Chapter 2
The Hokage looked like a man inch by inch evaporating with every puff of smoke he took— he seemed to diminish with every exhalation. A man entombed in himself, yet unable to escape. He was missing a few teeth; those which remained bore the same hue as egg yolk. His face bore a livery of spots, kingly crown of age; on him, these looked like the ripples on and the ruptures around a scabby terrain eroding under an earthquake. His hairline had recessed, his skin sagged and was unhealthy, his eyes had well worn grooves underneath. His calloused hands wore a visible web of veins: these ran up his arms, wreathed them like vine overgrown, were the ghoulish tracery that ornamented this living monument to decline and decrepitude. Only his eyes still had in them embers of intelligence and a near undiminished sparkle, as of sunlight at late afternoon reflecting off steel.
He smiled at them when they walked in, his face for a moment enacting the slackening that age had enforced on his person.
"If it isn't Satsuki-chan. The facial decorations are a novelty. I must confess that I approve." His eyes gleamed. "And you've brought with you just the person I wanted to talk to you about. Why, Naruto-kun, it's been a while since we last met. Have you perchance forgotten the way to these parts? I've said this before, but my doors are always open."
"Keep em shut, old man," the impudent boy next to her intoned. "My days go better when I don't gotta see your ugly mug."
For the third time that day, her jaw dropped. This was compounded when the Hokage laughed.
"Still as blunt as ever, I see," he said. He turned back to her. "I did not know that the two of you were well acquainted."
"We're no such thing," the boy squawked.
"Perish the thought," she muttered.
"Watercolour here interrupted one o' my pranks with her face."
"He desecrated the monument," Satsuki said angrily.
"And your face."
"Shut up, loser."
"Right back at ya, nutty bitch."
The Hokage cleared his throat.
"Since we're all getting along so splendidly," he said, distinctly amused, "I think it is time to get to the matter at hand." His face grew grave. His eyes lost their twinkle.
He steepled his fingers together, leaned back, and looked at Naruto.
"I am graduating you," the Hokage said.
The boy's face coloured. Not with the hue or the languid splendour that framed the redolent remains of a dying day, but with the angry alacrity of a tomato mashed.
"Like Hell you are," he howled.
The Hokage put away his pipe and let out a weary sigh.
"You are fourteen," he said. "You have been at the academy eight years. You have failed to graduate on three different occasions. Today was the fourth. And I have had enough. I've been very patient with you. I have waited, and let you do as you wished. I was sympathetic to your circumstances. I hoped that the occasional nudge and nicety would suffice. I said nothing the first time, despite suspecting. I said nothing the second, despite knowing. I said nothing the third, despite ironclad certainty and significant pressure from elsewhere. I'd hoped you would mature, and see the light on your own.
"Now no more, however. I know that you failed on purpose every single time. I have seen six decades of Shinobi, but consistent self sabotage to stay in the academy is a first."
The Hokage rubbed his head and reached out for the glass of water on his table. He took a sip, stared at the boy's contorted expression for a second, stone faced, then fished out a headband.
He placed it on the table, then continued:
"You will stop this tomfoolery at once, mend your ways, and serve your nation as asked to. Appeals to merit, pride, or communal duty do not seem to work, so have this instead: this is an order. I am no longer begging. There will be no more pleas. Refuse this, and I will consider it tantamount to treason."
He gestured to the headband. "Choose," he said. "It is either that, or a lifetime in our highest security facility."
The boy's jaw worked furiously. He hesitated a second, then grabbed the headband. Satsuki feared he'd crush it, such was the strength of his grip. He shoved it into his pocket instead.
"As you say, Hokage-sama," he said, voice clothed in formality, dripping with contempt. "Am I to be given a team?"
The Hokage let out a second sigh, just as weary. His eyes alighted on her, and she knew what he was about to say before he did.
She felt the blood drain from her face.
No. Not this. Not this boy.
"Unfortunately," the Hokage said, "we've been unable to find a suitable team to place you in. And therefore, we've decided to give you a sensei just for yourself. Her." He turned his profile, so that Naruto was looking her way too.
"If that be your will, Hokage sama," the boy said, drawing to attention, his voice a dull monotone, the fight knocked out of him. "I'm just as an ant to a God, after all. If that is all, then may I leave?"
"Naruto…" the Hokage began tentatively.
"Yes, Hokage-sama?"
The Hokage sighed. "Nothing," he said. "You may leave."
"Hokage-sama," Satsuki began hesitantly, after the boy had marched out of the door, shutting it softly after him instead of banging it shut, thus the more stinging in his censure, "I...I do not know if this is a good idea. I am only fifteen, and the majority of my experience is with the ANBU. I have never taken a student before."
"You are my best Shinobi," he said simply. He exhaled heavily and leant back, seeming to shrivel up as he did. "And he— he is a flight risk."
He swiveled his chair around and shuffled out of his seat. Three steps brought him to an open window. He looked out, silent, perhaps taking in the monument, which was clearly visible from where he stood. Satsuki could picture it herself if she closed her eyes: spartan, as befitting warriors; splendorous still, despite defacement, the four faces on it linking in service and sacrifice generations past and present.
Those larger than life replicas were sacred, not for themselves, but due to the hands that'd hewed them into that mountain.
She could envision how that monument had come about. Blink twice, close your eyes, and there they were, the ghosts of workers who'd there gathered. Armed with pick-axes, eyes gleaming with singular intensity, they all strained sinew under a grandiosity of purpose; rippled stone with each stroke, as though it were a crystalline lake ruffled; supplicated themselves at the mountain's mouth, as to a deity; to fashion for posterity a stony memory of greatness, one that in times of despair would be an ensign, an eternal flag of hope.
And if she kept her eyes closed long enough, then the workers' faces metamorphosed into those of her clansmen. She then saw the obduracy in their obsidian eyes. Their frames, shuddering shells of flesh and blood, with each stroke unselved; as she watched, skin unravelled, blood in vapourous trails besprinkled the half formed stone faces they hacked at. And, as the monument was upraised, her flesh of flesh, like morning dew, thawed, fused with those severe visages, therein were assimilated; until, fully formed, the monument mantled the skies and bore the rosy hue of life palpitating within stone— the remains of her people, even in death, fructifying within their urn.
The Hokage's voice arrested this flight of fancy.
"He was a delightful little boy," he said, his voice thick with grief. "Bright and jovial. Full of warmth. The proud possessor of a quenchless curiosity."
He sighed heavily and turned away from the window, a man until now burdened, but in the privacy of this office allowing himself an instant of vulnerability, unburdening himself— like a film reel unspooling— of a memory long withheld.
"That is rare, you know," he went on dully. "Curiosity. Most children that enroll at the academy show signs of unerring faith, even at a young age: talk to them, and ever present in the canvas of their mind are those first brushstrokes of obedience. It is that which we help fill in. That fixity of will, to subsume the self in a cause far greater than itself, sleeps quiescent within them; it is that which we awaken. But it is present.
"Most men and women are directionless, lost. It is in service they find themselves— in that, and in being an atom of an empyrean that will outlive them, outstrip eternity. A Shinobi sups on cynicism, is the epitome of pragmatism, but when it comes to this ideal alone, we are all romantics, idealists, dreamers, mad men.
"He— he was the opposite. He was warm, but the locus of his warmth was the world, not the ideal. His was a wellspring of passion overrun. I still remember that little boy who loved freely— who clutched at my fingers and called me Jiji, who wished to bring to the world only peace and joy."
The Hokage sank back into his chair and held his head in his hands. He remained that way a while.
"All that I ask of you," he said eventually, "is that you give him a chance. Do not judge him, as others have in the past. He may be hostile. Difficult to deal with. But forgive him his follies. In doing so, it is not just him you forgive, but me.
"I have made him what he is. My inability to nourish his tenderness of sensibility has poisoned it. And now...now my desperation must further fan his hatred. He is right, of course. He was never of our mould, never meant to be a Shinobi. He lacks the ruthlessness necessary. But he is our Jinchuiriki. His free will is what I owe his father; but my debt and duty to the village are even greater, and it is that which I must how uphold: his free will is what circumstance forces me to temper. I can, however, offer him a benignant jailor. The best I have."
And here he looked at her, as a man drowning would at a life raft.
"Hokage-sama." She was moved by the trust she was being offered, yet still uncomfortable; "If this is your will, then it will be done. But I fear that this is ill advised. I've never known tact. I'm not very patient. There are others more capable. More willing to make concessions for his special circumstances. Tenzo-senpai is well equipped to subdue a Jinchuiriki, if need be. Hatake senpai has more experience. And even Anko sensei…"
"What he needs more than a mentor," said the Hokage, "is a confidante. A friend. You are nearly the same age. There will be commonalities. Or if not, then they will emerge over time."
He picked up his pipe and stuck it back into his mouth, then stooped and rummaged about; fetched for her a bunch of dossiers, which he handed over. He'd done away with all semblance of vulnerability, and was back to being her leader.
"Those are his files. Consider his service to be a matter of national importance."
"I understand, Hokage-sama."
"I am asking you to do what I was unable to." The Hokage looked at her somberly. "Win his trust. See to his growth. Ensure his allegiance to the leaf, by whatever means necessary."
"Yes, Hokage-sama." She bowed.
"And Satsuki," his voice was as the breath of winter; "if he attempts to desert—if that remote possibility were to become a reality, and you find yourself unable to thwart it; then I once more ask that you do something I was unable to, to an erstwhile student of mine. I want you to take his life."
A/N: There are disparities between Naruto's pov in chapter one and the Hokage's explanation of his nature and condition. These are deliberate. Tis more a play on the idea of there being three sides to every story: yours, theirs, and the truth. So the Hokage's pov could be an idealisation. It could be that he doesn't understand the child at all, or only understands him partially, and for the rest superimposes an idealized image of what he wishes Naruto were, rather than what he is.
On the other hand, his guilt could be internal and imagined. It is conceivable he couldn't have done any better, or that he did the best by Minato's son and things still soured. Or that he has a perfect read on the child, and that it is Naruto himself who doesn't understand his nature well enough. It is not for me to comment on these right now. I'm just pointing out the possibilities.
In keeping with that, this will be a semi constant feature of the fic. Since it is mostly in pov, what you get to see are perspectives (infused with attitudes, judgement calls, emotions and biases). and not necessarily the truth. I will further point out that this isn't unreliable narration, or if unreliable, is only so insofar as the people you interact with everyday are unreliable, since everyone has their own perspectives on an event; and while their reportage of an event itself might be accurate, it is still through the prism of their biases and preconceptions. So more of a: we are all the heroes of our own stories, and either amplify or dilute the amount of influence we might've had over any event; are too quick either to congratulate ourselves, or blame ourselves, for something that may or may not be out of our control.
All this is just a tortuous way of saying— don't blindly accept everything that is said in pov.
Penny for your thoughts?