A.N. I do not own Naruto. Thanks to CannibalisticApple for reading the rough draft of this and offering suggestions!
"The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones."
-William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
The deepest level of RnD is rather warm after the walk from the tower through the April wind. He is getting too old for the chill of spring. Getting too tired of seeing treachery and betrayal at every corner from every comer. It weighs on his mind
He has left it too long, filled with wicked hope. He does not want to believe that his boy is gone forever. He had wanted there to be a way to get him back. Another chance. Another chance to prove that he knows who I am. I'll give him one last chance.
If he calls me Shishou, all will be forgiven. He could have sold a state secret under duress. He won't have to die for that.
It is stupid of him to bargain with his heart. It had never loved many, and it does not want to accept the reality of the situation. Kai is long dead. Whoever is on the other side of that slab of wood is just wearing his skin.
He stands here, outside the imposter's door, and weighs his options. He owes it to his boy to kill the imposter himself, rather than to send someone else to do it.
He owes it to Kaito, but he doesn't know if he wants to. I was a coward then.
He sets his hand on the door. I will not be a coward now. He'd missed his chance then, that day so long ago. This is a different sort of chance, a different choice. He cannot miss it now.
He strides in.
The imposter stands, brushing a strand of white-blond hair out of his eyes. "How can I help you?"
Every word sets his teeth on edge. Since when did Kai speak so politely to the one person who knows him better than anyone else? Since when did Kai want to research the explosion release? His boy hadn't that kekkei genkai. "You are reverse engineering the explosion release from your home country right now, correct?"
The imposter shifts uneasily, his head bowed. Since when did Kai have a problem with meeting his eyes? His boy had never been afraid of him. "Yes, Shimura-sama." Shimura-sama.
Did you know the man you killed called me Shishou?
You can't possibly know.
"Well, your project is to be discontinued immediately." Yes. Discontinued. Like Kai was discontinued by this hollow shell of a man in front of him. Was he in pain when he died? Does he want vengeance?
"But Shimura-sama the project could be helpful to Kono-" Do not dare speak of Konoha to me. Not after what you've done.
"There will be no help to Konoha by using another weaker country's jutsu." The genjutsu locks the imposter's limbs in place, and he examines the other man carefully. Did Onoki know that this would hurt him the most? Did he know? Is he doing it on purpose?
Iwa has always been weaker than Konoha. It always will be. Onoki cannot hurt him.
He sits the imposter down at the work table. He has thin shoulders, much like, much like Kai did, once upon a time. Kai is dead. "Well, it seems as though you've made a very unfortunate accident, Inuzuka Kaito." He tips the clay onto the imposter's lap.
This is not his boy, not Iwa no Kaito, not even Inuzuka Kaito, but let the imposter think that he'd died safe. Let whatever records Iwa make of this think it is an accident.
Blue-gray eyes. Shock. Horror. Hatred.
They cut him open more than the imposter could ever suspect. He hardens his heart. There will be others. There will be others. There has to something other than this.
His boy left a family behind when he died, and it would be cruel to reveal the betrayal to them, that they'd loved a infiltrator.
He shuts the door behind him and stands there as the room shakes. The scream of pain sounds like Kai's voice. Something in his chest shifts.
He stands there for a moment longer, aware of the sound of feet in the levels above him, and turns and strides down the hall. There is nothing left here for him to do.
It's been a long day. Hiruzen had ignored what was convenient for him to ignore again. Kumo is up to something in Ame, but Hiruzen doesn't have to pay attention to it right this moment, so he can wait until it brews into an international incident.
Danzo would rather solve the issue before it festers into a war. Of course, Koharu and Homura hadn't been interested—people don't like being told that their actions will lead to war, and they aren't much different than most people.
He swats at the mosquito buzzing next to his ear. The evening air is muggy and hot and his haori sticks to his back, but he has to keep walking. He has a promise to keep, if only to himself.
It's been sixteen years since the day the Nidaime died. In the upper reaches of the city there is still a small group who mourn privately for the passing of a great man, Senju Mito among them, but here in Konoha's lowest district, there's no love lost for him. He'd been the one to sign their existence as the red light district into being after all.
It hadn't been the best decision in hindsight, but there are no perfect people in this world, and Nidaime-sama had done the best he could at the time with pressure from the Daimyo.
He walks faster. He's down here to remind himself who he's fighting for. I have my convictions about Kumo and Ame and Hanzo the Salamander for Konoha because of these people.
The Ninth District is as much a part of Konoha as the Tower, perhaps more so. His contemporaries can forget, but he never will. There's still too much he wants to change.
"—know that, sir, but please, Kaa-san's sick. We just need another week." A small boy of about six or seven stands before a looming man. An innkeeper and another family who couldn't pay the rent.
It's common, but somehow, Danzo comes to a stop a few feet away.
Normally, it would an adult begging for an extension on rent. This boy's too young to be begging. But then, that's only his moral compass speaking.
"You said the same last month." The innkeeper leans down, dark eyes hard. "I'm not running a free institution, brat. Pay your rent, or get out. I've got mouths to feed."
"I got you the money last month, sir." The boy doesn't back away. Spit slides down his cheek. "I'll get you the rent this month too, sir, I just had to buy Kaa-san medicine this week, and I used up all the money I'd saved. I'm sorry, I'll—"
"You'll get out." The innkeeper uncrosses his arms. "You and your whore mother can get out. You're nothing but trouble."
"Please, sir—" The back of the innkeeper's hand catches the boy across the jaw, and he goes sprawling into the mud like a rag doll.
"If I ever see you back here—"
"You won't see him here again." Danzo catches the man's wrist and twists just enough to hurt. He wouldn't normally get involved, but it's been a long day...
It's the anniversary of the Nidaime's death, and seeing this part of his mentor's legacy has always brought a dull ache to his chest. No man is perfect, and it is not as if he knew this would happen when he signed Yoshiwara into existence. The rotting pieces of this godforsaken district beg to differ. Pain is pain. Misery is misery whether or not Nidaime-sama intended it to be.
"He's coming with me." In for a penny, in for a pound. He's already ruined this boy's chances to live in this neighborhood at the very least with his impulsive decision to stop the innkeeper from hitting the boy again.
"You're welcome to him." The innkeeper spits at his feet. "That foreign brat and his whore mother have been nothing but trouble, taking good food and lodging from Konoha citizens."
Foreign. The boy has pale blonde hair and blue eyes and a rapidly reddening hand print over his left cheek and a slight trace of blood on his lips.
Few citizens of Konoha have blonde hair and blue eyes. No matter. No matter.
It is not as if a boy no more than six or seven years old would be entrusted with the task of being a spy, and no self respecting spy would end up here, in Yoshiwara being slapped about by a civilian.
"Your mother and your things?" He asks while offering the boy a hand.
"Kaa-san's in the room still." The boy examines his hand carefully before accepting. Danzo reminds himself that he shouldn't be irritated by this, that there's no reason for this gutter boy to know who he is or why he would want to help.
"Then we should tell her that you're moving." He strides past the frozen Innkeeper. The man's finally recognized the hitai-ate on his forehead and realized that he hadn't been spitting at a man to be crossed then.
No matter.
It is not as if he will go out of his way to kill civilians even if they are terrible human beings.
No matter.
Hiruzen will try to ignore this too, if he were to bring it up. The state of the orphanage is deplorable. The state of this district is deplorable, but Hiruzen will leave it to the civilians to pass laws.
Hiruzen always does.
There's too much trust in the goodness of people in Hiruzen's heart. It blinds him too much to the reality of things.
"Thank you, sir, but where are we going?" The gutter boy is following him, wincing slightly with each word.
The woman in his arms has sunken cheeks, and brittle straw-colored hair. She does not awaken. He's walking too fast for her boy to keep up, and he has to remind himself to slow down. Slow down. Slow down.
As much of a realist as he likes to be, he doesn't like being reminded of the Nidaime's failures.
"My house." Where else can he bring a boy and a dying woman? He can't just leave them at the hospital. For one thing, it is dumb to think that such a thing would solve their problems, for another, he doesn't think that medicine can help this woman now.
"Sir," The boy tugs at his shirtsleeve. "I can't do that, sir." He looks close to tears. "I can't pay rent for a room in your house. We're in the sixth district already, and I don't have the money."
"I don't expect you to." Had Konoha really treated this gutter child so poorly? Can't goodwill be something inexplicable? He'll do—What am I supposed to be doing?— He'll do something. Something. It won't be enough, but it'll be something.
"What am I supposed to do, if I'm not paying rent, sir? I can do work. I can clean and cook and there's a lot I can do—"
"Are you not going to step foot over my doorway if you don't know what you have to pay for it?" He half suspects the only reason the boy's still following him is because he still has his mother. There'd been precious little in the way of belongings to bring, but it's very clear that his mother means a good deal to the boy.
"Nothing's ever free, sir." The boy glances at his mother's sunken face and wrings his hands together. "And you've helped me out already, and I'm grateful, but I'll have to pay somehow." He swallows thickly and continues. "It's not good to not pay."
"You can wash the dishes after dinner." He didn't drag this boy up here so he could wash dishes—he doesn't know why he dragged this boy up here, doesn't know why he bothered; there are plenty of boys—but if that's what it takes. If that's what it takes, then he'll create some task out of thin air. It doesn't have to be hard.
"Just the dishes, sir?" The boy stretches out a hand, but then draws it back. "You'll feed me if I wash your dishes?"
"Yes." No mention of a father. It is likely that the boy doesn't have one anymore. It is common among shinobi families, less so for civilian ones.
"Thank you, sir." The boy's more agitated the closer they get to the center of the city. He shifts uneasily on his feet at the intersections, casts worried glances at his mother, and shrinks in on himself the more other people look in their direction.
There has to a question that can distract him. What does one say to small boys? Who is he to tell or know? "What's your name?"
"Iwa no...Iwa no Kaito." He has such fearful blue eyes. Shimura Danzo doesn't consider himself a particularly sentimental man, but that doesn't mean he wants children to be afraid of him. It is no crime to be born in a foreign land. He had been born before his parents had moved with the rest of the Shimura clan to Konoha. They'd died in the war. By that metric, he ought to be insulted constantly as well. Yet, he is not. It all depends on power and perception.
"Sir, who are you?"
"Shimura Danzo." He does not explain who he is. Likely, it would just make the boy more anxious.
His house is on a gated piece of land tucked close to the cliffs. His mother had chosen the location for the shade, and a lovely view of the sunset. He lives half his life in the shadows and the rest in the sun.
The door to the garden path is latched. He is still holding the woman in his arms. "Would you open the gate?"
The boy does so, and they pass in.
It is a cold spring day in April, and the trees outside are heavy with budding flowers, dark branches like claws against the overcast day. The window is open, because he needs the chill, needs the bite of the air to center himself. He'd been to RnD yesterday.
The imposter had been sent to the hospital last night. Now it is morning, and the sky is overcast.
He sets his teacup down on the table. His hands do not shake. Pale blue gray eyes stare into his own when he closes his eyes, no recognition, no relation to the boy he knew. He holds the cup in both hands and tries to block out those eyes.
He hadn't killed his own student. Kai was gone. He tells himself. That was not my boy.
There'd been no recognition. For an imposter who hid himself so well from the rest of his acquaintances, he could not hide from the one man who'd been father and teacher and mentor to the boy he killed.
That boy was gone, and now the imposter is dead. There'd been no way to survive that blast. He hasn't gone out of this room to the hospital to check. He ought to check, keep up the charade, but no. No. Not when the ghosts are thick in the air.
Pale, blue gray eyes haunt the space between his shoulder blades. Shishou, what did I die for? Why did you kill me?
The imposter killed you.
He picks up the cup with his hands that do not shake and takes another gulp of his tea.
Iwa no Kaito had been dead a long time before today. He'd avenged his student, killed his student's killer.
Shishou, will you watch over my daughter? Tsu-chan's choosing Kiho-chan as her godmother, but you're the only family I have so...
Of course, my boy. I'll be glad to watch over your girl.
Thank you, Shishou. I'm sure she'll be able to thank you herself someday when she knows how lucky she is.
Is this a memory, or is it the ghost haunting him? Kai had loved his daughter so. The imposter had done well with that. Neither Tsume nor their child suspected a thing amiss. There is that at least. The child will not know the pain of betrayal just yet.
But he'd known. He'd known the moment Kai passed by him in the Tower without a smile or a hint of recognition. He's known the moment Kai opened his mouth and called him Elder Shimura like a distant stranger instead of Shishou. Their relationship since Kai started working in RnD hadn't been frosty enough to make Shishou become Elder Shimura and no matter how terrible matters between them ever got, Kai had always known who he was.
The very fact that he no longer remembered his teacher spoke volumes.
He hadn't wanted to believe it. He hadn't wanted to believe that his boy was gone. The imposter had been frighteningly good at being Kai. He'd raised his eyebrow sarcastically at the comments made by his Nara best friend. A small smile tugging at his lips there, a dreamy look in his blue-gray eyes here, fingers tapping against his desk, a fond air about him when greeting his wife...all those little mannerisms were still there, but the boy he'd loved like his own son was gone.
The determined gutter child with a wicked sense of humor and a vicious mean streak was gone. The imposter remembered nothing of Kai's history with his teacher, didn't even remember that there was such a thing, and he hadn't a choice. Something had sparked out in Iwa, and his boy had disappeared with the light.
He'd given opportunities, had covertly arranged a mindwalk, had stood outside that door and made bargains that meant he was a coward, nothing. There was nothing but tampered memories. There was nothing but absence where a brilliant young man had once stood.
He takes another sip of his cold tea.
His hands do not shake.
They are in the middle of dinner, and the boy—his name is Kaito, he reminds himself—when one of the ANBU comes to call.
"Hokage-sama wants to see you, Danzo-sama." The masked figure bows politely.
He rises, casting a glance in the direction of the boy. Dumbstruck, most likely. The boy is staring at his soup, a hard grip on his spoon. There's no time to waste over him though. "He is waiting in the Tower?" A nod. The Tower is not far from here. "I will be over directly."
The ANBU nods and vanishes. Danzo rises without saying anything to the boy.
His trip to the Tower is uneventful. "Hiruzen?" He asks, as he pushes open the door to the office.
The other man gestures towards a seat. "You were right about Kumo." It is unlike Hiruzen to just outright claim so. He hasn't even had the chance to sit down yet.
"Mmm?" It is likely that Hiruzen wants something to be done about it, but doesn't know where to begin, or how to ask. You would think that the Hokage would know how to ask for help.
But then, then, Nidaime-sama had seen a choice between a brave man and a coward that day. There'd be no man in the world who would choose the coward.
Not that Danzo himself is good at asking for help.
"Do you think that if we offer an alliance treaty to Ame, they would prefer us over Kumo?" Hiruzen takes a long drag of his pipe and sighs. The smoke lingers in the air between them.
"No." His mind wanders back to the boy, back to Nidaime, back to this very day sixteen years ago, when he didn't have the courage to stand up and die, and he wonders about what could have been.
He has done well for himself in the intervening years, had amassed political power, had built a worthy reputation, has done well.
But he is not Hokage, and he covets the hat his best friend and rival wears. Perhaps it is rejection by a teacher that stings far more than the loss of a hat. He didn't need to be Hokage, but he didn't need his teacher's last words to him to be a reprimand either.
"Why?" Hiruzen rubs the bridge of his nose. "By all accounts, Konoha is a better partner to hold an alliance with than Kumo."
They both, even sixteen years after the fact, have far too much of a grudge against Kumo.
"Because, Hiruzen, it's likely that Ame doesn't want to be allied with Kumo, but don't have a choice about the matter. Whether or not we offer doesn't make a difference." The corner of his mouth turns down in slight amusement. "You would think that after sixteen years of this, you would know better by now."
"I have you to remind me." The other man sighs and pours out two cups of sake between them. "That night sixteen years ago was so different from now. It almost seems like another life."
Yes, perhaps it had been another life, when they were warriors on the battlefield instead of the lifetime they've spent as Hokage and his Diplomat. "Are you waxing poetic about becoming a father again?" Hiruzen's second child had been born earlier in the year, a daughter this time.
"No." Hiruzen sighs. "And that reminds me, you aren't getting any younger yourself."
He is last of his clan, not that the Shimura clan had been particularly large, or blessed with a kekkei genkai for it to matter much. "Konoha won't lose much of anything if I don't have any children."
"That's not what I meant." Hiruzen extinguishes his pipe and knocks it against the ashtray. "It's not what I meant," he says again "and you know it."
His old friend seems to think that finding him a family would make him happy. That children, goodness, are a prerequisite to life fulfillment. He hasn't a traditionalist's interpretation regarding that thought.
"I see no purpose to that." He picks up the sake cup and swirls the clear liquid around in the earthenware. "If I wanted to interact with children, I would have found myself a genin team." As it is, the last time he spoke to a child before today was somewhere in the vicinity of three months to half a year ago.
"But if I hope that one of my students will become Hokage after me, who will be the diplomat after you?" Hiruzen asks, staring up at the ceiling. "Sure, I understand maybe you're just not interested in a family or a wife or children, but surely, you'd like someone to carry your name when you're gone?"
"I haven't time to worry about that." He doesn't know if the boy—Kaito, his name is Kaito—bothered to wash his dishes or not. It's likely that the gutter child conned him out of a meal, and is as of now, trying to drag himself and his mother far away from the strange man who had invited a child into his house on a whim. Such men are generally predators. The boy would be wise to run away. "There's much too much to do right now than to think about so many years into the future."
Still, it gives him food for thought. What had his mother said once upon a time? You are my legacy, son. You are who I will leave behind to tell my story.
He hasn't anyone to tell his story. He hasn't even thought about grooming a replacement of himself in the workings of the village. Sure, it might be pleasant to think of being irreplaceable, but that would make him even more important than the Nidaime and the Shodaime combined. He hasn't that hubris.
Both men had been titans of their era, but both men were ultimately replaceable. Their roles in the village structure had been large, but now, with the passage of time, it is the young who have taken up the roles they once filled.
"Just think about it, alright?" Hiruzen holds his own cup out towards Danzo's.
He moves his cup forward just a bit, and they click glasses together. "Alright, I will."
"To another year as village leaders. May we get to see many more." Hiruzen smiles ruefully. "And may Konoha prosper after us."
They drink on it.
He rises to go. "I have papers to look after for tonight, so I ought to go now. I'll draft a plan for what to do with Kumo tomorrow morning. We should be able to begin by evening."
"That sounds good." Hiruzen rises and walks with him to the door. "Biwako will miss me soon. If there's anything you need to tell me, a message to my house would be faster than routing it through the Tower."
He nods and goes.
The meeting room door creaks open. It's Hiruzen, who is silent for a change as he sits down in the chair opposite of Danzo. He supposes that he's thankful. It could be Minato. Minato with his sun-yellow hair and sky-blue eyes and his merciless judgement.
Minato is not here. He is thankful for that.
The tea in the pot has gone cold as well. He doesn't even like tea.
He dislikes rose tea the most, but it feels right to be drinking cold rose tea today. His boy is gone, and today is the day the entire world knows it.
Hiruzen watches him from the other side of the table, with heavy dark eyes.
There are eyes everywhere it would seem, blue-gray eyes between his shoulder blades and on the backs of his eyelids, dark brown eyes watching him from across the table.
Eyes everywhere judging him. He didn't kill his boy. The imposter killed his boy. Iwa killed his boy, and Iwa will pay dearly for it.
A gust of wind ruffles through the room and wraps itself down around his bones. Outside, the lilacs seem too bright a searing purple for the occasion against the heavy, overcast sky.
"Inuzuka Kaito died in the hospital early this morning." Hiruzen pours himself a cup of cold tea. "What have you done, Danzo?"
What have I done? I have made a sacrifice that you would never dare dream of. "What you can't do." He sets his cup down, and this time, for true, his hands do not shake. "I gave up my boy for this village." And it is always this, always so bitter.
Eighteen years later, and he still covets the hat his best friend wore and passed on to someone else. Eighteen years later, and he has more power and reputation than ever, but never quite enough. It is never quite enough to erase the sting of the word coward.
Eighteen years, and he has distracted himself in the meantime by building what he could and averting what crisis he had power to. It hadn't been enough to stop the war, but it had been enough to win it, but with an unwelcome cost.
He has never before felt that some costs of preserving Konoha weighed enough to crush his shoulders. He'd always thought the sacrifices would be worth it in the end, that he'd be leaving something worthy of protection to the young man who would have been his legacy.
Eighteen years, and now he has no legacy. That word echoes and rings hollowly in his head. Legacy.
Hiruzen will never need to raise a hand to any of his students will not have to look into their eyes and see shock and horror and hate before leaving the room and feeling the building tremble, and he has three.
The gods are not fair. They never have been. Why could it not have been one of them who'd been a traitor to Konoha? He has students to spare. He has power to spare and heart to spare. He has the hat and our teacher's regard.
Unlike him. Unlike him, he only had one apprentice that he'd loved like a son, and that word, coward. And now he has an absence, an open wound. It isn't productive to gather hatred and resentment so close. It blinds the eyes to the truth, but today, he thinks he'd rather let it fester.
"So I thought correctly. You did kill him." The words cut in ways that Hiruzen can't possibly understand.
"The imposter who came back from Iwa killed him." He reaches into his haori and pulls out the evidence, compiled neatly into two scrolls. Two scrolls to kill a boy he'd loved. Two scrolls to doom a man. "I merely ended the charade."
"He'd been replaced by a spy?" Hiruzen takes the scrolls and has the decency not to unroll them.
There are only three options. He doesn't know which is the worst.
His boy had been killed in Iwa and replaced with an imposter who had paraded around in his life for a year and a half before Danzo had the courage to kill him. His boy hadn't been killed in Iwa; they'd merely tampered with his memories, and Danzo had killed his own student. His boy had never been his boy, but a spy all along.
The first is the easiest to swallow. "The evidence says so. The mind walk said so. What was I supposed to do, let the mole continue to leak information because it wore a face that I knew?"
"But you don't want anyone else to know about it." Hiruzen tucks the scrolls away.
"There's no reason to tell anyone. The information breach was contained." He rises to go. There's such age on his shoulders now, that he's never felt before. He hadn't felt old before his time before, but he feels it now. He makes sure to keep his shoulders straight anyway. There's time enough to deal with the fatigue later.
If Tsume didn't detect a difference, then she doesn't need to know. Kai's daughter doesn't ever need to know. His friends don't need to know that they've been betrayed.
No one needs to know.
He stands in his foyer with a small amount of trepidation. The house is silent, but there's a light on in the kitchen. Perhaps Kaito has left already. Perhaps there is a mountain of unwashed dishes in his sink, and he ought never have attempted being kind.
But no, it does not matter what the child has done.
The child is merely a child and has no power to wound or harm him even by rejection. If the boy was smart, he'd have disappeared into the gutters of the city already.
The child is asleep in his kitchen doorway, arms wrapped around a mop. The floor is clean, but still damp. The dishes are done. The counter has been freed of its clutter. The table has been wiped and cleared.
He half suspects that the half rotten head of cabbage in his refrigerator has been thrown away as well.
The grubby little boy sleeps heavily, head cushioned against the yarn of the mop, the bruise on his face in the shape of a hand darkening to purple. It is stark against the pale skin, and Danzo feels a flash of indescribable anger. It disappears as quick as it comes.
Well, the boy has paid his dues and more, and it is late.
He can stay for the night.
He gathers the boy up in his arms, removes the mop from the equation, careful not to touch the bruise. No more than skin over bones, he can feel the child's ribs. He'd thought once, as his father had postulated, that Konoha meant the end of such children and such situations.
It's been a long time since he'd been so naive.
He had manners at the dinner table though. I doubt his mother was a prostitute by profession before they arrived in Konoha. It is likely that something else drove them here.
Refugees perhaps.
Tomorrow. Yes, he will think of what to do with the boy tomorrow.
Tonight there are papers to read, his own eventual replacement to consider, and deaths to not ponder over.
Missed opportunities are missed opportunities.
He'd been a coward then, more so than Hiruzen. He pays the price for that moment now.
No matter.
Opportunities are opportunities. Some will come around again. None of them pertain to this boy.
The electric light flickers. A gust of wind blows through the curtains and stirs the muggy air around. There's a storm coming.
Behind him, the woman wakes up. He hears the hitch in her breath as she recognizes that she's no longer in that squalid room, that the sheets are crisp and clean, and that this house is more spacious than the crumbling building she left behind.
He turns another page.
The sheets rustle. There's a weak gasp for air. "Si-" A thump.
He turns around. She'd tried to get out of bed and promptly collapsed, coughing on his floorboards.
What is he supposed to do? He didn't sign up for this. Didn't sign up for her bloodshot blue eyes, her shaking frame, her child sleeping peacefully on the couch in the next room, didn't—except he had. He had the moment he stepped in and ensured that this family would never be welcome in Yoshiwara again.
"You should go back to bed." He offers her a hand to take. "You should know you don't have much time left."
She nods, but doesn't take his hand. "My son, sir?" Her lips are cracked, and in the dim light, her sunken cheeks look worse than they would in the morning. She's young. Younger than his thirty-eight years. Statistically, he ought to be the dying one.
"In the next room." He takes a step forward and helps her back into bed. "Rest assured, you will not have to return to your landlord, and that Kaito is safe."
She relaxes minutely. "We don't have any money, sir, and I—" She breaks off and does not meet his eyes.
He has half an idea what she used to offer people when they did not have the money to pay. He knows that he wants no part in it. "Your boy cleaned my kitchen." He tells her. "He's paid." What would Hiruzen think of him now?
Sitting on his floor in the dead of night talking to a foreign woman he'd picked up, quite literally, on a whim in the middle of the Yoshiwara? Somehow, he doesn't think this is something his best friend would find the least bit...expected.
He doesn't even expect it. I must have taken a leave of my senses.
She coughs, shoulders shaking. "I will have to leave him." There is blood on her hand when she takes it away. "I—sir, could I ask you—"
"I will care for him." Oh, it's easy enough to say this, to give a dying woman some form of comfort. He can always ship the boy off to an orphanage in one of the upper districts. He's bright enough to be adopted and fitted into a family somewhere.
"God bless you, sir." Her grip on his hand is not tight enough to be uncomfortable, but that's only because she hasn't the strength. "People have, people have not been kind...you are the only one...God bless you."
Oh, who is he kidding? He isn't going to subject this woman's child to the conditions of the orphanage. He'd said that he'd care for the child, and promises to the dead are binding in ways that are difficult to avoid. Yes. I have definitely taken a leave of my senses tonight to be making promises like a madman.
Outside, the thunder rolls, and her grip on his hand loosens further.
"Do you want me to go get him so he can say goodbye?"
She's close now, hovering on the brink of this world and the next. It had only been worry for her son's future that had kept her alive this long. He's removed that burden from her and now she's slipping away.
"Please sir."
He doesn't tell her that he has a name, that calling him sir makes his skin crawl, that he really isn't as kind as she assumes him to be. He doesn't tell her. He just gets up and goes to shake the boy awake. "Your mother wants to see you."
"Kaa-san?" The grubby gutter boy is on his feet in an instant. "Will Kaa-san, will she—" His voice breaks and he has to take another breath to continue his question. "Will she be alright, sir?"
"Shimura-san." He is tired of being called sir. "And no, I expect she will not be alright." There's no reason to lie to the living. He can lie to the dying with a straight face, but there's no purpose in getting a child's hopes up to dash them for no reason whatsoever.
The boy's bolted out the door in an instant.
He sits down on the couch and waits for the sobbing in the other room to stop. The wind howls. The thunder roars, and he does not intrude where he is not needed.
A leave of my senses. What am I supposed to do with a boy?
You are my legacy, my son. His mother's voice whispers. You will tell my story after I am gone.
A legacy. He rolls the word around in his head and thinks of the boy, of Iwa no Kaito who he cannot send to the orphanage because he'd promised the dying woman that he'd take care of her son. Well, Hiruzen is always going on about how I should acquire a child to be my legacy.
Why not this one?
Tsume sends him an invitation to the imposter's funeral a week later. The words are scratched out starkly against the heavy white paper. She had to have broken pens over this in her half wild anger. Tsume will survive this just fine.
It's not really an invitation, more a note with a date and a time and a place. He half expects that there won't be that many attending.
The war hadn't made Kai's status as an immigrant any easier to bear. He considers sending her a note back to say that he will not be attending—he has no desire to see the imposter buried by Kai's weeping wife and child.
But it would be callous. He had promised Kai that he would take care of Inuzuka Hana. Promises to the dead are hard to break. He ought at least make sure that the child is alright.
She should be five years old now, having spent her fifth birthday with the man she thought of as her father. He had waited long enough for that. He ought to go. He ought to send the invitation back with an affirmation and go.
He ought to, but he sits there for a long moment and doesn't do anything. Two hours until they put the imposter into the ground. Did they even bury Kai in Iwa? Did they leave his body out for the crows? I trusted you, Shishou, but you weren't there when I needed you.
He pushes the funeral invitation off his table into the wastebasket.
"Danzo-sama, Hokage-sama wants your advice about the new treaty Suna is proposing." It's one of his own agents. What was the boy's name again? He can't possibly remember. He has roughly three hundred of them in the faceless masses under his command. He doesn't remember names, only numbers. Root Agent 00253.
He rises slowly. "Tell Hokage-sama that I will be there presently."
He still thinks Minato is too young, too nice, too soft to be Hokage, that perhaps Orochimaru would have made a better fit for the position, but Minato had been instrumental in winning the war, and Hiruzen has his doubts about Orochimaru's mentality these days.
He'd confessed it after putting the two scrolls away in his sleeve. Two scrolls to doom a man, and one shared tragedy to bring them back together again.
Danzo himself hasn't seen Orochimaru do anything treasonous as of yet, so he doesn't know if this is merely Hiruzen's sad attempts to comfort him, or a leftover remnant of their rivalry. See, I too, might have to sacrifice one of my boys for Konoha.
But it wouldn't be the one that Hiruzen loves like a son.
He goes to speak with Minato.
"...It's a big change from being frontlines for certain, Elder Shimura." Minato smiles, small, soft, and Danzo reminds himself to stay in the present.
The past is the past. It does not do to dwell on lost decisions, missed chances, doors slammed shut. Only this moment and the future matters. The past is set in stone.
"You will find it that way for a while yet." He almost laughs at the surprised look on the Yondaime's face. "You didn't think that we were all desk ninja in our youth, did you?" They'd been Konoha's strongest in their day, Hiruzen, Homura, Koharu, Kagami, himself. Students of the Nidaime were never weak.
"Oh, no." Minato corrects himself. "That's not it at all." The young man looks away. "I just, you never supported my candidacy much at all. I was wondering if you could tell me why?"
And on paper, there's no reason at all to oppose Namikaze Minato's ascension to the highest level of office if one isn't a bigot who believes that orphans ought to know their place.
"You're a war hero." He tells the younger man, the taste of something bitter on his tongue. "Those tend to die young if they survive the war. Don't do something that will get yourself killed less than two years into your tenure as Hokage, and I'll reevaluate Hiruzen's decision then." If Namikaze Minato survives two years as Hokage without Hiruzen behind him pulling the strings, he'd be a power to protect Konoha then.
No. He doubts this young man in front of him will live. Of the people who survived the Second War, he, Homura, Koharu, and by a lesser extent, Hiruzen, they'd been more cowards and villains than heroes. Kagami had been a hero. Kagami had died heroically in the last stand against Kumo invaders at the border.
Kagami is by all accounts, still very much dead, a plot of land as his grave on the banks of the Naka River.
"I see." Minato says, his eyes hard, but his grin in place. "I'll keep your advice in mind, Elder Shimura. You've been a great help with parsing the political discourse from the Kazekage today."
He's been dismissed. Hiruzen would never have dismissed him like this, but Hiruzen likes to think that they are friends and nothing but friends.
It is a quarter past one o'clock in the afternoon on a blazingly hot April day. He has a funeral to attend.
The graveyard is nearly empty by the time he arrives. He's late. He pauses at the edge of the plot and watches Tsume's shoulders slump. She is eight months pregnant with her elder child tucked into her side standing in front of the freshly turned earth, but he has confidence that she'll survive.
She's survived plenty and will continue to do so.
He reminds himself that he is not guilty, that this scene didn't happen by his hand, but Onoki's. Would it sooth her grief to know that her husband has been dead for a year and a half? It would not.
Over the years, he's gotten used to lying to the living. Some lies hurt less than the truth.
Some promises to the dead are hard to keep and harder to break. He's here for Kai's daughter.
Inuzuka Hana seems to have collapsed in on herself. She has red-rimmed eyes, but she does not cry.
Kai hadn't cried either, that day they'd buried his mother. They are more alike than he thought, father and daughter.
"I thought you weren't going to come, Shimura-san." Tsume doesn't turn around. "I would have waited so you could say goodbye to him."
"It is better this way." He comes to stand beside her and stares at the dark earth. Did they bury Kai or did they leave his body out for the crows? "If you had left it uncovered I would have lost my composure."
She laughs, a single hysterical barking noise that rips free of her throat and leaves shattered edges in the air. "Okami forbid anyone know how much you loved him."
He looks down at the child by her side. Inuzuka Hana stares blankly ahead, unseeing, unfeeling, numb to the world. At least she's had five birthdays instead of three and a half. She'd thought the imposter her father. He's responsible for the imposter's death.
By all rights, he's killed her father. Still, promises to the dead are hard to keep but harder to break. He is her godfather, so he ought to check in on her well being now and again. "He hasn't left us completely."
"He never talked about you after he came back from Iwa." Tsume says, suddenly. "I'd wanted to ask, but it was never the right time, you two had a fight before he was deployed from what I remember, and he didn't want to talk about it much. I just thought, thought there was more time—"
I thought we would have more time as well.
"You invited me anyway." He hadn't wanted to attend this morning. He hadn't replied that he would.
"I thought he'd want to see you one last, last time." She chokes on her words and pulls her daughter close. "He really admired you, you know."
His eyes are wet. It's been years. He shouldn't have come. Kai died a long time ago. He tells himself. Today is just the day they all know it.
It doesn't help.
"Are you going to live, or are you going to die?" He asks the sniveling child before him. The boy had slipped down here, to his mother's grave after dinner again. It is the seventh night in seven nights that he has done this. If he is going to die, it doesn't matter, but he rather hopes that the boy will choose to live.
Death isn't everything in this world and there is still much more of life for him to see. Sometimes the young forget that when gripped by the throes of tragedy.
The boy's shoulders shake, and he whimpers and gasps before the freshly turned earth.
Had he ever been a child like this? Surely he got up and moved on sometime on his own? What does he say to a child who is mourning the death of a mother? He'd lost his own mother so long ago that she is just a shadow lurking in the back of his mind, a whisper of the word legacy on the wind.
Perhaps that's not true. She's more than that, but for it to be of any use he would have to tell the boy so. He doesn't want to today.
"I—I don't want to die." Such misery. Well, at least this boy knows that death isn't a solution.
"Then, do you want to live or do you want to exist?" There are some that never move past the death of a loved one. They stay there, frozen in place, completely lost for the rest of their short lives. Subsistence is all they cling to at that point.
He rather hopes that this boy won't do that. There'd be no help for him if that's the path that he choses.
"L-live, Si—" The boy ducks his head. "Shimura-san." So he remembered then.
"Then you have stop coming here after dinner." Sometimes, he must be cruel to be kind. If he lets the boy spend his evenings here he'll never stop grieving even if he wants to live. It does no good to dwell on death.
"Shimura-san?"
"If you do not, then you'll miss the start of school." Likely, telling the child to stop grieving will do him no good, and heaven knows that Danzo himself is hardly interesting enough to be a distraction.
It will take years before this boy is ready to learn.
"School?" The boy-Kaito, his name is Kaito-uncurls himself from his folded position.
"I have signed you up for the Shinobi Academy, Kaito." He holds out a hand. He cannot spend his entire evening here, but he had promised this dead woman that he will take care of her child, and damn him if he breaks a promise that he does not have to.
Kaito takes his hand, and he pulls the boy to his feet. "Kaa-san called me Kai."
Kai? Oh, very well then. Kai it is. "You'll start school next week then, Kai."
"Shimura-san?" Kai tugs at his sleeve. "Does the hurt go away if you choose to live?"
He blinks. Does the— "No." He rather suspects that it doesn't. The grief just gets buried under everything else that must be done when choosing to live. "The absence doesn't go away, but life goes on."
Kai lets go of a shaky breath, and his hand drops from the Councilor's shirt. "O-okay." He straightens his shoulders. "I'll do well in school, Shimura-san. You won't be disappointed."
Disappointed? He doesn't think so. Kai is polite and attentive and likely nearly two years older than his yearmates.
It will be unlikely that he does not do well in school. "Do you know how to read?"
"Kaa-san taught me." Ah, good. That would make the transition easier.
"You will come with me to the Tower in the meantime." It is important that orphaned children are accounted for, not that the system will account for Kai if he doesn't take matters into his own hands. A ward of the state, living at the Shimura residence.
And now Hiruzen will stop nagging about children. I have one. I don't need any more.
Agent 00245 reports that Inuzuka Hana made it to a shelter, and that both she and the imposter's son are safe. Danzo dismisses the thought that the imposter's son might have the explosion release. One, it is far too early to tell, and he rather suspects that Tsume would truly crumple if she had to give up one of her children. For another, he already has the imposter's notes held in trust, and various collections of the imposter's genes.
It would be easy to ensure that Konoha 'borrowed' the explosion release from Iwa without ever having to irritate his boy's spirit in the afterlife.
Agent 00245 also reports that they've secured Inuzuka Gaku for questioning. The young man had been there when the imposter died.
He'd forgotten—Why had he forgotten?—that the imposter would have time to talk before he died. That yes, he'd chosen a foolproof method that looked more like an accident than a murder, but still, that gave the imposter time to talk.
He might have had a contact in the hospital, and however small that margin of possibility might have been, it existed. It needs to be investigated.
He thanks Agent 00245 and heads deeper into the base. He comes to a stop outside the one way glass of the interrogation room.
"This can be very simple." Agent 00156 tells Inuzuka Gaku. "You can tell us what Iwa no Kaito said before his death since he was sitting outside the door, or we can douse you and ask you again." Agent 156 had always been efficient in information gathering techniques.
He would rather that the young man on the other side of the door speak quickly about the matter. There's no need to anger Inuzuka Kosshi without reason.
The Inuzuka queen doesn't need much reason to go on the hunt these days after she'd lost her more easy going half on the Kusa border.
"Go fuck yourself." The young man snaps at the masked figures all about him. Brave. Stupid, but brave.
"What did he say?" Agent 00156 presses forward. "Tell us and you go free immediately."
"Like I fucking said the first time." Inuzuka Gaku growls, spit flying from his lips. His partner's on the table behind him, limp and unresponsive, and he has to still be drugged quite badly because his eyes are unfocused. "Go fuck yourself. I ain't telling you nothing 'bout Kaito-jisan."
His breathing is ragged. His eyes are bloodshot. His hands are broken. "You'll learn something 'bout Konoha over my dead body." Still, still he grits his teeth and smiles mockingly. "And that's that the will of fire doesn't die, you motherfucking bastards."
Agent 00156 slaps him across the cheek.
Inuzuka Gaku is unrepentantly silent, but there's a darkening bruise on his cheek in the shape of a hand...Another boy, another split lip and bruised cheek.
It was a bad idea to be so hasty. He has committed so many errors with this. So, so many errors. When did he start slipping this badly? He gestures, and Agent 00156 retreats from the room.
"Danzo-sama." Agent 00156 kneels, a hand on a knee, the other in a fist on the ground. "I am sorry, the Inuzuka has been recalcitrant, but I am certain the information is coming."
"Leave it be." It's likely that they'd have to half kill Inuzuka Gaku to get information out of him, and that would be both a waste and a liability. The Inuzuka inherit through the mother's line, so the boy isn't the heir of a clan, but there's no need to alienate a staunchly loyal clan either.
He considers his options carefully. "Bring me Inoichi's ward." Fu is a recent addition to his forces, but certainly, at nine, old enough to be useful in this situation. He cannot let Inuzuka Gaku go at the moment.
There is still too much that is uncertain. Best make sure to deal with the issue now. Inuzuka Gaku can forget this night and remember that he's been recently inducted into ANBU.
Anything else, well, he'll deal with that headache when the time comes.
It was unlikely that the imposter had backup in the hospital anyway. Tsume had been with him all afternoon as he lay dying. There's likely nothing that happened that would endanger Konoha.
Still, some time, he'd like to wring the imposter's last words from Inuzuka Gaku.
Word comes in that the Yondaime and his wife had died against the Kyubi while sealing the tailed-beast into their infant son half an hour later as he sits at his desk watching the red sun rise over a wreck of a city.
Hiruzen summons him to the funeral, and he almost wants to laugh. Didn't I warn you not to become a hero, Namikaze Minato? Couldn't you just have listened to what I said?
Yet another man dead in the name of protecting Konoha.
Still, years and years pass, and he cannot seem to die. Coward. He brushes the thought away. When there's life, there's another thing to be done. My time's not up yet.
Coward. The word rings out behind him on the flagstones like the tapping of his cane in the silence. Coward. You do not want to die.
It has been a few months since Kai started school when he comes home with bruises on his arms in the shape of fingers.
Or it's just taken him a few months to notice that someone has been hurting the child under his care. He prefers to think that this is the first time such a situation has occurred. "Who did this to you?"
Kai shifts on both feet and tries not to meet his eyes. He grips the boy's chin between two fingers and forces him to look him in the eye. "Who did this to you?"
"Sensei was just...a bit forceful when showing me the katas, Shimura-san."
"Sensei? It wasn't one of the other children?" He needs to make sure that he doesn't go in and look like a overbearing parent.
He is not Iwa no Kaito's father, nor will he ever be. He doesn't need to start rumors, and moreover, he doesn't need the headache of putting the rumors to bed.
"I can take the other children." Kai ducks his head, but the small sharp grin on his lips is amusing enough at least. "They don't bother me anymore. Not since the ones who do started getting red ants in their desks."
Ah. His boy's a vicious one then. Perhaps the gutters have taught him something useful after all.
"It's just...I can't make Sensei pay for hurting me, 'cause he'll just hurt me worse."
Sensei. He'd thought the teachers at the Academy would be smart enough to read the biographies of the children that they taught. Perhaps not. A glance at this boy's name and a brief skim through the biographical information must have been enough for this chunin who would very shortly no longer have a job.
Kai pulls at his sleeve. "He won't fail me in class though, Shimura-san. My marks won't disappoint you."
"You won't be seeing that sensei again." Evidently, ward of Shimura Danzo isn't enough for this chunin. He'll send this one to a border outpost where they can rot for the rest of their natural life. Shimura Danzo doesn't like inefficiency, and he likes it less when it damages his own ability to keep his promises.
"Shimura-san?" When he turns back to Kai, the boy's already set the table for dinner. "Am I not going back to school?"
The corner of his mouth turns down in amusement. "You're not getting out of school." He sits down. "That chunin will be deployed to the border of the Land of Fire and the Land of Rain."
The rest of the meal is spent in silence. Kai is still fidgeting however. "Ask your question."
"Why'd you keep me?" The words tumble out of Kai's mouth faster than a flood. "You're clearly important 'cause you have this house and visit the Tower and can move my sensei away if he makes you mad, so, so..."
Good grief. The boy looks like he's about to go mad right this instant.
"Why'd you keep me if you could get someone better?"
Why did he keep this boy over all the other ones? This one more than any other one he could have picked up from the streets of Yoshiwara? He's passed other pitable children before. None of them have ended up in his house.
"Because I am the reason you can't return to your old life." He'd snapped at the innkeeper, and what he's started, he'll always finish. "And I promised your mother that I'd 'keep you' as you like to put it."
"O-okay." Kai releases a shaky breath. "Thank you then, Shimura-san. You won't regret it."
Inuzuka Hana graduates Academy at age seven and a half. Nara Ensui's been poking around in the Archives about his best friend's 'death' and quite frankly, the Nara's meddling is a headache and a half. Still, it seems like the Nara wants a very specific genin team with Inuzuka Hana on it.
He might have more than a little to do with how the Nara discovered his goddaughter's best friends. Who else would have arranged it so that the Academy teachers were talking about student friendships in the chunin break room on the morning that Nara Ensui stopped by?
"It seems that Ensui wants to take a genin team this year." Hiruzen remarks, while knocking his pipe on the ashtray.
"It seems?" Koharu raises an eyebrow at this. "That boy's been practically screaming his intentions from the rooftops."
It's not as if the man has kept it a secret.
The man's bad at keeping secrets, considering that he's been covertly glaring in Danzo's direction when he thinks the older man isn't looking for the past two years. It's very clear who he suspects in the case of Kai's murder, and not without reason, since he did kill the imposter.
Sometimes, lies come back to haunt the one who tells them. If I'd decided to make the betrayal public then, I wouldn't have to outmaneuver Nara Ensui now.
But then that might have killed Tsume, and Kai would never forgive me then.
What's done is done. Now it only remains to decide what course to take.
"The question is," Homura mutters "whether or not we humor him."
The best path might be to give Nara Ensui what he wants. A genin team will distract him from continuing his investigations for at least another two years. A genin team will appease him quite a bit, and there are other plans to enact in the meantime to continue to distract him.
There's no real reason to kill Nara Ensui. For one, he is instrumental down in Crypt. For another, Kai's daughter would benefit from a devoted sensei more than Minazuki Yuki. That man is far too average, and Danzo doubts he'd be putting his life on the line for a student any time soon.
No, she'll learn all sorts of bad habits from that man. Better that it be Nara Ensui.
"Give him the team he wants." It's been a while since he's opened his mouth, so the other three turn around to look at him for a long moment before anyone speaks.
"Danzo, you've gone mad." Koharu sighs. "We can't let Nara Ensui anywhere near the field. He's impossible to motivate when he isn't in Crypt. That's the whole reason he ended up there in the first place."
"Not to mention, it sets a bad precedent for other jounin sensei to pick and choose their students." Hiruzen steeples his hands and stares across the table.
Old friend, his eyes ask. Are you thinking of Kaito again? You have to realize that there wasn't anything else you could have done about that, and that this solves nothing.
Danzo meets his eyes firmly. And you should know that I will not send my goddaughter out into the village without a proper escort. Minazuki Yuki is not a proper escort.
"Nara Ensui has never been sane enough to be reasoned with." He sets his hand on the table, fingers tapping. "And clearly he's bound and determined to get the genin team he wants." He takes a sip of his sake and feels the familiar burn of alcohol on his tongue. "It might be easier to give him what he wants than to have him suddenly quit the forces altogether."
"You think he will?" Hiruzen chuckles. "I think he likes his job a little better than that." You don't know a man like Nara Ensui half as well as you think.
He'd definitely quit if you burn him again. Then, you don't think you burned him the first time.
"He'll threaten to." He swirls the sake around in its cup. "And you should know him well enough to know that he's capable of every threat he makes."
"Still, it's bad precedent to let jounin sensei move teams around." Homura sighs. "And yet, losing the Head of Crypt would be such a blow."
"I'll make a decision at the meeting tonight." Hiruzen pushes himself away from the table. "If Danzo's right then I might as well give him the team. It's not as if our current system is built on years and years of effort when it'll crumple like wet paper in the face of a motivated Nara."
Danzo snorts. "The young never respect the institutions of their elders." He also rises to go.
Inuzuka Hana graduated this morning. If he knows her habits well enough, she'll be somewhere on the streets with her brother riding on her shoulders. He has a goddaughter to see.
Shishou, will you take care of my daughter? I haven't blood kin to ask, and you are the closest I have to family.
I would be happy to take care of your girl, my foolish sentimental boy.
A laugh. A small, sharp smile.
"Neechan! Tell another story!" The imposter's son is just like every other Inuzuka boy there has ever been and Danzo suspects he's similar to every other one that will ever be.
You cannot punish a child for the sins of his father.
No, Shishou. I would rather that you not.
He sits here, on the side of the street at a table by a teahouse, face shaded away from the sun by the awning, watching them. Today is not a day for introductions.
It is never the right day for introductions.
"Kiba-chan, I told you so many stories already." He was right. Inuzuka Hana did want to share her triumphs with her brother, and now they are walking together in the marketplace, the boy on her shoulders as they pass hard candies between them. A trio of wolf-dog adolescents tumble after her.
One of them stops to stare in his direction, but quickly rejoins the pack.
"But I want another one." Kiba tugs at her hair with a child's disregard. "Neechan tells the best stories."
She is a bright and serious child according to her Academy teachers, curious, with an interest in history, and a small group of friends.
Bright and serious, but with an Inuzuka's tendency to honesty and blunt speech.
"But my throat is tired now." She reaches up to poke her brother's cheek. "I'll tell you a story when we get home."
"Okay." The boy giggles. "Where're we going now, Neechan?"
She will not fit well into the role he'd thought she might play. No Inuzuka has ever been a politician, and Inuzuka Hana won't be any different no matter who her father was.
"There are puppies in the kennels. Wanna go see?"
He will not have a legacy, but promises to the dead that are hard to keep are even harder to break. His goddaughter will have ample protection when she leaves the village at the very least.
"Yeah! Puppies!"
No one will tell my story when I am gone. I have only this life.
"And what about all this good I have in my heart—does it mean anything?"
-Saul Bellow, Herzog
A.N. So I got inspired to do this piece because recently I've been doing a lot of pondering about Danzo. I'm not entirely sure how well it turned out. I've always felt that Danzo is nearly always convinced that he's doing the right thing. And as a consequence, he does some pretty terrible things, but he doesn't see it that way. Hence, Gaku's torture scene is so muted its...pretty much nonexistent...Even so, he has a spark of humanity in him. He's not an unfeeling rock.
Thus we get this eleven thousand word something. Now, let's see who can piece together all the clues about what was actually going on between Kaito and Danzo...neither of their perspectives has the whole story, but there are a few more published clues.
Thanks so much to everyone who reviewed, favorited and followed!
~Tavina