I do not own Naruto, nor Watchmen.
Hey! Happy Thanksgiving everybody! I haven't written another chapter because school has intervened and I am currently working on a monster research paper. Nevertheless, here's the next chapter!
Two more chapter to go until Part Two begins. I'm thinking about moving this fic from the Watchmen section to the Crossover section, as Part Two will focus more on the Naruto world as I view it, and will focus on Rorschach and his team of OCs growing up.
This chapter is the first huge change in the crossover, for both Watchmen and Naruto sides. I hope you like it.
Thirty-seven chapters and counting...
If he had only done something earlier, none of this would've happened.
But neither Eddie nor Sally ever thought Sakumo would take his own life, not while he still had Kakashi.
After Sakumo's disgrace, his wife Sumire left him to return to Tea Country. Apparently she had only meant to marry a hero, not a rapidly disintegrating screw-up.
On top of that, Kakashi is seven years old, and chuunin already, some kinda prodigy. Laurie is four years older than he is and she hasn't even graduated from the academy yet.
Eddie considers suicide the most selfish thing a man can do to his family. He's always been a selfish person, true, but his family is his and he's selfish enough to want his little girl less fucked up than the rest of the world.
Sakumo's gone. Like that - not bam, dead - but slowly, bled out on the wooden floor ala hara kiri. No one there to decapitate him and make it mercifully short, so he could still die with honor – no, he thought he didn't deserve the luxury.
Never saw it coming. Sally and Eddie tried to hang with him, cheer him up, but they're Leaf-nin too, and the fledgling Third Secret Ninja War takes up as much of their time as any elite Jounin's. Sometimes they don't even have the time to check up briefly with Laurie so she's living with his mother-in-law right now, so what the fuck does that say about them?
Time's run out.
Eddie stands there in the puddle of his friend and teammate's blood, too tired at this hour to be anything but dead inside. Sakumo's empty shell has already been taken away, but beyond that, nobody's cleaned up further.
Kakashi is ashy-white with shock.
Numbed, Eddie looks at the boy. He's too young to handle this. Legally he's an adult, but fuck that. Part of being a stable ninja is knowing when rules are appropriate, and not. The kid could go live with his Jounin-sensei, seventeen-year old squirt by the name of Minato Namikaze, who's been making those noises that he might take him in, yeah.
But.
Minato's never been a father and Eddie has. He knows what it takes for a kid to turn out okay. After the mess with his own father, he should have grown into a drunken, smoking, womanizing bastard, but he didn't. It took Jiraiya to keep him laughing, and Shido-sensei's firm but mildly affectionate hand to teach him he wasn't destined to repeat the pattern of abuse Eddie's grandfather probably beat into his own father.
Namikaze may be Kakashi's teacher, but Eddie is his goddamn godfather. (And doesn't it make him regret naming Jiraiya as Laurie's rather than Sakumo?)
He makes up his mind.
Sally will understand.
"C'mon, kid. You're living with me now."
One chapter, please? Spread the cheer!