The day of the memorial services, and Fuyu shook me awake when he got up. Services weren't that early, but I took a while to get moving in the mornings. Breakfast was quiet, Fuyu and I moving around each other in sequence, like teammates. The air between us wasn't quite cleared, but. Good enough. I didn't have the energy to hash it out the rest of the way right now, I and I had a feeling neither did anybody else.
Aunt Kuro pulled me aside after breakfast, to find me something to wear. I had no idea where my mourning clothes were- blown up with my house, probably. And evidently past me had not squirreled away a set in any of my bugout bags to date. Optimism, possibly, but it was more likely that I'd simply forgot. I like being prepared for every ridiculous circumstance possible, but needing to attend a memorial while living out of a suitcase apparently hadn't rated.
Fortunately, Aunt Kuro had sworn she had a set Fuyu had outgrown, that should fit me exactly. So I stood in her room, my hands folded, not touching anything, feeling slightly rude and guilty for having to look somewhere while I was there. It was a cozy room, red silk drapings and a bead curtain and a smoke layer near the ceiling and a shrine in the corner, cats curled up purring and lazy on her bed. I think, in a past life, I've had a room like this. No visions spilled over, but something about the hazy red light felt intimately, painfully familiar.
Her closet was almost as big as the rest of the room. I'd always assumed she did a lot of espionage, but she might just like dressing up.
Come to think on it, it's probably both.
The half-wistful look Aunt Kuro gave me as she passed over formal kimono with the Uchiha fans emblazoned gave my stomach an odd little twist.
"I hope I haven't ruined your matchmaking plans," I joked halfheartedly, taking the folded pile of blacks she'd put in my hands.
"Not at all," said Kuro, with a hum. "I don't know if you remember, but when you were first assigned your team you two fought all the time. You were meaner, when you were nine. Fuyu-chan came home complaining every night for a month."
"No, I remember," I murmured, looking away at the little round window, half-draped in saffron sheer. It wasn't quite the golden light of the end of the universe. "...I got nicer?" Sounds fake.
"You have so much more patience now, than you did," said Kuro. "I suppose... how you cultivated it was rather unfair to you, yes. But that's not my point at all." She smiled, and cupped my cheek briefly. Her hand was cool, and I went very still in reflex from having a jounin kunoichi's fingernails that close to my eyes. "The point is, you're still both children. You have so much farther to go, and you'll be different people all over again at the end of it."
"You talk like we really do have the time," I said, very quiet.
"It's a better way to live," she said, simply. I bit the inside of my cheek, and avoided her eyes.
She moved away while I was recovering from that one, and came back with a man's haori in her hands. Formal, black, with five crests. The spiny rosette of the Himitsu clan's houseleek.
"You think your mother and I don't coordinate?" was all she had to say when I shot her a watery glare. It was too big around the shoulders for me, easy to hide my hands in the sleeves. Just the way I like it.
"The reach of your cabal is infamous," I said, when I could sound a little less choked. Aunt Kuro just laughed, and smoothed the way the coat lay on my shoulders.
She shooed me out so we could both dress, and once I'd changed I decided to stand to wait, rather than sit down and be immediately covered in cat fur. Fuyu was already out at the kitchen table, dressed in black, his face pink like he'd washed it twice. He looked at me over the tops of his glasses, and looked like he wanted to say something.
"Aunt Kuro told me off," I opened with. Fuyu's mouth quirked into a knowing expression.
"Me too," he said.
"You weren't wrong, but it was mean," I said.
"Yeah," he said, looking appropriately sheepish, and more than a little relieved. "Sorry about the delivery."
"Sorry for being a dork in front of your boss," I told him, and he lowered his head until his forehead touched the table with a gentle bonk.
"I'm noticing you haven't promised not to do it again," he said, muffled.
"I don't like promising things," I said, which was true. He looked up to send me a glare that indicated he somewhat doubted my sincerity. Can't imagine why.
Aunt Kuro joined us a few minutes later. We left the house together. We were not the only family doing so, and the streets of the Uchiha district slowly filled up with shuffling groups in mourning clothes.
Ninja society is, however you want to slice it, highly stratified. But you wouldn't know it, to see the procession. Everyone in the same undecorated black suit. It was symbolic, and also it was necessary. Whatever goes on during life, everyone is equal in death.
Anyway, this wasn't actually a funeral. There were no bodies being buried; whoever was doing the autopsy work (T&I? ANBU? Nobody'd handed me a file) had yet to release any corpses back to the families. No, the real funerals would be staggered as the month wore on and the machinery of bureaucracy allowed. This was the memorial - an acknowledgement, nothing more. Had to get it out of the way now, so everybody could go back to work without it hanging overhead. Which I respected, I guess, at least the not fucking around about it part.
We trickled out the gate, casually staggered so it didn't look like a parade. I spotted Tonbo, and we nodded to each other. And I saw Fugaku's tall head through the crowd, and the smaller woman next to him. His wife, with a baby in a sling, and another somber little child holding her hand. She was facing away from me, but the line of her shoulders was bowed.
...Uchiha Mikoto had been friends with the Yondaime's wife, hadn't she? I didn't know her well. She'd worked T&I mostly, before she went on leave to have little Uchiha heirs. So I had Natsuki-chan gossip to work with, mostly, but I remembered. She and Uzumaki Kushina had been close.
Fuyu noticed me trying to walk like I hadn't had a brick dropped on me, and offered me his arm like a gentleman.
At the ceremony, the flame monument at the cemetery as overbearing and garish as ever, I broke away from Fuyu and Aunt Kuro, and went to find my mother. She was standing near the Kurama, but not with them, wearing full mourning kimono and every feeling she owned on her face. Her eyes were red, and her face scrunched up when she saw me there, in my dad's haori. Even though she'd engineered it to happen.
I folded my arm around her shoulders, she tucked hers around my waist. I leaned on her a little more than I should have, and watched Sarutobi Hiruzen, looking like he'd aged another fifteen years in the past week, take the podium to say a few words. I tuned him out instinctively. I'd gotten tired of Sarutobi's speeches when I was about four.
Never understood my coworkers who thought he was a great orator. Privately it's long been my opinion that he wouldn't know the Will of Fire if it smothered him in his sleep.
(a dark parlour, the upper third of the room thick with smoke. the embers of an umber-brown cigarette between my fingers; the smell rising with the smoke is not tobacco. a small round table covered in a floor-length lace drape, an old wooden-paneled radio sitting on it. the speech crackles through the air, tinny but unmistakable, and the burning in my chest grows with every word I hear)
None of that, please.
(there is no crowd, for this funeral. the priest, and the deceased's mother, a handful of her friends. i am by the kirkyard gate, leaning against a pointed iron railing. the roses on the casket are white. The sky is the same color, a blinding sort of gloom that makes my eyes water. the burning in my throat is not my illness. neither is it the same emotion as sadness. it is not even in the same postal code.
the priest closes his book, and lifts his head. there are not enough able-bodied mourners to lower the casket, it will be up to the mortuary laborers. i drift over without thinking much of it, join them on the ropes. my whole shoulder girdle screams and my hands have my own blood in them.
it is not the first time. it might not be the last time.
there is revenge burning in my throat and murder in my heart)
None of that, either, thanks. Yikes!
Much gratitude to my mother, who I was leaning on more than I should, to weather the fugue and stay upright. At least dissociative episodes killed time. Sarutobi was done speaking, the candles were lit, the heads around me were bowed. Behind the long table with the incense, next to the lists of the dead, someone had propped up the official Hokage portrait of Namikaze Minato. The one my dad had painted. I looked away quickly.
Break it up, back to work. I sighed. Time to mingle? I guess? My mother's hand in the small of my back was steering me away from the Kurama, thankfully, and towards Aunt Kuro. Time to slip the lead, I think.
"Back to work," i murmured, kissing her temple before we disengaged entirely. The look she gave me was sharp, but she let me go. I had familiar faces to look for, in the crowd. Some of them were already missing. More missing jounin than chuunin, and more missing chuunin than genin. There was a big list up front at the shrine. I hadn't read it.
Sarutobi's guard was his old guard, not the Yondaime's. So they would be-
Masked and shelved, unless I missed my guess, which I never do. Or maybe masked and doing something important? ANBU was awfully busy. Busy and shorthanded.
My crowd-picking skills hadn't diminished, thankfully. There were Genma and Raido, lurking near Kurenai and Asuma, all standing close together in solidarity, whatever their current relationship statuses were. Asuma looked bleak, all in black. Gai- usually you could hear him before you saw him, but he was still as a stone, reading the lists. Hayate and Ibiki, both looking tired and surly- talking to Natsuki, friends with Ibiki by way of T&I. Aki-sensei was with the Hyuuga, fading into the background best he could at that height.
A baby wailed, the cry piercing before it was hushed. I looked for the culprit, and found quite a lot of suspects. Seems like this was a year for popping off baby clan heirs. Babies from the end of the war. Babies from celebrating Minato taking the hat.
Another baby started wailing, this one from the back of the crowd, echoing in a way that told me someone was lurking up behind the flame monument. I stilled, and relaxed my eyes to make more use of my peripheral vision. The best way to spot ANBU who didn't want to be seen was out of the corner of your eye. A flicker of a mask, to hand off a wriggly bundle to a second, smaller mask, who hushed the baby quickly. My mouth stretched in a tired smile.
I half wanted to go say hi. ANBU that weren't Ox-taichou hated that. I'd turned, even, when a shadow fell across me and as it turns out, my crowd-picking skills aren't sannin-proof.
"Haruka-chan," said Orochimaru of the sannin, and my stomach dropped all the way to my feet.
"Erk," I said, looking up a touch wildly. No mistaking him, was there? That coldly effete beauty, the long dark hair, those golden, cat-slit eyes, the chakra presence like an unwelcome hand on the back of your neck. No, wait, that was his actual hand, unwelcome on the back of my neck.
"It's not often that a name on the first drafts of a list of the dead no longer appears on subsequent revisions," he said, and I swallowed, dryly.
I was very familiar with Orochimaru's research, it had been particularly medically useful when he'd had Tsunade to work with. Since she'd been gone, it was still medically useful, but I was a very critical reader of scientific reports. The research available to chuunin-level medics was on the very cutting edge of what was ethical, which meant that the shit above my clearance level had to be absolutely off the fucking rails.
Orochimaru of the sannin was into some weird shit.
"I got better," fell out of my mouth before I could rethink being glib to one of the sannin. A crease appeared between his eyebrows, like he didn't quite know what to do with that. Probably it had been an incredibly long time since anyone who wasn't Sarutobi or Jiraiya had given him cheek. That's me, pushing the boundries of good sense.
"I've put in a requisition to have you as a lab assistant," he said, his mouth growing in what was probably supposed to be a smirk.
"Provided I'm cleared to go back to work," I said, weakly. The frown line between his eyebrows deepened. I felt compelled to continue. "You've read my medical file, yes? I may very well have been forcibly desk-chuunin'd."
I looked around, and made the very conscious effort to step closer to him. His slit pupils widened a very little bit. "I don't want to tell you about it somewhere we can be overheard," I said, quietly. "But fair warning, I might turn out incredibly useless to your purposes." If one were, say, chasing a practical way to reanimate the dead, the end result of what had happened to me would be spectacularly useless. Sure, bring back a shinobi with full free will and no access to chakra! If you could figure it out without divine intervention, even.
I made myself smile, and thanked past me for establishing that even my most sincere expressions looked fake, because oof, there was not a lot in it here.
Appallingly, Orochimaru mirrored my smile. The grip on my C6 eased a little.
"Very interesting," he said, and my stomach did a flip. "We'll talk later, then."
And then he left me to finish having a heart attack in peace.
"Jesus wept," I said, the foreign words coming straight from whatever hind-brain I was keeping my past-life memories in. I needed to talk to Natsuki, urgently.
He was still talking to the little knot of our peers, in that involved, animated way of his, but brightened like a summer day when he saw me.
"Haru-kun!" he said, dragging me into the circle. "Where were you? You look a touch peaked, are you quite all right?"
"Weird day," I said, a bit helplessly. "Why, what're we doing that I needed to be here?"
"Oh, come on," said Genma, leaning in, that senbon still forever between his teeth. "Everyone here thought you were dead."
"I swear to you, the record was corrected within a day," I said, feeling a bit ragged. "How did any of you manage to read anything that quickly."
"News travels fast," said Genma, his knuckles braced on his hip all casual-like, as though that wasn't very explicitly his fault.
"What happened with you at the Kurama estate, anyway?" asked Aoba, like he wasn't already full of six different versions of it (none of them true).
"Just some words," I said. "Probably genjutsu doesn't work on people who're already organically hallucinating, Kurenai would know."
She heard her name, and looked over at me, flatly. The whole thing felt flat, honestly. Everybody was trying, with the banter, to start feeling a little bit more normal. Because we all had to go back to work, because everything was all still terrible. But it was… visibly hard. Fucksake, we'd all made it through the war and then-
We did have the whole day off, though.
It occurred to me, suddenly and quite sharply, that I was not making best use of all the resources I had at hand.
"So where are we all going after this?" I asked Natsuki, who looked blank for about four seconds, and then the ball started rolling.
Several restaurants, dive bars, izakaya and a movie theater were suggested in quick succession, and the discussion began in earnest. The movie theater was dismissed immediately ("what about the drinky theater?" "it got stepped on") and the rest of the list gone through in exhaustive detail. Lovely thing about shinobi, though I'm sure it would drive a certain kind of person nuts.
Eventually, eventually, everyone settled on an izakaya a little ways up the hill called Shin's. It was out of the path of destruction, and our information network said that none of the other groups were planning on using it for their wake, and it had a shadowed little courtyard, and it wouldn't break anybody's budget. Some of us still had other obligations, and some of us still had people we wanted to invite, so we decided to meet up there at six, to give enough time for word to filter out. And since wakes were supposed to last all night, it wasn't a great idea to start too early, either.
"So what's the cutoff?" Genma wanted to know. "You guys are all about the same age, but we're not all chuunin anymore, you know."
There was a long beat of silence, as every soul present tried to not be the one to have to say everyone who was behind the barrier.
"Don't trust anyone over 30," I said, mostly as a knee-jerk, but it got Asuma to snort anyway. Not a whole laugh, but. It was probably too soon for that. He'd lost his mother, and his remaining parent wasn't even as emotionally available as mine was. Natsuki fluttered a hand.
"Well, genin plus, obviously," said Natsuki. "Nobody who can't drink, that just feels bad, you know?" Not that we had many academy student friends. Genin could buy alcohol, even when they turned them out at 9 and 10, during wartime. Old enough to die for your village, old enough to drink in it.
"No jounin-senseis," I said. "No parents. I don't wanna be supervised, yeah? And the Jounin Corps probably have their own plans, anyway." If they didn't, that was just sad. ANBU probably also had their own plans, but they were secret, and none of us were supposed to know that we were scooping multiple ANBU for our get-together anyway. If Genma and Raido didn't show up, well, we knew which social group they liked better, then.
"If they don't, that's just sad," said Genma, echoing my thoughts.
"Just, everybody use your best judgement," said Hayate, rubbing one eye tiredly. "...You guys all have that, don't you? Saving it up for special occasions?"
"I dunno," said Asuma, very dry.
"We leave it up to that, there's gonna be a donkey show," I muttered, rubbing a thumb along my eyebrow, prodding the sharp pain that had taken up residence behind it. "Midgets. Strippers. Clowns…."
"Isn't that actually a thing, in like, Water Country?" said Genma, with faux innocence. "Funeral strippers?" Ebisu, who had looked unduly interested already, adjusted his glasses furiously to keep them from fogging.
"It is," I said. "I'm literally the one who told you about that."
"Oh yeah," said Aoba, straightening up. "Your pen pal." He said it with the inflection that I'm pretty sure they taught specifically when you started working in Intel. It had layers. "You haven't had a letter from Kirigakure in some months, I've noticed." And, well, he'd know, considering the administrative kerfuffle every time I received one.
"Oh yes! How is Mikan?" asked Natsuki. "I don't feel shy about telling you, I've been hearing some strange things about Kiri, lately."
I sighed, heavily. "Guess it's time to write another letter," I said. I had a couple things to tell him, probably.
"Wait, how'd you two make friends with someone in Kirigakure?" asked Raido. "Is it a ninja?"
"Of course," said Natsuki, cheerfully. "That's where we passed the chuunin exams, you know? We made a few friends, while we were there."
"We sent people to a foreign chuunin exam during the war," said Kurenai, extremely unimpressed.
"Oh, it was only a very small delegation," Natsuki demurred. "And technically the war had just ended, by then…"
"It was an op, obviously," I said, a bit exasperated with being derailed. "We even send delegations to the exams in Kumo and Iwa sometimes, if the Hokage feels we have a team or two expendable enough to make the information gathering potential worth it."
Wording it like that made the group wince, in particular Asuma. He knew which Hokage I was talking about. Namikaze Minato hadn't even had the hat long enough to preside over a chuunin exam, between this and that and the end of the war, which. Oof.
...The thought hovered over the gathering, for a moment. The bitter taste of maybe, things might have been different. But Minato didn't have the hat long enough to even begin to change status quo.
"I thought you all were supposed to be gossips," said Ibiki, derisively. "But only about useless things like funeral strippers, apparently."
"Definitely not useless," countered Genma, side-eying Ebisu's frantic spectacle-adjusting.
"Well, we'll have a chance to get caught up tonight," I said, looking over my shoulder a little. "Anyway. I should… team meeting." I extracted myself from the group with a wave, and Natsuki followed me out.
"You're going to tell me what's actually going on, I hope?" said Natsuki, linking arms with me.
"Not in public, I'm not," I said, and Natsuki nodded, the set of his eyebrows firming.
I only sagged a little, as we wandered away into the milling crowd. Thinner, now. People were going back to their day. I tugged Natsuki towards the last place I'd seen the Uchiha. My mother was talking to Aunt Kuro, and I felt a little thrill of terror shiver through me.
"It's what you get for leaving her alone at her husband's memorial service," Natsuki whispered to me when I tightened up.
"Like I'm the only one here doing networking," I muttered, scowling. I wiped the sullen expression off my face and smiled tiredly, for my mother.
An absolutely excruciating twenty minutes later, Natsuki and I had made our excuses, good-byes, and penances, and extracted Fuyu successfully for a long-overdue team meeting. We looked for sensei, but the entire contingent of Hyuuga had already filtered out, and with the way things were lately Aki-sensei was probably already wearing the Ox mask again.
...Which meant that he'd catch up with us later.
It might surprise you to learn this, but it actually is possible to have a private conversation in a ninja village. Well, I mean, there's no such thing as a guarantee, and ANBU really are always listening. But consider also: the sheer degree of paranoia baked into ninja villages on a foundational level.
Officially, there was no such thing as the Listening Trees. It was only a happy coincidence that a handful of strategically positioned Hashirama trees throughout the village were placed in such a way within their groves that they funneled sound only one way. Sounds from inside the trees did not make it out, from inside you could hear the whole neighborhood. Sensei had showed us as many as he could.
We picked the one near the old Senju compound, because it was almost always vacant. There was nobody in the Senju estate to watch anymore, except for the old civilian caretaker. Well, I say 'civilian'. Not even I know every long-term ANBU plant in the village, so I can only speculate.
The crown of the tree was constructed so that there was a little hollow just below the leaves, hidden from view and secure to eavesdropping. I hitched a ride up on Fuyu's back, unable to walk myself without chakra. We didn't all fit in the tree as easily as we had when we were nine, but it was still as comfortable as a bolt hole could be. Our knees touched. Natsuki fixed me with a very intent sort of look.
"So what is this about?" he asked. Fuyu looked to me, a touch uneasily, and Natsuki pounced on that brief gesture. "You two have been making plans without me, while you're sleeping over." He pouted.
"With every intention of reading you into the op," I said, apologetically. "It's been, ah. Nuts? Fucking bonkers? It's been a week."
"And that's even without the part where we're organizing a conspiracy to investigate a different conspiracy," said Fuyu with a sigh, rubbing the space between his eyebrows. "But that's not what got you all flustered at the memorial, is it?"
"Well, depends on when you're talking about," I said, frowning. "During the speech I was dissociating heavily, it's been kind of a thing since I came back from the dead, don't worry about that, I'm working on it. But afterwards was because I got buttonholed by Orochimaru no fucking Sannin while I was peoplewatching."
"You what," said Fuyu, choking on absolutely nothing. Natsuki gasped so sharply it sounded like a hiccup.
"He said he's requisitioned me as a lab assistant," I said, grinning absolutely mirthlessly. "Provided I'm cleared to work at all. Speaking of, Natsuki? How hard would it be for me to get permanently termed upon failing a psych eval?"
"Incredibly easy," said Natsuki, on reflex, and then he paled. "But you don't want that! Haruka, if you don't find work of some kind you will spin yourself all the way to the center of the earth and never find your way back again."
"I know," I said, tangling my fingers in the hair near my temple and just holding them there. "But I also don't want to be dissected in the name of science! I genuinely do not know the actual mechanism by which I came back to life and that is not an answer Orochimaru will take. He'll pull me apart to get at the truth, and I don't even know if he'd find it."
"But you put him off, right?" said Natsuki. "What did you tell him?"
"That I'm useless, basically," I said, loosening my fingers enough to scratch at my head. "Which, I mean, I truly don't think this resurrection method is what he's after. I came back with no life energy, if I use chakra for anything but basic metabolic functions I will literally die, and on top of that I've still got free will. But even if he believes me, that's no guarantee he won't pull me apart anyway just for funsies."
"We won't let him!" said Natsuki, worry and warmth and determination all swimming through his eyes, and for a moment I saw another man where he was sitting- golden-haired and skinned, golden eyes behind gold-rimmed glasses, wearing Natsuki's same expression. "Haruka, we'll think of something. In the meantime, collect competing job offers and reasons you suck. But not interesting reasons you suck, boring reasons. You have to be very boring."
That got me to laugh, hoarsely. The vision had dispelled. "Right. Propegate both my CV and my anti-CV."
"I wonder, though," said Fuyu, still frowning, his glasses in his hands, where he was ostensibly cleaning them. But he'd told me in confidence that sometimes it was just easier to think when he couldn't see anyone's expression. "Natsuki, have you been hearing the rumor that command is considering giving Orochimaru a genin team?"
"It's been a rumor for ages," said Natsuki. "I don't know why it'd bear fruit now."
"I mean, why not? That would be literally perfect," I said, slowly. "Konoha needs to be seen rebuilding. I'd be surprised if Jiraya didn't bounce immediately after the memorial service, Tsunade is eminently AWOL, Orochimaru is our very last in-house Sannin. Having him take a genin team, staying prominently in Konoha to teach the next generation, a beacon of hope in these trying times…"
"Send in an application to the PR department," advised Natsuki.
"And a genin team would take up a lot of his attention," said Fuyu. "Attention that couldn't be focussed on dissecting Haruka."
"No guarantee, but I'd call it worth a shot," I said, starting to feel a little less clammy, finally. A plan of action, even one as stupid as this one, always helped. "Right. Nominate Orochimaru no Sannin for jounin instructor. I'll just… slide that into the to-do list."
"What else have you got on there, Haru-kun?" said Natsuki, whose tone was light and teasing while his eyes were very serious. I grinned, all hollow and mischief, and met Fuyu's frown with a nod. He cleared his throat, replaced his glasses on his nose, folded his arms very serious-like, and took the cue.
"The Uchiha Police have been issued a moratorium on investigating the Kyuubi attack," he started, front-loading, and went on to explain the plan he and I had hatched in the dark in his room. Natsuki was appropriately and immediately unsettled.
"I'm more glad than ever it's me doing your mindwalk," he said to me, with a little hum. "This is really almost treason! Treason light, perhaps!"
"I will backdate everything when I have the hat," I said, my mouth a thin line. "Doing what's best for the village can't be treason, not ever. If it is, what's even the fucking point? Of the entire exercise?"
"If it's treason to want to see the Uchiha cleared of an obvious and ham-handed frame-up, nail me to the wall, I guess," said Fuyu, aggressively adjusting his glasses. "Not that any of my family would appreciate what I'm doing just now."
"Speaking of, how goes your arm of the investigation? Find the secret Uchiha eyeball registrar yet?" I asked.
"No. Sort of. There's no such thing," said Fuyu, lowering his eyebrows at me. "I mean, there is, kind of, but it's… immediately and obviously out of date or otherwise incomplete. Record of Uchiha who've gotten the… second level eyes, relies on self-reporting. If you don't want anyone to know you have it…"
"You just don't volunteer the information," I said, nodding.
"There are some records, and I have seen them," confirmed Fuyu. "But yes. It's patchy. Fugaku-sama's eyes are on record. Aunt Kuro's aren't. And none of the eyes on record match what was masking the Kyuubi's. Not even missing-nin."
"Because the Uchiha have so many of those! Good to know it's not Uchiha Madara back from the dead to terrorize us, anyway," said Natsuki, with a smile that had nervous edges. "But that doesn't exactly give us any leads."
It's true; without a seal on their forehead to protect their dojutsu and subvert their free will, the Uchiha were very conscientious about retrieving MIA, POW and AWOL clansmen, to the point of sometimes paying the village for missions of body recovery. The last genuine confirmed missing-nin to come out of the Uchiha was Madara.
And now, come to think of it... I couldn't recall, had anybody retrieved Uchiha Obito's body after his last mission? Or had they seen Hatake Kakashi's new eye and thought, good enough? ...Ah, one more thing for the list.
"Even worse," said Fuyu, continuing, "apparently sometimes the same person can have a different pattern in each eye. Different abilities in the right than the left."
"Have I mentioned lately that your dojutsu is some kind of bullshit?" I said, more casually than the actual speed of my thoughts.
"I am keenly aware," said Fuyu.
"Well," said Natsuki, lacing his fingers together to crack the knuckles. "We all have our work cut out for us, that's certain. Have you talked to sensei on any of this?"
"Haven't had the chance to catch him up all the way," I said, and Fuyu nodded. He hadn't either. "I'm sure he knows we're up to something, but…yeah. Now that all of us are on the same page, the next time any one of us catches a minute with him can read him in."
"Which will probably be you, you know," said Natsuki. "He doesn't show it like a normal person, but you do have sensei awfully worried."
"I know," I said with a sigh. "He's not normal, but neither is he subtle."
Natsuki reached over open-handed to swat at me. Fuyu sighed.
"I don't like that he's reactivated in ANBU," said Fuyu, quiet and just a touch sullen. That hit a note, apparently, because all Natsuki and I could do was exchange a look in solidarity.
"We knew it was only a matter of time, once we all made chuunin," said Natsuki, trying to sound upbeat.
"...It wasn't inevitable," I said, my mouth thinning again. "He liked teaching us so much I half thought he'd request another genin team." Not really a done thing, for some reason? Granted, not many jounin instructors seemed to love it the way sensei did. I supposed if you discovered a passion for teaching early enough in your career you wound up teaching at the Academy, rather than making it all the way to combat jounin.
"I don't know," said Natsuki, a bit forlornly. "I never could figure out if it was teaching he liked, or teaching us. Remember how he'd always complain, early on, about having to do remedial training to fill skill gaps in his old squad? Before we figured out he meant ANBU squad?"
"Which is why he enjoyed teaching so much, he could fill those gaps before they turned into a problem for someone else," I said, looking down at my laced fingers. "I wonder if we disappointed him, none of us going into ANBU." Watched my teammates' reaction to that out of my peripheral vision. They both made faces, but not the kind of faces they'd make if I'd just inadvertantly told a lie about them.
(not that I thought either of them had landed in ANBU without my knowing. Fuyu had only ever wanted to be Uchiha Police, and he was. Natsuki's shirts were almost all sleeveless)
"I doubt that," said Fuyu, steadily. "Sensei wants what's best for us."
"I just wish he'd want what's best for him sometimes," said Natsuki, resting his cheek on his closed fist. "I don't know why he won't push back."
"Yeah you do," I said, roughly, trying to not let my blood pressure spike too high, the way it did when we got to talking about the Hyuuga. Fuyu shifted, tapped the side of my boot with his, and smiled ever so small.
"So where's that fit in on your to-do list?" he asked.
"Modify, reform or otherwise remodel the Hyuuga's entire clan structure? Above 'end feudalism,' little below 'become Hokage'," I hummed. "Don't worry, I'll get there."
"We weren't worried," said Natsuki.
hey! hey, hi, hello... been a minute. just been, you know, having major life events, super normal stuff for this year... brain worms (and reading Much Better Fanfic Than I Am Writing hsdfhghh) made me hesitate posting this chapter for a few months and then Major Life Events reminded me that i did in fact start posting fanfiction again in the first place because life is fleeting and we could all die at literally any time! perfect mindset to be writing about teenaged ninjas in the grip of a heavy tragedy
Anyway, thanks to everyone who's been reading, love you all. I don't know if I said but I kind of started writing this around this time last year in the wake of several deaths in the family and the experience of having to just fucking live your life when you feel like literally anything else up to and including putting your head through a plate glass window would be more fun. So, i mean, the whole fic but this chapter in particular is more about ~feelings and coping mechanisms (shitty or otherwise) and about how funerals fucking suck no matter who you are and no matter how extensive your support network is. Went home with my brothers after my grandparents' funeral early this year and we all did cocaine and guess what! it still sucked. funerals always suck and nothing mitigates it. it's still healthy to try, though, don't get me wrong! next chapter is a lot of trying lmao... and maybe that's the start of where this begins to get AU, because if ninja had any concept of healthy grief processing or indeed of grief processing of any kind there would literally be zero villains in naruto. which is one of the main thesises of this fic. theses? main theses of this fic
the other main thesis of this fic is 'i love time travel stories and want to try and write a twisty one' but shhhh spoilers