Title: Between the Journey and the Rest: Chapter 4 - In This Place, Pt 2
Genre: Angst, Romance
Status: WIP
Summary: Iruka plans a pleasant surprise for Kakashi to take his mind off training ... of course, the best laid plans of dolphins and men go oft astray... and angst ensues
Warnings: yaoi, coarse language, violence, dripping wet shinobi changing into dry clothes, steadily building angst, will eventually have NC-17 lemon. Specific warnings posted for each chapter. Minor Spoiler Alert for some contents of Chapter 367 (mentioning a newly revealed name) and Kakashi Gaiden
Dedicated to Hatochan, muse and confidante; thank you for giving me back faith in myself and my writing and for 4 am heart to heart /soul to souls… "Oh, senseiii…." ;) and yummy Neko!Iruka ;) evil grin This story occurs several weeks after the conclusion of "Odd Admiration" within the Tolerant Intolerance universe, (early November) with permission from Hatochan. The cookie scene expands on a scene mentioned in Hatochan's Along the Way: Chapter 11: Childhood Comfort. Story title comes from Big Country's "Fields of Fire" ; Will be updated as real life permits :) My husband comes home from Iraq this weekend, so if I disappear with no word for a week or so, or am slow answering reviews you know I'm uhhh busy… researching, as Jiraiya would say… yeah that's it… :)
Disclaimer: You know Naruto and its characters belong to Masashi Kishimoto, because if I owned them, yaoi pairings would be canon… "In This Place" lyrics belong to Big Country
Between the Journey and the Rest: Chapter 4
In This Place, Part 2
All the years I lived in this place
The people I knew here,
I loved every face
I loved the parties, the funerals and fights
I loved this country, the land of my birth
How much am I wanted
How much am I worth
Oh angel, it's coming down stone by stone
It's breaking up home by home
Take it away, take it away, take it
In this place I will lay my life down
In this place I will let you carry me
As I age so my learning grows
I still touch the vision
I still smell the rose in this place
"Iruka, come here." She waited until the chuunin was nearby and pulled him close before teleporting the short distance into the kitchen.
"Sit here for a moment." She gestured to a chair with her foot since her arms were still full with a very quiet, still jounin. She laid Kakashi carefully on the floor before turning to Iruka. A glowing hand moved toward his forehead and he felt a tingling sensation and heard a mild buzzing in the back of his head. A sudden wave of dizziness overcame him as the exhaustion rolled from his body and the fog of confusion lifted from his mind. He took a deep breath and felt somewhat refreshed, almost as if he had just awakened from a short, healing sleep.
"Tsunade-sama! What, what happened? Kakashi!" The voice while not panicked, was still by no means calm.
"We'll figure that out in a moment. I need your help. I just gave you a quick chakra boost because I can't take care of Kakashi on my own. Our first priority is getting him stabilized. There are blankets and dry clothes in that pack. We need to get both of you out of those wet clothes quickly, and then I need you to light some fires and get a futon ready for Kakashi. I don't like the looks of him right now, and we may be in for a long night."
Iruka nodded and quickly grabbed the pack, setting aside the dry clothing for Kakashi before making his way to the bedrooms. He opened a door, but quickly backed out and closed it again when he saw the silver-backed hairbrush and crystal perfume bottle on the dresser next to a tiny picture of a grinning silver headed toddler sitting on the back of a large wolfhound. A faint scent of rose petals drifted up to him as he left. No need pulling up those memories tonight… I'll find another room. He tried a door to the left and was relieved to see a smaller bedroom with no hint of any previous female occupant.
There was a slight musty smell in the air, but other than the thinnest layer of dust, the room was clean. Iruka removed two field blankets from the pack and arranged them on the futon, folding back the top layer. A quick search of the chest against the wall provided another stack of bedding, smelling lightly of sandalwood and lavender. He lit a fire in the brazier and set the stack of blankets to warm by the fire before quickly stripping and changing into the dry clothing. The hair tie joined the pile of wet clothes and he grabbed a towel to roughly squeeze the worst of the moisture from the sodden coffee-colored locks. The chuunin gathered the wet mess to hang in the kitchen and returned to start fires to warm the rest of the house.
"The bed is ready and the fire is started, Hokage-sama," he announced as he re-entered the room. He hung the wet things from a series of hooks near the hearth before dropping to his knees and using a fire jutsu to ignite the prepared kindling. He turned to the other occupants in the room, but paled at the sight. Tsunade had made good use of her time while he had been occupied preparing the other room; the jounin, wearing only a loose pair of pants, lay slumped upon a pile of blankets on the floor, the wet uniform tangled beside him. Tiny cuts and thin red welts criss-crossed the near translucent skin of his arms and face and a succession of bruises and angry red abrasions peppered the lean body, results of his erratic flight through the forest. Iruka winced at the sight of a particularly evil discoloration spreading over the expanse of chest and down one side, indicating a hard collision with a very solid object. Kashi-love, what happened?
Tsunade was kneeling at the silver haired man's side and sounded a bit pre-occupied as she replied. "Good. We'll move him shortly, after I finish assessing damage and stabilizing his chakra."
Iruka retrieved the dripping uniform from the floor and set it to hang with the other wet clothing. He looked around for any other unfinished task, but could find nothing and his eyes returned to the too pale shinobi on the floor. He's lost weight again. The last two missions must have been even rougher than I realized. Some reward I planned for him; instead of an evening of pleasure, you gave him this... No, stop thinking like that, find something to stay busy and keep your mind off everything… "Is there anything I can do to help?"
"Hmmm. Your voice seems to have a calming effect on him. Come sit next to him. Hold his hand while you give your report. I need to know what happened tonight."
"I wish I knew…" the softly voiced phrase escaped his lips.
"Iruka, I know it's difficult seeing him like this, but he's been through worse before and made it through just fine. You've made it through worse than this, why should it be any different for him? Take a deep breath, let it out, and make your report." The hint of steel in the velvety rich voice produced the desired effect.
"Sorry, Hokage-sama. I forgot myself for a moment. Kakashi just returned from those two missions. They take a lot out of him sometimes, especially when he has to use the sharingan heavily. He was away for over three weeks this time; he takes care of himself enough to make it through missions, but I always make a point to do something special for him when he comes back. Looking at him now, I suppose things were a little rougher than I realized. He's lost a lot of weight recently." Tanned fingers threaded through pale stiff ones, thumb stroking the back of the bandaged hand. "Umm… well… you see… that is…" A deep breath allowed the chuunin to gather his thoughts, but could do nothing for the red spreading across the scarred face. "What I mean to say is, I was taking Kakashi to my classroom. I uh… had a special surprise planned for tonight…" The red deepened, suffusing his entire face.
"You mean to tell me you've been with the brat going on three years, and he's never talked you into the old 'Oh sensei' routine before now? No spankings, no 'See me after class, Hatake' ? You must truly have the patience of a saint… or else Jiraiya's slipping into his dotage. I mean, well, after Icha Icha Paradise, Volume 3, Chapter… well not that I actually read the stuff, but of course Jiraiya does run plot ideas past me and… well… ok." Surprisingly enough, Tsunade's blush almost rivaled Iruka's. "So you planned to seduce your recalcitrant student. Seems straightforward enough. How did that end in tonight's disaster?"
"I'm still trying to sift through everything and figure that out. I cast a genjutsu on him so that he looked about 17," a small smile crossed the features of the teacher, "all awkward limbs and ungainly angles. I, uh, was teaching him a class on advanced chakra technique." He flushed again.
Tsunade raised an eyebrow. "Advanced chakra technique… oh… those techniques. Where did you learn those? They really are a little advanced to just stumble upon on your own."
"Genma."
"Say no more, he knows more than is good for him sometimes." Both shared a smile at the thought of the vanilla-impaired senbon-sucker
"I was teaching, and the storm was coming closer. I brought him up to the front of the class and grilled him on the lesson, then sent him back to his seat and hit him with a pop quiz." Sable brows drew together in a puzzled frown. "He was taking it all so seriously. No horseplay, no pranks, no innuendo. Not even a paper shuriken or a 'spank me, sensei.' I thought he was just on his best behavior because he didn't want to spoil the fun. Whatever it was had already started… he was in a dream state?" He looked up at Tsunade in question.
"Possibly, your guess is at least as good as mine, you were actually there."
"I called time on the quiz; he didn't hear me, but I thought he was finally starting to join in, so I slammed the pointer on the desk. There was a very large crash of lightning and thunder and I saw terror and panic in his eyes. He yelled something out, 'No, Kerebu-san' or something. Then he ran out of the room into the storm before I could stop him. I tried to find him but he got the jump on me and that head start was enough to make trailing him very difficult in this weather. I finally ran into Raidou and Genma and sent Raidou back to you. I was afraid I might need Genma and his senbon before the night was out."
The young man sat in silence, continuing the mindless stroking, reaching forward once to tuck a sodden strand of hair away from the bloodless face.
"We managed to track him a little further in this direction and I got a hunch. It would have been disaster if I was wrong. We could have lost him and he could have been injured. He could have hurt someone else." Iruka cast his dark gaze over the supine form, lost for a moment in the fears of what could have been, then ensnared by the haze of early memory. "I recognized the area. I haven't been here in years, but there are some memorable landmarks. There aren't too many large stones that resemble a wolf's in Konoha and I remembered it from when I was a child. Tou-san sometimes brought me with him when he visited Sakumo-san. I remember Kyoko-san brought out a tray of tea and sweets and served me like I was an honored guest. She even smuggled a small bag of ginger snaps to me before we left, and I stuffed them inside the sleeve of my kimono." There was a hint of a smile on the tanned face that steadily grew as he spoke, though it remained tinged with the sadness of loss. Only one other person from those memories was still among the living. "It was getting late, so Tou-san took me up on his shoulders and ran through the trees. He had to change direction quickly to keep from running into Kakashi and Namikaze-san on their way back to the Hatake residence, and the bag of cookies fell from my sleeve. Namikaze-san returned it to me and I offered to share with them all. We had an impromptu little picnic for all of five minutes at the base of that rock."
There was a moment of silence as each savored memories of the Yondaime Hokage.
"I had a hunch he was here. Kakashi stayed with us once. After his father died, and he went to stay with Namikaze-san, there was an S-rank mission. Kaa-san volunteered to look after Kakashi. I barely remember what happened, but there was screaming and yelling in the middle of the night, and Tou-san came back with a sleeping Kakashi and told Kaa-san that he found him in the garden."
One bright tear trailed down the dark cheek, dropping onto the joined hands. "I found him in the garden."
He's told me everything else without breaking down... What could be worse? "Iruka?"
"He was laying in the garden, clutching an old katana embedded in stone. That's how he cut his hands." He gestured to the motionless appendage in his grasp. "He was so cold and still…"
"Iruka, you have to remember, he's still here with you."
"But one of these days he won't come back. He's good, but the odds are always against a shinobi. Some mission will be too much and I will sit with his body and he will look just like this…" The final words were torn from his throat with an odd keening sound. "I teach the shinobi rules to my classes every year. They are part of my very being, but how will I be able to sit there and cradle my dead lover and go on as if nothing has changed?"
"Did Sandaime truly never teach you the real meaning of the Twenty-fifth Rule? Yes, a true shinobi must suppress all emotion while on a mission, must remain stoic in public. But a shinobi is still a man. After the mission, after you return home safe to your loved one, then you release your emotions, you let out all the sorrow, grief, despair, and pain, you share it with your partner. A burden shared is a burden halved, and no burden is so heavy that it cannot be borne by sharing. Yes, some day, Kakashi might fall, or you might fall, or Naruto, or I. You lost your parents; I lost my brother, my lover, my sensei, countless friends and comrades. Kakashi has lost almost everyone he ever loved. But all of us continue to live, bound together in a great circle of friendship, trust, and sacrifice, brought together by the memories of the fallen. We continue because those who go before us would wish it that way, that we continue on without them until our time comes to join them."
Iruka remembered giving similar words of comfort to the grieving Naruto and Konohamaru at Sandaime's own funeral, over a year earlier. He could almost hear Sarutobi's gruff chuckle. Borrowing trouble before its time, eh, Iruka? You were ever a good student; you'll do well when the time comes. Just remember, you're always there for everyone else, let them be there for you, as well.
"I apologize, Tsunade-sama. I let grief and worry get the better of me. I will try not to let it happen again." He inclined the upper half of his body in a solemn bow, which she acknowledged.
"Ok. Now that I know the extent of his injuries, let's do a little something to help him out, eh, Iruka? Keep holding his hand, but pull back your chakra as I heal him."
Two well-manicured hands hovered over the jounin's chest, and a greenish not quite seen glow manifested around them. Suddenly, the silver haired shinobi arched backwards, his body lifting off the floor. Shakes and tremors seized the body as it stiffened and tensed. Mismatched eyes flew open allowing the fear and pain to shine through. Although minutes, even hours seemed to crawl by, in reality only seconds elapsed.
"Damn, he's fighting against it. He felt my chakra and reacted. I've just barely got him stable, Iruka, we're going to have to do this the hard way." The blonde woman sighed. "He's stable enough for now, but we'll have to keep a close eye on him. Any change could affect him rather quickly in this state. Looks like it will be a long night after all… Shizune should be here soon. I think we should keep him here. Right now it would be too hard to move him."
Iruka nodded. He made small soothing noises and continued stroking the hand nearest him. It was all he could do for now.