Songs That Keep The Memories Chapter 1, a naruto fanfic

Songs That Keep The Memories.

Disclaim ownership of source material

Natoko came to me one day when I was in the kitchen. I don't care if you like or hate her, hate this plot, think she is mary-sue or frustrating and cliché. I liked her enough to write her down. She made me giggle. Just enjoy. I tried to make it amusing. There will be a second part when I get around to writing it.

P.o.n. Team 7 days. This is in a limbo of plot. Random references all over the shop.

Music: Fields of Gold - (version by: ) Sting.

The mission was fairly simple. Go to the land of mist, collect scroll, come back. Get some money. Chill for the rest of the day then go on another mission. At most it would have taken a week.

But when its Team 7, nothing is ever that simple.

Half way there, a group of surprisingly skilled rogue ninja appeared. They were defeated, but unfortunately, Kakashi passed out.

They lugged Kakashi to the closest village, where no one would help them, until rather abruptly in the town square, Team Seven spotted a woman screaming at a market vendor, telling him that she wasn't going to pay full price for that bag of rice, because there were metal weights in the bottom, and it was not a kilo. The vendor sneered at her and lifted a rather threatening knife at the woman, leaving Kakashi with Sakura on a bench, Sasuke and Naruto went to the woman who now had a knife at her neck. Sasuke tackled the man and Naruto dragged the woman away who yelled threats (you bloody bastard! Goddamn thief! I'll get you I will!).

Once the situation was averted, Sasuke politely asked if she could help them. The woman sneered, and they noticed for the first time the large bandanna that ran across her face, in a similar style to Kakashi's headband, covering her right eye, only the scars didn't run just down like Kakashi's did, it seemed a giant scratch mark, three lines, out from the bandanna, one across her cheek bone, another across her nose and the last reaching to her left eyebrow.

She glared at them and sneeringly replied that she didn't help ninja.

At which point, Sakura shoved Naruto and Sasuke out of the way, and though being infinitely smaller than the woman, poked her hand in the chest, demanding help, because they had just saved her life and so help her kami-sami if she didn't help the, she would show her why she was ninja.

The woman sneered and grit her teeth.

"Fine, I'm the local healer, but I don't know any fancy chakra remedies, but you lot can rest where I am. Pick him up and move."

It seemed a contradiction that this decidedly vicious and incredibly uncaring -ninja hating, thought Naruto- woman was a healer.

And so that was how they ended up, once again, completely off track from what was supposed to be just a simple mission

Kakashi groaned and rolled over. The bed he was in was stiff cotton sheets with that smell of something that has been cleaned so many times it doesn't really have a smell anymore.

Where was he now?

"Sensei?" Right, okay, mission, and that was Sakura, and above her kneeling beside him, was Naruto and distantly behind him was Sasuke leaning against a wall.

Groan, it all came back now.

At least they were all safe.

He gingerly pushed himself up, only to have Sakura push him back down.

"Sorry Kakashi-sensei, but you can't get up yet. We were told by the healer that you weren't aloud to yet." That timid little apologetic smile was on her face. He realised she was right, he was shaking already from just that exertion.

"Damn straight he isn't." He looked to the side, where the door had opened, there the, he guessed, was the healer. "Good job Sakura, at least you listen to what you are told."

The healer walked forward into the room, he observed the food she had and his stomach growled, loudly. The woman smirked. "I thought so," she knelt opposing Sakura, and over Kakashi's currently invalid body, passed her the soup. "Feed him, I aint." She got up and left the room. Kakashi blinked.

"…is she?"

"She hates ninja." Sasuke supplied from the wall he seemed to be attached to.

Naruto grinned. "You should have seen how Sakura-chan handled her when she said she wouldn't help us. Threatened her and everything."

He knew Sakura was blushing as she fetched an extra pillow to prop him up with. If he had the energy he might of smiled. Sakura came back and went about setting him up to eat with surprising ease. Two pillows under his head, sent Naruto and Sasuke out of the room, the whole time keeping her eyes lowered so she wouldn't see his face properly above his chin. It had something to do with seeing his face and it not being fair if the other two weren't in the room.

He really didn't get his genin team sometimes.

Two days later he was up and walking, still unsteady on his feet so they could not leave to get the scroll.

They barely saw the healer, she would randomly appear to give them food, give them check ups (even Sakura, Sasuke and Naruto) then disappear again.

It was about the third time this happened that he realised he didn't know the woman's name.

"I'm Kakashi Hatake."

She glared. "I didn't ask."

"But I told you anyway, so it would be polite to tell me it back."

She crossed her arms and snorted. "Do I look polite to you?"

"Well, no, not really. But still, there is light in the dark isn't there?"

She snorted again, this time mildly amused as apposed to just straight agitated. "I suppose so. I'm Natoka."

"No last name?"

"No reason to, some of us aren't going to be remember long enough to need one." she laughed at his raised eyebrow and gathered up the bowl of soup.

When the remnants of the party of rogue ninja found them to try and extract revenge. Part of Natoka's house was burnt down. Their one week of Kakashi's recovery was extended to three as it was partially their fault that she had now lost their guest quarters.

They found out, randomly really, that Natoka had two daughters, a year younger then them, who after the attack, were found huddle with their mother in their corner. Surprisingly, Natoka had gone into some acute form of shock at the attack and her two daughters were trying desperately to get her to calm down and when Kakashi came into the room, they launched themselves at him telling him to help their mother because she was doing 'it' again.

The girls were called Naomi and Midori.

It was what Naruto wonder why she was so hateful of ninja. Natoka didn't seem the type of woman that froze up when this sort of thing happened. But when she finally came to her right mind, Naruto watched as she pulled her daughters close and sobbed in their hair.

He saw a mothers love then and felt a stab of things he hadn't felt for a very long time. He'd never had a mother to clutch close.

Some sort of truce happened that day, she no longer hated them as much. They played with Naomi and Midori when they weren't helping re-build the house.

Naomi and Midori looked very little like their mother, both were light eyed and light hair. A shocking mix of orange red against blue eyes that were a sea to Naruto's sky. But still, Naruto still liked to call them sisters and they called him big brother.

It was incredible to watch as Natoka would embrace her girls close, call them sea spirits and it finally made sense how she was a healer.

Natoka hit Sasuke across the back of the head.

"You idiot! You had a clear opening there!"

He frowned at the board game. "Huh?"

"You ninja think you are so brilliant with your tactical skill, but can't even apply it to a normal simple thing like board game. You have a opportunity! Use it!"

Sasuke stared at her, then down at the board again, then back up at her. "I did?"

"Yes, now I'll let you have your turn again, this time don't be so stupid." She moved his piece back again.

"You really love him, don't you?"

Sakura jumped and turned around, staring at Natoka.

"Y-yes… but everyone tells me its just a crush."

"I've seen crushes. I've had crushes. Your eyes hurt to much to look at when you think about him for it to just be a crush."

Sakura blushed, ducking her head under her bangs and bit her lip. "Sometimes its like staring at blank wall when I try to tell someone what I feel. I'm not meant to be in love. I don't think I should be either, but I don't know what else to call this… this thing I feel. I didn't even think it was love, until I thought he died."

"Well, your life-span is half the time of normal peoples, you are ninja, though you don't seem to be very good at it. Better to find now, spring time of your life or whatever."

Sakura giggled and her blush faded. "I don't want to tell anyone, because, it just sounds so stupid."

"Mmmm. You have a wide forehead." Sakura looked outraged and ashamed. "Over here, in the aristocracy, that's fashionable and a sign of intelligence. Women deliberately pluck their hair-line back. You intelligence is impressive by the standards. You work out if what you feel is stupid."

Piece by piece they found out information about Natoka and her two daughters. The first thing she told them that the girls father was never around, and that he never would be and it was some what of a fairy story for the girls as to his identity so if they ruined it for them, (this was particularly aimed at the male members of the ground as Sakura understood the importance of fairy-tales) that she would nail their balls to the wall and would display them as a ornament, telling all her visitors about it so help her god if they ruined it for her daughters too early.

Naruto knew of the cruelty of ninjas, but some how he had never really understood the effects, but he understood it clearly when Natoka pulled off her bandanna and showed them exactly the cruelty of a ninja.

As he vaguely suspected, her right eye was gone. But the grizzled mess under the bandanna, the patch of hair that was missing and the just complete mauling of that quarter of her face, he didn't resent her so much for hating ninja, but it still made him ask that age old questions (of at least, his life) that what did he have to do with it? Why did he have to suffer for someone else judgement?

But he understood the fear and the loneliness as she explained that she herself had wanted to be a ninja but had been rejected on account of her own less then perfect health, and took a resentment at young age at a broken dream to all of them, and one day (stupid) day she had baited one of them as being weak. He had attacked her, thus resulting her now present face.

For the first half of the night, he traced his fingers over his face, thanking kami that his face was without such hideousness. Thinking about Iruka and Kakashi, and even Ibiki. Some how their scars weren't so bad, because they had been able to defend themselves, at least, or something like that. He didn't quiet understand it himself, but their suffering seemed in a different category to hers, no less painful or emotionally perhaps maybe because they were ninja it seemed less… intense, because scars happened, they were ninja… but she wasn't, he mused.

She was also very stupid.

Shut up Kyuubi.

The second half of the night, he went up to go to the bathroom. Coming back he came upon a most interesting site. Kakashi was in the kitchen with Natoka, who was doing the washing up. He said something to her and Natoka laughed in that bitter sarcastic way of hers back.

"You are a strange man Hatake Kakashi-san." She flicked a soapy spud at him and he got out of the way with ease.

"There is more that you didn't want to say, about the twins."

She sighed. "What do you want me to tell you? What exactly would it prove by telling you, that yes I was raped and that resulted in the twins? That my sweet heart hated me after that, that no man wanted me, that I left the hidden village in shame, that I was a whore to my own family? Is that what you wanted to hear, Kakashi-san? Tell me? Because what does it change if you know?"

"… I'll request to have your name written on the monument in Konoha."

The dishes clattered to the bottom of the sink.

"Are you joking, you stupid man? One, I am not a ninja, let alone from your village. Two, I'm not dead yet! Three I haven't done anything. I know what that monument is for, you idiot."

For some reason it was amusing to hear Kakashi get called 'idiot' and 'stupid' so repeatedly.

"You said that you weren't important enough to have a last name. I'll make your name important, as repayment for what ninja have done to you."

She laughed, that bitter one again. "Repayment? There is only one sort of repayment I want."

"What is that?"

"That when I die, and die I shall, relatively soon, this you know too, don't you? That Konoha accepts my daughters. Let them do what they want. Whenever they turn up."

Naruto blinked, she was dieing? She didn't show it…

"Yes I know you are dieing, I'd have to be stupid not to see how you will occasionally clutch at doors. I thought for awhile you were pregnant again, but since that is out of the question…"

"Some sort of tumour, I am not sure. I told you I had health difficulties. No fancy chakra here. A year or two at most. I've got a lot of money put aside for them. They'll be awhile coming, no doubt they will wonder around before they figure it out. I've left them a letter with instructions. But accept them. Let them become ninja if they want, I am not sure what they want to do. But when they come to your care, look after them, for me, please? That is the only price I will accept if you are offering repayment."

He nodded. When a person had resigned themselves to death, Naruto realised, there was little else could be said to change them.

"You would have made a fine ninja." Kakashi murmered, coming close to touch her shoulder.

Privately Naruto agreed.

"Thank-you. I'd like to have been good if I had made it."

"Is there anything else, that I can give you?"

She turned to him, and Naruto surprisingly realised she came up to his nose. He also rather hated this fact that when she pulled down his mask to kiss him, he didn't see his sensei's face. Natoka grabbed Kakashi's wrist and took him out of the room. His acute heard Kakashi press her against a wall and her mutter her last request. "Let me be a woman again. No man has touched me since."

Naruto decided it was definitely time to go.

End part 1.

Part 2 will consist of some other stuff. Look out for it. Cause its cool, yo.

This is just a experiment of Civilian/Ninja relations and me guessing that some people hate ninja's. I think I would if I wasn't one of them. Acting like they ruled the place xD Sorry for the drabble style. I was experimenting.

And because I am sure someone will go. 'OMG YOU EAT SMALL BABIES FOR THIS FANFICTION. DIE HEATHEN DIE.' I say yes, I am heathen (no seriously), and yes, your first born tasted yummy. You should try it with sauce.

After.a.hard.day