.
It's a lot easier to be angry at
someone than it is to tell them you're hurt.
Naruto sat on the front porch, hands resting on his kneecaps and his leg shaking to an erratic beat. The hesitant optimism painted across his features crumpled into oblivion when he saw Sasuke and I approach with the hat in hand. In an effort to preserve what scant bits of the assailant's scent might have still lingered on the slip of paper I stashed the note in the crown of the hat; the words imprinted on the note rolled through my mind on loop, a sick concert dedicated to broadcasting the consequences of my actions in the one place that I couldn't escape it.
"You… you didn't find him," Naruto murmured.
I shook my head. When I was close enough, I linked my fingers through his own—I needed to take hold of something real, something warm, it wasn't exactly who I wanted but that was okay because somebody was better than nobody and Naruto was far from nobody—and led him inside, Sasuke following at our heels.
Tazuna and Tsunami both sat at the table waiting for us.
Tazuna and Tsunami both started crying when they saw us.
I sat down across from Tsunami, Naruto settling down on one of my side and Sasuke on the other. The hat remained in my grip even as I could see Tsunami yearn to take hold of it. I didn't blame her. She wanted to touch that soiled hat, feel the fabric along the pads of her fingers, for the exact same reason my own hand refused to detach from Naruto's.
When you were on the point of breaking, having an anchor to keep you rooted in this world was the difference between remaining whole and shattering.
Tsunami broke; I did not break.
My throat itched to scream at the sky in frustration, my eyes burned to shed tears, because a boy was being held hostage by a mob boss and it was my fault, if I had just let things run their course he'd be okay, he could end up dead because I was selfish, but I pulled in the pieces of my composure and held them together for dear life. I forced out a breath instead of a scream and forced my eyes to remain dry.
I was fine.
My fingers unwound from around Naruto's and both hands moved to pinch the brim of the hat shut.
I was fine.
"He's being held hostage," I said. "The note says: it's either the boy or the bridge, your choice."
Tazuna's hand slammed down against the table. "What?"
"Oh, Kami…" Tsunami choked out, fingers clamped over my mouth. "No…"
"You—you can get him back, right?" Tazuna asked.
"Maybe."
"Maybe?"
I rested my elbows on the table and twined together my fingers, laying my forehead against my joined hands. "It's not so simple," I mumbled. My head ached. "The choice isn't up to us 'cause our teacher is our commanding officer."
"He didn't leave any of us in charge," Sasuke noted. "None of us have the authority to alter the set mission objective."
"What, we—really?" Naruto asked. "Come on we… we gotta be able to do something!"
"The approach we take to this situation will be up to Kakashi," I said.
"Inari isn't a 'mission objective'," Tazuna spat. "He's a child—"
His words stopped cold when I tilted my head up to meet his gaze with blank eyes. "So he is," I responded. "But as ninja, out on a mission, we're bound by mission objectives."
"That's it, then?" Tazuna asked. "You all have to wait around for your teacher to wake up while he's—he's Kami knows where?"
"He would have to either way," I said. "The three of us aren't enough to get him back. We don't know what kind of forces he has with him, we don't know how he might react, and we don't even know where he is, or if he's even keeping Inari that close to him. Not to mention having to plan an infiltration."
I raised my hand to rub at my temples and wished they would stop shaking.
"There's nothing we can do?" Naruto asked.
"We need Kakashi," I murmured. "This… this is too big for us."
We needed Kakashi to track down Inari. We needed Kakashi to plan out the best approach for getting into wherever we needed to get Inari. We needed Kakashi to plan out the best path to get Inari. We needed Kakashi to lead the charge through the building like the human bulldozer that jonin are. We needed Kakashi to be there in case things went wrong.
We needed our teacher.
There was no way for us to go into that situation and not be put our lives at a severe risk, something which I refused to do no matter how much guilt I felt over the matter. I had my role in things, but I wasn't the lone bearer of blame—Kakashi and Tazuna each had their own stake. I would feel awful, terrible, disgusted with myself if Inari died over this, but I wouldn't let that potential outcome spur me into doing something stupid and impulsive that would put all of our lives in danger.
"You could give up the bridge," Sasuke said.
"We… this country can't afford that. There has to be another way."
"What if there isn't?" I asked. "What if there's no way for us to attempt a retrieval?"
Tazuna looked at his hands and didn't say a word.
"You'd leave him there?" Tsunami cried.
"I didn't say that—"
"You didn't not say it."
When he refused to meet her gaze or respond, Tsunami shoved her chair back with enough force to send it flying into the wall and fled the table. Tazuna followed after her.
The exchange went about as well as I had assumed it would. I blew out a haggard breath.
I needed to do something. Sitting around would drive me to insanity and, tired as I was, going to sleep wasn't appealing to me. I had steam to let off, nerves to smooth, emotions to vent.
I stood up and left without a word, the door of the house slamming shut behind me as I stepped out into the muggy summer air, the temperature not dulled by the absence of the sun. Konoha had a dry heat, but in the Land of Waves, with how close they were to the water, the air was humid and uncomfortable, the feeling of it washing over me, not unlike a snake slipping down my back.
The spot I chose wasn't far into the forest, half a kilometre away from the house at most. It was enough distance that I felt like I could breathe, but not so far that I wouldn't be able to get back to the house in a reasonable time should the need arise.
I picked a nice tree, one with a sturdy, expansive trunk, and started hitting it.
I treated it like a training dummy, aiming blow after blow at the bark, watched it chip off and flake onto the ground at my feet. I punched, I kicked, I kneed. The longer I went on the more vicious and harsh my strikes became, the more the skin on my knuckles was cut and the more that the ninja mesh along my legs, the only barrier between my calves and the tree, tore away into wire.
It hurt. It hurt a lot.
The method was crude but, at that moment at least, successful. The world around me sharpened into a painful clarity and anything except the immediate faded from my thoughts, lost in a haze of unimportance. There was nothing for me to be concerned about, nothing that I had to be responsible for. I was able to exist in a bubble of blissful ignorance and it felt fantastic; I hated every second of it.
I froze when I heard two sets of footsteps sound behind me, one hand remaining planted against the trunk of the tree. I knew the gaits, the chakra signatures.
"Hey, hey! Kaka!" Naruto called as he approached, Sasuke trailing a few metres behind him with a frown on his face. "What're you doing… hey, your hand's bleeding!"
I took a step back from the tree and raised one of my hands up to inspect it, blood oozing out of the torn skin of my knuckles. It stung—both of my hands did, my legs as well. The muscles in my body were stiff and sore, my limbs ached from sleep deprivation and the sudden burst of activity.
"It's fine," I said. "It doesn't really hurt."
Sasuke narrowed his eyes at the blood and his frown darkened into a glower. I ignored him.
"Eh, really?" Naruto asked.
I gave a noncommittal shrug. "What're you two doing out here?"
"I just… uh… just wanted to come see what you were doing—so did he."
"I'm just training."
"Oh."
I looked to my hands again, and my gaze travelled down to my legs, the minor abrasions that had scratched at my skin through the mesh. They needed to be cleaned out and bandaged.
"I'm done, I think," I said. "Come on, let's go. We should probably get back."
The first thing I registered upon waking up was that I wasn't the only conscious person in the room.
I rubbed at my eyes as I sat up in bed, felt the bags that framed them brush against the skin of my hands—four hours of turbulent sleep wasn't enough to dispel them. That was fine. I felt fine.
Kakashi was propped up against the wall behind his bed, his little orange book opened in front of him and a pillow on his lap to cushion it. His shoulders were relaxed, his eyes half-lidded, but the charge in his chakra signature—it reminded me of lightning bouncing around a glass jar—betrayed him.
He looked okay, save for the bandages poking out from beneath his clothes. His skin had regained some of its colour, his hands were steady, and he showed no visible signs of pain, for what little credence the last one had with ninja. I knew from having looked over his injuries the night prior, though, that he required proper medical attention, not the inadequate bandage and cleaning jobs that Sasuke and I had provided him with so far. He wasn't in dire condition, but he could be doing far better.
"You're already reading porn," I mumbled, running my fingers over my hair to flatten out some of the wisps that had flown away. "Nice."
He turned his face to look at me, eyebrow raised up. "What else would I be doing?"
"Not reading porn."
"Mhm." Kakashi shifted his attention back to the book and flipped the page. "Is there any reason why the woman in the room across from us has spent the last two hours crying?"
"Probably has something to do with the fact that her son is currently in the possession of a crime boss who's made a threat against his life."
His hand stilled.
I rolled out of bed and avoided wincing at the stiffness in my joints, the sudden jolt that ran through my legs when my feet hit the ground. I walked over to my pack and pulled out a fresher set of clothes that I could change into.
"It sounds like there are things we need to talk about," Kakashi said.
"To put it lightly." I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. "You missed a lot while you were out."
If the subtle jab elicited a hint of a wince from Kakashi, a twitch of his face, the stiffening of his shoulders, I chose to ignore it. I felt entitled to at least one bitter comment.
"So it seems," he answered, his voice revealing nothing. He flicked the page again, not that I believed he was reading the book in front of him anymore. "Why don't you bring Naruto and Sasuke in here? We need to have a team discussion."
"Alright."
I wandered out of the room, clothes in hand, and told myself that everything was fine.
.
.
Kakashi watched her walk out of the room and felt like a failure, more so than he had in recent memory.
He was the one who had made the wrong call with continuing the mission instead of leaving when things went awry. He was the one who got arrogant, careless, thinking that there was nobody that their enemy could throw at him and come out victorious. She was the one who suffered for it.
He didn't need his genius to figure out that something was wrong with his student.
Everything about Kasumi was blank. Her eyes were dead, her voice lacked inflection, and her face was expressionless. There were bags that encompassed much of her eye sockets. Her shoulders hunched and her movements were sluggish. When she spoke to him Kakashi caught the hint of gauntness in her features and the fact that, even in just a few days, she had lost some weight, which was proof enough that the poor eating habits she had displayed during the trip to Wave had worsened rather than improved upon reaching their destination. The bandages along both of her hands and the bottoms of her legs didn't escape his notice, either—whatever training she had been doing was harsh and careless, resulting in injuries that he knew her to avoid most days.
The attempts he made to reconcile the person who walked out of the room with the student he recalled were unsuccessful. She had been a handful, nothing that he expected her to be, but she had been full of personality and attitude and life, things that she lacked then. The person who he saw had a closer resemblance to a corpse. He had figured that out of the three of his students, she would be the one to deal with stress the best, but that theory wasn't holding up in the slightest.
The sounds she made while she slept served to twist the knife, so to speak, as he listened to her whimper and murmur in the subdued way that those with copious experiences with nightmares often did. He couldn't guess at what exactly she was seeing, but he assumed it had taken place after he passed out from chakra exhaustion.
Kakashi may have known that he would fail his students, one way or another, but he hadn't known that it would bother him. His arrogance and inability to protect his own students had caused one of them to be reduced to a husk—the thought that the other two had suffered likewise stung a part of him that Kakashi didn't know could still feel pain. He thought he had buried it and left it to rot.
Self-loathing Kakashi could deal with. The rekindling of whatever the hell else he was feeling? No, that he could do without.
He didn't want to bond with these children, didn't want to be in a position where he could care for them, didn't want to face that danger—that was all it was to him. It was dangerous. More than not wanting it, Kakashi didn't need it. He was beyond needing a team, he had been for more years than he cared to count. That was in his past. His ANBU squads were one thing as they could all care for themselves, and Kakashi could forget their loss as easily as he could forget the masks they wore. Three children, with faces and identities and names, were a whole other matter.
Not a soul in the village would forget the lives of these children if they were lost, Kakashi included.
He leaned his head back against the headboard and heaved a sigh. "This better be worth it, Minato."
.
.
I combed my fingers through my dampened hair to clear it of its snags and knots.
Putting on a cleaner set of clothes reminded me that I hadn't had an actual shower in over a week, prior to our leaving the village. Minor washings in stray bodies of water when we came across them during the trip from the village was as close as I had gotten, which didn't involve shampoo or soap or an extended amount of time spent rinsing the grit and grime from my skin.
I didn't linger in the shower. I rushed through the basics in the five minutes I had allotted myself, scrubbing every inch of my body with fervour, and jumped out again. There was a fleeting part of me that wanted to stand under the hot water for hours and hours and hours, but my more reasonable desires won out, the ones that were intent on getting back to the actually important matters—figuring out what the hell was going to happen next.
Sasuke was awake when I entered their room, but Naruto was out cold. There was no kind way to wake Naruto up. I gave a partial, distracted nod to him and made my way to Naruto's bedside, staring down at him as he slept.
"Naruto," I said, so I could say that I did try. No response. "Naruto."
I led a bit of chakra to my fingertips, a minuscule amount, the barest spark, and poked him in the ribs with it.
He jolted at the contact and gave a garbled cry of shock, floundering in his covers. "Ah! What—what's happening?"
"Kakashi is awake," I said. I stepped back and threw a look at Sasuke. "He wants to talk to all of us. Don't bother getting dressed, just come on."
"He's up?" Naruto slurred.
He rolled out of his bed and fell to the floor in a heap, the lump that he was under his blankets not moving from its spot on the ground.
"He's isn't out of bed, but he's conscious," I said.
Sasuke's back stiffened. "How bad is he?"
"Hard to say," I answered. I angled my body to bring him into my line of sight. "His chakra seems fine, decently full. He might need crutches, but he should be able to move around today. He just can't do any major fighting yet."
Naruto, not yet awake enough to absorb the meaning of those words, gave no outward reaction except to scratch his head and blink at the two of us. Sasuke's face tightened.
There would be issues if Gato had any high-level ninja guarding Inari. Some civilians and genin wouldn't be a problem, as even an injured Kakashi could handle those in his sleep, not to mention what the three of us were capable of, but it could get dicey if there was anybody there of chunin or jonin level.
Kakashi set his book down in his lap as we trooped into the room. He had the same bored expression on his face, sleepy almost, like the situation we were in was no cause for concern—it was both annoying and reassuring.
I sat on my bed, Naruto plopping down beside me and leaning into my arm, and Sasuke leaned against the foot of the bed.
"All here," Kakashi said, his steel grey eye skimming over all of us. "Let's talk. Go from the start."
"The start of what?" Naruto asked.
"After the fight," Kakashi said. "Give me a full report of what's happened since then."
I flicked my eyes to the window. "One of us is going to need to leave soon to guard Tazuna while he's at the bridge."
Sasuke unwound his arms from around his chest and straightened up. "I'll go."
"What if Gato tries something?" I asked. "There should be two people there."
"Naruto," Kakashi said. "Send clones with Sasuke. Give him enough to set up a perimeter around the bridge."
Naruto gave a sleepy nod, pressed his fingers together, and ten clones popped into existence and made the already crowded room feel that much smaller. Sasuke looked at all of them with distaste.
"You should send them ahead," I said. "Sasuke and Tazuna won't be leaving for the bridge for another few minutes, but the clones can go before them and make there aren't any traps or anything."
"Good idea," Kakashi said. "If there's anything wrong I want you to alert us immediately."
"Yeah, got it."
The clones opened the window and squeezed themselves out one by one, while Sasuke went downstairs to where I could feel Tazuna sitting at the kitchen table.
Kakashi stared at us, expectant.
I did most of the talking. Naruto piped in with bits here and there, but he spent more time staring down at his hands and twiddling his thumbs. As much as I could, I kept the narrative short and sweet, cutting what details I could and boiling the entire situation down into a fifteen-minute explanation.
Kakashi took all of it in when an even expression, but I felt the minor shifts in his chakra signature, spiking and waning as the story went on.
When I was finished speaking I reached under the bed and pulled out Inari's hat. "This is all they left behind," I murmured. "The actual note is in the crown of it."
A hint of chakra gathered in Kakashi's nose as he held the paper underneath his nostrils and inhaled. Once, twice. A minute nod. His gaze moved to the window and he leaned forward, his chin propped in his hand. He sat there in silence.
"So?" Naruto asked. "Can you find him?"
Kakashi waved a hand. "Of course I can."
"Then why didn't you say so?"
"Hmm." He rubbed the back of his head, turned to look at us again. "We'll be discussing the plans for the rescue later on tonight, once Sasuke returns. I want both of you to be packed and ready to leave at a moment's notice—there's no telling when we'll have to depart."
"Alright," I said.
Kakashi picked his book up again and went back to reading, a clear cue that the conversation was over. Naruto bristled at the blunt dismissal but I grabbed his hand and pulled him away before anything could come out of it, dragging him off towards the back porch.
We sat there, out in the sun, shoulder to shoulder with our feet dipped in the water, for the rest of the morning.
.
.
We were informed later in the morning that there had been another note waiting on the bridge when Tazuna and Sasuke arrived. It granted Tazuna until construction ended on the bridge to make his choice if he wanted to get Inari back alive. For every day that Inari remained in Gato's possession, however, Gato would take off one of his fingers, starting that evening at midnight.
Kakashi decided that we had no choice but to attempt the rescue within the day.
I bit back my protests and nodded along. I had my marching orders, and like the good little soldier that I was, I'd follow them.
.
.
"You'll be doing it tonight, then," Tazuna said. "Going to get him."
"Yes," Kakashi answered.
I twisted my spoon around the bowl and tried to ignore the rampant fear that tore through my mind at those words.
We had a plan. All of us knew what we were supposed to do, what role we were to play. I wanted to believe that we would succeed. I wanted to think that it was possible for us to get into the base, accomplish all of the objectives Kakashi had set out, and get back out alive.
I didn't.
Kakashi spent the entire day in bed regaining his energy. He could move around without crutches, though I caught him using chakra to augment his legs in order to do so. The wound on his arm would bleed again if jostled. He was functional. His fighting capabilities would be limited, but in a pinch, he would manage.
Naruto and Sasuke were both inexperienced and jittering with nerves.
I was emotionally and physically exhausted.
We needed to take a day or two to collect ourselves and prepare for whatever might await us at the base. None of us were in the proper condition to attempt this rescue, but the time constraint Gato placed on us had pushed Kakashi into action.
I tamped down on the urge to stomp my feet and throw a tantrum and tear out my hair and fall on the floor sobbing. The impulse was stupid and ridiculous, which was where all its appeal came from. I wanted to be a child and throw a hissy fit. There was so much of everything bouncing around inside my head, vouching for my attention and my energy, two things that were in short supply as it was.
A hand landed on my head.
I blinked, yanked from my thoughts. The table around me was empty—Tazuna gone, Tsunami gone, the boys gone, the dishes cleared away.
"You should eat," Kakashi said. He wasn't looking at me, even as his hand remained in place. "You'll need your energy tonight."
"If I eat, I'm going to puke."
"I'm ordering you to eat."
"You're ordering me to puke, then."
"I'm ordering you to eat and keep it down."
"That's not fair," I mumbled. "You can't order bodily functions around."
Kakashi hummed. "It's going to be fine, tonight."
His casual approach and words were supposed to calm me, give me a reason to relax in the face of danger. It had succeeded earlier, but right then it failed—it angered me. I had spent the entire fucking mission trying to convince myself that things were fine, that I was fine, that all of it was just fucking fine.
None of it was fine. There was nothing about the situation that was fine. I wasn't fine, Kakashi wasn't fine, Tsunami wasn't fine, Tazuna wasn't fine. Inari sure as hell wasn't fine. The boys were coping, but Sasuke wasn't sleeping either and when Naruto thought nobody was looking, any hint of a smile was wiped from his features and replaced with a harried look that I had never thought he was capable of.
I didn't want to be told it was fine anymore. It wasn't.
"Don't make promises like that. Don't… don't do that to me."
His chakra jolted; his face remained placid, a lone silver brow rising up. "You don't have confidence that I can keep it?"
"No."
The hand was removed from my hair and Kakashi took a step back, stared at me for a small eternity.
"Alright."
Not knowing what else to do, I nodded.
My eyes affixed themselves to the cold soup in front of me and I wondered whether I would grow to regret the choices I made. A few hours were all that stood between me and a definitive answer.
The legs of my chair scraped the floor. I stood, picked up my bowl, and walked into the kitchen. The remnants of my supper sloshed against the cold metal as I tipped my bowl over and poured all of it down the drain.
"I'm going to double check my pack," I said. "Come get me when it's time to leave."
Kakashi said nothing, watching me with those stupid, emotionless eyes.
I left.