Published: 4/4/2018

"O sweet Spring Flower, Miss Misuzu! I have admired your beauty since I first laid eyes upon you. Please, won't you accompany me on a date?"

This hammy request was delivered not only on one knee but also with an incredibly gaudy bouquet of flowers. I darted my eyes left and right and found that a myriad of passers-by had stopped to stare. A nearby toddler began to cry.

"Miss Misuzu!" Gai Maito implored.

I found myself beginning to sweat. I knew about Gai, of course. All people knew about Gai even if they didn't have memories from a strange alternate universe. How could they not? He was Gai. He was the biggest village weirdo since… since ever, maybe.

My first inclination was to put on my best Yoshiya-face, glare with frigid superiority, and nope the hell away. But even though Oyuki was not in the immediate vicinity somehow I just knew that if I broke character now she'd hear about it. And oh, I did not want her to hear about that.

Right up until this very moment demeanor practice had been my favorite training task. It had been the simplest and most entertaining of my exercises, usually involving a delivery or other miscellaneous task, in which I would be instructed to adopt a certain personality type and try my hardest to sell it to whomsoever I happened to encounter. Usually it was great fun, especially if I ran into family or clanmates, and with my ongoing assignment of "giggling socialite" that was doubly true. Now, though, I was having second thoughts. Second thoughts about everything, really, because being asked on a date by Rock Lee's future sensei was something that would make any young woman question her life.

"Oh, Gai-san, that's so sweet of you," I tittered, nervously and admittedly without much substance. "I'm flattered."

Because my errands often took me to the Academy and since part of my current training was learning to project the image of a sociable young woman, I had become rather well-known amongst the Academy community. It was not surprising in the least that Gai, who I knew to be a frequent volunteer tutor in taijutsu, had seen seen me about enough to start admiring my looks. Nor was it a surprise that he had begun to admire my looks—and I meant that in a truly factual way. Currently I was the most well-groomed I'd ever been in my life. If there were ever a time for me to gain an admirer based solely on physical appearance it would be now.

Why was that? The answer was simply that I was under daily scrutiny. Oyuki was my main supervisor, but Fuyuji, I&E's cultural apparel advisor, critiqued my hair, clothes, and general looks almost every morning I reported to the unit. This, of course, was also at Oyuki's behest. In her words she wanted me to have a taste of what sort of daily diligences were required of an infiltrator.

Fuyuji was an interesting fellow with extremely extensive knowledge of both male and female fashions. If he hadn't been born into a ninja clan I suspected he would have lived a very happy and fulfilling life as a tailor. He had a keen eye for design and the sort of taste that made a person look sharp without being showy. I saw him sketching all the time, and it was a real shame he wouldn't devote his full time to a clothing brand; it was obvious where his passion was.

Ordinarily I might have been irked to have personal choices like how to wear my hair and uniform dictated to me, but as it was Fuyuji and I had really hit it off. Once he learned that I was an avid needlecraft enthusiast, and that I was far along enough in skill to be wearing clothes and alterations of my own making daily, he began sharing all sorts of his very fashionable designs with me. Unlike him I had access to a sewing machine (Hisame-jii, who was possibly the only ninja seamster in all of Konoha, had one) and even though it was primitive and treadle-powered it made me a more of a sewing powerhouse than he could ever dream of being.

Our relationship quickly soared beyond simple tutelage. We became something like business partners. In exchange for following his instructions in hair and dress I was given incredibly high quality fabrics so I could sew and sometimes model clothes for him. He had lots of young nieces, ones even littler than I was, so more often than not they were very cutesy outfits. But every now and then he would draw up elegant and ladylike dresses for me to try out. That in itself was very enjoyable, and in fact I liked some of his stuff so much that I sewed it up in sturdy chuunin blues and put it on under my vest, but most vitally I was allowed to keep the leftover materials for my own projects.

But all of that was distraction from the point. I couldn't keep my mind out of the present much longer. The reality was that, due to a combination of dressing well, styling my hair, and pretending to be a nice girl, Gai Maito had taken a liking to me decided to ask me out. And he was waiting for a response from me right now. I couldn't stand here without answering for much longer.

Mechanically, I held out my hands and accepted the garish bouquet of purple and orange flowers. A ludicrous amount of hope flared in Gai's eyes, and he clasped his hands together and looked up at me as though he was praying to some sort of ten-year-old deity. I wondered if he he even realized he was older than me. Wasn't this embarrassing for him? He was Kakashi's age, after all, and Kakashi would probably die before he behaved like this for anyone in public.

"Gai-san," I began. Then I hesitated, because when he met my eyes they were full of such earnest attention that I knew at once I would be the worst kind of person if I returned anything else but an equally earnest answer. After all, he had gone out of his way to buy me flowers and ask me out in person. That was bravery. He was making a sincere effort to know me right now. What kind of person would spit in the face of that? Not the kind of person I wanted to be, demeanor training or no.

"Gai-san," I started again, more warmly now. "I'm really touched. Thank you."

And even though Gai often projected the image of being dense and sometimes delusional, he was as perceptive as any ninja ought to be, and sometimes even more than that, too. The preteen before me was a future jounin, after all. One didn't rise to that level of excellence by being delusional. Gai looked up and returned my smile with equal friendliness and warmth.

And then I faltered. It wasn't that there was anything wrong with his smile or his response at all. In fact it was a really handsome smile, one made even more wonderful by the fact that it was soft and calm and nothing at all like his usual frightening grins. It was that his smile brought forth in my mind the image of another boy's smile—the smile that he had given me when I'd given him a vanilla cupcake to celebrate his birthday. I swallowed.

"I'm really touched, Gai-san," I whispered as I replayed that sunny scene in my mind's eye. "But I don't think… I don't think that I could go on a date with you. I… I'm sorry."

Gai stood as tears began to gather in my eyes.

"Oh no," I mumbled flusteredly and began fanning my face with my hand. "I—I'm sorry, I didn't mean to… I'm sorry. I—"

"I understand," Gai interrupted with surprising gentleness. "Please don't worry about a thing, Miss Misuzu. I'm to blame for asking so suddenly. I'll try again when the time is more convenient."

He smiled again when I tried to hold out the flowers and pushed my arms back to my chest. Then he left without any further attempts to ask. I returned to I&E's office in tears.

"What? What's wrong?" one of the ninjas by the door asked, startled, as I appeared in the doorway with my armful of gaudy flowers.

"He was so nice," I cried in reply. "I didn't realize that he was that nice."

I first noticed it a few months into my apprenticeship. After taking part in a spar on Academy grounds, the faint whisper of a clandestine conversation drifted into my ear.

"...such a disappointment."

I turned my head and caught sight of two Academy instructors hurriedly looking away. They moved towards the end of the hall and ducked around a corner with ill-concealed haste. I paused for a moment, considering. Then I lifted my arms and began making hand seals.

Eavesdropping skills and chakra-enhanced hearing techniques were so important for espionage that Naoto hadn't even bothered to wait for me and Oyuki to lay out a training regimen; on my second day in the unit he just stopped me by the door and showed me the techniques right then and there. They were all very basic jutsu—in the future I would learn more complex and specialized techniques—so it was no trouble at all to hear the rest of what they were saying.

"She was one of the top students, too. We had so much hope that she'd finally be able to excel once her guardians stopped interfering with her training."

My eyebrows flew up. I had figured they'd been talking about me, if only by the reactions they had to my presence, but that was a far more escalated degree of talk than I had expected to hear. I had always known that Auntie Reiko and Uncle Souhei's decision to forbid my skipping of grades had been unpopular, of course, but I hadn't realized there were people out there who were so invested in criticizing them.

This alone wouldn't have made me overly angry. Auntie and Uncle had known what they were doing and were thick-skinned enough not to be bothered by such gossip. Besides, those instructors didn't know us and they didn't know what sort of internal circumstances were going on in our family. But what followed did make me angry. It made the paper handout I had in my hands crumple so hard it almost returned to pulp.

"—and now look at her... things seemed so promising when she and her teammate were promoted, but now? Did you see her sparring with the third-years? Her skill level..."

"Don't tell anyone I said this, but my desk is next to the Special Forces recruiter's, and I heard the other boy, the one who got left behind for Mikawaya's mission, got taken up into ANBU."

If they had been lamenting the dissolution of Team 11 and wishing that I could have had more consistent mentorship it would have been one thing. I wouldn't have been entirely pleased—after all, whose fault did they think Team 11's dissolution was? as time went on it baffled me more and more how the instructors acted like victims—but in the end they still would have been wishing, however hypocritically, for my good.

"So what, they passed her up?"

"I heard she turned them down so she could join I&E instead."

There was a tsking noise, soft but clear in my ears.

"She's more of a coward than I anticipated."

Talk about my team and grade-skipping was one thing. As Academy instructors they had been involved, however peripherally, with my student affairs. But I wasn't a student anymore and my life after the Academy was none of their business. They had no right to be making comments about my career choices.

Hot indignation bubbled up beneath my collar. What the hell did these outsiders think they knew? Susumu had accepted my decision without question, and not even Akihiko, for all his misdirected rage, had called me a coward when he'd left.

For a moment, I stood shaking in the hallway. I wanted to but I couldn't go up to them and scream in their faces. Even when I was angry I knew how idiotic that would be. Eventually I took a measured breath and opened a nearby window.

It was never unusual to see shinobi egressing through such ports as second floor windows, but when I looked over my shoulder at the instructors after landing in the courtyard they started and avoided eye contact. Disgusted, I marched over to a nearby training post.

From the corner of my eye I saw their figures shift to track me. I pushed my foot back and fell into a Hurricane Gale stance. Then I lifted my arms, picked up my leg, and plowed it through the post with enough force to rival one of Akihiko's best kicks. The top half of the training post flew across the field and slammed into a nearby tree. It shuddered and dropped an armload of pine cones.

They were too shocked to dodge my gaze then. I stared them both in the eye. It was a challenge against my seniors but I didn't care.

The two instructors ducked their heads and walked hurriedly away.

Once my ire had drained away it left me sprawled on the kitchen table. That evening after dinner, after everyone had dispersed to their own business, I sat face-down in the kitchen as Auntie Reiko absently washed dishes. Normally I'd have helped her, but she was so far through with them now that there wasn't really a point.

"So?" she finally asked after she'd finished a few minutes later. She beat her hands against her apron to dry them. "What went on with you today, Suzu?"

"I did something really stupid," I glumly replied.

Auntie sat down across from me. I confessed the details of the confrontation at the Academy, hiding neither the fact that I had eavesdropped nor that I had destroyed Academy property in a fit of rage, though the details made my cheeks burn bright red with embarrassment. Getting upset because I'd eavesdropped and picking a fight over it… it was the height of immaturity. I let out a long sigh.

But Auntie, rather than scolding me, looked pensive. There was a crease in her brow and her blue eyes were distant with memory. She placed her chin on her fist.

"During the Second War," she began, which made me sit bolt upright, "before my last mission, there was a squad I was a temporary member of."

Neither Auntie nor Uncle ever spoke of the Second Shinobi World War. We all knew why, of course; we were the children of their fallen friends and comrades. Possibly when I was younger I wondered why they wouldn't talk about it to at least us, but lately I never felt the need to question it. After all, there were all sorts of matters I didn't want to talk about to anyone. I think I knew intuitively that no one was necessarily trying to keep secrets. What was the point? Everyone else was living through the same circumstances, after all, and we all had our own traumas. But it drained energy just to think of these things. There was simply no will to hash it all out again, and why would there be?

"It was a really hodgepodge team, but we all still came from regular combat units—all of us except for one guy, that is. He was from the Intel Division and he'd never been an open field battle in his life. All of his fieldwork had been scouting and surveying.

"They pulled him because no one else had been available. There were seven of us in total and about half of the team really enjoyed taking the piss out of him. We could all tell that he trained and he was good in a fight, but he wasn't on the same level as us. He wasn't combat specialized like we were, of course, so he couldn't have been. But the guys looked down on him anyway. He was an outsider on the team for a long time.

"But one day we were on a mission really far into Suna territory and it was a huge disaster. Two of our guys were killed outright and the rest of us were injured. It was bad; we had to leave their bodies behind, and while we were running it started to look like we'd have to ditch the two who had been injured the worst, too. That wasn't unusual back then. The ninjutsu specialist and I were ready to do it because we'd done it before, but the guy from Intel refused. He said there was still a way."

"What happened?" I asked, engrossed, because I'd never heard any of her war stories before. It had never occurred to me that she might have had to leave comrades behind. Auntie rolled her shoulders and gave me a shrugging smile. It was not a regretful look, not per se, but it was a somber face that said that she'd grappled with it for a long time in the past. I wondered what that must have been like. Survivor's guilt was bad enough on its own; what would having to physically abandon a squadmate engender?

"We argued but in the end we gave him his chance. So he told us to take cover and hide out while he went and infiltrated."

I snapped back to attention.

"He was I&E?" I exclaimed. "He went solo?"

"He was," Auntie nodded. "And he did. Honestly, when he left we thought that was the last of him, and we made an agreement that we'd wait twelve hours before leaving. But he came back before the time limit was up and his pack was full of Suna uniforms. He'd managed to steal four whole sets of gear from the supply depot we'd been skirting around."

"What?" I gaped. "How?"

Auntie smiled. "Well," she said thoughtfully, "he didn't give us the full story, but from what I gathered he removed all of the gear that identified him as a Konoha-nin, ran in, and acted like he belonged. He had a lot of knowledge about Suna's military culture and procedures because he was from Intel and he had been a scout. My guess is he was able to use that to trick his way through to the supplies and back again."

It must have taken nerves of steel. I couldn't even imagine it. The closest I got was picturing myself trying to blend in with the Iwa ninjas at Tatsumi River, and just thinking about that was enough to make me feel a little nauseous.

"So we dressed up as Suna-nin and we were able to slip through. Whenever we ran into patrols he pretended he was a field medic escorting a platoon through for emergency medical attention. He gave fake names and ID numbers for them to write down at their checkpoints and we ran before they could match the information with their control post. We never got the two bodies back, but everyone else lived."

Auntie Reiko smiled again at my astounded look. Then the turn of her lips faded and she shifted her gaze towards the kitchen window. Dusk was falling outside.

"His name was Manaki," she said after a long while. "I hadn't thought about him in years. I can't even remember his surname anymore… but those instructors you told me about reminded me of him and his bullies. He never said anything to them about it afterwards but they all knew that they would have died if he hadn't been from Intel."

And suddenly I began to feel ashamed. In the face of such a heroic story my boorish display of violence was twice as detestable. I put my face in my hands and wondered if I ought to just give up taijutsu altogether.

"Don't," Auntie Reiko advised. As expected of my foster mother; she knew exactly what I was thinking. "Manaki only survived long enough to save us because he'd been diligent in his combat training. I mean it when I say he was wasn't bad in a fight—he just wasn't as good as we were. Besides," she added, "imagine the talk at the Academy if you started backing off your martial training now."

I dropped my hands in horror. Auntie Reiko began to laugh.

Surprisingly it was Uncle Souhei who produced a solution to my gossip problems. Ordinarily it wouldn't have been unusual to turn for him for advice, and indeed, no one was ever taken off-guard by his thoughtful solutions. What was surprising was that he was suddenly participating in House life again. He'd hardly been home in the past two weeks and it had been just as long since I'd last spoken to him properly. Just what he was doing or where he was going was a mystery to me, but Auntie Reiko seemed entirely unconcerned, so I eventually decided to leave it be, too.

"Rather than picking fights," Uncle advised dryly, "you ought to just show them you're still growing your skills. Learn a new ninjutsu or two and practice them in a public place. It'll head off the rumor mill significantly."

"How do you know?" I asked doubtfully. I expected a glib reply, but he delivered an unexpectedly serious response.

"When I left active duty," Uncle said, "the talk that followed me was not unlike the talk that is following you right now. It was always the case that, during times of war, people who leave very visible roles find themselves accused cowardice or laziness. But so long as you demonstrate to them that's not the case, the rumors will eventually cease to stick. After I began working as a clan iryou-nin and people saw that my skills weren't going to waste, things calmed down significantly. There were some who thought I was just using my clan to hide away from the warfront, of course," he added thoughtfully, "but I suspect those particular people would have found a way to criticize me no matter what I did."

This sudden disbursement of wisdom reduced me to a thoughtful silence. Uncle Souhei seemed to sense that I still had more to say, so he fell quiet and waited patiently for me to gather my thoughts.

"Am I really such a wretch," I asked after a long moment, "if I'm not out in the field slaughtering enemies and bathing in their blood? Why am I a coward for joining I&E?"

"Why indeed?" Uncle Souhei ruminated. "It's an eternal question, Suzu. I don't know."

I gazed at him critically. Uncle put his chin on his fist and stared back.

"You have a theory, though, don't you?" I deduced.

"Maybe I do," Uncle Souhei sighed at that. "Maybe… sometimes I believe it. That we're addicted to this violence. This is the Third War, after all—we all know what happens. So why else would we keep doing this to ourselves if we weren't addicted? Every time it happens we destroy own people as much as we destroy our enemies."

I turned my eyes downward and thought about Itsuki-sensei, huddled in the dark like a child. Silent and then sobbing and then empty.

"People say things like justice, or honor, or revenge," Uncle Souhei murmured, "but it's all just pretense. I think the truth is that we don't know how else to live. But we're too scared to change, so when people do try to live differently—when they try to get by without the violence—we become unsettled and project our fearful selves onto them instead."

"And that's why you and I are cowards," I finished heavily.

"That's why we're cowards," Uncle Souhei agreed. And he went silent. I watched as he put his chin on his fist with a faraway look on his face.

"Suzu, do you believe people can change?" he asked.

"Eh?" I blinked. "I—yes?"

Uncle Souhei snorted a bit.

"Are you asking me or telling me?"

I scowled at him.

"You don't have to be mean about it. It's your fault for asking such a non-sequitur question."

Uncle let out a chuckle as he turned to look at me directly once more.

"You're right. I'm sorry. Do you believe it?"

I gave him a look but decided not to press the point. Elders were entitled to their condescension every now and again; I could take the high road.

"Yeah," I answered honestly. "They can change. I believe it."

Uncle Souhei blinked as if startled. I gave him an exasperated look. What was wrong with him all of a sudden? He asked a question; he ought to expect an answer.

"You… do?" he asked a bit dumbly. "Just like that? Even if… they are cowards or traitors?"

"Why wouldn't they?" I frowned at him. "Obviously they won't always change for the better, but it would be stranger to stay exactly the same. Life is too eventful even if someone is a traitor. And what's this about a traitor all of a sudden anyway?"

Uncle Souhei quickly looked away.

"Never mind it," he said. "All this talk about the past made me think of a man I knew."

"He was a traitor?" I perked up. Auntie's talk about the Second War had made me curious for more stories. "Was he from the Second War?"

Uncle let out a long, pained sigh. I remembered myself and immediately drew back. Of course talking about a traitor wouldn't be pleasant; this wasn't my place to pry. Before I could take my question back, though, Uncle answered.

"Yes, it was during the Second War. He had information about the enemy that could have saved lives but he refused to report it."

"Oh," I said. "That's what you meant by traitor."

"Am I wrong?" Uncle gave me a sharp look. "Do you know what kind of devastation he could have prevented? That attack killed hundreds, Yasunari and Kazue included. Your parents might still be alive today if he hadn't been such a coward."

This was startling information, but when I stared up into Uncle's face and saw the cold glint in his blue eyes, I found myself arrested.

He really hated that man, I thought with wide eyes. The intensity of his gaze was perturbing. I'd never seen such terrible loathing on his face in my life.

"I… I guess he didn't get caught?" I asked smally. "He probably would have been executed otherwise…"

And just as suddenly as the emotion came it was gone. Tiredly, Uncle turned his head away once more.

"No. No one had any reason to believe he'd done wrong and there was no evidence to implicate him. He's alive today in the village, hiding out with his family and pretending he never did anything wrong. And he hasn't changed at all," Uncle uttered. "He's just as much of a traitor and a coward today as he was back then."

I bit my lip. Any questions I had died in my throat before I could voice them. Whoever that man was and whatever he had been to my uncle, I doubted very much he would tell me if I asked.

Several long moments passed in which Uncle refused to look at me. Then he finally stood, picked up his cup of cold tea, and left the sitting room table in silence.

A/N: It's long overdue but I think I've come up with a new title for the rewrite. The theme of this story has shifted a lot since the early drafts, so Glory has always felt a little bit like an artifact title to me.

This chapter was very talk-based, wasn't it? But it set up a lot of juicy stuff for the coming chapters. I'm also really happy I got to write about Reiko. Souhei always gets lots of screen time so it was nice to give his spouse a bit of the limelight for a change. But of course right after she appeared he got a 1,151-word scene… haha. The man's got a lot of baggage.

Thanks to all of you who left me long and thoughtful reviews! It pleases me so much to read your thoughts and your suggestions always give me lots to think about. This story wouldn't be half of what it is today if I didn't get feedback from you guys.

Cheers,

Eiruiel