Chapter 5 – When the Corner Turns
It was the darkest days of the Reconstruction, and Iruka was scavenging.
It was drizzling as the light faded, a tangible grey curtain that made Iruka's muscles cramp with cold. He swiped at his nose and swallowed down an empty longing that he would find something to eat soon. Some of the others had been coughing for days, and he was starting to feel desperate. It made him less cautious than usual – made him wait less before moving across empty spaces, made him scan the area a little less carefully.
'Just stay out a bit longer,' he kept telling himself. 'You'll find something.'
Probably it was his hurry which made him vulnerable, or perhaps it was the rain that concealed those following him. All Iruka knew was what one moment he was leaning over a dank crevice, hopeful that it might lead into an unraided pantry, and the next minute he heard something – a faint sound like the scrape of displaced gravel.
His head snapped up, and he saw their eyes. They gleamed, white around the edges. At first he could see nothing more then that. Then one of them opened his mouth, and Iruka could see his teeth too.
Iruka fled. Fled in the hysterical zigzag pattern of a rabbit under a shadow. Iruka ran, even knowing that it would eventually come down to a fight he would lose. He ran, but not fast enough. It happened as he took a sharp turn into an impassible street. Skidding to a stop, his dark eyes climbed up the obstruction created by the buckled buildings. Then he looked back to see his pursuers – six of them – rounding the corner. His breath was jagged shards in his throat, which tasted like iron, and Iruka swallowed painfully as he drew his frail weapon.
They attacked him all at once, overwhelming him in instant of raw weight and numbers. Only once, he felt his kunai drag on flesh, and then it was crushed from his fingers, his phalanges forced back until he heard them break. Hands clawed his hair, flinging him down. His head crunched against mortar, and after that his vision became a blaze of white stars. Only the vicious driving force of a foot under his ribs kept him from passing out, and even then he was only conscious enough to blink stupidly at his attackers.
He made a wretched sound, crying out though he had no hope of rescue. His scream was swallowed up in the concrete, muffled by the falling rain.
In the present, Iruka sat with his head ducked low, his expression bleak. Naruto sat tensely on the edge of the chair. It took him more than one try to ask the question, "What happened then?"
His teacher looked up. "Someone stopped them."
Iruka could feel their hands roughly searching the thin debris of his clothing, satisfying themselves that he had nothing to steal. He waited for them to press him down, for the inevitable, but before it could happen, hoarse shouting penetrated his ears and then his assailants had other things on their minds then pinioning a boy with a head wound.
Iruka's temples throbbed as though they were swelling against broken glass. It made his vision sloppy, skipping around the edges, and yet he saw. Saw men he did not know arrive to turn a beating into a melee. These new fighters had hitai-ate that gleamed from their forehead, and on their sleeves was a symbol in the shape of a shuriken. Iruka recognized the insignia even through the morasses of confusion: The Konoha Military Police.
It wasn't a long fight. A starving child might have fit his assailant's criteria, but armed shinobi known for their swiftness in meting out justice certainly did not. Outclassed, they ran as soon as they were able, and when none remained, the three interlopers approached Iruka. A rescue? Or another kind of trap? Iruka scrabbled back.
The Uchiha who knelt first had severely cropped hair that was turning prematurely gray. When his large hand took hold, Iruka struggled with all his meager strength. It did no good. Intolerant of his flailing, the shinobi merely shook him until Iruka subsided.
Another officer stepped closer and gazed down at Iruka, brow furrowed. When he spoke, his voice was smoky and low like a wood instrument. "You're frightening him."
A gentler pair of hands deposed the bruising grip. Iruka still flinched, but this new shinobi only parted the hair matted against his bleeding scalp. He met Iruka's eyes. "Are you hurt anywhere except your head?"
Iruka couldn't make sense of the question; it had been too long since anyone had shown concern. His silence must have been answer enough. The shinobi observed him with narrowed eyes, then pressed his lips together. "His eyes aren't dilating, and his hand is broken. He needs medical attention."
The first man grumbled, sitting back on his haunches. "We should already be after those poachers. I think that new baby of yours is making you sentimental, Fugaku."
"No one can afford to be sentimental these days," Fugaku answered, but he didn't let go of the firm, supportive grip he had on Iruka. He had very black eyes, like the coats of shinny beetles, and the silver head plate he wore glinted.
Involuntarily, Iruka began shivering.
"He's shaking like a leaf."
The first man seized the word play. "Leaf?" he asked dubiously. "A scrawny one, maybe, if he's that."
A little distance away, the last man picked up the kunai that had been crushed from Iruka's hand. "He did handle this like a shinobi before they disarmed him."
Fugaku blinked, and suddenly his dark eyes became startling, swirling pools of red. Iruka's blood seized, paralyzed under their scrutiny. "Yes," the man confirmed after a long moment of observation, and then blinked again to deactivate the sharingan. He commanded Iruka, "Report! Name and rank."
"He can't be out of the academy."
"He's old enough," Fugaku countered grimly. Iruka couldn't have known it, but he already had one son on active duty, younger than this.
Iruka himself didn't answer. The words of the question seemed intangible, and they had no impact on him. Nor did the insignia of Konoha's police force make him feel secure. A hazy memory from long ago latched onto the cognizant part of his mind, of his father arguing with one of the Uchiha, who was unwelcome in their home and yet could not be compelled to leave because of that shuriken symbol of power on their arm.
The Uchira who had picked up the dropped shuriken, the one Iruka had carried since the battle with the Kyuubi, suggested, "We could take him to the Sandaime. We're due to report in at the Tower anyway."
The grey-haired man crossed his arms. "Are you going to chase all the rats into the sea? It isn't worth the time. And even if we take him back, what then?"
It was Fugaku who decided. "We can't leave him here. We'll have to take him with us." And he reached to draw Iruka into his arms.
It was the wrong thing to do. Though he understood very little else of what was going on, Iruka became hysterical at the idea of being carried away. Instinctively, he bucked with his feet and caught Fugaku in the throat, and while the man gagged, Iruka surged past, disappearing into the maze of alleyways even as he heard the angry commotion of pursuit behind him.
Later, he would wonder what made him do what he did. Maybe it was pure panic, or perhaps the guardian he was trying to be had finally been overwhelmed by the child he actually was. But whether it was whim or fate or disorientation, all good sense fled and Iruka turned his feet toward his last shelter, all while his mind throbbed with hiccupping thoughts like, 'I want to go home'.
All too soon, the familiar façade loomed. The crumbled boundary wall seemed like a forsaken shield, standing around dying yellow grass and the entryway that was like a ragged gash. Iruka almost collapsed when he reached it, staggering against the frame of the door and clinging.
"Shouya," he called as soon as he had breath. "Chiori, Iku."
Then he went very still. Never, since he had taken in his first child, had he come to this door without being greeted by the sound of small feet. Now he heard nothing but an eerie non-response.
"Shouya," he called again, much more timidly this time. Sluggishly, he forced himself to step over the threshold.
He found the children in the main room, where he had left them that morning.
The few pieces of furniture were toppled over and broken. The tarp stretched across the ceiling was gone. And there they were, stretched out on the swollen floor boards, or on the scorched, salvaged tatami. The porous floor had absorbed the blood and already some of the sticky streaks had gone to foam, perforated by tiny pink bubbles.
There was also a long, torn blanket hanging from a rafter, weighted down by a body that turned in slow in circles, with Shouya's blue eyes. He looked exactly as his father had, not so long ago.
Iruka was conscious of his knees folding, but nothing else penetrated the hollow noise in his ears. It drowned out everything else, and he was senseless, unaware when the adult shinobi finally caught up with him and entered the house.
"Gods," Uchiha Fugaku said from behind him.
Iruka only stared straight ahead. He couldn't see anything but the boy on the rope.