Our Own House

"And we swore on that day that it will never fall apart"


I felt like a zombie as we collected ourselves for dismissal. The whole room was buzzing with gossip and excitement as everyone processed their own team assignments, but I couldn't appreciate any of it.

Shisui Uchiha, I thought to myself, completely mortified. Shisui freaking Uchiha. Why couldn't I just catch a break for once? All I wanted was to live a quiet life, where all my friends and family weren't in mortal danger. Why in the world, out of every possible option for teammates, did I have to end up with Shisui Uchiha?

It was bad enough that I had to worry about my family. Really, my anxiety about them and the war had only recently subsided. I couldn't start getting attached to someone from the Uchiha clan now. Much less Shisui, who would become such a tragic victim during their demise. This was like opening up a whole new can of worms. One that I didn't want to deal with whatsoever. I'm not Naruto Uzumaki. I'm not the savior that everyone seemed to need in this world. I wasn't here to save Shisui or Sasuke or Itachi or any of the rest of the Uchiha clan. Their lives were too big a burden for my little shoulders to bear.

Anyways, even if I did save them - what then? I was depending on my foreknowledge to save my family. Would Orochimaru still attack the village and kill Hiruzen if Sasuke wasn't his only option for Uchiha bait? Would Asuma still end up fighting Hidan if the village had an entire clan of sharingan warriors to send out against the Akatsuki as well? What about Isamu and Biwako? How could I navigate their untimely demise when the details would be even more blurry than what I already had?

I was a terrible person for thinking all of this, but I couldn't help it. It was okay to worry about myself, wasn't it? The shinobi world was kind of a shitty place, when you got past all the cool super powers. If I didn't reign in my heart, it would break me.

"We should probably say hello, I guess," Asuma's voice chirped in my ear, registering only barely through the buzz of my thoughts. "Nat... did you hear me?"

"What?" I blinked, looking at him. A thin frown bloomed on his face immediately, and his eyebrows furrowed together. I guess I probably wasn't taking as much care to smother my reaction as I should have been. I probably looked just as distressed as I felt.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

I nodded, trying to correct myself immediately. I picked my jaw up off the floor, straightened my back, and smoothed my expression down to something more neutral. I don't think I looked okay, per se, but I hid the worst of it as deep beneath the surface as I could manage. Now was not the time to be falling apart.

"I, uh, just didn't think we'd be on a team with Shisui. It caught me off guard," I said, letting out a deep breath. If he was going to believe me, I had to calm down.

Asuma's eyes narrowed. My heart was beating so loud, he could probably hear it.

"You've been spending too much time around Obito," he decided after a moment, and I felt the tension leave my frame immediately. "Come on, everyone else seems to like him well enough."

"Yeah, I guess so," I automatically agreed. That was as good as an excuse for me as anything, even if it didn't make any sense. I never hung out with Obito if I could avoid it - most of our 'friendship' just revolved around the fact that we hung around the same people. It was true, of course, that Obito had some sort of mysterious grudge against his cousin, but I sure as hell wasn't taking time out of my day to gossip with him about it. If that's what Asuma wanted to believe though, then I wasn't going to correct him.

"Well like I was saying, we should probably go say hi to him. Mom will be mad at us if we don't," he went on, shoulders fixing into a lazy shrug. He shifted his weight for a moment, looking suddenly very smug, before adding a, "Be nice."

"Hey! I'm always nice," I protested. The irony of all this wasn't lost on me. Usually I was the one telling him to be on his best behavior. He was such a little twerp.

"Yeah, when you're not being weird," his smirked. He was enjoying our role reversal too much. "Now let's go."

Grabbing my arm, he half dragged me over to Shisui. The Uchiha was sitting on the other end of the room next to Mogusa, one of the boys on Kurenai's team, and seemed to be wrapping up a conversation as we approached. As much as I was trying to smother my feelings, every step we took in his direction raised my panic-dial a little bit higher. I could hear my heart beating in my ears, and my palms were starting to sweat.

I would've given the shirt off my back to have been literally any other place but there.

"Hey Shisui-kun," Asuma greeted for the both of us.

Shisui spun around in his chair at the sound of his name, a happy grin growing on his face before he even looked at us.

"Oh, hiya," he piped, hopping to his feet. "You're coming to say hello? You beat me to it. I was just about to go looking for you guys."

"Yeah, we just wanted to say that we were excited to, ah, be on a team with you," Asuma said with an awkward half-smile. He actually seemed nervous as he stretched his arm up to rub the back of his head with one hand. That was interesting. I wondered if Biwako had threatened him this morning to get him acting so polite.

"Thanks, it's an honor to be with you as well," Shisui nodded sincerely. Then he dipped forward into a low formal bow, like the kind you might give to a respected superior. I stared at him dumbly as he righted himself again. "I'm sure we'll all be great friends!"

My stomach clenched involuntarily, and for a moment, I thought I might be getting sick. I didn't even realize that the silence between us was becoming uncomfortably long until Asuma sent his elbow into my ribcage.

Oh, it was my turn to say something nice.

"Yeah, great friends," I agreed. It wasn't the most graceful thing that's ever come out of my mouth, that's for sure, but it was all I could muster. Thankfully, Shisui seemed oblivious to whatever vibe I might've been giving off, although Asuma shot me a glance like I'd grown an extra head. I probably was going to have to try harder if this was going to work for any extended period of time.

"Cool, well, my mom is waiting for me outside, I'll see you both tomorrow," Shisui nodded, stealing another glance at both of us. There was an unfettered sort of excitement radiating off of him. I didn't like it.

Then with a wave, he trotted down towards the door. He was gone for all of five seconds before Asuma was bothering me again.

"You sure you're feeling alright," Asuma pestered.

"Yeah," I lied once again. "I'm fine."

"Alright," he allowed skeptically, and we started out the door to head home for ourselves.

I was restless for the remainder of the day after that. My mind wouldn't stop moving. Shisui. Shisui. Shisui. He was all I could think about. Of course, Asuma's train of thought was going somewhere similar. He was babbling excitedly about missions, genin, and team assignments the entire way home, and would have continued for hours if I hadn't told him I was going to read a book for the evening.

I needed some time alone to process everything.

Maybe that had been a bad idea though. At the very least, Asuma had been a decent distraction. Once I was holed up with my book, my mind was suddenly given free reign to run completely wild. I didn't process more than a sentence or two of my book the entire evening after I picked it up. Instead I sat for hours staring at the page, looking at the same five words over and over and over again.

Here was the crux of my problem: I couldn't do anything about this. The more I thought about it, the more I understood that I was stuck. The only option that could possibly remove Shisui from my life was to fail the test with my sensei, but I couldn't do that. I was bored at the Academy, and I needed to get stronger. Flunking the second exam would mean delaying everything by at least another six months. Plus, there was no guarantee that I wouldn't be placed with Shisui again anyways after the next round of exams. I ran my fingers absently over the leaf symbol I had strapped to my arm. I had worked too hard to just give this up now.

Plus Asuma might actually kill me if I ruined this for the both of us.

If I didn't fail though, that meant I would pass. That meant I would be spending every day training side by side with Shisui Uchiha for at least a year, probably more. With students graduating the Academy so young, they had started making kids wait a while before getting any promotions. Chunin were supposed to be squad leaders, and no matter how talented you were, most seasoned ninja would grumble if they had to follow orders from a seven year old.

People like Kakashi were rare exceptions.

So yeah, there I was, with my hands tied in an unbreakable knot. The whole situation was sitting like a boulder in my stomach. I was just going to have to take this one step at a time. Maybe I wouldn't like Shisui. Then I'd be able to just drift away from him when we were promoted.

Yeah, that's what I'd have to tell myself if I wanted to sleep at night. Not that I ended up sleeping much that night anyhow.

It had been a while since my foreknowledge had kept me up at night. The last time I had trouble was probably some time during the war, back when Nawaki was still alive. Tonight though... every time I closed my eyes, I saw Shisui's looking at me, crying bloody tears with a smile on his face.


When the morning finally came, I felt groggy and disgruntled. I certainly wasn't ready to meet my new sensei. I didn't have much of a choice though - Asuma was chomping at the bit to get to the Academy. He had woken up an hour earlier than he needed to, and half dragged me out of bed when he realized that I was awake too.

"If we leave now, we're just going to end up sitting in the Academy for an extra half hour by ourselves," I grumbled, as he pulled on a new brown sleeveless hoody and tied his headband around his forehead. His new genin attire made him look twice as much like Hiruzen and Isamu as he had before. All he was missing was the Sarutobi clan symbol stamped on him somewhere. It was interesting that he wasn't wearing any clan paraphernalia, actually. He was finally allowed to now since he'd made genin, after all.

"Hmph fine," he frowned, pouting a little. I got him to hang around the house for another forty five minutes before he forced me out the door. I was grumpy as all get-out, but I had to admit it probably wasn't the best idea to be late today.

Soon enough, we found ourselves walking back into our Academy classroom one last time. Due to my stalling, we were the last two people to show up. It was weird looking at our classmates all rearranged according to team assignment. People were next to peers they never talked to before, and more than a few of them looked a little awkward.

I sighed when I saw Shisui waving to us from the third row. Why was he so cheery? I didn't get enough sleep last night to deal with this.

"Morning," Shisui sang in greeting as we walked up to join him.

"Morning," Asuma yawned in response.

I nodded to Shisui, deciding that was the best I could give him right now in my sleep deprived state. Then I allowed Asuma to slip into the middle seat.

"You two ready for some fun today? My cousin told me that most jonin instructors like to test their new students when they're first assigned," Shisui bubbled, making conversation.

"Hopefully we have the same definition of the word fun," I replied, slouching in my chair.

Truth be told, I was actually rather anxious about today. After all the stewing I'd done the night before, one thing was terribly clear to me. I had to pass whatever test our jonin instructor threw at us. Failure simply wasn't an option, and while I could pass written exams in my sleep, I was worried about how I was going to react in a real-world situation.

It didn't help that Shisui had thrown me off my game yesterday. Everything that seemed certain before suddenly felt like it was up in the air.

"Ah, don't worry about it, I'm sure we'll do just fine," Shisui told me over Asuma's head. My stomach churned a little. I didn't need his kind words right now. I didn't need them ever. What was he playing at anyways, being so nice so early in the morning? Narrowing my eyes at him, I watched as his smile faltered a little.

Hmph, so maybe there was an end to his boisterous energy.

"Shisui-kun," Asuma cut into our staring contest. "You, uh, want to play a game while we wait?"

"Oh, sure," Shisui nodded, shooting me another sideways glance.

The two of them proceeded to start playing a ninja derivative of I Spy, while I continued to sulk. Asuma was probably going to yell at me later for this, but I found that I didn't care much. I just couldn't be friendly with them right now. If I did, I think all my coping mechanisms might simply break, and I'd melt down completely.

Luckily, we didn't have to wait very long. About five minutes after we had taken our seats, two men walked into the room. One was huge with a round stomach, wild red hair, and purple lines decorating his face. The other, meanwhile, seemed a bit neater with straight blonde hair and intelligent green eyes. He was layered in the regular konoha blues and flak jacket underneath a red vest.

I pegged their identities the moment I saw their faces. After all, I was half expecting the famous Ino-Shika-Cho combination to be rearing their faces today at team assignments, even though Shikamaru's father seemed to be missing. It made sense that because Minato was a jonin sensei for my generation, the other Naruto parents might also be taking students, after all.

I would be happy working under either one of the two men standing in front of me. Now I guess the big question remaining was which team belonged with who.

Ino's father cleared his throat first.

"Team One," he said. A few rows to the side, I saw Kurenai perk up between Mogusa and Kumade. "My name is Inoichi Yamanaka, you can follow me."

"Yes sir," Mogusa answered for the three of them. Asuma waved to Kurenai as she got up from her chair. She shot him a nervous smile and waved back.

Next, Choza Akimichi clapped his big hands together. "And Team Two," he said with a wide grin. "You're with me."

"Sensei! Let me just first say what an honor it will be to have you as a teacher! My name is Maito Guy, and I am going to be the best student you could possibly ask for!" a boisterous voice broke out from behind me.

Inoichi's lips quirked a little as he disappeared out the door with Kurenai and company.

Choza seemed completely unfazed, meanwhile. In fact, I'd say he might have even been expecting something. "Wonderful," he smiled serenely at Guy. I noted that Ebisu looked like he was going to explode as he glared at his green teammate's back, and I couldn't help but smirk a little to myself. Even in my bad mood, Guy being Guy was always made my day a little better.

"He's kind of a character don't you think?" Shisui said aloud as the four of them left the room. With Team One and Two gone, it was just my team, Obito and Rin left.

"Guy's going to be one of the best ninja in the village one day," I replied, feeling unreasonably defensive of my friend. "Just wait and see."

"Well sure, I guess," Shisui frowned again. "Guy-kun works harder than any one I've ever met. Anybody whose that crazy is going to end up getting real strong. I didn't mean anything bad by it."

"Yeah," I nodded, sinking down into my chair a bit more. Really I had to check myself. This morning wasn't going very well, and I knew half of it was probably my fault. Shisui wasn't trying to start a fight with me. I was just instigating. Why couldn't he be obnoxious like half the other kids in my class? It would be a lot easier to hate someone like Kumade who'd just left with Kurenai.

Asuma let out a heavy sigh, as I fell back into silence with the boys. For another few minutes, the only two people in the room making noise were Obito and Rin. They seemed to be cheerful enough, at least. Obito looked positively smitten to be Rin's teammate, and Rin was always glad to have a friend. Seeing the two of them so happy together made me feel even worse, if that was possible.

My heart fluttered in relief when the door finally clicked open again a minute or two later. Obito and Rin's voices hushed almost immediately, and the world stood still for a moment of anticipation.

Who was walking through the door? Was it Minato? Was it our new sensei?

In stepped a man that was completely too familiar. He was tall, dressed in the typical Konoha blues, except for one white and red sleeves poking out from his flak jacket. His hair was white, just like mine, and he wore it short in the front with a long spiky rat-tail section falling down his back.

I didn't even bother hiding my jaw hitting the floor.

"Sakumo-san?"

He... He should be dead...

"That's Sakumo-sensei to you now," the man smirked. "Team Four, with me."

I felt like I was in another dimension. Every thought of Shisui Uchiha had vanished from my mind, and had been replaced with dumb struck astonishment. Sakumo Hatake had gone on the mission. He'd failed it. The village had blamed him. Everything had been by the book. He... he should have committed suicide, years ago.

I racked my mind, thinking of all the neighborhood gossip I'd heard recently. There hadn't been anything about Sakumo, I realized. Not a single word. It's not like I'd been keeping an ear out for him, of course. I didn't see Kakashi regularly anymore since he graduated, and I never really crossed paths with Sakumo either. I guess I just never thought twice about the absence of news.

Maybe I should have.

"You know him?" Asuma whispered under his breath, looking between me and our new sensei. I blinked.

"He's Kakashi's father," I breathed back. What had been different? What could have happened to have prevented him from... "I met him a while back, after I went for a run with Guy. We, uh, talked. It was just a minute though."

Shisui grinned - clearly he recognized our new sensei as well.

"I hear they call him the White Fang," he said, tone laced with excitement.

Sakumo didn't wait for us to gather ourselves. When I looked up again, he had his back turned to us and was already walking out the door. Scrambling out of our chairs, we made to follow him. He led us out of the classroom and towards the stairs, heading towards the roof.

My mind was whirling during the short walk up there.

Could I really have done this? Could my short thirty second conversation have altered this man's life so much? Or was it just my entire existence that was disrupting things? I was close with a lot of important people. Maybe something else had changed because of me. I'm sure Hiruzen worked closely with Sakumo during the aftermath of his failed mission. Maybe the Hokage phrased a sentence differently because of me, or maybe he'd been off taking care of me at some key important time. It was impossible to tell.

No matter which way you tried to slice it though, there was no denying that Sakumo was here today because of me. I wasn't sure how I felt about that.

I mean, it's not that I wanted him to die. I was happy that he'd found some happiness again, that he'd decided to live. This would be great for Kakashi, great for me now that he was assigned to be my teacher. Sakumo Hatake's life was worth half a world, I knew it better than most.

But like everything else Sakumo's presence boiled down to one thing: Would Sakumo living effect my ability to save my family? I couldn't know. I didn't really want to trade the life of a stranger for the life of my brothers or my parents.

It was too late now though, I suppose.

When we reached the rooftop, Sakumo gestured for us to sit on the set of stairs that led to the class-gardens. We filed in accordingly, with all the grace and nerves three fidgety ninja-children could muster. Shisui slid into place first, then Asuma, then me, and all the while Sakumo watched. He stood stick straight just in front of the railing with his arms crossed over his chest. He looked like he was sizing up three good pieces of meat.

"Alright," Sakumo said finally. "Let's start with lesson number one. Every successful team is built on good friendships. So on that note, the first thing we're going to do is start with introductions. I want you to tell me about yourselves, include whatever you think is important. Stuff you like, dislike. Stuff you do. Who do you want to be when you grow up, and anything else you want to share. Okay?"

"Sure, sensei, I can start," Shisui responded almost immediately. "My name is Shisui Uchiha. Uh, I like hanging out with my friends, and my cousins, and my older sister. I also like training and having competitions with them. I really don't like being bored or doing chores for my Mom." His face hardened then into a deadly serious expression. "When I grow up, I want to be the strongest ninja ever so that I can keep all of them safe."

I withheld a cringe, wishing that Shishui hadn't shared. I didn't need to hear that sentence come out of his mouth. It was probably going to keep me up tonight again.

Sakumo nodded, face completely blank, and his black eyes moved to Asuma. "And you?" he asked.

"My name's Asuma Sarutobi," he responded, crossing his arms. "I like playing games and going to the park. Usually with Nat." He kicked at my leg thoughtlessly as he mentioned my name. "I don't like it when people can't keep their promises, and..." he paused, glancing at me again. "My dream is to become a great ninja, but I want to do it my own way. I don't want to be like my dad or my older brother. I want to be known for being myself, not for being just another Sarutobi."

I raised my eyebrows, making eye contact with him. He just shrugged in return. We usually didn't talk about things like this together, but looking back, his dream made sense to me. It was interesting to see that he'd finally found a way to put all his mixed feelings surrounding his father and his clan into words. It was almost like he was growing up.

"And lastly," Sakumo interrupted my mental tangent.

"I'm Natsuki Senju," I said, rocking forward on the steps. "I like reading and learning new things. My favorite food is dango. I don't like waiting and I really don't like hospitals." I chewed on my lip as I got to the last part. What did I want from life? The answer was easy enough - I wanted to stop bad things from happening to my loved ones. I wanted for the whole lot of us to just be happy together. Unfortunately, there was no good way to say that exactly without also bringing up the rest of my baggage. I would have to settle for something less. "Um, and I guess I just want to grow up to be strong enough to protect my family," I finished, glancing sideways at Shisui. I was aware we'd both basically said we had the same dream for the future. I'm sure Sakumo had noticed as well.

"Very good," Sakumo nodded.

"Wait, Sensei, you haven't gone yet," Shisui interrupted him. "You've got to introduce yourself now too."

"Me?" Sakumo's eyebrows rose. "Hmm. Well, I like a lot of different things. I have a son whose about your age. My favorite hobby right now is teaching him how to cook. Although I think he'll be better than me pretty soon. I also don't like it when people break promises, Asuma. And lastly my dream for the future right now is to see my three new students grow up to be everything they want to be."

He smiled widely at us, and I found myself blushing. Beside me, Asuma looked mildly surprised, while Shisui on the other side of him was grinning sheepishly back at our sensei.

I turned my gaze back to Sakumo who seemed to be enjoying himself a little too much. I knew what was coming next. It was about time for the other shoe to drop.

"Of course, that's all depending on one thing," Sakumo shrugged easily. "Before I can officially call you my students, you'll just have to pass a little test first."

Alright, I swallowed. Here we go.


Arc Title and Chapter Quote from song Our Own House by The MisterWives


A/N Alright, new chapters up!

Her new sensei's officially been announced! Sakumo Hatake's going strong, what do you think?

As always, thanks to everyone who left a review last chapter (there was a lot of you this time, I was thrilled). Remember to leave another ;)

Until next time!

Aule