Published: 1/24/2021

Previously: Suzu follows her uncle's trail to an unexpected place; Kyouya and Tsubasa make their first appearances; fateful meetings stand on the horizon.


"Hey there, little sister! How are you today?"

I found myself being lifted in the air by a young man with tousled brown hair and smiling hazel eyes. His mask was resting askew atop his head, and his cloak, hanging unzipped and open, revealed the steel grays and charcoal blacks of his uniform. His gauntlets were cool against the skin of my underarms, and at this close distance it was easy to see the assortment of knives and senbon stashed away all over his person—I counted two kunai and a bundle of needles in his sleeves alone.

Hideaki laughed merrily at my confounded stare. Beside him, Isana stood aloof. She seemed much more in place in her ANBU garb than he did. She was very stoic and her dark stare was unreadable. She was elegant in a sharp kind of way; her long plait, released from its coiled bun, reached well down her back. After a moment her gaze drifted away from my face and fixed itself on Hideaki's.

"She's not a baby," she said. "Don't infantilize her just because she's a girl. Put her down."

I found a burgeoning respect for her beginning to grow within me despite myself. It was not that Hideaki, I thought, was necessarily talking down at me. I knew that the I&E personnel had been grooming me to come off as disarmingly cute as possible. As a domestic infiltrator aimed towards high society it was simply the commonsense approach; a sweet-looking girl, after all, could go farther amongst the wealthy than a scrappy one. The role of looks in my work was undeniable. So in truth this exact sort of doting behavior would be just the sort of thing I ought to want from people; it would become my lifeline if I ever got the chance to do a real infiltration, after all. But that did not always mean I liked it. It messed with the brain to be loved only for a cultivated image.

Hideaki eyed me and then his partner shrewdly before he laughed again and set me down. "Pardon me," he said as he placed me gently on the grass. As soon as he did, though, he glanced at Tsubasa sidelong.

"Wait, before that," Tsubasa interjected before Hideaki could conduct any similarly embarrassing greetings. Then all of a sudden I found myself bending over backwards to avoid the spray of shuriken that flew in Hideaki's direction. Hideaki laughed delightedly and jumped back as Tsubasa produced a ninjato from nowhere and charged.

"Tsubasa!" Isana yelled, angry, before cutting herself off abruptly as she saw me flip back onto my feet from my hands. "You're a ninja?" she asked with narrowed eyes. I'd been unconsciously cloaking again, it seemed.

"Nominally. I've been on a disciplinary ban for the last…" I paused to count as I released my technique. "...six months, I guess."

She gave me a startled look as the suspicion fell from her face. "And how much longer do you have to go?"

"I don't know. It wasn't specified in the order."

"Your CO didn't tell you? Have you appealed?" She looked concerned now. "A whole half-year without work is harsh. Are you doing all right?"

"Who is there to appeal to?" I asked doubtfully. "The ban came from the Hokage. I've been taking some work from a friend, but I've mostly been relying on the clan to get by."

"From the Hokage?" Isana was incredulous now. "You're—what, a chuunin?"

I averted my eyes. "Yeah."

"It's unusual for the Hokage to be involved with the discipline of a mere chuunin," Hideaki commented as he came to a sudden stop beside us. Tsubasa was wheezing against a nearby tree and clutching his stomach. It seemed he'd been immobilized by a winding punch to the diaphragm.

"It is," Isana agreed.

"It's not like Yondaime-sama to be so heavy-handed," he commented further. "Especially with someone so young. We haven't known him long, of course, but so far he has generally been quite gracious. He's treated ANBU twice your age with more lenience…" He peered at me with a creased brow. "I'm shocked to hear he actually decided to starve someone out of the Forces. Even if you were some sort of political enemy and he did it to stamp out your influence…"

I just stared back blankly. Did he think I could hold that kind of power? I was thirteen.

"They say Shimura-sama was that old when he began gathering influence," Isana observed in reply. "He wasn't able to become Hokage thanks to Sarutobi-sama's appointment, but he enjoys enormous clout in the village to this day. Considering how charged village politics have become lately I wouldn't be surprised if Lord Fourth wished to crush any new threats before they rose."

"He never struck me as the sort," Hideaki mused, troubled. Then he put out an arm and neatly twisted Tsubasa's blade from his hand. "Still a moment, dearheart… these are strange tidings."

"Jerk," Tsubasa grumbled, though without heat. He grabbed his sword back and slid it back into its sheath. "You said we'd duel."

"How did you come to be in this situation?" Hideaki asked, ignoring this. His gaze shifted into something a little more detached and analytical, and suddenly he didn't seem so out of place in his uniform after all. "You are Souhei's niece, so I suppose that means you are also one of the orphans?"

I swallowed as a wave of discomfort swept through me. "I… uh, yeah. We grew up together. Or, well, we lived together until he came of age and moved out. And… I was on his team, Team 7, for a while. As a—a replacement member."

Tsubasa tilted his head, and Isana and Hideaki suddenly fixed me with looks of recognition.

"Imouto-sama," Isana said.

"Oh, that's fascinating," Hideaki murmured. "You're imouto-sama."

"But you're not actually his sister," Tsubasa prodded.

"I—no, we're cousins. But everyone calls him Minato-nii, I mean, all the kids at the House call him that. People probably just misunderstood," I stammered in explanation, feeling at once like a particularly distasteful imposter. And yet—

What could I say to explain? I shut my mouth. I had not spoken to Minato once since the confrontation with Obito. To be recognized as "imouto-sama" when it was ambiguous if he even thought of me as his family anymore—when I was not sure I even wanted to be his sister anymore—

I had never asked to be taken as the Hokage's sibling and showered with status. It wasn't right. It was a lie. Besides, there was a whole household of children beside me who loved him better anyway.

Hideaki made a noise of comprehension. "I see," he muttered.

"What?" asked Tsubasa.

Hideaki, it seemed, was unwilling to air out the dirty linens of others, so he furrowed his brow and didn't reply. Isana looked at her partner, regarded me clinically, and then also decided to keep her silence.

"Tsu-chan!" Kyouya's voice suddenly floated over from across the stream. He was tending to a setup of tables and picnic blankets in the garden. "Nana's arrived but she hasn't come in. Could you go to the gate and check if she needs help? Her hands might be full."

Tsubasa opened his mouth and looked like he might complain about being redirected, but the three of us immediately held up our hands to assert our innocence. Scowling slightly but mostly resigned, he grumbled about being left out of the loop and took off in a sullen shunshin to the gate.

Hideaki and Isana both returned their stares to me once he'd gone. Hideaki considered me deeply.

"You're a talented cloaker," he said after a long moment. "Your affect was totally normal when you were blending your signature earlier. Can you do total erasure, too?"

Isana raised her eyebrows at Hideaki as I responded in the affirmative. "You don't think…?" she trailed.

"I do think," he replied, still looking at me. "No wonder he disciplined you personally—you're the hospital intruder. I thought it must have been an inside job… the hunters would've been mobilized if it had been a foreign shinobi."

My mouth popped open and my stomach did a truly terrible twist at the mere thought of ANBU hunters mobilized to track me down. Just thinking of it was enough to make the blood drain from my face.

"Yes, this does make sense," Hideaki muttered to himself. "I understand now. You provided internal intelligence about the Kyuubi Attack that would have kicked off the Naruto series as a means to prevent it happening. But this strained your relationship with the Hokage, so he benched you. But you knew about the dangers and you forced your way into the operation against his orders, and he punished you more for it."

"...An indefinite mission ban still seems excessive to me," Isana commented after a long moment. "It's all within the Hokage's rights to fire someone from the Forces, but the Commander did say that it was the intruder who slowed the confrontation enough for him to send along backup."

"You went to save his life, didn't you?" Hideaki regarded me pensively. "I understand why Hokage-sama would discipline you for disobeying orders, but some measure of leniency would be expected for your contributions to his safety. Not even the council could argue otherwise. The medics said he nearly bled out from his injury."

I felt like I wanted to wilt and to rage at once, and I vacillated between the two before settling on apathy. "He hasn't forgiven me," I said flatly. "For not telling him. For keeping the secret until now."

A long silence fell. The three of us stood still for a drawn-out moment. Then Hideaki came forward and picked me up again, this time under his arm, and gave me an affectionate noogie as he began walking back towards Kyouya. I gasped, recognizing the gesture from Earth memories.

"I've never been noogied before," I said, slightly awed, as I reached up with my unpinned arm to fix my hair.

"Unsurprising," Hideaki replied cheerfully, "since it's not a common gesture in this culture."

A strange wistful smile crossed very briefly over Isana's face, which made me wonder. Uncle had told me she was a normal person and had no memories of anyone but her own self. Why would she make such a face at seeing a noogie? Did Hideaki perhaps give her noogies, too? I took one glance at her no-nonsense stance, stern even in distraction, and immediately dismissed the idea.

"Ah, there they are." Kyouya smiled at us before looking past our shoulders towards the approaching figures of Tsubasa and Nana. "They—" he suddenly faltered.

Isana and Hideaki turned. Then they also faltered, eyes going wide, and I looked again at Tsubasa and Nana, puzzled.

And then I realized there was a third person between them. His figure was partially obscured by the large stack of pastry boxes Tsubasa was balancing in his arms. His shoulders were hunched with age, but his bearing was quite solid as he walked alongside Nana in quiet conversation.

"Daisuke?" said Kyouya.


He was an old man with the crest of the Sarutobi clan pinned on his back. My first thought upon seeing him was that he was cold. Cold-eyed, cold-faced, and exceptionally cold-hearted.

"Clumsy child," he said. "Are you upset at the Hokage for kicking you out of the Forces? If you were so determined to make a mess of things, the least you should have done was make a real plan. You have no one to blame but yourself." He snorted. "Fool girl."

My only reply was a speechless stare, but Hideaki had to hold Tsubasa back by both arms.

"What the fuck? Who the fuck do you think you are?" Tsubasa snarled. Hideaki winced as his captive aimed three ruthless kicks in quick succession, one against Hideaki's shin and two against both his knees.

"And who are you?" Daisuke spared a disdainful glance. "Never mind," he dismissed before Tsubasa could reply. "Kyouya, what is your business, calling everyone out?"

From the moment Daisuke first spoke Kyouya's face had settled into iron civility; a carefully cultivated smile of vague welcome now hung on his features. It was not so forced as to be unnatural, but it was a very practiced expression.

"I wished to introduce my new acquaintance to the group," Kyouya replied gently. "I hadn't expected you to come, Daisuke, though of course you are welcome in my home. I'm pleased you took the time to visit us today."

Daisuke snorted again. "You don't actually think that you can shame me into playing nice by being polite."

"Oh no, not all." Kyouya demurred with great grace despite this decidedly discourteous declaration. "I have no patience for those sorts of games. Tsu-chan, here, I have your tea."

The still-steaming Tsubasa was roughly shoved into a lawn chair by Hideaki and forced into stillness by an overfilled cup of boiling beverage. Tsubasa stared mutinously up at all the adults around him, but Kyouya just smiled his practiced smile and began serving the group with slow, easy grace. I accepted my cup with dumb thanks; he spared me a warm nod. Then he invited Nana to join him as he seated himself by the table, leaving Daisuke to stand as the only man unserved. Daisuke raised an eyebrow.

"Do you think you're being clever by snubbing me in front of a group? As if I needed these people's regard."

Even our poker-faced ANBU were beginning to regard this bomb of feckless incivility with doubtful looks. I'd never encountered such unprovoked aggression from a fellow Leaf villager in my life.

"Certainly not," Kyouya replied. "As said, I have no interest in games. Throw your tantrum; you know my home as well as any of us. Once you have abused our sensibilities to your satisfaction, you are more than capable of seeing yourself out. You may return when you wish to speak with us like a decent human being. Until then there's no need, as you may say, to play nice." And so saying, he sipped his tea.

I turned in unison with Tsubasa to regard Kyouya with round eyes. Nana, who was wearing her own face of affected courtesy, gave her cousin a mild nod.

"What on earth are you doing?" I blurted out before another torrent of effrontery could spill forth from Daisuke's already-opening mouth. "What are you trying to accomplish right now?"

"He's displeased," Isana observed with indifference. "He is likely trying to scare you."

I just replied with another stare. What could he possibly gain from scaring me?

"Nothing much, I'd say," Hideaki remarked. "Presumably he wants you to resign yourself to the current situation and refrain from interfering further with the Hokage's affairs."

"What good would that do?" Things had been irreversibly altered. There was no taking that back now.

Hideaki just shrugged. I looked back at Daisuke and met a pair of flinty brown eyes. They were dark and displeased and—

Beneath his anger, I thought, there was a slew of breathless emotion. There was—disbelief. Distant denial and deep regret. I was suddenly taken back in time to the face of Kazuto, and I remembered him in his grief, spitting bitter resentment at his brother for lack of any other solace.

Daisuke saw the pity creep into my expression before I could stop it. His face screwed up with anger, but I couldn't help it. I didn't know the full of it, but even if I did, did it matter? I could tell just by reading the heavy guilt behind his eyes. He was like Uncle Souhei—or perhaps Uncle Souhei was like him. He'd known of Naruto and he'd refused to interfere.

I eyed his clan crest and his aged face and I thought he must have lost a lot in the time it took for skin to wrinkle like that. How many years must he have lived restraining himself, watching friends and family go, knowing everything and doing nothing?

"I haven't done anything wrong," I said softly. "And I don't deserve your anger. But I understand why you are angry."

Isana's brow furrowed, but Hideaki leaned forward with muted interest, as if he had spotted a fascinating animal from afar and wanted a closer look. Tsubasa, for his part, was wearing a face of tight restraint.

"Don't patronize me," Daisuke hissed back. "You arrogant child."

He had not endeared himself to me much in the time of our short acquaintance and this did not do anything to help his case. But I flattened my lips and gave him a hard stare because no matter what names he called me it still wouldn't change the truth.

"You can't fault me for taking a different path," I said. "And it may fail anyway."

"With that sort of flippancy you're twice the fool for doing this at all," he spat.

"I'm not a fool for hoping. It's a fool who wants change and does nothing to make one."

"Who gave you the right to throw people's lives about?"

"Who gave you the right to stand back and let them die?"

The whole garden was silent as we stared one another down. Nana and Kyouya eyed us with their expressions hidden behind their teacups. Hideaki turned his speculative gaze towards Daisuke.

"You're a fool," Daisuke finally said again. His words were hollow.

"Can you call yourself any wiser?" I questioned in reply.

The resulting gesture was a thing half-fury, half-despair. As suddenly as he had swept in, he swept away, taking his storm of ire with him. We tracked his path with our eyes and were rewarded with the sight of two figures standing a ways away at the bridge. Hayato-sensei turned to watch Daisuke leave; Uncle Souhei, however, stared at me with lips parted in astonishment.


"Why was Daisuke—" Uncle's face was the very picture of perplexity. "How did you—did they invite—how is Suzu—"

"Apparently she followed your week-old trail all the way here. The kid's a bloodhound," Hideaki complimented. Now that the theatrics seemed to be more or less over, he had thrown himself onto the picnic blanket and was helping himself to Nana's cookies. "I'd love to have another tracker like her for the unit. We've only got the one."

As he said this he eyed me consideringly. I just gave him a tired look, wondering how I could shut that down while still sidestepping the fact that there had already been a failed recruitment attempt. I didn't need a repeat of my Kakashi gaffe.

"I'd give it up, Hideaki," Isana commented upon seeing my face. She seated herself beside me on the other blanket and passed me a sandwich. "Look at her. Have you seen a bigger 'been there, done that' look in your life?"

Hideaki blinked at me before pealing off into laughter. "Wow, you're right!"

"You're crazy," Tsubasa told me as he slouched in his chair. "Did someone really try to recruit you into ANBU? Are we really the same age?"

I just pinched the bridge of my nose in reply.

"Suzu," Uncle said.

The garden once again descended into tense silence. I looked up.

"Suzu, I…" His words seemed to die in his throat. There was a long moment as he simply looked down at me, unable to speak. Eventually I decided to break the silence for him.

"You should have told me," I said. "Years ago. You should have helped me. I was all alone."

And his face crumpled. I had never seen Souhei Namikaze cry once in all my life, but his mouth opened, turned downward, and let out a low, keening sound. He made a choking noise as he tried to stop it in his chest; the result was a strangled, coughing sob. Kyouya and Nana both averted their eyes, looking abashed on his behalf. Isana glanced awkwardly between us. Tsubasa's eyes grew round; Hideaki just looked taken aback.

"I'm sorry," Uncle wept. "I'm… sorry. I can't—I don't know how—"

"You should start at the beginning," Hayato-sensei suggested in a soft murmur. "She won't understand unless you tell her."

"How?" Uncle choked. "Where?"

A sigh. "Her parents, maybe."

What I knew of Kazue and Yasunari Namikaze's deaths was not much. As I had been told growing up, they perished on the Suna front in the Second War shortly after I was born. I remembered nothing about them, not even impressions. I had been too young.

But I learned their history then. Some thirteen odd years ago, Uncle Souhei explained through gasping breaths, he had served as an iryou-nin while fighting in the war against Hidden Sand. Having been warned by his mentor not to become attached to those who were fated to die by canon, when he first learned that there would be a new forward group assembled to fight the as of then still unknown Suna puppeteer Sasori, he had resolved not to involve himself no matter the consequences. But when he'd learned his best friend Yasunari and his wife, Kazue, were members of that forward group, he'd changed his mind at the last moment and had raced to warn them in time. But he'd failed to reach them and, in the poisoned aftermath, failed also alongside the other medic-nin in devising an antidote quickly enough to save them. The antidote itself, when they finally managed to administer it, was only halfway effective. It spared the lives of the survivors—at the cost of their ability to mold chakra.

What happened in the aftermath of those days, it seemed, had burned a brand of fatalism directly onto Souhei's heart. He'd met the woman who eventually became his wife while helping the wounded of that battle, and he'd hated himself for the relationship and eventual marriage that came about in the wake of Kazue and Yasunari's deaths. When his wife Reiko was permanently ordered into retirement by the clan, he became a caretaker at the House alongside her. It was there that he encountered the newly-orphaned daughter of Kazue and Yasunari. When he met me, he said, he vowed in his heart that he would raise me in the place of my parents, who had died as a result of his cowardice.

"But I was never a good father to you," he whispered, face hidden behind a hand. "Never when it counted. This time least of all."

As he finished his tale there was a heavy silence. Hayato-sensei was the only one among us whose expression had remained even throughout the whole tale. I didn't know what to make of it. As I'd aged Auntie had spoken more about her life in the Second War, but Uncle never shared his story. I hadn't known he'd been friends with my parents. I didn't think he felt any responsibility for me beyond his general role as a clan caretaker.

And then, before I'd even really finished processing, I found myself saying, "You were a good father." And then I paused.

Uncle Souhei's face flooded with pained disbelief. Maybe he thought I was just saying it to make him feel better. I considered. Was I just saying it to make him feel better?

"No, you really were," I realized after a pensive moment. "When I was little you were always there. You were always watching. You were there when I was packing for Tatsumi River. You were there when I fought with Akihiko. You were there to rescue me and Haruka from the assassins, too. It counted then."

"But I—" he swallowed. "I should have helped you."

I considered this for a long moment, too. There was no doubt about that. He should have helped me. Not only for me, but for everyone whose life depended on our foreknowledge. He'd had a responsibility and he'd run from it. He'd disengaged and dropped all of his duties upon his wife and hid away, unable to face her or the children, because he was a coward. He was a coward.

"But I forgive you," I found myself concluding in a surprised voice. I was surprised. Just like that?

"Just like that?" Uncle whispered, unbelieving. I felt my eyebrows pinch together.

"No…" I said slowly. "No, you have to do something for me first."

The dread of reckoning was plain on his face. I'd never seen a grown man look so scared of anything in my life. He looked as if I could convict his very soul and damn him to hell with a single word.

"You need to start coming home at mealtimes," I finally said. "Auntie can't run everything alone. And help me figure out what the hell I'm doing with all this foreknowledge."


A/N: I haven't mentioned this yet, but I'm migrating to AO3. HSS' main story has already been cross-posted. The side stories will go on at a later date. Once that's finished I'm probably not going to spend too much time on . I might keep updating HSS here, but probably not as promptly. I uploaded this chapter on AO3 over a week ago, actually...

Don't worry, though, because Suzu's journey continues! Believe it or not, we're almost to the halfway mark on the outline. And when HSS is finished, I have the content for a one-shot sequel and a small spin-off about the Suzuverse ANBU. I make no promises about the timeline of these things, but I thought you might be heartened to know that, for what it's worth, these plans do exist.