Hazō sat with Akane on the treetop platform and completely failed to take in the beauty of the sunrise as it slowly dispelled the darkness covering the forest. His attention was firmly elsewhere.
Back in Mist, sometimes his mother would clear her schedule, such as it was, the day before a mission and spend it all with him. Not every mission, in retrospect less than half, but enough for it to feel like a tradition. It was only later, during a campfire conversation with the rest of Team Uplift back in their wilderness days, that he'd learned it wasn't a tradition unique to the Kurosawa family. Many ninja in Mist set aside a day to spend with their loved ones before a B- or A-rank mission from which they thought they might not be coming back.
Hazō's situation wasn't that dire. The old mine was a valuable asset waiting to be exploited, but not one worth realistically risking his life for (or, more importantly, his family's). Still, he'd be dealing with chakra beasts. Enemy ninja could, in theory, be predicted—there were myriad unimaginable ninjutsu, but the ways they were
used were severely restricted by training and imagination. Melee or ranged offence, defensive barriers, misdirection, area denial… In truth, for a chūnin, Hazō wasn't that experienced at fighting other ninja—he'd gone from a geninhood of menial labour, to a survivalist lifestyle of avoiding combat whenever possible, to a life of peace behind high walls, where actual missions were the exception rather than the norm—but on the other hand, he had confidence in his pattern-matching ability, and he knew that the battle was halfway won the moment you figured out the enemy's tactics and objectives.
Chakra beasts were not ninja, and did not think like ninja. They didn't care about area denial or setting up combos or tricking the enemy into revealing his trump card too early. With every chakra beast, it seemed like the kami who created the world (assuming Gamasēji was wrong about it being the Sage) had taken some dice and rolled on the random encounter table until they got bored, then squished all the monsters they'd ended up with into a single ravenous abomination with powers that made no sense and could only be predicted by examining remains (if any) and listening to the stories of traumatised survivors (if any). Indeed, part of the terror of the "black hunter" had been that nobody knew anything about it. People who went too deep into the forest simply… disappeared.
Whatever now dwelled inside the mine wouldn't be a serious threat to a team with as much power and versatility as theirs. Probably. Maybe. But just in case, Hazō decided to take a leaf out of Mum's book and make sure he headed out with no regrets.
"I'm ready to talk," he said. "I'm sorry it's taken so long."
Akane shook her head. "I told you I was prepared to wait."
"And you have," he said, "and I appreciate it. Still, I should have got to it sooner. The truth is, Akane…" he hesitated, "I'm scared. Last time, I messed up so badly I lost you as a girlfriend. If I'd done worse, I could have lost you as a friend. When I think about stepping into territory where I have the potential to hurt you that much, part of me just freezes up. I want… more than this, but I also don't. Do you understand?"
"You messed up pretty badly," Akane agreed, "but you're wrong about one thing. You could never have lost me as a friend. You can't. I'm not someone who turns her back on people. Just doing what I did back then, making distance between us, was already one of the hardest things I'd ever done. You can't stop me from loving you, Hazō. Real love doesn't work that way."
Akane had a gift for saying exactly the right words. He didn't know how she did it. Hazō could feel the same potential within himself—sometimes, when the situation called for it, a speech would bubble up from the depths of his soul, and it would just be
right—but whatever inner journey she'd made to that place of effortless clarity, he hadn't finished it yet, and all of Mari's manipulation training wasn't going to bring him a single step closer.
Communication took two people, though, and whatever power he'd already gained as a speaker, he had not gained as a listener. He knew she was telling the truth. He knew that Akane didn't lie, and he knew that love was something simpler and clearer to her than the tumultuous, seemingly random, overpowering force it was to him. Still, for all that, he couldn't make himself believe her all the way. Part of him was confident that yes, he, Gōketsu Hazō, could indeed fail badly enough to push her away. Hadn't he already done so much damage without even dreaming it was possible?
Besides, this time he'd already foreseen some of the ways he could fail.
"I want to believe that," he told her, "but the more I think about it, the more I can see real, genuine obstacles that aren't going away with just good intentions. I'm your clan head now. I stopped calling you my apprentice because that power imbalance was dangerous for a relationship. What about now, when I have absolute power over you?"
Akane stared out at the rising sun, dangling her legs over the edge of the platform. It wasn't the same one he'd used with Ami—that would have felt wrong for reasons he couldn't pin down—but after watching the world below bathed in the rain, he'd felt a strange desire to see the same place lit up by the sun, and coming here before dawn when most of the extended Gōketsu Clan was still asleep and yet to start making its countless demands on his time seemed like a perfect idea. Besides, what could possibly more youthful than watching the sun rise together?
"You can't escape that, Hazō," Akane said. "Whoever you have a relationship with, when they marry into the clan, they'll be in the same position as me. Maybe not Ino, but I don't know if clan heads can marry each other. At least, it's never happened in Leaf, and there must be reasons for that."
Hazō couldn't help noticing that she said "Ino" rather than "another clan head". He filed it away as potentially very important.
"This isn't about me, though," he said. "This is about you. You'd be the one to get hurt if things went wrong."
She nodded.
"You're forgetting one thing, Hazō."
"What's that?"
She smiled.
"I trust you. I trust you not to use your power to try to make me do something I don't want to, or if you do, I trust you to listen when I tell you why. That's what you've earned over these past months. I trust that you will want to know how I feel, and that you'll bear those feelings in mind when you make your choices."
"I don't know if that's enough," Hazō said. "I don't want to force you to do anything—ever—but that's my job now. If something needs to be done for the good of the clan, then I'd be betraying my duty if I didn't make it happen—even at the cost of hurting people. Bad enough for that to happen with family. I don't know if a relationship could survive it."
"I trust you," she repeated. "And we aren't alone. If you and I couldn't deal with a conflict, then the others could mediate. Noburi would help us talk things through calmly, and bring hot chocolate. Keiko, who's been having her own issues with taking control versus respecting agency, would offer insight that was just a little bit alien, but that we couldn't get anywhere else. Mari would identify the problem with pin-point precision and give us sage advice that didn't help at all, but somehow got us to move forward anyway. Kagome… Kagome would stay well out of it, but we'd all feel safer knowing that nothing could try to take advantage of our moment of vulnerability and survive.
"I trust you not to lose your way so badly that you stop listening to the people around you. I trust
myself to catch you if you start to fall. And I trust both of us to be adults who'll look back on that fight afterwards and use it as an opportunity to grow."
The word "trust" echoed in Hazō's mind. So much trust. How could he be worthy of so much trust when he'd already betrayed it once? How could he, who held more potential for failure in the palm of his hand than most people experienced in a lifetime, accept that gift with just the hope that Akane might be right about him?
Unbidden, Jiraiya's face floated to the top of his mind. The patriarch was grinning his trademark grin, but there was a touch of solemnness in his eyes.
I already know that you'll find the strength to shoulder this responsibility. I know that, with or without Naruto, you'll grow into the leader this clan needs.
Then the Jiraiya in Hazō's heart added words he'd never had a chance to speak while he was alive.
When I first met you, I thought I was done becoming who I was. I was the best at everything—war, politics, spycraft, writing, invention, love… at some things, I was even better than Sarutobi-sensei. I was a mature adult who had it all figured out, as a shinobi and as a man. Then you became my family, and suddenly I had to be better. You trusted me to protect you, and guide you, and to be a father and a husband and a leader worth following. I could never be the man you deserved. Nobody could ever be that man. The only thing I could do, I realised in the end, was to work as hard as I could, every day, to become more of him than I was. That was going to be my way of life as a clan head, and it was going to be my way of life as Hokage, and it is the torch I've passed on to you. Honour their trust. It is the only way you can live now.
Why had Hazō even needed to be told something like that? Hadn't he told Yoshio, Shizue, and Karen that being clan head meant taking absolute responsibility? When a member of your clan trusted you, your goal was to live up to that trust. Nothing else.
Nobody said he couldn't angst. Nobody said he couldn't worry whether he was worthy. Jiraiya's final letter was written with the painful humility of a man who knew he had fallen short. But no matter how he felt inside, what a clan head
did was be the man his clan trusted him to be, or pass the mantle to someone who would.
How could Hazō claim to have that much resolve when it came to leading the clan if he was too timid to display it in his relationship with one person?
So instead of brushing away her faith, he simply said, "Thank you, Akane."
But that didn't mean he was done. The other obstacle towered far bigger, and this one was a matter of more than resolve. It was plain fact that some questions required more experience, and maybe more intelligence, than Hazō had in order to find the right answers.
"Akane," he said, "there is one other thing that bothers me."
"What is it, Hazō?" Akane asked.
"We talked through my worries about you sacrificing yourself"—she nodded seriously—"but there's more to it than what you're willing to risk your life for. When we broke up, it wasn't just about the ninjutsu, but about your place in my life." That phrasing sounded so arrogant, so self-centred, he realised, but it represented the problem perfectly. "You felt like you were being swept up in my goals and my visions, and it stopped you from being able to live a life of your own. Has that really changed?
"I don't want to insult you in case you really have found your own path and I just haven't realised. But what I see is you always working by my side. You support me. You do the things that need to be done but I just don't notice. Right now, you're giving up all your time to train the Shadow Clone Technique, which I asked you to as part of my plans, and to help Kagome-sensei with his decryption work—and while someone like Keiko might enjoy getting her teeth into that kind of problem, and I know I would if I just had the time, it doesn't strike me as the kind of thing you'd choose of your own will. Clan business is even taking time away from your training with Tsunade, the one thing I know you chose without me being involved in any way whatsoever.
"I'm scared that the closer you get to me, the more you'll end up swept up in my flow again. I don't want that for you. I want you to find a happiness that's just for Gōketsu Akane, a selfish happiness that'll let you become as much as you can of what you want to be. There would be no greater way of hurting you than taking away your future."
Akane gazed at the sun. She wasn't smiling.
"You're not wrong," she said eventually. "I'm a follower. Supporting others is what loyalty means to me, in the end. Sometimes I'm scared that one day the world won't want me to be youthful, and I'll just bow my head and do what needs to be done, and that's where my journey as Gōketsu Akane will end. Sometimes I wonder if I'm just hollow, borrowing somebody else's philosophy to live by, and somebody else's vision to chase, and somebody else's happiness to exist for.
"I know I'm running away from taking responsibility for my own life by thinking that way. Refusing to look for answers… it isn't just unyouthful, it's
dangerous. It's how people's souls die. But reaching out for deep truths is hard, and frightening. I'm a good person. Loving, helpful, youthful, enthusiastic, dedicated. What if the truth is that I'm not? What if being hollow would be better, but at that point it's too late to go back?"
Hazō was silent. That was… much more than he'd expected.
She turned to face him.
"But Hazō, what I need from you isn't freedom. That's not yours to give. What I need is… a push on the back. And then, I need someone who'll hold me steady when I come back from wherever it is I've gone. And finally… I want something only you can give me, and only you can help me understand."
Hazō looked at her questioningly.
It almost felt like there was an aura about her. Not a jōnin aura, but something else, overpowering in its intensity.
She smiled, and suddenly the sun was a drab and dreary thing. It was Akane's smile that set the sky on fire, a vivid red rather than her usual shining gold.
"This is my selfishness. I want you, Hazō. I want everything about you.
"This love isn't hollow. It's not something I was taught. It's not something I borrowed. It's not the love of a follower. I didn't know it was there until I passed the Oracle's test and he showed me. This love is
hungry, and uncompromising, and if it isn't leashed it will destroy.
"Look at me, Hazō. See me. Hear me. Make me your world the way you've always been mine.
"Don't just stand by my side.
Face me."
She paused, as if gathering words. Hazō watched the fire in her eyes—not the familiar comforting glow of the hearth, but a new, all-consuming blaze.
They locked onto his. Perfectly, with no room for escape.
"This is my selfishness, Hazō. I want you. All of you without exception."
The world froze, balancing on a pivot, a single moment stretched into an eternity. Akane was still, waiting for his response.
Hazō didn't know what to say. This wasn't the calm, reasonable Akane he'd come to talk with.
No, it was. He knew Akane, and he could sense control, imposed over something that thrashed and raged against it. All he had to do was say no, and the fire in Akane's eyes would be smothered, and they would once more be just friends, just siblings, and in all likelihood they would never speak of this again.
Should he? This was more than he'd bargained for. Was the answer she'd given him enough? If he'd been right about her struggle with identity, then wasn't he right about the risks of making it worse?
Or was it hypocrisy to accept the half of her words that matched what he already thought while rejecting the half that didn't?
Could he take the risk? Wasn't it safer to just keep going the way they were?
But even if she was struggling with who she was, she knew what she wanted. A push on the back. Someone to hold her steady. The third thing. If he could give those to her, wouldn't it
help her on her way to whoever it was she would become?
What was the right thing to do? Give her space, or step close to support her? This time, Jiraiya had no advice (though, given his romantic track record, that was probably for the best).
Instead, to his utter shock, the face Hazō got was Ami's.
In the end, which one of them are you?
Hazō the brother. Hazō the clan head. Hazō the lover. In the end, which one of them was he?
Yes.
His supportive, fraternal love. His passionate, romantic love. His drive to be the best man he could for those who trusted in him. All of them were Hazō, independently, but also all at the same time. He would give her all of him, and if that wasn't enough to make this work, then Hazō would
become more until it did.
He opened his arms and reached out to hold her.
He never got close. Before he could so much as brush her with his fingertips, Akane pounced with all the focus and explosive power of a Kagome blast ring.
As the two melted into each other, Hazō made an executive decision. Just for today, the Human Path could manage without him.
-o-
You have received 1 + 1 + 1 = 3 XP.
-o-
In the end, Hazō felt guilty enough about his dereliction of duty that on coming home late at night, he decided to at least use up his remaining chakra on experiments. He established the following:
- The earth clone performs the Earth Clone Technique, correctly as far as you can tell. The ground rises up as if to form a clone but then immediately collapses. Hazō does not know why.
- The earth clone performs the Shadow Clone Technique. The shadow clone behaves just like the original, which is to say it obeys Hazō's orders, but ignores its creator. It disappears when the Earth Clone Technique expires 10 minutes later. Hazō does not receive its memories. During a second test, he asks the earth clone about its memories, but can't get a meaningful answer.
- Hazō's shadow clone can use the Earth Clone Technique as normal. The resulting clones are of equal strength to Hazō's, which is to say so low that it's impossible to see any difference.
-o-
Voting is closed. The next update will be the plan from last Sunday.
) which is something we have sorely lacked for a long time now
