Published: 8/17/2020

Previously: Gai and Suzu have a picnic; the House receives hostile visitors; Suzu suspects something more about her uncle.

Dear Souhei,

Hideaki passed me your letter. I have been following the matter of the captured assassin on his behalf.

Things are, I think, as you suspected. The Uchiha were not allowed to hold on to the assassin for long; though it would be normal procedure to have the military police interrogate him before escalating the investigation, your attacker was immediately transferred into the custody of the Special Forces. He did not come our way—he was assigned to the care of the Second Division—but he spent very little time with the Divisions regardless; the Subcommander handed the case over to Root on the same day. The man is probably already dead. They spare no mercy for failures, and especially not their own.

The protocol override was done on special orders, ostensibly out of fear that the attack on the Namikaze clan was part of a larger threat to the reigning Hokage. The Hokage himself, however, was not informed of the situation at all; investigation indicates that the special order came instead from the council. Sarutobi-sama was engaged with the court of the daimyou on behalf of the village when the request to transfer went through for council approval, which suggests they were waiting for an opportunity to grant permission without Sarutobi-sama's knowing.

It seems to me that Shimura-sama is escalating his plans. I doubt that he intended to send actual assassins when the threats were first arrived; more likely he was attempting to bait the Yondaime into assigning a guard of some sort, which he would then add to his criticism campaign as partiality and an unfair use of village resources. As you know, those who wished for the appointment of Orochimaru of the Sannin have factionized, and their disapproval of Yondaime-sama's youth makes them more than disposed to attack him for any hint of sentimentality or immaturity. Knowing this, Shimura-sama has been looking to court their support by targeting your family.

My guess would be he is retaliating for the recent restrictions to the promotion system. Shimura-sama has already declared his belief that other villages will take advantage if the Jounin Corps continues in its diminished state; he and Yondaime-sama have been clashing endlessly over it. As it stands, Shimura-sama is looking for ways to interrupt the momentum of Yondaime-sama's recent political victories.

I strongly recommend you proceed with caution. You may wish to inform Yondaime-sama of these happenings, but if you do, you must move with the utmost discretion. You certainly know by now that your family is under surveillance. If you move to inform the Hokage Shimura-sama will undoubtedly intervene, and he will be all the more cunning for last week's failure. Please weigh the risks carefully and do not underestimate him. He is a powerful adversary; even with the protection of the ANBU Commander, Hideaki and I must be cautious of his reach.

We all will be in dire straits if Shimura-sama were to learn of our association. It is bad enough he knows of our respective ties to Kyouya; if he links us as a group, heaven knows what chaos could follow. As it is, the information in this letter could not have been obtained without an ear inside the Special Forces. If Yondaime-sama comes out with an accusation and Shimura-sama learns it originated with you, it will only be a matter of time before he puts two and two together, and that cannot be allowed to happen. I do not wish for a second tragedy to occur.

I am praying for your safety. Be very careful with Danzou Shimura, Souhei. Do not hesitate to contact us again if you need help.

Kindest regards,

Isana

My mind whirled as I lowered the letter. There was too much to process. Minato—Danzou—contacts within ANBU, Root surveillance—and the politics—

Usually I was kept abreast of village politics by my association with the Intelligence Division, but ever since my suspension I had lost all ability to pass through to I&E. I still technically had my Intel apprentice clearance, but even when I had still been a functioning member of the general platoons the pretense had been quite thin; in my current situation there was simply no chance.

So much had happened. I knew Minato had been enacting new reforms, but I never suspected it would lead to the formation of factions—and factions made of Orochimaru supporters, no less. And a burgeoning alliance of the council majority with an anti-Yondaime conspiracy… to think that all of this had begun so early on into Minato's tenure. In another world I suppose he had died before any of this had come to be.

But the most unbelievable thing about the letter, I thought with a trembling swallow, was not all that. It was shocking, but not as shocking as this. Even though I had suspected something strange about my uncle, it hadn't ever been this.

I carefully refolded the missive and returned it to its exact place on Uncle's desk. But I had a terrible urge to keep it and stare for longer, consequences be damned; it had been a whole imagined lifetime since I'd last seen written English.

Many things about Souhei Namikaze began to make sense when considering that he, too, had memories of Earth. I could hardly name all the tells that came to mind now that I knew. His sheaf of papers with its strange cipher, his story about a traitor who had withheld information, his inexplicable distance, his comments about the chakra control of people like us… it was clear now. The cipher had not been a cipher; it had only been English. He was the traitor living unpunished in the village with his family. He had known that Obito would come for the Kyuubi, and because he knew the Namikazes did not exist in Naruto, he had been waiting for the Nine-tails to come out and kill us all. That was why he was always drawing away. That was why he had apologized for failing me as a father: he had been waiting for us all to die.

He had known everything, all of it, just like me. And he'd told no one and done nothing. He'd watched everything play out according to canon. He'd looked away and never turned his head back—just as I tried to do, too.

"The other person had glasses, didn't he?" I asked the next day on the back porch. "That's why you wear them, too, even if you don't need them."

I was, in my own way, much the same. The girl from Earth had been an avid seamstress. No matter how incongruous I knew a sewing shinobi to be, I felt incomplete without having those same needles and threads in my life. Even if we weren't the same person we still had that connection, and it had felt shockingly wrong not to acknowledge it.

Uncle Souhei froze. Actually froze, in a way that I had never seen him freeze before: in his mind and his body and his spirit, the very heart of him stood still. Then he turned to look at me with deep horror in his eye.

"Why do you…" he began in a halting whisper. "How…?"

"I went through your desk while I was cleaning," I replied. "You didn't hide the letter well."

For a brief moment his look of shock shifted into horrified rage. But it was overtaken by soul-crushed dread before long. He looked away.

"How long have you known about me?" I asked quietly. Auntie and the Academy-aged kids had gone off to the park and we were alone at the moment, but Tenrou and Nodoka had been popping in and out all morning, and I didn't know if I would hear them coming back in time if I spoke too loudly.

Uncle Souhei's reply was to take his face and bury it in his hands. Without fake lenses to soften his features his eyes looked quite sharp. But now, I observed with a strange knot in my chest, he mostly looked broken. His back hunched and his shoulders sagged and the very air of him was suddenly bleeding with defeat.

"Years," he finally uttered through his fingers. "Since you were a child."

"Since I was a child?" I asked, softly displeased by the evasiveness of this answer. It could be argued that I was a child even now. Though fairly adult by ninja standards, thirteen was still far from full-grown.

"Since you came back from the front lines four years ago," Uncle bowed his head and acknowledged the failure of his deflection. "Since I introduced you to Hayato."

Something pinged in my mind at the guilt of this confession. Since he introduced me to Hayato-sensei? Why speak of Hayato-sensei here? He was a totally unrelated party. Hayato-sensei had nothing to do with Naruto; he had no knowledge of Earth or Plot. He was just a village psychologist; just a former teammate my uncle had happened to keep in touch with. Unless...

"He's like us, too," I concluded flatly. "You introduced us on purpose. You wanted to ask him about me."

A cringe. I reassessed the situation. Then I put a hand on my face, too.

"They're all like us," I whispered in realization. "That—Isana. And Hideaki and Kyouya. They know about the other world, too. There's a whole group of us?"

Uncle refused to meet my eye. I found myself seizing his sleeve.

"All this time," I said, "all this time, I wasn't alone. You knew. And you let me go through all of this by myself?"

"Not all of them are like us," Uncle Souhei replied weakly. "Isana's different—she's normal. And not all of them knew about Naruto, either. Only… only half of us."

"And you did nothing?" I felt my voice crack. "All these years and you didn't do a thing? You never told anyone about what was going to happen to us? About all the people who would die?"

He was silent. My fingers curled into fists.

"Jiraiya thought I was a foreign agent when I told him," I said. "He nearly killed me."

My uncle's forehead dropped to his knee. "So it was you after all," he muttered quietly to himself. "You're the reason why Minato and Kushina are still alive."

"Ojisan!" I cried, appalled.

"What?" he finally shouted back. "What about it? I didn't change anything. I told them not to change anything, either! They listened to me!"

"Why? Were you that concerned about protecting the canon?" I found my voice rising as well. "What are you going to do now? Are you going to break Obito out and correct the timeline? Kill Minato-nii to fix things yourself?"

"No!" He was suddenly on his feet, towering over me, and I scrambled to get up after him. "No, never! I never wanted any of them to die!'

"Your actions say otherwise!" I glared defiantly up into his face. "You—"

"Stop!" my uncle cut me off furiously. "Stop talking! As if I don't know everything you're going to say!"

This, I think, infuriated me more than anything else that day. More than the fact he had kept this secret, more than the fact that he hadn't done anything, more than the fact that he had left me to this all alone—

Tenrou and Nodoka were standing in the hallway with twin looks of shock when Uncle Souhei stormed past and threw himself through the sitting room window. That, I was quickly realizing, was his way in unpleasant situations—when things went wrong, he got gone. He never faced it. He would just stand up and leave.

"What happened?" Nodoka asked in a hush as I came over still trembling with anger. "What—"

"We had a fight," I managed to grind out. She and Tenrou exchanged wide-eyed looks.

"...That's surprising," Tenrou said. "You don't usually." He eyed me doubtfully.

None of the House children were of the type who picked fights frivolously. Not with our guardians, anyway, and especially not with Uncle Souhei, who was a master of the cold fury. Auntie, when crossed, got mad and got over it; but Uncle was fluent in the language of passive aggression, and his retaliation tended to be both drawn-out and scathing.

"What did he do?" Nodoka ventured cautiously. Her hair was a little more golden brown than the usual sunflower yellow, and at present it was quite mussed; had they come running when they heard the commotion from outside?

"Something I'd never thought he'd do," I uttered before I could help myself. "I never expected that of him."

My cousins' eyes grew concerned.

"That's really strange," Nodoka said softly. "Even though you're his favorite."

I grimaced.

"You can't deny it," Tenrou added. "Even when he's weird and distant he likes to talk to you. He's talked to you more than anyone since he came back."

"That just makes it worse," I replied, a little softer and a little less enraged now. My cousins exchanged glances again.

"...That's not wrong, either."

I left a note for Auntie and took off to Itsuki-sensei's. Itsuki-sensei, for his part, didn't bat an eye at my sudden appearance and offered up the usual guest room without so much as an inquisitive glance. Since it was still early in the afternoon, I put my bag away and then went down to help him mind the shop.

"It's like we can't stop betraying each other," I blurted out an hour or so later. Itsuki-sensei looked up from his place behind the counter with a curious look.

"We?" he queried.

"People," I said. "Just—people just can't stop betraying one another."

Now that I had said it aloud I realized how nonsensical this sudden outburst was, and I made a face. But something of my meaning seemed to reach my teacher; he regarded me soberly.

"I have been betrayed," he told me as he leaned forward on his arms. "And I have betrayed others, too."

My mind whirled with the faces of countless people. Uncle, Minato, Obito. Itsuki-sensei at the Missions Desk arguing for our lives. Itsuki-sensei in the bunker ignoring me scream. The boys from Iwagakure at the bottom of Death Valley—Akihiko saving my life, Akihiko shouting in my doorway—and Kazuto in the tunnel, hurling bitter despair at the brother he'd thrown down his tantou for, daring him to move on.

Betrayers every one of them, and yet…

"I know you loved us," I told my teacher. "You were our teacher. You never wanted us to come to any harm."

"That is true," he tilted his chin forward. "We should not have been sent on that mission. I did my best not to let it happen. But that's no large matter in final analysis. In the end my team shattered and I walked away without trying."

"But I don't resent you at all," I said, and I meant it. "I don't even really hold you responsible. I'm not angry with you like—like I'm angry with—with them."

This sent my teacher into a long silence. He did not ask who they were or what they had done to betray me, and I recalled with sudden clarity that the man before me had once been an ANBU touchstone. He was a confidant trained by the Special Forces. He knew how to listen around secrets.

"It may be a matter of time," he finally said. "As in enough time has passed since Tatsumi River that whatever anger you might've had has cooled."

Well, it could be, but I eyed him doubtfully. Itsuki-sensei quirked an eyebrow back.

"Or," he continued thoughtfully, "the breach of trust was more severe. I wasn't there for you and Akihiko when you needed me, and because of that you lost each other, but you saw for yourself what had become of me in the wake of the mission. It may be you didn't hold me with the same accountability you might have had I been more mentally well."

So the difference, then, was how freely betrayal had been chosen. That made sense. I knew very well that Itsuki-sensei, had he been able, would have done everything in his power to help us; in his case, he had not abandoned us so much as become unable to take care of us. In fact, it was probably that sense of responsibility that had contributed so heavily to his breakdown. His inability to help us had been the thing that had hurt him most.

But in the case of Uncle Souhei… I found myself going quiet as I followed that same logic. In the case of Uncle Souhei, he had done what I'd tried to do. Unlike me, he'd succeeded. He had buried his foreknowledge regardless of who he knew would suffer. And he had kept burying it every day until the impossible happened and someone else found him out.

"Suzu-chan?" Itsuki-sensei asked softly as hot tears began to run down my face.

"I'm so angry," I whispered. "Because I know exactly why he did it. I almost did it myself. And I don't feel like I have a right to get angry at him, because I—" because I'd done the same to someone else, and he still hadn't forgiven me, and I was still living in exile in my own home because of his anger— "I've betrayed someone else in just the same way, if not to the same degree."

A shallower or more spiteful man might have told me that what went around came around, but Itsuki-sensei regarded me carefully as he stood and picked up his stool. He came over and carefully set it down beside mine. Then he sat.

"Suzu-chan, I'm not a wise man," he told me, "and the advice you get from me is only ever informed by my own life. I don't know about other people's circumstances. But if you were to ask me, I would say that hurtful things don't hurt any less just because you think you might deserve it.

"I don't know what he did, I don't know what you did, and I don't know who has harmed who and what excuses there are to be had," he said, lifting a hand and settling it gently on the back of my neck, "but life has a way of making us settle accounts. Whether or not you've done wrong to one person doesn't excuse another doing wrong to you. And that person will have to account for what he's done to you just as you are accounting for what you've done yourself."

I burst into full-blown sobs then, but Itsuki-sensei seemed to have been expecting it; he merely handed me the box of tissues he'd snagged from the counter. I sat in the middle of his shop wailing for a solid five minutes, heedless of any customers I chased away with the scene, but Itsuki-sensei didn't seem to mind. He patted me on the back once I'd calmed down and then calmly retook his place behind the counter.

"Sensei, I don't know what I did to deserve you," I confessed a long moment later. Itsuki-sensei's lips quirked.

"Oh, Suzu-chan," he said fondly. "If it were up to me I'd say you deserve better. But that's the beauty of life, don't you think? It's not up to either of us, and we get to have one another anyway."

I spent the weekend cooling off with the Mikawayas. Mikawayas plural, since I was given the chance to finally meet Itsuki-sensei's aged aunt. For an old woman in ill health she seemed quite sharp and energetic, and she was just as clever and delightful as her nephew. But unlike her nephew, who had dropped most of his gregarious faces and was quite quiet these days, she seemed to be a genuinely extroverted person who took great pleasure in making friends with me.

"You are a good girl," she told me at the end of the day. She took my hands with an earnest smile. "You come by and bother Itsuki whenever you want. I won't be around much longer and I know he'll be lonely without me."

Itsuki-sensei was obligated to roll his eyes at this, but I think his aunt and I both were touched when he didn't protest.

I found myself returning home laden not only with two bags of fruit but also with a huge container of karaage. My aunt took one look at me and blessed me for bringing home a chunk of dinner. She did so quite openly, which was unusual for her, and I wondered if the ever-shrinking noose of finances had tightened yet further. Then I belatedly began to consider that the Mikawayas were actually endeavoring to help our financial situation by plying me with unprecedented amounts of food. Itsuki-sensei had always gifted me souvenirs, but he had never been in the habit of giving me quite so much before I'd started working for him.

Auntie was bound to have heard of the episode with Uncle—especially considering he was still gone, again—but she didn't make much comment. She had a knowing look on her face; it was the look of a woman who had been proven right in things she would have preferred to be wrong about. But later on that evening as I was helping her with the dishes, she did say this: "It's one thing for him to do it to me. But he is mistaken if he thinks any of you are obligated to tolerate him in the same way."

I gave her a look of shock. She regarded me seriously.

"I am his wife, but you are not," she told me. "I chose him and I keep choosing him. But you did not choose him, and if you wanted, you could leave this place and support yourself without him—and I'm glad for it. I hope you know that, Suzu," she added, more softly now.

I stared at her in silence, at a loss for words. Most wards of the clan stayed at the House until they came of age, but nothing prevented us from leaving so long as the clan head could be convinced we would have a stable living situation. Still, I knew of no orphan in recent years who had done so. It'd never occurred to me to even consider it.

We resumed washing in a strange kind of hush. I turned my foster mother's words over in my mind. Lately so many unthinkable things had become possible. But if I wanted to leave the House, I could, couldn't I? I didn't have a doubt of where I would go. It might even be a genuinely beneficial situation—the House would have one mouth less to feed, too.

"But I'll stay," I decided quietly as we began putting the cutlery away. "At least for now."

Auntie didn't turn to look at me, but I saw her mouth curve into a small smile. "That's good, too," she replied. "He shouldn't have the power to drive you out."

A/N: I find fathers hard to write. Mine wasn't very good to me, and it's hard not to let it show in any writing I do about dads, even if they're fictional.

Eiruiel