Interlude: One Final Lesson
September 30, 1069 AS.
To Akane, Hazō's words had always had a weight to them that he didn't understand. Ever since their first meeting, when as Nishino-sensei he had shown a mastery of Youth apparently half by accident, Hazō had somehow always managed to say the right thing at the right time, and then keep going as if it didn't matter. Now, he'd done it again. Back in the rooftop garden, amidst the monstrosities she had lovingly cultivated, he'd told her she was capable of finding her own answers, in defiance of all the evidence. It had been a push in exactly the right direction at exactly the right time. And as for where it had pushed her…
"Ishihara. I wondered when you'd come to gloat."
Mizuki-sensei, Mizuki, was a shadow of the man she remembered, even more pitiful awake than the ghost of a man she'd seen sleeping on the cotton-covered wooden slab the prison's designers considered to be a bed. His eyes were bloodshot. His bound hands (a matter of protocol even though he was a thrown weapons instructor with no ninjutsu she'd ever heard of) trembled slightly, betraying his seeming composure. His lips were twisted in a grimace that seemed to combine disgust at her and pity for himself.
"You know I wouldn't do that," Akane said softly.
"No," Mizuki acknowledged, "I suppose you're not the type. So what do you want? I already told our brave heroes at T&I everything I know. Are you here for a last-minute apology? Hoping I'll repent at the last second before they cart me off to face justice?"
He gave a bitter laugh. "I regret nothing except getting caught."
What did she want? Despite her best efforts, Akane couldn't come up with the kind of question that would get her the answers she wanted, or even what kind of answers they were. She still intended to find them.
"How did it come to this?" she finally asked Mizuki. "How could a teacher, someone responsible for keeping children safe, ever think of doing what you did?"
"Keeping children safe?" Mizuki asked incredulously. "Is that what you think teachers are for? You really haven't changed, Ishihara."
"Gōketsu."
Mizuki shrugged.
"I didn't even ask to be a teacher. Do you know how I ended up in this mess? I happened to be
good with kids."
Well, yes, obviously. As a teacher, Mizuki had always been a little short-tempered, but still one of the best. He understood how children thought, and how to teach them, even better than Iruka-sensei, and he never slacked off on the job the way some of the others (in retrospect, dissatisfied with their low-paid desk jobs) seemed to. He was harsh but fair, and he'd always liked Akane.
"Do you have any idea what it's like to grow up in a family of seven? I wasn't even the oldest. But then Hina got herself killed hunting chakra leopards for a coat for some rich civilian, and Kazusa never came back from a classified mission that we never found out what it was, and guess who was stuck looking after the brats?
"Mum and Dad were busy, and then they were dead, and somehow I was supposed to find time and money for training while managing a couple of little terrors. I'd been on the Hokage track, you know."
Akane found that very hard to believe. Mizuki had been a great throwing instructor—not many people knew how to use Fūma shuriken to begin with, never mind teaching them to a child, even one as exceptional as Sasuke. But that had been all he was. His fighting skills were to Sarutobi Hiruzen's as Keiko's seduction skills were to Mari's, and after this she was going to go memorise RPG rulebooks until that image was out of her head.
Still, she wasn't going to interrupt. Mizuki
was answering her question, in what looked like it would be a very roundabout way. More importantly, given what was in store for him in a matter of hours, the least she could do was give him one last chance to unburden himself.
"So when Uwaki-sensei woke up with twenty stab wounds from a jealous lover," Mizuki went on, "guess who got volunteered to take his place? Good with kids, a clanless ninja with no special skills that wouldn't be missed in the field… I never did find out whose idea it was, or I'd have made sure Uwaki-sensei wasn't lonely in the afterlife.
"I didn't hate it at first. For a job that had cost me my career and paid peanuts, it had its moments," he reflected. "But then I grew up and saw the world for what it was. Tsuchiko died. Raidō died. Year after year, most of the kids I'd taught died before they ever made chūnin, escorting civilians who were somehow worth more than trash just because they were rich, hunting monsters they had no business being anywhere near, fighting wars started by men sitting in high towers who were too important to go near a battlefield. You want to know when I realised the Will of Fire was a lie? It was when I looked at the human incarnation of wanting to protect one's comrades and saw a man who sent twelve-year-olds into the meat grinder."
There was a lot Akane could say to that, but still, she'd decided not to interrupt.
"That was the day everything clicked into perspective. There was no Will of Fire. There'd never been a Will of Fire. It had just been an excuse for Command to use us until we were used up, and make sure we didn't answer back. So when the Seekers found me—I never asked how; they're not people you ask too many questions—I took my chance to move to the side that did the using.
"Obviously," he indicated the cell around him with a nod, "that didn't work out so great."
"Was that when you decided to use me?" Akane asked, voice calm and controlled.
"It wasn't Plan A," Mizuki said. "I'm not a moron. But Plan A was a bust, and the Seekers aren't big on second chances, and all I did was speed up your schedule a little. I've seen naïve clanless kids like you die by the dozen within their first year, and you were oblivious even by their standards. Then you screwed up, which was predictable, and didn't get killed, which wasn't, and the rest is history.
"And that's my life story, Ishihara. You can fuck off now."
"Gōketsu."
Mizuki really was pathetic, Akane decided. It wasn't that his life had been without hardship, but at every stage he'd chosen to blame someone else for his fate. At every stage, he'd chosen to blame someone else for his perspective. And, above all, he'd committed the cardinal sin: he'd stopped believing. Had it ever occurred to him that the would-be Hokage had a responsibility to change the world rather than just complain about it?
What a staggeringly arrogant thing to think. How many times had Akane been rescued from the consequences of her mistakes? Her parents, Rock Lee, Hazō, Team Uplift, Yakushi-sensei… Take one person out of the chain, and right now she would be helpless or dead. What right did she have to judge Mizuki, who, at every point in his fall, could have been saved if someone had just reached out to him like all those people had reached out to her? And what right did she have to condemn him for giving up in the face of injustice when her own philosophy and ambition had been given to her as gifts when she needed them most?
"Time's up, Lady Gōketsu," one of the escorts told her. "If you want to watch this piece of filth face the consequences of his actions, you'd better hurry to find a good spot."
Akane nodded. There was probably something she was supposed to say, and this would be her only chance. What was the right way to put an end to their relationship? Was it to tell him he was wrong about the world? To tell him that she was going to fix it? To thank him for making her, in a perverse way, the person she was now, or to take another stab at forgiveness?
"Goodbye, Mizuki-sensei," she said. "May the Will of Fire judge you fairly." It was, in the end, more than she could hope to do herself.
"Ishihara," he called out as she turned to leave. "You survived, against all odds. Don't waste it. Learn to be one of the people who uses instead of being used."
She hadn't found the answers she'd been looking for. Maybe this had been the wrong place to look. But she had found something. With this, Mizuki was just a man. He was no longer the teacher who'd betrayed her, and she was no longer the pupil who had been betrayed.
"Gōketsu," Akane said. "It makes all the difference."
-o-
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