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Not Surprised

As I finish up my stretches, Naruto and his sparring partner approach us. I stand up to greet my nephew. "Hi, kiddo."

"Hey, Nara-baa!" Naruto ambles over to me, trapping me in a hug and spinning me around despite my ensuing protests. Once he sets me back down, he asks, "How was your meeting?"

I sigh, hoping Ino doesn't decide to start screaming at me again. "Eh, uneventful."

"Uneventful?"

"Let it go."

Following our outburst, Naruto shares a glance with Shikamaru, mumbling, "Okay. . . . Anyway! Since you've already met Shikamaru, I'd like to introduce you to Iruka."

With a bow and a polite smile, I acquaint myself with Naruto's former sensei, looking up to see a man with a scar across his nose.

"Ah, fuck."

He's here. He's in Konoha. He's my nephew's old sensei.

I'm so screwed.

Naruto's nose scrunches up in confusion. "What?"

Managing to tear my eyes away from the scarred man, I mutter back, "What?"

"You just said, 'fuck,'" Naruto explains.

I purse my lips, as though I'm contemplating his accusation. "No, I didn't."

"Yes, you did," the Uchiha cuts in. Teeth clenched, I cut him an indignant glare.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Iruka giving me an odd look, which is understandable considering how weird I'm acting, but it unnerves me nonetheless. The hairs on the back of my neck are standing at attention, fueled by my adrenaline, which is flaring and urging me to bolt.

Taking a step back while making sure to keep Iruka in my peripheral vision, I tell Naruto, "You know what, I have to go."

"What," he asks, his face scrunched up again. "Why?"

I take another few steps back. "I have . . . laundry to do."

"But you're wearing all the clothes you own."

Another couple of steps. "I'm, uh, going commando."

Ino's hands go to her hips, and her eyebrows pull together in puzzlement. "You told me you had a wedgie earlier, though."

"Will everyone just stop contradicting me," I shout, finally turning tail and scuttling away as fast as possible.

Not five minutes later, I'm barging into Tsunade's office and trying to hide the fact I'm shaking. "Tsunade!"

Despite her obvious surprise at my sudden arrival, she coolly replies, "Nara." Her eyes follow my form as I pace back and forth in front of her desk. "You're in a hospital. Willingly." I can hear the shock in her voice. She knows I secretly fear hospitals.

Instead of directly answering her silent question, I tell her, "He's here."

Impatiently, she raises an eyebrow and taps her pen on the desk. "Who?"

Incensed, I stop pacing and stomp my foot. "Iruka! Who else?"

Clearly bewildered, she takes a moment before asking, "Umino Iruka, the Academy sensei? What about him?"

Incredulous at how long it's taking her to get this, I lock eyes with her and draw one finger over my nose.

She scoffs. "Is that supposed to mean something? Why are you—" She stops talking, her lips drawing together as realization hits her.

However, just as soon as her shocked expression appeared, it goes away. She waves her hand at me. "No, you're wrong. It's not him."

I march up to her desk, place my hands on the top and lean towards her. "Oh, it's him."

"Nara, no," she flippantly assures me, shaking her head. "He's just a chuunin, and not even a very good one. He can't kill you. It's not him."

Laughing humorlessly, I push off the desk. "That's just what he wants us to think."

She looks at me like I've lost my mind, which is insane because I'm clearly the only one with her head on straight. "Nara, it's not him."

"It is!"

Sighing, she stands, comes around her desk and places her hands on my shoulders. I try in vain to keep my anxious ass from fidgeting. In an imploring voice, she tells me, "Nara, if you keep going with this, I'm going to have to change my mind about who the dumber Uzumaki is."

Her statement having done nothing to calm me, I continue with my pacing. I walk through Tsunade three times before she finally gets out of my way. Discouraged, she goes back to sit behind her desk and proceeds with her paperwork.

"I'm positive it's him," I continue.

"And why is that," she drawls in a bored tone, scribbling something down on a patient file.

My pacing slows as I gather my thoughts. "In the prophecy, it says that the man with a scar across his nose is gonna kill me."

"Yes," Tsunade agrees. "And yet, you've run into plenty of other men with scarred noses who you've never even considered to be the guy that giant toad warned you about."

"That's because the other part of the prophecy never came into play."

She rolls her eyes. "And what part is that? The creepy one about some ghost in the fog of time?"

I stop pacing to stomp my foot again. "One, that isn't even the line. Two, no. The beginning of the prophecy is all about me falling in love with him."

Raising an eyebrow, she asks, "What are you trying to tell me here? Are you in love with him?"

"No, I'm not in love with him," I exclaim. "But . . ."

Before I registered that Iruka was the one—the one I would fall in love with, the one that would love me back, the one that would kill me—I just saw him. His gorgeous tan skin. His sparkling brown eyes. His small, sweet smile. His hair that I can only imagine is so, so soft. He was so beautiful.

"But . . ." Tsunade presses, breaking me out of my reverie.

A short whine escapes my lips. "He's so pretty," I breathe.

Exasperated, she throws her pen onto the desk. "Nara," she groans, dropping her head into her hands. "What is wrong with you?"

"I don't know," I scream in total tantrum mode. "Tsunade," I whine, "I'm gonna die."

She looks away from me and massages her temples. "Yeah, it looks like it."

"Tsunade."

"Just stay away from him, Nara," she insists. "Okay? Just stay away from him."

Twiddling my thumbs, I look down at my shifting feet. My anxiety hasn't gone away since I got here, and I'm starting to feel queasy. "What if I can't?"

She goes back to her paperwork. "Well, then it'd be official."

My neck is damp with cold, nervous sweat. "What would?"

"You are the dumber Uzumaki."

I camped out in Naruto's apartment for the rest of the day, praying he didn't decide to bring Iruka over.

I'm still alive, so evidently, he didn't.

Now, in the middle of the night, I'm between night terrors, lying on Naruto's couch with one leg thrown over the side. I've awoken five times from dreams in which Iruka viciously murders me.

In the first one, he just straight-up killed me. No lead-up or anything, just surprise: I'm dead.

In the next one, he chased me for a while. I almost got away, or at least, I thought I did. Then I turned a corner, and he was right there, waiting for me with a poisoned kunai.

In the third one, I think I was already dead. That, or he buried me alive. I spent the whole dream screaming and scratching against the inside of a coffin until my nails broke off, my fingers bled, and I suffocated.

I don't remember the fourth one, though I'm sure it involved me dying a perfectly gruesome death.

The fifth and final one was the worst. We were in bed together—not like that—just snuggling up to each other. And then bam! I'm dead again.

The thing that got me was that before he killed me, I had this strange feeling. It was like pure bliss, and I felt so comfortable.

Suffice it to say, I did not enjoy having it shattered.

I gave up trying to sleep after my eighth nightmare, so I started tearing through all the copied documents Kakashi gave me to make sure I won't have any unfinished business when Iruka kills me. I've already gotten through any and all paperwork that concerned Kushina or her husband, Namikaze Minato.

I'm elbow-deep in old mission reports when Naruto returns from the mission he'd left for early this morning. He takes a few slow steps into the apartment as he surveys the messy spread I've set up in the living room. "You're still doing this?"

Without looking up, I reply, "Yup."

He leans over the back of the couch and reads from my new journal from over my shoulder. "Is that my journal?"

I'd needed something in which to record anything important from the documents, and after scavenging around the apartment for a while, I finally found a small, unused journal in a dusty corner of Naruto's room. "Not anymore."

"Uh, okay." Cautiously, he steps around the small stacks of records littered across the floor as he moves to the front of the couch. "So, what exactly are you doing?"

Jotting a few notes down in a journal, I tell him, "I'm getting my affairs in order."

He asks, "Why?" I don't respond, still not really in the mood to tell him about my nearing death.

Sitting down next to me, he finally says what's clearly been on his mind since he walked through the door. "Okay, you're acting weird."

"You haven't known me long enough to know what's weird for me," I mumble, flipping through a few copies with the ink smeared so bad I can't read them.

"Ah, yeah, you're right," he amends. "Let me clarify. You're acting weird for a human person."

Irked, I finally turn my head to glare up at him. "You're not as funny as I think you are."

A pleasantly surprised, gleeful smile takes over his whiskered face. "You think I'm funny?"

"That's not what I said."

"It totally is-ttebayo."

"No."

A few seconds pass in silence, during which I continue to read yet another document with badly smudged ink. The only clear writing on it is the serial number on the bottom. Besides that, all I can tell is that I signed it by stamping it with my clan's crest instead of using my signature. Why would I do that? And since when have I ever carried a seal of the Uzumaki crest around with me?

Okay, seriously, what the fuck does this say?

In an attempt to interpret it better, I squint my already chinky eyes, managing to make out "Uchiha" in the second line and "custody" in the third paragraph. Is this a report of a mission I took with an Uchiha to drop some criminal off somewhere? Or was I assigned to pick up someone being extradited to Uzushio from the Uchiha police corps?

I stare at the document for another second before slamming it onto the designated Mission-Reports-I-Plan-to-Burn Pile, figuring it doesn't matter what it says because whatever it's about is over and therefore irrelevant.

I go to snatch another paper from the box, but my hand is knocked away as Naruto suddenly tips the box over and tosses all its contents onto the ground.

"No," I shriek, shooting to my feet and watching as the entire set-up I'd created topples, papers falling from their neat stacks and scattering onto the floor as they're hit by the onslaught of untouched paperwork from the box.

I wait until the last sheet of paper settles before slowly turning to look down at Naruto. He sits calmly on the sofa, smiling up at me as though he hadn't just ruined hours upon hours of tedious work. "What the hell, Naruto?"

Resolutely, he stands and tugs at my wrist to get me to follow him out of the living area. "You're being all tense and weird, and you need to relax—"

"No, I'm not, and no, I don't," I angrily interrupt.

"—so I'm gonna take you out for a drink with me and my friends—"

At the mere mention of venturing outside of the safety of the apartment—into the village, where the perpetrator of my upcoming demise lurks—I fly into a panic, attempting to wrench myself free of Naruto's grasp by dragging my feet against the floor. Alas, he's bigger and stronger, rendering my struggling ineffective as he yanks me along with him on his way to the front door. "No, no, no, Naruto, wait!"

"Nope, you're going," he replies, using one hand to pull his shoes on while keeping his other firmly wrapped around my wrist to prevent my escape.

Although, I could always use Merge no jutsu to escape. . . .

Ha-ha. Looks like I'll escape death and an awkward night at the bar.

What. The. Fuck.

Surrounded by loud, inebriated shinobi in a dark, dingy saloon, I can't help but wonder as to how the fuck Naruto managed to drag me down here. I even put my shoes on myself and he let go of my wrist halfway to the bar. He really is persuasive. No wonder he'd been able to convince his own rogue teammate to return. Damn Konohans and their will of fire.

I'm standing at a raised table, watching as Sakura and Ino attempt to out-drink each other while Sai counts their shots, occasionally taking some of his own. The Uchiha is standing way to close to Sakura and will not stop staring at her, but they're both far too intoxicated to realize how they may appear to any onlookers. Naruto is flitting around the pub, greeting everyone as if he's hosting a party.

Ugh, I hate drunk people.

"Shit, Forehead," Ino exclaims, slurring her words a little as she slams down the empty glass of her fifth shot. "No more hard liquor. I can't—I-I-I need to switch to beer."

Sakura pounds back two more shots of tequila before turning to her left to look at her friend. Subtly swaying from side to side, she smirks and asks, "Are you sure, Pig? I'm only leading by two shots."

"Uh, yeah," Ino mumbles, shaking her head at Sai's attempt to give her another shot. Once he understands that she's finished, he shrugs and downs it himself.

"Hmm, fine," Sakura sighs, appearing more relaxed than I've ever seen her. Sweetly, she turns to face the man on her other side. "Sasuke-kun, will you go get some beers for us please?"

His dark eyes having not wavered from her even as she'd turned her attention to him, he pins her with his deep stare, leaving her visibly flustered. After another moment, he merely says, "Sure," before venturing to the bar to fulfill her request.

Sai suddenly leans into my side, startling me. "I believe what we just witnessed is known as sexual tension, yes, Eye-bags?"

Brushing off the annoying nickname, I look at Sakura to find her biting her lip and gazing longingly at the Uchiha's back. Turning back to Sai, I mutter, "Oh, yeah."

Abruptly, he smacks his hand onto the table, startling me yet again. "I knew it. I am so good with emotions," he affirms, almost savage in his drunken conviction. I nod briefly, hoping he'll just stop talking to me.

Sasuke returns with Naruto hanging off him, the blond trying and failing to pluck one of the drinks from his hand. As soon as they reach the table, Naruto detaches himself from his friend and hops over to me, laying an affectionate, wet kiss on my cheek in greeting and draping himself over me instead.

From across the table, Ino catches everyone's attention with a disgruntled sound. "Where's my beer," she questions Sasuke, glaring at him.

He shrugs. "I never said I'd get you one."

Clearly miffed, she glances at Sakura drinking from a fresh bottle, and then back to Sasuke. "Yeah-huh. Forehead asked you to get us some, and then you agreed, and then you went to go and do that. I was there."

Taking a swig of his own beer, he seems to ponder on what to say for a brief moment. Finally, he murmurs, "I thought she was talking about me and her."

Ino rolls her eyes at this, turning away and grumbling, "Yeah fucking right."

There's a lull in the conversation, and before one of the drunk people at the table can fill it, I speak up. "So, Naruto, where's Hinata?"

Naruto picks his head up off my shoulder to respond. "Her dad won't let her drink, so she's—" a brief pause ensues as he hiccups, "—not here."

"Well, I'm not surprised," I tell him, reaching for my water and taking a quick sip. "The Hyuuga are a bevy of stuck-up stick-in-the-muds. All the noble clans of Konoha are."

"Hey," Ino squeaks, indignant.

I spare her a quick, unimpressed glance. "The Yamanaka aren't noble."

"Oh, okay," she mumbles, her shoulders slumping from their irate position. "Wait; hey!"

I shake my head good-naturedly at her. "Seriously, though. The Hyuuga, the Senju, the Uchiha, the Sarutobi—just a bunch of entitled wet blankets."

Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Sasuke giving me an angry glare for trashing his clan, and I decide to have a little fun with him. "The Uchiha especially were super stodgy. Never straying from the rules; never going out of their way to have fun." Now his lip is curling. "There was this one guy," I continue, "Fugaku, so annoying. He was always there whenever I wanted to do anything fun. Always with the: 'Uzumaki, don't do this. Uzumaki, don't do that.' Always thought he was right . . ." I trail off as I take notice of Sasuke's suddenly dismayed expression.

Jeez, maybe I shouldn't have picked the kid's dead clan, even if I'm not particularly fond of him. It was kind of mean. I know I'd be pissed if someone did that to me.

Before I can apologize, Sakura cuts in. "If you hated him so much, why spend time with him?"

"Oh, well," I babble, desperately trying to backtrack. "He wasn't so bad, really. But, um, I was actually pretty close friends with one of his teammates, Mik—" My breath hitches as my train of thought goes off its tracks.

That's where I know Sasuke. That's who he looks like.

Eyes wide, breath quick and shallow, my gaze turns back to Sasuke, and I realize why he looks so fucking shocked.

I try to string a sentence together, but it just comes out as "Y-y-you—"

A cold, mournful sensation that's been all too familiar as of late has begun to creep into my chest, and I find it difficult to keep my dinner down.

Mikoto and Fugaku had always liked each other, but Fugaku was an Uchiha in the head family, and as such he'd been promised to somebody else before they'd even met. I always assumed that their attraction had fizzled out over time, and they'd married other people. I also assumed that I haven't seen or heard from Mikoto since my return because she was on an extended mission out of the village.

But no. She's fucking dead.

Upset and utterly distressed, I attempt to once again to say something—anything—to Sasuke. Sasuke, who is Mikoto's son, meaning I have yet another late friend who left behind a child that I—wait—

Wait—

Wait—

Wait—

Wait.

I have a bad feeling.

Everyone at the table has been staring at me in varying degrees of shock for the past minute—aside from Sakura, who's looking at Sasuke, concern etched onto her face. My expression having turned to that of suspicion, they take notice, and Sai asks, "Eye-bags, is something wrong?"

A little frantic at this point, I ramble, "I, uh, yeah, I, um, I have to go—I think—yeah, I have to go," bolt from the table, and head straight to Naruto's apartment.

Once I'm through the door, I rush over to the mess of papers on the living room floor, silently cursing Naruto for ruining my perfectly organized stacks. I root through a few piles before my eyes land on the poorly-copied, unreadable document signed with an Uzumaki seal that I'm almost sure isn't mine.

A seal I'm now almost sure is Kushina's.

Document in hand, I'm out the door again, taking off towards the Konoha Records Office.

With my chakra-fused speed, I'm there in under a minute, bursting through the door of the small building next to the Hokage Tower. The elderly night-shift employee behind the counter startles at my sudden appearance, spitting out the food he'd been chewing. "Why are you here? We are closed!"

"Oh, please," I mutter, taking long, quick strides across the room. I slam the document in my hand onto the countertop, and slide it across to him. "I need to see the original of this. Now," I demand, leveling an intimidating glare at him.

He scoffs, pushing his food aside and taking a closer look at the piece of paper. "You shinobi, always in such a rush," he gripes to himself, as though I can't hear him. After another few seconds, he stalks off to fulfill my request.

I've been pacing for a while when he finally returns, a full fifteen minutes having passed. "What the hell took so long," I snap, nearly ripping the sheet of paper as I tear it from his hands.

My eyes scour the document in search of any words that might confirm my suspicions. I'm so focused on reading that I almost miss the man behind the counter grumble, "Calm down, kunoichi. That document was dated almost twenty-four years ago. This could not possibly be an urgent matter." Distracted, I tell him to shut up by way of a short, miffed grunt.

Halfway down the page, I find the confirmation I'd been looking for, and I just start screaming.

I set out at dawn for the Uchiha burial grounds, and having to pick my way around ruin and debris just to get to them. Unfortunately, I'm not surprised the village didn't see it fit to clean up the Uchiha district after Pein's attack three years ago.

Now, after kneeling in the dirt for close to twenty minutes, I've scrubbed off all the grime that'd accumulated on Mikoto's grave marker since it was last cleaned.

"Wow, Miko-chan," I address my dearly departed friend. "That took forever—not that you're not worth it, of course." Grimly, I add, "Although, I am dreading cleaning the other graves as I can only imagine yours is one of the cleaner ones."

I stare forward at the words carved into the stone, not really reading them. I'm not quite sure what to say. After all, I only found out about her death yesterday. Maybe I should clean Fugaku's grave and talk to him, then circle back and—

"What are you doing here?"

Startled, I snap my head around to see Sasuke glaring down at me.

Damn, my game sure is off this morning. I can't believe I let him sneak up on me.

Scowling, I remark, "What, like you own the graveyard?"

"Actually, I do," he replies coolly.

I feel my face scrunch up in thought. "Oh, yeah, huh? That makes sense."

He turns his head, and I hear him mumbling something about "the Uzumaki" and "stupidity."

After a calming breath or two, I manage to restrain myself from throttling him.

"So," I start as I clamber to my feet and cross my arms. "You gonna try to kick me out or something?" I try to complete my intimidating look with a glare, but he's a full head taller than me, and I just don't think it's working.

I'm surprised as he abruptly changes the subject. "How close were you with my parents?"

"Oh, um," I mumble, trying to gather my wits. "Pretty close, I guess. I mean, closer with your mom for sure." For a moment, my mind sidetracks, and I trail off, "Wow, that kinda sounded like one of those 'yo mamma' jokes that Inuzuka kid keeps making. . . ."

"Focus up, Uzumaki," Sasuke snaps.

"What? I answered your question," I shriek. "Man, you're just like your dad. I don't know why I didn't realize it sooner."

His lips twist down on one side at that. Clearly, he doesn't like other people talking about his family.

In an attempt to comfort him, I say, "Look, I know you probably feel like I'm sticking my nose where it doesn't belong, but Mikoto and I really were very close. After my team died, I didn't have anyone else to talk to, so I confided in her whenever I visited Konoha. She became one of my best friends."

Silently, he stares—glares, really—at me for a moment, as though he's appraising my words for genuineness. Finally, he asks, "How did you meet?"

"Our chuunin exams—their first ones, at least." That's all I tell him, but I remember so much more. I remember meeting their team—Mikoto, Fugaku, and a Hyuuga girl—in Konoha's Forest of Death. I remember Souichirou almost killing the girls before Misaki and I pulled him away. I remember that in the third round, after Mikoto had already been eliminated, Fugaku knocked my tooth out, and I returned the favor by breaking his arm.

Yeah, I really shouldn't tell him any of that.

"How come you seemed so surprised to find out they were dead?"

"What is this, a game of Twenty Questions?"

"Just answer, Uzumaki!"

"I know you know my given name," I argue, albeit pointlessly.

He turns to face me fully, looking especially livid.

I put my hands up in an effort to mollify him. "Alright, alright. I knew Fugaku was dead, but Mikoto was a shock."

His brow furrows in confusion, "How?"

My brow furrows in confusion, as well. "I didn't know they were gonna get married."

"Why would that matter?"

If possible, my face contorts even further with bewilderment. "What?"

"She still would have died," he says slowly, as though speaking to a child.

Suddenly, our misunderstanding becomes very clear to me. My eyebrows shoot up as my realization hits. "Oh, shit. You don't know."

"Don't know what," he grits out.

As gently as I can, I tell him, "Last I saw your mother, her name was Aragaki Mikoto."

Completely dumbfounded, he drops his gaze to the ground and mumbles, "What?"

For a moment, he remains silent, so I decide to change the subject. "Do you happen to know where Uchiha Tomeru's grave is?"

He looks back up to me, and I find myself explaining, "When I was four-years-old, a deranged member of my clan kidnapped various children around my age. He and his disciples conducted experiments on us with Forbidden Seals."

"Forbidden Seals?"

"Yeah, they're body seals that're extremely volatile. Most people don't survive the first use of the seal, and even more don't even make it past initial placing of the seal."

Taking a deep breath, I continue, "Anyway, after a couple months, we were rescued from the, um, abandoned hospital that we were in, and it was your clan—the Uchiha clan—that did the rescuing."

"And Uchiha Tomeru rescued you," he questions.

"No, he was with us," I murmur.

I look away from him, suddenly finding his appearance oddly similar to the boy I once barely knew. Why do all the Uchiha look so alike?

"He didn't make it." It's not a question.

I can't quite keep myself from sighing. "No, he didn't. They put a seal that protects the user from gen- and doujutsu on him. A few minutes later, his sharingan manifested as a last-ditch defense mechanism, and a couple hours after that, he was dead."

Nervously, I run my finger over a spot on the nape of my neck where that very seal rests, hidden by my hair.

"Where is your seal," he asks, analytically sweeping his eyes over my form.

I pick at one of my removable sleeves. "On my arms."

"So, you have two," he concludes.

I circumvent the truth by saying, "Each arm has one half of the seal."

He nods, opening his mouth to likely continue giving me the third degree—and to think I'd believed he didn't talk much—but I cut him off. "You know what, I came here to be depressed about your mom, and now I'm depressed for a whole bunch of other reasons. So, let's just leave it at this, alright?"

"Hn, fine. Back to my parents, then. How come—?"

"Ah-ah," I interject, wagging a finger. "I wanna clean your dad's grave, say a few words to your parents, then find and clean Tomeru's grave and say a few words to him. After that, you can buy me lunch, and I'll tell you all about them."

He glares at me again. "I'm not buying you lunch."

"Wow, that's how you treat your friends? Color me not surprised," I tease him.

His glare intensifies. "We're not friends."

"Yeah, we are."

"No—"

"Yes," I interrupt in a sing-song voice.

He turns and strides away from me, but I can still hear him mutter, "You're just like Naruto."

"Thank you," I call as he looks between grave markers, hopefully searching for Tomeru's.

"Not a compliment," he calls back.

A small smile on my face, I turn back to Mikoto's grave. "Well, Miko-chan, your son is an asshole. No offense."

A cold breeze blows past me, and I find myself blurting, "Holy shit, I take it back! Don't haunt me!"