Chapter Four – It Survives in Hiding

The recovery of Konohagakure would not happen in days. It would not happen in months.

The stretches of green produce would never reach harvest; they had been ground into runnels of black mud and gore, which sterilized the land. The village storehouses had been damaged, along with the academy and much of the private housing, and while the Hokage's mansion still stood on Konoha's leveled horizon, it seemed like a relic to its surviving people – dark, unapproachably apart, and silent.

Starvation became the second ravager of Konoha, and the streets became even more dangerous. Finally, something like marshal law had been initiated. Overwrought, the remaining authorities had no time or resources for thieves, murders, and desperate men. Justice was swift, and there were executions for the first time in many years. Iruka used to stop when he saw them and offer up a soft word with folded hands, but at some point he stopped. It was too much for his heart, which was an increasingly dead weight in his chest.

More haunting than the insensibility was the reality that Iruka was no longer a child, a son, or even a nin. The school was shut, and no one had yet stepped forward to take the title of Hokage. For Iruka, the landscape was food, not identity – survival, not meaning. Yet the empty space inside still haunted him, and the question: 'What did I survive for?'

He might have continued like that, slowly loosing his ability to feel for other people. He would hardly have been the only one. It was only chance that he came across something that would change his life – that would save him. He was making his evening circuit when it happened. He was living a kind of scavenger life in those days, relying on his novice shinobi skills to stay alive – to sort of stay alive. His mother would have wept bitterly at the gaunt, wary, hollow eyed creature he had become.

Iruka hadn't even flinched when he came across the man on the rope. He stood in the wavering shadow, brown eyes following the pendulum-like movement of the hanging body as it drifted in the breeze. Swollen features stared at him above the thick tether wound around his neck. The eyes bulged. They were blue, and fair tangles of hair drifted quietly in the wind.

Iruka watched wordlessly for a long moment, fingering the sharpened tip of the kunai at his side until the razor edge pricked his fingertip. He wondered faintly whether he should cut the man down. He was no longer picky about his corpses, but he doubted that someone who intended to die would carry anything valuable. Civilian clothes, so no weapons. Iruka blinked hardened eyes, then, turning, he left the dangling body to drift.

It was a sound that called him back, something trickling out of a past when he cared. A little cry, like a noise he had once made. Above him, the sky rumbled, and Iruka flinched, restless. He should walk away. His own footsteps would cover any other sounds.

Iruka went back. The corpse hung, but below it was a home. There was an alcove where the steps had been, just wide enough underneath for someone small. Iruka knelt beside it, wincing at the ache that was still in his moving parts, the pervading weariness and pain. "Hey," he whispered softly, into the shadowed shelter. "Hey."

Blue eyes blinked back at him from a face even smaller than his own. It shifted fearfully into the dark as far as the little space would allow, shuddering on a sniffle that shook it's whole body. A child.

Iruka sat back on his heels. He felt the stir of a cold wind, and it made him tremble a little. He pulled his overlarge, 'borrowed' jacket a little closer, feeling vulnerable. Feeling on the edge of something. Then he turned back to the alcove.

"Hey," he murmured again, reaching cautiously into the space, palm open and flat and clear in the dim light. He didn't try to grab hold. "Come on, it's cold here."

Who knew why the child responded to him? Maybe it was something in his voice or maybe he realized there was no one else. Maybe he just needed warmth, another human body to press against. Whichever answered best, the child reached for the older boy and allowed himself to be brought out into their dangerous world.

He buried his face in Iruka's stomach against the sight of the swaying body, gurgling a kind of sob. The tiny hands were fisted against his sides, tight around the fabric. Iruka hesitated before pressing the palm of his hand against the fair head.

This was his first foundling. There would be others, all too helplessly young and utterly alone. Iruka lead them back the ruin of his house, and started living again to keep them fed. They made his heart work again. Anyway, there was no one else.

If they were going to survive, it would be on their own.

"You brought him back with you," Naruto said. Behind his lips, other words rebounded; You rescued him.

Something like sorrow seemed to press against Iruka's shoulders, forcing them down. "My family's house wasn't in good condition. I tried to repair it – a tarp across the roof, boards where water or fire had ruined the tatami – but there was only so much I could do. Still, we went back there and I tried to take care of them."

Naruto felt an ache under his ribs; here were Iruka's first orphans, and Sensei had been one of them himself. "Why didn't the village Council do anything?" he demanded. His own feelings about the Council were complicated, but he couldn't understand why there had been no attempt to help.

Iruka said, "At the time it felt like abandonment, but the Yondaime had just died and there was no obvious choice for a replacement. Should the Sandaime return, or should a younger shinobi be named in his place? Who? Something like that had never happened before, and Sarutobi was grieving."

Naruto's felt his chest tighten; his sensei's descriptions were awful. In his career as a shinobi, he had seen war torn places. He had even seen Konoha itself brought low and then rebuilt after Pein's attack. However, at that time there had been leadership and – thanks to Tsunade – precious few casualties. Order had not broken down.

He said so, and Iruka agreed. "Maybe we learned from our mistakes. I'd like to think that."

The way he answered, thickly and with regret, it was as though he were speaking for himself. Naruto felt a sinking feeling. He asked, "Did he die, that boy?"

Iruka sighed, long and deep.

Lawless times were never kind to children. Predators of all kinds roamed the streets, and people sunk low into their own shadows in an attempt to go unnoticed. It was unsafe even to beg, and the vulnerable, the unsupported – those who couldn't afford to leave or didn't know where to go – suffered most.

By that time, Iruka knew all about suffering. In only a few months, he had lost his parents, his home, his faith in human beings, and any memory of being warm, secure, or full. In place of those things he had gained, over time, responsibility for over half a dozen small, needy mouths, relentlessly hungry and desperately in need of him.

He didn't know quite how it had happened, only that he couldn't bring himself to turn them away. Whenever he tried, the memory of the first man he had ever killed rose to his mind, and then he had them by the arm, tugging them all way the way back to his own inadequate home.

Now he stepped through the hanging threshold, passing the bare frame and its scraps of rice paper. "I'm home," he called.

They came to meet him with hopeful eyes. "Ruka!" one of the littlest warbled, waddling over to fall clumsily against his knees. She clung, just as most of them clung. Iruka wished it made him feel strong and grown up, but mostly he felt inadequate.

"You were gone a long time," a blond boy said, twisting his shirt tail fretfully.

"Shouya," Iruka greeted his original foundling, rummaging deep for the smile he remembered on his mother's face before she died – It's-going-to-be-okay. He smoothed the youngsters furrowed forehead, which was as wrinkled as an old man's. "I'm sorry it took a long time, but I found something."

Instant celebration, eager grasping. He emptied his pockets, handing over all he'd accumulated throughout the long day. They cried like baby birds when he fed them, chirruping, a cascade of whimpers. He knew their stomachs hurt. His own always felt like teeth chewing.

Complete satisfaction was out of reach, of course, but it was with less urgent unhappiness that evening fell on Iruka's small cavalcade. He answered the outstretched arms of a petitioning child as they settled for the night, tucking them together so they could be warmer. "Ruu." The toddler cuddled into the space under his chin, thumb in her mouth. Her nose was running and Iruka rubbed it clean. Meanwhile the others drew closer, dragging blankets and jackets and whatever they had left to keep them insulated in the absence of beds.