A burden shared was a burden lightened.
When even the smallest of my burdens could shake the world, just one slipping from my shoulders made all the difference. From Atlas and holding up the sky to… Still about the same, honestly.
Opening up about a particular spot of terror in a fathomless expanse of existential fear and despair only went so far; I was long overdue for two decades of focused therapy with a highly understanding psychological specialist. Ideally, one that I could trust.
But I felt better. Greatly. Well enough that when I woke up with Ino laid out over my back; spit on the back of my neck and one of her overstuffed pillows smashed flat between my arms; I didn't stall. I didn't stay in bed for any longer than my customary five minutes or take overly long on my shower.
And the less than ten seconds required to hide the ruined pillow under Ino's bed. By the time she found out, I'd be long gone. And by the time I came back, she wouldn't be angry anymore.
Or so I hoped.
Seriously. That thing was crushed. There was no coming back from that.
I faced the rest of the morning and its trials with grim reluctance but faced it I did.
I got dressed. I did my hair. Had a light breakfast of miso and an omelet with a side of small talk. Ino's parents chimed in every once in a while with a question, comment, or observation. The usual sort.
How was work. How's the family. Nice weather today. The food is good, thank you for having me. When are you going to use my first name. A casual offer to either put me on the fast track to working in T&I or a thinly veiled threat.
It could have been both.
==========
Yamanaka Inoichi, former head of Konoha's Torture and Interrogation unit, current clan head of the Yamanaka, and father of my best friend gave me a severe look. The most severe look he could muster outside of wartime.
Extremely severe.
A look that would have been a lot more impressive if he hadn't been doing it over the orange juice carton. And if he didn't have the customary Yamanaka eye bags on full display.
Yes. Customary.
Ino, on the opposite side of the table from me and with a pair of eye bags of her own, nearly nodded off into her soup as the hand propping her head up slipped.
Clarisse, without looking, nudged Ino's food out of the way of any possible accidents, like she did every morning I happened to be here.
And she went back to eating as if nothing had happened.
I suspected it was genetic. And part of the reason why the Yamanaka got along with the Nara as well as they did. For a given value of 'well'; suckered the poor bastards in with their early morning lethargy, then revealed their extroverted natures once the sun was a sliver on the horizon, the forbidden time zone that ended at dusk where the Nara were (metaphorically, not literally) at their weakest.
How devious of them. How devilishly fiendish and underhanded... I was sure that Shikamaru would agree if asked.
Which reminded me that we hadn't talked in a while.
Noted. And marked for future correction.
And Inoichi had asked me a question. One that I'd held off by dint of taking my time chewing my food.
" How would you like to work in T&I?"
What a question. And one that needed pondering, if only to keep from offending.
My career was set. Had been from before I'd even entered the academy… but I couldn't just say 'no'. Not after having slept in his home. Not while sitting at his table.
Not after what I'd done to his daughter.
Not to a man that had been a semi-constant presence in my life since I'd met his only child.
Damn it all, he'd been to all of my birthday parties.
That would be unforgivably rude.
The blond waited, patient as I gathered myself and my reasoning as to why I'd chosen my course of action.
He knew what I was doing. And allowed it, knowing that something this big couldn't be decided on a whim.
Or he was more tired than usual today and had blanked out, his expression staying while his mind went on vacation.
Which wasn't uncommon.
It was one or the other. But he needed an answer. Short. Sweet. Sensible.
"I'm still a genin, sir," I said. And that said plenty on its own. At my rank, I didn't have the luxury of choosing my assignments. Or specializations. "And I don't think Kakashi-sensei would be happy."
I was part of the man's first team. Territorial wouldn't even begin to describe it.
Inoichi nodded, acknowledging my point and proving he was still with us. "You are. And he wouldn't." He lifted his bowl to his lips, breaking eye contact. "But there are always exceptions."
Damn it. He was actually serious.
"...Aren't you retired?"
I knew the answer already.
Technically, yes. Realistically, no. But the facade of pensions and happy family lives had to be maintained. And the question had to be asked.
Stalling without appearing as if you were doing so was a tricky balancing act.
"Of course I am." He laughed through his nose and took a sip of his meal. "But people still listen when I talk. And I'm sure they'd like to listen to what you have to say too."
…
Was this a job offer or the soft start of a sting? Or entrapment?
A blatant appeal to my ego was obvious. An opening gambit that could lead to a hundred different outcomes depending on the context. And on the personality of the target. And…
He'd know exactly how that worked, wouldn't he? How that looked. And how it could be interpreted; He was a middle-aged ninja that had seen two wars and come out the other side without full body scarring. Everything he said and did carried implied dangers.
Was this a test? It could be. A way of determining suitability for this particular-
Ino dropped her spoon, interrupting the untangling of what promised to be a spectacularly torturous web of multi-layered meanings and overly nuanced understandings.
It hadn't been on purpose, the deep breath of someone forcing themselves awake sounding out when she did it, but results were results.
"Daddy. Stop it. It's too early for this. And we all just woke up." Ino glared at her father with bleary eyes. "I can hear Sakura's brain exploding."
Those words, understated as they were, and outright untrue at the last (my brain was not exploding, it was working), had an unexplainable weight behind them.
A weight that Inoichi felt like a physical blow as his expression melted away like snow under the Suna sun. "Sweetie, please."
Keep going, Ino.
Please.
"She's going on her first C-rank in an hour." Ino refused to let up even as she picked up her spoon and started on her lukewarm meal. "Can't this wait until she comes back? When we're all - ugh..." Her face twisted as the 'lukewarm' problem was revealed to her at a bite. "Let her think it over, daddy."
Yes.
Do that.
"But..." Inoichi tried again, his shoulders sinking and bowl rising to cover his face as his daughter continued to glare him down. "I'm talking about business."
Ino didn't say anything. She just continued to glare. All mussed hair and half-closed eyes and hostility as she ate her still great but not as good breakfast.
"...Hmm." Inoichi's shoulders continued to fall until they could no longer as he continued to show that Ino had him surgically wrapped around her littlest finger; if he hid his face any harder behind his bowl, the contents would start pouring down his front. "Maybe this isn't the best time."
"Yeah," Ino agreed. "Maybe it isn't."
Inoichi mumbled into his soup.
Clarisse shook her head with a smile.
"We'll talk about it when we, I, get back?" I offered a fig leaf as my internal clock began to run down. "In a month."
Long enough to figure out how to say 'no'.
Ino continued to be the best friend anyone could ever ask for.
"...And the Chunin exams won't be that far away," he said, accepting my fig leaf begrudgingly. "Kakashi would kill me if he ended up down a member before then."
Wonderful. Even better. "So after the Exams then?"
"After the exams."
==========
With how that had ended, it could have been both.
The offer of an alternative career path and a way to the top of the political hierarchy was greatly appreciated. But, again, that wasn't going to help me in the future. And… And it had been a very ordinary morning at Ino's house, otherwise.
Comforting. Familiar. Fortifying… Better when Ino hadn't followed to send me off, far too busy with her own early morning mission to bother Sasuke one last time before the end of this month.
A blessing. For once.
Life went on.
Kakashi being at the meeting place just outside the gates on time for once, without any of us having to wait until lunch, nearly made me reconsider this notion. But, through force of habit, my teacher's very existence in this location, at this time, for the predetermined reason as to why he should be here was cognitive anathema.
Intellectually, I knew that he wasn't always late. He was late when he could afford to be. And when it didn't negatively affect Konoha. But emotionally …
The heart was a fickle thing.
That Sasuke had agreed with me at the time, joining Naruto in pointing and declaring Kakashi an imposter, had reinforced this notion… Then I'd reoriented his image back to him as a broody teenage boy, and not a mascara-wearing mutant, and the problem was reconciled.
Then I'd met Tazuna…who was surprisingly not drunk. Still old. Still wearing glasses. A great deal more visibly fit than any of my memories had implied, but well within parameters. And I supposed that a single case of drunkenness wasn't proof of a habit.
Corrected.
The rest, the complaining, was unimportant.
Life went on. And I took what solace in it that I could, when I could.
As I was currently. At this very moment… Eight miles or so away from the front gates of Konoha for the first time in my life.
Yes. Really. The first time ever.
Fresh air. Green leaves. The inherent peace of mostly unspoiled nature and the tentative enjoyment of seeing new sights.
A lack of trees that weren't several hundred feet around at the trunk and giant leeches contained by the technological marvel that was a chainlink fence. And potentially better than average survival instincts.
How novel.
"Why are all you ninja so damn scrawny?" Tazuna asked a question I'd been asking myself for at least a decade. "Aren't you soldiers? Why is the little girl the only one that looks like she works for a living?"
I took what solace I could.
"We are ninja, Tazuna-san. Don't be fooled by how we look." Having obviously tuned the man out in favor of his book, Kakashi reassured the civilian with a rehearsed utterance that had been said twice today, word-for-word. That Tazuna hadn't noticed was a testament to the banal evils of age. "You paid for the best and you have the best."
…That was more true than he knew. And I was going to have to tell him this sometime within the next three to four years. As a reminder. And for amusement.
When spirits were low and the stakes were high, when reality proved crueler than anyone had ever imagined... When the uncomfortable realization that nothing mattered began to dawn on him, I was sure this long wait would be well worth it.
It might even make me crack a grin when I did it.
"I'm not scrawny, old man!" Naruto, unaware of the meaning of the word 'professional', glared at the old man's back. And began his part of the cycle once more. "I'm just built different!"
I sighed and continued to do my job, the many things I could have said to that statement forcibly laid to rest.
None of it would have been helpful.
And I was still appreciating the non-giant nature.
"Yeh." Tazuna took a long swig from his bottle. One of several that he'd hidden on his person with the care of someone that was worried that someone could snatch them away if he wasn't careful… And then he coughed. "Like a shrimp."
A squirrel fell from a nearby tree and into a bush, swallowed up by the foliage. But not literally.
Delightful.
Naruto growled, eyes filled with dangerous thoughts as he began to cross his fingers.
Sasuke, a thunderous scowl on his face, slapped Naruto's hand before the blond could finish doing something that Kakashi would make us all regret.
Dust went up when our token blond stumbled, surprised.
Then pissed.
Naruto would be giving him an extra helping of shit for that later, possibly within the next half a minute, but Sasuke had known the risks. Weighed them. And did what he had to.
The treeline, proving itself to be refreshingly non-threatening at the moment, was left alone for other vista's. Such as the sky.
Attacks from above were always a threat.
And I wished there were more clouds. A few more. For no particular reason.
…They'd look nice, I think. Scattered across and along the sun's path as it passed. A couple of birds. That sort of thing.
...
It was a shame that photography as a hobby wouldn't be a thing for a while yet.
" No attacking the client, idiot. " The Uchiha signed, my partial attention to the drama of teenage boys more than enough to catch it. " What the hell is wrong with you? "
Kettle has yet to realize he is black, like pot.
" I wasn't going to attack him, dipshit. " Naruto signed back, slower and with enough of it fumbled that large swathes of it could be left up to interpretation. " I was going to prank him. "
Okay.
No.
" He's an elderly man who's been drinking. If you give him a heart attack or make him hit his head on a rock when he falls over, we're screwed, " I blithely added to the conversation, making it grind to a standstill as both boys winced. " And we'll see how far 'It was just a prank, sir' gets us at our disciplinary hearing. "
Considering who we were talking about… Farther than I'd like, I think. It was Naruto, after all. And our current Hokage, the softest of them all. But the sentiment came across clearly enough.
" Well said, Sakura. And please don't hit your fellow nin in front of the client, Sasuke. It makes us look bad. And some of us only have so much to lose, " Kakashi interjected, mid-page turn before I could say something to that effect. " Now, let us speak of better things. " The halt in his 'voice' was nearly audible. "Things that make us seem relatable to normal people. "
…Normal people?
What did that even mean ?
My brief questioning look to the rest of my team got me helpless, irritated shrugs.
Ignoring that this idea had come from Kakashi, one of the least normal people I knew…had he met us? Or, well, Naruto and Sasuke. Had he met them, the pair of socially maladjusted demigods in waiting that they were?
Jutsu this. Jutsu that. Ramen. Tomatoes. Strangely knowledgeable exchanges of what made good eyeliner. Or not so strange.
Naruto did love his theater. Bunraku. Kabuki. Noh. The traditional stuff. If there was any hobby he had that didn't involve being an irresponsible, death trap creating jackass, it was the arts.
…No man should be that good at applying their own makeup.
And Sasuke was an Uchiha. If there wasn't a strategic mascara supply somewhere in the old district, along with secret nail care tips, I'd be amazed.
…I would also have to admit that my interest in the beautifying arts wasn't null. And that this was a normal enough topic; someone had to do something before this somehow got more awkward than it already was.
I crossed my arms over my chest and frowned. "I've been thinking of changing my polish."
The silence that came from me jumping on that exploding tag was the silence of confusion. Confusion, and tentative interest; long walks needed something to fill the space, no matter how dull they might have been.
"I like the color. And it keeps to my theme." I flashed them for emphasis, the smooth pink finish reflected the sun's light nicely. "But what I'm using now chips far too easily in the line of duty. And takes forever to apply." I sighed. "But everything that might work is far too expensive on a genin's salary."
Not entirely true. It took forever for other people to apply. The same methods I used to paint fences worked well enough for this, more than well enough, but saying so would take away from the conversation I was attempting to start.
Jutsu wasn't normal .
Of that, I was sure.
"Long-lasting. Durable. Attractive. Inexpensive." I did a dismissive wave in the air, not waiting for a reply; Kakashi lowered his book to look at me, both brows raised. "Pick two, with optional expensive, and hope you can live with your choices."
"Oh man ," Naruto, always himself, was the first person to make a noise. "Don't I know it. Do you know how hard it is to find someone that'll sell you a bucket of the good stuff without it eating into your food budget?"
Yes.
"Or them calling the ANBU?" Sasuke added helpfully.
"Or that. That happened a lot. And, sometimes, they had the right idea." Naruto's face scrunched with old frustration. "But, come on . What the hell was I going to do with that much stage color? Put it in balloons and throw them at people? Are they high? Do you know how much that costs ?"
Not at all. That wasn't my 'scene'. "Quite a bit, I'd think. Your registration picture is flawless."
My scene or not, I could appreciate the work he'd put into that picture; I hadn't seen any mistakes in his foundation. And that was something I struggled with at times just by adding blush on fashionably important occasions.
"Right!? That took hours to put on, but I didn't think of giving up! Not even for a second!" Naruto jerked a thumb back towards himself with a look of pride. "When Uzumaki Naruto puts his sights on something, he always gets what he's going for!"
Clearly.
I nodded. "I could tell. Well done."
If Naruto's chest puffed up any further his lungs would explode.
"Who do you go to for yours? Who's your provider?" Sasuke got straight to the heart of the issue while Naruto was consumed by pride, his dark black eyes sharper than any blade. "Any business that sells to ninja should know better."
I couldn't disagree with that last statement. Not even a little. I understood that the villages weren't populated entirely by lifelong mercenaries, the greater part of the population (at least Konoha's) being made up of the civilians that staffed and maintained our infrastructure... But…
The ebb and flow of supply and demand wasn't important right now.
"It was a gift." Ino again. Which explained a lot even if it was exasperating… She probably hadn't meant for me to apply this color for actual work . That was on me. But this topic had come from somewhere . "And I didn't ask where it was from."
Should have. But I didn't.
"Are you…" Sasuke gave me a searching look. "Never mind. You're serious."
I frowned. "Why wouldn't I be?"
What an odd thing to say.
"I don't know." Sasuke clicked his tongue. A deer, more skittish than any Nara deer I'd ever seen, scrambled away from sight and deeper into the woods as we passed by. "I didn't think you could be that trusting."
...
I blinked. Twice. "Ah. I see." Then nodded, returning his look with one of my own; how insightful of him. "Fair point."
Not as if I'd tried to hide it.
"So why did you accept the gift then?" Once content to let us speak amongst ourselves, our teacher lowered his book by a minute fraction to say his piece. "If you didn't know where it came from, Sakura-chan?"
…I never liked it when he added a suffix to my name. When it came from a man like this, a man that refused to take anything seriously without life on the line, it felt like an attack.
Like an attempt at forcing a reaction.
Which it very well might have been.
I didn't like it. And I didn't have the patience for a back-and-forth game of verbal cat-and-mouse right then.
Tazuna, bored and frustrated as he was ignored, continued to plod along. One foot in front of the other till the end of it all.
Which was fine. He was safe and alive. A lack of boredom hadn't been part of our contract. And… This wasn't about him.
Or, not just about him. And it wasn't about the poorly placed and sketchy road puddles half a mile down the road from us that just about glowed to my senses either.
"I accepted it…" I began slowly, making sure that my enunciation was clear. "Because everyone needs someone that they can trust."
If even rogue nin could understand something this simple, of course I could.
Kakashi stared at me… Then back to his book, satisfied. "Huh."
"Huh," Sasuke echoed.
Huh indeed.
"Oh!" Naruto exclaimed with a snap of the fingers. "Ino!"
…The hell, Naruto?
==========
Gozu and his brother, Meizu, had been on this lonely stretch of road, sitting on their asses, for the last two days.
Sitting. Hiding in puddles. It was the same shit at the end of the day and Gozu was fucking sick of it.
He was sick of this dry, rainless hellscape. And pissed that his brother and him hadn't been able to catch up to the old man before he'd been too deep in Konoha territory to chase.
That wasn't something they'd tell Zabuza, of course. Of course they'd caught up to that old bastard before then. They'd just needed to dodge a Konoha patrol and cover their tracks for a while after. And crap like that took time.
The Demon Brothers of the Mist hadn't been too slow to catch a doddering old civilian. No way.
They'd recited that story front to back to each other until they could do it by rote. Because why the fuck wouldn't they have? What else were they going to do if not that? Play Majong? In a puddle?
An ambush that had yet to be sprung was fucking boring.
"I'm sorry, Sakura!" A rough, scratchy whine broke the silence and made the puddle he was hiding in ripple. "I didn't know you were trying to be - what's the word again?"
"Subtle?" Another, less scratchy voice added. "Like you weren't?"
"Shut your fucking- Yeah. That. That's the fucking word. Subtle. I didn't know that she was trying to be subtle!"
It was starting to look like their long wait might be over as several people walked between them.
"Read a dictionary sometime, numbnuts. And it was obvious she was trying not to bring her personal life up in front of the client and her teacher, dumbass."
Client? Fucking finally.
" Our teacher. And I can't read minds!"
"Alright, children. Alright. Settle down. If I'd known that talking about makeup would turn out like this-"
"Kids." An even older voice grumbled. "I'm being protected by actual children."
Go time.
Gozu carefully rose from his hiding spot, his brother doing the same at his side…and there it was. Their target.
Targets.
Some tall fuck in a flak jacket, the jounin of the group, and the first kill before they got anything done. Two boys brainlessly bickering with each other over fucking nail polish, easy pickings…and was that a brick house or a fucking wom-
He was going to die.
His spine was broken. His heart had been removed from his chest. Liver punctured, stomach ruptured. Legs mangled, arms little more than nubs on the ruin that used to be his torso, blood and fluids draining out into the dirt as his insides became soup.
Eyes pulped, the fingers that dug into them the last thing he ever saw.
He was going to die.
Gozu's shriek of terror ( what the fuck ) became a blubbering gurgle as his stomach rebelled and gorge rose up into his throat; his vision a blur as he looked through tears, his eyes rolling as his legs lost all their strength.
Killing intent.
That was Gozu's last recognizable thought before something he couldn't even see ( fast ) slammed into his middle and he projectile vomited into his own mask.
And then he was lifted into the air. Thrown upwards. Tossed end over end as he curled up on himself in horrific pain, clawing at his mouth and choking on his last meal as it filled his airways with onigiri and acid.
And then there was more pain. Worse than what he was still feeling as his upward trajectory was forcefully brought to a stop by a hold on his ankle… It was a hold that dislocated that leg with a loud, sickening pop in his hip and crushed several bones in his foot.
Snap.
Bone being forced to grind against bone. Him drowning in his overflowing mask that refused to go down no matter how much he pulled… And the deep, abiding fear of being hit by enough killing intent to rival Zabuza's on a bad day nearly helped him tune out his brother's screams.
His brother, who had been buried under a punching, kicking, writhing, and cursing ball of orange and black.
Nearly.
It was being flicked into the dirt, breaking several more bones, then being dragged all over the road like a dishrag on a counter that did that.
He didn't know for how long that went on. He had no idea when it stopped…but when it did, it was a relief.
His brother getting dropped next to him, moaning pitifully?
Even better.
Unless they were about to be tortured. Or some crap like that.
If there was anything that made you wish you were dead... They really should have invested in those suicide pills.
Everything hurt. And he couldn't even move.
What was broken?
Fuck, what wasn't broken?
Fuck.
"You see, Tazuna-san? What did I say?" The jounin said cheerfully to the brothers' pale, sweating target. "My students are more than capable of keeping you safe. And they'll keep on doing just that… Of course, depending on the results of this talk we're about to have."
"...Super."