I thought to myself that I would update every two weeks but before I knew it a month had passed! Ah, but I did update – just not this fic. [shamless plug: The Reason XD].
I had started writing but then stopped because I felt uninspired but then I finally figured out how I wanted to write the ending so now, without much further ado, the new chapter!
CHAPTER 10
Sasuke watched Naruto chase after Sakura from the window, it almost seemed as if nothing had changed. He pressed his head against the windowpane and closed his eyes trying to block Naruto's voice from his head. He was really loud after all.
- - -
It was winter in hidden cloud village; the city was different since Kakashi had last been here. Beyond the mountain where they stood, they could see the village safely blanketed in snow.
"What is it? What is it?" Naruto asked repeatedly, sounding like a broken record. It had been a while since they had a real mission and neither Kakashi nor Iruka had given them any details surrounding their leave.
"Ah..." Kakashi looked at Iruka, "I'll let Iruka-sensei give you guys the details since he's joining us."
Iruka's eyebrows shot up; he should have known Kakashi hadn't planned out what to say to his team. "Well..." He scowled at the other man, "I think it's better if it came from you. After all, you are their sensei."
Kakashi declined politely, "No, be my guest. I mean, you read missions to us all the time but you've never have a chance to brief a team on it. Take this as experience for when you get your own little team of Genins."
Iruka smiled through his gritted teeth, Kakashi wasn't giving up so easily. "Well... we, ah, are here to, we're assigned to find, to be more exact to retrieve Tsunade's lost pig."
"Wha-?!" Naruto howled before Kakashi clamped his hand over the boy's mouth.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you."
Naruto yanked Kakashi's hand away, "Why not?!"
"Baka. We're standing on a snowy mountain. What do you think will happen." Sasuke muttered.
Five heads turned when they heard rumbling and sure enough, snow was barreling down on them. Iruka and Kakashi reached for the children and hoped they would be able to escape in the nick of time but they were a second too late.
Iruka brushed away the ice from his eyes and grimaced slightly at the feeling of it scraping against his skin. He scanned the area for the rest of his team but found only Naruto who currently seemed to be in the same situation as he was, both stuck halfway in the snow.
Naruto grinned and patted the snow beside him, "I landed on a soft spot."
"Gmmm ufff!!"
"Wah! It talks!" Naruto yelped and struggled to free himself. What they found to be the soft spot was actually Sasuke and a very mad Sasuke at that. With a little help from Sasuke's Chidori and Naruto's Rasengan, enough snow had cleared away for Kakashi and Sakura to free themselves from their own snowy coffins.
The five trudged towards town beleaguered and exhausted from their battle on the mountain. Mother Nature was a force not to be reckoned with. They continued on into town without ever noticing the figure in the distance watching them.
- - -
Kakashi fell back into bed, soft blankets and someplace dry was all he needed in life or at least at the moment.
Iruka yanked him down to the floor beside him, "Your bed's on the floor Kakashi."
Sakura smiled at them and crawled underneath the covers that Kakashi had just been on. "Thank you Iruka-sensei."
"Hey..." Kakashi mumbled to himself, "Does she get special treatment just cause she's a girl? She needs to learn to train herself as a ninja, Sasuke and Naruto too." He crawled into his makeshift sleeping bag and turned over, "I'm getting too old for this."
As always, Iruka chose to ignore him and got up to turn off the nights, "Good-night."
Iruka was sound asleep when he heard someone whispering his name. "Iruka- sensei, Iruka-sensei... are you awake?"
"Mmm... Naruto?"
Iruka checked on Sakura before following Naruto out of the woods. He didn't want to leave Sakura all by herself but it seemed safe enough and he knew Naruto would not let up on this. "It's not fair! Kakashi-sensei is playing favorites again!" Naruto was seething away, "What's so special about Sasuke anyway? I mean, wasn't he the reason we lost our fellow ninjas?"
"Naruto!" Iruka had had enough, "I've always believed in you and what you are capable of. I believe in your dream of becoming Hokage but how can you speak ill of your teammate? I know you have your differences but now is really not the time."
"Hmm?" Naruto stopped in his tracks and turned back to look at his sensei, "Is there something you're not telling me?"
Unlike the students in his class where he taught just the basics, he was now solely responsible for shaping and molding Naruto into a better ninja, now was not the time to be his friend. He could not jeopardize the mission so he couldn't tell Naruto anything. He gave his most reassuring smile to Naruto and said, "Just get along with Sasuke. Didn't Kakashi teach you guys about teamwork?"
Naruto shrugged and continued on, "He's always the one that starts it."
"Uh, just where are we going?" Iruka asked after they had been walking around in circles.
"Shh! I found them." Naruto shushed Iruka and squatted down behind some bushes.
"Funny, how is it we're able to find them if we've been walking around in circles?" Iruka muttered to himself before squatting down beside Naruto.
- - -
Kakashi dropped to the ground and leaned against the tree for support before digging out his Icha Icha Paradise, "What do you want Sasuke?" With one eye, he looked up at the boy who was standing in front of him, his hands were in his pockets and his eyes on the ground.
"I was thinking about what you said to me back then." said Sasuke.
"Oh?" said Kakashi looking quite amused at the situation. He wondered where this conversation would lead; perhaps Sasuke was finally opening up to him. He placed his book back in his vest pocket.
"What did you mean when you said your hands were stained with innocent blood? What happened to your loved ones?"
"Why the sudden interest?" Kakashi pushed himself off the ground and began to walk away, "What I say is for your own good but I don't really feel like sharing with you now. Besides, it's late."
"Kakashi! You said you couldn't save me from going the same path as you had but you're walking away! How can I avoid that path if I don't know path you chose?" screamed Sasuke. His hands were now balled into fists and he stood in the same spot with his eyes still on the ground.
"It's not that I don't want to tell you." Kakashi walked up to Sasuke and placed his hand on the boys shoulder, gripping it harder than he meant to. "It's just too painful."
Sasuke brushed Kakashi's hand off, "Don't. I'm glad you won't be our sensei."
Kakashi turned away from Sasuke and shoved his hands in his pockets, "I did it."
"You?!" Sasuke lifted his gaze away from the ground and towards Kakashi. His mind was reeling. He wasn't sure what to make of Kakashi's confession or if it meant what he thought it did.
"My hands, like yours were trained from a very young age to kill. Let's just say that in my youth, I didn't make the right decisions, I didn't listen to my sensei and I made my own decisions. Those decisions cost the lives of the ones I loved the most. I failed to do the most important thing of a ninja: to protect those that are precious to me." Kakashi took off his hitae-ate headband and shoved it in front of Sasuke's face. "Take a look at the symbol there. It represents our village. If you can't make decisions based on that then you should quit. You'll never become more powerful than Itachi. Find the power in protecting what you cherish, not through the burning hate you feel."
"I... I... I can't let it go so easily. If you do know how I feel, you'd know how hard it will be for me." said Sasuke.
Kakashi retied his headband on, "I'm only asking you try."
"Wahhh!" A voice screamed from the bushes.
Neither Kakashi nor Sasuke bothered to pay any attention to their intruder. It was something that occurred often so they were pretty much immune to sudden outbursts, especially from Naruto.
"I can't promise anything but I'll try."
Kakashi smiled.
"Kakashi-sensei, is Iruka-sensei here to replace you?"
"Did you call me Sasuke?" Iruka magically appeared next to the both of them.
Both men jumped a little; although they were both accustomed to unexpected outbursts from Naruto, they had not expected Iruka to appear out of thin air.
"No." said Sasuke. He walked over to where Naruto was and to everyone's surprise, he reached out a hand to help him up.
Naruto gave Sasuke a funny look before his took his hand. "Thanks Sasuke." said Naruto as he smiled.
Iruka chuckled to himself as he watched them head back to the inn, "I wonder if hell has frozen over. I would have never expected that from Sasuke! By the way, what happened?"
Kakashi took his hands out of his pockets and stared at them, "Noooooooo!"
"Kakashi! What happened? Are you ok?" Iruka rushed to Kakashi's side and held him in his arms instinctively.
"There's blood on these hands..." Kakashi brought his hands up and covered his face.
Iruka held onto Kakashi more tightly and brought his chin to rest on his shoulder, "Shh... it's okay." He whispered into his ear.
A second of silence lapsed into minutes and minutes into hours, they stayed like that till daybreak.
I wanted to make certain scenes longer but then I also prefer to be subtle when writing so the reader can pick up on things on their own rather then having me point it out... so hopefully it worked the way I wanted it to.
Thank you for the previous reviews!
Please continue to review so that I may grow as a writer... ah, what a far fetched dream that seems... ::sweatdrops::
I had started writing but then stopped because I felt uninspired but then I finally figured out how I wanted to write the ending so now, without much further ado, the new chapter!
CHAPTER 10
Sasuke watched Naruto chase after Sakura from the window, it almost seemed as if nothing had changed. He pressed his head against the windowpane and closed his eyes trying to block Naruto's voice from his head. He was really loud after all.
- - -
It was winter in hidden cloud village; the city was different since Kakashi had last been here. Beyond the mountain where they stood, they could see the village safely blanketed in snow.
"What is it? What is it?" Naruto asked repeatedly, sounding like a broken record. It had been a while since they had a real mission and neither Kakashi nor Iruka had given them any details surrounding their leave.
"Ah..." Kakashi looked at Iruka, "I'll let Iruka-sensei give you guys the details since he's joining us."
Iruka's eyebrows shot up; he should have known Kakashi hadn't planned out what to say to his team. "Well..." He scowled at the other man, "I think it's better if it came from you. After all, you are their sensei."
Kakashi declined politely, "No, be my guest. I mean, you read missions to us all the time but you've never have a chance to brief a team on it. Take this as experience for when you get your own little team of Genins."
Iruka smiled through his gritted teeth, Kakashi wasn't giving up so easily. "Well... we, ah, are here to, we're assigned to find, to be more exact to retrieve Tsunade's lost pig."
"Wha-?!" Naruto howled before Kakashi clamped his hand over the boy's mouth.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you."
Naruto yanked Kakashi's hand away, "Why not?!"
"Baka. We're standing on a snowy mountain. What do you think will happen." Sasuke muttered.
Five heads turned when they heard rumbling and sure enough, snow was barreling down on them. Iruka and Kakashi reached for the children and hoped they would be able to escape in the nick of time but they were a second too late.
Iruka brushed away the ice from his eyes and grimaced slightly at the feeling of it scraping against his skin. He scanned the area for the rest of his team but found only Naruto who currently seemed to be in the same situation as he was, both stuck halfway in the snow.
Naruto grinned and patted the snow beside him, "I landed on a soft spot."
"Gmmm ufff!!"
"Wah! It talks!" Naruto yelped and struggled to free himself. What they found to be the soft spot was actually Sasuke and a very mad Sasuke at that. With a little help from Sasuke's Chidori and Naruto's Rasengan, enough snow had cleared away for Kakashi and Sakura to free themselves from their own snowy coffins.
The five trudged towards town beleaguered and exhausted from their battle on the mountain. Mother Nature was a force not to be reckoned with. They continued on into town without ever noticing the figure in the distance watching them.
- - -
Kakashi fell back into bed, soft blankets and someplace dry was all he needed in life or at least at the moment.
Iruka yanked him down to the floor beside him, "Your bed's on the floor Kakashi."
Sakura smiled at them and crawled underneath the covers that Kakashi had just been on. "Thank you Iruka-sensei."
"Hey..." Kakashi mumbled to himself, "Does she get special treatment just cause she's a girl? She needs to learn to train herself as a ninja, Sasuke and Naruto too." He crawled into his makeshift sleeping bag and turned over, "I'm getting too old for this."
As always, Iruka chose to ignore him and got up to turn off the nights, "Good-night."
Iruka was sound asleep when he heard someone whispering his name. "Iruka- sensei, Iruka-sensei... are you awake?"
"Mmm... Naruto?"
Iruka checked on Sakura before following Naruto out of the woods. He didn't want to leave Sakura all by herself but it seemed safe enough and he knew Naruto would not let up on this. "It's not fair! Kakashi-sensei is playing favorites again!" Naruto was seething away, "What's so special about Sasuke anyway? I mean, wasn't he the reason we lost our fellow ninjas?"
"Naruto!" Iruka had had enough, "I've always believed in you and what you are capable of. I believe in your dream of becoming Hokage but how can you speak ill of your teammate? I know you have your differences but now is really not the time."
"Hmm?" Naruto stopped in his tracks and turned back to look at his sensei, "Is there something you're not telling me?"
Unlike the students in his class where he taught just the basics, he was now solely responsible for shaping and molding Naruto into a better ninja, now was not the time to be his friend. He could not jeopardize the mission so he couldn't tell Naruto anything. He gave his most reassuring smile to Naruto and said, "Just get along with Sasuke. Didn't Kakashi teach you guys about teamwork?"
Naruto shrugged and continued on, "He's always the one that starts it."
"Uh, just where are we going?" Iruka asked after they had been walking around in circles.
"Shh! I found them." Naruto shushed Iruka and squatted down behind some bushes.
"Funny, how is it we're able to find them if we've been walking around in circles?" Iruka muttered to himself before squatting down beside Naruto.
- - -
Kakashi dropped to the ground and leaned against the tree for support before digging out his Icha Icha Paradise, "What do you want Sasuke?" With one eye, he looked up at the boy who was standing in front of him, his hands were in his pockets and his eyes on the ground.
"I was thinking about what you said to me back then." said Sasuke.
"Oh?" said Kakashi looking quite amused at the situation. He wondered where this conversation would lead; perhaps Sasuke was finally opening up to him. He placed his book back in his vest pocket.
"What did you mean when you said your hands were stained with innocent blood? What happened to your loved ones?"
"Why the sudden interest?" Kakashi pushed himself off the ground and began to walk away, "What I say is for your own good but I don't really feel like sharing with you now. Besides, it's late."
"Kakashi! You said you couldn't save me from going the same path as you had but you're walking away! How can I avoid that path if I don't know path you chose?" screamed Sasuke. His hands were now balled into fists and he stood in the same spot with his eyes still on the ground.
"It's not that I don't want to tell you." Kakashi walked up to Sasuke and placed his hand on the boys shoulder, gripping it harder than he meant to. "It's just too painful."
Sasuke brushed Kakashi's hand off, "Don't. I'm glad you won't be our sensei."
Kakashi turned away from Sasuke and shoved his hands in his pockets, "I did it."
"You?!" Sasuke lifted his gaze away from the ground and towards Kakashi. His mind was reeling. He wasn't sure what to make of Kakashi's confession or if it meant what he thought it did.
"My hands, like yours were trained from a very young age to kill. Let's just say that in my youth, I didn't make the right decisions, I didn't listen to my sensei and I made my own decisions. Those decisions cost the lives of the ones I loved the most. I failed to do the most important thing of a ninja: to protect those that are precious to me." Kakashi took off his hitae-ate headband and shoved it in front of Sasuke's face. "Take a look at the symbol there. It represents our village. If you can't make decisions based on that then you should quit. You'll never become more powerful than Itachi. Find the power in protecting what you cherish, not through the burning hate you feel."
"I... I... I can't let it go so easily. If you do know how I feel, you'd know how hard it will be for me." said Sasuke.
Kakashi retied his headband on, "I'm only asking you try."
"Wahhh!" A voice screamed from the bushes.
Neither Kakashi nor Sasuke bothered to pay any attention to their intruder. It was something that occurred often so they were pretty much immune to sudden outbursts, especially from Naruto.
"I can't promise anything but I'll try."
Kakashi smiled.
"Kakashi-sensei, is Iruka-sensei here to replace you?"
"Did you call me Sasuke?" Iruka magically appeared next to the both of them.
Both men jumped a little; although they were both accustomed to unexpected outbursts from Naruto, they had not expected Iruka to appear out of thin air.
"No." said Sasuke. He walked over to where Naruto was and to everyone's surprise, he reached out a hand to help him up.
Naruto gave Sasuke a funny look before his took his hand. "Thanks Sasuke." said Naruto as he smiled.
Iruka chuckled to himself as he watched them head back to the inn, "I wonder if hell has frozen over. I would have never expected that from Sasuke! By the way, what happened?"
Kakashi took his hands out of his pockets and stared at them, "Noooooooo!"
"Kakashi! What happened? Are you ok?" Iruka rushed to Kakashi's side and held him in his arms instinctively.
"There's blood on these hands..." Kakashi brought his hands up and covered his face.
Iruka held onto Kakashi more tightly and brought his chin to rest on his shoulder, "Shh... it's okay." He whispered into his ear.
A second of silence lapsed into minutes and minutes into hours, they stayed like that till daybreak.
I wanted to make certain scenes longer but then I also prefer to be subtle when writing so the reader can pick up on things on their own rather then having me point it out... so hopefully it worked the way I wanted it to.
Thank you for the previous reviews!
Please continue to review so that I may grow as a writer... ah, what a far fetched dream that seems... ::sweatdrops::