A/N
On Chapter Endings: You call them cliffhangers, I prefer to think of them as dramatically resonant moments.
On Dirty, Rotten, No-Good Thieves: This chapter was somewhat delayed by the theft of my laptop, both because I lost a version of it that was 90% written, and because I lacked a convenient place to write for a couple weeks. I didn't see the thief myself, but if you want to blame someone for the late update, eyewitnesses recommend a "tall, balding, old man".
Disclaimer: Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the Kishimoto. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
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Chapter 11: For Whom The Bells Toll, Part III
What.
What?!
What the fuck?
How the…why did he…what?
I took a deep breath. I needed to calm down. It had been nearly two hours since Kakashi had left it was pretty clear he wouldn't be coming back. I was still lying in the clearing where our test had taken place, surrounded by the wreckage of derailed plans and shattered dreams.
Pull yourself together. I sat up and assumed the lotus position, focusing on my breathing. In. Out. In. Out. I let my awareness flow into my chakra system. I saw my agitation reflected there as chakra swirled wildly throughout my body, all semblance of order destroyed. I set about restoring it to its usual smooth flow. I began in my head and worked downward, slowly feeling my equilibrium return. I found myself humming. If you find your center, you will surely win.
Balance restored, I spent a few minutes just following the flow of my chakra, thoughts adrift. I used to spend hours a day like this, trying to get a feel for chakra, learning its texture and taste. When had I stopped? When had I decided my time was too valuable to spend like this? I resolved to set aside a few minutes each day; it would surely help with my mental health.
OK. On to the problem at hand.
Kakashi had failed us. Why?
What did I know?
Well, for starters, I knew that we deserved to have passed. The bell test was something Kakashi had learned from Minato, years before I'd shown up. There was no way my presence had messed up the time-line enough to make so that teamwork was not the actual purpose of the test.
I didn't know that much about the actual administrative process for passing/failing a genin team, but my understanding was that it was entirely at the discretion of the jōnin administering the test. I mean, the jōnin was the one who decided what the test was in the first place. They could easily assign a task they knew was impossible for their genin to succeed at (such as "take these bells from me"?). There had been stories about jōnin who had failed teams who had done what the jōnin asked, ostensibly because they didn't like the way it had been done.
If I were correct about that, it meant that Kakashi had been within his rights to fail us. But that still didn't answer the burning question: Why? Why fail us when we had done so much better than our canon counterparts? He hadn't even had to bother with the tied-to-a-stump charade.
So, what did I know?
I knew that Kakashi had been conflicted. He had been barely able to look at us while he delivered his verdict. His usually smooth voice had cracked, and he had stumbled over his words. He had apologized. And he had run away immediately. Those could all have been signs of someone who found our performance lacking despite really wanting to pass us and being broken up about being the source of our disappointment, but I doubted it. In that case I would expect him to have stuck around and consoled us, or at least told us his reasoning. No, those were the actions of someone who was doing something they couldn't justify, but felt like they had to anyway.
And if it wasn't us, then it must be him. He had been somewhat different from canon Kakashi, at least from early-on canon Kakashi. Harsher, rougher around the edges, his darkness and cynicism closer to the surface. Why? It was possible this was just one of those things that differed from canon for reasons of world consistency, like the different rules about the academy jutsu. Perhaps someone who had been through all the hardship he had simply had to be more broken than the (relatively) carefree jōnin Kishimoto had written. Maybe something I'd changed (either directly or with the flapping of little wings) had affected him. He had been the one to "save" me from Itachi. Perhaps Itachi had said something, or some aspect of the confrontation had triggered something.
Fruitless line of speculation. Being able to pinpoint the cause(s) of the change(s) would make it easier to understand (and therefore influence) him, but there were simply too many possibilities with no way to narrow them down. I was better off focusing on what I knew.
The root of Kakashi's issues had been his father's suicide and the death of his teammates. Given our similarity to his old team, it was almost certainly the latter that was the problem here. Huh. Could it be that simple? Had he been afraid of failing us figuratively, so he'd failed us literally before he ever got the chance?
That bloody coward. I was going to—!
Calm down. That's what I was going to do. This was still salvageable, maybe, but it would require precision and deliberateness. Dispassion was my friend here, as much as I could muster. I was working off a couple assumptions and a guess, but it felt right. It rang true with his actions and what I knew of his character.
I needed to move fast. Every person he told was another barrier to changing his mind, another anchor tying him to his current position. Still, it hadn't been that long. People generally did not rush to tell others about things of which they were conflicted, guilty or ashamed.
I had a pretty good idea where he would be.
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The memorial stone was an austere stone slab, completely free of adornment. While such simplicity could have made it look cheap or unimportant, it didn't. Sitting alone on the hilltop, overlooking the graveyard below, it had a gravity and solemnity no ornamentation could have matched.
Well, not completely alone. Kakashi crouched in front of it, head turned to look at the graveyard where Rin was buried. I couldn't see his face from where I stood on the edge of the path, five or so paces behind him.
Neither of us spoke for several moments. I had much that I wanted to say, but I really had no idea how to start.
He broke the silence, speaking without turning around.
"Can I help you?" His voice held a combination of disbelief, annoyance and forced politeness, as if I were a bible salesman who had knocked on his door during Thanksgiving dinner.
"Yes, you can. Why did you fail us?"
"You're a smart girl. Is it really so hard to understand that if bell equals pass, no bell equals no pass?"
"You're a smart man. Is it really so hard to come up with a better explanation than that?" He turned and raised his eyebrow, so I continued."That's obviously not what the test was really about. You're so far above our level—so far above every fresh genin's level—that the only way we could actually get a bell is if you let us. It's unlikely that it was designed to test our proficiencies, as you'd get a much better idea of that from our academy files than you would from watching us flail around for three hours. Given how the test was set-up to pit us against one another—and the fact that I've never heard of part of a team passing—it's pretty evident the test was really one of teamwork."
"Very clever of you. Do you want a cookie?"
His flippancy was really starting to grate. It was pretty obvious he was trying to annoy me into leaving him alone, but I'd grown up with a little brother. He'd have to try a whole lot harder than that to get rid of me.
"What I want," I said, gritting my teeth, "Is for you to tell me why you destroyed our hopes, shattered our dreams, and deprived future-Konoha of a capable ninja team. Fail us if you must, but at least give me a real reason."
There was a pause, in which Kakashi held himself very stiffly. Finally, he spoke. "You weren't good enough."
Well, that was…unlikely. If I was right and it really was his hangups that were the problem, I needed to get him to admit it so we could deal with it. It was entirely possible—likely, even—that he hadn't even admitted it to himself yet.
"Really? We're not good enough? That's what you're going with?" I shook my head in exaggerated disbelief. "Sasuke is a genius the likes of which Konoha hasn't seen since—his brother, or, well, you. As for Naruto, while he may be seriously lacking in a few areas, those are mostly a result of the neglect and abuse of the academy instructors. You've seen the depths of his chakra reserves, but you haven't yet seen the depth of his determination. Give him three months of proper instruction and he'll equal or surpass everyone in our class in almost every area. As for me, well, those two are skill and strength far in excess of what a genin team needs, so unless you're going to argue I'm actually a detriment, I can't see how you could say we aren't good enough.
"Have you ever had a team that was 'good enough'? Your record says no. I don't have the details of every team you've failed, but ninja are a pretty diverse group. I'd be willing to bet that the only common thread between all those teams was you. So tell me, Kakashi, why don't you think you're good enough to be a sensei?"
This was a relatively specious argument. The obvious counterpoint was that the actual thing all those teams had had in common was Kakashi as a tester, and that he just had high standards. Still, if I were right about my guess…
Kakashi jerked like I'd slapped him. "You think I'm not good enough?"
"That's not what I said. I said I think you think you're not good enough. But even that isn't quite true, I was just echoing your earlier words. Truthfully, I think you're sad, and lonely, and scared, and think that you're damaged goods."
His eye flashed dangerously, but his voice remained level. "Alright, you got me. I'm a bad, bad man."
"Do you know why Obito was always late?" I asked him. "It's because he was constantly helping people. There's an old lady who lives near me who told me about 'that nice Uchiha boy' who carried her groceries every week without fail. Who are you helping with your cynicism, Kakashi? Do you even care?
"Do I even…" Kakashi disappeared and suddenly I was slammed backward into the memorial stone. He held me aloft with one hand, fingers wrapped loosely about my throat. His snarling face was inches from mine. "Do I even care!? I was being flippant to keep myself from lashing out at you! I bleed every second of every day for those I cared about. You stand there judging me, pretending you know me, know what I've been through. Where the fuck do you get off telling me what my problems are?"
I opened my mouth to respond indignantly when I met his eyes. His hitai had slid backwards when he'd moved, and half his Sharingan was visible.
-Fingers around throat.
Sharingan
"How? Tell me!"
Pain-
I let out a small whimper against my will. Kakashi dropped me as if I'd turned white-hot and jumped backward, looking at his hand in some combination of disgust and horror. His other hand pulled his hitai back into its usual position.
I massaged my neck. Note to self: provoking emotionally unstable jōnin not conducive to good health.
"You think I don't know what hardship is like? That I don't know what it's like to wake up screaming every night, until you're so tired your waking hours become a nightmare to match your sleeping ones? Don't know what it's like to see the same faces everywhere, to have everything remind you of your weakest moment? Don't know what it's like to see the strain you put on those close to you, so that you withdraw from them rather than hurt them too? Don't know what it's like to hear empty words of comfort from people who mean well but whose every word just underscores how little they understand?
"How could I know what that's like: I'm just a silly little girl." I looked into his eye. "You don't have a monopoly on tragedy and pain, Kakashi, even if you've had far more than your fair share."
He gave me a long look. "If something happened to one of you because of my action or inaction…I don't think I'd survive it. I can't lose another teammate. Not after Obito and Rin."
"Surely you've had teammates die since then."
"I haven't had teammates since then! I've had people I've worked with, but in my life I've only ever been on one team. And seeing the three of you together, remembering all that we were…picturing all that you could be, all that we could have been…"
"Do you really think we'd be safer in another year, less well trained, with a weaker sensei? Our team consists of:"—I held up fingers as I enumberated—"the last of the Uchiha, only known source of a pair of Sharingan; the son of the Yellow Flash, one of the most feared/hated ninja outside Konoha, who is coincidentally also the nine-tails jinchūriki; and a seals mistress." Fuinjutsu was rare enough—and transferably useful enough—that attempted kidnapping of its practitioners was not all that uncommon. "Our team is going to be a target no matter what happens. The way I see it, by failing us you're making it much more likely that 'something' happens to one of us. That is already your action and inaction.
"If you honestly think that we'll get a better teacher, or a stronger protector, then go ahead and fail us. If you truly believe that there is a better teacher in Konoha for Sasuke than Kakashi 'of the Sharingan', that there is someone who can better teach Naruto to follow his father's footsteps than Minato's own star pupil, that I would be better taught by someone not my intellectual equal, then go ahead and pawn us off on someone else.
"But if not…don't abandon us. Please. We need you. The village needs you. And…I'm starting to think that you need us too."
The last sounds of my words faded and Kakashi and I were left in silence on the hilltop. Kakashi had moved to stand next to the memorial stone once more. He was gazing out over the graveyard, one hand resting on the stone.
I thought back over the words we'd exchanged. Had I said too much? Too little? I had gotten him to—mostly—admit why he'd failed us, but I'd also had to antagonize him. He could look past that, right? And, I mean, this was something he wanted to do anyway, he just needed a little help to recognize that. Right?
But…what if he still said no? I still had more to say, of course. I could argue about this until the cows arrived back home via random walk. But in my experience reversals of emotion-driven decisions usually happened quickly and dramatically, or not at all.
Without Kakashi as our sensei, not to mention another year at the academy, so much would be different. My foreknowledge would become much less useful. We wouldn't be in a position to help when the Suna invasion came. And what would Orochimaru do if Sasuke were still at the academy? And Naruto in the genin corps…would Jiraiya still teach him? And the summoning contract? And…
I could almost see all my plans, predictions, and hopes collapsing around me. So many hours of planning, years of preparation, potentially destroyed by a single moment of weakness from someone I had expected to be a pillar of strength. I had called him a bloody coward earlier, but that wasn't really fair. The amount of psychological trauma he'd undergone was frankly staggering. That he was still functional at all was a testament to his fortitude. I just wished he'd faltered a little later, after I was in a better position to support him. But if he now…
"So be it," Kakashi said quietly. "Welcome to Team 7, Ami."
My spiraling panic evaporated. Had I not been me and he not been him, I would probably have hugged him. As it was, I contented myself with a wide smile.
"That was a fairly…unconventional way of passing your genin test," he continued.
I bit back an angry retort. Only because you made me. I was a little wary of how quickly his mood had shifted. Still, if he was in a lighter mood…"Well, you know what they say: If at first you don't succeed, complain until you're given the prize anyway."
"Yes, quite," he said, amusement tinkling in his eye. "Though I think you'll find that adage less practical in the ninja world. How did you find out about Naruto's parentage and passenger?"
"Please. An orphan born under mysterious circumstances the night the Yondaime dies? Who is his spitting image? After his wife was pregnant? I'm honestly flabbergasted more people haven't put it together. Though I suppose it's a night few want to dwell on.
"Also, if they were trying to hide it, having him use Kushina's last name was probably not the best idea. As for his 'passenger': accelerated healing factor, vast chakra reserves, whiskers? Son of the previous host? If they didn't want us to figure it out, they probably shouldn't have left a book on jinchūriki in the open section of the library." Said book did, to my surprise, exist, although its information was vague and inaccurate enough that I was dubious anyone could actually use it to deduce Kurama's existence.
Kakashi gave me an appraising look. "You spill secrets very easily."
"They're not secrets to you. I think you mean to say that I discover secrets very easily, which I wouldn't be able to do if they were better hidden."
"Fair enough. What do you think I should tell the other two? I have some ideas, but you know them better."
I thought for a second. "Tell them it was…a test of how they handled failure. Naruto won't question it; he'll just be happy to have passed. It might even teach him to be a little more questioning of authority figures, a lesson he desperately needs. Sasuke might suspect something, but he won't care.
There was a moment of awkward silence. Kakashi broke it first.
"Well, then. I would thank you, but I'm still not entirely convinced this is for the best. Only time will tell." He turned to leave.
"Wait! Kakashi, there's one more thing."
"That's Kakashi-sensei to you now."
I bowed my head. "Yes, sensei. It's…" I paused. Was this really the best time? I'd already pushed him pretty far today. On the other hand, he had listened to me. And most of our interactions from this point forth would probably be in the mold of student and sensei, with him in the position of power. Once that pattern was ingrained in us it would be much harder for me to persuade him like this. In for a penny, in for a pound.
"I've spent a number of hours over the past year talking to people around the village, trying to find out everything I could about our prospective senseis." This was actually true, and I'd made sure I'd been seen by several people doing so, though I'd done it for less time than would account for all the knowledge I had. "There aren't that many retired ninja, but those there are are always happy to talk to youngsters about the good old days. You were of particular interest to me, both because of your…colorful past and the, in my estimation high, likelihood of your assignment to us.
"In my investigations I heard tell of two different Kakashis. The first was a genius the likes of which is rarely seen. He pushed himself to excel in every pursuit and frequently surprised both himself and everyone else with his successes. He could often be found training, and was seldom caught in a situation he hadn't planned for. He began as a cold and distant ninja, but over time he learned the compassion and love that binds Konoha together.
"The second Kakashi I heard about was a porn-addicted, constantly-distracted, perpetually-late mess." I unconsciously braced myself for another outburst, but Kakashi held himself still, single visible eye emotionlessly trained on me. "Even those he was closest to, with whom he spent the most time, said they rarely saw him fully engaged in whatever he was doing. Don't get me wrong: He was still an incredibly capable ninja. How could he not be, skills like he had? But he lacked the passion, the intensity, the drive that had made the other Kakashi so special.
"I truly believe that a few years spent with a team of his own would turn the latter Kakashi back into the former, but I'm not convinced we have a few years to spare." I paused for a second, searching for the right words.
Kakashi gave a hollow laugh in the silence. "You make it sound so easy."
I refound my tongue. "I realize it's not a choice you made, that there's no switch to flip, no magic button to press. All the same I feel compelled to ask.
"I think," I said quietly, "that you owe it to us to at least try. I think you owe it to your old team to give your all to your new one. I think that you owe it to"—he hadn't fully made up with Sakumo yet, had he? Best to avoid that, just in case—"Minato's memory to teach his son as well as you can. I think you owe it to the memory of—the Itachi that was Konoha's pride to protect his brother to the best of your abilities.
"Above all, I think you owe it to yourself. Your story is a heartbreaking one, and that's just the parts I know about. I somehow doubt the classified portions were any more cheerful. You've lost so much, sacrificed so much, that you deserve some happiness. If I thought you'd be happy settling down on a farm somewhere, that might be what I'd recommend for you. But that wouldn't make you happy, would it? Service and sacrifice are too ingrained in you to be blithely set aside.
"Instead, you need to move on. I'm not saying you need to forget your teammates, or their sacrifice. You couldn't if you tried. But you do need to accept the past. Whatever happened happened, and dwelling on it won't change anything. You need to stop looking back with Obito's Sharingan, and turn it instead to the future. So…yeah."
Seconds passed. Kakashi stood stock-still once more, eye unreadable. And then he did something I absolutely did not expect.
He giggled.
I was dumbfounded. What…?
"So, yeah? Hehehe…that's what you decided to end your speech with? Ahahaha." His giggles turned into full-on laughter. "Seriously? After all that, that's how you…hahaha." He drew himself up ramrod-straight, gesturing broadly, and declaimed, "You have been spat upon, knocked down, and robbed. But not today! Today you stand! Today you fight! Today…"
Heat rose in my cheeks as I recognized the closing lines of the climactic speech from Makoto: The Village of Sheep. It was a highly popular ninja film: the fourth "Makoto" movie, in which he comes across a farming village, derisively called 'the village of sheep' which is being terrorized by a gang of Samurai. Makoto teaches the farmers the ninja way, they drive off the samurai, and there is much rejoicing. Borderline-propaganda, but so are pretty much all ninja films. I was pretty sure I knew where Kakashi was going with this.
"…They came looking for the Village of Sheep, but they will find themselves in the Village of Wolves! So…"—he repeated the grand gesture—"yeah." He collapsed in another fit of laughter.
I almost said something, but decided to wait. This was possibly the best response I could have hoped for. I had said my piece, he had listened, and now we could move past it. He might take it to heart, he might not, but either way the tense situation had been diffused. Was he acting? I looked at him, still laughing hysterically. Probably not. Exaggerating, maybe.
He straightened, reaching up to wipe away a tear. "You talk a good talk, kid, but a couple elements of your, uh, rhetorical style, could use some work."
"So teach me," I said.
He smiled (I think—damn that mask!). "I'll see if I can fit that into your curriculum. As for the rest, I'll take your words under advisement, and I'll see you tomorrow at 9:00, training ground 6."
"At 9:00?" I asked.
He didn't respond, just kept smiling. He turned to leave once more but paused, looking back over his shoulder. "You know, for someone who talks about happiness so fervently, you could really stand to lighten up."
Then he was gone, and I was left to ponder his words, and the future.
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Someone asked me about the fidelity of Ami's memories of Naruto canon. I'm writing her as someone who at the very least read the manga and watched the anime once, and probably read some FF too. I'm going to say she read/watched it not terribly long before being reborn (and has a world-class memory), thus she remembers pretty much all the important characters/events, and many of the more minor ones. She might get some details wrong. As for the memories fading over the twelve years of her second life, it is entirely in line with her character to have written out every bit of information (pun intended) that she remembered as soon as she got the manual dexterity to write, and to then review that information until it was cemented in her mind (and possibly to save some backups (written in English for security purposes, of course)).
For any non-American-English speakers, "where do you get off" is American slang for "how dare you", "what's wrong with you", etc…Google Ngram shows it has some use in British English, but much more rarely. I try to avoid regionalisms as a general rule, but this one has exactly the feel I was going for, so it stayed in. To balance it out, I also used "bloody" as an intensifier, a uniquely British(/commonwealth) convention.
You can't really see what's around the memorial stone in the manga (not in any shots I could find, at least), except that it's on a hill. A map of Konoha that I found placed the graveyard right next to it, so I decided that the graveyard was visible from it. That way when Kakashi visited the memorial stone, he was thinking about both Rin (buried in the graveyard but not on the stone (her not being on the stone is itself just conjecture based on that never being mentioned in the manga and her debatably not dying "on duty") and Obito (on the stone), not just Obito.
Ami spent a lot of the last two chapters talking up Naruto and Sasuke, but it was kind of necessary for convincing the people she was talking to. I swear this isn't going to devolve into one of those "everyone marvel over how awesome everybody else is" fics.
Ami also convinces some people relatively easily of some things in these two chapters. It's worth noting that they were things that each person knew they should have been doing anyway. I swear this isn't going to devolve into one of those fics where the protagonist goes around saying four words to each person and completely changes their worldview (See Talk no Jutsu).