Disclaimer: Naruto does not belong to me, nor do the Eiffel Tower, the Serengeti National Park or Cadbury's chocolates. Mmm, chocolate.
A.N.
The following is the first chapter of a future fic. I wrote it as catharsis from another (long and increasingly complicated) story I'm currently working on; it was going to be a one-shot, but the first plotbunny met a second and... well... I really am very sorry. Anyway, it's too interesting to drop now - just don't expect any updates in the immediate future.
Random warnings:
Rated for descriptions of injuries and Naruto-level violence. Vague spoilers for late Shippuuden, but since these came to me from the Internet and you're on the Internet I doubt you'll be learning anything new. I'm behind on the manga, so canonicity may be a bit wobbly. All mistakes are my own doing.
It's only a first chapter, but I worked hard on it. I hope you like :)
1 – Life and/or Death
Sometimes things go wrong. It is the way of the world that for every success there must be an equal number of failures, and someone always has to clean up afterwards.
My name is Tsunade, and I have the worst job in the Leaf Village.
It falls to me, the unpaid comrade of the sewage man, to clean up Konoha's worst messes. Medical, administrative and political messes: on a bad day I get all three. I don't know what to call this. A worse day? A worst day. Funny how quiet the streets are, given how nobody's supposed to know anything.
Being the best is an ugly business. Oh, nobody's watching for you to fail: you're their Hokage, their lifeline, their leader, and they would trust you to the ends of the Earth. They can't doubt you and won't doubt you, but you cannot doubt yourself either. You must march in with unfailing arrogance and the knowledge that no-one else can do what you can because if you falter, even for a second, something will go wrong and you will fail and someone will die.
ANBU Owl asked to go to the funeral, though he's still in shock. I didn't let him. You can't take risks with that kind of jutsu. Guy's tried to escape the hospital twice already, but Yamato still hasn't moved and of course we're keeping Kakashi sedated.
Sakura's staying with Shizune – best to leave her out of things for a while. She told me everything I needed to know and then shut down, like there was nothing else inside.
It began with a team of eight: Kakashi, Naruto, Sakura, and Guy; Yamato, Sai, sharp-eyed ANBU Owl and quick ANBU Fox. Dangerous and powerful, ready for anything. The perfect hunters.
Madara, as expected, was untouchable. He hopped through the canopy giggling like it was all a great game, while branches and entire trees crashed down around him. Yamato got close, Fox got closer still, and a Rasenshuriken from Naruto nearly took both their heads off and missed Madara entirely.
"You know, you're improving," he said as he rematerialised on a more distant branch. "I think I'm almost proud of—"
Kakashi's fist came through his chest.
They stood in uneasy equilibrium for a moment, Madara's red eye wide with shock, Kakashi's narrowed in concentration. The lightning intensified.
Then there was a terrible crack, Kakashi fell forward, Madara vanished and things stopped going to plan.
ANBU Fox: straight through the heart, dead on arrival. Kakashi: fractured right arm, dislocated shoulder and concussion. ANBU Owl: a six-fold chakra seal, the cruellest thing to use against a Hyuuga. Guy: knife in the back, neatly lodged between the fourth and fifth ribs. He would have drowned but Sakura, burned down one side but otherwise unscathed, kept him and the others alive for the medical team.
Naruto lost control at some point, when it was already far too late.
"What about Yamato?" said Kakashi.
Tsunade jerked her head at the ceiling, towards the comatose floor of the hospital. "Still out. Sharp blow across the top of the head. I think the bastard was aiming for the coronal suture," she added bitterly, "but Sai threw his aim off. If he hadn't..."
Kakashi drummed his fingers on the sheet. "And Sai, how's he?"
Pause. "I don't know."
"What?"
Another pause. "We couldn't find him," said Tsunade, her voice very level. "Yet there's no sign of a fight, and no—"
"—body," said Kakashi.
"I think he went off after Naruto and Madara," said Tsunade, "the fool. We've had nothing from him, nothing from any of them, no trail, no tracks, no message – nothing."
"And it's been what, two days now?"
"Six – lie down!"
"Six days," said Kakashi. "None of the other jinchuuriki lasted more than three."
"I know."
The Hokage bit down on the ball of her thumb for a moment, then took out the finger and replaced it with a toothpick. It stuck up as if she'd grown a snaggle tooth.
"I've informed the other Kage, of course," she said. "They're not happy. Seems Killer B's been out of touch for almost a fortnight, and he's the last one left. If the Akatsuki have caught him as well as Naruto – I don't want to hedge any bets, but we should be prepared for the worst."
Kakashi made another abortive attempt to sit up. "You're giving up on him?"
"What do you want me to do? You think I like it? You think this is easy? It's nearly a week now I've been sending teams, ANBU squads, all of our best trackers – the entire Inuzuka Clan, for pity's sake – we can't spare the resources any more."
"Naruto won't go easily. Surely he's worth some risk—"
"I'm not calling off the search entirely, Kakashi." She bared a canine around the toothpick. "Much as some people would want me to. Oh, that kid – he'll fight to the end. I don't think he knows how to do anything else."
"And Sakura—"
"Sakura's just fine."
Kakashi's left hand, hanging down the side of the bed, began to tap out a rhythm on the aluminium frame.
Ding ting ding, ding ching DING ting ting ching,
CHING ding ding ting –
"Stop it."
"Sorry."
The silence this time was sharp and brittle, like glass.
Ting.
"You really don't remember anything, [do you]?"
"Should I?"
"No-one else saw Madara do his little vanishing act. That jutsu of his—"
"I haven't managed to copy it, if that's what you mean. Believe me, I've tried."
"Don't be facetious, Kakashi."
"But it's a slow jutsu, I know that much," Kakashi continued. "And I got him, I swear I got him – he was solid, I felt it."
"You said you didn't remember."
"I remember Madara, and I remember ANBU Fox. The fox mask, right up close."
Tsunade's toothpick splintered.
"Is that all?" she said.
A shrug, awkward and one-shouldered. "They always did say Fox was fast," said Kakashi, absently. "Poor kid. She couldn't have stood a chance."
"Kakashi, when you remember—"
"—if—"
"—if you remember anything, even if it's not important, even if it's just an image or a noise or a touch – tell me."
Kakashi limped across his flat, avoiding the squeaking floorboards, and peered out of the window. Someone had followed him home, but at this point he didn't really care. Besides – he shook open the discharge letter – incapacitating stalkers was probably one more of those activities forbidden to him, like taijutsu or handstands or breathing.
He tossed the paper into the bin. The bottom drawer of his desk stuck when he tried to open it, but eventually he jerked it out and, after some scrabbling, found an unopened wad of sealing tags. Most of them spilled out of his hand when he bit the packet open; he slapped a couple of the remaining seals over the door-frame and threw the rest at the drawer. They missed.
Kakashi sank into bed.
The Sharingan never forgot, no matter what injuries he sustained. Mind damaged or memories destroyed and he could still reach into that safe little corner to recall every detail, but he'd been awake for three days and still remembered nothing. Not that it would make a difference, because Naruto was certainly dead—
They were his memories. It was a matter of principle.
Lady Tsunade had visited him a few more times, but only to poke him in the ribs and threaten him for daring to move. No news – she'd have told him if there had been – and war lurked on the horizon. But then it always did, these days.
Could you fight a war against one man? Against five, against ten? Where did you start counting?
One man and his demons. Now that would make a war.
He rolled his legs off the bed and swung into a sitting position. The light from the setting sun poured though the window, Kyuubi red.
Madara was strong, not too strong to beat but too powerful to credit, too fast and sharp and dangerous to be real. He'd taken Guy out so easily, Yamato, himself. Brushed them aside like dead leaves. And Naruto – Naruto and the Nine-Tailed Fox, fiercest of all the tailed beasts – Naruto and his legendary stubbornness – had he even put up a fight?
Broken trees, burnt rocks, said Tsunade, the ground ripped open like a stomach wound.
Maybe there had only been the first Kyuubi-fuelled explosion, all rage and no reason, before Madara took control. But he didn't know that, couldn't be sure, all he had was word of mouth and the feeble evidence of intuition; if he could know, see, remember, go back to the clearing and hit the right trigger in his mind—
Why did he care anyway?
A matter of principle again, perhaps.
Almost automatically he lifted his right arm out of its sling and matched the other hand to it, finger to finger. The plaster around his wrist made it hard to form the seals, but the summoning was such an ordinary jutsu he could have shaped it with one hand alone.
I/boar
Silly idea, of course. Silly idea, to send the pack chasing after a memory which probably never existed; and Pakkun would complain afterwards, tell him off for wasting time. Still, he could do with the company.
Inu/dog
Only when he reached the third seal did he feel the first stab of pain. The sign was a complex one, and his fingers weren't doing what they were supposed to. He smoothed down the flow of chakra and moved on.
Tori/bird
They'd warn him, if he was losing his mind: dogs always smelt that out.
Saru/monkey
Just one more twist of technique was needed for this last, best, trickiest part, and then he could reach into the place where his pack lived. Kakashi concentrated.
Hitsuji/ram
He dropped his left hand to the floor and let the power go – come on, guys – a wonderful inebriating rush down his arms and into his fingers, like whispering fire, and everything was wrong because the fire wouldn't leave. And because underneath the skin a knife scraped along his bones, silver-sharp and cold and moving down from the elbow. And because he couldn't see for some reason, and his arm was breaking again and then one last moment of mirror clarity before the world shattered, all falling glass and mad reflections, curled around the pain now but it wouldn't stop wouldn't stop make it stop please somebody make it let it let me—
Darkness.
Something fluttered off Kakashi's face as he twitched. There were moths in his room which kept eating his shirts, and he'd run out of thread to repair them. Have to buy some more tomorrow. He wasn't supposed to be lying like that, was he? Not on his right side. But habit was a strong force to break, and he liked sleeping sideways; the medics would just have to lump it.
He peeled his eyelid off the floor.
Wait, floor?
The knots in the wood were full of grey dust; the wood was grey, and the opposite wall was grey too.
Why'm I on the floor?
Nothing good ever came of lying on the floor. At worst he was about to die; at the best, he was going to spend the rest of the day with a vicious backache. Kakashi was pretty sure he wasn't dying, but it paid to check. All four limbs still present and head intact, though his vision had lost all colour. The right shoulder creaked a bit when he moved. His arms—
By pushing with his legs and leaning on his head and bracing his back against the bed-frame Kakashi managed to force himself into a sitting position. He could have moved his arms if he'd been so inclined. It would have been easier, quicker, more dignified, but right now he didn't want to and that was that.
The room was patchwork grey, the colour of moonlight, and the paper tags he'd spilt earlier had blown across the floor and stuck to everything. They played tricks on his mind, shifting his focus distance with pattern after pattern.
He opened his palm.
Pattern after pattern after pattern, the paper seals had written their symbols on his skin. Ink twisted around his fingers in a hundred different shapes and spiralled to a stop around the final character, burnt black in the centre of his palm: forbidden, taboo, end of the line.Well, he got the message. He shook down his sleeve – the writing went on, all the way down his arm. The pain was no worse than mild cramp now.
Kakashi took a deep breath and let it out in an even, ten-second exhalation. His arm was fine, it wasn't broken, it was fine and he couldn't read the writing. Forbidden forbidden forbidden, and what did that bit mean there, at the crease of the wrist? It looked like 'drastic sake' but it might be 'perilous fruit juice' in another language; and above it a long beautiful, meaningless scrawl; and to the left half a kanji, reflected on itself. Perhaps they wanted him to go mad.
If he'd designed the sealing, he'd have slapped an illusion on top. Never allow the victim a scrap of information, keep them frightened, let their mind fill up with nonsense to keep them away from the real problem.
"Ah, but that's loose thinking," he whispered. "Illusions have keys of their own."
The marks had faded from black to grey, like a bad tattoo. Kakashi pulled himself to his feet and shut the window.
Can't remember opening it. Doesn't matter. Concentrate.
He spread a blank scroll across the table and stared at his arm for a moment, then picked up the brush and began to draw.
I should have told him. He knows now, you see, and I'll have to step in before anything worse happens. Sometimes things go so wrong it's impossible to fix what's left.
Author's Promise (cross my heart)
This story will be finished - more than that, it will be rewritten, properly plotted and fleshed out - once I've completed my other story, caught up with the manga and maybe got a couple of short fics under my belt. Give me a couple of years, but I swear I'll get it done. I hate unfinished fics.
It took a long time to get this polished and posted, but I think my writing improved immensely in the process. I tried to do something interesting with the scene structure, though I'm not sure if it worked or it's just confusing; and I still use too much punctuation. Hmm, it's also a bit gloomy and angsty for my liking, so maybe I'll shove in a second chapter to balance that out and add some more plot hooks. Yay plot hooks, yay foreshadowing. I have all the subtlety of Brian Blessed after a few beers.
Constructive criticism is very welcome, as are random comments. Randomness is fun.