Chapter 21

Things had been different between Iruka and Tan-li since they had first shared a bowl of tea, and yet still it surprised him when the jounin suggested they go for a walk through the prairie. Thinking of the children, Iruka had hesitated. However, the other man had taken him by the arm and led him towards the village's edge.

"They were on their own before you," he said, not unkindly. "I think they'll manage for a few hours."

Iruka relaxed after that. A break from being a caretaker wouldn't be such a bad thing, and besides, a growing part of him had been steadily longing to get outside the walls, away from problems that were too big for him.

Outside the gate, the land drew up in a gentle swell, rising to the height of a hill which marked the village's furthest reach. Expanding from this summit was the infinite – an endless, undulating wilderness of waist-high grass in a prairie rainbow of tan, green, and gold. Iruka stood on this precipice of inestimable space and sky – widening forever – and took a deliberate breath.

Tan-li stood beside him, his unseen eyes fixed forward. He said, "They call this the ocean."

Few within a thousand miles would have known as well as Iruka. He murmured, "So it is."

They wandered further into the vast field, weaving through the waving knolls while the grass yielded to the press of their bodies. The sound it made was reminiscent – like the constant roar of waves. When Iruka closed his eyes, only the smell was different; it was dry, mixed up with the earth. Not even the forest was quite like it.

The forest.

The stray thought must have momentarily clouded his face, because when he opened his eyes, Tan-li seemed to be gazing at him. Smirking slightly, Iruka teased, "Are you staring?" A brisk movement was the only answer, indicating it might or might not be so, and Iruka stuck his nose up. "That's not fair, you know. Imagine how you would feel if you couldn't see where I was looking."

The jounin grinned. "I could not imagine not seeing your eyes, Sensei. You speak far too much with them." But then he tilted his head, asking, "Does the mask bother you?"

The question was more ironic than he realized. For while Kakashi's mask covered the opposite half of his face, the effect was really not so different – except that Iruka's masked jounin did not smile with his lips.

Iruka snorted. "I've come to accept the jounin's melodramatic preoccupation with mystique. But don't worry," he reassured, patting Tan-li's arm. "It isn't the worst psychosis I can think of."

A stir of dust in the distance caught his attention then, and Iruka squinted, shielding his eyes. Oh, he thought – the horses. He could just see them as they pranced and pirouetted, whirling under the power of their corded legs as they moved together in ever widening concentric circles. "Why do they run like that?" he wondered, hardly realizing that he had spoken aloud.

"They're playing," Tan-li answered. He seemed amused by Iruka's transfixed interest, and with an odd, mischievous twist of his mouth, he turned his head and whistled shrilly.

Iruka gasped when the herd turned on the sound, their direction shifting as though on a hinge. A hundred ears pricked and turned, and within in the time it took for the ANBU's hail to fade, the graceful animals had swallowed the distance between them and arched around the waiting nin. They pounded the ground in a cacophony so great that Iruka felt the drumbeat in his body, disrupting his heartbeat. He watched them go by in flashes of sharp hoof and tawny hide and hair in all colors from black to blond.

'The horses have more color than the people,' he thought as they sifted past.

"Well," Tan-li said with a chuckle. "It seems we have company."

Iruka, who had been left breathless by the wild performance, did not at first understand what he meant. Puzzled, he pivoted his head, following the jounin's line of sight.

A throaty whinny echoed from a pretty little painted pony, stunning with her auburn patchwork and showy white socks. The animal pranced for a moment, as though uncertain, but then Tan-li made a sound low in his throat and she tiptoed closer, looking for all the world like a spectator come to investigate some new phenomenon.

Approaching them closely, the pony butted the teacher's stomach gently with her head, grunting and flaring wide nostrils. Iruka found himself both compelled and uneasy. "Tan –"

"Hush. She's only curious. Some of them are like that, just as people are."

Iruka went stock still has the lovely beast snuffled at his hair, his clothes. Hand faltering, hesitating in the air, he slowly drew it up and settled it on the pony. Gingerly, he stroked her velvet nose, and then flinched, enchanted, when she made a low nickering sound and nudged him back.

"She likes you," Tan-li told him, grinning.

Looking into the liquid brown eyes beneath thick white lashes, Iruka though it might be so. He sifted his brown fingers through the short ginger coat, feeling all along the warm body. He stopped when his hand come into contact with an anomaly. Frowning, he traced the brand on the horse's flank. It was waxy and swollen, distinctive in its zigzag shape.

Tan-li stepped closer to see what held his interest. He clicked his tongue at the redness of the mark. "Stubborn nag," he commented. "She fought."

"Fought?"

"Mm," Tan-li explained. "It's applied with a metal tong. Oh, the pain is short, really, and it is an honor. It's like this," he pressed his fingers briefly to his hitai-ate, bright in the sun. "They're our partners, and so they also carry the mark of Kusa."

It was possible that what he said was true, but even so, it made Iruka uncomfortable thinking of this creature going unwillingly under a brand.

"They say that horses can read the soul," Tan-li continued. "The lore of my people is that a man's stead is part of him, and many shinobi know their horse better than their wives, better than their children. It is a sad fact of war. Children are so slow growing. They take too long to become valuable resources."

Iruka had time to reflect that herein laid one of Kusa's bigger problems. Shouda wanted his village to be strong again, but they weren't building their young people. Too many were going into the field at the earliest possible time. And while that kind of recruitment would indeed fill taxed compliments, those kinds of soldiers died before they had enough training or experience to truly benefit their village.

'How lucky Konoha was in Sarutobi,' he thought, not for the first time. How wrong things could go in the wake of war. Kusagakure was surviving, but it was only an appearance of strength. They were on the edge of disaster.

More comfortable now, Iruka leaned into the side of the pony, resting his head against the warm back. Tan-li smiled at the action. "You like them? Perhaps one day I'll teach you how to ride."

They were the wrong words: 'one day' oppressed Iruka's mind.

The jounin sensed the shift immediately. "Is it really so bad here, Sensei? I've often heard that Konoha is a magical place, but surely…" The sky spiraling up into the apex of heaven, the swirl of green, yellow, and brown. The sweet smell against their cheeks, and the living, powerful animal beneath his hands.

No, the land of Kusa was breathtakingly beautiful. However, it had nothing on a ramen stand with peeling paint. On rooftops and pinwheels. The animal made a soft sound, puffing into the space below his ear. Iruka turned gratefully, pressing his face into the lithe but powerful neck. He felt the pony lip the back of his shirt.

When Iruka didn't answer, the jounin changed the conversation. "I'm impressed by what you've done for the children. My mother survived most of my childhood, but even so she was often gone. It would have been nice to have a place to go." He paused then, and Iruka could almost sense the coming question. It always came down to this question sometime or another. Even his children asked it eventually, when they were old enough. "Shouda reported that you were also an orphan. Is that why you care for them?"

There it was. Iruka considered it anew as he always did, since how he answered depended on context – on who had asked and where they were. Alone in this vast space with a person who had won his unexpected esteem… Iruka smirked. He so infrequently told the truth; Kakashi would have been jealous.

"It should be an easy question, but somehow it isn't," Iruka admitted. "After the Kyuubi, Konoha was all but destroyed. Our Hokage had died, our water was contaminated, our crops destroyed. The government broke down for a little while, and they were dangerous times for displaced children. My…I had my first group of survivors then. There was safety in numbers. But a roving missing-nin came across them while I was scavenging." His throat closed momentarily, and he had to clear it before going on. "Well, times change. But the plight of the vulnerable do not."

"It is hard to imagine Konoha so broken."

"It isn't like that any more, thank the Hokage. Or, actually, the Sandaime." He smiled at his own joke. "I've known few more able leaders."

"A woman leads you now. I've heard she is over a century old, but still looks like a girl."

"Ah, both cases are exaggerated, I'm afraid," Iruka chuckled, smiling and easy again.

It wasn't destined to last.

"You couldn't be happy," the ANBU guardian said out of nowhere. His tone had turned suddenly very somber, and belatedly, Iruka read the tension in his wiry frame. Tan-li shifted, so that he was facing the chuunin directly. He asked again, "You could never be happy here?"

Realization was dawning in Iruka. He'd been drawn out into his private, beautiful place to demonstrate the grandeur of Kusa, and to have this conversation. His companion-guardian – no, his something like a friend – gazed at him intently. Wondering, couldn't he ever be happy? Wouldn't he just stay?

Yet though it was growing increasingly hard to disappoint these people, Iruka answered the only way he possibly could. "This is not my home, Tan."

He did not know what to expect – whether something like Shouda's cold fury, like Ryo-ki's flashy anger, or like the children's quiet grief. But Tan-li surprised him. Rather than deflating, Iruka's response seemed to draw him taught as a bow and dark as a thundercloud.

Uncomfortable, Iruka drew back a step, but the ANBU only moved closer, intervening in the space between them. His jaw was clinched and tight, like the conviction in his voice. "I didn't believe Shouda when he spoke of your power," he began, and a wavering kind of intensity hovered in his voice – as though he were pleading and demanding at the same time. "I didn't believe in you, but I was wrong. You can change things here."

Fierceness filled expression, eerily similar to Shouda in those early days. It raised goosebumps on Iruka's arms. "Tan –"

For better or worse, he did not get an opportunity to finish. A reed song rose above the other sounds, and by now Iruka knew it for the summon it was. Tan-li stiffened, uncertain. Certainly, he had seen the way Iruka had involuntarily tensed, unready to leave this place but resigned. The teacher fully expected to be caught by the arm and dragged back to the village. But then Tan-li did something incredible.

He asked, "Will you give me your parole?"

Would he stay, left alone in a field so distant from the village? Would he not attempt to escape? Iruka considered it, and the faith that Tan was demonstrating by even posing such a question. "Yes," he decided finally, and the ANBU nodded. Trusting him.

Then he was gone in a flicker as short as a breath. Iruka looked after him enviously, wishing that his body would work at that speed. He sighed. Oh well.

He turned back to the pony, but the animal had become agitated. It had its ears back and made uneasy noises. Iruka looked around, wondering what could have upset her, but to his eyes there was nothing but waving grass for miles and miles and miles. "What's wrong?" he asked, reaching for her neck. The horse shied away, and, with a nervous toss of her head, galloped off in the direction of her fellows.

Perplexed, Iruka watched her go. Then he found himself truly alone.

Being alone on the prairie was a whole new kind of empty. They had ventured far from Kusagakure, and for as far as he could see in every direction, there was nothing but himself and the wind and the grass. Iruka relished it after so long of being under scrutiny.

"Ah," he commented, absently rubbing his calf, which was cramped from the awkward way he had been carrying his weight recently. Ruefully, he reflected that he was still in no shape to get very far, even if had been improving. And he thought, 'Shouda, you bastard. Did you think even this far ahead?'

Easing himself down, Iruka laid back and spread his limbs luxuriously. The greenery crunched as it folded, pillowing his head, and he closed his eyes. He let his mind drift, lingering over thoughts of home and of his current work. Of grasshoppers and jailer-guardians and little boys trying to grow up too fast…

A sudden deeper hush attracted Iruka's attention – even the insects seemed to have stopped buzzing. In the dead silence, the crackle of someone approaching seemed especially loud, and the teacher sat up, wondering who it could be.

An unknown little boy stood just paces away. Startled by his close proximity, Iruka nonetheless found himself greeting. "Well. Hello."

There was no response.

Iruka considered this mystery boy in the silence, his gaze wandering over the dark brown skin, the dirty toes, and almost complete nakedness. He was young, younger than Ryo-ki. Perhaps eight-years-old. And the few things he was wearing – an overlarge shirt, a fingerless glove, a ring of dog tags – reminded Iruka suspiciously of a Kusanin shinobi's gear. Yet the items looked piecemeal, as though he had stolen them in separate parts…or taken them off a body. Moreover, a tense, uneven feeling hung about the boy. Something fearsome.

Iruka guessed, "Are you the monster?"

The child barred sharp teeth, a seesaw smile.

Ah. Well, that answered that question. "Are you going to say 'hello'?" he asked.

The boy stared at him for a long time, until Iruka began to wonder if he could even understand speech. Then, just as suddenly as he had made his appearance, the creature broke position and stalked forward. He stuck his nose next to Iruka's, so close the tips touched.

"'llo," he said.

Then he proceeded to plop down in the teacher's lap, matter-of-factly looping an arm around his neck and rubbing their cheeks together. Only slightly taken aback by the bizarre transition, Iruka gazed steadily into golden eyes, liquid amber with dark rings around the edges. 'Like a dogs,' he thought, and speculated if the comparison might not be too far off.

"Are you the one who's been sneaking around the window at night?" the teacher wondered. When no answer seemed to be coming, he sighed and gave up. He ran his fingers through the roots of the unusually stiff bangs, commenting, "You need a bath."

A sudden rain of metal interrupted further conversation as a row of kunai buried themselves deep into the soil beside Iruka's leg. A warning, as it turned out, for the very next moment, a muscled Kusanin hurled himself at them from nowhere, blade brought to bear. Startled, Iruka only had time to drag up his arm and deflect the knife blow from the little boy's neck with an expert twist of his wrist. He felt the blade hit bone, going wild.

What happened next would remain hazy in Iruka's memory for years afterward. He remembered the flash of the sun off of metal, saw his arm sheeted in blood. Then there was only the recollection of a sound like a roar, of blistering chakra, and too many teeth. Then the shinobi that had attacked them was reeling on the ground somewhere between shock and pain, his hand spasming over his throat, now a red cavern, which bled and bled and bled.

"IRUKA!"

He heard Tan-li call his name, and was stunned by how frantic he sounded. He and two others emerged from the grass, spreading around them defensively. The way that they looked at the boy, it was as though he were something terrible, and though they had their weapons drawn, they did not approach more closely.

Slowly, Iruka stood. It seemed clear to him now that he had fallen upon the village abomination, and that the keening shinobi who lay clinching his neck might well have been trying to rescue him.

"Sensei, are you alright?" Tan-li asked tersely.

"I'm fine," Iruka responded. He was bleeding, but while the laceration on his arm was still leaking sluggishly, it was already beginning to clot.

The monster seemed disturbed by his wound, however. Fearfully, the boy held Iruka's wrist in both his hands as though he were just short of licking it. However, the hostile crowd still had his ringed eyes darting around, and instead he tugged, trying to drag Iruka further into the sea of grass.

Iruka held his ground. "I'm afraid not, little one. I gave my word, and anyway I can only handle being kidnapped once at a time."

The Kusa shinobi choose this moment of distraction to venture forward, but then the creature snapped his head around and bore his teeth with such an unnerving growl that the men shied away like panicked horses.

Iruka exhaled ruefully. "Tan-li, it's really too bad you and I are friends," he said. "Because this would be a great opportunity to escape."

Yet while he might have held a ninja's changeable version of honor, as a friend and as a human his oaths were binding. He looked out into the distant grassland, somewhere in the midst of which was the long way home. Then he swallowed hard, and took a step back towards his captors.

Next Chapter: Iruka and the monster appear before the village council.