Set around six years before the series starts. Author's notes at end.
Vanishing Point: In perspective drawing, the point at which two parallel lines appear to meet.
It's a joint operation between the Leaf and the Sand, which has meant working with some unfamiliar faces - some of them; if Iruka is honest, only half trusted.
It's not exactly going to plan, which has meant seeing a lot more of some of those faces than he'd expected.
This was, of course, how he'd wound up wedged in a muddy ditch in late afternoon with an arm that's very probably broken, a stolen scroll that is far too important to risk losing to enemy hands should they be caught while making a dash for it before (if) backup arrives, and a companion who probably shouldn't be moving more than necessary in any case. The great irony of the situation is that that same companion - Yashamaru - is the Sand team's medic. Ordinarily, one broken bone and a mild concussion would be nothing he couldn't take care of in the field; but one of the nasty things about head injuries is the hell the wreck with the concentration, and the ability to focus chakra with anything like the kind of precision required by medical ninjutsu is the next thing that goes. It's going to be a long night.
There's no real science to getting through these parts of botched missions. Nor does Iruka have much experience to draw on in that department, but even though he's nominally on guard he's far too tired and sore to feel much guilt when his mind starts to wander to less stressfully locales. So naturally he winds up thinking of home, of a classroom full of children he's meant to be taking for shuriken drills seventeen hours from now, and weighing the odds he'll be there. He finds himself wondering who they'll get to substitute for him if he's not.
The inevitable ramen-centred apologies to Naruto for missing a day have always meant he's had a full report on the competency of past substitutes, generally delivered in spluttered form between mouthfuls. Last time this happened, the little troublemaker had made a point of making sure the meal was bought and paid for before relating the story of how the sub had reacted to a carefully orchestrated incident involving two tripwires and a bucket of paint. Then there was period last June when he'd been home sick, and Naruto had practically beaten down his door begging him to come back after it proved the replacement not only had near-precognitive ability to see his pranks coming, but was willing to put the whole class under some variant of kagemane no jutsu and make them do hand seal drills for an hour and a half if anyone misbehaved.
He can't quite shake a faint feeling of responsibility for whatever Naruto's going to wind up vandalising while he's away.
"Iruka-san?" Inquires a quiet voice, and Iruka realises to his embarrassment that his thoughts must have been showing on his face.
"Ah, just thinking about a student of mine. He's bound to find some way to cause trouble by the time I get back," Iruka admits with an apologetic smile, surprising himself with the confession, but then, it's probably a good idea to keep Yashamaru talking right now.
Yashamaru gives an answering smile, though directed off into space. It would be a foolish waste of effort to turn far enough to face Iruka properly, given his condition. "You're a teacher, Iruka-san?"
"Aa, I teach an academy class when I'm not on missions." It's all too easy to start rambling now he's got the excuse for it. "They're all a handful, but there's one – Naruto – he's an orphan, you see. He's never had anyone to pay him much attention, so he shouts twice as loud as the other children so that someone will have to listen." It's probably not a sentiment he'd use to describe Naruto to anyone who'd have to deal with the boy in person, but it's accurate nonetheless.
Shadows in the trench have lengthened since they stumbled into it, though it's not late enough yet for visibility to really start to fail. A bird calls somewhere nearby, surprisingly loud, but with the silence already recently broken neither of them startle badly, probably saving both their injuries a jarring jolt.
"It sounds like you have good instincts for children." Yashamaru's eyes drift closed again under the effort of speech, though he doesn't look obviously strained. The changing light reveals a blood stain on the side of his head, but it looks to be drying rather than spreading any further. "You must make a good teacher."
"You give me too much credit. Naruto is a lot like I was at his age." The correction is automatic. It must sound like false modesty, but it's nothing but the truth, even if he could never have boasted more than a fraction of Naruto's talent for pranks.
"I have ward of a child of my own." Yashamaru admits, smile fading under a faint wince. "I can only imagine what trouble he'll cause if I'm late returning."
From the way he'd said that… "Not your son?"
"No. My sister's."
Another child orphaned by the life of the ninja, presumably. Naruto may have it worse than many, with no surviving family and the rest of the village still too suspicious to even consider taking him in, but he's by no means unique or even unusual. It is reassuring to hear that this Gaara has done somewhat better. "He's lucky to still have family to care for him, at least."
"Do you think so?" Yashamaru asks the question with surprising sincerity. "Sometimes I'm not sure what would have been best for him. Besides," he adds, catching another facet of Iruka's assumptions, and taking a deep breath to get himself through the next part, "Gaara is no orphan, Iruka-san. The man who was my sister's husband is the Kazekage. Even were he willing, caring for a child like Gaara requires more time than he could spare. Lately, Gaara will rarely listen to anyone but me. I would never have left him alone so long if they didn't need a medic on this mission so badly."
"I can't imagine he could be more unmanageable than Naruto." Iruka offers, trying to keep his voice light, although they're clearly either breaching a heavier topic that he'd originally imagined, or Yashamaru is in even worse condition than he'd thought.
"Gaara causes a different kind of trouble." Yashamaru says. He doesn't smile.
Iruka is left with the feeling he's missed something important here. Yashamaru's hardly operating near a hundred percent at the moment, most of this could just be sleep-talk - the trouble is he doesn't have any way of knowing. On the other hand, Iruka decides it's not hard to believe that caring for the Kazekage's son could be a full time job of itself.
Yashamaru's brow creases into a frown. "I'm sure I'm not supposed to be telling you all this. I should know better than to let myself babble with a head wound."
Well, that much at least is just the concussion talking. "If the existence of the Kazekage's son is a clan secret, there must be very little to gossip about in the Sand. It'll all matter less when you're feeling better." Iruka assures him. Fortunately, his companion seems to accept this, and the conversation falls into awkward silence.
It's definitely getting colder now, the sun has all but set. One of Iruka's legs is starting to go numb. He considers shifting, but worries that will only turn into a way of proving to himself just how much water he's sitting in, and he'll be very lucky not to wake up his injured arm getting comfortable again. How much longer will they be here for?
Yashamaru begins again unexpectedly. "Iruka-san, if you compare yourself to an orphan – you've lost family too?"
"Aa. My parents, a long time ago." Those aren't the sort of memories he wants to call up at a time like this.
"They died in battle?"
Iruka nods. There's no need to elaborate or go through the "I'm sorry" routine, they're all ninjas here.
Yashamaru isn't ready to return from his line of bizarre tangents yet. "Do you think… if you were to meet the man responsible, could you ever forgive him?"
Iruka finds himself blinking at his companion in confusion. He tries to consider the question seriously, but the scenario barely fits. Iruka's parents were killed by a demon fox powerful enough to match the fighting forces of a whole village – not really comparable to a single man. Unless you take the viewpoint of most of Konoha and count Naruto, but Iruka rejects that thought as quickly as it comes to him. He remembers the kyuubi too well not to sympathise with that viewpoint, but he's spent far too much time working with children not to recognise just how childish blaming Naruto really is.
"What are you talking about? That depends on far too many things." He tells Yashamaru, and has to consciously stop himself from falling into the tone he uses on students who ask irrelevant questions. "Probably when it first happened I would have said I'd never forgive him, but as I grew up I learnt that the circumstances are always different. There are too many things it would depend on - who he was, on whether he was acting on another's orders, on whether he knew what he had done. It isn't fair to ask for a broad judgement."
Yashamaru considers this, and gives another faint smile. "You're wiser than I, Iruka-san." Then his voice returns to thoughtful tones. "What if the circumstances were that the man could not remember what he had done – had no idea that you had any reason to hate him? And yet, you would see in him sometimes hints that his base nature had not changed, that he could kill in cold blood without reason, that given the same chance he might still do the same thing all over again. How do you tell how much of your fears are justified, how much are merely your own desire for revenge?"
It's difficult to figure out what Yashamaru wants him to say. Iruka's students learn (and, for the most part, just as quickly forget) over a hundred different ninja rules, but not one of them mentions forgiveness. Revenge is never encouraged, but it's a fact of ninja life and a very personal matter. This has gone well beyond hypothetical and they're definitely not talking about Iruka's parents either, but is Yashamaru really telling him the killer of the Kazekage's wife is walking around free? Surely he doesn't mean he blames the Kazekage himself for his sister's death.
"I think…" Iruka begins.
It was at this point that a kunai attached to an exploding talismen hit the wall of the trench between them. Whatever he'd being going to say was forgotten very quickly after that.
This was, of course, how he wound up back on his feet again, out of the trench and - due to a regrettable though understandable lapse in judgement - right into the line of enemy fire. Things could have gotten very nasty around that point. Iruka must have been due for some good luck, however, because it was also then that a Konoha search party chose to launch a truly impressive nick-of-time, skin-of-the-teeth rescue; though not before Iruka does some creatively painful things with that broken arm which clinch any remaining chance he might have had to speak to Yashamaru again that day. Yashamaru is whisked off back to the Sand and the scroll whisked off to the waiting hands of their collective leaders, to Iruka's rather greater relief. The medics send him home and explain in no uncertain terms that he's taking the morning off, which, former misgivings about missing his class aside, he's not at all inclined to argue with. Iruka makes it just as far as his own bed and collapses like an unmasked kawarimi decoy.
When he was next properly awake it was a state reached to the discovery of himself back home in his bedroom with Naruto seated cross-legged and cranky on the corner of his bed, complaining loudly about the lack of any instant ramen in his cupboard. It's after ten, school has been in for hours. The front door has been wide open ever since he got home. He has to admit he only has himself to blame, though locked doors in a village like Konoha are such an absolute joke that most people don't bother with them.
It soon becomes obvious that this round of the ongoing battle to make Naruto attend class is one he's going to have to concede. Broaching the subject only leads to a spirited argument over whether about whether skipping school to visit a sick teacher still counts as skipping school. Iruka reminds him that school is still on, Naruto wants to know how they're supposed to learn anything in class when their own teacher keeps skipping days, and asks it in a worryingly good parody of Iruka's own style in lecture mode. He doesn't know or care who the sub is. He goes on to accuse Iruka of changing the subject, because there's still no instant ramen anywhere in the house, and just how is Iruka supposed to make himself any food without help when he can only use one hand, huh?
Actually, Iruka has a number of friendly neighbours who could be convinced to help him out, but has to admit Naruto has a point. While the conversation does get Naruto out of the house, it's only because he's found Iruka's wallet and is going to the Ichiraku for takeout. The twenty-five minutes it takes Naruto to get back are just long enough to prove to Iruka how fast it's going to get boring around here without the company. What the hell, he decides, he may as well at least save his substitute some undeserved stress, and let the boy stay.
The ramen arrives eventually, leaving Iruka to fumble with the chopsticks in his left hand, while Naruto continues his ongoing quest to replace all bodily fluids with noodle-soup. It's striking to realise just how long it's been since he last tried to think of Naruto and the Kyuubi as the same – such flimsy associations collapsed under the weight of familiarity long ago. Besides, after this long as his teacher, Iruka is fully aware that Uzumaki Naruto poses far more threat to the health and sanity of the village than any monster fox ever could.
He does spare just enough thought to hope that someone had the good will to find a babysitter for Yashamaru. No doubt everything will seem a lot simpler to the poor man once his head hurts a little less and the world stops swimming.
From where he's sitting, it's hard to believe it could be all that bad.
Author's notes below – really just for those who are either wondering about how/where this is all supposed to fit into Naruto continuity, or want to see a bit of what goes on inside the writer's head.
It is usually a mistake to examine the timeline of a series as convoluted as Naruto too closely. Continuity errors build up like a body count – and that's probably only fair when you remember that the mangaka has twenty pages to turn out every week and is bound to lose track of details somewhere. Facts below have been chosen mostly for convenience.
This fic is obviously set after Naruto started school but before Yashamaru's death – but I think there's at least a narrow window in between. Judging from some of Sasuke's flashbacks, it seems that most of Naruto's class started at the academy at around seven years old (though given the number of exams Naruto has apparently failed, we could always assume he started even younger and was kept back, and give ourselves some extra leeway). During the Chuunin exam, the Sandaime mentions that it's been thirteen years since the Yondaime's death (ie, Naruto's birth). Around the same part of the series, Gaara states that the first attempt on his life (ie, Yashamaru's death) was made six years ago – when Naruto would have been (yep) just about seven. They're probably both rounding up or down a bit, but since we're never given any exact dates it's about the best estimate we have – and it does leave just enough space for Naruto to start school at least a few months before Yashamaru leaves the picture.
That just leaves the question of whether Iruka would have been Naruto's teacher way back as far as his first year at the academy – a little iffy given that Iruka would still have been a couple of years short of twenty when Naruto was that age. On the other hand, according to the Naruto character guide book, Iruka made Chuunin about seven years ago. Presumably, that means he should have been eligible to start teaching right around the same point. Handy.
To summarise, after much continuity angst, this fic does probably stretch canon a little, but does it surprisingly little permanent damage.