"Heard your dad started another war," someone says to her, ugly look in their eyes as they storm up to the mission desk.
She'd thought she'd have more time.
"Excuse me," Seiko says politely, then gets up and walks upstairs, leaving the guy to stare at an empty desk. "Ensui, you have to take the mission desk. I'm going home."
"Ah, Seiko," Ensui says. "Bad news. We're back on potential war footing, so Tonbo and Chobee are both back on active duty, starting tomorrow. Start trying to recruit some more people, 'kay?"
"I--" Seiko stares at him blankly.
"I need to go home," she repeats. "Right now."
"Seiko-chan," Ensui says. "We're understaffed."
She's growing to hate that phrase.
"I need," she repeats, "To leave. Ensui, everyone at the front desk is coming in with a grudge."
It's not normal for a mission failure to spread this fast. Did his teammates immediately come back and start talking? Who are Sakumo's teammates anyway? He's never brought them home.
There's something close to pity in Ensui's eyes.
"Leaving isn't going to make them hate you less," he says. "You're good at this job, Seiko. Don't show weakness now."
He doesn't get it.
"Who cares about them!?" Seiko tries to keep her voice even. "I'll be back in an hour. I need to go find--" She stops short. Who does she need to find? Sakumo, whose death might be closer than her vague memories had ever warned her... or Kakashi. He's used to Sakumo being the coolest guy. Someone you can brag about. Should she try and brace him?
You used to be good at this game.
Kakashi will be fine.
"I need to go find my dad," she says. "He's going to take this badly."
"He knew what the consequences would be," Ensui's voice is flat and cold. "He made his choices, and now we all get to live with them."
The only people in the entire village who would be happy about something like this are the old warmongers and the young and ambitious. This is Hoheto's ticket up the ranks, if he lives through his second war.
"Ensui-san," Seiko says. "He made his choices, and now I get to live with him." She bites her lip, stress inflaming her aches and pains until she's swaying where she stands.
His laughter is sharp.
"Take your hour, kid," he says. "The only place you're going to be living from now on is at that desk."
He's never looked younger than today, the laziness stripped away from his nature to reveal the honed edge of someone who twitches whenever someone new enters the room that he doesn't know.
"You're only eight years older than I am," Seiko says. A seventeen year old who talks like an old man.
"Kid, I've been a jounin for longer than you've been alive."
That's not true. She's seen his file: He's only been a jounin for six of those years. Just long enough that every year of it happened during a war.
"I can't recruit anyone without your approval," Seiko says, instead. "There's no point."
"Don't worry about it," Ensui says, contradicting himself without a sign of shame. "There'll be newly injured chunin and jounin trapped here soon enough-- if they can get through you, I'll give them a chance."
And what was that supposed to mean?
She hasn't attempted any kind of body flicker in the last month, and the rust nearly sends her falling off a rooftop as her foot slips and she collapses, Biter's jaws firmly clamping around her sleeve the only thing that stops her from a second hospital visit as he pulls her back onto solid ground. Well. Solid roof.
Seiko just lies there for a second, panting.
"This used to be easy," she tells Biter.
He gives her a somber nod.
It's never going to be easy again.
She climbs back up to her feet, and properly readies herself for her next flicker. She can do it. She can do this-- she just. Needs. To go home.
And then...
Sakumo is weeding in the backyard. The garden often goes to hell when he's on long missions, the yard being a non necessity that Kakashi doesn't tend to and Seiko hasn't tried to deal with. Weeds creep up everywhere, waiting for the dip of the spade.
She breathes out a sigh of relief.
"Hi, dad," she says. "Welcome home."
His back stiffens, even though he'd known she was there.
"Seiko.." he says. He sounds soft, uncertain. Either Kakashi's already talked to him, or he just has low expectations. "I'm back."
"Yeah, I heard."
His face tightens.
"Seiko," he says again. "I..."
The mission had come before Kakashi's graduation, her birthday, and their mothers funeral, but it hadn't come before his teammates' lives. Well, that's how it is.
"I've never met your teammates," Seiko says.
She always gets the most bitter of smiles out of him.
"I'd always intended to introduce you to them when the time was right..." he murmurs. "But young children always made them quite skittish."
Seiko snorts, crossing her arms.
"They should've been forced to do more D-ranks when they were genin, then."
"And how many D-ranks did you do, Seiko?" Sakumo says, voice almost teasing.
Living with Kakashi qualified as a D-Rank, though she bet Ensui would've been willing to reclassify it as a C.
"Enough."
She rolls her eyes.
"I gotta head back to work soon," she says. "I just..."
Got really worried.
"Forgot something at the house."
A bit of the light fades out of his eyes.
"I am sorry, Seiko," he says.
For what? For breaking the rules he raised her and Kakashi by? Or because she's about to bear the brunt of a lot of public dislike?
She gives him the benefit of doubt. He probably hasn't even realized what her being at the mission desk is going to mean. Well, she certainly isn't going to tell him. He needs to be-- helped. Stabilized. Something.
Her foot hurts where she had taken a final plunge off a roof to get here.
"Kakashi's going to be a little annoyed," she says. "He doesn't mean it."
He does mean it.
"I know. He's a good kid."
He's a good ninja.
"Dad..." she swallows her words, unused to sounding so young. "It's... I mean..."
The thing is, her teammate is already dead.
And he had died-- slowly. Screamed. Begged. Chiyo Poisontongue had strung him like a puppet and the strings themselves were poisoned. She'd had one of those strings hooked into each of her arms. Only Hoheto had been without them, gentle fist cutting through the chakra threads.
So why should her dad's teammates get to live, when Kiyomu is dead? That's what she wants to know, but, most precisely, that's what everyone in Konoha will want to know. And there's no answer: only that the will of fire burns its upholders.
"Are you coming with me to clean the grave?"
It's probably going to depress him more: it's probably going to make him worse, and be all her fault. But still--
He nods.
"Yes.. that's coming up, isn't it."
He always takes bad missions this month.
"Yes," she says. "Glad to hear it."
She's got to go back to work.
"Genin currently aren't authorized to go past the Land of Fire's borders without specific permission," Seiko says, carefully not looking at Hoheto standing behind his new teammates. His new jounin-sensei is a lady named Uroko Kurama, who stares at Seiko with an anxious purse to her lips. "Do you have that permission? It would be in the form of a written exception. Or an oral one from the Hokage."
"Just let us take it, Seiko," Hoheto says, nearly spitting the words. "No one's going to hold you responsible."
She ignores him.
"I have a different C-Rank available if you no longer can fulfill the requirements for--"
"No, I've got it," Uroko mumbles, digging around in one of her storage seals until she finds the right scrap of paper.
Seiko looks at it.
It is, indeed, signed by the Hokage.
I have every faith these young genin can handle themselves.
The Hokage had signed one of these for her team, as well.
"Here you go," Seiko says, and hands over the C-Rank. "Next in line?"
Kakashi is sitting on the front steps of their home, arms crossed.
"Hey genius," Seiko says to him. "Did you forget which side of the door had food behind it?"
Kakashi wrinkles his nose at her.
Then, he hesitates.
"My jounin-sensei is getting called to the field," he says.
Ah.
He'd been delaying so she'd tell Sakumo for him. Wonderful.
"And he's taking you?"
Seiko sits down next to him, ignoring how her legs give way slightly before what should have been a dignified sit and end up letting her fall the last couple of inches until she thumps into the wood. Ouch.
Kakashi nods, hunching his shoulders.
"He says I'm good enough." It's almost defensive. "Chunin good."
"He thinks he can get you a promotion?"
The thing is, she knows that the jounin will mean this as a kindness. Being a solo genin is rough; being a solo chunin is vastly preferable. It will mean Kakashi has more control over his missions; his housing; his pay; his life. It will guarantee him stability that's not dependent on Sakumo.
"He thinks I can get myself a promotion."
Okay.
Her gaze slides over to his direction.
"People respect chunin," she observes.
He knows what she's digging at.
"I don't get it," he mutters. "The mission comes first. Mission, then teammates. Everyone knows that."
He's able to say it like that because he hasn't lost any teammates yet. She's glad for him.
"There's never only one path forward," Seiko says.
"There's one path," Kakashi says. "War. Duh."
She elbows him, hard.
But he makes an important point. There are people who will be mad at their dad for not following the mission, and there will be people mad at him for causing a war-- and while those are overlapping stances, they aren't the same stance. Something to watch out for.
"War's gonna end eventually," she says.
She knows it doesn't mean anything to him.
"He's been avoiding me," Kakashi says, abrupt. Hurt. "He won't train with me."
"Maybe he's injured."
"He doesn't smell injured."
"You mean he doesn't smell like blood," Seiko sighs. "Don't rely on Pakkun for this kind of thing, genius."
"Pakkun's super smart," Kakashi says, grumbly.
"For a puppy," Seiko says. She uses Kakashi's shoulder to push herself back up to standing. "Okay, I'll go talk to him. When are you leaving?"
Another, worse flinch of hesitation, stiffened up with some good old sullenness around the eyes. Uh oh.
"Tomorrow," he says.
She's going to kill him.
"Sorry," Seiko says. "I don't have the authority to accept mission requests. You'll have to talk to the senior jounin on site, who--"
The man bangs his hands on the desk. He looks civilian, which makes this slightly unusual. Hopefully he's just gotten lost.
"I don't care who I have to talk to!" He yells. "I want to pull my child out of the Academy."
That's definitely not in her purview.
"This isn't the Academy," Seiko says. "And I don't have any say over Academy students, since they aren't registered ninjas. You'll want to talk to--"
She doesn't know any of the teachers over there.
"-- Uh. Just a second." She starts rummaging through her stuff, ignoring the way Biter yips when one of the scrolls accidentally falls on him. "I'm sure we have a list of teaching staff in here. Somewhere."
"I wasn't implying that you had any say over it," the man-- father, probably-- says, disbelief evident in his voice. "You're barely a year older than my son!"
Great.
"I graduated over a year ago," Seiko sighs. She pokes at Biter, who casually lifts his head up to show where her forehead protector hangs around his neck. "The good news is that we do allow withdrawals all the way through the moment when you graduate and are assigned a registration number. Did something happen to your son..?"
Aha. Not a mission so it's not in Ensui's insane filing system, teaching staff sounds like a list that Chobee would have made, and Chobee puts his own files in a specific seal underneath the table to keep them out of Ensui's way. Got it.
"Not yet," the man says, voice dark. "But he's being bullied, I know it."
This is unsurprising.
"I should warn you," Seiko says, pulling out the list and looking through it. "Children are allowed to attend the Academy without parental permission when they are age 12 or older. And if he really wants to be a ninja, he won't appreciate this at all."
She taps a name that Chobee had circled.
"This is the teacher in charge," she says. "Say the mission desk sent you."
"If he wants to go back at twelve--" There's a stony look in his eyes. "Well. That's a long time away."
Not long enough for the war to be over. But how could this man know that?
"If there's any--"
A blur of legs bolts into the room and barrels past the man to duck behind the desk.
"I'm not going!" It yells. "I wanna talk to my dad! Right! Now!"
Oh, dear.
"You should go," Seiko says, losing track of whether the man follows her advice as her limited attention falls onto her next problem.
Unfortunately, the brat recognizes her voice.
"You! I thought the ANBU had taken you away! Why are you back here!" Asuma Sarutobi whines, voice loud enough that whatever had driven him here surely wasn't a fear of being chased.
"I work here," Seiko says, watching the man leave with a pace so slow that she could almost hear his ears straining to eavesdrop. "I thought that your guards kept better track of you."
The kid huffs, tucking some of his hair behind his ear as he continues to crouch behind the desk.
"Those guys got called away," he says. "The new ones are wayyy easier to ditch."
How charming.
"And why would you do that?" Seiko wonders. "I wasn't aware there was something interesting over here."
She nudges Biter with her foot. If she's going to be stuck here during her normal lunch break, the dog needs to go bring her some food. The dog huffs at her. He's getting lazy, just sitting under her desk all day.
"My dad comes here!" Asuma proclaims. "I know it, and so do the teachers at the Academy!"
She's heard that, too.
"He hasn't been here once in the months I've worked here," Seiko says. "Get lost."
"You can't say that to me," he says. "And that's not true! He used to be down here allll the time."
"Your information is out of date, kid," Seiko says. "Better work on that."
The kid growls at her.
"You're wrong," he says. "My dad says that it's important that the Hokage sit at the mission desk. So he can listen to the village."
That sounds like a direct quote.
"He hasn't been here," Seiko repeats, voice patient. "Since I started working here. If you would like, I can go call Ensui and ask him when the Hokage is next going to take a shift. Perhaps he could fill out the calendar that Ensui d--"
"That won't be necessary," a leather-worn voice tells her as an older man with the beginnings of a beard and deep, deep crows eyes walks into the room.
Should she kneel? That would hurt her knees, and she doesn't want to.
"Hello," she says. "Can I help you with something?"
The man smiles at her, either amused or approving.
"Seiko Hatake, was it," he says. "I've heard a great deal about you."
She stares at him blankly.
It's difficult, really. Most of the time she's happy in the village, and most of the time she's okay with working here, and most of the time she's aware she volunteered to be a ninja and all that.
Many things in this world are his fault, but most of them are unspecifically his fault, in a way that killing him would do nothing. Which she knows for certain: because when he dies, nothing is improved, and in fact much is made worse.
And she can't kill him anyway, so there's no point in thinking about it.
"I can't help you with that," she says.
"No?" the Hokage says. "I always felt the best way to learn about people was from their own lips."
Crouching behind the desk, Asuma looks furious.
"It's not my job to help you with that," Seiko corrects herself. "Is there anything else?"
She can feel the weight of the stare of the unseen ANBU who are, somewhere, listening to her. Judging her.
"You can't talk like that to the old man," Asuma says, hurling himself around the corner of the desk to argue with her. "It's rude!"
The Hokage makes a pained grimace at being called an old man by his own son.
"You shouldn't constantly threaten to send ANBU after me," Seiko says. "It's rude."
Kid clearly doesn't like being embarrassed in front of his dad.
"I only did that once!" He insists. "It's your fault for being so suspicious. I talked to Lizard, and she said she'd put you where you belonged!"
"Lizard was kind enough to escort me downstairs," Seiko says.
"How responsible of her," the Hokage says. "Now, Asuma. I'd like to speak to Seiko here in private. Would you mind waiting outside for a little bit?"
It's not really a question.
Seiko laces her fingers together, trying to ignore their trembling. She shouldn't have sent Biter away.
"But, dad--"
"Later, Asuma. I promise."
He's never going to like you more than he does right now, Seiko considers saying. You should prioritize speaking to people who want to be around you. That's how you maintain relationships.
But what would she know about that?
She stays silent, and eventually, the room echoes her own silence back at her. Until, of course, the Hokage shatters it.
"Now then," he says. "I've been meaning to talk to you, Seiko."
Great.
"I'm not going anywhere," Seiko says.
"Yes, quite."
The Hokage moves around the desk to sit down beside her.
"Working at the mission desk is quite a big responsibility for one so young," he says. There's a kind sympathy in his smile. "I was quite worried when Ensui told me the age of his newest recruit."
"Ensui didn't recruit me," Seiko says. "I wanted to be here."
In a sense of 'wanting'.
"That's a relief to hear," the Hokage says, smile deepening the beginnings of his crow's eyes. "It's actually quite hard to find people with the proper mindset to work here."
"It's not hard work," Seiko says. Her hands shift over the various scrolls that cover the desk, though they can offer no information on what this man wants from her. "Anyone could do it."
She can't read anything from him.
"Any chunin could do it," the Hokage says. It sounds even worse on his lips than when it came from Ensui's mouth.
Seiko doesn't respond.
The silence drags on until the Hokage clears his throat and continues.
"Your family has faithfully served Konoha for generations, and your own generation has shown nothing but true talent, faithfully devoted to the village and the Will of Fire."
Her wrists hurt.
"Ensui saw that potential, and that's why he accepted your request to do this important work-- and why I allowed it to continue. But security protocols tighten during war time."
"You didn't talk to Ensui about this," she says, hoping.
He probably won't care that much.
"Seiko-chan." She knows it's not uncommon for higher level jounin to be disrespectful, but coming from a genin from a currently disgraced clan, it's probably less accepted. "I see your potential as well. And I've seen your mission track record-- an excellent showing for your age and experience. Many of our most esteemed members can't claim to have a completed Rank S mission, let alone your well rounded number of C and D ranks."
Seiko nods.
"My brother hopes to make chunin shortly after his next birthday," she says. "Now that the war has started back up, the C-Ranks for genin will become as plentiful for him as they were for my team."
Pain, slashed across his face as it so often hurts Sakumo.
"If your jounin-sensei had survived, both you and your fellow teammate should have been promoted off the back of that mission alone," he tells her.
Seiko bites down hard on her lip, swallowing before replying.
"Hoheto would be glad if you passed that on to his current sensei. Her name is Uroko Kurama."
She doesn't have to check her papers to remember a simple thing like that.
"We are talking about you, Seiko Hatake. And your current supervising jounin-sensei is Ensui Nara."
"No he's not."
The words just slip out of her mouth.
It's the Hokage's turn to give her an almost baffled look.
"I don't have a jounin-sensei," Seiko says, voice definitive. "I'm unassigned."
Another long pause.
"I see I haven't been straightforward enough," the Hokage says, finally. "Seiko. I don't like a policy of exceptions. You must be a chunin to do the duties you are doing-- so you can accept the idea of Ensui as a jounin-sensei, and act on his requirements to climb to chunin, or you will no longer be allowed to work at the mission desk."
Seiko feels her world suddenly turn dizzyingly narrow from the force of her own rage.
"Thank you for telling me that," she says, reaching into the desk to pull out the bundle of mission scrolls that she'd organized down there. While it had come in handy whenever she was trying to help Duy, the reason she'd had all that knowledge on hand was much simpler-- she had been doing research on what she, herself could do if she ever stopped working here. "I'll take one of these as my new mission for the week, then."
She stands up, hands grimly clinging to the edge of the table to keep her balance, bows to the Hokage, and walks towards the door to the office.
It's actually relatively good timing; she needs to be at home more often to make sure her dad doesn't--
"Oi, oi," Ensui drawls from his position in the doorway, one of his hands curled around Biter's harness to prevent him from shoving into the room. The lunch that Biter had gone to retrieve for her also now dangles loosely from his hands. "I thought you'd at least be a little mean about it, Seiko. That was more boring to watch than you handing out directions."
He's blocking her way.
"Ensui."
She abandons her lunch as a lost cause.
"Let go of my dog."
Ensui's lip quirks up, but there's a type of death in his eyes.
"Make me."
She blinks at him, and slowly, unwillingly, she looks back down at Biter.
Leaving a Nara room to plan is inadvisable; the best way to take him down would be a quick strike from an unexpected direction. Ensui gets freaked out by sudden noises and movements, which could be good or bad for her. She doesn't carry her sword with her in the office.
The Hokage is still sitting at the desk, watching her.
Biter is waiting for her command.
She's felt like this before; has walked into traps before. Chiyo Poisontongue had a genin team, and she'd had them round up her and her teammates, drive them into a specific area where all the dead bodies had been replaced by puppetry. The entire field glinting with chakra threads, and invisible web of malice.
She couldn't see them. Only Hoheto could. But she could feel them, and she can feel them now. The shadows in this room are dim, but present.
"Ensui," she says again. She knows he can hear the warning. But his aim was this moment, so naturally it doesn't phase him. "I'd like to go home."
"You know how it is, Seiko," he says. "We're understaffed."
She gets it. She gets it she. Understands.
A chunin exam.
She could fail it. All she has to do is fail to get past him, and she's unqualified. It's the type of exam most could only dream of having-- no risk of dying. A simple task.
Ensui did it like this as a kindness. Because he knows she doesn't want to.
She hates him. He doesn't understand at all-- she has to go home. There's no option. Kakashi's birthday is next week. He could make chunin any day after that. Their dad is .. waiting.
To die.
"Biter." Everything in this world. Why can't she have good things? Is the only thing left just...childish jokes. "No biting."
Biter snaps his head back and howls, a spine chilling, mourning sound that sends a pure shockwave of force out, staggering Ensui back and sending every loose paper in the room flying.
Expecting her to be able to run past a jounin is far too much, unless Biter is willing to drag her corpse somewhere. She pushes herself towards Ensui, the chakra edge that would normally drag across a blade instead dragged along the chopping side of her hand as she lunges towards him--
Only to grind to a halt as his hands form into the seal that stops her hand inches from his neck.
"You shouldn't get so close to shadow users, Seiko," Ensui says. "I'm disappointed."
It's a cruel joke. Of course, she knows plenty of those.
"I'm trained for close combat," Seiko says. "What about you? I thought Nara preferred to stay away from people. Set them up, not knock them down."
The thing is. She doesn't actually have any feeling in her left hand. It's all a chakra-fueled illusion, from start to finish. Even the shaking, the pain, is all an illusion-- with her mind being the only control she has, and well.
She'll be the first to tell you her mind's seen better days.
Hoheto had called them out, string by string. Cut left. Further up. Keep going.
"You know me," Ensui says. "I'm a lone wolf."
Cut them out of your flesh. Keep going.
"Wrong metaphor," Seiko says.
Her hand isn't real. The strings aren't real. The blade that runs along her hand is made of chakra, and it's real. It's just like her sword is here with her. Her sword would never abandon her, never leave her. It would cut them extend beyond her and break the strings that keep her here and--
Ensui coughs up blood as the chakra blade stabs through him, his change in movement enough to let her yank free of the shadows and lunge forward again-- only to feel the slick darkness curl around her wrist as the shadow tendril coils around it and lifts her completely off the ground to dangle.
"My, my," Ensui says, rubbing the bit of blood off his lip. "You can't just attack someone without finishing your sentence, Seiko. Now I'm curious."
Her wrist hurts.
"You're a Nara," Seiko says. "Deer run in herds, so they don't get picked off."
He doesn't like that she keeps putting him alongside the rest of his family.
"I could be a wolf."
He's so defensive about it. Maybe he was in ANBU, and he used a wolf mask. That would be...
Hilarious.
Seiko whistles sharply between her teeth. Then she swings, legs kicking the air until they find safe purchase on the ceiling. Her free hand slams down on the surface of the wooden beams. Her hand isn't real. Her pain isn't real. The blood is real.
"Summoning: Earth Release: Bloody Fang Technique."
Biter's teeth glow with flickering red energy as he leaps at Ensui, only for his fangs to close around nothing but shadow as the clone dissipates, leaving Ensui standing on the other side of the dog.
"You still haven't explained the metaphor, Seiko."
He's staring up at her, only to freeze as Biter howls again and lunges at Ensui's shadow, biting and ripping it as if it were flesh and blood. And the shadow bleeds.
Now.
Seiko bolts across the ceiling, scrabbling on all fours to make up for her various limbs failing her. She spots the Hokage's face as she slips out the open window behind the desk.
Honestly. Shouldn't he be happier?
She drops to the ground, her knee collapsing on itself as she forces even more chakra into another jutsu.
"Summoning Technique: Return!"
Biter re-emerges from the ground in front of her, seizing her shirt in his teeth and pulling her back up to her feet as they both run back towards their home.
It's not a victory. It's a loss.
She knows it, she knows, she knows.
But--
Still--
"Congratulations, Seiko," Sakumo says, smiling at her with a confused sort of happiness as she arrives at home, Ensui having made it there ahead of her. "This young man, ah your jounin-sensei...?"
"Direct supervisor," Ensui corrects. She's never seen him so uncomfortable. No gum, no papers-- just the stiffness of some injuries to keep him company.
"Your supervisor," Sakumo says. "He was telling me that the Hokage himself oversaw your promotion. I'm so proud of you. I knew you could do it."
She gnawed off her own limbs to escape one cage. If only doing that again would get her out of this one.
"Thanks, dad," she says. "I guess Kakashi will have to wait one more promotion to get ahead."
There's a peacefulness in his eyes.
"Yes, you and him.. You're both doing so well."
No, no, no...
But they have a guest.
"You can go now," Seiko says, voice flat.
"Seiko!" Her dad sounds kind of horrified.
"Candid as always." Ensui also looks ready to chew off an arm if that's what it takes to leave. But, for some reason, he stays where he is. "Seiko, I'm a curious soul. You know that."
He's incurious about paperwork.
"You said I got the metaphor wrong."
He's so insistent. Why does he even care?
"You did. When a deer falls behind the heard, they abandon them. But when a wolf falls behind the pack, they bring them back to the den."
Her father takes a sharp breath.
"I see," Ensui says.
She doubts it.
A/N: ending on an ambiguous metaphor feels very nostalgic for me
