Chapter Ten:

"He was being attacked by his own Village," Obito reasoned. "He could be on our side."

"Then he would have said something to stop the ANBU from trying to kill him," Kakashi replied.

"Either way, we'll never find out if he bleeds to death," Midori huffed, opening her bag and taking out several rolls of bandages and what meager medical supplies she had brought. She looked over the Cloud's condition and immediately wished Rin were here. He was burned along his body and legs and she didn't know if he would survive with the amount of blood pooling out from what was left of his severed upper arm.

"Wait," Kakashi said. He unrolled the wires from his forearm and tied the Cloud's remaining arm tightly to his side and immobilized his legs. Then he knelt warily by the enemy's head with a kunai in hand while Obito and Midori secured a make-shift tourniquet around his stump.

As the sun cleared the horizon and filled the cave with light, Kakashi noted the Cloud was still young, perhaps only a few years older than they were. He was short and lean with unruly brown hair flecked with blood and grime. Though the paleness of his face was likely due to blood loss, his sunken cheeks and the dark bags under his eyes deepened Kakashi's suspicion that he was a hunted prey on the run. But the possibility did little to earn his sympathy, especially if the dead Cloud they had found in the forest had been killed by this youth. The mutilated body had reeked of malice and brutality.

The Cloud stirred and groaned in pain just as Obito finished tightening the knot.

Midori lifted his head and tapped her hand lightly against his cheek. "Are you awake? Swallow these." She pushed two pills – a pain killer and a blood replenishing pill – into his mouth and chased them down with a trickle of water. She watched him swallow and then lowered him back onto the floor.

The emergency field medications were quick to take effect and within minutes the Cloud was fully conscious, even if his eyes were still dulled with pain. Slowly, they roamed across the roof of the cave and then looked from one face to another.

"Can you speak?" Kakashi said. "State your name and hidden village."

The Cloud focused his eyes on Kakashi and then on the kunai poised against his throat. After a moment, his lips parted, but instead of forming words, they stretched into a wide grin. An eerie light filled his eyes.

"…going to kill me?" he rasped. A weak laugh shook his shoulders. "Go on… kill me. Do a better job than that… bastard up there!"

Kakashi narrowed his eyes. "Why are you being hunted?"

The Cloud bared his teeth. "Because I killed them all. Everyone member of that fucking team. Serves them right. Serves them right for ruining my life – for dragging me to the bottom of hell and making a monster out of me!"

A rogue ninja and a comrade killer. No wonder he was being hunted. "What were you doing on the border of Fire Country?"

"Fire Country?" The revelation appeared to surprise him for a second, and then he laughed again. "They chased me all the way down to Fire Country and failed to kill me! What useless scums!"

"You want to die?"

"Fuck no. I want to be killed. I want my blood on their hands. On your hands! On the hands of all the fucking shinobi in this rotten world!"

"Why?" Midori asked, a frown tugging her brows at the Cloud's hysterical behavior. "What did they do to you to make you hate them so much?"

"What does it matter," Kakashi interrupted. The only thing he needed to know was whether this shinobi was going to be a threat to his team or their mission. If so, he had no qualms about giving the Cloud what he claimed he wanted, whether it was the truth or not.

"Let's listen to what he has to say first," Obito said quietly.

Kakashi sighed and shrugged, but didn't take the kunai away from the Cloud's throat.

"Why do you hate your Village so much?" Midori asked again.

The injured youth laughed, the sound somewhere between a bark and a wheezing cough. "Why. Why? Because they made me a ninja that's why! You're one of 'em too aren't you? Tell me, are you happy? Are you grateful to be making a living killing people? Are you happy being an obedient little soldier fighting for the old geezers who only see you as statistics on a piece of paper? Well?!"

"Our leader isn't like that," Midori replied. "I'm sorry yours was."

"I'm not talking about the Kages… though they're equally as rotten," he spat. "I'm talking about the daimyos and lords and merchants and all the fuckers who have something to gain by ordering us to go to war. And what about us? What do we have to gain? Not a fucking thing. We're losing everything… everything…! I'll be damned if I let them take anything else from me…"

The three listened in silence as the Cloud's words faded into a whisper. He clenched his eyes closed. The muscles in his hollow cheeks shook with the strength of his jaws clamped together, holding back the tears that welled in the corners of his eyes.

"That's enough," Kakashi said. They couldn't waste any more time listening to the woes of a broken shinobi. And broken or not, he had no intention of letting this Cloud jeopardize their undercover mission. Kakashi tightened his grip on the kunai and tipped the edge of the blade against the youth's artery until it broke skin.

The smell of blood and mercy rose unbidden from his memories. He had seen this before, in another time, in another place – a shinobi who had sought death to escape struggle. Kakashi narrowed his eyes and breathed, "Rest easy."

"Kakashi wait – " Obito stopped, but before he could say anything more, the Cloud cried out.

"Please! Don't kill me!"

Kakashi's hand stopped, stayed by both voices. He glared down at the Cloud but froze at the fear-stricken expression he found. The maniac grin was gone, as was the strange light in his eyes. They were opened wide, wet with tears, and his lips quivered with every shallow breath.

"Please," he whispered. "I don't want to die."

"That's not what you were saying a moment ago," Kakashi said.

"I don't know… I don't know, I blank out sometimes. Please, let me go. I won't hurt you."

The three Chuunin exchanged looks.

"What's your name?" Obito asked.

"Iku. I'm being hunted by the Clouds."

"You are a Cloud," Kakashi said.

"I'm a runaway. I… I killed my team a month ago. I'm sorry! I didn't mean to!" His eyes were wide, seeing something other than the three Chuunin. His voice cracked, but he rambled on, like a broken dam of incoherence. "I had to kill him. He took me away from my parents. He murdered them – his own sister! – so I had nowhere to return to. Ten years. Ten years and I finally had the chance! The look on his face!" He almost laughed but choked on his own spit and coughed harshly.

The heaves turned into sobs. "Not the others. I never meant to harm the others! I swear! They were like me. We were orphans, we grew up together – forced to become shinobi. We hated it!" His voice turned to grief. "Why did they attack? Why did they look so sad? Why… I don't remember… I don't remember! I – he – killed them. It wasn't me!"

"He?" Obito asked.

Iku only shook his head, crying. He sniffed loudly, his body trembling in fear, pain or something else entirely. "I'm sorry. I don't remember. I'm so, so sorry… I just… I didn't want to die..."

Midori looked at her teammates, bewildered. "What do we do?"

"It's an act or he's plain crazy," Kakashi said. "We don't have time for this."

Obito shook his head. "I think he has a split personality. I read about it once. It's caused by physical trauma during childhood. Their multiple identities are a coping mechanism."

"It's the other me," Iku said, his words hushed but clear. "He's been there for years. They tried to beat him out of me. It didn't' work. I can't control him. I don't even remember what he does. Please, believe me."

"The man you killed," Midori said. "You said he killed his own sister. Was he your uncle?"

Iku nodded. "My mother came from a shinobi family, but she fell in love with my father, who was a civilian, so she left the Hidden Cloud Village." The change in topic seemed to calm Iku and he spoke quietly with a distant, pained look in his eyes. "We lived far away in the countryside. We were happy. But that all ended when Goro tracked us down ten years ago. My mother refused to return and wouldn't let him take me either. So he killed her and my father, telling me it had been an accident. It's ironic, only when I became a shinobi myself did I realize my mother wouldn't have died in a simple accident. But at the time, I had nowhere else to go. I went with Goro and became the one thing I hated most. If only my mother hadn't been born a shinobi, she would have been alive. We would have been happy. If only ninjas didn't exist… If only I…"

He froze and squeezed his eyes shut. "If only I didn't exist…"

"So we'll take them down with us." Iku's lips peeled back in a ruthless grin. His voice was soft with malice. "Every last one of them fuckers."

The alter ego was back and Kakashi wasn't interested in hearing his foul-mouthed ramblings again. Before Obito or Midori could say anything, his fingers flew through a set of seals and he slapped a hand over Iku's eyes, activating a hypnosis genjutsu. The Cloud stiffened and then his body went slack as his mind was plunged into unconsciousness.

"Kakashi," Obito reprimanded.

"The conversation wasn't going anywhere. He's a risk to himself and both our countries – much less our mission. Don't tell me you couldn't figure that out."

"I know he's a risk, but…" Obito rolled a stray piece of stone distractedly between his fingers, looking at Kakashi with a rueful expression. Kakashi knew that look and didn't like it at all. "I don't want to get you mad but… any chance we can spare him?"

"No."

"Kakashi…"

"No."

"Just so you know, I won't let you kill him."

"Obito…" Kakashi growled.

Midori shook her head at the familiar stalemate between her teammates and looked at Iku. She thought back to what they had just heard and tipped her head in wonder. "Maybe Konoha's just special but I don't know of anyone who hates being a shinobi."

"Yeah you do," Obito said, surprising Midori. "Asuka."

"Your cousin Asuka? Really?"

Obito nodded. "It's not that I support what Iku did, but I can sympathize with how he feels. The Uchiha Clan doesn't give its children much choice either whether they want to become a ninja or not. Those who refuse are persecuted and shunned. Those who don't show talent are looked down on. It's not Asuka's fault that he was born an Uchiha, but it's the Uchiha's fault that he turned out the way he did. Believe it or not, he wasn't always like that. Asuka and this guy are both just victims of the shinobi world. I can't help but think, if this were Asuka…"

"If this were Asuka, would you forgive him for killing your own clan members?" Kakashi asked, his voice hard.

Obito opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He fell silent, his eyes dropping to the ground, dark with conflict. For a long moment, the only sounds filling the cave were the shallow breaths of the wounded ninja and the waves breaking against the bottom of the cliff.

When Obito looked up again, his face was still troubled and he shook his head helplessly. "I don't know," he said truthfully. Yet, even undecided, his eyes never wavered as they fixed on Kakashi. "I'm just asking you to have mercy this one time."

Kakashi glared, not at all in agreement. But he knew Obito's stubbornness matched, or even exceeded Midori's, and any sort of dissent in the team would become an even greater threat to their mission than a wounded lunatic.

"Fine," he said, then turned to Midori. "You okay with the decision?"

She nodded. "Killing him would make us no better than the Clouds."

Kakashi didn't think so, but he shrugged.

Obito smiled in relief. "Thanks Kakashi."

With the immediate problem more or less solved, the three focused on other matters at hand. From their position, they couldn't make out whether the battle had already ended above, but decided it was as good a time as ever to make a brief rest while laying low.

Although Kakashi was confident his illusion would last at least six hours, he and Obito decided to take turns keeping watch.

"I'll take a turn too," Midori said.

Kakashi shook his head. "I don't want to stay for more than a few hours."

"I thought girls needed their beauty sleep," Obito added with a grin. "Unless tomboys don't count."

Kakashi barely had enough time to stop Midori from throwing them all out of the cave with a Kaze Kamaitachi.

.-.-.-.

The midmorning sun filled the cave with warmth.

Kakashi sat near the opening, listening to the waves and seagulls flying high overhead as he chewed on a rations bar. Obito, having taken the first watch, was sleeping at the far end of the cave with Midori. It was nearing three hours since they had fallen down the cliff and there was no indication of disturbances above.

The Cloud lay, still unconscious, at Kakashi's feet. His breathing was shallow but steady and the bleeding from his severed arm had stopped.

Kakashi thought back to Obito's words about Asuka and the Uchiha Clan. He had barely spent a year with Asuka and had never taken enough interest in him to try to get to know him any better. But he remembered the dark, sullen looks that perpetually darkened the boy's face. At the time, he had thought it was simply resentment toward the other students who laughed at him and constantly compared him to Obito.

Yet, if what Obito said was true, it was possible the resentment extended to the entire structure of the shinobi world – a world which couldn't be called fair or normal by a long shot. One of the many consequences of its aberrance was the freedom of choice granted to most children of the Academy, yet not to those who came from prestigious and conservative clans.

There was no doubt that the life of a shinobi was harsh and cruel – even more so to those who did not choose to embrace and endure it of their own free will. Kakashi had never given it much thought or ever questioned the decision to follow in his father's footsteps. It was a given. What some perceived as the absurdity and unjustness of his world was as natural to him as the act of breathing. So he had never really understood what Asuka had been trying to say the day Kakashi had graduated from the Academy.

(Flashback)

Three weeks after his father's suicide, Kakashi was sitting on a bench behind the Academy, having already finished his exam. With a ninjutsu scroll lying across his lap, he waited for the other classes to complete the test.

He could hear students in the distance, chattering excitedly or groaning in defeat. Beside him, sitting in sullen silence was Asuka. Why the other boy had joined him an hour earlier was a mystery but it wasn't the first time during his year at the Academy and Kakashi didn't give it much thought.

"Don't you hate the shinobi who drove your father to suicide?" Asuka suddenly asked.

Kakashi looked up from the scroll, swallowing both the surprise at hearing such a question and the prick of pain his father's death still caused him well before the emotions could leak into his expression.

"My father died because he was weak," Kakashi said. "That's all there is to it."

Asuka scowled. "He died because people like the Uchiha called him a disgrace for saving lives. Where's the fairness in that?"

"Even if he saved lives, he failed the mission. The people had the right to call him anything they wanted to. That's the way things work."

"You don't think that's messed up? Aren't you angry?"

Kakashi thought about the past few weeks – the tangle of emotions that had clogged his chest and the barren emptiness that was slowly but surely swallowing everything inside him. The pain, loneliness, confusion, hurt – it was all becoming the past. Anger had never surfaced anywhere.

"No," he replied.

Asuka huffed derisively. "It must feel awfully good being a genius. Even if your father's despised by the whole Village, you still get the special treatment. Everyone loves you. Everyone acknowledges you."

Kakashi wasn't one to get riled by Asuka's caustic tongue but he understood why some in their class would. He simply shrugged and stood up. "If you want to be acknowledged, all you have to do is grow stronger."

"Easy for you to say."

Kakashi didn't think so. Drop-out or not, Asuka was an Uchiha, a warrior clan with some of the most powerful genes in the world. With enough effort, it would surely make up for a large portion of whatever ability he was lacking. But Kakashi wasn't a counsellor and neither was he interested in continuing the conversation so he turned his back and walked away.

"Hey, I've been thinking, if I become the Hokage, do you think everyone will acknowledge me?" Asuka asked quietly.

Kakashi paused and glanced back over his shoulder. Becoming the Hokage was many children's dreams, but he never knew Asuka was one of them. Though it struck him as unexpected and somewhat unlikely, he shrugged. "I don't know about everyone, but I suppose I would."

Asuka stared at Kakashi with a look of surprise. His frown eased and a rare smile tugged at his lips. "I guess that's good enough for now."

(End Flashback)

Kakashi had never understood why Asuka had been so angry over the circumstances leading to the White Fang's death. Neither did he know what had become of his dream four years down the road. He looked down at the Cloud and wondered if anyone who resented the shinobi world could become one of its leaders.

With a sigh, Kakashi shook the thoughts from his mind and stood up, pulling his mask back into place. He went to where his teammates were resting and shook Obito awake. "I'm going to go check the situation above," he said. Obito squinted through bleary eyes but nodded clearly. Kakashi motioned to Iku and added, "Keep an eye on him."

Climbing quickly but carefully, Kakashi scaled the cliff wall and stretched his senses to check the surroundings. He didn't feel anything unusual so he peered over the edge and pulled himself onto flat ground. The earth was dug up and scorched in places but there were no bodies – only several dark stains and the faint scent of dried blood. Kakashi checked the nearby forests to be sure but found nothing. Both the Konoha and Cloud shinobi were long gone.

Satisfied, Kakashi made his way back down, letting gravity carry him halfway and swinging his body into the cave within seconds. Midori was just beginning to stir, being poked and prodded by Obito, who sat with a rations bar in his mouth.

"I'm up, I'm up," Midori groaned, sitting up and shielding her eyes from the bright light.

"Sleepyhead," Obito chuckled. "Imagine the sort of commander you'll make one day."

"Shut… up…" she yawned. Then she caught sight of Kakashi and asked, "How was it?"

"Quiet," Kakashi replied, his eyes on the Cloud. "I'm going to take him up there and hide him in the trees. Then we'll head out."

Obito looked up and held Kakashi's eyes for a long moment.

Midori looked between the two, apprehension clouding her face at the strange tension that pervaded the cave. "Kakashi you –"

Obito cut her off. "Sure thing," he said, a confident grin on his face. "We'll be ready."

Kakashi regarded his teammate for a moment longer and then nodded. Slinging Iku's remaining arm across his shoulders, he gathered chakra to his free hand and feet and climbed back up. All the while, Obito's face lingered in his mind, even as he heaved himself and Iku onto the clifftop, even as he looked for patches of thick foliage just inside the forest, even as he tied the Cloud to a thick tree and renewed the illusion to keep him sleeping for another six hours.

The possibility had been on all of three of their minds. He had known they wouldn't demand to accompany him. Their trust in each other was stronger than that, or they wouldn't have survived for so long in the war. Midori may have sought reassurance. But Obito's irrational confidence in Kakashi was unnerving – and for a long moment, as he stared down at the unconscious enemy with his kunai in hand, he wondered if it had wrongly entrusted.

Every fiber of his being and every shred of training told him to kill the Cloud. It wasn't even about threats or risks – this shinobi was an enemy and, hunted or not, he had attacked Konoha forces with every intention of taking them down.

Kakashi brought his weapon to Iku's neck, poised once again over his carotid artery. He knew, even without conscious thought, the exact depth, angle and force that needed to be applied to end a life. He couldn't count the number of times he had delivered the final stroke over the past years. But something held him back.

Have mercy.

Kakashi bit his lip and pulled back. Abruptly turning away from the Cloud, he secured the weapon back under his sleeve and leapt away without ever looking back.

He returned to the cave to find Midori and Obito bickering as usual, but the words barely took on meaning in his mind. He just stood there, lost for words, still reeling from something he couldn't even quite grasp.

After a while, he finally realized it was gratitude.

"Look, Kakashi's back already. If you had just stopped complaining we would have been ready by now," Obito was saying, ducking under the bag Midori swung at his face.

"We would have been if you hadn't stuffed that rations bar into my mouth when I was yawning!" Midori shot back.

Despite their words, they were both more or less ready and it seemed their squabble had stretched out their sore muscles. Obito and Midori soon joined him at the cave opening and discussed the best route going forward. They quickly agreed that running over the waves would surely tire them, but it would greatly reduce the risk of running into any more Cloud shinobi.

"Obito," Kakashi said just as they were about to depart.

"Yeah?"

"Whatever the Uchiha Clan's done," he said, voicing the thought he had been mulling over that morning, "it's not on you. You don't need to be the one carrying their guilt."

Obito looked at him in surprise. Midori smiled, reassured that whatever fissure caused by this unexpected turn of events was all but gone.

Obito, too, broke into a grin and felt a fraction of the burden ease from his shoulders. Sometimes he didn't even realize he was looking for something until his teammates gave him the very words.

"Thanks Kakashi."

With that, the three resumed their mission.

.LinSetsu.