One of the hardest things about being a teacher, Iruka reflects, is resisting the urge to hit one of your students really fucking hard. And to then tell them exactly everything you've ever thought of them.
The very hardest thing would be to wonder afterwards if any of what you said would even mean anything to them.
Because whenever he sees Sakura and Naruto at Ichiraku, with smiles that don't quite brighten and voices that don't quite break, he would love nothing else again if he could just get his hands around Uchiha Sasuke's throat.
He has these children for five years, on average. He is expected to wipe noses and dry tears and teach arithmetic and geography and how to kill yourself silently and produce well-rounded, intelligent, promising murderers and identify prodigies and comfort failures and protect the future of the village and attend a thousand funeral ceremonies.
He wonders for how much longer he can do this.
He bites back a sneer, for as much as Uchiha Sasuke was a student of his, as much as it burns that he had to let that wide-eyed boy return home to the ghosts of his whole world, he wishes for once that he himself wasn't just a chuunin. That he could be jounin, ANBU, prodigy, sannin, just so he could be the one to snatch Sasuke's wrist back, and smother his chidori. Just so he could do… something.
He doesn't wish too hard, for one reason.
He knows that he could be Hokage, Emperor, Bijuu, and still his power would not reach that far. Sometimes a metamorphosis is something that happens silently, and no one can force Sasuke to bind up his demons once more.
And maybe he also wishes for a new jutsu, and for the power of a sannin, so that he could stop that killing hand and break those stabbing fingers and puncture through that dying mind, and scream right into Sasuke's head.
Look, look, look- you little shit, you fucking shit, you- does the Sharingan make you blind?- it's not too late- you are needed- why didn't you just fucking die too- no, no, you can't die, I don't want you dead, but- my fault- you were such a little kid, and why didn't I ever-you're murdering them both from the inside out, and you were so cute as three kids, tumbling in the dirt in your new hitai-ate, and now you're like acid rotting through their inside and spilling out as stained vomit-
He laughs coolly, his heart bleeding. And now, Sasuke has joined Orochimaru.
It's like a slow fracture for the heart. Iruka remembers Orochimaru all too well. Oh, he was just a little brat to the man, he recalls that in painful clarity, it was Anko that was the special one.
This is why Iruka has never minded being ordinary. Ordinary got you thrown to the back of the queue. Ordinary got you a thousand secrets and ten thousand knives to hide behind. Ordinary got him the dismissive flicker of yellow eyes.
Orochimaru will hurt Sasuke in ways that the boy has never known before, and Iruka wants to torture them both for it. Orochimaru, it goes unspoken, but Sasuke-
Do you still think life is a fucking game, with you, the handsome young prodigy, getting free passes and bonuses on your name and face and skills, or has Orochimaru bled that from you? You're going to burn right up, kid, and you should've just sat in the playground and played on the swings, because it's too late to call home.
And goddamnit, but Iruka wants to just start smashing heads now, because he failed, they all did, and all giving Sasuke those titles- child prodigy, last of the Uchiha, talented, gifted, perfect- accomplished was to convince the kid of his own rightness, and that made things so very, very easy for Orochimaru.
Even if Sasuke can kill Itachi, it's never going to be a victory.
A/N: Written because I always felt bad for Iruka. Everyone else is moving on and growing and changing and fighting, and he's still waiting, because he can't do anything else. He teaches them for five years, and then he watches and wonders if they're still going to be alive at the end of it all.