Chapter 39: Thirty-Nine
Chapter Text
A/N: I just wanted to say thank you for all the beautiful comments people have been leaving over the past few chapters <3 Even if I don't reply, please know that I read and appreciate every single one of them and they inspire me so much to keep writing!
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE:
Adjusting to freedom was difficult. With the lack of structure that Root had provided, Sansa found herself at a loss. Having nothing to do set her teeth on edge, winding her anxiety tighter by the second until it felt as if she would shatter apart. She remembered feeling a similar way after her years spent a hostage at Kings Landing, and later after her escape from Ramsay.
She still didn't even know what had happened to Koi, she only knew that he was still alive because she could feel the string of his chakra connected to the master-seal. She was tempted to follow it, but fear held her back. She didn't want to reveal her connection to the Root members, to reveal that she could find them. Instead, she decided to bring them to her, to bring Root out from the shadows and into the open.
So, she sent Naruto off to the Academy with a message to give that would turn the village upside down.
It worked.
It took less than two hours after Naruto left for the Academy for her to be summoned to the Hokage Tower, to the Sandaime's office where he stood waiting behind his desk. Jiraiya, who she had not seen since their arrival in Konoha, was also present, standing just off to the side.
They thought to intimidate her. She was not intimidated. She was Sansa Stark of Winterfell, the first Queen of the North, the Queen Mother of the Seven Kingdoms. She was Uzumaki Fuyuko of Uzushio, Princess of the Whirlpools, Sister to the future Uzukage. Only the gods themselves could cower her.
"What," the Hokage demanded of her, as she was forced before him, "have you done."
It wasn't even a question. It didn't need to be.
Sansa almost smiled. The men in her life had always ultimately been the architects of their own defeat and Sarutobi Hiruzen would be no exception.
"I'm playing the game of thrones," she answered. And when you played the game of thrones, you either won or you died. There was no middle ground.
Sansa did not intend to lose.
The Hokage's hard eyes bored into her own and Sansa did not lower her head, meeting his stare with her own. She wondered what he saw in her eyes, if he saw the years she'd lived, the trials she'd suffered, the battles she'd lost, the wars that she'd won. She wondered if he saw the fire-bright fox-cunning and flickering-shining kami-blessing. She wondered if he saw the endless depths of the oceans, the unfathomable shadows of death.
She hoped he did. She hoped it terrified him, to know just who he had pitted himself against.
The Hokage turned away first and Sansa's lips curled back, leaving the slightest hint of sharp teeth visible, a glint of victory. "Leave," the Hokage said hoarsely.
Sansa turned and left.
She did not bow.
~
"She may have Kushina's colouring," Jiraiya said, looking out after Fuyuko, his slightly widened eyes a visible sign of how shaken he was, "but that was all Minato."
Thinking of his successor, of Konoha's sunshine-gold, whirlwind Hokage, Hiruzen couldn't help but grimace in agreement. Minato was revered in the memory of Konoha's people, a pillar of greatness that no living person could possibly rise up to meet.
What people didn't, couldn't, remember about their beloved Fourth was how coldly, even viciously ruthless he had been. In the span of a single battle, Minato had once practically won a nine-year war for them by killing over thousand Iwa shinobi– men, women and children; he spared none. Years later, that ruthlessness shone through once more when he chose to seal the Kyuubi into his own newborn children instead of his dying wife, knowing that to seal it in Kushina would be to lose the Kyuubi with her death and without having a Jinchūriki, Konoha would be vulnerable to the other Hidden Villages.
Minato could smile so warmly at people, could talk to them, make them feel so special, could make them believe in him, in his strength, in his dreams of a better future. He was charismatic, a leader amongst men, a shining hope.
But his eyes.
Fuyuko had his eyes.
An impenetrable fortress that no enemy force could breach; only allies were ever allowed past those defences.
Minato had caught Hiruzen's attention young; the boy had been brilliant, outshining the Clan heirs at the Academy despite being a no name orphan who'd been forcefully enlisted in the Academy in preparation for the upcoming war. Hiruzen knew a child prodigy when he saw one, he'd had one of his own in Orochimaru, and he knew he needed to nurture and guide such talent, to ensure the boy's loyalty never strayed from the village. That was why he'd pulled strings to have Jiraiya assigned as the boy's jōnin instructor. And Jiraiya had done his job well, reeling the boy in, giving him roots, helping him form connections.
Jiraiya had done an even better job then he could have hoped. He'd succeeded with Minato where Hiruzen himself had failed with Orochimaru.
And where he'd failed with Fuyuko.
Perhaps Jiraiya would have better luck with Fuyuko where Hiruzen had not.
"I want you to offer her lessons," he told his student, though they both knew it wasn't a request.
"Sensei, I can't," Jiraiya immediately argued. "She hates me, she'd never agree to travel with me–"
"I don't mean for you to take her with you," Hiruzen corrected, "separating her from Naruto now would destroy any remaining trust she has left in us. No, I want you to offer her lessons in sealing between now and the Chūnin Exams."
Jiraiya tensed, unhappy to be reminded again of the exams, but Hiruzen wouldn't budge on the matter. He also knew that Jiraiya wouldn't say no to anything that might help his goddaughter survive the exams.
"Fine," Jiraiya said, defeated. "I'll try. But I don't think she'll accept the help."
"She's a remarkably pragmatic child," Hiruzen disagreed. "I believe she will. But not if you approach her as a godfather."
"No," Jiraiya agreed quietly. "No, she won't be looking for a godfather. She'll be looking for a shinobi."
And there was no room for softness, for love, in the life of a shinobi.
Shinobi only endure.
~
Sansa ignored the eyes on her as she waited for Naruto outside the Academy. There weren't as many parents as there normally were– the Clans, it seemed, were busy finding answers about Root and Danzo. It was the civilian parents present and they hadn't seen her for three years, so it took time for them to recognise her, to realise who she was.
Sansa hadn't bothered to wear a scarf over her hair, or dirt to hide the marks on her face. She had left such tactics in the past where they belonged. Instead, she had braided her jewel-bright hair into a crown and used the deep, almost Tully-blue paints that Naruto had confessed he used for his pranks to line the whiskers on her cheeks. On her forehead, where most Konoha shinobi wore their forehead protectors with the Konoha symbol, she had streaked an Uzushio swirl in the blood-red of arterial spray.
It was her rebellion, making her stand. If asked to elaborate, she would say she was proud of her heritage. Nobody could prove otherwise. Nobody would truly think a seven-year-old child would understand the link to a fallen village.
They would be wrong.
When Naruto bounded out of the Academy, accompanied by a young man in his late teens, he drew the eyes of nearly everyone in the yard, child and adult alike. Sansa wasn't surprised. Her brother had learned to be bright, to be loud; his grin rarely leaving his lean, sharp face, already angular and vulpine despite his young age. Her Naruto was a storm, howling winds and hurricanes; so relentlessly, unapologetically alive; he was a force of nature, and he was hers.
The villagers were right to whisper, to look at him as he laughed and shone, a magnificent burning star that threatened to blind anyone who stared too long. Let them hate, let them turn away; they didn't deserve him, didn't deserve his brilliance. They never had.
The young man next to Naruto faltered when she stepped forwards. His eyes darted to the marks on her cheeks, to her forehead, to her hair, then to her eyes. His scent was wary, but not outright afraid, and for that at least she commended him.
"Ko-ane!" Naruto almost bowled her over as he let go of his teacher's hand and leaped at her. Sansa barely managed to anchor herself in place as his arms flung around her before burying her face in the curve of his neck, letting her chakra merge with his, hurricanes and oceans creating a whirlpool, before reluctantly pulling away, pausing only to rub her cheek against his.
"How was your day?" she asked, reaching to tuck a strand of sunshine-gold hair behind his ear. Naruto's eyes sparkled with mischief even as he casually shrugged.
It hadn't escaped her clever brother's notice that his teacher was listening to their conversation– and that he wasn't the only one.
"It was super weird," Naruto said, all faux-earnestness and mock-confusion, "I told everyone about what happened to you, and lots of the other kids left. They said they had to go talk to their mamas and their papas."
"I imagine it was scary for them to hear," Sansa said solemnly. "They must have thought they were safe in the village. It must have been horrible to realise that they weren't safe at all– that someone who was trusted enough by the Hokage to be on the Council could have stolen them for a secret army!"
Naruto's teacher quickly cut in then– but the damage was already done; Sansa could feel how panic was spiking through the chakra of the eavesdropping civilians, anger too, could see how they were all reaching for their children, wanting to hold them closer. And despite stepping forwards, even the teacher was perturbed, his chakra surging uneasily, upset.
"Hello," he greeted her, his eyes carefully not straying from hers. "I'm Umino Iruka, your brother's sensei."
"Hello Umino-san," Sansa greeted him politely, because Naruto had had nothing but nice things to say about this particular teacher, especially in comparison to the others that had taught him. And considering that Konoha's schooling system operated in a way that each class of students had the same two teachers for the entire six-year rotation, it would only be beneficial to have a positive relationship with the young man. "I'm Uzumaki Fuyuko," she introduced herself. "I'm Naruto's sister."
"Naruto's spoken quite a bit about you today," Iruka said warmly. "Will you be joining us in class soon, Fuyuko-chan?"
"Ah," Sansa said, pausing slightly, "not quite, Umino-san. I'm already a genin."
"Oh," Iruka looked surprised. Sansa let her smile sharpen, lips pulling back enough to let her sharp teeth glint.
"Shimura Danzo was many things, Umino-san," she said. "A monster. A thief. A master manipulator. And a very effective sensei."
Iruka had paled.
"So it's true," he whispered shakily, before pulling a face like he hadn't meant to say that at all.
"It's true." Sansa said calmly. "Every word." Iruka let out a shuddering breath.
"I'm so sorry." He said. "You didn't deserve that."
Sansa blinked. "You know," she said slowly, "out of everything people have said and done since I was rescued from Root, I think you're actually the first person to tell me that. That I didn't deserve to have that happen to me." Tilting her head slightly, she looked up at Iruka in a new light. He was still a shinobi teaching child soldiers how to kill. But… he was kind. That was a rarity in any world. "I can see why Naruto likes you," she murmured. "Thank you."
"Iruka-sensei's pretty cool," Naruto agreed. Sansa linked her fingers through his, enjoying the feeling of the warmth of Naruto's palm leeching through to her cool skin. She'd always run colder then him.
"Come on, little prince," she murmured, low enough that only Naruto's sharp ears would hear, "let's go home."
Naruto led the way, taking her the safest path. It included running over rooftops and Sansa was appropriately impressed by how far Naruto could jump, though her heart did leap up to her throat a time or two. She was much less impressed when they arrived back at the apartment, only to find a familiar figure waiting there.
Reacting to her immediate hostility, Naruto growled, his claws coming out as he bristled, moving in front of her. Sansa put a calming hand on his shoulder, letting her chakra wash over him even as she looked evenly up at Jiraiya.
"What are you doing here?" she asked.
"I can't come visit my own godchildren?" he asked, arching an eyebrow down at her.
"No," Sansa said bluntly. "You lost that privilege seven, nearly eight now, years ago."
Jiraiya grimaced.
"I had a duty–"
"You did," Sansa agreed. "To us."
"Who is he?" Naruto asked, still glowering at Jiraiya. Their chakra was so deeply intertwined that Sansa could feel the hints of Kurama's burning chakra creeping through and she immediately pressed it down, pressed it back, pouring the freezing, icy depths of her ocean so quickly into her brother that he actually swayed on the spot. The very last thing she wanted was for Jiraiya to realise how easily and regularly Naruto used Kurama's chakra– not when she knew it would immediately get back to the Hokage.
"Let's go inside," she said, using the grip she still had on Naruto's hand to casually pull his arm over her shoulders, making it look like a protective gesture, rather then like he was leaning on her. "Don't use the burning red," she warned Naruto in the Old Tongue as they stepped into the apartment.
"I won't, I promise," Naruto said, sounding a little woozy still. "That felt strange."
"I'm sorry. I panicked." Sansa apologised, feeling guilty.
"What language is that?" Jiraiya asked, having followed them inside and closed the door behind them.
Settling down on the tatami mat, Naruto curling up on the ground beside her, resting his head on her lap where she could run her fingers through his lovely, bright-sunshine hair, Sansa answered, "nobody really spoke to us when we were young. We made up our own language. As we got older, we kept making up more words for it. Our older sister at the orphanage, Kanna, she helped us."
"Impressive," Jiraiya said, his eyes sharp, "but you are impressive, aren't you?"
Sansa stared coolly back at him. "Flattery will get you nowhere."
"No," Jiraiya said, nodding. "It won't, will it? But pragmatism will. In four months, you'll be competing in the Chūnin Exams. Genin who are three times your age die in those exams. Now, I'm offering to train you, one-to-one, for those four months. You may not think much of me as a godfather, but I'm one of the Legendary Sannin for a reason, I'm the most successful spymaster in the Elemental Countries and my student became a Hokage. You're not going to get a better, more qualified offer then me."
Sansa looked back at him, cold faced. "You're right," she said. "And I will accept. Because I have too much I want to do, to die in that exam. But after those four months are up, I never want to see your face again."
"Ko-ane," Naruto asked, looking up at her from his upside-down position on her lap, a little, troubled frown on his face, "what does godfather mean? And why are you talking about dying?"
Sansa looked over at Jiraiya. "Well," she said, with a certain sadistic relish in her voice, "do you feel like answering this one?"
Jiraiya frankly looked like it was the last thing he felt like doing.
If Sansa was being truly honest, she wasn't getting as much enjoyment out of his predicament as she acted. This was going to hurt Naruto and she preferred to protect him from pain, where possible. Oh she wouldn't shelter him from it to the point of foolishness, not the way her parents had sheltered her from the dangers of the South, leaving her pitifully naïve, a little dove to be torn apart and eaten alive by the rabid beasts at Kings Landing, but pain for the sake of pain? What point was there in that?
Stroking a hand through Naruto's hair, Sansa sighed. "A godfather," she murmured, "is someone who is meant to be a parent, if the birth parents die. Jiraiya was supposed to adopt us. But he left instead."
"He didn't want us?" Naruto whispered, tears filling his eyes. "Is it because of our belly-fox?" he asked in the Old Tongue.
"No, my little prince," Sansa assured him in the same tongue, before switching back. "He just decided other things were more important."
"That's not fair," Jiraiya said quietly. "I wanted you to be safe. Making sure Konoha was safe was the best way to ensure that. You wouldn't have been safe if Konoha was at war."
"Maybe," Sansa admitted, as Naruto turned his head so his face was pressed against her stomach, hiding the tears she could feel seeping through the material of the dress Tenzo had bought her at the town they'd stayed in, "or maybe not. We'll never know now. All we'll know is that you weren't there when we needed you. And that's all we'll ever know."
Jiraiya was silent for a long moment then he nodded.
"As for the exam," Sansa continued, still stroking Naruto's hair as she listened to his hitched breathing, "do you remember your lessons about shinobi ranks?" She felt Naruto nod and explained, "for me to become a chūnin, the Hokage insists that I compete in the next Chūnin Exams. Only, they're very dangerous and sometimes people die in them. But I won't. Because I have you to come back to. Nothing will keep us apart. Never." She vowed.
She'd do whatever it took– even accept Jiraiya's training, if it meant coming home to Naruto.
~
Despite what people thought, Shikaku, Inoichi and Chōza didn't get to meet up as often as they'd like. All three of them were the Heads of their Clans, Shikaku was the Jōnin Commander, Inoichi the Head of the T&I Department and Chōza and his wife ran a successful chain of restaurants on top of his duties as a jōnin and occasional jōnin instructor. At least since their children had been born they'd had the excuse to meet up more, as Shikamaru, Ino and Chōji would be the next Ino-Shika-Chō Trio and getting the three familiar with working together was important, not just for their future teamwork but for their future survival.
Their children weren't at this meeting, though, for all that it involved them.
It was Chōza who spoke up first, after Shikaku had casually activated the seals under the short-leg table they were kneeling around. It gave them a two-yard radius that no sound would escape from and the solid walls around them ensured no eyes could see inside.
"So I hear Naruto-kun caused an outrage in his class today," Chōza commented mildly.
"I think everyone has heard," Shikaku said dryly. "If there's one thing a clan child of any age is conditioned to take seriously, it's bloodline theft. And if someone talks about stolen clan children and bloodline theft in a class full of young clan heirs, that's like throwing a bloody carcass at a pack of starving wolves. They're not going to stay quiet. It took less than ten minutes for every Clan child in the Academy to hear. The Clan children proceeded to leave their classes, against the protests of their teachers, and in less than an hour, every parent of an Academy-aged child had also heard, as had every member of their Clan.
"Meanwhile, the rest of the Academy children, the ones who weren't Clan heirs, told their parents during lunch break what they'd heard Naruto-kun say about Root and Danzo, parents who went on to gossip about it with their friends and family, and before the Academy even ended for the day, the entire village had heard about the debacle in some shape or form– and believe me, the re-telling of it gets even worse the further it goes on.
"Ultimately, it spread too quickly for it to be shut down. The Sandaime couldn't control how the story spread, not like he was before, stating that 'investigations were ongoing'. Now Root's existence and Danzo's part in it is common knowledge to shinobi and civilians alike, the Clans all know that their children have been stolen, Uchiha Sasuke knows that his Clan's bloodline was stolen and abused by a village Elder from the corpses of his massacred Clan, and everyone is demanding answers."
"Fuyuko-chan outmanoeuvred him," Inoichi murmured, and there was something very much like approval playing at the corners of his mouth. It was a more vindictive expression then he'd normally wear, especially for something that danced dangerously close to treason against the Hokage, but there had been Yamanaka among those recovered from Root and Inoichi was not the forgiving type, not when it came to family.
"You're sure it was her?" Chōza asked. There was a very serious expression on his face.
"Shikamaru told me exactly what Naruto said to their class," Shikaku confirmed with a slight nod. "While upfront it sounds like childish babbling, when you really listen, every word is calculated to be as inflammatory as possible. Shikamaru told me Naruto was gleeful afterwards, even if he tried to hide it. Shikamaru said it was the same expression he wears when he's just played a prank. It was definitely Fuyuko-chan's influence and it was clearly a calculated move. Hokage-sama was keeping the Root investigation contained, involving the least amount of people possible. He was trying to work out a cover-up, even if he didn't say it in so many words. Fuyuko-chan just made that impossible. She dragged Root out of the ground, straight into the sunlight to die."
"Can we really blame her, though?" Inoichi asked, to which none of them could answer. It was bad enough that there had been Yamanaka and Nara operatives in Root; if any of their children had been abducted by Danzo and put through the inhumane training regimen that was Root training, they'd be burning everything and everyone involved to ash then salting the earth to ensure nothing ever grew again.
"She's focusing her ire on Root, I say we let her," Inoichi said darkly. "Root was always a poison in the village, let's help her target her rage so she doesn't try turning it elsewhere and gets herself into trouble she can't get out of."
"We may be too late for that," Shikaku said grimly and Inoichi and Chōza both looked at him, questioning in both their eyes. "It was part of the deal the Hokage made with her, to have the Uzumaki recognised as a Clan," Shikaku explained, reluctantly. "She has to compete in the next Chūnin Exams. She agreed."
Inoichi looked horrified as Chōza looked between them, uneasy. "But aren't they–"
"Yes," Shikaku confirmed. "The next Chūnin Exams are being held in Kiri."
And all three of them remembered exactly what Kiri had done to the Uzumaki.
"Kakashi is not going to be happy about this," Inoichi said grimly.
"No," Chōza said quietly. "No, he is not."
~