We are the dead.
We are the dead.
We were once husbands, fathers, grandfathers, jounin, pillars of the community, soldiers, clan heads, an interrogator and a village elder-cum-second Jounin Commander. We were corporeal. Now we are just two of the many ghosts who haunt the village of Konoha.
I was head of the Akimichi clan, and my colleague here was head of the Yamanaka, and my team mate. Our third team mate, Shikaku, is still alive, the lucky bastard. Still has all his faculties intact, although he's retired as Jounin Commander. His son's taken over.
When I died, it was as though my mind and my body were falling apart. I was a living telegraph pole, communicating orders to thousands upon thousands of shinobi. It was not the first time I had over-exerted myself. The last time this happened, I went into a coma, just as Chouza was waking up from his.
This bastard named Kai and his brothers and sister had stabbed the shit out of me and placed a death seal upon me, you see. No-one could lift it, not even Kagura Harumichi, who'd come over from Suna on a diplomatic mission from the Kazekage – she knew everything about seals, but this one had her flummoxed. So anyway, while all this was going on, I was in a coma. The last thing I remember before I blacked out was my little sister Zakuro summoning her giant butterfly to take us both back to Konoha, and all this after she'd lost her eye too.
We were at war with an army of shinobi resurrected via Edo Tensei. My daughter had been placed in a unit under the command of Aida Munashi, Jounin Commander of Kirigakure. Chouza's son was relapsing from injuries from a particularly nasty mission, so he and Shikamaru and Shikaku were all behind the scenes, as was I, while Chouza was commanding another regiment. I was in charge of intel and communications. This time, I overtaxed myself. This time, I felt blood streaming out of my nose and mouth, my mind buckling under the pressure of delivering telepathic messages to the allied shinobi of the five villages. My head and eyes ached. Every cell in my body ached, it seemed. I remember my vision blurring, disembodied voices in my head, and then that was the end.
My mother and her team mates were among the undead shinobi. I was forced to fight her – I was the only one who could, and she insisted, wanted to know how strong her little boy had got. The old girl couldn't believe it, that the moody teen she'd left behind was not only a husband, but a father and a grandfather too. In our giant forms, we sparred with each other, and even my Katon couldn't slow her down, but I managed to shove a tanto through her neck, and she returned to the afterlife smiling and proud. It was the hardest thing I'd ever had to do in my life. That wasn't how I died, though. We Jounin Commanders were up against the undead Danzo and the old bastard was waving a sword around, and when I saw him headed to where a group of medics, including my grandson and one of Chouji's students, the redheaded Hyuuga girl, were – I couldn't help myself. Some instinct kicked in and I threw myself in his path and the sword went right through the seal, and my belly didn't save me this time, although at least the medics got away.
Typical Chouza. I swear that's why the Seventh took you on as her bodyguard – well, before she was the Seventh, of course. You're a professional sword-taker, you always were.
I'd bitchslap you if it wasn't true. Well, I knew I was going to die anyway, but at least, gods be praised, I survived long enough to be able to die in hospital with my family around me – save for Chouji. Inoichi was dead by the time Ino found him, but she knew he was gone before she found his body, for the three Inos – her, Inoichi and Inosuke, her and Sai's little boy – were linked telepathically. When one feels pain, the others feel it. Ino got a raging headache when Inoichi went into his coma last time, Chouji said.
I watched from the afterlife as my daughter wept over my body. She was not to know, until hours later, that her husband had been slaughtered too. Flying on his ink bird, scouting terrain, he had been shot down by an arrow fired from the complete Susano'o of Sasuke Uchiha, whose vengeful ghost had haunted Konoha ever since he'd killed himself in front of us all those years ago. I can't say for sure that Sai was being specifically targeted because he was Sasuke's replacement, but you do wonder. Anyway, when Ino found out, she went to pieces. She was always a strong girl, strong for Sakura, strong for Chouji, and even in the little blip where post-natal depression had floored her, she soon got back on her feet – but losing her husband and her father broke her. It killed a part of her soul she never got back.
Not until she married Chouji. Even Shikaku in all his wisdom couldn't have foreseen that they'd end up together. Chouji would come home from training looking downcast because Ino had teased him about his weight. It didn't endear her to me, I must say. But then something happened – it must have been around the time of the Chuunin Exams – and Ino seemed to actually treat Chouji like a friend rather than a nuisance like before. He told me she'd brought him fruit in the hospital, and then there was the terrible time when he came home, all skins and bones, and we prayed every night for his life and slept little. I was sitting outside the operation room when Ino came and asked me how Chouji was. I told her he was out of danger and her pretty face lit up like a roomful of candles.
When Ino was a teenager, I had always wondered whether she and Chouji would become a couple. I asked her about it, a couple of times, whether she preferred him or Shikamaru, but she laughed in my face. As if, she said. One's too lazy, the other she couldn't see as anything more than a friend.
I knew Chouji loved Shikamaru, and that he and Ino had had a bit of a thing going on, but they weren't in love, just messing around. Ah, the awkward moment when you find your son's condoms...but at least he was using protection. If he'd knocked her up, Inoichi, you wouldn't have had to kill him because I'd have got in there first, believe me. Neither of them were old enough to have a kid.
I was so happy when Ino married Sai. He was a misfit, but she did him the world of good. He was no puppet, but through Ino it was that he really learned how to talk to people, how to act in social situations, how to function normally after his upbringing at the hands of Danzo, and it was through Inosuke's birth that he learned how to become a father, and he finally had his own little family. A real family, not an artificial one where you're forced to kill the ones you love.
I was so happy when Chouji married Yumi. He'd gone through his fair share of girls – and the odd bloke – who just used him and treated him like shit because all he was to them was an easy lay. Oh, sure, some had lasted, but none of them really gelled with him, and to be honest I thought most of them were fucking bimbos. I'm a proud man, Inoichi, I don't want my son marrying a useless bitch. Which Yumi wasn't. Megumi and I liked her from Day One. She was an immigrant from Uzugakure with a strange accent and a talent for knife fighting, which she'd picked up in order to defend herself and her mother as they travelled from border to border searching for work. She found a job in a steakhouse that Chouji frequented, and he got talking to her, one thing lead to another, yada yada. She was smart and a hard worker and she loved her food. She fitted right in and even the snobbier clan members warmed to her.
But when you're a shinobi, there's always the lingering fear...
...that happiness can't last. We had our fair share of trials. Chouyomi's kidnap and much later, her rape and her descent into depression. Taiyaki making herself sick and taking the red pill to make herself thin. I was so fucking angry, you can't imagine. I know what it's like to nearly lose a child and seeing Chouji in a mess, relentlessly comfort eating and crying, brought back unpleasant memories.
But it was Ino who helped Chouyomi after the rape, Ino who sat with her in her bedroom and held her hand and got Chouyomi to lie down while she entered her mind and helped rip out the last lingering images of the horrible genjutsu that the enemy had cast on her. Ino who stroked Chouyomi's hair and let Chouyomi howl into her arms before you and Chouji came upstairs to take over.
And it was Chouji, along with the Seventh, who sat with Ino when she was depressed after having Inosuke, Chouji who held her hand and told her stories of what his students did and sometimes even made her laugh. And if she wanted to talk, he'd sit and listen. He was always a good listener, my son.
Do you think that, had it not been for Yumi and Sai, they'd have married eventually?
Fuck knows. Maybe. People's feelings change. Zakuro didn't realise she was gay until she was in her sixties. The Seventh was in love with the Uchiha traitor before she realised the Sixth was the right man for her. She still mourns them both. When I haunt her office, as her old bodyguard before she was Hokage, I see the old picture of her old team together.
Chouji and Ino, too, kept photographs of their days as mere genin under Asuma's care.
Chouji was unconscious when I died. Before I died, Kagura Harumichi sealed half of my chakra within Chouji. She knew I'd want to say my last goodbyes to him, and she was right. When he found out I'd died, he too went to pieces. He was a broken toy, a wingless butterfly.
He and Ino and Shikamaru had each other. But it wasn't until after Yumi's death that your son and my daughter really became close...
...yes. Yumi started getting headaches and no amount of meds would get rid of them. Then as time passed, the fits started, and the moodswings, and she had to give up her job because her hands became unstable and shaky and she couldn't chop meat or carry plates. Megumi got worried because she knew there was something serious that she couldn't deal with, and made Yumi go to the doctor, and the poor kid had a tumour in her brain and there was nothing they could do. When she died, I watched heartbroken as Chouji and the kids all clung to each other and cried. How I wished I was alive and able to offer a hug or some words of comfort.
I wish I could have consoled Ino after Sai died. I'm not as good as you at dealing with people who are upset, Chouza, but when it's your own little girl...
...or your own son. Chouji and I needed each other, that much was true. He comforted me when I went to pieces after my niece killed herself.
Our children realise, when they're older, that we're only human ourselves. We may be men of power and status, but we are not made of iron. We are not infallible beings. Cut us, and we bleed. Burn us, and we cry out in agony as our skin blisters. Put us in a terrifying genjutsu and we are frozen with fear, trying desperately to break ourselves out.
No amount of training can help you to easily accept the death of someone you love. I repeated the shinobi laws over and over when Mum died.
After my mother died, I just went and sat in the flower shop and stared at the petals, red, blue, yellow, orange, pink, purple, white, gold, hoping they'd cheer me up.
But sadness can bring you closer together. Ino and Chouji, in an odd way, bonded over the deaths of Yumi and Sai. And Yumi and Sai watched with us as Ino and Chouji finally realised, after all these years, they did love each other.
He was no longer the stupid fat kid.
She was no longer the shallow, bitchy blonde.
He had lost the sight in one eye due to brain damage, had three children, been a teacher and jounin squad leader. He had been scarred in battle and grown wiser, tougher, maybe a little more cynical, but deep down the same old kindly Chouji she'd always known.
She had a scar on her face, but it didn't spoil her beauty, nor did the sadness that crept over her features and aged her, but she did not wither. She had a son. She had been an interrogator and a medic-nin. She had learned to look past the outside, she had unearthed a cruel streak that came out in her dealings with prisoners but which she put away when she came home. She was still, to her friends and family, Ino Yamanaka, the girl who'd cheer you up with a smile and an offer of drinks or flowers, the girl who'd see you in hospital when you were down, the girl who'd hold your hair back when you were throwing up.
Just like she did with the Seventh.
Before she was the Seventh. Before the Sixth sacrificed himself for Konoha, for everyone. He is not with us now, not like Kakashi and Asuma and Anko and Konohamaru and all the rest. He is within the belly of a death god.
How do we know this? Other kami who had seen the sealing process told us.
Both Ino and Chouji mourned Naruto when he died, and even the knowledge he'd died saving the lives of his comrades, the most honourable way a shinobi could die, did not console them.
Come on, Chouza. This is getting depressing. Let's speak of happier times. After all, we were there when Chouji and Ino got married.
We were there with Asuma, and Ino's mum Ayame, and my sister, and Sai, and Yumi. We were the secret guests, but only the dogs of the Inuzuka and Taiyaki could see us, and as Dango always was a bit uneasy about his sister's ability to see ghosts, she kept quiet. But Chouji felt my presence. Like his earring, I whispered into his ear to go forth and make her happy.
Chouza and I shook the branches of the trees outside the shrine.
I hoisted my staff into the branches and gave them a poke or several, and as the happy couple with their attendants – Inosuke, Dango, Taiyaki, Chouyomi, Shikamaru, Temari and the Seventh herself – made their way out of the shrine, I took a deep breath and blew cherry blossom petals into their wake as Inoichi zapped the lilies of the valley that grew in a patch, and made them dance.
I couldn't help it. Ayame loved those flowers; they always reminded her of Ino and me with their slender stems and little white heads, like silver bells. Tall and pale, beautiful and deadly. Like Ino.
Sometimes I pass over them as they sleep. The lily of the valley and her autumn leaf, for Chouji's hair is turning grey now, but there's still shades of chestnut in it, and the spirals on his face are as red as ever.
I am – I was - Inoichi Yamanaka, husband of Ayame, father of Ino, grandfather of Inosuke, interrogator, head of the Yamanaka clan.
I am – I was – Chouza Akimichi, husband of Megumi, father of Chouji, grandfather of Chouyomi, Dango and Taiyaki, second Jounin Commander and elder, head of the Akimichi clan.
My daughter...
My son...
We can rest peacefully knowing that they are happy together. I can watch my daughter and be proud of her, that she is back to her old self and with a man who loves her, come what may.
I can watch over them knowing that things have come full circle. I am sealed inside Chouji; I see everything. I am a part of him, just as Ino is a part of Inoichi. I can watch over them knowing that my son has found another woman who truly loves him for who he is, and that that woman is Ino Yamanaka.