Hi All! This is a really bad habit, posting at midnight, but you know you love it. I've got some very Lee-centric chapters coming up, along with a few very comedic ones so bear with the two sad ones coming up.
Neji's POV during Naruto's tenure as Hokage, and then the end note is from Kakashi some time after he's retired.
You really hate being on Hokage-babysitting duty. Compared against marrying one of your cousins, you'd much rather marry your cousin Hinata or Hanabi than babysit the Hokage. But both of the cousins the family would have expected you to marry are now settled down—so you've been robbed of the next most horrible thing compared to babysitting the Hokage. Your other ANBU teammates don't share your belief that you are simply babysitting rather than doing something heroic for the village by protecting the Hokage. You'll let them lie to themselves if they want to.
Because with how much the Hokage escapes from the Tower to rampage around the village, your job can only be classified as babysitting. If Tsunade or Kakashi were still Hokage, this would be expected—routine almost. Kakashi had once escaped three whole squads and had only been dragged back to the Hokage Tower by his irate wife—you'd come within inches of tearing your hair out in frustration as each dazed operative stumbled his or her way back to headquarters, each with little to no knowledge as to where they'd obtained their concussion.
But with how long you've known Naruto, and heard (sometimes painfully loudly) how much he wanted to be Hokage, you'd never expected he'd shirk his work. Naruto wasn't joking as a boy that he would become greater than even the Yondaime Hokage—according to Hiashi-sama, Yondaime paled in comparison to the Nanadaime. So when Naruto escaped, usually three to four times a week, it was damn hard to find him.
Tsunade had escaped, according to Genma (who you replaced when Kakashi took power as Rokudaime), only about twice a week and was easily found when Shizune or Sakura were sent after her. Kakashi had only escaped once a week, and after about a month you discovered that he went to the memorial stone on that day—you were the regular captain of his personal squad and so you'd left him to his own devices if he was at the memorial stone. It was during the long days sitting inside the Hokage Tower, carefully concealed from all but your subordinates on your team, that you decided you job was a glorified babysitting job. You have the Byakugan, and you usually spent the majority of Kakashi's self-appointed days off staring fixedly in the direction of the stone where the Rokudaime stood a silent vigil.
You know that Kakashi had hated the constant ANBU guards which followed him everywhere—almost into his home even. But only almost, because following the Rokudaime into his home was no longer protocol for safety reasons. Safety for the ANBU operatives, not the Hokage. Kakashi's wife Sakura had nearly killed half a squad years ago, a squad composed of newly inducted operatives, when she'd sensed them moving about in her house. The four men on the squad had survived, but the tiny little house that housed the Hatake family was leveled. You had personally apologized to Kakashi and had forced the entire squad to help the civilian contractors hired to build the Rokudaime a new home.
You were damn lucky that Kakashi was once in ANBU and understood how green recruits acted—often overzealously. He was the one who had calmed Sakura's fury at the intruders—she'd thought they were infiltrators or spies or traitors, people sent to assassinate the Rokudaime, and she'd acted accordingly. You had decided, at the time, that an apology to Kakashi was enough—Sakura would probably have killed you and there was nothing "gentle" about her method of murder.
Speaking of gentle—you're at your wit's end these days, and disabling Naruto's chakra network using the gentle fist sounds better every day. He's never in the same place, so finding him takes some doing. At first you had always thought—go to Ichiraku's, truss up one Nanadaime Hokage, sprint back to the Tower before anyone notices said Hokage was missing, and go about your normal life. But life hardly ever proved simple for you, not even when dealing with the resident idiot of the village.
Rarely was he to be found at his favorite ramen stand—and if he was eating ramen, it was usually at a different stand every time. Then perhaps the Korean barbeque place, was your subordinates' usual suggestion—again, rarely. You find yourself longing for the days when you babysat Kakashi who only ever went one place when he went missing from his desk.
When, a year or two ago, you'd found Naruto at the memorial stone three escapes in a row you'd nearly wept with relief—the Nanadaime had finally found his rhythm, his place for escape. But then on the fourth day—not consecutive, of course, just the fourth time in ten days—he was nowhere near the Shinobi memorial stone. Your subordinate Badger had found Naruto at the civilian memorial stone. It is positively maddening.
Your wife playfully suggests one evening that you simply ask the Hokage why he disappears so often, and why he takes the special care to complete his duties of the day before he does escape. You grudgingly take her advice.
Naruto's blue eyes stare at you in wonder, as though you should have seen what he was doing years ago. You don't shift your weight on your feet, instead remaining planted firmly like the excellent ANBU captain that you are. Just because he could pound you six ways from Sunday doesn't mean that he will, he's the legendary Uzumaki Naruto—the most forgiving, understanding, cunning and dull-witted man to ever live. He loves people to death, or their misguided ideals to death if they survive his unrelenting energy and force of will. He'd saved you twenty years ago, now, so there was no reason for him to beat his ideals into you a second time. Surely there was more of a reason to his actions than just seeing the village? There had to be.
"Kakashi-sensei told me to ground myself to the village somehow, when he retired. He told me to find a way to constantly see what I'm working for, what I'm doing here—he said it makes it easier to deal with all the other stuff and stuff." You are thankful that Naruto can't see beneath your mask as you roll your eyes. What was the point of seeing underneath the underneath if what was on the surface was really what was on the surface? The difference between you and Naruto is stark, now, as your genius overthought what he was doing when he was really doing just what it looked like. The Nanadaime just wanted to see and breathe and be in the village he was head of.
It's a very different experience compared to the one you'd had when you'd discovered a major facet of what made the Rokudaime tick, what made him get up to do his job every day.
After allowing him seven years of a constant one day vigil at the memorial stone, you'd quietly confronted Kakashi about his day off. You'd been the head of his security for his entire tenure at that point, and as such afforded yourself a little deeper of a friendship with him—as much as your own mask would allow. His response was to slowly and carefully recite every name on the cenotaph to you, as well as when and how they died—if they'd had family when they died, who had come to their funeral, or if there had even been a personal funeral. As Hokage he didn't need to know that information, but as Hatake Kakashi he'd forcibly memorized all of it. He also attended every funeral for every fallen shinobi.
Kakashi's way of connecting to the village he loved was to know who had died for it—and he'd told his student to connect to the village which had hated him as a boy.
Because of the Rokudaime's advice, Naruto didn't always go to Ichiraku to see old man Teuchi—he tried as best he could to frequent other establishments. And he didn't confine himself to the soldiers who had died for the village, but he also visited the markers for civilians killed in attacks on the village. You wish you'd seen it sooner, otherwise you wouldn't be sporting nineteen gray hairs—not that you've made Moegi count them or anything, that would be weird and narcissistic. She just knows you care about your hair and tells you whenever you have a gray one poking out of your scalp. It's not like you've gotten down on your knees and begged her or anything.
You smile as you slip off your shoes to go into the house, your eye flicking words into your brain as you glance at the door post. It was the only work which Bird had allowed you to do on the home he forced his squad to build. He felt personally responsible for assigning a newbie crew for your protection years ago, which indirectly caused the destruction of your previous home. You liked Bird, he's a good man who let you be when you went to the memorial stone. He was always curious, but he didn't ask you why you went there so often. The reason you'd never requested a different personal logistics man was because of that, it had been nice to be surrounded by people who hadn't totally peppered you with questions all the time. It's why you'd joined the ANBU in your youth—no one ever asked you questions, not even "why?"
Because back then, to have the ANBU show up to someone's door meant one of two things—the ANBU were on an assassination mission, or they were assigned as escorts for a personal meeting with the Hokage. The first few months of your tenure, until Bird had been fully assigned as the primary security logistics man for your security detail, you'd struggled with new ANBU recruits asking you "why," among other things. They didn't ask aloud of course, but, being ANBU yourself, you know how to speak without saying a thing, not even moving a muscle—and these new kids were freakishly talkative.
But Bird seemed to understand his job, and you liked it. He'd even backed off when you'd established a pattern of going to the memorial stone. You never went the same day every week, nor did you go on any sort of schedule. It was damn hard to figure out an algorithm which was nearly random with only the input of seven as a constant, but you aren't called a genius for nothing.
Or maybe you are called a genius for nothing, since you couldn't figure out how to get out of being Hokage all those years ago…
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