Published: 8/2/2018


Dear Suzu,

How are you lately? It's been a while since I last wrote. Have you been worried about your good friend Jiraiya? Never fear. I am in good health, and I have better news than that besides: I've found them.

Genjutsu was the name of the game here. Fearsome genjutsu, too, the kind that retroactively messes with your memory. Turns out I've actually located them several times over in the past few months, but their wards were screwing me up. Half of conversations I'd had with those street rats probably weren't even real. Well, at least now I know I can still track something down when I need to. I was getting worried I was losing my touch.

The problem now is that I've been back and forth here so many times that the sentries are bound to recognize me. Getting in won't be easy, so at present I've retreated and have set up base in a city a few miles away. From here I'll have to plot my next move carefully.

I'll be sticking around a while and I've got a few friends here, so if you'd like to write back, you can give it a shot. Address it Kitaru of Washi-gai and it'll find its way to me. Make sure you tell me about how things with are going with you, too. Until then.

Your friend,

Jiraiya


The day before the transfers took effect was a miserable one. Over half the desks in the office had been stripped naked, and the colorful whiteboards and baubles I'd come to enjoy seeing had been wiped clean or removed. The snack table was empty of everything but a single package of senbei, and the room felt cold and empty.

As if trying to combat the cold atmosphere, we all clustered in the center of the room and sat close together. Those without chairs perched on desks or sat on the floor. At first we were all silent.

"When the war ends, I'll come back here," Fuyuji said quietly. We turned to look at him. "When these reassignments are over I'll transfer right back. Wait for me. Don't give my post away."

"We'll wait for you," Naoto replied softly. Though yesterday he had been shocked and angry, today the head of I&E was as unshakable as ever. His grip on his cane was loose and relaxed.

"We'll come back, too," a pair of Yamanaka cousins piped up. A flurry of promises to return rose from the group.

"So will we."

"And us! We'll come back!"

"Yeah. Wait for us, too, buchou."

"I will wait for all of you," Naoto vowed. But as he said it a terrible sadness began to color the air. Even if the promises were not empty, they were groundless. The ones who were leaving were going to the war. No one could really know if he would return.

"And you will come back, too," Oyuki said forcefully as she wrapped her arms around my shoulders. "You'll practice every day and study all the scrolls I gave you. You'll maintain your appearance even when the others sneer at you. And then you'll return here to finish your apprenticeship."

I swallowed thickly as others began to chime their agreement. Naoto turned his head and looked me in the eye—or seemed to look at me, anyway. Sometimes he made it so hard to remember he was blind.

"That's right, Misuzu-san. We'll wait for you especially. You chose to come to I&E when nobody else did. You'll always have a place here."

My lip began to quiver. "Thank you, Naoto-san," I replied.


"There is no place for you on this team."

Two weeks post the destruction of the Kannabi Bridge, Kakashi Hatake was half a month healed and half a month more broken. Everything about him was raw and jagged. He looked nothing like the man in the Earth-girl's memories; he was stiff, straight-backed, and his speech was clipped and harsh. He had not yet begun to tilt his hitai-ate in his signature way, either. White bandages covered his left eye instead.

"Kakashi," Minato admonished. He put a hand on my head, more brotherly than ever. He seemed content to pretend that our previous encounter had never happened and his acting reflected that admirably. I wished the same could have been said for me; I didn't know how to look him in the eye anymore.

"It's true, Sensei," Kakashi argued. "Even if she is your little sister there's no way she's capable of surviving on the front lines. Just look at her."

It had always been the case that Intel workers and other "indoors" shinobi were regarded with disdain for their clean and less-worn equipment. That was doubly true in a time of war. Field shinobi wore their dirt and grime nearly as proudly as they wore their scars.

I picked at the hem of my skirt with silent contemplation. Even though I was no longer under Fuyuji's and Oyuki's keen eyes, after Oyuki's speech yesterday, I couldn't find it in me to go back to wearing the blocky standard-cut uniform; instead, I continued to use the clothes I'd sewn with Fuyuji's help. Even so, it was not an ostentatious outfit by any means. It was a sturdy, functional skirt, full enough not to be constricting and short enough not to get in the way. Compared to many chuunin, who did not even wear the uniform, it was positively orthodox. Of the students on Team Minato, in fact, I was the only one wearing a vest.

"That's not true at all, Kakashi. Suzu has returned from the front lines twice now. She came from an excellent team and she trains all the time. I can guarantee her skills to you."

How was it that Minato could recommend me so heartily? Was it because of the incident with Jiraiya? Did he really mean it, or was he just trying to look after me? I couldn't say.

Evidently Kakashi couldn't decide either. He continued to eye me skeptically.

"Let's just give it a try for a little while, Kakashi," Rin interjected with a conciliatory gesture. "We haven't even seen her fight yet. If Sensei says so she must be capable."

Though her brow was still creased and heavy with sorrow she aimed a welcoming smile at me. Something in it reminded me of Anzu, and I felt a little more reassured, so I was able to smile back.

To his credit, Kakashi did not blow up at me on the first or even the second day of my reassignment. In fact, he did his utmost to ignore me entirely, and that was probably the best one could ask for considering the circumstances. But while one can ignore a teammate during individual exercises, it is impossible to ignore her during team drills, and the third day was the day that team drills began.

"What is wrong with you?" An angry exhale exploded through his nostrils as a ball dropped for the fourth time. "Academy students can do this exercise better than you!"

It was a very basic coordination task—nothing more than a group juggling exercise. There had been a time where Team 11 had done this activity one-handed, blindfolded, and with legs tied together. We probably could have done while half-unconscious, too. But with Team 7 it was different. They had a different rhythm and they were taller than I was used to my teammates being. The speed at which they threw was different, too; Rin pitched slow with minimal spin, similar to Yoshiya, but Kakashi's throws were straighter and faster than even Akihiko's most energetic tosses.

"I'm sorry," I mumbled, willing the muscle memory of my previous squad to leave my body. "I'm still adjusting. Please be patient with me."

"Sensei," Kakashi called, ignoring me. "This is pointless. She's not coordinating. What can a kid like this contribute to Team 7? She's useless to us."

Even though Kakashi was still a kid himself, the venom in his voice made me flinch. Minato let out a sigh and attempted to diffuse the situation.

"That's not true, Kakashi," he repeated. "Suzu's a very skillful and competent kunoichi. Just give her a chance to learn your movements; she'll pick it up quickly. I told you she came from a good team, right? They were top of their year."

Kakashi snorted.

"It's true, Kakashi. By the time of their dissolution they had at least seven commendations."

This seemed to impress Rin slightly and she shot me a faintly admiring look. Kakashi, however, only cocked an eyebrow at me.

"The top team?" he asked coldly. "I've never heard of them. Where are they now?"

Silence rolled over the field. Minato's placating pose stiffened while Rin's hand slowly rose to cover her mouth. I lifted my eyes incredulously.

"Commendations mean nothing. What matters is results. If they couldn't even look after themselves, how could you claim their skills were worth anything?" Kakashi pressed.

"Kakashi!" Rin gasped.

"Kakashi, you know that's not how things work during war," Minato's voice immediately took on a hard edge. "You don't know anything about Team 11 or their circumstances. They also lost one of their members—you're speaking ill of the dead."

"That's unrelated," Kakashi contradicted. He turned a cold eye on me, and his glare felt like it could cut through flesh and bone. The sand-filled balls we had been juggling tumbled into the grass. "What disrespects the dead is trying shove an incompetent stranger into a comrade's place."

"Kakashi, let's just give it a little more time." Rin twisted her fingers together anxiously. "I'm sure Suzu-chan will find her footing soon. You don't need to bring her old team into this."

Grief often made people cruel. I knew this quite well; after being on a team with Akihiko, how couldn't I? But knowing that didn't soften Kakashi's hostility. Just as Akihiko's anger had still hurt me, Kakashi's words pried keenly at a wound that had only just begun to heal.

At this point Minato decided that team exercises needed a break. It was just as well; we weren't making any progress and it was only straining our nerves. Instead he decided that some round-robin sparring matches would be suitable to finish the day. Judging by the initial pair-ups of Suzu versus Rin and Kakashi versus Minato, he was probably looking to vent some of Kakashi's ire via some good, old-fashioned fistfighting.

Rin's weakest skill was taijutsu by far. She seemed to be very aware of this and spent most of our fight trying to keep me at a distance with thrown weapons. She certainly had a talent for bending trajectories; she kept me on my feet by throwing shuriken in my blind spots at every turn. I was heavily reminded of Yoshiya, who had done just the same thing in fights where ninjutsu had been barred.

Upon remembering this I found myself becoming incredibly sad. It was all so familiar that I could almost pretend that I was back with my old team, running around on the field with games of tag and hide-and-go-seek just an afternoon away. But after a while other memories began to stir in me, too; formations and strategies began to rise from the recesses of my mind. In those days I had relied on many methods to bypass Yoshiya's games of keep-away—feints, substitutions, clones…

I was no taijutsu prodigy, but I had spent the entirety of my childhood doing my best to keep up with one. I broke through, and Rin was so startled by my sudden aggression that I was actually able to catch her arm behind her back on my first approach.

"Wow," Rin exclaimed as we reset our position and made the seal of reconciliation with one another. "You're fast, Suzu-chan! Just like Sensei."

I was so startled that I laughed aloud. "I wish! It will take years before I can even begin to approach Minato-nii's speed. There's still a long way to go to catch up to him."

Rin smiled at me again. She was bright and cheerful, but something about her was grounded and practical, too. Warm, but still down-to-earth. She was very likable indeed.

"So are you taijutsu-focused?" Rin asked eagerly, seeming to forget all of the afternoon's slip-ups and frustrations. "Do you know any medical jutsu at all? You don't look like a ninjutsu type…"

I smiled and opened my mouth to tell her that no, I didn't know any iryou-ninjutsu, and that I had been my team's all-arounder, but in that moment there was sudden blip at the edge of my awareness. I sharpened to attention. I had felt that blip before. It was the same feeling as when we had been attacked—

It happened in a flash. I barely had the time to raise an arm to block, and the blow hit me so hard that it pushed me onto my knees. His kick was as fast as any of Akihiko's best strikes—faster, even. I let out a gasp as my shoulder creaked in its socket; the air displaced by his movement sent my braids flipping past my face and my skirt flaring out behind me.

"Kakashi!" Minato's and Rin's voices rose in simultaneous shock.

Kakashi bore down on me with silent, singular focus, like a hawk diving in to kill. He gave no indication that he had heard them; he only spun a kunai into his hand and made me the pinpoint of his gaze. His intention was clear. The next strike would be true, and he wanted to test if I could withstand it.

I flicked my eyes to the blade in his hand. His stare was unhesitating. That knife would gore me if I let it.

Flaring chakra in my limbs, I pivoted away as quickly as they could propel me; simultaneously, I drew from my kunai holster and brought it up to parry. The irregular weight of Minato's kunai fit itself into my palm, and I flipped it into a reverse grip, letting the flat of the blade rest against my forearm for a stronger deflection. I braced my back leg just in time to meet a titanic downward strike. I felt the soil beneath the soles of my sandals compress.

When Kakashi and I met eyes time seemed to stop for a long moment. I glimpsed something dark churning in his gaze. There was a strange, abyss-like despair in his eye, and something about it seemed desperate. Like if he could just hit me hard enough—if he could just strike this change into the ground—then everything that was wrong might become right again.

And then the moment passed. Minato's hand was fisted in the back of Kakashi's collar before the boy had time to put his feet on the ground. My cousin did not speak, but the force of his presence was enough to halt all hostilities. Kakashi landed in a stance of resignation.

"We're done for today," Minato said softly. He did not release Kakashi's shirt. "Suzu, Rin, good work. You're dismissed. Kakashi… we need to talk."

It became abundantly clear that their conversation would not start until we left, so I rose from my half-crouched position. When I stepped away the imprint of my feet was visible in the ground, and my limbs were still trembling from the force. I put a shaking hand on the back of my neck and began to walk away. I couldn't find it in me to look back at them as I left.


"Sensei," Akihiko called.

"Hmm?" Itsuki-sensei looked up—or down, rather—from the scroll he was reading. Usually when we did tree climbing and hanging exercises he would read. Though these training sessions required a fair amount of exertion on our parts they were so inconsequential to him that he probably could have slept through any of them.

"Are you in a good mood today?" my clanmate grinned, waving his fingers. Yoshiya perked up and gave Sensei a hopeful look.

"Maybe." Itsuki-sensei put on an expression of indifference, but even across the distance I could see the faint twitching of his lips. I giggled. He was in a good mood.

"Do something!" Akihiko took stock of my laughter and waved his arms exuberantly. "Do the leaf thing again!"

"Again? Aren't you tired of these party tricks by now?" Itsuki-sensei laughed and tucked his book into his belt. In contrast to his words, though, he was already drawing a stack of senbon from his pouch.

"We're not!" Yoshiya declared with conviction. He fixed Sensei with his best entreating eyes.

"It won't be long before you all will figure this out for yourselves, you know," Itsuki-sensei muttered, but obligingly fitted the long needles between his fingers. Then in a blink of an eye he was throwing, and between one breath and the next Konoha's emblem was proudly displayed on the trunk of the tree across from us. And then, as if in an afterthought, Itsuki-sensei spotted a falling leaf and threw a single needle to finish it off. It landed dead in the center of the mon, pinned and fluttering lightly.

"Man, you don't need ninjutsu to do that," Akihiko sighed admiringly.

"'Course not. If it did, a blockhead like you wouldn't even be able to dream of doing it," Yoshiya challenged from his tree branch. Akihiko's eyes lit up.

"Wanna bet, bandana boy?" he shot back. He began rolling up his sleeves.

I laughed and turned to share a look with Itsuki-sensei. But all of a sudden he was gone and the branches around me were empty. Startled, I fell silent, but there was nothing but birdsong in the air. It was just me and the late summer sunlight filtering through the canopy.

For a moment I could only hang from the tree in bewilderment. But then my mind caught up with the present and I remembered where I was. This was not Team 11's training grounds—this was only the village outskirts. I'd taken a meandering walk on my day off and ended up climbing a tree to enjoy the good weather. Between now and then I'd started dangling from a branch, and at some point had gotten caught up remembering a scene from the early days of my genin team.

How melancholy. Being back on a platoon was evidently bringing many past memories to the forefront of my mind. I let my arms drop and stared down at the verdant bush below me. How quickly those days had gone. We hadn't even been together as a team for half a year.

"Suzu-chan?"

I blinked. A faint choir of handbells had begun to ring in my ears, but they were far too distant to be anywhere near—

Rin was peering up at me from the forest floor. She was dressed in casual clothes and sturdy-looking gloves. She had a basket full of purple-flowered plants in one hand and a pair of gardening shears in the other.

"It is you, Suzu-chan!" she exclaimed as I regarded her with shock. She was so quiet. Her chakra had been suppressed so fully that I had thought she'd been ages away.

"Hello," I greeted rather dumbly. "I… what are you doing?"

"Me? I'm gathering plants for medicine. There's a lot of wolfsbane growing in this area, so I thought I'd help myself. There's milk thistles, too."

Something in my alternate Earth memories seemed to realize that wolfsbane was used in a lot of Chinese medicine, so I didn't feel wholly surprised to hear an iryou-nin was gathering some of it on her day off. Milk thistles, though, I knew nothing about.

"What are milk thistles used for?" I asked after I'd dropped from the tree and landed beside her. Rin gave me a thoughtful look.

"Well, they have a couple of uses, but right now I'm gathering them because there's been a rash of death cap poisonings at the hospital." She fixed me with a serious look. "Don't eat wild mushrooms if you're not one hundred percent confident in your identification. Milk thistles are only really good for supportive treatment—if they live, most of those people will require liver transplants."

That was slightly frightening. Not for me specifically—I didn't really eat mushrooms—but I knew several of my younger cousins liked mushroom hunting. I made a mental note to warn them when I went back home.

"Is it okay to store those with wolfsbane? Isn't it pretty poisonous?" I asked, looking with concern at her basket. Rin smiled and brought an empty cloth pouch out of her pocket.

"I have a separate bag for the milk thistles. I haven't started gathering them yet." As if sensing I'd come out here without a purpose, she smiled and suggested, "Why don't you come along? Learning the proper method for gathering plants can be pretty beneficial to everyone, not just medics. I'm sure it'll be useful for you."

I had no reason to refuse, so I fell into step with her and we began walking farther into the forest. We were silent for a few minutes—me because I didn't know what to say, she because she looked like she had something weighty on her mind.

"Suzu-chan…" she began after a long moment.

I looked at her attentively. "Yes?"

"Kakashi isn't a bad person, you know."

My eyebrows shot up. Were we jumping in from there?

"Really, he isn't!" she insisted, taking my look of surprise for doubt. "I mean it. He's… he's just upset that our old teammate is being replaced and he's taking his frustration out on you. It's not his fault… but it's not yours, either."

Her words brought a weak smile to my face. Of course she would say that. Who wouldn't? Could anyone have cause to believe I had known what would happen to Obito?

"Please don't think badly of him. I know it's hard because he's been so nasty to you, but…" Her brow was furrowed but her expression was earnest. I twisted my fingers together and looked away. Somehow I felt I didn't deserve to be looked at with such an honest gaze.

"It's okay. I believe you," I said, staring at my feet. Out of the corner of my eye, Rin looked both hopeful and skeptical at the same time, so forced myself to make eye contact. "No, really I do. I know Hatake-senpai isn't a bad person. He's just…" I searched for the words. "He's just not himself at the moment," I concluded.

A look of relief flooded Rin's face. "Is that so?" she asked with a big smile. "I'm glad."

I looked away again and began to feel that this conversation was painful. It was hard to be looked at with such geniality by someone who I had wronged so terribly. After all, Rin was a person, too, and she had been friends with Obito just as Kakashi had.

Rin's smiled faded a bit. A cluster of purple flowers was blooming at the edge of the path, so we stopped and began rifling through the grass.

"...I guess being on Team 7 really is hard for you, isn't it?" Rin asked softly a few moments later. "If… if my team was broken up and I was put on another squad, I would be miserable."

"That's…" I trailed, not knowing how to respond. That's true, I wanted to say. But it was also deserved. It seemed to me that cowards didn't deserve happy assignments and cheerful relationships. If I was unhappy because I was being bullied, or because I had been taken away from my apprenticeship, or because being on a platoon seemed to stir up my old traumas, it was only right. In the end none of those things could make up for what I hadn't done.

"I know it probably doesn't help to hear it from someone like me, but if you ever need help, or if you want someone to talk to, I'll definitely be here," Rin told me ardently. "Since we're on a team together now we should rely on each other. We can't take the place of your old friends, but… but if it's all right with you, I'd like to be a new friend."

"I…" I swallowed. Rin put down her plants, pulled off her gloves, and took my hands in hers.

"Okay?" she asked.

"Okay," I whispered back. "Thank you, Nohara-senpai."

Rin immediately blushed. "Don't call me senpai," she murmured, embarrassed. "Rin is fine."

"...Rin-san, then?" The familiar address bit savagely at my conscience, but how could one refuse to comply with such earnestness?

"Rin," Rin replied firmly. "Just Rin. Teammates are family, too, even when it doesn't seem like it."


A/N: This section of the original story is what I hated the most about the previous draft. I want to just wipe it from all conscious memory. To be honest, I don't have confidence that I can make it any better in the rewrite, either, but I should at least try. Perhaps in future drafts (rewrite the rewrite? if I decide to continue with fanfiction after the Suzu series finishes, it will probably happen eventually) I will just remove this arc altogether.