(A/N: Before you read, I want to point out Echoes of Light now has a cover! I finally stopped being lazy and got out my tablet to draw a picture of Akari and Masaru as kids. It's not my best work and the eyes are a bit wonky, but it came out pretty well in my opinion. I did it in part because of this: I will now be updating twice a week. The buffer is big enough that I'm almost at Chapter 20, and I really want to get to the good stuff. I think I found a unique and original twist on the Land of Waves arc, and I really want to see how you guys will react. Anyways, with all that out of the way, enjoy the new chapter!)
Chapter 11
"My family is full of idiots. That includes me."
Another year, another group of genin thrust upon him.
Hatake Kakashi had grown used to the Hokage's attempts to saddle him with a team of genin every year. Every year, he also made a point to fail them. Why? Because none of them could pass the bell test, but also because he really, really, really didn't want a team yet.
This year, though, was different.
For starters, one of them happened to be the son of his own sensei. Uzumaki Naruto, a very loud and abrasive young boy who resembled his father in appearance more than anything else. It was fitting he took on his mother's surname, since personality-wise he took after her almost exclusively. Except he might be worse, which was surprising given Kushina's already infamously brash nature. Additionally, just like her he also happened to be—
Well. No point dwelling on that right now.
Haruno Sakura's introduction had been memorable in its own way, a strange mixture of blushing at Sasuke and suppressed squeals, topped with a resolute declaration to become an ANBU captain. That... startled him. As a former ANBU captain himself, he raised an eyebrow and instinctively slid into an analytical mode, scrutinizing the young kunoichi more closely. Her work ethic seemed strong, and her file suggested some promising skills.
Her squealing and obvious fangirl nature gave him doubts, though.
Then... Uchiha Sasuke. One of two survivors of the Uchiha clan, and the top student in his class. Quiet and broody, he gave a sufficiently ominous declaration of his intent to murder Itachi and avenge his clan. On the bright side, he also included a nice, heart-warming declaration that he would protect Masaru, the other survivor.
Coincidentally, as the only Sharingan user left in Konoha, Kakashi would be expected to train both boys in their clan's doujutsu. Which meant the council would not allow him to fail this team, short of unbearable circumstances proving without a doubt that they could not work together. Politics. Phooey.
Frankly, he was just relieved he didn't have both Uchiha boys on his team—or Masaru, period. He still remembered his shock at finding the unconscious boy when his team responded to the massacre. Rushing to the house in search of Akari, only to find her twin sprawled in a bed with blood-soaked blankets swaddled around his torso, his ear half-torn from his skull—
It... was not a pleasant memory. Kakashi had many regrets, and seeing Masaru every day would just remind him of one of his largest.
Which is why when he appeared in a swirl of leaves at the training field the next day, he did not feel overly pleased to see Masaru sitting tied up next to a tree, an irritated look on his face. "YOU'RE LATE!" Naruto and Sakura bellowed.
"Sorry, a cat ran in front of me and I had to find a different route," Kakashi replied idly, his gaze focused on Masaru. Seeing as he and Sasuke lived together, Kakashi felt it a safe bet that his little genin had something to do with his presence. He glanced to the particularly broody Uchiha (who seemed slightly broodier than usual, though Kakashi had only one other interaction to go off at this point) and asked, "Why is your cousin tied up?"
"He's an idiot," Sasuke replied simply, and Masaru shot him a dry look before slumping back against the tree with a sigh.
"Um, apparently, his jounin-sensei failed his team," Sakura piped up, "So Sasuke-kun brought him here to show him how it's done." Ah, so that's why—wait, what?
Kakashi blinked as he processed her words, wondering if he heard right. Masaru's team failed? He thought the council wanted both Uchiha boys to graduate and join the active shinobi forces at the same time! Hell, he barely got away with convincing them to not saddle him with BOTH Uchiha brats! How did Hyuuga Hoheto get away with it?! This required further investigation.
Later though. First he needed to do his own test.
"Well, as long as he doesn't interfere in the test, I don't mind," he allowed after a beat. "Anyways, onto business..." With that he pulled a pair of silver bells from his pouch and proceeded to explain the rules of the tradition carried on since the Third Hokage's team.
The test Hyuuga Hoheto designed was simple.
Hoheto's original genin teammates had hidden themselves at certain points in Konoha, and the prospective members of Team Eleven must locate them using the physical descriptions Hoheto provided. Upon finding them, they would give each student a slip of paper with a different clue on it, for a total of six individual clues, which they would then use to guess the title of one of his two favorite books.
By specifying he had two favorite books instead of one or three, this instilled a natural assumption that only two people would pass—one per book—thus inciting a competitive streak within the group and prompting them to guard their clues closely. However, in reality the slips each used a basic cipher which could only become clear if they gathered all six together. Upon solving it, the true meaning of the code would become clear.
As expected a fire immediately lit in Tobio and Ami's eyes, the pair running off with eager shouts. As they departed though, Masaru calmly sat down on the grass and folded his arms. Hoheto folded his arms as he looked at the young Uchiha, a single eyebrow raised. "You are not going to look?" he questioned, and the child shook his head, reclining back to stare at the sky.
"No, I won't," he affirmed quietly. "I can't work with this team." Hoheto closed his eyes and sighed, shaking his head slowly. He'd had suspicions this may happen, the Uchiha had been known for their rather exclusionary pride, and his teammates came from rather minor families.
"Masaru-kun," he began, "I understand you may not think you like them right away, but—"
"It's not that," the boy interrupted softly, and Hoheto opened his eyes to peer at him inquisitively. Lazily sprawling on his back, Masaru continued to gaze at the sky, his face thoughtful as he watched the clouds drift by. About a minute of silence passed before Hoheto determined he wouldn't elaborate any further on his own.
"Then why do you refuse to work with this team?" He saw a minute tension enter the boy's body, his muscles stiffening slightly as his eyebrows pinched together and his mouth tugged into a small frown.
"I guess," he said quietly after a while, "This particular team brings back too many bad memories."
"Bad memories?" Hoheto echoed, and Masaru hummed, shifting a bit uncomfortably as he closed his eyes.
"...Ami is the exact kind of girl my... my sister hated," he muttered, flinching as he said the word "sister". "She's vain, cares more about appearances, has a short temper—if I were to get along with her, she... she would never forgive me. And you..." He hesitated, inhaling through his nose before resuming. "You remind me too much of... everyone else."
Hoheto frowned at this, realization dawning on him. "The adults of your clan," he surmised, and Masaru flinched slightly as he nodded.
"Y-yeah... It's—it's nothing personal, but... You seem really serious and stern, and..." He trailed off, but his point was made.
"I see," Hoheto murmured, and sighed. "And Tobio-kun?"
"He seems like he might be okay, but..." Masaru shrugged, offering a feeble smile. "Can't really have a team where I'm only okay with one person, right?"
. . .
"You're saying Uchiha Masaru sabotaged his own team's chances at passing?"
"He did."
Utter. Silence.
Sarutobi Hiruzen resisted the need to heave a put-upon sigh as Homura and Koharu stared at Hoheto in shock, their eyes wide and filled with disbelief. The Hyuuga jounin remained unperturbed as ever, the perfect picture of calm as he awaited their response. Secretly, Hiruzen thanked whatever forces existed that Danzou was not present to offer any input on the mess.
He'd expected some troubles with this year's batch of genin, given the fact they had three boys with severely traumatizing backgrounds and multiple clan heirs, but he never expected this. In his entire tenure as Hokage, only one other student had been brazen enough to purposely fail the secret test. The thought brought a wry smirk to his lips.
That boy takes after his mother in more ways than one, he thought sourly, but withheld the temptation to make the dry remark aloud as he maintained his professional demeanor. "Hoheto-san, can you elaborate on why he may have done such a thing?" he questioned.
"I spoke to him about it afterwards, and apparently the team's members elicited some bad memories of his childhood," Hoheto replied, his voice showing no particular feelings on the situation. "In particular, I reminded him of the adults of his clan, and the kunoichi, Ami, had been someone his sister would have heavily disapproved of."
Homura and Koharu exchanged knowing glances at his remark, and for once Hiruzen could sense that they were all on the same page. They had spent hours nitpicking over the arrangement of the teams for the two Uchiha boys to provide them the ultimate support.
Team Eleven, while shaky, worked on paper. Tobio's friendly nature would help bind them together, and for all her arrogance Ami had a forceful personality that could help Masaru through any slumps he may encounter. They even selected a Hyuuga instructor for Team Eleven to give Masaru at least some aid in handling his doujutsu, since Kakashi couldn't be his full-time instructor.
So Hiruzen felt utterly foolish for forgetting to take the opinions of Masaru's deceased family into account. Of course Hoheto would remind him of the Uchiha adults, the Hyuuga clan had a tendency towards cold composure that would make him very similar to the harsh and apathetic Uchiha. Meanwhile he knew of Akari's opinion on her classmates, and that she would not approve of the arrogant Ami. Twins had a powerful and unique bond, so he should have known Masaru would value her opinions even more with her gone.
"To borrow a quote from the Nara, this is quite troublesome," he remarked dryly, rubbing his forehead in mild exasperation.
"Hoheto-san, if he were to be assigned to a different team that did not raise such issues, do you believe he would still attempt to sabotage it?" Homura asked, recovering from his initial shock. The Hyuuga paused, considering it carefully.
"Based on our conversation, I would assume not. He seemed to have a problem with the specific people more than the concept of a team. However, I cannot say for certain. It would likely be dependent on who's in the team."
"Then hopefully we can work with that," Koharu murmured grimly. "The Sharingan is too valuable for us to waste it. The sooner he can start actually training, the better." Hiruzen nodded in faint agreement, even if he didn't particularly care for her exact phrasing. As the Hokage, he had to do what was best for the village, and in the end shinobi were resources. He couldn't let his feelings get in the way.
That said, he still had some more emotional stakes in seeing Masaru pass. He had been one of the few people to treat Naruto with any degree of kindness, and while they'd been forced to grow apart after the massacre, he had good reason to believe that Masaru still loved him. Naruto needed all the friendship and support he could get, and few things could strengthen their bond more than being part of the same graduating class.
Mind already running through ways to keep him as a genin, he cleared his throat and nodded to Hoheto. "Thank you for your assistance, Hoheto-san. I apologize for the inconvenience we caused you. You are dismissed."
"I am always pleased to have served you, Lord Hokage," the Hyuuga demurred with a bow, and then retreated to leave the three elderly leaders of the village alone. They had a lot of planning ahead of them.
"So in the end, we passed our test despite almost failing once, and you still failed."
"Hn." Masaru made a noncommittal noise as he continued eating his yakisoba, pointedly ignoring the dark look Sasuke sent his way.
"Why are you so calm?" Sasuke grumbled, looking at him irritably. "Don't you care at all?" Masaru just hummed and shrugged, too busy chewing to answer. He couldn't help but wonder how Sasuke would react if he ever found out Masaru failed the test on purpose, but unless he asked Masaru had no issues keeping it to himself.
Several hours had passed since Team Seven had passed Kakashi's secret exam and become genin. Initially they failed the bell test, prompting Kakashi to reveal its true purpose had been to test their ability to work together. However, he ultimately passed them when they fed Naruto against orders and defended it by citing a team must stay strong, leading to a dramatic monologue about valuing comrades' lives over orders.
Of course, Masaru got to see most of it, since Sasuke refused to untie him until lunch time. Highlights included Sakura getting caught in a genjutsu and threatening Kakashi for supposedly injuring someone to an intense degree, Sasuke getting dragged underground so only his head stuck out, and Naruto suffering the One Thousands Year of Death. That last one got Kakashi a cold threat from Masaru to never touch Naruto again or he'd tell the Hokage he attempted to assault both of them.
As Masaru reflected over the events of the day Sasuke's gaze discreetly slid upwards, eyes flitting focusing on his cousin's wrists. Angry red marks marred his skin, chafed and scratched from the ropes. Sasuke felt a pang of guilt as he looked back to his food, his eyebrows pinching together. Aggravated as he'd been to hear Masaru had failed his own test, he really didn't need to tie him up like that.
The raven-haired boy knew he'd embraced his inner rage more heavily than Masaru, his desire for vengeance often clouding all other thoughts. Yet as broken and angry as Sasuke was, he had realized long ago that his cousin was even more broken on the inside. Grief and hollow longing tended to paint Masaru's features more often than not, his body language subtly betraying how closely he lingered on the verge of shattering at any given time.
Ostensibly, they went through the same tragedy, but they each had a different, personal stake that made it impossible for either to fully empathize with the other. For Sasuke, he had to live with the fact that his brother had been the one to kill everyone. Masaru, meanwhile, lost Akari, his twin. Few bonds were more sacred than that, and Sasuke realized early on he'd likely never be able to fully appreciate the magnitude of the loss her death caused him.
While he tended to act cold and dismissive, he worried for his cousin. Masaru was the only family he had left (that man did not count), and if he died too—well. Sasuke didn't want to think about that.
(Sometimes, he dreams of finding Masaru in a pool of blood, his hair sticky and matted to his face with blood and his skin too too pale as red seeps from a gaping hole in his stomach. He tries to stop the bleeding, tries to block it, but more and more pours out of the wound until he's standing waist-deep in a sea of blood clutching his cousin's cold body and crying.
He always wakes up screaming, unable to stop shaking for the rest of the night, and he wonders how Masaru can ignore it through the thin wall separating their bedrooms.)
(Sometimes, he wakes up to the sounds of Masaru crying instead, muffled sobs drifting through the thin walls and echoing in his ears with the intensity and clarity of a loud rock concert. He wonders if Masaru can move, because he can't.)
"Hey," he said quietly, pushing the dark thoughts away. Masaru raised his head to look at him inquisitively, his cheeks still puffed with the mouthful of yakisoba he had yet to swallow. Sasuke felt a flicker of amusement at how silly he looked swirled the noodles on his plate in circles with his chopsticks, his eyes rising to meet his cousin's gaze. "After dinner, let's practice the fireball."
Masaru hummed thoughtfully, the bulges in his cheeks swishing around as he chewed the noodles before sharply deflating as he swallowed. "...Alright." Sasuke nodded and offered a small, weak smile. Surprise flickered in his cousin's dark orbs, his eyes widening slightly as his shoulders hunched with slight tension. Then his posture relaxed and he offered a small smile of his own, and after a moment the two returned their gazes to their food.
A knock on the window drew him from his thoughts, and both boys blinked in unison as they registered the 'on the window' part. Matching pairs of black eyes instantly snapped towards the living room window. Shinobi instinct took over as Sasuke ditched the chopsticks in favor of a kunai he always kept nearby, while Masaru held his chopsticks between his fingers like senbon, ready to throw at a moment's notice.
Their tense postures swiftly faded though, their faces morphing into similar looks of surprise as they recognized the silver-haired man crouched on the windowsill. Waving at them cheerfully, his one visible eye creased as he smiled under his mask before pointing to the window lock. The two boys exchanged brief glances, and Sasuke noted a heavy tension in Masaru's shoulders, his back straighter and his left eye narrowed slightly.
Anger. Irritation. Annoyance.
Sasuke almost raised a brow at the hostile intent Masaru's body language portrayed, his gaze flickering back to the window. Kakashi looked at them expectantly, and after a moment Sasuke pushed back his chair and got up. Strolling over to the window, he nonchalantly grabbed the cord dangling at the side and tugged it, causing the wooden blinds to swiftly tumble down with a loud clatter and obscure the jounin from sight.
When he turned back to the table he was satisfied to note the heavy amusement in Masaru's expression, the brunette's mouth quirked in an obvious smile as he suppressed the urge to giggle. Sasuke flashed a smug smirk of his own as he rejoined his cousin, setting the kunai on the table and picking up the chopsticks so he could resume eating.
"It's quite rude to ignore your sensei you know." Chopsticks instantly flew as the boys whirled in their seats to see Kakashi standing next to them, hands stuffed in his pockets. Noodles splattered to the floor as Masaru's chopsticks soared past the jounin's head, while Kakashi leaned slightly to the left to avoid Sasuke's. "Attacking your sensei can also be seen as rather impolite."
"You broke into our apartment!" Sasuke snapped, the chair toppling over as he sharply rose.
"Well I tried knocking, but you wouldn't let me in," the silver-haired jounin replied genially, eye crinkling in what was undoubtedly a mocking smile. Sasuke's eyebrow twitched as he glared at the man, while Masaru stared at them dumbly before looking at the noodles splattered on the floor. He banged his head on the table with a loud groan. If the others listened closely, they could hear soft mumbles of "messy" and "wasteful".
"What do you want?" Sasuke asked dryly, crossing his arms and glaring at the intruder. "Team Seven doesn't have training until tomorrow."
"Oh, don't worry, I'm not here about training," Kakashi assured him with a small wave. "I'm actually here to see Masaru-kun." Both Uchiha boys stiffened, the brunette slowly raising his head to glower at him. His expression held no subtleties this time, his hostile feelings towards the man perfectly clear.
"What do you want," Sasuke repeated lowly, stepping between them defensively. Kakashi raised his hands in a show of peace and good will. Still glaring at him, Masaru slowly pushed back his seat and got up.
"What is it?" he questioned warily, and Kakashi's eye crinkled in another smile.
"Uchiha Masaru, you are now an official genin of Konoha. Congratulations. You are to report to the Hokage's office at eight."
The hostility vanished in an instant, both boys staring at him in open shock. "Huh?" Masaru sputtered, staring at him wide-eyed. "I... How? Why? What?"
"Well, the Hokage will give you more details on that tomorrow," Kakashi demurred, stuffing his hands in his pockets once more. "He was still working out the exact details when I left, but he should have it all sorted out by the morning."
"But... I—I failed. The secret test."
"Yes, but given the circumstances the Hokage going to make an exception for you. It's pretty unorthodox to pass a single genin without a team, but it's been done before. I'm sure he'll figure out something. See you tomorrow Sasuke." He disappeared in a flurry of leaves before they could respond, and the Uchiha boys just continued to stare at the space he occupied as they tried to process this.
Sasuke recovered first and turned to look at Masaru, a single eyebrow sliding up in a silent inquiry. Meeting his gaze, Masaru just shrugged his shoulders and spread his arms around him in a blunt declaration that the world made no sense anymore.
Eyebrow raising higher, Sasuke's lips twitched into a smirk and his eyes glimmered with faint amusement.
They were broken. Even after all this time they still couldn't find many things to speak about, many shared interests to bond over, and they still had trouble understanding what went through the other's mind.
But they were family, and Sasuke would be damned if he lost anyone else.
