| One Minute More |
[Jul. 27th, 2013|12:03 pm] |
[Takes place Yondaime Year 5, April 19, immediately following Take the Mask]
As soon as Raidou had dismissed them, Kakashi was gone. Off to plot a way around the ‘no team switching’ policy, Genma guessed. Ryouma and Katsuko took a moment longer, but the unholy alliance Raidou had predicted seemed to be forming already, as Katsuko promised Ryouma a tour of the cafeteria and introductions to the servers most easily charmed into doling out an extra portion or three, and who was likely to have ‘secret pie’ available for a winning smile.
When the door had shut, Raidou made a beeline for the couch, collapsing onto the creased and faded leather with a sigh. “That went well,” he said, in a tone that suggested he wasn’t sure he believed himself.
Genma shrugged and dropped onto the sofa at the opposite end from Raidou. Dry springs deep in the frame whined. “You were expecting something different?”
“Honestly?” Raidou glanced at Genma sidelong, then let his head loll back and draped an arm over his eyes. “I was kind of surprised they didn’t just laugh me out of the room.”
( Genma raised an eyebrow. ) |
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| Take Me Back to the Start |
[Jun. 29th, 2013|02:46 pm] |
[Takes place Yondaime Year 5, April 17th, in the early morning after Run, Rabbit, Run.]
A hospital was a good place to reflect on your shortcomings.
Of course, with a little practice, anywhere could serve as a place to yank your flaws out, sharpen up the edges, and stab yourself with them—repeatedly, for preference, until you’d finished bleeding incompetence over the floor and could actually stand your own company again.
Not that Kakashi had that kind of problem.
Or difficulty looking at himself in the private bathroom’s tiny, depressing mirror.
He washed his hands, careful not to wet the edges of the new white bandage wrapped around his wrist, and shoved his hair back from his forehead. It fell forward one spike at a time until it looked exactly the same. He gave up on it.
( Minato-sensei was waiting for him back in the hospital room, backlit by milky dawn light. ) |
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| Suffer the Children |
[Jun. 2nd, 2013|10:53 pm] |
[Takes place Sandaime Year 30/Yondaime Year 1, June 5, four months before the Kyuubi, when Genma is 17]
The war had officially been over for a year. The first anniversary celebration had been a few days of somber memorials followed by a week of wild revelry, and Konoha hadn’t stopped celebrating yet. Banners strung between buildings honored the troops, and the spiral-leaf emblem of Konohagakure rippled and fluttered on flags and pennants decorating nearly every door. Even dripping leftover raindrops from the latest one of Fire Country’s perennial June showers, the decorations were a cheery sight.
At seventeen, Genma was still too young to join the platoons of off-duty ninja enjoying the early June evening by getting tipsy, but no one was checking a uniformed shinobi’s ID too closely. Walking into certain bars with a hitai-ate tied around your head and a faintly blood-stained flak vest on over patched and repaired chuunin blues was an easy way to get a free drink or three, and maybe a willing partner for the night. Even for an awkwardly big-handed, skinny guy who still had a few pimples on his cheeks and nothing resembling a full beard.
( It had been a long enough day running messages between the Hokage’s palace and Intel... ) |
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| We Were Giants Once |
[Jun. 2nd, 2013|07:21 pm] |
[Takes place Sandaime Year 26, four years before the Kyuubi, when Ryouma is thirteen.]
Everyone knew that Hatake Kakashi had been placed on a team of one when he graduated from the Academy. Ryouma didn't see why they couldn't do the same for him.
"Because you're a thirteen-year-old hooligan, not a seven-year-old prodigy, and no one volunteered," Naoto-sensei said unsympathetically. She'd kept him after on the last day of class to make him clean the new team assignments off the blackboards; he reached higher than she did, these days, or any of the Academy teachers except Himura-sensei. She'd stayed because, she said, someone had to make sure he didn't write dirty things on them afterwards.
( Since most of the things Ryouma knew how to write were dirty, she had a valid point. ) |
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| Burning on the Western Front |
[Jun. 2nd, 2013|04:23 pm] |
[Takes place in June of Sandaime Year 29, just over a year before the Kyuubi, when Raidou is eighteen.]
The first time Raidou ripped someone's arm off at the shoulder, he had nightmares for days. That was a long time ago. Now he kicks his screaming target in the face and throws the arm to Gorou, who's out of weapons. A sparking jutsu turns the limb to stone, and Gurou beats another man to death with it, making blood and bone fly. Raidou breaks the amputee's neck.
And that's Tuesday.
The Third Great Ninja War was seven years old before Raidou got into it, a shiny teenage chuunin with ambitions to make himself a hero. He's eighteen now, still a chuunin, and it's the only day job he’s ever had.
( Sometimes he suspects it might be screwing him up. ) |
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| Don't Fear The Dark |
[Jun. 1st, 2013|05:19 pm] |
[Takes place Sandaime Year 20, ten years before the Kyuubi, when Kakashi is four.]
The mask was waiting for him in the hallway.
Kakashi stuck his head cautiously around the kitchen door, saw the the red-lacquered eyeholes gleaming in the shadows, and ducked back into the kitchen. His mother found him rooting through the cutlery drawer, balanced on a tall stool to reach the handles. Her long, dark hair was knotted in a complicated twist, with calligraphy brushes rammed through it. A few drops of ink splattered one cheekbone.
“Looking for something?” she asked.
He’d read Shizuoka Noburu’s Lessons From Behind Enemy Lines last week. The chief principle had been deny everything. “No,” he said.
( Her eyebrows lifted. ) |
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| No Old Heroes |
[May. 30th, 2013|09:41 pm] |
The guttering embers of Obito's funeral pyre die around dawn. Rin helps Minato-sensei gather the ashes and break camp, a hollow feeling in her chest where grief should be. Kannabi Bridge lies in ruins miles behind them; Kakashi hasn't said a word since Minato-sensei rescued them yesterday. She finds Kakashi out in the meadow, staring up at the sky. The bandage wrapped around his head makes her eyes burn.
“Kakashi,” she says, and touches his shoulder. He doesn’t shrug her off. “Kakashi, we have to go.”
After a moment, he turns to look at her and nods. She’s known him long enough to read the tightly controlled fragility in the set of his spine, the shape of his mouth underneath the ever-present mask. He looks one step away from falling apart.
“Come on,” she says gently, and takes his hand.
( He lets her lead him out of the meadow. ) |
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| After the Ending |
[May. 20th, 2013|07:02 pm] |
For the first three days after Kushina’s death, Naruto never stops crying, and Minato never puts him down.
Maybe that first is an exaggeration, Kushina’s dramatics rubbing off on him at last (too late.) Naruto wails himself into an angry, exhausted sleep from time to time. The world is too big for a newborn to rail against forever.
Minato envies him, all the same. He wants to scream, wants to weep, wants to shake the foundations of the earth, rage with thunder and whirlwinds against the heavens until the gods themselves kneel down in fear and give him Kushina back. And he could, he thinks sometimes, walking the rooftop in the smoky hours before dawn, with Naruto sniveling against his shoulder and ANBU guards shadowing silently behind-- he could challenge the gods, if gods there are in a world burned over. There are demons. Kushina died with one.
Another ANBU appears in a flicker of smoke, kneeling with his fist to the concrete rooftop. “Hokage-sama,” he says, not quietly; Naruto has begun wailing again with the abrupt chakra flare, and he has his mother’s lungs. “They’ve found the Sandaime’s body.”
The bone-white armor is charred and cracked; dried blood masks his tattoo. He reeks of death and fire, and his bowed shoulders tremble, a little, as he waits. Minato isn’t the only one who hasn’t slept since the Kyuubi came.
The ANBU might follow him against heaven. But half of them are dead, and so is the Sandaime, and a quarter of Konoha’s ninja corps. Who would look after the survivors, if Minato waged war against the gods?
He cradles Naruto’s head against his shoulder, rubs the tiny, shaking back. Blinks hard, against the drift of smoke that is all he can breathe, these days.
“I’ll come down,” he says. “Can someone warm a bottle for my son?” |
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