2 – Good Intentions
He wipes the blood off his knife before returning it to his pouch, glancing between his teammates. The mission went well, for a change, and while Nezu would be carrying a few extra bruises home, they had avoided serious injury.
“It went well,” Kaba’s low voice confirms what the teen has already thought. The masked man lets out a sigh, “Problem is, I promised to meet my girlfriend for the fireworks tonight.”
Nezu snorts, sliding his sword back into position, “You don’t have a girlfriend, idiot.”
Kaba’s reply probably would have been sharp and insulting, but he doesn’t get to give it.
“Fireworks?” The teen’s voice is soft and doesn’t carry far, but his teammates have learned to listen well, and their quarrel is forgotten.
“They’re shooting off fireworks this year,” Nezu supplies, “Didn’t you hear?”
“You’ve been spending too much time at the memorial stone,” Kaba adds.
“Fireworks for what?” The teen questions again in irritation. There are fireworks on New Year’s, and to commemorate the day the Shodai Hokage founded the village, but it’s the middle of October, nowhere near either of those dates.
“…” The two ANBU exchange masked glances without saying anything.
In a sudden burst of clarity it occurs to the teen just what day in the middle of October it is—he’d been distracted enough on the mission that he’d lost track. Without a word he jumps to the nearest branch overhead. The other two follow silently.
“Back to the village,” is all he says before taking off, leaving his teammates to play catch-up from the start.
------
It’s late when the village gates finally burst into view. He isn’t sure how far back his teammates are, but he stopped hearing their complaints at the pace he set several hours earlier.
The fireworks are long past, and the night is as black as death. He drops down to the ground and is in front of the gate before the guard has time to do anything more than draw a kunai from his pouch.
Without a word, he drops his identification scroll in front of the man and waits impatiently as his return is confirmed and recorded. The guard hesitates, looking out at the black forest.
“Where are your teammates, Okami-san?”
“Behind me,” the teen answers concisely.
The other man hesitates a moment longer, looking between the sinister ANBU issued mask and the dirty armor before nodding and holding out the scroll.
“Welcome back, shinobi.”
The teen says nothing and instead disappears again as he passes through the gate.
He feels a familiar tug inside of him and veers toward the northern quadrant of the village, coming to an abrupt stop in front of the memorial stone.
He stands there in silence, dark eye following the lines of writing through the small slit in his mask. The quiet echo of his breathing and the slow rhythm of his heart give testament to his life in the barren clearing, and he only stays long enough to offer that silent assurance to the friends who left before him.
I’m still alive. I survived… again.
Then he takes off, wrenching his mind away from his personal ghosts and focusing them on the task at hand, only to find his genius failing him.
What sort of thing do two-year-olds like to play with?
He ruminates over the problem as he flits from one rooftop to the next, steadily making his way across the village to his apartment.
Probably too old for the baby things, he muses, throwing his mind back to the store he’d visited last year and wishing he had paid more attention at that time.
Too young for real kunai, obviously. He’s pretty sure he’d gotten his hands on his first kunai sometime in his second year, but he’s always been the exception to the rule.
He deactivates his own traps in a matter of seconds and begins divesting himself of his uniform, leaving a path of muddy, blood-splattered armor in his wake before closeting himself in the bathroom and turning the shower full and hot.
Most of the toys are marked with ages, anyway, he assures himself as he scrubs away layers of grime while the hot flow of water thaws his cold skin.
Don’t worry, sensei, I’ll make you proud. He promises as he shuts the water off again minutes after he began.
Toweling off as he makes his way to the dresser, the teen pulls on a fresh set of clothes and locks up, not bothering with extra traps since he’ll be in the village.
He feels a lot more at ease with the idea of shopping for children’s toys this year—the deserted streets do a lot to calm his nerves and his embarrassment. But when he arrives in front of the store he visited last year, he’s greeted with dark windows and a wooden sign on the door reading: Closed.
Scowling at his rotten luck and wondering just how late it really is, he turns to walk down to the next store—and then the next after that, always meeting similar sights.
By the time he’s walked down every major shopping street in the village, he’s finally willing to admit to himself that he is out of luck. There is no way he can buy the kid a gift when every store is closed.
Standing in front of a store filled with colorful tinker toys, he briefly considers letting himself in—he can leave the payment on the counter—but quickly dismisses the idea. The Hokage frowns heavily on his subordinates using their shinobi abilities in such a manner, especially in their own village.
He jumps swiftly to the nearest rooftop and hurries back to his apartment, letting himself in hastily and clumsily locking the door behind him. It’s late, and he hasn’t slept in seventy-two hours, but he isn’t ready to admit defeat just yet.
He pulls open the bottom drawer of his dresser and shuffles through the clothes, digging under garments he’s only worn once and probably will never wear again. Groping around at the bottom of the compartment, all he finds is some raggedy string, a sticky roll of bandages that he’s a little afraid to touch, and three buttons that have lost their homes.
The next drawer up produces similarly fruitless results and the teen shoves both drawers shut with an irritated huff before diving under the bed.
When he was young he’d had Western-style bed, a plush mattress on four raised legs. After he’d left his clan’s house, he’d spent most of his adolescence sleeping on a futon on the floor. The first thing he’d bought for his apartment, two years ago, was this bed.
It’s large enough for him to grow into, and more comfortable than any bed had a right to be—with a spring box right under the spongy mattress—and it sits high off the floor. High enough for him to shove a medical kit and the extra packs of shuriken he procures every time there’s a sale at his favorite weapon’s shop underneath.
Over the last two years a lot of things have found their way under there, the teen finds as he rifles through the dirty magazines Kaba gave him last year. He finds the forearm protector he spent a week looking for but never found, a wide variety of wraps, small coils of wire, and poorly kept weapons with chips in their blades and dust coating the handles. His nose wrinkles when he pulls out the moldy remains of the rawhide chew Pakkun pestered him to buy him at one time or another.
But nothing appropriate to give a two-year-old boy, he grumbles to himself, sliding back out and pushing to his feet.
With a brief glance around his single-room apartment, he reluctantly makes his way to the small closet next to the bathroom door. The middle shelf is full of towels and spare blankets, and the bottom is littered with extra clothing and weapons that didn’t have a place anywhere else. His travel pack is shoved to one side.
At the very top are the boxes and things he rarely ever takes out.
I don’t think I’ve looked at any of it since before I moved in…
He pulls out one box at a time, rooting through papers, rare trinkets, and even rarer photographs. He almost pauses at a picture of a thin woman with dark, deep-set eyes and a thin chin like his, but moves on quickly when a familiar wash of confused emotions begin to rise inside of him.
He stares at a picture of his team, and for a moment he doesn’t breathe, absorbed in the pain of remembering those people.
It’s too soon, he tells himself, turning the photo over with a sense of guilt. It’s still too soon.
He bypasses a small, uncoiled yoyo that he doesn’t remember ever using, and pushes aside a few of the worn adventure novels he’d read when he was young.
When did sixteen become old? He wonders wryly, and thinks about how much longer he has to live. He isn’t sure he likes the idea of living into his twenties or thirties, but he’s equally shy of the possibility of dying any time soon. He isn’t sure what happens after death, but isn’t willing to risk it as long as there’s a possibility of him having to face all of them again.
What will happen, will happen, he tells himself, instead, When the time comes, I’ll face it like a shinobi.
He pushes the thought aside and continues to search.
By the time he’s pulled down the final box, he’s almost forgotten what he’s looking for. Until he pulls that out.
It’s several years old and cheaply made. The thread has fallen out in places and the stuffing is oozing from the gaping holes. He struggles for a moment to remember exactly what it was from.
That was six years ago, he remembers finally, his thumb moving across the matted gray fur. Back when Obito and Rin first joined our team. Sensei took me to that festival to ‘make it up’ to me.
He’d complained the whole time, but his teacher never gave up in his attempts to get him to loosen up.
“Kakashi, here!” He remembers looking at the man dubiously as the blond grinned down at him, holding three large rings out to him.
“What?” I asked.
I didn’t even want to be there. But he was always dragging me to things like that when he had the chance—in between missions and training.
“See if you can get them around the pegs,” his teacher had demanded, thrusting a finger at the booth behind him. The man had wiggled his eyebrows, leaning in to whisper, “You get a prize if you make all three!”
“Sensei, that’s not fair—I’m—”
I always felt uncomfortable, going to places with him treating me as a regular kid. It felt like he was trying to make me into something I wasn’t.
Of course, he’d never told him how much he hated it. His sensei loved to go out like that, and he hadn’t wanted to lose someone else important to him back then. Not that it helped, because in the end he’d lost him, regardless.
“C’mon, ‘Kashi, it’ll be fun!” The man had cajoled, “Besides, look, at that! Doesn’t it look cool? I know I’d try to win it, but they won’t let me!”
I won it without even looking, he recalls the surprised face of the merchant. But when I tried to give it to sensei…
The teen rolls his eyes just thinking about it. His teacher had refused to take it.
“It’s yours, ‘Kashi! You won it! You should proudly put it on display on your own!”
So he’d shoved it in the back corner of his closet and never taken it out again.
It was supposed to be a shuriken, he thinks, with three uneven triangles protruding from an oblong center.
It was ugly when it was new… and it’s even worse now, he thinks, I forgot I even had it.
Still, he’s been searching three hours and hasn’t found anything else even remotely suitable. It’s late and his vision is beginning to blur for want of sleep—his bed is looking more and more inviting.
So he sits, with his back against the plush mattress, and pulls out his medical kit, selecting a fine, sturdy thread meant to sew up human flesh, not novelty pillows. His stitches are rough and uneven, but functional, and he stuffs the filling back in as he works.
Next year, he promises silently, I’ll get something better. To make up for… this.
He frowns at the final outcome and glances at the clock.
It’s well after midnight, and he wonders, briefly, whether two-year-olds are conscious of things like birthdays and the flow of time. He can’t remember when he was two years old. He can’t remember his second birthday; whether he’d waited in anticipation or been aware of the significance of the day at all.
He can remember a little from when he was three—snatches of moments.
I remember crying, clinging to a cold body.
But he can’t remember when he was two. But he suspects the boy won’t realize he’s been given his present a few hours late. He’s probably asleep, anyway.
Tucking the pillow under one arm, he heads out into the cool night again, alone on the streets of Konoha. If there are other shinobi about, he doesn’t see them, and he doesn’t look for them, either. He’s on a mission of his own.
Again, the house is dark, and he makes short work of breaking in. As he expects, the boy is sleeping.
He’s quite a bit bigger than the last time he saw him—an entire year before. His yellow hair has grown longer and messier—in definite need of a haircut—and a fond smile is on the teen’s face before he can stop it, the affection he felt the year before returning without conscious thought.
Sensei’s hair looked like that all the time, he remembers, And it got even worse before… Rin always used to be after him about it.
He recalls the man’s mannerisms, the way he’d run his fingers through his lengthy yellow spikes and laugh ruefully. “Maybe next weekend,” he’d say, “I don’t really have time right now—there’s a meeting with the clan leaders in fifteen minutes, and Kushina’s going to kill me if I miss our date tonight…”
And he was supposed to be the fastest man in the village. If he was really that fast, you’d think he’d be able to get his work done on time—and then have time to spare for something as simple as a haircut.
They’d bought him a pair of scissors, as a joke. It hadn’t been his idea, but Rin had talked him into handing over a portion of the money, and even into going to the shop with her. He still isn’t sure how she managed it.
I was pretty set on making her happy back then, I guess… It was so soon after… He tears his thoughts away and smirks, Sensei laughed so hard that tears came out of his eyes… And he finally let Rin cut his hair.
He doesn’t realize he’s been staring until the child stirs, the serene face shifting slightly as smooth eyelids crack open, a sliver of blue visible beyond.
The teen’s breath catches and his heart thuds loudly in his chest, fearful that he’ll be discovered without really understanding why that should make him afraid. As irrational as it is, he doesn’t move, standing frozen over the toddler’s bed until the light blue eyes slide shut again, never quite opening fully.
Still, he doesn’t dare breathe until several minutes have passed and he’s nearing the edge of his endurance. He releases his breath slowly, relaxing only when he’s positive the child is safely asleep.
Stupid, he chastises himself, embarrassed and glad that no one had seen how a two-year-old could manage to scare him in a way that facing handfuls of enemies never has.
This is no time for daydreaming, he chastises himself sternly; I should just get it over with and leave. There’ll be trouble if someone finds me in here.
He awkwardly places the small plush toy next to the child in his crib. The toy is big enough that it might be a pillow for the toddler, and another smile touches his lips when one of the boy’s hands move, rising to feel the soft material that covers the poorly made—and even more poorly mended—toy.
Small lips part, releasing a breath that might hold words; but if they do, the sound doesn’t carry.
The teen backs up a step or two, eyes fixed on the small, sleeping figure. Satisfied that his task is complete, he wonders if his teacher is proud.
Then he thinks about Rin—it’s been a while since he’s seen her.
I should go visit her tomorrow… She’d like that.
Silently, he steals from the house the same way he entered and disappears into the dark, early hours of the morning.