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a/n: This is insanity. I had a dream about Iruka-sensei and his students finding themselves inadvertently caught between a younger kakashi and a mission, and this craziness is me indulging myself. As a point of interest, Neji was originally in this story as well, and poor Tsume-sama was Kiba's non-existent father. Originally intended for my drabble compellation Ripples in an Ocean, but it just outgrew its britches.
Between a Scarecrow and a Sand Dune
Iruka enjoyed getting out before the sun. His mornings always began early at the academy and so he was used to it, but he also found that Naruto did better out of the groping, milling midday crowds. There was a general merchant that he favored about half-way down the street, and he greeted the old man with a faint smile and a nod, his hands too full to wave.
While they waited for their order to be filled, Iruka sat the drowsy toddler on the edge of the booth long enough to adjust the buttons on this warm cotton jacket. The uppermost pair had been worked half-way out of their holes, and Iruka paused when the pads of his fingers ran over the rough tooth-marks in the soft bone. He frowned.
Naruto had the unfortunate habit of pulling up his jacket to chew on his buttons, so that his caregiver was forever tightening the loosened string or outright replacing those that went missing. The mismatched set of colors and sizes made the child look homeless, an idea that grieved Iruka. And as the youth smoothed the thinning fabric he reflected the whole thing would need to be replaced soon. Already it was too short at the wrists.
It made him fret just a little, and the ridge between his eyes creased. He went on fewer missions these days because of Naruto, and academy teachers made so little.
"Sensei." The child reached past his fussing to take fistfuls of the chuunin's own jacket, leaning in to bury his face sleepily in the warm material. Iruka idly fluffed the blond, baby-fine hair, curling am arm around him against the morning cold while they waited.
Meanwhile, the kind old shopkeeper had finished wrapping his purchases, and smiled at him in a soft, knowing way while he fished around awkwardly for his wallet in the pocket opposite his free hand, reluctant to release Naruto. He was faintly rosy at the edges of his ears and nose when he finally managed to lay out a sprinkle of coins against the wood, but the old man just shook his head in a gentle way and helped him adjust his load so that he could carry the food and Naruto without dropping them both.
The sun was beginning to really make itself known, with the pre-dawn's milky pearl giving way to a fresh, clear blue. The chilly breeze was lightening too, promising a fair day. Nice enough, perhaps, to eat lunch outside. He mentioned it to his humming companion, "Hey, you. How about a picnic today?"
Naruto was awake enough now to squirm happily. He declared, "May-doh," which was his favorite spot.
Iruka nodded. "The meadow it is. But first, home."
They were just passing through the largest part of the growing crowd when the parcel in Iruka's hand began to slip. He slid Naruto to the ground and adjusted his burden, pausing long enough to smile over the increased bustle and the fairer, gentler wind. The brief halt was long enough for him to be spotted.
"Sensei!"
At first the summon wasn't immediately familiar, but Iruka placed it immediately when he recognized the brisk, smooth strides baring a stout woman away from what had seemed a hasty council with two other men in jounin vests.
Iruka's bow was a half-beat late. "Inuzuka-sama," he greeted her. His surprise at being addressed so publicly by the clan leader was appropriately masked, though he had to deliberately work to lower his raised brows and relax reflexively widened eyes.
It wasn't so much that he found the Inuzuka clan overly stand-offish or indifferent; compared to the Uchiha or Hyuuga they were downright friendly. But while he'd always been on good terms with Inuzuka Tsume in the brief times they'd met at the academy or in a meeting, it had always been necessarily formal; a wholly businesslike acquaintanceship. Though, he recalled with some discomfort, their first meeting had been unusual.
It had been during one of his earliest parent-teacher conferences in Kiba and Naruto's age group. The Inuzuka were well-enough known for a distinct lack of respect for personal space (a canine characteristic, it was widely supposed), but the young teacher had still been startled when the fierce looking woman had stepped practically toe-to-toe with him and then proceeded to stick her nose into the empty space between his ear and the curl of his neck. There'd been the most distinct sniffing sound, and then the next moment the woman was clasping his shoulders with a sort of unexpected, bone-crushing force and smiling at him in a widely toothed way. Iruka remembered her sharp teeth, and the same direct, forceful voice telling him it was a pleasure to meet him; that Kiba seemed very fond of him.
The whole thing had been a little abrasive, but not altogether unpleasantly so. Iruka was a tactile man himself, if perhaps lacking the Inuzuka's jarring force.
He was struck by that again as he found himself eye-to-eye with the clan leader, and was abruptly invested of a small, heavy weight. He blinked at the little body that automatically curled against him, reflexively adjusting his grip. He hadn't noticed Kiba was with his mother until the little boy was already in his arms. The child was still sleeping, half curled and limp like a puppy.
"Ah, Inuzuka-sama," Iruka began, but a cut of a hand quieted his inquiry.
"I'm being called off on a brief mission, and I haven't time to drop him off at home. You'll watch him for me, yes, sensei?"
Iruka was good with children, and often babysat for parents in the village. This wouldn't be the first hand-off he'd received in the market, or even the most abrupt. He pulled his student more comfortably into his arms, letting his face stretch pleasantly. "Of course. I'll take good care of Kiba-kun."
He was treated to another flash of that somewhat pointed grin, but didn't have time to even start when the woman abruptly reached to drag their forehead's together in a kind of roughly affectionate salute before the woman was turning to rejoin her group. "I know you will, sensei," she called as she disappeared amongst the milling people. "And thank you!"
The three of them – one slightly stunned teacher and two dozy infants – where left. Feeling somewhat clubbed, Iruka rubbed his head and blinked after the woman for a moment, then at Kiba. The child had barely shifted, even as Iruka laid the boy's head against his shoulder in a more upright position. "Morning, Kiba," he muttered quietly.
Beside him, Naruto was beginning to whine, shifting from foot to foot and reaching for him plaintively. Iruka pressed a hand against the crown of the blond head, knowing he couldn't carry them both and his package of food. "Hey, quiet now," he hushed the boy. "You'll have to take turns."
"Nono," Naruto was working up to real distress. He tugged with the half-angry, half-desperate forcefulness of a toddler on his age-mate's shoe. "Nono, Ruka-sensei. Mine, Ruka-sensei!"
Kiba had woken some at the pull on his leg, and made a grumpy, sleepy face at the other boy. But when his teacher repeated they had to take turns he helpfully held out his fisted hand toward the other toddler. Iruka watched the determined succession of wins and defeats until it was altogether decided that Naruto would be walking. He scolded the child's ill-tempered squall of protest at his loss and took his hand to lead him on; that was quite enough nonsense for the moment.
"Pretty," Kiba commented, and he was pointing with his free hand over the little enclosure and to the far trickle of water beyond.
Iruka smiled at him, "You haven't been here before, have you Kiba?" he asked, and chuckled when the child shook his head gravely. "Well, it's one of Naruto and my favorite places. I bet you'll like it too."
Though they called it a meadow it was really nothing so grand. Just an empty space in the middle of the forest that had grown up a modest spread of grass and was fringed on one side by a crumbling rock formation and a largish stream. It was nice place to picnic, and well worth the relatively long walk from the village; the trees shielded it from the wind, while their distance was enough to let in the sunlight. The water was clean and good for drinking, and there were plenty of little occupations to keep a preternaturally curious toddler busy while his over-worked guardian got a few papers graded.
The boys were captivated by the modest waterfall and splashed at the basin's shallow fringes under their keeper's careful eye. "Sensei!" Naruto crowed when a hiccupping ripple betrayed a playful silver fish. They followed it along the bank until it slipped into the deeper pool, out of sight.
After that, they settled at the far end of the clearing to eat in the shade of the stretching trees. Naruto claimed what he surely saw as his rightful space, small fingers plucking determinedly on Iruka's arm until he shifted so that Naruto could clamor onto his knees.
Iruka noted that Kiba chose to sit quite close as well, spreading out his lunch between his legs, one of which was just near enough for the teacher to feel the brush of his bare toes. It made an affectionate rush flow through him for the boy. But then, he had known that Kiba was going to be one of those special, unforgettable students from the first time he'd patched up the boy's knee and the child had licked him.
Naruto sang a meal-time song as he unpackaged their lunch and handed out the articles one by one, leaving Iruka to finish the refrain when Naruto's voice became muffled with a mouthful of orange slices. Kiba, who didn't know the words, merely moved his head in time with them and munched on the smoked fish Iruka had handed him.
It was a peacefully domestic, restful time, with only the sounds of deliberate chewing and the rustling of leaves clicking together to break the quiet. A sudden distant uproar drew their eyes immediately. In a clamor of whistles and alarmed bawling, a cloud of birds lifted from the northwest, darkening a corner of the skin in a patchy living curtain and they fled wildly with a sound like a thousand wings.
Kiba pointed at the disappearing creatures, speaking through his mouthful, "Pretty."
Beside him, his sensei sat disquieted. Then Iruka's nose wrinkled suddenly, his senses twitching. What on earth –
Without warning, he swung the baby out of his lap just as a fast moving body materialized like a shot from the foliage and solidly collided with his own, carrying enough force to send them both backward against the unforgiving ground in a tangle. Iruka felt the skin of his back scrap against the pebbly earth, and grimaced as he looked up through displaced bangs at the person now half-straddling, half-squashing him as the creature kicked and struggled to regain its footing.
He had the sudden vague impression of one stretched, round eye as strikingly blue as the sky superimposed behind him, and a half-covered crescent moon the color of crimson. The wildness of the gaze stunned him almost as much as the impact, leaving his mind grinding more than usually slow so that there was a moment when he both did and did not recognize who had hit him.
Reality descended with force when the approaching charka signatures exploded like hostile sunbursts on the edge of his awareness, livid with killing intent and coming upon their position with such speed... It made Iruka's heart grind to a panicked halt, only to restart hammering painfully. They were in the way. His eyes darted to the children. Wrong place, wrong time. But nothing could change their involvement now.
In the half-second that it had taken him to assess all this, he had pushed to his feet and summoned a henged clone. A passable white-haired jounin manifested, and the teacher sent it straight onward, following it's double's previous path. Simultaneously he shoved Kakashi – sharingan Kakashi, his consciousness reeled – in another direction, forcing a baby into his arms as they went.
Then they were running crazy.
The leafy canopy surrounding Konohagakure was an endless, twisted maze of natural platforms and pitfalls, impossible to navigate without the possession of charka and the reflexes of a nin. Going slowly, monitored closely, his fledgling students might have been able to make a halting, straggling path back to the village. But now they were racing for their lives, with Iruka holding Kiba tucked securely under his chin and the little boy clutching at him through his jacket as the world hurled itself past in a cacophony of flailing green and protruding brown. Already Kakashi was pulling mercilessly ahead, and – thank god, thank god – he had kept hold of Naruto.
A twinge and Iruka threw his body sideways, so that the volley of shuriken sank harmlessly into wood instead of flesh. He panted. They were here. He didn't wonder how they knew to follow; he and Kakashi could likely conceal themselves and Kiba, but Iruka knew form experience that Naruto would stand out like a star, and lead the enemy straight for them. What enemy? He didn't have time to wonder. Whoever, they were among them now, dancing around and just behind them in the trees.
A sudden burst of charka sent Kakashi diving to another branch as his current exploded with splinters, and suddenly the two Konoha shinobi were almost level again. Iruka glanced at the legendary jounin, whom he had never met.
With the odd sharpness that sometimes came in such times, the details assailed him. The copy-nin was missing his vest – destroyed or discarded – and the black body suit that remained was blotched and starchy with dried blood. Like a blossom, the rust stretched upward over the exposed paleness of his neck and chin, blotted oddly in a faded splatter. He'd heard of the mask, but it seemed inconsequential to the roving, maddened eye. For while the blue was dead, impassive and intense, the crimson hollow swirled of its own.
There was no time for any explanation to pass verbally between them. They both knew all they needed. A pouch bulged securely against the jounin's hip; a mission. He was on a mission, likely something vital, important, impossible. And Iruka and his children had been in the way. Now Iruka was his teammate. Their combined goal was to make it close enough to Konoha to set off the alarms and bring help. Their goal was to do it before they died.
There was a hiss of displaced air, and then before him was a wall of earth, looming like the fist of God. Iruka couldn't break hard enough to avoid it, and Kiba screamed as he wrenched in midair, barring his left side and not the child to take the full force of the headlong collision. He felt as much as heard the crunching sound that resonated through his whole body, and then he fell like a stone, paralyzed during that essential instant when he might have recovered and avoided the volley of kunai. They peppered the air as he plummeted, too insensible to tell if any found their mark.
A ribbon of light lanced out then, wrapping the area and exploding with the intensity of the sun. It was like the detonation of a lightning bolt, or the death of a planet – a light so great that it's expulsion into the air made noise. A paralyzing, incapacitating dazzle.
Iruka lost precious moments in the half-second it took him to realize the blaze had not blinded him, though dazedly he sensed the stagger of their pursuers and heard cries of pain and surprise over the rush in his own ears. Blood, rich and red, was saturating his back and shoulders, so that his shirt clung to him. Numb, numb; his whole left arm was insensible. Kiba was clinging tenaciously around his neck, unsupported.
"Sensei!" the boy pleaded, and at once the chuunin's mind snapped back in place, so that he instantly halted their descent. The barrier of light burned behind him, so he sprung forward and away from the jitsu that was – for the moment – shielding him from the enemy. Kakashi was beside him in an instant once he regained the dense rafters, urging him to follow with a gesture.
Somewhere ahead they paused, and the two runners sucked in breath as they balanced on a slender branch. "He's drawing them towards us," Kakashi spoke the obvious. And however impenetrable his expression, Iruka saw through the tense control. He could feel the jounin's anger, burning.
The man was drawn like a bowstring, taught to the breaking. It was in the dark crescents pooled under his eyelids, in the line down his forehead, and in the way that he stood. He had a tremendous investment in whatever mission he was completing – the work of who knew how many days or weeks of toil. The pale blue eye tracked involuntarily to the bag at his hip, and he shifted Naruto in his arms.
With a dawning horror, Iruka realized he was weighing Naruto over whatever he had secure in that bag, and it electrified him with fear, because he knew that alone he could not save his children. His nerves, his heart was on fire. It was very clear to him now; this man would not rescue his children if his mission was at stake. And his mind churned in reaction, already figuring.
Sliding Kiba to the bough, he pressed a high, fearful note into his voice, "We can't just keep running." Bending to brace his weight against his knees, he made a show of gasping for air. Stumbling as he straightened was easy; the bloodless pallor of his face was unfeigned. He inched closer. "Konoha is too far."
The jounin youth was cold. He sneered, "Perhaps too far for you."
"Maybe you're right," Iruka spoke calmly, biting down on a gorge of anger. "Maybe you should go ahead."
Predictably, Naruto – hitherto mute with terror – awakened at the mention of separation. He jerked in Kakashi's arms, reaching for his guardian. "Nono. Ruka-sensei!"
Iruka smiled at the little boy fondly, pleased with the momentary distraction and the way Kakashi's face bloomed in consternation. He'd have liked to kiss the boy goodbye incase his plan failed, but there just wasn't time.
"Hatake, don't leave them," he said suddenly, stepping forward. The other looked up, his hands full of the struggling child. He looked at him without understanding, agitated as the other drew closer to his side. Iruka begged him, "Trust me."
"What –" Kakashi began, tensing. But by then Iruka's hand was down the mouth of the all-important pouch and Kakashi was shouting "NO!"
Iruka was already gone, racing back the way they had come. Determined. Because he didn't care what was on the scroll now clutched in his fist. It wasn't worth the lives of his babies.
He felt a few take the bait, and he speed up, just enough. This had to be a chase.
He weaved, pleased to keep the men that followed him guessing and apart. One tenacious clinger closed steadily, never swerved by his reckless changes in direction or minor illusions. Iruka caught flashes of the broad, grim face, sensed his determination. He went on until he felt his heart might give out, before finally letting his leg miss a foothold, so that he collided forcefully with a narrow limb, his rhythm broken.
It was the opening his pursuer needed. Almost the instant he fell, a press of charka swam up around him, slamming him headlong against the trunk of the nearest tree so hard that he wheezed, breathless. The energy was gritty, crushing, and swiftly replaced by its master's physical form.
For a moment, feverish hands groped him while he panted, pinned helplessly against the tree. The bark chaffed him, digging in cruelly while the warm weight in front smothered him. The enemy nin made a choked, gurgling sound of relief when he found the stiff coil tucked in Iruka's waistband. Dragging out the scroll, he was too distracted to even much react when his prey suddenly writhed in his one-handed hold and forced his elbow deep into his captor's gut.
Iruka ran, and the enemy let him go. And as he fled, Iruka's grin was predatory, sharp, and proud.
He was still running when Kakashi found him again. He was racing, a blur among the mottled tawny forest landscape, when from nowhere he was snatched out of the air and thrown with a wooff against the hard truck of yet another tree. Curled just beyond him, he had the vague impression off a cocoon of bent branches and sheltering leaves before pain focused him on the infuriated jounin who had caught him. He felt the pressure of a hand against his aching shoulder blade, and then the other was searching him ungently.
His thoughts a little wild, Iruka wondered what was it about him today that screamed 'pin me to a tree and molest me.'
Dimly, he recognized the boy in front of him. Dimly, he knew that he held the Sandaime's favored academy sensei beneath his hands. Dimly, he recognized the brats discarded behind him. But it was hollow, hollow. Buried, blinded by the adrenaline that had been carrying him through the last weeks of his existence – weeks, weeks of work – and delirious with dawning horror and fury, he realized – given up, he'd given it up. This…this…
Shaking him even with his damaged shoulder, Kakashi screamed into his face, "What were you thinking?"
Outraged by the violence against his guardian, Naruto squalled and ran to beat against the jounin's legs. Kakashi shoved the boy back viciously, so that he fell to his bottom some distance away. It drew the teacher's scattered senses together with anger, and Iruka tried to push free. "Hey –" he began, but another brutal slam against the tree snapped his teeth shut on an indrawn breath.
Bristling, beyond all measure of reason or civility, Kakashi demanded lividly, "I would like to know why a little under qualified chuunin is wandering around so far outside the village with two valuable infants, and then saw fit to not only impede my mission, but also to forfeit a scroll –"
Iruka protested, "I was trying to save our lives –"
"THAT SCROLL WAS WORTH MORE THAN YOUR LIFE!"
The teacher went instantly quiet, subduing under his hands. Silence echoed in the den, the tableau seeming frozen. But then the aching look that had swallowed up the teacher's expression faded to blankness. "Alright," he said, and his eyes flickered with the briefest vein of fierceness as he shoving the genuine scroll back into Kakashi's gut and pushed past him to go to the waiting children. He lifted Naruto from the floor, and the toddler curled reflexively into his undamaged shoulder, clinching compulsively.
Kakashi's hands were trembling around the scroll. Relief and chagrin had flooded him so suddenly that his knees felt weak. He caressed the roll's stiff edges, recognizing his own charka seal on the paper. It was real. It was the scroll he had labored for, safe and returned. He looked over to where the chuunin stood, propped wearily against the tree. At his heels, Kiba was glowering at Kakashi with a child's righteous indignation.
Slowly, the unflappable composure he was better known for reinstated itself. "We can't stay here," he said, glancing around their fragile burrow, and at the fragile rice-paper seals, fluttering feebly. They were child play-things, and all at once their presence puzzled him. He had stumbled across the shelter accidentally, and now that the crazed anxiety had left him, he wondered what it was.
"It's a tree fort," the chuunin spoke softly, as though sensing his confusion. "Something a pre-genin would make after studying basic concealment." The teacher squinted at the rudimentary scrawling. "Maybe Tamaki-kun? I thought he had the knack for seals. Though his penmanship could use some work."
The ridiculousness of it put Kakashi off-balance. To comfort himself, he pressed the reacquired scroll more firmly within his fist. This – this junior and his babies – they were not his fault. They had been in the way. But he recognized the Inuzuka brat now, and the little charka beacon could only be the kyuubi. He was bound to return them to the village, whether or not he liked it.
"We can't stay here," he repeated. The infant seals had bought them minutes only. But as his mind raced, he struggled with a course of action that might actually work. They could not out-race the men who followed them.
The academy sensei grunted as he pushed himself to his feet again, swaying for just a moment as his face drained and then flushed. He was panting slightly when he addressed the little dark-haired child. "Kiba, do you think you could follow on the branches?"
"I-I'm not real fast," the boy sounded stunned, uncomprehending.
Iruka nodded, swallowing. Hoarsely, he said, "But you have good balance. You're one of the best in the class. I know you can, Kiba."
The little Inuzuka puffed at his teacher's words of confidence, and fisted his hands tearfully. "If you say so I will, Iruka-sensei."
His teacher smiled affectionately at him. He nudged the little blond in his arms with his forehead, drawing up the disconsolate gaze. "Hey, you," Iruka greeted him fondly. "Enough of those tears. It's time to be a ninja. I need you to be very brave."
Naruto rubbed his nose to chase away the sniffles. "Ruka-sensei," he mewed softly, burrowing his face in his caregiver's neck. But the teacher just rocked him. "Hey, hey. You're going to be fine. Are you ready to be brave? Kiba's ready, aren't you, Kiba?"
The other child nodded timorously, shaking head to foot.
Kakashi almost recoiled from the warm body pressed into his arms in the next moment, but the chuunin's eyes were fierce, and involuntarily he felt his hands moving to support the child. Kakashi stood over Iruka by a handswidth at least, and was possessing of a strength, an ability, and a wealth of experience that could hardly be compared to this sensei. But just then – looking into the creased, perspiring face – Kakashi recognized the eyes of a parent, and it was he who felt inexplicably young.
"You're holding –" Iruka had to swallow to bare down on the intensity of his emotion. "You're holding something much more valuable than any scroll." His tone was deadly in its assertion. But in a moment so mercurial as to hardly be measurable, the command wavered, and what came out next was more of a plea. "Please take him home," Iruka begged, and his uninjured hand was there briefly, ghosting over Naruto's wild, fine hair like a farewell.
He leaned in to press a kiss into the little boy's streaked, uplifted face, gently pushing the seeking hands that reached for him back. He looked up at Kakashi again, hollow eyed. "Please take him home. And I'll do what I can."
His implication came to Kakashi at once, stirring his nerves. But at once he was nodding, his expression smooth. He was a genius. He understood. He agreed. But… "By the time we reach the Konoha," he said. "There will be no reason to even send a rescue."
The chuunin nodded, and though his tired, wavering posture showed resignation, Kakashi detected no fear. Iruka grinned ruefully and said, "I am the perfect lame duck."
Past his spoke words were others, resonating between them. Deliver the children, deliver the scroll, deliver yourself. They both understood. Though his outburst had been unprofessional, out of character, and possibly cruel, Kakashi had spoken the truth earlier. An heir and a vessel, the success of a mission, and a valuable warrior all far outranked the life of a grade-school teacher.
Iruka folded his fingers and suddenly there were more of them crowding the enclosure. A silver-haired, featureless clone stood already holding a considerably more convincing blond toddler. Iruka reached to pick up Kiba's doll-like double while the real child stared, his eyes stretched wide. Smiling at him, Iruka said, "Be good. And look after Naruto, okay?" The little Inuzuka nodded.
Kakashi moved closer to the child on foot, crouching. They would stay still for a time. "Go," he signaled, and then the teacher and his clones disappeared, so swiftly as to almost never have existed. Naruto threw out a hand, choking on the wail of despair that was swiftly muffled by the heavy hand of his new keeper.
"Quiet," the stranger commanded, and the boy miserably obeyed. They waited to a count of sixty, and then left the shelter, fleeing like rabbits for Konoha and safety.
His back arched against the base of the tree where he was crouched, aware there was nowhere else to retreat. "Kakashi" stood beside him, with the little blond mannequin tucked against his heart. But even knowing they weren't real didn't stop his blood from freezing when one of the hunters drove a flying kunai through them both, so that the pair erupted – not in blood – but pale white smoke.
There was an isolated cry of rage, but most of the hostile masks around him were grim but unaffected. So they had suspected. But too late. Kakashi and the two children would have reached the village by now. Unable to stifle a vein of thin triumph, Iruka let the doll-like Kiba fall from his arms. It too disappeared in a cloud as it plummeted, even before it hit the forest floor. Left alone, he stared back upon his pursuers with a kind of resigned tranquility. Like them, he already knew there was no escape.
"That's the one who had the scroll." It was impossible to guess where the voice came from among the foliage, but Iruka rightly suspected it was the unfortunate who had stolen the false scroll from him earlier and then let him go.
A figure emerged from the others, facing him on the branch. He had a face Iruka might normally have considered handsome. The broad, strong lines reminded him of one of the Hokage's sons, the one that smoked – Asuma. But the comparison was lost in the tight curl of fury in the air around this one as he pulled a clinched paper aggressively from his vest.
"You thought this was funny?" he asked, and though his voice remained smooth he punctuated his words by impaling the scrap with a blade, pinning it to the bark just to the right of his captive's ear.
Iruka's eyes shifted automatically to the fluttering paper, not indeed a scroll of secrets or stolen jitsu, but a roughly drawn charcoal doodle of a hippopotamus sitting in a scribble of grass. Naruto had gifted it to him the night before, and he had slipped into his own jacket without thinking. He thought the outrage was unjustified; really it was a very fine drawing.
The madness of the thought made a hysterical giggle well up inside him. But though he managed to suppress it, the sand nin must have taken the smile that stole upon his lips as mockery, because he lashed out viciously – a solid, brutal strike to his side of his head like one might cuff a recalcitrant dog. Hard eyes pierced him as he sputtered, spitting blood, wandering over the so young, thin-limbed body – wholly unremarkable. His judging perusal reminded Iruka of Kakashi's similar examination, and he glared hotly, unwilling to seem submissive.
He might have saved his effort; the Sand captain was not impressed. Teeth grinding, the man spat orders to his men. "Strip him. Find that scroll."
"And if he doesn't have it?" one hissed as they moved to comply.
The squad leader's expression twisted. "Then he will die regretting the deficiency."
Over the little blonde's tears, he sought out capable faces. "Sand nin, pursuing," he reported. "I don't think they'll risk an assault on the village itself."
Oblivious to the stunned expressions and the atmosphere of confusion he was leaving behind, Kakashi made to leave the group, his mind already planning all that he must say in his meeting with the Hokage. His focus was so one-minded that when hands suddenly snatched him and swung him around by his shoulders, he was taken by surprise. Inuzuka Tsume had him in a vice grip.
"Where is the boy?" she demanded, and it was a violent, biting shout. She shook his slim shoulders, shouting into the too passive, blood streaked face. Fiercely, she emphasized, "The teacher, the little sensei that was with them. Where is he?"
Behind her, Kiba was shaking, pale in his sister's arms. The girl's eyes were liquid as she smothered her brother against her chest.
Quietly, limbs indolent, Kakashi said, "He stayed behind to give me time to reach the village with the children." Then, accompanied by a shrug as though he felt compelled, he added, " They'll have had him by now."
Naruto wailed louder.
'They'll have had him by now.' A numb horror had poured into the clan leader when she'd heard those words. She'd always liked Kiba's sensei, the Umino boy, ever since the first time she'd met him. It was hard to lie or hold false intentions around an Inuzuka, and this teacher had radiated sincere passion for his students.
Now, she balked to see that passion demonstrated so graphically. She'd trusted her child to him, but not to this. In many ways, Umino was a child himself, and the image of him as she'd last seen him – wide-eyed and fumbling to balance a brown package and her baby – gave her such an impression of overwhelming gentleness and smallness that it made her physically ache.
They stopped when they found the abandoned tree-fort Kiba had described before she left the village. Umino had apparently left them from here, but though the ancient forest around them reverberated with an unnatural stillness, they could sense no one's presence. Another shinobi stopped beside her on the branch, peering around at the woods. "There's no one," he began, but she silenced him with a snarl.
"Split up," she commanded, and leapt onward. She refused to believe they were too late.
A slick crimson weal of blood against a branch gave them their eventual lead. Tsume thought longingly of Kuromaru. But he was completing their business from the morning, and she did not expect him before tomorrow. Slowly, she ranged forward. Further on, she found another rusty blotch curled around a possible handhold; she could see where slender fingers had gripped…
They came upon the site so suddenly that Tsume wasn't prepared. The wind had been at her back, and so she hadn't caught the scent until they were upon it, and then she reeled back, almost overcome. The fresh metallic smell tingled oppressively in Tsume's nostrils, so overpowering that she had to shake her head to clear it. She felt one of the other nin come up beside her, and heard his sharp inhale of breath. "By the Hokage…" he murmured, aghast. Her stinging eyes cleared, so that she looked up and saw.
The Sand nin had left behind their worthless prey when they had become sure he did not have what they wanted, but true to their captain's words, they had not left him untouched. He reeked, from a purely olfactory perspective – blood coated him, glistening in thick black runnels across his body and down his bare sides. Whatever clothes he'd been wearing, he'd been divested of them, and the result was a appearance of defenselessness that stole away Tsume's breath. It was easy to see the damage that had been done – the alternating rawness of the wounds and the mottled, blackened contusions. His toes curled just inches from the base of the branch he might have stood on in the moments before they fell upon him. They'd left him hanging, pinned – held in place by the weapons that had been driven into his body. Tsume could see the steel rings of the kunai dark against the pallor of his skin. They were buried inside him.
And Tsume could not sense even the dimmest thrum of life.
Tanaka, whose family were medic nin, bypassed her stunned rigor, reaching to grip the brutalized teacher's chin. "He's alive," the man said after a long moment, and briskly pulled away one of the blades driven through Iruka's shoulder. An outpouring of blood drew a curtain down his body, but the youth did not even grunt. Her companion called to her, "Tsume-sama, help me."
She moved immediately, bracing the little sensei's weight while the other went about freeing him. Alive, she thought in astonishment, and set her face. It meant they had time.
A pretty young woman answered the door when he knocked, squinting in the washed out dim of earliest dawn. She wore a patterned dress and a full length apron, folded down over her lap. As she let him in, they exchanged the most tired of smiles.
"How is he?" the old man asked, sorrowfully observing the mewling baby crouched in an isolated corner with his back to the door.
"He hasn't stopped crying since he got here," the woman said. The little boy had been dropped off at their shop last yesterday evening by a confused looking shinobi who had no message but to watch over the child under someone came to fetch him. "He's exhausted, and I believe he thinks his father is dead." She looked at the elderly man, who she knew as a grandfatherly leader, and a wise and kind man more than a warrior who regularly sent men to die. "Who is he?" she asked. She was very young. "Is his family really dead?"
"His family?" the Sandaime repeated, and his heart eased just a little in spite of the circumstances. "Yes, they are dead. But he is not alone. I've come after him now. Someone he'd like to see is awake."
"Oh, thank god," said the youthful civilian mother. "He's so little to be alone."
The Sandaime said, "Indeed."
"Ruka, nono." The child constricted, hunching and rocking with his arms squeezed around him. "Gone."
"He isn't gone," the old man reassured him, his own heart panging at the sight of such sorrow. He didn't wonder that abandonment haunted this child. "He was hurt trying to keep the bad men away from you and the village, but the medics have fixed him. He's just inside, Naruto."
The baby just swayed as though he hadn't heard, and his Hokage sighed, turning to push open the door. The shaft of hallway light illuminated the low bed against the far wall, and the still body propped against the mattress. The youth's face was bloodless, his eyes sealed shut. Naruto caught sight of him and sobbed, taking a drunken step into the room. Hesitantly, he wobbled toward the bed, drizzling tears.
Perhaps it was the sound of his gurgling, but halfway there his guardian's eyelashes flickered. His head moved feebly, and his fingers stretched and curled against the blankets. Hoarsely, he called, "Naruto?" The little boy stood paralyzed. "Naruto." Iruka sounded more certain now, less like he was speaking from the dead. Heavily slitted eyes pressed open, so full of pupil as to be almost black. The lines of pain smoothed as he made out the boy. "Baby," he asked, "Why are you crying?"
Naruto closed the distance between them in a run that was more like an uncoordinated stagger. He climbed up beside his caregiver and practically collapsed against his chest. It had to have hurt the teacher, but his grimace was hidden in blond hair. "Poor baby," he gentled the child, rubbing circles in his back, caressing his head. "Everything's okay now. Everything's okay."
And the Sandaime watched the touching reunion from his post at the doorway, smiling softly.
To his great consternation, the child had writhed and screamed the entire way back to Konoha. Kakashi had known when he'd left that he was signing off on the younger man's death. Umino had known it too. And he'd been irritated the kid wouldn't shut up about it.
He'd already been before the Sandaime when the Inuzuka matron and the medic, Tanaka, brought in the body. Since there was no reason it should be classified, he assumed they would take him to the hospital to gather what information they could. There hadn't been enough time for the Sand nin to do anything really interesting, but Kakashi was curious anyway.
Imagine his surprise when he'd found his Hokage standing braced against his walking stick outside a hospital door, watching over its very live occupants. The old man had seemed surprised to see him.
"Kakashi. Well, then."
For a blink of a moment, the jounin thought he saw something disapproving or even sad in the man's weathered face, but whatever, he moved to make a place for the newcomer at the door anyway. Kakashi peered through the dimness, to the breathing, living teacher lying on the bed, and his child with him.
Astounded, Kakashi turned to his leader. "I saw him when they brought him in. I was sure he was dead," he said. It echoed inside him, 'I don't understand why he isn't dead.'
The old man nodded slowly, "He was very badly injured. By the time we was brought here, he did not have enough charka left in him to sustain a body like yours or mine. But charka conservation has been a part of Iruka's training for all of his life. It limits him, but in this case I believe that it saved him. We assume the sand left when they sensed others coming, though they did force a kunai under his ribs before abandoning his body. That he survived that was luck on his side. Perhaps he twisted in just the right way; it missed his heart and did not pierce an artery. As it is, he'll recover in weeks with no permanent damage."
The Sandaime smiled then, almost fondly. "He's tough for being so unspectacular, eh?"
It was a chastisement, Kakashi knew, and pressure built in his chest. He'd misjudged the situation this time, pretty badly. And he'd left Umino to die. In the last difficult years, Kakashi thought he had become numb to losses. Losses were acceptable, inevitable. But for him to live? It left him to face all that he had said and done, because Iruka would be there in the future.
"Should I say something to him?" Kakashi wanted to know. He wasn't sure he could manage an apology. He wasn't sure he was sorry.
"He isn't expecting it." The old man shrugged. "He thinks he did his duty. And he believes you did yours. Why? What do you want from him?"
Kakashi considered the question. Absolution? For what he had done? No. He had no need of that; as the Sandaime had said, in his actions he had done his duty. But for the first time in a long time, he found himself concerned with what he had said and done that would not go into the mission log.
"Perhaps I want to thank him?" he ventured. But no, one did not thank a fellow shinobi for doing as they were required. He tried again, "To tell him I am pleased he lived." But that part wasn't even true. That Umino had lived didn't please him, especially, in any more than the abstract sense that it was a recovery of the village's resources.
Sandaime waited patiently for him to make up his mind.
Finally, Kakashi decided on a truth. "I think I'd like to ask him why he's alive."
"Hm," his leader acknowledged, looking into the room discreetly where the exhausted youth lay sleeping, injured but breathing strongly with the three-year-old pariah draped across his lap. "Perhaps that's not a very good question," he suggested.
The silver-haired ANBU nodded. It'd be best if he went back to his work. In his fast moving world, a few weeks from now this whole incidence would be a part of the distant past. Probably he would never see Umino or his infant ever again. And anyway, a shinobi had to live without regret.
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