Published: 1/24/2020

Previously: Kakashi and Suzu return to the village; Itsuki and Reiko offer insights on suffering; Jiraiya shows his dangerous side.

The silence stretched on. I adjusted the bag of ice on my head. Then Jiraiya put his palms down on the table.

"We have to tell Minato," he said. I looked away. "What, don't tell me you thought I would keep this a secret? The Hokage at the very least has to know, neverminding anyone else in the village administration."

"Of course he has to," I muttered. "I'm not saying you shouldn't tell him."

"Then what's the issue?"

I pursed my lips at him.

"Jiraiya-sama, I had information about the mission that killed Obito, but I held onto it, and now I've even replaced him on Minato-nii's team. The guilt crushed me so much that I dissociated almost every encounter I had with him until I ended up in the western ward. How could there not be an issue?"

"Obito's not dead," Jiraiya corrected as he lifted the scroll. "If anything that should make Minato happy."

"Happy that his student barely survived a crippling cave-in, got kidnapped by the ancient jaded Madara Uchiha, and has been driven half-mad?" I crossed my arms doubtfully. "Obito is coming to steal the Kyuubi, kill him and his wife, and destroy the village. I knew that all of this would happen if Obito went to Kannabi Bridge and I didn't lift a finger to stop it. Even if we can put personal betrayal aside—and I don't know if we can—that's plenty enough for treason, don't you think?"

"But he'll be happy regardless," Jiraiya maintained. "Once you're dead, that's the end, but if you're alive you can always change. In his heart Minato still believes in that sort of thing. As for treason—well, it's not my place to promise anything, but I know people who have been granted leniency for worse. Besides, this situation is unique altogether. This isn't information you acquired in the course of your duty as a shinobi… in fact, it was information you acquired before you were a ninja at all. And we can both see what kind of hardship you encountered while discharging it," he added wryly as he eyed my bag of ice.

I just continued to eye him doubtfully.

"Your worries aren't baseless," he allowed. "But unfortunately for you it's out of your hands now. If you didn't want him to know you should have kept quiet. It would have been doable enough to just get out of the way and let things come to pass, you know."

"I know I'm a coward," I answered coldly, "but I'm not so craven as all that."

Jiraiya frowned at me. I set my chin stubbornly.

"You used to give off the image of a sweet kid," he accused, "but whenever I see you these days you're not sweet at all. You're just sullen."

I regarded him with a flat look. "Is that so?"

"Why do you think I took you for an infiltrator?" he countered. "Sudden medical leave, sudden change in personality, unknowable classified information. You're a textbook case study of a foreign spy. And stop looking at me like that," he added in a complaining voice. "You look like Souhei."

I exhaled through my nose and tipped my chair back. Jiraiya's kitchen, which was clean and warm—if rather empty—was decorated with various wooden ornaments and paintings from across the continent. I put my ice on the table and stared at the one behind me upside-down.

"Excuse me for the familial resemblance," I muttered. Then I straightened up and dropped the chair back onto all four legs. "...Jiraiya-sama."

"What?" He eyed me knowingly.

"Would report it all to Minato-nii for me?" I asked quietly.

"What, alone?"

"I don't want to see his face when you tell him it was me," I confessed frankly. "I don't know if I could handle it. It'll be my worst nightmare come true."

Jiraiya regarded me for a long moment. Then he propped his chin up on his palm.

"Sometimes I forget, but Minato really is a manipulative little shit," he told me.

I gave him a stunned look. Where had that come from?

"Why would you say such a thing?" I asked with shock.

"Because it's true," Jiraiya replied. "Now that I think about it all you Namikaze kids are like that. When you say this sort of stuff I can't help but feel sorry for you."

"What do you mean? Why?"

"Because he plays you all for fools," he gave me a pitying look, "and you all dance along without a clue. Granted, it's not your fault. You're just kids and you don't know any better. Him, on the other hand..."

"What are you talking about?" Confusion began to give way to agitation. "Minato-nii wouldn't do something like that."

"And that's why I feel sorry," he shook his head. "Tell me, kid, if you were on a mission with one of your other cousins and they got hurt because you screwed up, what would you do? Let's say it's that Chiharu girl. Would you own up during the post-mission when she asked who it was, or would you keep quiet or blame it on someone else?"

"...No," I said. "That's not fair. I'd say it was me."

"Right. Now your cousin is royally pissed off at you. Let's say she's seriously injured to the point where it will affect her ability to take missions—maybe even permanently. What will you do? You're obviously going to feel bad—really bad. But are you going to walk around with a rope on your arm and a face like you'll go out to hang yourself if she so much as looks at you askance? You won't, am I right?"

"Of course not." I frowned at him. Chiharu and I fought sometimes, but on the whole we got along well enough. Sometimes if things were heated she might throw a punch, and I might punch back, but if I overreacted in the way Jiraiya suggested she would probably be more aggrieved than gratified.

"Then why are you like that with Minato?" he raised an eyebrow at me. "I'll tell you why. It's because he uses you for hero-worship like he does everyone else. Now I'm not saying he's doing it maliciously," Jiraiya held up a hand before I could cut in angrily. "He's doing it for his own needs. Kid, you don't know it, but Minato is a cripple without people's approval. He can't function without praise. Call it vanity, call it dysfunction, but that's how he is. He was a prodigy and he grew up that way. No matter how many times I've told him otherwise he thinks that if he's not being admired and applauded, he's a failure at existence."

I could only offer him a blank stare. "What—what are you saying?"

"I'm saying that when he feels bad about himself, he goes and puts a show on for you kids, and when you fall all over yourselves admiring him he feels better." Jiraiya put his arm down. "Kiddo, let me say something about you two. I was an orphan, too, and I lived with my cousins growing up, and this is why I feel sorry: though you're blood and you love each other, you don't treat each other like people. For your sake, I'll go ahead and tell him everything. But you need to consider what you're going to do going forward. Are you going to keep worshipping the ground he walks on and treating him like the be-all-end-all of everything? A man who has to use his baby cousins to validate his own existence?"

"How can that be? How could he fake so many accomplishments?" I asked. "He's a war hero."

"It's not a matter of faking achievement," Jiraiya shook his head. "He is a genius and that can't be denied. But his personality?"

I swallowed. "Are you suggesting—"

"I'm not suggesting anything," Jiraiya interrupted. "I'm saying it plainly. He's not a god, he's a man, and you're a kid from his clan, not a crutch for his unhealthy emotional needs. The way things are now isn't good for either of you. You know how to resolve conflict with your other cousins. Why is he the only one who's different?"

I stood then. My breathing was heavy.

"I'll leave the rest to you for now, Jiraiya-sama," I told him. "Please let me know what happens."

"Go calm down," he replied. "Even if I'll be the one to break the news to him, you're going to be needed before long. Get your brain together before that happens."

I responded by going to his kitchen window and throwing myself outside.

Three days later I stood in the Hokage's office and found that the world had been stripped bare. His smile was so wooden that it almost hurt to look at. Pretense had collapsed into a veneer thin enough to read through—and the text, I found, was bleeding red.

"You don't have to worry about anything from here," Minato eventually said, still forcing out that artificial smile. The look in his eyes reminded me of the night he'd returned from Kannabi Bridge—tense, wary, and full of strange fear. "Jiraiya-sensei explained everything. I'll handle it all from now on."

"Are you sure that's wise?" I asked quietly as I dropped my gaze and looked to the side. "I did as comprehensive write-up as I was able, but I'm the only person knows everything firsthand. You should take me with you when you go to meet Obito at the least. He's not the way he was."

"I'm sure," Minato replied firmly. "I know my team, Suzu. I don't need you to chaperone me no matter what skills he's acquired."

There was a tension between us that had never existed before. I didn't know what to feel. Jiraiya's words swam in my head and I thought about all of the days I had spent happy in my brother's lap. The quiet lessons, the encouraging smiles, the letters, the presents—all lies? Had none of it been real? Had it all been a transaction in his mind? Just—input brotherly affection, output naive sibling affirmation, just—just fuel for his self-esteem?

It was all just a mess. I looked down at notebook in my hands and thought about my own actions. People's lives were riding on this knowledge. If he had wronged me, what had I done to him? What could we even call this? It was his team, his village, his wife, his son, and his own life—

He had deceived me. I had deceived him. We stared at one another, both silently trying to calculate the breadth and depth and magnitude of the other's betrayal, but nothing seemed to parse. How angry were we supposed to be? Who did worse? Who deserved an apology?

"It's not a matter of skills," I said quietly. "That's not why I'm worried. I don't know if the write-up can properly convey the change that the Sharingan causes in an Uchiha when that sort of trauma occurs. He's—he really is unhinged, Minato-nii. He's not the Obito you know. He'll take advantage of it."

"I'll be the judge of that," Minato told me. His wooden smile began to splinter then, and I felt myself beginning to wither away. All in a moment I just wanted to disappear. I gathered the edges of my chakra and pulled them in, deep into my center, and held it there in the same way I would hold my breath when I didn't want to cry.

"I'm sorry," I uttered after a long moment. In the end the truth remained: I had been wrong to keep my silence. "I'm sorry. I should have told you sooner. I was scared of what would happen, but—but it's just excuses. I'm sorry."

Then I held my breath again. Minato's face went blank for a long moment. He looked down. Then he said, "What do you have to apologize for, Suzu? None of this is your fault."

There was a long silence. Longer than almost anything in my life—as long as a small eternity. Even he knew it was a bad lie.

"We have several preparations to make if we want to be ready for the birth date," he said after he eventually recovered. "It'll take several months to alter village security. Things will be quite busy—let's talk another time, Suzu."

A minute later I found myself standing blankly in the hall. I stared down at the floor for a long minute. Then I put my hands over my face, walked to the end of the corridor, and squatted behind a potted plant in silence until water finally ceased to leak from my eyes.

"Suzu?" Auntie glanced into the kitchen when she heard the sound of the mug shattering, but I was still too frozen to get up from my frightened crouch. When she saw me hunched over and clutching my chest, she leaped forward to kneel beside me. "Suzu? What's wrong?"

"I—" I said, and then stopped, and then stammered, "I can't—I can't feel my… m-my—"

My heartbeat, I could not say. Even with my hand stuffed down my shirt, directly against my skin, I could not feel my heartbeat, and no matter how hard I listened, even with chakra sense, I could not feel a pulse of anything. Not my blood, not my chakra, nor even my breath—but then again, I was not really breathing easy now at all.

"Your heart?" One of my aunt's hands flew to my back while the other shot up to feel my wrist. "Can you tell me what's wrong? Is there a pain? Is it radiating?"

"I—no, I—" I was gasping, but I wasn't hurting. It was just, it was so silent—like I had ceased to exist even though I was still right here, like I was gone, but I was still alive—

"Sweetheart, you're still cloaking, I can't hear you," Auntie told me as she leaned forward and put her ear near my chest. "—Here, move your hand for me, please. Suzu, let go of your cloaking technique so I can listen for what's wrong."

"I—what? But—but I'm not—"

"Honey, I know you don't want to break a practice streak, but you've been doing total erasure for days. Let it go," Auntie interrupted before I could deny I was cloaking. "Please, do it now. You're still learning and it's dangerous. Your heart's not used to chakra deprivation. You could have an arrest."

My brain flew into overdrive. Deprivation? A heart attack? What was she—?

Suddenly Uncle Souhei appeared beside Auntie. He crouched down and brushed her hand away before he tapped my sternum with three fingers. Though his touch had been light I immediately felt like I'd been kicked in the chest by a horse, and I fell backwards into my aunt's arms with a gasp. Blood rushed to my head and my ears began ringing with sudden clamor. But I then began to feel warm, like I'd stepped into a firelit room after standing a double shift in cold rain, and my fingertips and toes began to burn with pleasant heat. The pressure between my temples suddenly eased, too, and breathing became much easier.

"Her tenketsu must have been locked up after suppressing her chakra for so long," my uncle decided as he put one hand on my stomach, over the Hara, and began fishing in his pockets with the other.

"Her signature's skipping," Auntie Reiko noted as she worriedly tilted her head. It was easy to forget she was a formidable auditory sensor herself, but in moments like these I was always reminded. "Souhei..."

"That's not unexpected after nearly a week of high-ratio suppression," Uncle replied as he produced a stethoscope and laid its cold diaphragm against my skin. Several beats passed as he listened. Then he said, "There's a systolic murmur. It's loud. We should stop by the hospital… she might be fine, but I'd rather have them check."

"What?" I asked, utterly bewildered. Auntie lowered me gently. "What's…?"

"Misuzu, you are extremely fortunate," Uncle Souhei replied as his wife ran out into the hall and called for Akira to watch the babies. His tone was quite cool. "I know you've decided to make infiltration your trade and it's impressive that you've been practicing such advanced concealment techniques. But if you'd been outside when this happened you would have collapsed and no one relying on chakra sense would have been able to find you. If you know enough to be trying things like total signature erasure you should be well aware of the dangers of chakra deprivation. What were you thinking?"

"I… I have no idea what you're talking about, Uncle," I said as he lifted me from the kitchen floor, sidestepped the remains of the broken mug, and settled me into a princess carry. "What is total signature erasure?"

At this point my foster parents and I were already halfway out the door. My aunt and uncle both gave me unamused looks.

"It's not like you to try playing stupid, Suzu," Auntie said warningly.

"Auntie—" I protested.

"Misuzu, you are on thin ice," Uncle Souhei told me darkly. "I would suggest you not push it—"

He cut himself off when we made eye contact. Auntie paused. My parents exchanged looks.

"What is total signature erasure?" I repeated. "I know layer techniques, I know muffle techniques, and I know blending techniques. But I don't know what erasure is. How would you even do it? Oyuki told me the way to hide was behind signatures in the environment."

"...Ideally, that is what one does," Uncle Souhei eventually replied. "But in cases where there are no other signatures—where you are in an inorganic environment without the natural chakra of flora or fauna, or in a place where all other shinobi are concealing themselves—there is nothing to hide behind. In those cases the only way to disguise one's signature is to still circulation completely."

"But that would kill you," I pointed out with confusion.

"Indeed," was the very dry reply.

"Total signature erasure is a technique that slows the body's chakra circulation to the most minimum amount necessary to support life," Auntie cut in. She gave my uncle a disapproving look for his snark. "It's a very fine line to toe. You have been getting quieter and quieter all week, so I assumed that you were just trying to find that spot on the line. But if you haven't been trying to figure out erasure, what in the world have you been doing with your chakra?"

And suddenly I felt small and withered again, just like I did when I had been standing in Minato's office. I sucked in a breath and held it.

"Suzu," Uncle Souhei suddenly regarded me sharply.

"Oh," I said. And then it made sense.

When we arrived at the hospital my parents took me straight to acute care and explained that I'd been doing signature erasure without supervision. I was immediately treated to another lecture even as I was stripped, thrown into hospital clothes, and subjected to all the manner of poking and prodding and tests. Several tens of minutes passed before I was alone with my parents again.

"I wanted to be invisible," I finally admitted once we had been shoved into an observation room and told to wait for the doctor to return. "I wanted to vanish so no one would see me. I wanted them to forget I was there. And when I held my breath it felt like I was quieter… so I held my breath a lot this week."

This proclamation was met with startled silence. Auntie and Uncle traded glances. Then they regarded me with identical looks of concern.

"Suzu," Auntie said, "why would you feel that way? Why would you need to vanish?"

I looked away and was unable to reply.

I was in the hospital for nearly three weeks after that, having messed up my tenketsu, my circulatory system, and my heart all at once. Upon request my Uncle brought me my I&E scrolls, and once I had located the treatise on advanced chakra concealment, I spent a solid afternoon reading up on the effects of continuous high-ratio chakra suppression and deprivation. I was flabbergasted that I had so nearly managed to stumble into death just by holding my chakra in my stomach. If it was this easy, I thought, it was a wonder most ninja were alive at all.

"On the contrary," Uncle rebuffed as he calmly lifted a fruit from the small bowl of apples—a gift from Itsuki-sensei, apparently, sent with wishes to get well soon—and began to peel it. "It takes very precise chakra control to be able to seal the central tenketsu both well enough and long enough to experience actual deprivation. It is not easy at all. It speaks quite well to how much your chakra control has grown, actually, especially since you were holding them shut without thinking..." He peered at me over the rims of his glasses. He was not so frigid now that he knew what had happened was an accident; now he only looked thoughtful. "...So well, in fact, that I'm inclined to wonder if you wouldn't be interested in studying medical ninjutsu in the future."

I blinked at him. And then I blinked again. Had Uncle Souhei ever offered to teach any of the House children iryou ninjutsu?

"There was your cousin Naoki, but you wouldn't remember him. He'd be Minato's age, but he died only a few months after you were born. Since him not many have had chakra control advanced enough." He looked at me contemplatively. "I didn't get started on total signature erasure until I was in my final year as journeyman iryou-nin, you know."

I knew from speaking with Koharu that a journeyman medic was skilled enough to receive favorable—for certain values of favorable, anyway—treatment as a prisoner during wartime. That meant having mastery over a fair bit of advanced jutsu. In the last year of that level, Uncle would have to have been a step away from full certification.

"How old were you?" I asked.

"Well, not a terribly lot older than you are now," Uncle admitted. "But we are hardly the norm."

I found my eyebrows creasing. His phrasing made me frown in puzzlement. Why were we in particular any different from normal? But before I could open my mouth to question him there was a knock on my door. Uncle Souhei and I swung our heads about in synchronization as it slid open.

"...Jiraiya-sama," my uncle said, expression cooling rapidly, as the man in question stepped into the room. "What brings you here?"

Jiraiya's face grew equally shaded when he laid eyes on Uncle Souhei. "Souhei Namikaze," he greeted with equivalent warmth—that is to say, with a lack of it. "I have business with your daughter. I'd like to speak to her."

Uncle did not budge. "I see," he said.

"In private," the Sannin added waspishly.

Uncle did not look impressed. "There is no way you have business classified enough to justify kicking me out of this child's hospital room," he declared flatly.

"That's not for you to decide, is it, Namikaze? Don't make me pull rank on you."

It was strange to see Jiraiya, who was normally so open and loud, with such cold and quiet disdain on his face. In contrast, Uncle Souhei was beginning to look uncharacteristically hot beneath the collar.

Jiraiya raised an eyebrow. "Now, if you please."

Uncle Souhei stood and regarded Jiraiya with profound distaste. Wordlessly, he put down his paring knife and strode from the room with his hands curled into fists and his nostrils flaring. I watched him go with unconcealed awe, never having seen him behave with such unobscured anger.

As soon as he was gone Jiraiya's shoulders sagged.

"That man never fails to put me on edge," he grumbled as he shut the door and made his way to my bedside. "I wish he'd skip the passive aggression and just speak his mind for once."

"You weren't kidding when you said you didn't get along," I observed. "I don't know of many things that can make him as angry as he was just now."

"Yeah, well. Special treatment for a special guy," was the muttered reply.

And wasn't that a fascinating response. It was clear they had a history.

"Anyway," Jiraiya cleared his throat as he sat down. "Back in the hospital already, kiddo? What's wrong this time?"

"Chakra deprivation," I mumbled, shrinking back into my pillows. "I'm here under observation until my heart and my tenketsu are regular again."

Jiraiya stared at me in disbelief. "How the hell did you screw yourself up that badly?" he asked, aghast.

"I was um, ah—doing total signature erasure," I said. At this point it didn't even feel like a lie anymore. I had been doing it, anyway, even if I hadn't known it.

Jiraiya whistled. "That's some intricate stuff for a brat your age. You're wasted in the general platoons."

There were so many things I thought I might say to that, but in the end I just bit my tongue and stared at him. He sobered.

"All right, that's enough of banter," the Toad Sage sighed. "Down to business. We've got a lot to talk about, kid… I don't even know where to start."

Hello again, all you readers still sticking with this story! Thank you for always sending me your support. I'm sorry for the long absence; I moved countries midway through the summer and then promptly fell down a hole of mental ill health and unresolved childhood trauma. It's been a ride—but then again, when isn't life a ride? But even when I was doing quite badly it cheered me up when people continued to leave such encouraging and thoughtful reviews. Thank you very much for making bad days just a little bit better.

As time goes on and I learn more about the nature of trauma and recovery, I find myself wishing I could send the information back to the past so that I could write about Suzu's experiences more realistically. Oh well, eh? Something for the next rewrite. Hah…

Sorry if this chapter seems disjointed, awkward, or wordy! I haven't flexed the writing muscles in a while and it definitely shows.

Cheers,

Eiruiel