THE SOUND OF SETTLING

These Silences story 1

- The first of a series of fics involving a singular theme, featuring various pairings that I happen to favor. I don't own Naruto, but as is obvious I shamelessly borrow its contents for storytelling. Masashi Kishimoto is ANBU when it comes to storytelling, and I am a mere Academy student.

- This contains implied yaoi, and if you are uncomfortable with this, please do us both a favor and retreat immediately. I do mean I imply the relationship of two male characters. This is set ideally after the series is over, to which I would daresay is, for now, an AU, precisely because it hasn't ended yet. ; And I'm making my own conclusions, literally, but that's not exactly the point.

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Whenever I'm alone with you

You make me feel like I am home again.

. - from "Lovesong" by The Cure

The mission room was always a beehive of activity no matter what the time of day. Early in the morning, the first non-shinobi employees replaced their sleepy-eyed companions, and waited for the third morning watch. This was when more somber one-man teams (usually Hunter Nin and Tokubetsu Jounin, who worked in pairs), were assigned their dangerous assassination and retrieval missions, and who needed to get a travel's head start.

In the middle of the day, when most assignments were handed out, the Hokage herself came down to direct a few more important missions to team leaders, before sending them off with her customary gruff blessing. Genin teams, giddy in their newly acquired ranks, would crowd over their team captains, excited to show their mettle. The new chuunin in tern sniffed at the younger nins' eagerness, and often took their missions with mature and measured grace.

The afternoon was when the Academy students were released, when their gleeful shouts rang through the Academy grounds. The teachers would take the rotation, and sit behind the desks to administer the paperwork.

It was when teams of all sorts arrived. They were the grave and grim (those who hurried to pass their reports, anxious for a wounded teammate in the hospital), the elated, and the weary. They came in random order: sometimes only a heavily bandaged team leader would appear with little words to pass her team's report, sometimes children fought over who would hand it in (and they mostly each held a part of the paper when they passed it), sometimes only a messenger bird with a small scroll tied to its leg would show.

The mission room always breathed with the rancorous noise of life, and lost lives, that the village made its business to protect and confront. It hissed when someone operated the coffee machine in the far corner of the room, pooling rich, black coffee in a sleepy nin's mug. It rustled with the papers that were filed, stamped, leafed through and crumpled; it babbled in the voices of so many different shinobi arguing, laughing, praising, crying.

He always stopped down the hallway before he entered the mission room, and it had become a strange habit of his that Sasuke, who was always susceptible to little things, would look at him questioningly when he did so.

"Compulsion," he would say as an excuse, and he would be answered by an impatient grunt. Of course he could not tell anyone why exactly he stopped like so. Truth to tell, it was an embarrassing habit, and if he bothered to say the words out aloud, he was quite sure he would be teased incessantly to no end.

The Mission Room was the threshold of the village, where its shinobi residents came and left. Some never returned, some returned missing parts of themselves, or parts of their teams. The Mission Room was what he would have liked to think of as the doormat to the village, where one asked permission to leave (Itekimasu! he would think, verily in the manner he was taught to do as a child), and to return (Tadaima, he would tell himself, still bothering to listen for a silent response).

Home, to him at least, was a state of being.

It was the brightest day of the year. It was the kind of morning that promised the best of luck in all directions, and the crisp mountain air carried the last scents of what had been a brief, but beautiful spring.

He entered the still-empty Mission Room, which seemed to doze with the minimal activity of the few people who manned the desks. Some who milled around gave him a tired nod of welcome before turning back to the coffee machine.

"Ohayou Gozaimasu!"

A familiar, but completely unexpected figure smiled at him brightly from behind the main table, and he was suddenly conscious about the way his vest was torn in several places (I should have left it, he thought), and his sporadic and inconsistent handwriting that looked like it was hurrying off to go somewhere outside the page. He thought briefly about apologizing and stalling (but of course he did that all the time) but then again it was the kind of morning that seeped into one's nerves and made one do tremendous things.

"O…hayou, Iruka-sensei."

The other winked knowingly. "I am sure that has got to be a week late," he said, shaking his head in mock anger as Kakashi approached the table sheepishly, "I can only imagine the trouble for everyone else if all three of Team 7 will take after you. We'd have to recalibrate the filing system of the village!"

There were several things that were incorrect in that statement and on a normal day he would have corrected the ponytailed sensei, but today, of all days, he did not want to ruin anything. Not when they now shared a laugh, which roused the Mission Room from its one-eyed doze and trailed along even after it faded off, like a mischievous child.

Not that, he reminded himself hastily, there was anything in the first place.

So he said a congenial "Oh dear, that would be terrible!" instead and handed in his report.

It was in fact a one-man mission he'd taken on three days ago, which took him to the upper regions of Fire Country, skirting the Basin of Cliffs to spy on a suspected Earth Country syndicate.

He had beaten off fifteen Iwa nin who were patrolling the perimeter and he had badly gashed his wrist against a sharp stone; he had lived off roots because his pack had fallen off his back when he dangled several thousand feet off the ground, with chakra barely enough to allow him to maintain a steady grip. He had died in that place, in the way that all nin died for their missions, and returned to be resurrected.

He had every right to submit his report late, and he wished he had given it earlier, because he really did not want to trouble the man who was now reading through his report, in fact it was the last thing he wanted to do—

"So I shall be going now," he heard himself say and for a brief moment was immensely cross because it was an unnecessary and redundant statement, as he had already done what he came for. Itekimasu.

So he turned, and did not catch the look of great concern and sadness in the scarred man's face.

He left the Mission Room, and walked down the strangely empty hallway in a rapidly deteriorating morning. He had always asked himself, in the darkest, still-wounded part of his being, why he bothered to come back to the village. Why he bothered, after every S-rank mission delivered to him half-heartedly by some Fire Country personnel, to return to a place that demanded of him his life in return for a home.

Ah, but he lived in a bare little apartment in the Eastern Sector and too often it waited, as silent and alone as he was, mute and indifferent and unused--it was not 'home'. Not that he was all too different from other shinobi; many, as a matter of fact, lived alone, in colder and more decrepit places.

He was quite sure it had to be "that"—the little secret every sensei told their apprentices, the powerful "precious person" that held the answer to one's existence. As a child, he firmly believed it was the Hokage—the figure everyone in the village ideally sought to be like. Growing up, he thought it was himself.

It had been several years hence, and he still didn't know what it was. Of course, he had a sneaking suspicion, but he had paid it no heed.

The sky was approaching the mottled yellow look that it always had before the sun resurrected itself from behind the jagged outlines of the Hokage Cliff. It was light enough for him to recognize who it was that had followed him up from the mission room, and as he leaned on the edge of the balcony (careful to cradle his bandaged hand), he thought he felt something that had rotted in him slowly churn to life.

Without a word, the other took his place by the railing as well, breathed deeply in the clearness of the approaching morning.

This happened more often, these wordless instances, which he found most ironic because in the past they both had always made it a point to cut each other off. They had had dealings—embarrassing ones in front of the Hokage, teasing ones in the company of Naruto, formal ones in the presence of their comrades in the ever-busy Mission Room.

I really did want to redo my handwriting, sensei, but it was really difficult to keep the pen from shaking. Even with chakra.

At first it was always a chore to have to ask the lively, frustratingly polite teacher to talk about his students. He had known them best of all, and Iruka was known to be the most attentive Academy teacher in the village. While most sensei could give a general run-down on a student, and in the end forget their names ("What on earth was that Uchiha child's name again?"), Iruka would go on about Sakura's meticulous habit of writing down discussions word-for-word, or about Sasuke's tendency to daydream when the day was particularly lethargic.

He used to approach the Academy teacher to talk about Naruto especially, and how the Kyuubi carrier reacted and thought. It surprised him how Iruka was the only one the then-rabidly defensive boy had taken to. Once, long ago, he had asked these things because he was more concerned about himself in the presence of a Jinchuuriki, and had been immensely annoyed at the various "unnecessary" anecdotes he had to endure. They had been forced into contact because of the children, and he had to endure that too.

Now, that the "children" weren't so childish anymore, and that Team 7 was not quite Team 7 anymore either, they were simply two shinobi who had missions to do, and papers to file.

While they had every reason to return to their separate paths (days of endless chalkmarks and child-screams for Iruka. Landscape after landscape of rocks and solitary S-missions for him.), they always found themselves returning, as if controlled by an unknown puppeteer, to the Mission Room, to the roof deck, to each other's company.

Now that their children had grown up and had grown their secrets away from their teachers' eyes, the words too trickled out to give way for the heavy weightlessness of silence.

It surprised him how slipping into this silence felt like slipping into a comfortable alcove that one could call one's "own"—in the wide-open space of the roof deck, in the small pockets of breath between the customary words they used to have in abundance with each other: "How are the kids?" (How are you?); "I'll be going now" (Be safe.) and "See you" (Come home.)

He used to believe it was habit that kept him returning, induced him to check if the Academy teacher was manning the mission desk. He used to believe that it was only because of mutual teacherly concern that they both arranged for short dinners at Ichiraku—dinners that were similarly silent affairs.

Now, that they were simply two shinobi who had missions to do, and that they had done all they could for the children that had needed them most, they listened to the sound of settling: This is what we have made of the village and its future.

Towards the western side of the village, a flock of kites, the fastest messenger birds in the village, took to the air from one of the Hyuuga spires. They circled the sky once, twice, and scattered off to different directions, bearing messages and missives, and orders from the coding teams. Below them, the bustle of a Konoha Friday began, as stalls along the avenue opened for the day, and the first screaming lot of Academy students raced down the street.

It's time for classes, the kids are here.

Wordlessly, Iruka shifted from his position, and he understood perfectly. The day had started, and it was time to get to work. Iruka smiled and waved a little, acknowledging the child-squeal that had called his name from the grounds.

...you are most loved.

It was almost simultaneous when they leaned away from the railing to walk back down to the Mission Room. Had they indeed been around each other that long? he wondered. It might have been so.

And it may have been his imagination, but every measured step carried with it a small jaunt that was characteristic of people who had experienced tremendous things. It was a fine, fine morning that ended spring, and ended a week of sleepless camping, bloody skirmishes, and the whisper of steel against his skin.

Iruka was smiling widely to himself as well, ducking his head slightly to hide it, and without even asking why, he knew the teacher was experiencing the same thing.

As always, they stopped before they entered the Mission Room, now fully awake with the robust greetings and farewells of shinobi. The Hokage herself was abusing the lousy handwriting of some poor nin, and then sending him off with an embarrassing advice that had the poor man blushing and laughing as he exited the room.

They stood, for a full moment, still as trees, absorbing the life around them.

Iruka turned, reached over to lightly tap his bandaged hand, and winked playfully. You be careful next time. There will be no excuses for bad handwriting the second time around, hmm?

He lifted his good hand to rub the back of his neck sheepishly, and they both laughed heartily. He felt it spew out of him like the geysers of Earth Country—warm, soothing, spilling into every fiber of his being, settling like warm, rich coffee in his deepest, most wounded parts.

The fingers on his wrist stayed, pressed lightly against the vein there, before letting go. The teacher's face had glowed a subtle crimson, and he could not stop the smile that shifted the shadows of his mask.

Okaerinasai.

Iruka turned then, and walked down the hall to where his class was, disappearing around the corner. He could hear the man's amused reprimand, as childish giggles greeted him.

Through the wall beside him, he could hear the coffee machine hiss warm coffee into someone's cup, and the annoyed "Troublesome!" as the contents spilled over to the owner's hand. He could hear the sandaled shuffling of small feet eager to walk the world, and the weary pads of feet that had walked too many paths.

And he thought he could hear, in the dreamlike illusion that mornings like these brought, the faint footfalls of those who had moved on from this world, who had once, like him, found a reason to come home after seeing death in the face.

Then he knew, as he had suspected, that it was the silences he shared with Iruka that he unconsciously fought for. It was only this silence that allowed him to feel welcomed back in his village, after a week of killing for it. Nobody else was able to welcome him with the wordlessness that tasted of concern, relief, respect and contentment, and he was sure he was able to give something as precious back.

Home was, after all, a state of being.

The Hokage was now laughing boisterously at some lewd joke. Through a window, bird cries echoed as kites flew over the Yondaime's head. Briefly he thought about saying something to the Academy teacher he was fond of the most, when they would meet next that afternoon for the other's Mission Room shift.

He heard his name called, and slowly turned to raise a hand in acknowledgment.

He was home.

Author's notes:

(1) Itekimasu - "I'm leaving now." It's customary, in Japan, to ask permission before one leaves a place.

Tadaima - "I'm home." Said by person who has arrived "home" so to speak. Sometimes it's regarded as asking permission to enter home again.

Okaerinasai - "Welcome home." Said in reply by whoever is home to one who says, "Tadaima." To an extent, it is giving permission to enter home.

Thanks to Goukii for the reference. I decided to use the Japanese equivalent because the context holds more water than just saying, "I'm off!" as in the Western context doesn't really place too much weight on such customs.

(2) The idea that will eventually span a number of fics started from a writing suggestion made by a friend. I'll go ahead and give this one to the lovely KakaIru people in the LJ community, because they are all brilliant at writing fics and keeping the fandom alive and palpitating. :D I initially wanted this project to be under one title, with one chapter per pairing (which don't really affect each other), but scrapped that as I realized that they should be stand-alones instead (I have a secret fear of WIPs, and I am trying to wean it by writing two at the same time. So a third isn't too healthy).

(3) Again, I fail at writing from Iruka's perspective.-hangs head- I'd imagine the Country of Earth to be filled with rocky slopes and dry canyons. There would ideally be inconsistent soil formations and random bursts of hot spring geysers from clefts in the ground/ mountain face. (I'm sorry, but I do tend to dwell--almost literally!--in the setting so I can visualize it. ;)

(4) Thank you for reading, and I do hope it was fine. Do leave a note, I'd love to hear what you think. ;