Published: 5/23/2020

Previously: In the spring, preparations for October are underway; in the summer, Suzu continues to struggle with the question of retirement; in the fall, many things happen, including an unexpected encounter.


My inner panic instantly morphed into shock. I knew that voice. I knew it like it was my very own.

"Speak," Akihiko ordered sharply. "If you cannot be identified as an authorized unit you will be removed."

"Akihiko?" was my dumbfounded reply.

The figure standing before me, unlike the other ANBU I had seen today, was clearly not yet an adult. His voice, too, was boyish, though still deeper than when I had been with him. He twitched. Then he shoved his face into mine to see under my hood.

"Suzu?" he hissed as he withdrew his knife. "What are you doing here?"

"We've been trying to contact you for ages," I replied blankly. And it was true. I still checked in with his father once or twice a month. But we had never found a way to speak with his son and we had resigned ourselves to never knowing his fate.

Akihiko went still. His mask was painted in green, red, and black, and it had the look of some kind of cat—a tiger or a panther or something of that sort. I could not see anything about the rest of him; he was cloaked in full black.

"...What are you doing here?" he asked again after a long, guilty pause. I paused myself. Then I lowered my hood and gave him a hard look.

"I'm here to help Hokage-sama," I told him. "I have vital information about the invader."

Akihiko's head snapped up. "How do you know about that?" he demanded incredulously. Then he looked at me again before asking, "You're going to help Hokage-sama? You're only a chuunin."

"Try and stop me," I replied fiercely to his doubt. "Call the guard, then. If you think I'm enough of a fool to come to a place like this without realizing that I'm just a chuunin, then do it."

If truth be told I did not like my chances in a fight against Akihiko Namikaze. I wouldn't have liked the odds overmuch even back on Team 11. And now, in close quarters without any backup and without making any noise? Everything was stacked against me. But if a fight was what it would come down to, I was willing. He was bound to have learned more and gotten even better in ANBU, but much time had passed and I had grown in unexpected ways myself. It didn't matter that he was in the Special Forces. It wouldn't be my first ride against an ANBU, anyway.

Akihiko seemed taken aback by my ferocity. I felt my hands curl into loose fists as he stared at me. I had silencing seals in my sleeve. If he made to shout I would stop him.

"...Hokage-sama is in danger?" he asked uncertainly.

"Yes," I replied. "When I spoke to him about it Jiraiya-sama agreed. Hokage-sama's plan to fight alone is too reckless. And maybe we're just underestimating him, and maybe I'm needlessly interfering. But the alternative is untenable. A future without the Yondaime is too much of a risk."

"A future without the Yondaime?" Akihiko paused again at these foreboding words. "The situation's that dire?"

I set my mouth into a thin line. If only he knew. "Yes."

Another long moment passed. We continued to stand at odds and I wondered what would happen if another patrol came through. Before I could pursue that thought much further, however, Akihiko spoke.

"If you're here with Jiraiya-sama's authorization," he asked slowly, "why weren't we told?"

I furrowed my eyebrows at him. Then I understood his misapprehension and seized it with all my might.

"He won't have told you," I said aloofly, as though Jiraiya really had dispatched me to back up his stubborn student and had warned me no one else could know. "I expect Hokage-sama wouldn't take kindly to it. If you all knew I was coming he would've stopped me for sure."

That much was all true. Of course Jiraiya wouldn't have told anyone to expect me; we never agreed to implement any such intervention as this. And it went without saying Minato would stop me. He'd locked me out of the loop months ago.

"But why you?" Akihiko stared at my vest. He scanned me as if looking for identifiers of a Special unit, but of course he found none.

"I'm the only one who knows the full story," I informed. And that much was also true. "And everyone else who has details has a full plate."

Akihiko continued to stare. But he wasn't moving to arrest me, I noted, and I decided that if I were going to push this I might as well take it all the way to the wall. Without saying anything further I walked past him and opened the door to Rin's room.

The curtain was drawn but I could hear the dull drone of the stasis seal. It was still humming its sad sharp note, just as it had been since Minato first activated it, and I knew without a doubt that Rin was here. I took a deep breath to steel myself as I stepped forward.

A bed holding a figure so stiff and bloody should have been soaked right through. But Rin was frozen in time and the hole in her chest had ceased to leak. Though the blood was still there she had been suspended in that moment before death; it would not be free to flow until someone took her out of that moment.

I heard a sharp intake of breath beside me. Akihiko, who had followed and shut the door behind us without speaking, turned to me.

"I didn't know—" he began, stopped, and then began again, "—I didn't know we were guarding a body. I guess—someone must be coming to steal her corpse—?"

"She's not dead," I replied sharply. "That's the reason why we have any hope at all in this." Then I shook my head and moved forward again. "Come on. How well can you hide?"

Though I could not see his face I suspect Akihiko gave me quite a look. "I know the basics," he said with a familiar sort of sarcasm. My heart suddenly heaved. Yoshiya, I thought, used to snark at us just like that.

"Good, then," I muttered as I forced the emotion back down into my throat. I crouched by the wall and applied a Strings of Fate seal to the baseboard. There it would be low enough to go unseen, but not too low to trip someone if I activated it. I don't know why in particular I felt compelled to do it, but it felt expedient all the same. Then I promptly went to the bed, dropped to my knees, and crawled under. A beat passed before Akihiko shimmied in beside me.

"What now?" he asked.

"Now we wait," I replied as I took another steadying breath. "Or I'll wait. And you'll wait with me?"

My former teammate was silent and inscrutable. The eyes of his mask were empty and dark.

"My mission is to guard this hall until the end of the evening shift," he said eventually. "And I've uncovered information that indicates there will be an intruder in this room. So this is the optimal position to complete my mission."

I couldn't help the half-laugh that escaped me. I wondered just how much trouble Akihiko would be in when the night was over. And not just him, I amended to myself. He and I both.

I put my head down on my forearm. Though it was hardly the moment, something about that thought made me want to smile.


The room was screaming.

No, that was not it—it was not the room itself, but everyone in it. Akihiko shouting my name, Minato roaring Obito's, Obito yelling about Rin. Me shrieking back, fingers still tearing at the folds of his sleeve, feet still scrabbling for purchase against the wall, arms still struggling against the limb pinning me five inches off the floor. His fist was iron against my chest. The fabric of my collar was pulled taut and the seams of my garment, sewn sturdy, had begun to dig into the flesh under my arms rather than tear.

"You know it!" I cried at the mask. "She was ready to die for this village and you want to destroy it? You love her with your words but you lie with your actions!"

"You know nothing!" Obito howled back. "Don't talk as if you understand! It's because I loved her that I'm doing this!"

The room had been thrown into disarray after the initial struggle; the table had been overturned when Akihiko had kicked Obito in the side and a fat splatter of Minato's blood was pooling beside it. With the void box seal activated and negating all space-time ninjutsu I'd been unable to reseal my wires, so the tangle of those strings strewn all about the place framed the chaos with garlands of silvery thread.

Obito snarled and leaned up against me. The bite of his knife was already a prick of fire on my neck. Minato surged forward, arm still dripping, and Akihiko had drawn his ninjato. There was more screaming.

"Not dead—"

"—not involved—"

"—a liar!"

"Get away!"

And then, finally, abrupt silence. I saw the red of blood on the white of tile as I soared across the room. Minato's face froze in blank terror as I was flung away; Akihiko dove at Obito with bellowing fury. Then I hit the ground, slid, and crashed into the opposite wall with my back against the wood and my hands pressed against my throat.

"Suzu!" Minato's voice cracked with breathless horror. Before a second had passed he was kneeling next to me and turning me over with his uninjured hand. I began to cough violently.

"Let me see it," my brother demanded. His fingers closed on my shoulder in a death grip. Obliging, I slowly removed my shaking hands. Minato's eyes were white with fear as they came away smeared with gore.

For a moment I thought that it was all over. I thought my throat had been slit and that I had finally come to my last hour. But then I noticed that though there was blood it wasn't gushing, and that though I was gasping like a fish out of water I was still taking in air.

"It's not deep," I panted with realization. "It's only a scratch. I can breathe, the artery isn't severed, it's fine!"

I struggled into a sitting position and hastily swiped my sleeve against my skin. The cloth came away with an ugly stain but it cleared up the blood that was obscuring the cut across my skin—long, it seemed, but shallow. For a long moment Minato, with his hand still on my shoulder, could only sit and stare as it oozed gently. Then his arm fell to his side and he let out a long, long breath.

For a few seconds we sat stuck in those poses. I stared up at him with my limbs splayed across the floor and my shoulders sliding down the wall. He stared down at me in deathly silence. And then his lips parted.

"Never," he uttered in a voice like ice, "do that again."


A handful of seconds later the door slammed open to admit another cloaked figure. He caught sight of Akihiko viciously trading blows with Obito and sprang forward as if he had been conceived by lightning. In another second he and my former teammate both had one of Obito's arms each; they shoved him bodily into the ground, where Akihiko jammed his knee into Obito's kidney to stun him. The older ANBU withdrew a paper seal from his sleeve and slapped it with great force onto the back of our invader's head. Obito fell into immediate unconsciousness.

"Shit!" Akihiko exclaimed breathlessly. He pitched forward, rolled off of Obito, and managed to pull himself half-upright. Then he splayed his fingers across the front of his vest, which was now exposed by the tear in his cloak. The armor sported a magnificent slash from hip to sternum. The older ANBU looked at Akihiko intently.

"Are you injured?" he asked. The muted cadence of this fellow was vaguely familiar to me; the sound of his voice brought my mind to scents of dry air and dusty heat. Susumu, I concluded in a daze.

"No, sir," Akihiko panted in reply. He looked at Obito, sprawled on his face on the floor, and then at me, sprawled on my back by the wall. Then he ran his fingers across the gouge in his armor. In hindsight he was quite lucky Obito had only had a kunai. It would have been a hideous injury otherwise.

"Good," Susumu said. Then he turned away, seized Akihiko's arm, and began grilling him for a report in a low voice.

I would have been tempted to listen in—at this point in my life eavesdropping was becoming second nature—but I was distracted as yet another new figure appeared in the doorway. Jiraiya's eyes flew across the room and took in the disorder of it all before landing on Minato, whose sleeve was now quite crimson indeed.

"Holy shit, Minato!" said Jiraiya as he saw the laceration. It was a deep thing, deep enough that it would be a problem if he didn't get it sealed soon, and in fact I wondered if his brachial artery had not been injured. Then, of course, Jiraiya saw me and did a double take. "Suzu? What the hell are you doing here?"

At this Akihiko turned his head. I couldn't see his face but I could certainly see his realization, which was nearly instantaneous: Jiraiya had never authorized me to come here. I wondered how my friend would finish his report now.

"I sneaked in," I croaked in explanation. "He needed… needed backup."

Minato's hands were white-knuckled fists on his knees. He dropped his eyes to the floor and gritted his teeth. That, I noted, was not an emotion I often saw on him: desperate frustration, colored with profound self-disappointment. He was usually so prepared and always so successful in everything he did that there never was much opportunity to see him make that face.

"You let your guard down, Minato," Jiraiya concluded after he had knelt in front of his student and examined, in a surprisingly teacherly way, the wound. He withdrew a roll of bandages and made a tight binding to slow the blood loss. "You underestimated your opponent. I warned you not to go alone… you're lucky she decided to come anyway."

More lucky, I thought as I cast my eyes towards my friend, that Akihiko had decided to come. Then I winced as Susumu brought a fist down on my friend's head. Akihiko's shoulders hunched, but evidently Susumu had not put much power into the strike; a moment later his teacher sighed and slapped him lightly on the back. Well, I considered, even if he had fallen for my tricks, he had also helped save the Hokage's life. There was only so much one could ask of an apprentice ANBU.

"You did good, kid—" Jiraiya turned to look at me. Then he faltered when his gaze locked onto my bloodied throat. I quickly wiped it again to show him the superficiality of it.

"You did good, kid," he said once more as he let out a breath. "You are a waste in the general platoons. You should be a tokujou for getting past all the security we put up in this place."

This made me chuckle weakly and I looked at Akihiko again. It wasn't in the least bit true. I had been caught in the end, after all.

Akihiko, as if sensing my gaze, turned to look at me. He looked away again almost immediately, though, and something about that abruptly made my heart crack. For a moment had it felt like we'd returned to the old days, and just like when we'd been on Team 11, we'd accomplished something great together. We'd only had the opportunity because of Minato's anti-space-time ninjutsu seal, of course, and Susumu had been the one to really incapacitate Obito in the end, but we'd still managed to help take down an extremely dangerous enemy. I deflated.

"Maybe we should promote you." Jiraiya saw my sudden misery and grinned facetiously to cheer me up. "Eh, Minato? I'd say she deserves a reward for helping save your ass, don't you think?"

Minato slowly looked up. The jab, I perceived with sudden acuity, seemed to hit a little too close to home, and a flicker of hurt passed from his eyes before being covered with cold, flinty fury. Jiraiya seemed to sense his joke was of ill timing and was taken aback.

"Sorry, kid," the Toad Sage immediately apologized. "That wasn't funny. I didn't mean—"

But Minato cut him off, and he said the last thing I'd expected him to say that night.

"I think," he announced, frigid and curt, "she deserves a court-martial."


The charge served to me was one of absence without leave. A mercy, one had to admit, when other such ominous crimes as insubordination—and the quiet whisper of treason that always accompanied it—could have just as well been laid at my feet. But the resulting punishment, well…

"A mission ban," Auntie repeated as I set down the scroll. It was thin, sealed with red cloth, and implicitly insulting. A punishment as severe as a disciplinary mission ban—a full removal from the active forces and, as a consequence, all income—would normally be handed down to its recipient in person. "I… Minato decided this? He actually gave you a disciplinary ban?"

"He did," I confirmed. And a cold fury of my own settled in my heart then, because Minato—who grew up in the House himself and knew how our wages supported the lives of everyone in it—had taken my work from me anyway. Any other manner of punishment could have sufficed—demotion, confinement, extra duties or additional labor… but he chose the one thing that hurt not just me, but my entire family. His family, too. Or did this simply mean he no longer considered us House people his family? The fire lit itself anew.

"We'll make do, Suzu," Auntie raced to assure me. "It's all right. The clan will make up the lack if we need it."

Her words did not appease me. Stress had come over my foster mother and covered her like a leaden veil in the days since the attack had passed. The plan's success had assured that business could continue as usual in the village without anyone the wiser, but the problem now was that her husband had gone missing. Yes, Uncle Souhei had vanished—but not during the mission, because when she had raced to find him with the fear of suicide mission still glinting in her eyes she'd found that he'd checked in and out from his post without any fanfare whatsoever. He simply hadn't returned home after being dismissed. After hearing this I felt wretched for compounding her troubles; that, in turn, made me all the more furious.

And that was the start of my suspension. The first month flamed with rage, but also with betrayal. The question of why was ever-burning. I could accept being disciplined for abandoning the post that had been assigned to me; Konoha was a military organization and it had a chain of command that need to be maintained. But why this punishment? Why a punishment that made our loved ones suffer? Had the House really fallen out of his regard after all? After all the years he had lived with us had he really turned away just like that? Did we mean so little to him that he would discard us the moment he rose to power? That didn't seem like something characteristic of Minato at all.

Was it spite, then? Was it his revenge for the fact that I withheld my foreknowledge and put his life, wife, child, and village at risk? I never believed for a moment he had forgiven me as easily as he'd pretended to, but if we were actually in the throes of a fight right now it seemed insane to me that he would drag the House into it. There were children as little as Haruka here depending on the House to survive. There was no reason or honor at all in dragging them into a grudge between two people.

It was a keen pain to realize that my attempt to help—and in it my attempt to atone—had been rejected. I knew, after all, that I had been wrong. I knew I should have told him sooner and I knew I should have done something before things had come to the point they had at all; I had told Jiraiya as much. But if even this was not enough to begin making amends—if I would not even be allowed to try—well, then what was there to do? And what was this? A declaration that I would remain unforgiven? That he'd wield his authority over me without restraint? That he was big, I was small, and that I could not even hope to be reconciled with him?

The second month was better, but worse, too. Uncle Souhei returned and began to help around the House again, so at least we no longer were operating under the anticipated burden of taking missing person request to the clan head. But he was avoidant in the extreme. He hardly spoke at all when spoken to and his every free moment was spent away from us. He was trying, it seemed, to live with us without looking at us. Auntie's respite bled into a different kind of stress shortly.

Unable to take missions, I found little satisfaction in training and instead found myself beginning to devote all of my energy to the domestic arts. I spent hours upon hours cleaning, cooking, and sewing with Auntie. I began to wake up early in the morning to help make lunches for my little cousins, and after breakfast I walked them to the Academy. Around month three I began working at Itsuki-sensei's fruit shop after dropping them off, and then one day in month four, a few moments after Itsuki-sensei had smiled and handed me my weeks' wages, I realized with a start that the decision I'd been unable to make had, somewhere along the line, been made.

I wasn't taking missions. I wasn't training. I was looking after my family and earning money at a fruit store. I'd retired just like that.

As a chilly February rain began to fall I found myself dragging in the sale banner in a rush to avoid getting wet. Then I sat down on my stool, surrounded on all sides by strawberries, persimmons, and winter oranges. All at once I was living the life I'd secretly been dreaming of living. No violence, no blood, no politics.

Just life.


A/N: Cliffhangers are cruel. I thought I had better not take another half-year to update.

Well, a major change from the previous draft has occurred now, hasn't it? Kyuubi didn't get loose. Naruto's not the jinchuuriki anymore—it's still Kushina. Abd we also got to see Akihiko again in new content for the first time in almost five real-life years! His behavior is much more realistic this time, I think. This version of events makes much more sense to me than the version that was in Glory.

Now we get to move into an arc that I have been really looking forward to! I cannot wait to revise the writing of Souhei's secret.

Thanks as always for tagging along! Please drop a review with your thoughts if you are so inclined. I'm eager to get feedback again after so much time away from writing.

Cheers,

Eiruiel