Harder Every Day

by Surreptitious Chi X

Drabble. Doing his job gets harder for Ebisu every day. People know almost nothing about him, and that's the way he likes it, because if they could see right through him, they'd know the one thing he doesn't want anyone to know: he doesn't want to be a shinobi. Edit: Now a drabble series.

4. Trust

Trust

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Ebisu hated teaching the gentle children the most. The children like him. The ones that cringed in spite of themselves and lost chakra in their punches because they were instinctively trying not to hurt their instructors. The children that were poor at chakra-shaping because they thought too much about what a fireball would do to someone if it actually landed a hit with any accuracy.

Unfortunately, he saw a lot of the gentle ones. They were usually the ninjas in need of the most tutoring.

It hurt most when the child was smart, like him. Then it was like looking in a mirror, and he was suddenly one of the many people who had torn him down over the years.

The genin sensei who had told him that unless he killed, he would be allowing a murderer to come into his house at night and snap his father's neck, stab his mother to death.

The Chunin Exam proctor who had told him that if he got squeamish about killing another student in the Forest of Death, then he could just let a giant centipede or a rabid wolf kill him.

The enemy ninja from Iwa who had almost, almost captured his whole team, who had threatened to make him watch while his teammates were tortured, until he gave up the encoded message he'd memorized.

Standing over the others, his father, who had told him every time he wavered that he was the heir to the Tonda clan, the only male child of the family in his generation, including the branch family, and that if he didn't become a ninja and rise through the ranks, the Tonda clan would die.

When Ebisu saw these weak, shivering students, choking back their tears, he thought of his father, of his teachers, of the merciless enemies. They lingered over his students like ghosts.

And he thought of taking off his sunglasses, and showing them that he was scared too. He thought of being that kind of teacher. A teacher like Iruka. Someone his students could grow with and trust in.

But he couldn't take off his sunglasses and show his students how weak he was. He was too terrified of crumbling without them. After all these years, his sunglasses were the only thing holding back the tide of panic and pain. He'd seen how ninjas of his generation fared. Most of them were dead or crazy. And he was no Iruka.

It was better if no one put their trust in him.