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In Triplicate
Prior to Izumi Chie,
the only person in Konohagakure to be as much of a hardass about paperwork was the Nidaime himself.-It starts when she’s in the Academy.Nakajima-sensei is boring as sin, the children are loud and noisy, and Chie?Chie knows it all already. She didn’t go through sixteen years of formal education for nothing, dammit, and even if she still has trouble with theoretical physics, how the hell is she going to remember to calculate a kunai’s trajectory in the heat of the moment? She’s smart, but she’s not Hatake Kakashi. She doesn’t have a mind for numbers, or even for history dates. Who needs to know what year Senju Hashirama first met Uchiha Madara on the field of battle if you know it was the turning point of the Warring Clans Era and you’re entirely capable of writing a dissertation on its ramifications leading down to today? Even if you probably shouldn’t be able to? No, wait—especially though she probably shouldn’t be able to.“Chie-kun,” Nakajima-sensei says, drawing her attention back to the present. The children all stare at her with an indefinable look; the mid-morning light filters in lazily through the great tall windows favored by the Academy, and Chie’s hands are tiny and pale and delicate. She hates them. Nakajima-sensei smiles, and the fine lines around his eyes crinkle with it. His eyes are a warm brown she hasn’t seen anywhere else in Konoha. A part of her wonders where he’s descended from, but the rest of her remembers that open anthropology is frowned-upon in a society that relies upon controlling the information flow and shuts that line of inquiry down. For the moment. “Would you care to answer the question?”Chie smiles back, equal parts bland and unapologetic, and some of her classmates look disappointed at the lack of embarrassment. Serves them right, the little monsters. “My apologies, sensei. May I hear the question again?”“Indeed. The question was this: what did the honorable Senju Tobirama say when he founded the Department of Intelligence and Investigation?”“’Without bureaucracy, the state cannot survive,’” Chie quotes, eyes sliding mutinously in the direction of the window again, far more entranced by the way the leaves of the tree outside create intriguing patterns of shadow and light—gossamer threads of hope protruding from the bright spring green, or so the poet Tanaka would’ve said. “Though a fairly simple sociopolitical statement, there are no records of this thought process prior to the honorable Senju Tobirama’s declaration. The continent was far too devastated during the Warring Clans Era for prior histories to have survived, which weighed heavily on his mind, and led him to record many of his thoughts on the matter for his brother’s benefit.”Nakajima-sensei smiles, openly pleased for a fraction of a second, and the rest of her classmates just seem boggled. But then something sharper enters his eyes, a cunning that abruptly reminds her of the truth of the world she now inhabits. There is a challenge in his gaze—a challenge and a warning. “Very good, Chie-kun. I see you’ve been reading ahead in the textbook. Perhaps you’d like to move on to more advanced learning, hm?”“I still have much to learn, sensei, though I am honored by your consideration,” Chie says carefully, bowing her head deeply. She may be younger than the usual student, with her frame too small to be able to use the Academy-style taijutsu styles with complete comfort and her absentmindedness matched only by her acute attention to detail, but she is no Hatake Kakashi, and she knows that the Academy teachers have been watching her—considering her, evaluating her progress. It isn’t often that a clanless orphan displays such potential, no matter what the honorable Jiraiya of the Sannin has most recently espoused in his first published novel.(He is too idealistic, they say. He will bring the new generation to ruin. They will dream not of kunai and survival but of peace and a plowshare. How can we allow this? We are at war. —And so the book dies a quiet death. She has a copy. She’ll never, ever lose it.)Izumi Chie knows better. She knows better than the Hokage does.The thought nearly makes her want to laugh, then cry. If anyone, she can appreciate the acute irony of the statement; the Hokage most certainly knows more than she does, being something like a bajillion years old compared to her supposed six, but there is something about her that neither he nor anyone in the entire shinobi governmental structure could ever possibly guess at that makes the idea of progressing before she’s gotten some physical training remarkably unpalatable. Ninja just aren’t wired for it, trained to think as they are of practicalities and realities and how ideas relate to the physical.How could they ever believe that reincarnation is more than just a religious idea about what comes after, a vague abstraction with no real bearing on their present reality? How could they even begin to comprehend the possibility that a soul older than the most ancient of their legends, from a world beyond their longest, most faded myths, might’ve possibly crossed between the intangible and the tangible without noticing until it’d been too late to return?“We will discuss this further,” says Nakajima-sensei without any discernible positive or negative reaction, bringing her back to reality. “For now, class, let’s finish up with a discussion. Okonogi-kun, Wakisa-kun—you two start.”Chie fingers her wispy, short brown hair absently, already staring at the window.-Izumi Chie is a quiet child.They snoop, as all ninja do, and they call it collecting information. Izumi Chie’s mother died on mission a week before her daughter’s sixth birthday, saving Hatake Sakumo from having his spinal cord severed. Her father was never in the picture. She has no friends and she spent the first three months of her sixth year with her nose buried in history books, chakra theory, and almost all the poetry contained in the Konoha General Library.A Yamanaka, when informed about this, hemmed and hawed for a little while, then finally said that while the subject matter wasn’t exactly typical for a six-year-old, he had known her highly literate mother and Chie’s instinctive reaction to isolate herself from all outside influences would only be a concern if she remained lost in her own mind. It made sense that she went to books; likely, it was her way of feeling connected to her deceased mother.The Yamanaka joined the nosy ninja—observation team, and somehow keeping track of clanless orphans begins to become the local past-time for the T&I department (because nobody calls it The Department of Intelligence and Investigation any more). By the time Izumi Chie is seven years old, she and the dozen other clanless orphans in the Academy system have a whole cadre of silent caretakers psychoanalyzing their development. (And Hatake Kakashi’s—but their interest in him is at least half because they know it’s going to be hell and a half to get the kid into the Psych department when he inevitably needs an evaluation, and T&I collectively lives for the pain of the psych-nins. Hey, they’re at war—they’ve got to let the stress out somehow.)Chie is by far the most intriguing to their minds; she is a cagey one, even by shinobi standards, and after a week spent in the library she comes out with an alarmingly self-satisfied look and a self-constructed cipher seemingly drawn from the multiple books on animal husbandry back in the dustiest, most mind-numbing part of the library—it looks like chicken scratch, anyways, one Yamanaka Inoichi tells the head of T&I, shaking his head at his coworkers’ fascination with all Konoha’s orphans.After that, Chie writes. And writes and writes and writes and writes, all with a pensive look on her face, keeping all her indecipherable papers in the toy safe her mother gave her on her fifth birthday. Oh, she does what other, more normal children do as well—she trains a little and plays nice with any workmates she’s required to have in the Academy, though she seems to regard her peers with a world-weary disdain learned only through an intolerance for loud children; she goes out to dango stalls and takoyaki stands and a particular ramen stand in the market district she seems to hold a distinct fondness for and chats with the strangers she meets while she’s there, politely inquiring about the weather and their crops and their families until they become acquaintances and then strange half-friends, all as the fascinated Yamanaka watches.Look, her actions seem to say to her watchers. I exist, even if it’s not in your paradigms. This is my way to live. It is strange and different, but I am just fine.And of course that’s no way to make a ninja leave you alone, because habits mean predictability and predictability makes you an easy target.This is why, when the Sandaime chooses to de-stress himself by meeting earlier in the year with those among his future shinobi who have no family to look after them, a seven-and-a-half-year-old Izumi Chie sits calmly on the visitor’s chair in the Hokage’s office and smiles when Sarutobi inquires after her continued patronage of dusty little Ichiraku’s on the corner of Hashirama Street.“I made a friend, Hokage-sama,” Chie says after a moment of thoughtful contemplation. “Her name is Kushina. She told me that she was a clone, and then she disappeared in a cloud of smoke. I looked clone up in the library and found that it’s technically called a bunshin. She said it’s a special kind of bunshin—kage bunshin. If it’s a kage bunshin, Hokage-sama, couldn’t it stand in for a -kage if needed? It would certainly help with the paperwork.”Hiruzen freezes for a fraction of a second and ignores the way his ANBU are caught between a horrible desire to laugh and the utter brilliance of the idea. “…My,” he says, recovering admirably. “That is certainly an interesting train of thought, Chie-chan.”Chie inclines her head. A hint of a smile plays about her lips. “You are too kind, Hokage-sama.”“You are quite considerate. Now, I do think you will have to get home before it turns dark—may the Will of Fire go with you, Chie-chan, and do not forget: all of Konoha is with you. If you find yourself in need of aid, do not hesitate to ask your teachers or a responsible adult.”“Thank you for your time, Hokage-sama.” Chie hops off the chair and bows respectfully to the old man, amusement evident at his last sentence, though she voices nothing about it. Sarutobi double-checks that she is comfortable with the chuunin teenager that escorted her to the Tower; when there is nothing distrustful in Chie’s face as she nods at Suki Mebuki, he files the reaction away for later examination.Much, much later. He has a war to coordinate, and the stacks of paperwork aren’t getting any thinner.…Though the idea of using kage bunshin really is brilliant.-Izumi Chie graduates the Academy at age eight, squarely in the middle of the class rankings despite Nakajima-sensei’s thinly-veiled attempts to get her to consider a jump-start to her shinobi career.The career I didn’t really want? The one that I was forced into when the woman who birthed this body died? she half-thinks of saying with a dry stare, but in Konohagakure, your voice is only important insofar as it exists to contribute to the advancement of the village and the Hokage. Personal opinions—personal feelings—do no matter. The world is at war, and feelings died with the first man who was impaled by a katana to save Hatake Sakumo from certain death by Iwa-nin.Quite a man, that Hatake Sakumo. Out there on the front lines, fighting even though he could’ve taken leave before Chie was old enough to retain information and still be left with plenty to spare, in memory of the comrades who died for him.Idly, Chie wonders how Hatake Kakashi feels about that. He’d graduated the same year she’d been entered into the Academy, been placed with an individual jonin-sensei, and has since been sighted around the village by various gossipy housewives and stallkeepers and chuunin (all equally nosy and unsubtle in their methods) doing things like training puppies, repairing fences, and learning jutsu under one Namikaze Minato. He’s certainly been busy. Busy enough to have very little time to think about a father absent in his desperation for atonement.“Oi, Izumi.” It’s a child’s voice, and the words are squeaked out in an imitation of the growl the boy will one day grow up to have. Chie blinks and looks Morino Ibiki in the eye unflinchingly. Behind him lingers a quiet boy with dark hair and thick eyebrows, looking at her with a thoughtful expression that makes her wary. Ibiki, young and unscarred (for God’s sake, he still has hair—completely nondescript hair that is perfectly cut and partitioned at the side) jabs a thumb in Gai’s direction. “You’re with us. C’mon.”“Oh, they announced the teams already?” Chie asks, not moving. She has bowed to enough whims in her memories; she is not particularly inclined to do so further if the person requiring it is not the Hokage. Leaders are different. Little boys whose skulls are soft and unmarked by the lingering shadows of monster-men are not.Ibiki examines her with renewed interest. Unexpected. He’s silent for a moment as Gai comes to stand beside him. Then—“Did you ever really need to listen?”“Did you?” she returns, smiling. This is a game she knows well.“Maybe. Maybe not.”“Chie-san, Ibiki-san,” Gai says, drawing their attention. He holds up his lunchbox. It is the essence of manliness: lovingly-forged tin with bold, sharp grooves and rifts where the metal has been carved into shapes like the Konoha symbol and a Hashirama tree and… a pair of goggles? “Please, let us partake of the joy of sustenance together, that we might be filled and prepared to meet our jounin-sensei when it is time.”Chie stares at him for a long, long moment; Gai stares back, patient. Slowly, she smiles. Lesser men would be intimidated by the way the tiny, pale, green-eyed eight-year-old pins the two of them with a look that could be comparable to a cat recognizing a new source of entertainment. “Don’t be so formal,” she tells him, standing. “If we’re a team now, we will need to be familiar with each other.”“That’s right.” Ibiki folds his arms over his thin chest. “Did you have a place in mind, Gai?”“…Yes. Yes, I did,” Gai says, a smile of his own finding its way to his face.-“Sorry, what?” Chie says more than she asks, staring at her jounin-sensei.“Hello,” says Hatake Sakumo, looking more tired than anything else, but he tries to smile regardless. Nobody in the clearing is fooled. “It’s a pleasure to meet you three. I’ll be your jounin-sensei, starting today.”Chie turns accusing eyes to the Hokage, who most definitely, absolutely, unequivocally got the wrong idea from how much she talked about the Hatakes when he last called her in to discuss her new status as a shinobi and what that meant for her orphan stipend and what her options were now. Normally she’d be more respectful, considering exactly who the man is, but at the present moment—no, no, no. Ibiki and Gai she could handle. But this? Not this.“The war has to end at some point, Chie-chan,” Sarutobi tells her, looking far too self-satisfied for a man who has just ruined her life.Sakumo flinches. Both of them pretend not to notice.“…Hokage-sama…”Sarutobi actually chuckles. Damn him. “Now, now, Chie-chan. I know you’re shy, but shouldn’t you be a little more excited about meeting your hero?”Chie splutters, flushing red. Ibiki looks like he’s seen the universe tip itself over on its head; Gai blinks once and nods, like this makes sense. Sakumo… Sakumo just looks boggled. “Hokage-sama!”“Have fun,” Sarutobi says genially, like the kind old man he most definitely has no right to pretend he is. “I do believe I have paperwork to attend to.”She wants to die. Disappear, melt into a puddle, use that one go-underground-forever jutsu, whatever—just to be anywhere other than right here, stuck with Hatake Sakumo and her inevitable involvement in a changed world from the one she knows. Dammit, Hokage-sama.So much for a quiet life. So much for not getting involved beyond her semi-unwilling acquaintanceship with Kushina because the idea of a clanless eight-year-old being able to influence anything was lunacy. Everything changed before she knew enough to have any sort of choice in the matter, and that’s just damn unfair, is what it is. What’s going to be next—an unwilling adoption by the Uchiha clan?Something in her shrivels up and dies at the thought. No, no, no, she repeats to herself, feeling in her bones the acute awkwardness of the silence the Hokage has left in his wake. That’s ridiculous. I’ve never even spoken with a Uchiha that—
—that wasn’t… Obito…
Uchiha Obito, who had been paired with her on a class assignment for a grand total of five minutes before deciding that he was going to get her to talk to him, no matter what.
Oh, hell. The village is huge. How is it so small?
“…So,” Sakumo says, clearing his throat. “Why don’t we go around and introduce ourselves? I am Hatake Sakumo, kenjutsu user and your jounin-sensei. You… Maito, yes? Let’s start with you.”Gai grins, a megawatt smile Chie has been subconsciously waiting to see for the two years she’s known him. “Yes, sensei! I am Maito Gai, interested in genjutsu and taijutsu! I am your genin subordinate!”“Morino Ibiki. Long-range fighter, or assassination techniques. I’m a genin now.”Chie resists the urge to throw herself on the ground and protest the cruel, unrelenting nature of the universe as all three males present look at her curiously. Instead, she squares her shoulders and looks Sakumo in the eye, daring him to take issue with her. “Izumi Chie. Prospective kenjutsu user. Also a genin. We’ll be in your care, sensei.”“Well, then. I guess we should get started,” Sakumo says, and though he is a jounin, though he is very, very good, he really can’t help the brief look that flashes across his face—the look that says I would rather do anything else in the world at this exact moment than be here and awake and alive.When Ibiki and Gai exchange looks and give Chie an expectant glance, she realizes that this is not going to be a standard genin team experience. In the least. The part of her that’s done with protesting actually perks up in interest—finally, something interesting—and as she thinks about it, the view begins to grow on her. A bit like a weed, really.This isn’t the Academy. This isn’t thinly veiled threats and total disinterest in subject matter she’d known before she could walk. Her hands might be small and she might be eight years old and looking to be as depressingly short and tiny as she was in a world before living memory, but perhaps this can be something more than just a path she must be coaxed along by the fettering hands of fate. It might be Hatake Sakumo standing there and not someone as generic as she’d hoped, but people aren’t things, pieces on a board, and before them is a man broken enough to be unable to hide it from normal eight-year-olds.And the Hokage, perceptive as he is, had to know exactly what he was doing when he put three children together that have been individually noted for their propensity for psychoanalyzing everyone they meet.“So,” she says, crossing her arms with a confident smile, deciding to play the role of spokesperson to the hilt—if that’s what they want her to do. “What’s first?”She’s been handed an opportunity on a silver platter. Like hell is she going to waste another life.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

"Gai," Ibiki starts, stops, and sighs.Chie looks at Gai's hopeful face; he's small, sure, but he has just as much heart as the man he will one day become. She grimaces. "Gai…""It could work," Gai says, eyes alight with righteous passion."Sensei's kind of broken, Gai," Chie says, crossing her arms. "The kind of broken that makes the fact that he shows up every day to train us a miracle in and of itself.""And Kakashi's a bastard," Ibiki adds, leaning back in his seat.Chie rolls her eyes.
"Thank you,
Ibiki.""I'm just telling it like it is.""There's a difference between being truthful and adding information that isn't helpful to the situation. Besides, I'm fairly certain Sensei was married to the woman that birthed Kakashi-san." She takes a bite of her dango to avoid saying more, like maybe
and besides, you're kind of a surly bastard for an eight-year-old, were you always that way or do you have a difficult family situation that led to that,
or possibly
look, this is just like how you avoid all the Uchihas involved in their clan politics, you can tell them from a mile away by the sticks up their asses and you know I'm right,
or even
I can fix Sakumo but if you want us to fix Sakumo and Kakashi you do realize we'll spend at least half our lives on that?—because after all, she likes to live up to her principles.And besides, what does it even mean to
fix
someone? She's using their definitions and their perspective because she doesn't exactly have much of an explanation for how she knows all the other stuff aside from that period when she'd spent every waking moment reading, but as far as she can tell, Sakumo needs intensive professional counseling before he could even begin to address the very obvious rift between him and his son.Kakashi lives with the Maitos. Gai hasn't told him that Sakumo is their sensei yet, and it's been two months.That aside—Sakumo needs counseling that may or may not even exist. If it does, she'd bet money on it being inaccessible to him because it'd be seen as a mark of weakness in this military dictatorship that prides itself on the strength, physical and mental, of its most prized shinobi… and Sakumo is a prize for them, there is no doubt about that. It isn't often that someone as skilled as one of the legendary Sannin is around, for all Konoha seems to be seeing an influx of remarkably capable shinobi.Careful,
she thinks to herself.
Already getting protective, are you?"Chie!"She looks up. Gai and Ibiki are both looking at her with clear exasperation; she swallows her dango and speaks. "What?""Were you listening?" Ibiki asks, stone-faced. His dark eyes are black pits from which no light shines. The kid will do excellently in T&I whenever the Yamanaka realize his potential, that's for sure."No," she says blandly. "I was busy thinking about Sensei's issues.""A shinobi must always be aware of their surroundings," Ibiki tells her.She smiles. "A shinobi must
also
always be polite in the presence of strangers, and aren't you wonderful at
that?"Ibiki just snorts, unimpressed, while Gai looks between them with a frown. "Please, let's not argue.""We're not—never mind. What did I miss?" Chie asks, absently tucking her hair away from her eyes. She really should get it trimmed again—it's getting to the point where it just enters her field of vision, and that's been a distraction in training. Distractions are bad, even if they're arguments with an eight-year-old, which is more fun than it really should be. Ibiki's a smart, vicious child, and she always did appreciate those that appreciated sarcasm."I believe it will ultimately benefit Sensei," Gai says, leaning forward. "I am aware that we are young, but he has begun to smile at times while training us, and he is visiting the Memorial Stone frequently."And you believe that you can get him to start speaking to your father again,
she thinks but doesn't say. "Do we need to be doing more than what we're already doing? I doubt we could ever… mm, no, it's not even worth mentioning."Gai tilts his head thoughtfully. "I do not know if we can do more without Sensei noticing. But I think we must try, for Sensei's sake…""…And for Kakashi-san's," Chie finishes, lips twitching in something that barely resembles a smile. "Gai, you're too kind. You do realize this is going to take us years?""No kidding. What a pain," Ibiki sighs.Gai looks between them. A small smile finds its way to his face. "You have my deepest and utmost gratitude, Ibiki-kun, Chie-chan.""Well, we have our entire lives ahead of us. However short," Chie mumbles, then stands on the bench so the waiter will be able to see her signal for the check. The benefit to being cute and small: the waiter, a remarkably androgynous-looking man, smiles in amusement and gives her a conspiratorial thumbs-up. She looks from Gai to Ibiki. "So… if that's the case, we're going to have to start doing more… team things."Ibiki grumbles something under his breath that neither Chie nor Gai bother to acknowledge."I am open to any suggestions," Gai says, then frowns. "Aside from perhaps inviting Sensei to my home. I do not think that would be a good idea at this stage.""Treat it like a mission," Chie tells Ibiki.Ibiki shrugs, looking up from where he's been fiddling with something under the table, and shoves a few ryo notes to the middle of the table. "Here. For my portion.""Well, I might know someone who could give us some ideas," Chie says, placing her own ryo with Ibiki's. "I'll have to introduce myself, though.""What?" Both of them are looking at her strangely. She grins, having forgotten how much fun it is to mess with kids."I'll have to introduce myself. They have been watching me since I was about six, after all."When neither of them looks satisfied by this explanation, she snickers, stands, and leaves with a wave. She's got to start doing some real planning, after all, especially if she wants to convince Sakumo to train her in kenjutsu."Hi. You've been watching me."It is not, as conversation starters go, the most delicate or polite opener from someone who has decided to ruin someone else's day by intercepting them in their favorite restaurant. The Yamanaka chokes on his lunch; his buddies stare first at her then at him, and after a moment, the other Yamanaka—Inoichi, if she isn't mistaken—reaches over and pats the man on the back with too much amusement to be entirely sympathetic. "There, there, Inoki.""I what," Inoki coughs, looking down at her. "You—how—"Chie crosses her arms. "I observe," she says, droll, resting her weight on the back of her feet and tipping her jaw up to look at him down the line of her nose. "I am observant. And I know about the betting pool."Inoichi blinks, giving the dark-haired man with a raw, angry scar across his face a look that says
how interesting."…Damn," Inoki says finally, not considering for a moment that she might've been bluffing. Her estimation of him goes down a couple of notches, though his hair is very nice. What she wouldn't give to be able to braid hers like that…The thought is distracting. She shakes it off and resolves to ponder hair options when she doesn't have a fifteen-year-old chuunin to intimidate. "So, Yamanaka-san, do I need to call child services for protection, or will you be willing to lend me your aid in a project of mine?"The dark-haired man she is relatively certain she knows to be Nara Shikaku snorts.Inoki sets his lunch down and just stares. "You really are Keiko-senpai's kid.""You say that like it's a surprise," Chie notes. "Children raised by parents often inherit their traits."She does not mention that very few of hers actually came from Izumi Keiko, as she had actually been in possession of an identity prior to being housed with the admittedly fascinating and intelligent woman."Is that the kind of thing you write down?" Inoki asks for a moment, sidetracked, and when he gets a flat stare and two unimpressed looks from his companions, he puts his hands up in resignation. "Hey, the observation team's been curious for years. You were always quiet, Chie-chan, but…""Kaa-chan once told me that a person is best remembered by living for one's own sake," Chie says, taking pity on the way he trails into uncomfortable silence. Just because she doesn't entirely miss Keiko as a daughter should doesn't mean she can't be sorry for the woman's death. Sakumo is sorry enough for the both of them, anyways. Many times over. "I thought it prudent to honor her by doing just that."Both Inoichi and Shikaku look at her with evaluating expressions—and no, no, nope, she wants no part in that. She shifts her stare to Inoki, willing him to respond."…Right," he says, looking abashed. "Well, Chie-chan, I don't suppose I can refuse…""No," she says, making the word crisp and sharp. Sharper than her smile, which she likes to think is very sharp indeed. "You may not."Inoichi and Shikaku exchange looks—looks she doesn't like. Looks that speak of impending ninja nosiness."Say, Chie-chan," Inoichi says, smiling disarmingly. "Mind if I know what my subordinate's going to get up to?"There's a non-choice if she's ever heard one. She bows her head politely. "I wouldn't dream of keeping it from you, Yamanaka-sama.""Do call me Inoichi-san. I look for my grandfather whenever I hear Yamanaka-sama," Inoichi informs her with just a tad of conspiratorial indulgence, and she is once again distinctly reminded of how much her frame makes even ninja underestimate her. Or at least pretend to underestimate her.Either way, she's got a lifetime's experience with exploiting that."As you wish, Inoichi-san. Now. My project will require some introduction…"Inoichi clears his throat. Or makes a strangled noise, it's hard to tell. "You want to do what.""He's my jounin-sensei," Chie points out.Shikaku nods. "Yes. He's your jounin-sensei."Chie thinks about this for a moment, tapping her fingers on the restaurant table, ignoring the eerily similar expressions of sheer disbelief on Inoichi and Inoki's faces. It could be considered audacious—well, scratch that, the heir to the Yamanaka clan is acting like she's suggested painting the man purple and sending him on a mercy mission to all the little old ladies that need groceries carried, it
is
audacious. Who is an eight-year-old
genin,
of all people, to try and help Hatake Sakumo? Oh, he might look like a dead man walking, but he should know better—he's avenged his fallen comrades many times over, saving countless others, and for that he is a hero. Heroes are strong. Heroes are pillars. Heroes do not break, and heroes do not need
therapy.It's unbelievable. Ridiculous. So altruistic and foreign to the ninja mindset that most would refuse to believe the idea came from Maito Gai, strange as he might be.Chie lives for being ridiculous. She looks Shikaku in the eye, shoulders squared. "As a ninja of Konoha, it's my duty to look out for the best interests of my comrades, Nara-sama. I will be working closely with my jounin-sensei for some time, and Hokage-sama clearly had his reasons for calling back such an asset from the front lines to teach the next generation. His wellbeing is our concern. Am I naive? Perhaps. But as I see it, my teammates and I may be the only help Sensei can afford.""Call me Shikaku-san," the man advises absently, looking pleased with her answer. Damn ninja and their silent tests of character. "Sounds like the Will of Fire is strong in you, kid. Inoichi?""Work on your poker face, Chie-chan," Inoichi says; he too seems strangely proud, though she's never spoken to the man prior to this. Chie quietly wonders at the sheer connectedness of the hidden village. She's never experienced anything quite like it, and though her life was short, she had managed to experience quite a bit in her time. "Come by T&I on your off days and Inoki can help you take some introductory psych classes. It's a bit soon for you to leap into intensive training, but it can't hurt for you to know the basics.""But—seriously—you pick the biggest projects," Inoki informs her, shaking his head. His braid dangles with the motion. When he notices her watching it with an intent little smile, he tucks it away, eyeing her warily. "And my hair is off-limits. You mess up my hair, I'll find a way to foist you off on Mikoto-san."Chie blinks.
"…Uchiha
Mikoto-san?"She'd met Mikoto once in passing when Kushina whirled through the library, shouting something at the old librarian about fuinjutsu records and Uzumaki sealing workshops; Mikoto had come behind, smoothing over the librarian's ruffled feathers with words softer than silk and a private smile in her eyes. Chie knows exactly who Mikoto is, and Chie knows exactly where the deadly grace of her first son will come from.…Certainly not her husband. Uchiha Fugaku is the perfect sort of detective, judging by the various investigations Chie has heard civilians gossip about. Hard-boiled, blunt, a tough sort of caring, intent on the truth and justice being done. Nothing like Mikoto, who wears her gentleness with purpose and girds herself with a warmth that some mistake for weakness. Chie admires that about her, wishes she had more time with Kushina so she could get to know her, but both women are in high demand with the way the war has intensified the further into Iwa they get.Besides, her acquaintance with Kushina is mostly limited to their shared patronage of Ichiraku's and Kushina's markedly irreverent (though hilarious) advice for living on your own two feet. Chie finds herself entirely unwilling to abuse that unless they build something more substantial. Kushina is like the sun, and you do not bend its light to your whims.Inoki nods. There's a challenging glint in his eyes—blue and lacking in the pupil department, much like the rest of his clan. "That's right. One of our finest. She's always busy."Chie eyes him, deciding that she probably doesn't want to know exactly what Mikoto does in T&I. She can guess, anyways. And if she can guess, she can also guess that what Mikoto does in T&I might be very useful to her, indeed. "…We'll see.""That wasn't an opportunity," Inoki sighs, ignoring the way Inoichi and Shikaku smirk at him."Hey, sensei," Chie says as the two of them observe Gai and Ibiki's weekly taijutsu-only sparring session. Sakumo makes a noise to affirm that he's heard her; she crosses her arms and considers Gai's form. It's practically perfect for a genin—really quite a shame that he seems determined to go into genjutsu. Or will his mind get changed somewhere down along the line? She has no way of knowing. "Did you know the honorable Senju Tobirama-sama?"Sakumo glances over at her. "It depends on what you mean by 'know,' Chie-chan," he says after a moment, turning his attention back to the boys when Ibiki manages to score a hit on Gai's ribs and Gai laughs through the pain, giving his teammate a breathless congratulations before they both leap back."Were you acquainted with him?" Chie amends, eyes drifting to the patterns of fragmented sunlight the surrounding trees create as they shift with the wind. Manipulating someone's perception of those leaves would be an excellent way to practice setting up genjutsu subtly. She makes a mental note to mention it to Gai later."After a fashion," is the short reply.Chie nods, undeterred. She'd expected this kind of resistance, especially considering her suspicions about where the Kakashi of the future's quieter, taciturn nature (under all the trolling—because of
course)
came from. Inoki had told her that it was common for people with Sakumo's issues to try and deflect any actual conversation from happening, and that's her story for her source on psychology. "I heard he was responsible for setting up nearly all of Konoha's infrastructure. How far does the truth of that go?""Where did you hear that?" Sakumo counters. A test. Ninja should never assume."The Academy textbook," she says, then smiles, because the truth is never simple. "And about fifteen different scholarly examinations of the economics of the Warring Clans Era found in the library."Sakumo breathes out, a motion that could've been a chuckle in another reality. Instead, he just seems—tired. Exhausted. "You're very resourceful, Chie-chan.""Everything in the library is a statement on politics, sensei. Primary sources are far more reliable than secondhand accounts." Chie shrugs, thinking of distant lands and long-forgotten political structures. She ignores the ache. It's inapplicable, anyway. "I'm mostly curious. I understand that record-keeping is inadvisable, but history helps us to understand where to go next.""That's a very controversial view," Sakumo says, looking at her with a heretofore unseen spark of interest.
Success."Anything for Konohagakure," Chie replies, glancing at him. If there's a thread of irony to the patriotism, well, she's the only one who could understand it. Nobody else has the frame of reference to know what being a child of many lands was like, to remember more hours spent traveling across oceans and mountains and wide open fields than one would remember the safety of home. There is no such thing as globalization in the Elemental Nations—that will only come in full later, decades down the road, and she finds herself wanting to live to see it. "I want to see this place survive. Maybe even flourish. Imagine a world where Konoha's children are free to grow up as children—where people can be expected to live long and happily."Sakumo hums. "And you think history will help us to do it? You're quite an idealist, little Chie-chan.""I'm not—" She shuts her mouth, looking at her hand. She
is
small.Sakumo's smile is bare and slight. But it's a smile. She'll take it. "You won't be forever," he says, perhaps taking pity on her; the way he ruffles her hair seems to indicate that, at least. "But you are eight years old, you know. You'll have to survive first—and it's not impossible. I know a man whose longevity keeps surprising me, given that he tries to make friends of his enemies wherever he goes.""Like Naruto," Chie says. She fixes her hair and pretends to miss the surprise that crosses Sakumo's face. "In the
Tale of a Gutsy Shinobi.""Yes," Sakumo says thoughtfully. "Yes, quite like him, indeed."He is thinking instead of reacting, interacting instead of putting up a wall. She has a long road ahead of her, but Gai's grateful smile as he goes for Ibiki's jugular with his foot cements the decision she made all those months ago.Chie is silent for a bit. Then— "So, how involved was the honorable Senju Tobirama-sama in the establishment of Konoha's infrastructure?"Sakumo gives her a dry look.The first time Izumi Chie
sees
Hatake Kakashi, he is silent and pale and shuffling out of the Academy behind a man whose blond hair shines brighter than the sun. She nods to herself—another piece of the puzzle, check—and returns to trying to comprehend the terrifyingly massive loss of everything she's ever known and/or loved. She is no stranger to culture shock, but civilization shock, as she has decided to term it, is an entirely different matter.The first time Izumi Chie
meets
Hatake Kakashi, Uchiha Obito is late for a meeting.Chie pins the tiny Uchiha with a disapproving glare. Obito shuffles nervously, his sandaled feet tapping loudly on the bridge, hands locked behind his back. "…Please?""I know you're on a team, Uchiha-san. Please attend to your duty—which should, I believe, be training with them. If you can find me when you're off-duty, return then.""But I can't find you!" Obito exclaims, waving his arms around like an excitable (if anxious) kitten. "You're impossible! Nobody knows who you are or what you do!"They don't need to know me, they don't like you,
comes the thought, a long-forgotten strand of music she had loved dearly in her teenage years, and the shock of the memory resurfacing renders her momentarily mute. Obito looks down at his feet at her silence, then up again; he points at her with all the offended self-righteousness of an eight-year-old.She wants to pet him."I'll find you, Izumi Chie," Obito vows, walking backward. "I'll find you if it's the last—""—Seriously, dumbass? We go all over town to find you and you're doing this?" comes a disdainful voice, and Hatake Kakashi drops out of the trees just in time to trip Obito and hop out of range of his flailing feet. The mask goes together with the furrowed brows and the deadened eyes to create a marvelous likeness to Sakumo, and Chie wants to laugh—not because she's amused. "I can't believe Minato-sensei made me fetch you.""I'm not a dog!" Obito hollers, hopping to his feet.Kakashi snorts. "You're right, you're not. Dogs are better than you are at keeping their balance."Wow. Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Obito's pained grimace tells her that this is normal for them, and something about that… Chie sighs, drawing their attention. "Obito-kun. If you absolutely can't find me when you're off-duty, ask for me at T&I. My sempai should be able to help you.""But why can't you just—""Ninja."Obito scowls. It warms the cockles of her cold, deadened heart."Think of it as training," Chie tells him, amused. "As my teammate would say… anything is
youthful training
if you believe hard enough."Obito opens his mouth.
Uhhhh,
his expression says, but Kakashi beats him to it."Your teammate is
Gai?"
Kakashi asks with a mystified sort of horror, distracted from antagonizing Obito by this shocking revelation."You tell me, Hatake-kun. You live with him."With that Chie gives the two of them a sharp nod and departs, intent on making it to the market district—and her favorite blacksmith—before noon. It might be her team's off-training day, but she still has work to do. (She'll never know how long afterward Kakashi just
stares,
half-offended and half-fascinated that an ostensible stranger knows so much about him.)

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“You.”

Chie pays little attention to the intruder crouched on her windowsill as she moves about her tiny kitchenette, trying not to burn herself on the stove. If Kakashi intended to harm her, she’d probably already be dead—that’s the way of it with ninjas, she’s found. Anything they let you see them do is less intent to do it than it is a warning that they could.

When Kakashi’s rather rude opener is ignored, he lets himself in and glares at her. “What are you doing?”

“…Cooking,” she says, one eyebrow raised as she pauses in the act of opening the oven. “I didn’t think the mask covered your eyes too, Hatake-san.”

“You know what I meant.”

She opens the oven and tries not to smile. He is, she reminds herself, a chuunin; very serious, very adult, and very definitely would not take to being patted on the head well. “Actually, Hatake-kun, I haven’t the slightest. All I know is that someone very rude invaded my home for no reason at all, and unless he sets the table, he’s not going to get any of the food I had to pay for with my own money.”

Kakashi is silent. That is either very good or very bad. Chie pulls the rather large pot out of the oven and manages to heft it onto the counter—cooking is very different when the world around you is so much taller—but before she can do anything else, she has a nosy, hungry, pre-adolescent boy peeking over her shoulder. He sniffs. “What is

that?”

Ah, that’s right—chili is a very uncommon dish in Konoha.

“Excellent question. If you set the table, you get to find out.”

Kakashi glares at her. She can feel it on the side of her face. After a moment, he looks away. “…Tell me where the cutlery is.”

“Cupboard on the right,” she says smartly, taking the rice off the stovetop and portioning it into two bowls. She does not comment on his use of the word

cutlery

when something less arcane and more up-to-date would’ve been just fine, though she very much wants to poke fun at this strait-laced little boy with angry eyes and ridiculous hair.

Seriously. Do people in Konoha start their children on creative applications of gel at an early age or something? Is she missing out by leaving her hair in its simple, side-swept, short style?

Dinnerware clinks behind her. She moves the pot to her small kitchen table and glances out the window. The sun is just now setting, casting the trees in brilliant shades of orange-bronze and gold.

I wish,

a small part of her starts, and with the ease of long practice she ignores it. “Sit down,” she says mildly. “You might act like one, but you’re not a wolf, Hatake-kun.”

Kakashi pauses, staring at her. She stares back, a small, curious smile on her face.

Kakashi sits.

“Chili is a dish more commonly made among the merchants in the Land of Lightning,” Chie explains, dipping a ladle into the pot and pouring it on top of the rice. She repeats the motion and sets one bowl on each side of the table. “I picked it up from an old woman with less teeth than her smile would suggest. She’s been traveling the mountain paths in Lightning since long before you and I were born—perhaps longer than our parents have been alive, even.”

Kakashi stiffens. “…Parents.”

“We all have them, Hatake-kun. Mine are dead.” Kakashi has the good grace to look abashed, and Chie takes a bite of her chili to prevent herself from saying more. He might be a genius, but that doesn’t mean she needs to overload him. Besides—it took her time, but she’s gotten good enough at making a pot of chili that if she closes her eyes and dreams a little, it almost seems like she isn’t ten thousand worlds away from a life that once was.

Almost. Because Kakashi’s chakra still pricks at her senses, sleuthing as any ninja in an unfamiliar location would, and that inherently other sense of being is so far removed from anything in her previous experience that she can’t help but tune into it. She opens her eyes and sees his dull eyes staring back at her, mask up, food eaten save for a few grains of rice left in the bowl.

Staring matches, entertaining as they are for the unfortunate person who has to be in one with her, get tiring when your opponent has mastered the art of imitating a dead fish. Chie sighs. “Yes, Hatake-kun, he’s my sensei. Take three guesses as to why Gai didn’t tell you. You’re a smart boy. I’m sure you can figure

something

out.”

“…Why is he…?” Kakashi starts, then falls silent.

It seems she has her answer as to whether or not Kakashi particularly cares for his father: so much so that his self-imposed exile is hurting him enough that he actually sought a stranger out for answers. She pinches the bridge of her nose. “Hatake-kun. I am a

genin.”

“Exactly. You’re nothing special. So why…?” His brows are furrowed.

“Might I suggest,” Chie says delicately, “that it isn’t about

me?

I am, as you said, nothing. A clanless orphan. My teammates both come from shinobi families, though not clans, exactly. None of us have special status, and each of us are primarily aided by our minds. Yet Hokage-sama chose Sakumo-sensei to teach us anyway. Regardless of what you may have heard about any sort of hero worship—

which is a misunderstanding

—I assure you that Ibiki, Gai and I are not people Hokage-sama would pull strings for, not in that sense. Does that help?”

“I don’t know.”

Chie stands, deposits their bowls in the sink, and stands at the window. “Come here and look out the window.”

He joins her and looks. Above the treetops surrounding her apartment building and past two districts’ worth of buildings is the Hokage Mountain, gleaming in the light of the setting sun.

“The Hokage must represent the village,” she says, leaning against the windowsill with crossed arms. “The mountain is a symbol of that. I’m sure you know that. But what that means is that Hokage-sama must look out for the village’s best interests—its assets. Like it or not, your father is an asset. What do you do with a tool you can’t afford to lose, Hatake-kun?”

“…You find a way to repair it.”

Chie smiles and wonders how transparent her grim amusement is. “I can’t claim to know what the Hokage is thinking, of course. But I trust that he knows what he’s doing.”

After that, Kakashi never quite leaves her alone again.

-

Chie eyes the papers dubiously. She glances at Ibiki, who is, as usual, completely unhelpful—all he does is raise an eyebrow at her. Not good enough. “Tell me again why you wanted a read-through of these files?”

“Routine check. Or a department move.”

“Your inflection on check tells me that you’re either lying or attempting to misdirect. Because I know you, you’re lying. Work on that, unless you want to obfuscate your meaning,” she advises, stretching her feet out on his coffee table. She is bruised and sore from their training in the morning; after long months and a mildly forced attendance to Gai’s birthday, she had managed to wrest a training regimen out of Sakumo that will eventually instill the same lethal grace in her that Uchiha Mikoto seems to possess naturally, and she looks forward to it. With

the great eagerness of youth.

Gai would be so proud, starting in as he has on his

shock sensei out of that stupor

plan. A pity that he’ll never know she thought the words.

Ibiki’s mother, passing by the sitting room with a bag dripping with a strange liquid Chie doesn’t want to touch with a ten-foot pole (at least she doesn't

think

so, judging by the smell), gives them an indulgent smile.

Ibiki nudges her feet off the table. “She’ll make Idate clean the room later. Don’t.”

“Why?” Chie asks, half-amused, half-worried.

Ibiki rolls his eyes. “Idate doesn’t understand that you want to clean the floor with the

mop

, not yourself.”

“Meaning you have to watch him. Aw.” She relaxes subtly, eyes flickering over the contents of Ibiki’s papers. “Aren’t you two cute?”

“Shut it, Izumi.”

“You see, I’m jealous because I don’t have a family,” she says, irreverent, and never stops to consider the thread of truth to the statement. She’d had one, once, but it had been broken long before she’d known its value. Instead she finishes scanning the documents and looks up. “Interesting proposition.”

Ibiki watches her. She does not acknowledge it. “Very interesting. I hear you and Inoki-sempai had a discussion.”

Oh, he heard about that, did he? Chie favors him with an impertinent smile and reflects upon the fact that having access to a jumpy Yamanaka’s braid at any given moment is rather a useful thing when one just so happens to spot discrepancies in the T&I ledgers, even if one only happened to be going through said ledgers in the first place because of a spot of forbidden braid-tugging. If those discrepancies happened to lead to the discovery of more, and if it was eventually suggested that T&I relocate its offices to a more secure location for a bit while the mess was sorted out, well, it’s none of her business, now is it?

She does have her suspicions about the source of the errors, as would any good ninja involved with something as sensitive as Intel. But like any good ninja involved with something as sensitive as Intel, she knows that suspicions are best kept to oneself until one has evidence to back them up—and it is a matter of waiting. Give a man a noose and he will hang his dirty laundry on it first.

Sakatama-kun isn’t suited to be a desk ninja, anyways. It takes a very particular skill-set to be a desk ninja, and he is decidedly meant for the battlefield. Though… if he’s airing his discontent through the

ledgers

and not, say, the training fields…

“You,” Ibiki says, with the air of one who would very much like to roll his eyes, “are ridiculously cagey.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean—said the pot to the kettle,” is Chie’s reply as she stands and stretches. She winces at the soreness in her arms, dances around Ibiki’s half-hearted motion to check for strain, and makes her way to the door. Ibiki follows, something like amusement in his eyes. “See you tomorrow.”

“Chie…” Ibiki starts, then shakes his head, thinking better of it. “See you tomorrow. Thanks for looking over those papers.”

She nods and departs without further fanfare, glad that the early afternoon hours still provide plenty of time for her to pick up her order from the blacksmith and hop over to Ichiraku’s before the sun really starts in on its dream of burning everything to ashes. Whoever named the Land of Fire was both unimaginative and remarkably apt; she suspects a historian, personally, but with how crazy things get when chakra and ninja involve themselves in something as mundane as cartography—well, she couldn’t possibly say for sure.

Chie smiles to herself as she meanders through narrow roads lined with homes, gaze idly drifting from one brightly-colored roof to the other. That Ibiki lived in such a predominantly civilian area of Konoha came as something of a surprise, but she recognized the junction he led her down earlier as the one most genin are supposed to use to get to the training fields. With wartime regulations in effect, nobody quite seems to care as much about making sure that genin get a mental map of Konoha’s interior; Ibiki had muttered something about his father insisting on doing things by the book when Chie had asked why he lived in the area, and recognizing the disgruntled pride of an eight-year-old boy when she saw it, she had tactfully backed off.

As it is, to get to her preferred marketplace quicker, she’s going to try something new today: cutting through the training fields. Fields Three through Seven are all fairly benign, but if she has to go through the swampy obstacle course that is Eight… Chie shudders, shaking her head. It isn’t worth risking what happened to Inoki (and his hair) last time he had tried to get through.

That she pushed him into the swamp is irrelevant. Inoki really should’ve seen it coming, and that lack of awareness is why he isn’t a field operative quite yet.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

It's cold the day Sakumo shows up thirty minutes late for training with his jaw set and a bruise around his eye, the look on his face too blank for any real attempt at neutrality. Chie appreciates that he's trying to look neutral, though, even as Gai and Ibiki exchange looks and then nudge her forward when Sakumo remains silent, arms crossed, and gaze far away."Sensei," she says, drawing a sharp look from the man. It doesn't ruffle her. She's dealt with worse. "Is today the day?""Today is a day, Chie-chan," Sakumo counters, clearly not intent on making this easy.Chie bites back a sigh. "Every day is a day, sensei, except maybe solar eclipses. I think. Technically, they'd classify—whatever. We don't get a C-rank every day, sensei."Sakumo looks the three of them over, finally seeming to realize that Gai and Ibiki are present and watching him with the kind of quiet concern they think they're good at hiding."No," he says finally, uncrossing his arms and rolling them. One of his shoulder joints pops; which one is impossible to tell, but the way he is, either he's dislocated it recently or he'd slept on it wrong the night before and is only now getting around to warming up. Considering the bruise, Chie's willing to bet on the former. "Not today. Something came up, and we'll be done early today. But I will be running you through some exercises and getting you started on specializations, so why don't we get to it? Start with your legs.""Got it."The usual warmups start off silent and tense, but Chie manages to get Gai going on about the virtues of stylized lunchboxes as he and Ibiki complete their final set of push-ups and begin to move on to an exercise that's more of a game than anything—hopping across a series of posts set up in their clearing, dodging the posts that taper into spikes. She's only just ahead of that, taking a breath and getting ready to channel chakra to her feet to try walking up a tree, when Sakumo taps her on the shoulder and nods to the other side of the clearing.A tad bemused, but nonetheless willing given that Konoha is a military dictatorship and he's her direct authority, Chie follows him over and stands at ease as he stares off into the distance, gathering his thoughts.If she said she wasn't curious about this, she would be lying. Sakumo hardly speaks one-on-one to them on a good day beyond the necessary instruction—on a bad day, they mostly finish their warmups and end up sparring until he disappears off somewhere and they are dismissed for the day."Chie-chan," he says finally, and Chie keeps her expression smooth. "Is there a reason Yamanaka-sama sent me a permission form to allow one of my genin to join the T&I interns on their rotation for 'special observation and instruction'?"Chie bites her tongue on her initial response, something along the lines of
it's highly possible, Sensei, if only you would look at the name on the form to confirm things for yourself,
and instead she meets his eyes squarely. "Yes, Sensei. Yamanaka-sama graciously offered the opportunity at a chance meeting, and I didn't think it prudent to refuse him. He said it could be useful to my team—""—and useful on your sensei," Sakumo says wryly. His eyes flicker from the piece of paper he fished out of his pocket while she was talking to her face, searching for clues. And weakness too, probably. Ninjas.Chie says nothing.He sighs, for a moment looking far more exhausted than a man his age really should. "I'll allow it." There's a but that hangs in the air after it, so she waits, and the faintest hints of what could be a smile curl about his mouth in approval. It fades too quickly, but that doesn't bother her like it would Gai if Gai could really see his face at the moment. "On one condition, Chie-chan.""Of course, Sensei.""No observing torture sessions until you've gone through the official training for it in the pre-chunin preparatory period. There's a reason nobody tells the younger genin that T&I is a department." His eyes begin to get that glassy look again, sliding into the far-off and the unknown, sights no man should have to see, and when he shakes himself to see her watching he only looks tired, as he did before."Thank you for your concern, Sensei," Chie says after a moment, feeling the awkwardness of the protracted silence a little more than is probably strictly necessary.Sakumo just shakes his head. "Get back to work. I know you've been pretending to be worse at the tree-walking exercise than you really are—show me your best work, and we'll see how you can improve from there."Somewhat chastened, Chie nods and makes her way back to the trees that Gai and Ibiki have begun running up. Ibiki gives her the side-eye, but otherwise says nothing.Gai smiles at her. "Chie-chan! Let us give it our best effort!""I was thinking of taking a nap, myself." She surveys the skies and then the clearing. Ibiki sighs.Unfathomably, Gai laughs.Daytime is busy enough to keep her occupied, with hard physical work at practically all hours only being further accompanied by the grueling mental practice of calculating and re-calculating the effects she's having on her current environment. Despite all that Chie has said and done already, the world still feels half-unreal to her—a waking dream, a passing shadow, one filled with sights and sounds and scents dulled out by the grey edges of something that simply can't be reality, no matter which way one cuts it.Keeping a mental tally of everything she's noticed, despite her hopes, hasn't really helped matters at night. When it's not wondering whether or not some unfriendly ninja will break into her unfeasibly-trapped apartment (it's hard to get quality with the kind of budget she's on) despite the unlikelihood of it all, it's the dreams she has of the world she can never return to.Not full memories, not now—those have begun to fade, and she wrote them all down when her hand was shakier and her time was mostly free. She'll always have those in some form. No, what devastates more than anything is the vague fractals of location and light and the feel of the air that coalesce together and form places she had been to before the end, all mashed up in ways that cast strange shadows on the ground where there ought to be nothing but sunlight reflected off blue waves and white sand."For a ninja, you're not very good at hearing people in your own house."Very carefully, Chie does not jump out of her skin. Instead, she peers into the darkness only to see the sullen eyes of Hatake Kakashi watching her from a corner—not his face, no, because the mask covers most of it.She remains silent for a few moments. Then— "What the fuck?""Pardon?" He looks shocked, but at least half of it is affectation.Chie stares right back at him staring at her. "Do you know what time it is?""Yes," he says without missing a beat. "It's two twenty-three AM.""Is there a reason you're in my apartment at two twenty-three AM, Hatake-kun?"Kakashi shrugs. "Your traps aren't very good.""That's an explanation of how you got in, not a reason.""You know I could kill you where you sit, right now?" he asks instead of responding to her comment. "It'd be really easy. And I have a million options. All I'd have to do is pick one of them and you'd be dead."Chie pinches the bridge of her nose. "Yes, Hatake-kun. Then the Uchiha Police Force would find my body, an investigation would ensue, and given that there's probably a patrolman who noticed you enter, you'd be a prime suspect for the case. Do you have a point?""You're mad." He sounds
surprised."Hatake-kun, it's two twenty-three AM.""Two twenty-six AM.""Sure. If you have a point, get to it. I'd like to go back to not sleeping well in peace." This is really just her luck—the snotty-nosed genius ninja boy got offended by the stars aligning against her and decided to hound her constantly, she ended up here instead of, oh, somewhere else, anywhere else, she was made to enroll in military service against her will...Kakashi looks at her like she's an idiot, which might be fair at this point, really. "You need to guard yourself better. I could've killed you.""You're you," Chie points out. "You're unreasonably skilled. I'm a genin in training and the enemy is nowhere near my doorstep yet. They won't deploy me unless they're reasonably certain I won't be a risk in the field, and they don't assess that until the pre-chunin preparatory period, which you skipped by getting a field promotion. And as far as I know, no one in Konoha except you has threatened to kill me in my sleep yet.""So you know you're badly-defended, but you choose not to do anything about it?"Chie can feel the urge for violence rising up inside her. Instead of submitting to it, she grits her teeth. "I
choose
to
believe,
based on my assessment of my station and my surroundings, that it's very unlikely that another nin will decide to break into a lowly genin's home and kill me.""But I could've.""You seem to have an issue with the concept of my unimportance to the grand scheme of things," she drawls, trying very hard not to go for the kunai under her pillow like part of her dearly wants to.The fact that the conditioning is working on her and violence is beginning to seem normal is something she'll have to contemplate later; right now, her top priority is getting Kakashi to fuck off into the great unknown outside of her window. And possibly to look into whether or not T&I offers basement apartments near their location.Kakashi twitches. "You're my father's apprentice!" he squawks,
finally,
and Chie gives him a very unimpressed look."I wasn't aware that Gai and Ibiki were not a part of my
initial genin team,"
she says.He glares at her, suddenly next to her bedside, and she leans away from him. Whatever mission he's been out on, he definitely forgot to take a shower.Some things never change,
she thinks, her expression flat as the smell reminds her of the time Gai had decided to skip a shower after the hardest day of their routine and showed up bright and early for the next one without considering what that might do to his teammates and his very olfactorily sensitive teacher."You're different." Whatever else he was about to say, he instead falls silent, and that is a trait the Hatake family seems to share.Chie tries several times to construct a response to this and ultimately ends up sighing again, feeling a very particular headache somewhere behind her temples. "I'm very flattered that you think so, Hatake-kun.""Not like that," he clarifies, his eyes going wide in a hilarious moment of uncharacteristic earnestness. "I mean... I've seen it. He treats you differently. He's teaching Gai and Morino-kun, but he's assessing you.""Hatake-kun," she starts, then stops, thinking better of further taunting.
This whole thing is exhausting.
"That might be true, but why does it matter to you?""I..."This younger Kakashi is so unlike anything she had expected—getting distracted by petty taunts, finding himself at a loss for words... or maybe not, she thinks, finally noticing the way he's watching her.
Are you stupid
is a pretty common attitude from him anyways, if Obito was anything to judge by, but the expression on his face is the closest to genuine, hurt offense she's seen yet."Is there a reason it affects you?" she asks, feeling rather lost and unsure of what to do about it. "Is there something I'm—not getting, here?"Kakashi is silent for a long, long period of time. "...He's
my
father," he says, so quietly she has to strain to hear it.Ah,
she thinks. And maybe it's that she's had one father already, but she doesn't quite think she needs another."If you want," she says, just as softly as he spoke, feeling just as ridiculous with her small body and small hands as she did the first time around, "I can help you talk to him again. Gai and Ibiki and I, we just want to help him. Like I told you—the Hokage knows what he's doing when he gives the final say on which units are assigned to which teacher—"But Kakashi is already shaking his head. "Not yet," he's whispering. "Not yet."What a sad, strange child, this genius boy, growing up in a war with all the people who should be watching him fighting somewhere on the front lines. Even the ones at home."I won't force you," she tells him, drawing the blankets around herself. A cover if she needs to do some hand-signing for emergency jutsus, yes, but primarily a small comfort for herself.Kakashi just nods. He doesn't move or stop looking somewhere past her shoulder into the darkness, but he does blink.Chie shuffles her blankets around, taking the opportunity to kick the thin undersheet to the foot of the bed and only keep the top one near her. "I'd like to get back to sleep sometime tonight...""...Oh." He blinks again. "Right, uh, I... bye!"The window shades flutter in the wake of his hasty exit. Chie sits back in her bed and runs a weary hand over her face.
I don't get paid enough for this,
she gripes to herself.
I don't even really get paid to manage ninja emotions! I volunteered!Still somewhat preoccupied by the strangeness of her night visitor, Chie meanders through the village in the early evening of the next day. Her pace is slow and unhurried. Her body hums, the whole of it a contented sigh in her mind, her skin singing under the sun. Training today had been a blur of motion, keeping her and teammates on their guard as Sakumo taught them the ins and outs of dodging—the number one skill to keep them alive.A ninja that gets hit in a warzone is a dead ninja,
Nakamura-sensei had told them in the Academy.He had been right. Her own mother in this place had, after all, died saving Sakumo from getting hit—taking the hit for him instead.In another time and place, that didn't happen.She could be bitter about it, she supposes. Certainly Sakumo had seemed to expect it from her at first, and the Third Hokage had found her professional curiosity about the Hatake family wildly amusing instead and wasted no time in exposing him to the truth. Izumi Keiko had been a rock-solid teammate and colleague, or so she's heard, and as a mother to Chie... she had certainly known how to encourage her daughter's intellect.A part of her does wonder what her life might look like now if Keiko had survived.But the dead are the dead, gone to their eternal rest, and the only way to honor their memory is to let them be. Carry their memory with you, but let them be.Yes. That is one of the only ways to function in a world past the worlds, in a time past time, when everything but yourself feels removed from the green of the trees and the fierce blue of the sky—Chie blinks and shakes her head a little, averting her eyes from where they had gotten stuck on a little sun-dappled patch of shade next to one of the public benches. She hadn't really noticed herself stopping, and thankfully no one is staring at her—one of the few benefits of living in a military village is that everyone has their demons—so she nods to herself and continues on her way to the T&I department."Alright, everyone. Starting today, we're going to ramp things up a bit."There's something different about Sakumo today, something in his face and his eyes that looks a little less dead, and it leaves Chie nonplussed but delightfully surprised. She, Gai, and Ibiki are lined up in front of him, all of them at attention, and Sakumo's arms are crossed. Ibiki nudges her. She ignores it.Sakumo eyes them sternly. Ibiki moves his arms back into position."The war is not over yet," Sakumo says after another moment. "But someday soon, it will be. None of you will be seeing the front lines before you make chunin. Even with the mandatory preparation period being shortened, it's very likely that you won't be seeing them at all."Chie does exchange a glance with Ibiki and Gai this time. "The war is ending, sensei?""I didn't say that." Sakumo's voice is mild."But you know something," Ibiki pipes up. Looking at the glint in his eye, Chie is reminded again that he will one day be hell to contend with. "Something is—or will—be happening soon. You want to prepare us for it.""We should celebrate with a lunch of celebration!"A beat."That's a fun idea, Gai," Chie volunteers when it looks like neither Sakumo or Ibiki are going to respond. Gai beams proudly at her.All part of the plan, she reminds herself. Going along with Gai doesn't make her feel any worse about anything—in fact, given the right situation, it can be a very profitable venture—but the fact that in any other dynamic she would have left dealing with the awkward bits to someone else... a part of her dearly misses that."Let's not celebrate right away, or leap to any conclusions," Sakumo says, a hint of wryness leaking through into his tone. "I said someday. Today, I test you on your dodging skills.""Scatter!" Chie yells as Sakumo kindly takes his time pulling out his kunai, which for a ninja amounts to making the motion visible to the human eye, and proceeds to do his level best to bury them in a storm of whistling metal.By the time they finish, they all have more than a few new surface-level cuts decorating their skin. The only semi-serious injuries end up being one laceration on Chie's upper arm and Ibiki's shoulder, where the friction of the handle of one kunai had made a well-aimed hit a significantly more painful one by virtue of also skimming the surface layer of his skin. Gai had done the best of the three of them at dodging serious injury, the raw control over his own body already beginning to display itself in their daily life, and she makes a mental note to study a few taijutsu scrolls soon to see if there's anything he'll find useful in them."I'll just get this treated at home," Ibiki tells them, looking at his bloody shoulder and torn sleeve with no real emotion on his face. Sakumo had staunched the flow with what he had on hand, which had ended up being some old supplies in the travel-sized medkit he kept in some secret pocket, but the wound itself looks like it hurts; there's a just-barely-too-stubborn set to Ibiki's jaw that helps show it, too. He may be a bastard already, but he's young and pint-sized yet.Sakumo nods. "Take care on your way home."That's new.Gai and Chie exchange glances."Sensei! I'll accompany Ibiki to his home!" Gai exclaims, latching onto Ibiki's uninjured arm with all the earnestness he can muster. "Come, Ibiki! Let us go!""Yeah, yeah, alright...""Sensei." Chie waits until Ibiki has begrudgingly allowed Gai to drag him off in the direction of the southern markets. Sakumo has lost some of the liveliness he had at the start, but thankfully he doesn't just disappear, like an older Kakashi might have. "Would you mind taking me to the clinic around here? I don't have suitable medical supplies at my apartment.""You don't?" He frowns at her.Chie coughs politely. "I'm on something of a budget.""Ah." Sakumo puts his hands in his pockets, something she hasn't seen him do before, and nods to the other path out of the clearing in the field. "I'll take you. I haven't been to the one around here, but I know where it is.""Thank you, Sensei." She trots along behind him, waiting until they're a comfortable distance away from the narrow path and a ways back into the village proper to walk slightly to the left and behind of him, as is expected of a student.She thinks. She isn't actually sure whether the stuffy old etiquette book on the cultural customs of the Warring Clans still applies in the present day, but it's better to be safe than sorry.Even so, she completely dashes antiquated propriety when she opens her mouth again. "Sensei, is something different?""What do you mean, Chie-chan?""You look different." She waits a beat. "And you told Ibiki to be careful on his way home."Sakumo hums. "Maybe I'm a teacher who's just looking out for his students. That's normal, isn't it?""But you aren't just any teacher," she says.He laughs a little, a short, unhappy thing that dies before it really gets going. The forever-distracted part of her wants to yank on his hair, which was long to start with and has grown longer since he started teaching them, but he's far from being as easy pickings as Inoki is. She'd be gone in a split second. "No, I suppose I'm not.""Did something happen?""Are you snooping?" Sakumo asks her, turning and raising an eyebrow at her as pedestrians pass them by, going to and from their workplaces for the lunch hour in this district. Chie, for her part, does recognize the look he's giving her—ninja to ninja, it's a silent
why are you being so brazen instead of seeking out that information on your own?—but this man is her sensei, and she figures that teamwork is all about trust, right?So Chie shrugs. "I don't mean to pry into your personal life, Sensei." Unsaid, but hopefully heard:
I do care about you, though.He gives her a long look. When she doesn't waver, he sighs. "An old friend paid me a visit, that's all. Come on, the clinic should be just around this corner."

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

A month, then two months, trickle on by, winding their way down the Naka River in silent fragments of sunsets and sunrises, filled with pale reds and oranges and the shadow of loss. Chie learns in slow measures both how to break and how to bend. As she did in her first childhood, so she repeats: she looks out for the children, which, in this life, means studying taijutsu scrolls with care for Gai and making inroads to T&I for Ibiki, who does not have the questionable benefit of having been watched for several years by a bunch of curious ninja-nerds.

The war quavers and wanes. More ninja trickle back in from field assignments, hollow-eyed and searching for nightmares in broad daylight. No longer bound to the biannual meetings the Hokage puts upon himself to keep up with Konoha’s military-slated orphans, Chie still somehow finds herself in contact with the old man every so often—taking T&I paperwork to his desk for Inoichi, who has set up a joint leadership arrangement with Uchiha Mikoto and voluntarily saddled himself with the arduous task of sorting through the bulk of their documentation (all mostly blacked out, of course, but it exists nonetheless), or walking across the same patch of the Naka River that they both favor, crossing paths on evening walks.

“Hokage-sama,” Chie says one such time, bowing.

The Hokage gives her the same genial smile he gives every child under his purview. “Chie-chan.”

“Did you know,” she asks, one hand resting on the dark, wooded railing that runs along the flat little bridge leading into the deep thicket, “that there is a condition that affected warriors before the founding of Konoha? Long before the honorable Senju Hashirama lived, there was a man in the Land of Iron who lived by the blade. He fell sick, but no healer could figure out what was wrong with him. The tale says that people thought a spirit had taken control of his body. It says again and again that there was no light in his eyes—that he walked around, but he only seemed to see things no one else could, and he never slept.”

“I do know the tale, I believe,” the Hokage says. He folds his hands on a cane that is only for show. His hat looks heavy, but set atop his skull, it never once slips or wavers. “When they took him to see the sky on top of the highest peak in the land, and he saw the full moon, the light came back to him.”

Chie nods. “Yes. I was looking through the archives yesterday, and found the story in a scroll. The language is archaic and formal, but the note at the bottom said the condition affected many warriors. It suggested a poultice of flowers that only bloom in the moonlight—to encourage sleep. As I was reading, I wondered if that could have any application today, with our ninja. We’re safer than ever at night, but...”

“Aah.” He looks thoughtful, but unsurprised. “You have an inquisitive mind, Chie-chan.”

“I am sure the medic-nin would be more informed than I am about this, but if it helps Konoha...”

“Patriotic, too.”

She watches him, not entirely sure whether the amused look on his face is a warning or a benediction. “It is important to me, Hokage-sama.”

Only after she says it does she realize it has a thread of truth to it. As far as places to live go, Konoha, with its thriving markets and temperate weather, is not the worst possible location for her to have been reborn into. There is the absurd benefit of a half-familiarity, a passing parasocial knowledge of a version of it that had existed as a story, and there is also the luck she has had to be a genin in a time when no military personnel below chuunin are permitted in war zones. In the quiet of her apartment, supported by her orphan stipend and then by her genin salary, she has rebuilt some semblance of an existence, and remained nameless.

It is some kind of gift, in her eyes. One she isn’t entirely sure she ever deserved.

But then, the man in front of her has rather gone and dashed that precious anonymity by assigning her to a team under a Hatake—so how much of a gift is it, really?

“Well, it certainly makes me glad to see that Konoha’s future is so considered by its children,” the Hokage says, a smile creeping onto his face for the first time since their conversation began; with a jolt she realizes that the old coot enjoys setting people off-balance. “The life of a ninja is fast-paced. When you get to be my age, you get to wondering what the village will look like when you’re gone.”

Chie blinks. The Hokage, dying? Logically, all things end—she did, after all. But Sarutobi Hiruzen is such an omnipresent force in the village that, even being aware of what a Konoha without him could look like, it seems like a distant dream. “I can’t speak for anyone else, Hokage-sama, but I would like to see it grow. Thrive. I suppose the question would be how to go about it.”

“Indeed. That is the question I have faced in my time, and it takes no small measure of care and calculation to do it.” He walks past her, to the other end of the bridge, and nods. “Take care, Chie-chan. Konoha will always need minds that consider its future.”

“Of course, Hokage-sama.” She bows at what is clearly a dismissal, and takes her leave.

-

“Chie-chan, come here.”

Inoichi again, with a stack of papers in his hand. He looks visibly exhausted—which, well, he

has

been burning the midnight oil recently, with the influx of prisoners T&I has conveniently acquired, but the longer she works with the Yamanaka clan the more she realizes how unusual it is for them to let their weak points be seen by others. Chie nods at Inoki, who puts her registration papers for T&I’s training courses into a file folder. “I’ll be back.”

“Don’t come back,” Inoki mutters, crossing his arms.

Chie shrugs. “Suit yourself. What was it you said about Shikanai-san last week...?”

“Never mind,” Inoki says, paling. “Come back and I’ll get you started on the next series of classes.”

“Just tell them yourself. They’d probably be happy to hear it.” For some reason, probably to do with Inoki being a young teenager, being honest about his feelings seems to give him the vapors. Some things really are timeless. Chie tunes out his sputtering as she reaches Inoichi.

“Walk with me,” Inoichi says. Without waiting for an answer, he steps through the door to the internal offices.

This is new.

Curious more than anything, Chie trots alongside him and waits for him to gather his thoughts. The route they’re taking is a sure shot to the makeshift office he’s taken over within the underground building that is the true heart of T&I—because, she thinks, with more than a little bit of irony, a ninja must look

underneath

the

underneath

—but Inoichi isn’t walking terribly fast.

“You’ve been helping out a lot with the paperwork,” he begins, which was not the tack she was expecting, but she’ll take it. “Truly. What you’re doing is very helpful for T&I, genin status and all.”

“I’m only delivering your paperwork.” In her free time, even, at the expense of other pursuits like harder training. It hardly seems like something to be congratulated for.

Unless she’s being used as a pawn in some wider counterintelligence game she was heretofore unaware of, which isn’t out of the realm of possibility, what she’s doing is really only fulfilling the debt she got herself into by finagling her way into psychology classes—which, itself, is a small part of her grander scheme of healing the rifts in the place and time she has found herself in. There is no selflessness in a ninja’s make unless it is for the good of the one they serve, be that the Hokage, the village, the Daimyo, or, hell, even the Will of Fire.

It just isn’t practical. It’s true that pragmatism doesn’t play into a ninja’s life nearly as often as the Academy conditions its students to believe, but especially during wartime, impracticality is frowned upon. Why waste time and energy on things that won’t have a benefit in the mid-term, if that?

Konoha especially, and the ninja villages as a whole, are shockingly

young

entities, at least as far as her standards go. The framework set up for Konoha is still an evolving thing, resources are somewhat sparse and part of the reason the war even began in the first place, and going out of one’s way for needless kindnesses is almost gauche to the warriors Chie lives and works alongside.

She sometimes forgets that the older generation still remembers the Warring Clans Era. The Hokage himself is hardly older than sixty, if she had to guesstimate, given that the carnage of the era and the necessity of paranoia had resulted in some truly spotty record-keeping.

I'll do something about that. If only for myself,

comes the thought. She files it away for later.

Inoichi holds somewhat different views, and so do most of his generation. Paperwork, even mostly blotted-out paperwork, being in a genin’s hands at all, is evidence of that. But even so, they bear a marked inclination to play the old game of

I-know-you-know-I-know-you-know,

exchanging favors for favors and personal benefits for great services. In the Konoha shaped by the Third Shinobi World War, as it will later be called, there is no real sense of giving without expectation of return.

The only break in that truth is at least twenty years away from making himself known to the world.

“That might be true,” Inoichi is saying with an effort to summon some cheer into his voice, “but even so, it saves me time. You’re an efficient worker, Chie-chan.”

They reach his office. He takes his time unlocking it; she watches as he channels chakra to his shoulder, where something beneath his vest glows. The door squeaks loudly as it opens.

Inside, Ibiki sits patiently against the wall, all his baby fat rather failing to make him look as cool as he’d probably like to. He nods. “Izumi.”

“Your teammate says you can vouch for his abilities. Given your performance here, I’m willing to listen to what you have to say. What do you think?” Inoichi asks from the door.

“You owe me,” Chie tells Ibiki, both her brows raising.

He dips his head. For a kid, and a surly one at that, he really does have just an unreal amount of ambition living in all four feet, nine inches of him. “Yeah, sure. I’ll remember.”

Meaning, in the strange way he has already begun to develop, that he’d calculated the cost of involving her like this beforehand, and he views it as an acceptable price.

Ninja.

“He’s a pain in the ass,” Chie says, turning to Inoichi and looking him in the eyes. “He’s perfect for this department.”

Inoichi grins. "Oh, good. I've got some ideal trial runs for the two of you, in that case."

-

A night full of reeds and whispering water in the spring, as soldiers trickle back in from the front and show no sign of needing to be deployed beyond the borders of the Fire Nation:

“Say, sensei.” A hand in the water, plunged up to the knuckles, and the current passes between each individual finger. “The water’s cold. Is it the snow melts?”

“Probably, Chie-chan,” is the short reply.

“My mother liked cold water.”

Silence, agonized, frozen in time.

“She told me when I was young that a ninja must always be prepared to sacrifice everything for the good of the village.”

“You’re still young, Chie-chan.”

Too young,

is the implication,

to have been told such things.

There’s a protectiveness in that.

“Am I?”

“Are you?”

Her fingers are numb. She takes them out and wipes them off. Stiffness is no good for ninja fingers. “Sometimes I feel like I’ve lived a lifetime already.”

“Sometimes you seem like you have.”

“Maybe. But you can’t move forward if you keep looking back.”

The stars are beautiful,

she thinks, looking up and into the vast, distant blue. When she was a little girl she had stared out her window and longed to touch them. That's a far-away dream.

She’s a little girl, here and now, living in a time further away from outer space than she'd ever been. Her hands are pale and thin and she hasn’t picked the callouses on them off in years.

One small fragment in all eternity. Time moves on, moment by moment. Chie closes her eyes.

“Maybe so,” Sakumo says, stepping away from the bridge, away from the banks of the Naka.

She relaxes. Just a tad. “The war will be over soon.”

“Yes, I think so, too. But there will be skirmishes afterward.” He still looks too haunted to be fully alive.

A shrug. “Isn’t that life?”

“For a ninja, yes.”

The night makes a fool of her. She wants to run her mouth, wants to make big promises.

I’ll change that,

or

one day, there won’t be another war.

But she’s another piece in the puzzle, not a solution.

No one person can end a war.

“I need help,” she says instead. “I want to try training with knives, but I don’t know where to start.”

“Kenjutsu, was it?” Sakumo asks, rhetorical. Trust him to know what she’s on about even when she doesn’t say a word about it.

Chie shrugs. There is guile in every bone of her body and she will use that to her advantage. “Start small?”

“You’re not too far off the mark. We’ll find you a sword.” He holds up his hands a few inches apart. “A small one.”

“My thanks, sensei.”

We’ll find you a sword

implies future action, a continuous motion, going and not stopping. There will have to be someone to train her once the sword is located, after all, and who better than the White Fang?

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“What’s your deal?”

“I don’t know. What’s

your

deal?”

Kakashi’s eyes narrow. “I’ve been watching you.”

“Congratulations,” Chie says, stacking some of the papers Inoichi gave her together and sliding them under the desk she’s been assigned to share with Ibiki. Who’s ignoring her.

Pointedly.

She jabs him none-too-kindly in the leg and has to work to keep her jaw set when he kicks her hard in return.

“You never cared about swords before being assigned to my father.”

“You didn’t know me before I was assigned to your father.”

Her interrogator crosses his arms. All of, what, nine by now? Maybe ten—who the hell knows, she'd never looked up his birthday—and he’s already a little man, asserting his authority in places he has no power in. “Seems to me like nobody did, Izumi.”

“Ibiki did. Ask Ibiki.” Chie stands from the desk and tucks a folder beneath her arm. Before either of the boys can say another word, she stalks into the bowels of T&I. Today of all days is hardly the time to be waylaid by an angry child looking for someone to blame.

“Ah, Chie-chan,” Inoichi says when she enters his office. “Are those the prisoner records? Thank you.”

Chie bows her head lightly. “Yes.”

“...Is something wrong, Chie-chan?” Inoichi asks after a moment with a look she recognizes too well. The arch of the brows, the careful nonchalance—she is not a fool to be led by the nose. The past is a dead thing.

Just because it haunts her doesn’t mean she wants to

talk

about it. That’d just be gauche.

A moment, a breath, and then a sigh. “Yes, Inoichi-sama. The records... I noticed some discrepancies.”

“How so?”

“The records log the time and date of entry, the prisoner’s chakra levels upon admittance to a cell, the security level necessary per prisoner, and which set of patrols will check in on the prisoner. I’ve seen the monitor seals doing their work as far as chakra levels go, and those checked out, but if you examine the records from six months ago—yes, that paper—the chakra levels and the patrol schedules are spotty. Human error is always probable, but considering that each month’s records up until Ibiki and I began training here follow this pattern, I was wondering...”

“If it was just human error or evidence of something else?” Inoichi hums, steepling his fingers together as he leans back in his chair. “Could be both. Ninja aren’t exactly keen on record-keeping, if you’ll recall. We only keep ours because of a law instituted by the Nidaime in relation to war crimes. Our prisoners exist on paper, so the possibility of parole or exchange despite certain kinds of violence committed against us does, too... on paper.”

Chie nods. It goes unsaid that if the prisoner is valuable enough, they may just not be admitted to the records. Wherever ANBU is, she’s sure they’ll have something of the like going on. “In the chaos of those early days, I can see why that would be important.”

“I can’t say I saw the point when I was younger. It’s good to see that kind of wisdom taking root in children your age.”

She shrugs. “War will do that to you.”

“...Right.” Inoichi gives her that odd look again, the one he and Shikaku-san had both given her when they first met. “At any rate, as far as the records go, keep an eye out for other strange things. I’ll have you work on all our records during your desk time. Organize them however you want—just be able to explain it to me.”

“Understood.”

-

Nothing remains of Izumi Keiko that her mission party did not manage to carry with them.

“Well, I’m here,” Chie murmurs, setting a few peonies bound together by a simple ribbon down at the headstone that represents the woman who birthed her. She’s not sure what, exactly, drives her here, to this sleepy cemetery in a quiet corner of Konoha, when the clouds have darkened and a storm looks to be imminent.

Non-shinobi urban centers are only just beginning to develop television; forecasts are determined in cities like Tanzaku Gai with rudimentary instruments, confirmed with those who study the skies, and sent out across nations in printed newspapers like the one tucked beneath her arm, which of course only means they’re hopelessly out of date by the time they hit places like Konoha. Merchants are only permitted within the Village at certain seasonal points on a by-contract basis if they don’t already live within the walls; regulations are stringent, and with the war ongoing for such an unfortunately long time, each and every one is cross-referenced to hell and back.

She sighs and leans her forehead against the stone. In this new reality, accessing information is like pulling teeth, knowing information is something you only do in secret, and her only friends are this gravestone and two children learning to kill for their country.

And Uzumaki Kushina, kind of, but Kushina befriends anyone in her orbit.

“I never questioned my inclination to academia until you died,” she mutters to the grass. “I doubt life would have been easier if you had lived. Never was the lucky sort. But this is ridiculous.”

“What are you—?”

Bashing her head against her mother’s grave is

tempting.

“Hatake-kun, do you need something at this exact moment?”

“I—”

“Great. Get lost. I’m trying to talk to my mother.”

“What was her name?”

Chie closes her eyes and grits her teeth.

What’s wrong with you?

she asks herself.

When did this child get under your skin? Is it just that it’s today?

“What?”

His footsteps sound behind her, which she knows is a concession, and she wants to throw something. “What was her name?” he repeats, coming to stand beside her.

“What does it matter to you?”

“She was a comrade,” he says quietly. Then: “She died for my father.”

“Her name was Keiko. She liked being alone as much as I do.”

“...I’ll go.”

Chie curls up against the gravestone, away from him, and waits until he’s left the area entirely to tuck her head into her knees.

Keiko in death became more to Chie than a sharp intellect and someone who could never replace the mother she’d had before. She was everything that death had forced Chie herself to leave behind just as much as she had been a living, breathing soul; all that came After Keiko was, in truth, the beginning of this life.

And besides, it’s not like you don’t bond with someone who cares for you and feeds you when you are at your most helpless. Chie remembers nothing solid of her earliest years here but rubber kunai teething toys being packed away in a box and tucked into a large closet, which would’ve been when she was two or so, but Keiko had—loved her. Loved her with a quiet fire.

She takes in a shaky breath, then another, and another.

I didn’t love you like that,

she thinks.

I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry—

-

“Again. Gai, come over here,” Sakumo calls, and Gai trots over from the far side of the clearing. Chie centers her stance and slashes at the air once more, feeling her muscles strain to keep up with the repeated motion. “Again. Watch her form, now.”

Chie sucks in a breath. There is nothing quite so ungainly as being a sweaty mess under the noon sun; the central area of the clearing is bright under its rays and she would like nothing more than to dive into the sun-dappled pond at its edge. But this physical conditioning is necessary to survive in this world, and she is no longer hindered by a misaligned spine and bad hips, so with just as much care as the last hundred times Sakumo has had her do this exercise, she lifts her blade and performs the most precise cut she can manage with shaky arms.

“What did you notice as she performed the kata?” Sakumo asks Gai.

Gai hums in thought. “Chie-chan, when you swung your sword, you shifted your weight forward.”

“Too far?” Chie asks, straightening.

“Not that much,” Sakumo responds. “You’re turning a kata meant for shallow cuts into one that could reliably break bone, if you needed to. For someone as small as you are, Chie-chan, you’re inclined to fight like a juggernaut. But you don’t have the muscle. If you wish to rely on your strength, you’d need to augment it with chakra—learning how will be an addition to your already-packed schedule.”

“Like Tsunade of the Sannin, huh.” She considers it.

“I must admit I am terribly curious to see how the process of acquiring that kind of strength goes,” Gai says with a gleam in his eyes. “The taijutsu scrolls you gave me to better my illusions, Chie-chan, they have sparked my curiosity about the body in combat. If you choose not to, I may attempt it myself.”

Chie tilts her head. “How about this, then? We’ll work at it together. Ibiki?”

“Yes?” is the response from somewhere high in the trees. Up the fourth tree closest to the pond, if she had to make an educated guess.

“How about it?”

“I don’t think so. You’ve seen my father—all the signs point to me turning out like that. I won’t need the augmentations.” There’s a poignant pause. “I will join you for conditioning, though.”

“It’s settled, then,” she says.

“I can’t say I expected this team to work out this way,” Sakumo muses aloud.

Gai and Chie glance at him. “Pardon?”

Sakumo smiles—actually smiles, something real. “On paper, you’re a very independent bunch, and you didn’t interact very much in the Academy. But in practice, you’re forming a cohesive unit as seamlessly as a bunch of genin can be expected to. First you worked out the kinks through your training and your shared interests—T&I, tea, that one ramen stand you all keep going to, studying—and now this. You have the makings of a strong team if you keep sticking together like this. Good work, kids.”

“Sensei!” Gai cries, throwing his arms around the man. “We are so very honored to have garnered your praise!”

Chie politely averts her eyes as a very startled Sakumo gives her a helpless look, as if she ought to be the one to do something about it. Ninja need more hugs if this is the reaction he’s having. Gai’s brand of positive reinforcement is a bit... boisterous, but learning to take it in stride will give all of Konoha a break in the future.

Accept it

, she mouths.

“I... I’m glad you’re happy,” Sakumo says, patting Gai on the head with a bewildered air.

Gai sniffles. Loudly. “Thank you, sensei!”

“Hey, Ibiki,” Chie improvises, turning to the tree he was last in. “Any breakthroughs?”

“This code was constructed and written in a dialect from the Warring Clans period. Tell me what

you

think.”

“Does it have the Nidaime’s name anywhere in it?”

“Again with him,” Ibiki grumbles, dropping out of the leaves a couple trees over from where she had thought he was. “Yes, as a matter of fact. I haven’t gotten through all of it, but the gist is already something about his policy work. You’ll probably want to read it later.”

-

Chie trots after Sakumo, keeping a watchful gaze on the people around them as they head to the Hokage’s office above the Academy. Those who know of Sakumo falter when they see him in the street; most of the ninja she recognizes either turn away or make themselves scarce. With some sense of irony, she thinks of a little blond boy some twenty years down the road.

I will change fate,

she thinks idly, contenting herself with giving her sensei’s detractors equally dirty looks in return. The shock—and then the shame—on their faces doesn’t exactly feel great, but they’re being assholes, and they know better.

“Chie-chan.”

She jumps in guilty surprise. “Sensei?”

“Enough.” It’s a rumble, but not a terrifying one. Chie thinks of a bear reprimanding a cub, then feels somewhat guilty for the thought.

But she’ll die before she admits that. Acknowledging it is as good as, to a ninja. “Sensei, did you know that the Nidaime had a code of honor he adapted from the Senju clan code?”

“Ninja and honor, huh,” Sakumo muses, a touch of darkness in his voice. He’s silent as they pass through the streets like living ghosts; only when they turn a corner and make it to the outside of the clinic he drops her off at after training does he speak again. “Chie-chan, did you know that Uzu’s decline from a major nation to a minor one was only partially because of its fuinjutsu?”

“What?” she asks sharply. It’s easy enough to surmise, sure, but hearing it flat-out from someone who truly belongs to this world, this time, this place? Sakumo only smiles at her. With disappointment, she realizes she’s fallen directly into his trap: knowledge is a currency, and by showing that she didn’t know, she’s accepted that he’s got more currency on hand than she does.

“Heeeeeeeey, Sakumo-senpai!”

The shout is loud and overjoyed. Chie and Sakumo turn as one just in time for a blur of red to bowl him over in a hug. “Wow, Senpai, I didn’t know you were gonna be here, ya know? I’m so glad to see you! I just got back from the front! Listen, I wanted to tell you—”

“Hello, Kushina-chan,” Sakumo says, downright indulgent, and Chie’s jaw drops when he pats the woman’s back with only a fraction of the awkwardness with which he handles Chie and her team. “Have you met Chie-chan? She’s one of my students.”

One thought enters her mind:

Not fair.

“Chie!” Kushina whirls, eyes bright, and she thinks she recognizes that look. She’s seen it before, in the past, in the eyes of the young and immortal, and she realizes something, then.

Uzumaki Kushina is in love.

She hadn’t quite looked this happy before she was sent out on deployment—and isn’t it funny that a war could cause this kind of happiness? Even when those strong arms release Sakumo and sweep her up to hold her close, Chie can’t quite bring herself to mind.

Too much.

“How have you been holding up, ya know? Have you been taking care of yourself, Chie? You gotta eat more! You’re too thin! You should come to dinner with me—I cook a mean bowl of ramen, ya know!”

“K-Kushina-san,” Chie manages. She does mind being manhandled. There’s only ever been one person whose affections she’s been comfortable with, and her mother is beyond inaccessible to her now. “I—would like to stand up—”

“Oh, right! Sorry!”

Kushina puts her back down with no hint of bashfulness. Chie adjusts her battle vest and her sleeveless shirt to try and put them back in place, very carefully ignoring Sakumo standing by and radiating smugness. “How have you been, Kushina-san?”

“I’ve been amazing,” Kushina says, grinning. “What about you, huh, Chie? Are you happy getting assigned to this lunk—”

“Sensei is a remarkable teacher and I am grateful for his instruction,” she says very quickly and loudly, enough so for passerby to hear. Ignoring the red creeping up her face, the way Kushina’s grin morphs into a cheshire smirk, and Sakumo’s raised brows takes more effort than she would like.

“Sounds like something I gotta know about. Come over for dinner when you’re done getting treated! Bring this new team of yours, Sakumo-senpai!”

She’d be unhappier about the prospect of talking to people outside of her working hours, but Sakumo’s showing an actual emotion, so she plays along and dips her head. “I’d be happy to, Kushina-san.”

“We’ll see if Gai and Ibiki are free,” Sakumo assures Kushina, who claps her hands together with a smile like sunshine, makes them promise again to make it, and bounds away in the direction of the district market. Teacher and student watch her form be swallowed by the usual late afternoon crowd, heedless for a moment of just how unwelcoming that crowd is, and when she’s vanished from sight Sakumo raises a brow. “Does everyone—”

“Like I said, it was a misunderstanding. I was... I was researching. I like to know things.” Chie wishes the ground would swallow her up and let her die. Her jaw sets as she thinks of the unfortunate day when she’d spoken one word too many about the Hatake family, which she had just happened to be researching at the time. Hokage-sama seemed to find it hilarious. Hilarious enough to assign her to the White Fang himself, which was absolutely not what she’d been intimating no matter

what

anyone says, and she has reams and reams of notes on the political situation in Konoha to prove it... not that she can actually show them to all the people who’ve caught wind of the misguided assumption that she hero-worships her sensei, given the language she wrote them in, but still...

A large hand lands on her hair and ruffles it. She goes very still, silently horrified by the tears that threaten to spring to her eyes.

Her family had played with her hair. Both her parents had tousled her short mop well into her adulthood, which had been just one more reason to keep it short and free of fuss, easily malleable and toyed with.

“Chie-chan...”

“Besides,” she says too loudly, her own heart hammering in her ears. “You are a good instructor. I meant what I said. I should go get this treated now. See you later, sensei.”

With that she flees into the clinic. Sakumo’s half-amused, half-weary eyes follow her until the doors swing shut.

-

Dinner goes great.

Up until everyone arrives, that is.

“...Shit,” Chie says softly as Team Minato filters in and Kakashi stands frozen in the doorway, eyes locked with her sensei, who’s equally as frozen. Ibiki kicks her leg in reprimand for letting her reaction show to the others. Kushina looks between them shrewdly while Gai, Rin, and Obito are talking on her squishy couches, the latter two heedless of the sudden tension in the air. Behind Kakashi, Namikaze Minato is making a face that’s a cross between the emotion Chie is feeling right now and the emotion Ibiki is trying very hard to hide at her side. All three of them are united in the excruciating awkwardness of being a part of this moment, and inadvertently, Chie’s gaze meets Minato’s.

She’s never spoken to or encountered Minato before, but somehow, she understands exactly what he’s about to do. She nods. He returns it.

“Hey, Ibiki-kun, Chie-chan, Minato,” Kushina says. “Come help me with the ramen. I made a lot, ya know!”

Minato pushes Kakashi in with an apologetic look at his student that goes entirely unnoticed. He kicks the door shut—a seal glows in the center when he does, a spiral laced with geometric patterns, blessed be the Uzumaki, Chie thinks—and toes off his shoes. When Kakashi tries to pull the door open, it stays stubbornly shut. Minato gives him a mild look that is absolutely anything but. “Maa, Kakashi, I think you’d better stay and talk.”

“You too, Sensei,” Chie murmurs with an iron grip on his wrist. His hands are shaking; she gives him a sympathetic look, but makes him stand with her anyways. If it’s going to happen now, it’s got to happen, not destroy dinner. “Upstairs. There’s a sitting room. You have the strength.”

Woodenly, Sakumo goes to his son, whose own nerves are so prominent that his chakra is buzzing and sparking like a badly-produced fuse. “Kakashi,” he says with absolutely no inflection in his voice. “Why don’t we go upstairs.”

It’s not a question.

The Kakashi that would’ve hounded her for information on his own father is clearly absent this evening. He goes without even a token protest, and just like that, the two of them have disappeared up Kushina’s antique ironwood staircase, scavenged from the outskirts of Uzushiogakure after it took a heavy hit from Kiri in the early days of the war. Its presence is part of why Kushina had been so happy to run into Sakumo earlier—he’d helped her, once, on a mission they’d had together during a lull in the war, gathering up whatever was salvageable and carrying it back to Konoha and earning her undying loyalty in the process.

That’s what Chie learned by arriving early, at any rate.

A hand lands on her shoulder. She looks up into the blue, blue eyes of Minato, whose gaze is serious but... warm, somehow. “We’ve done what we can. It’s their turn now.”

“Yes,” Chie tries to say, but her mouth feels numb, almost. “You’re right.”

Good. That came out okay. It sounded normal.

His eyes soften. Those same eyes would have looked colder than ice out on the field when he gained the moniker of the Yellow Flash, Demon of Iwa. “Chie-chan, was it?”

“Yes, Namikaze-san. Izumi Chie. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” She bows.

“Minato-san is fine,” he says, smiling. “Why don’t we help Kushina? She’s giving me the evil eye.” His chuckle has a distinctly nervous tinge to it. When Chie looks, Kushina’s smile is angelic; she ruins the effect by winking outrageously at her, but it eases the ice in her chest all the same.

-

“This is incredible.” Ramen is one of her favorite foods, and in this life she can actually eat it, which is how she’d gotten to know Kushina in the first place—Ichiraku’s has been around for a long time, and Teuchi’s a nice man who always hands out a little extra to repeat customers. Which Chie and Kushina both are.

Ichiraku’s is good. But Kushina’s ramen? Delectable.

Scrumptious.

Even soul-filling.

“I knew you’d appreciate it!” Kushina’s grin is wolfish. “This is my own recipe—handed down through the family for generation after generation. You can taste the mountains and the sea!”

“I can,” Chie agrees, ignoring Obito and Ibiki’s incredulous looks boring holes in the side of her head. “I’m certain your ancestors are honored, Kushina-san. If they have any taste, they have to be.”

“It really is good. Thank you for cooking for us, Kushina-san,” Rin says earnestly.

Kushina waves it off, but there’s something soft and warm and melty in her eyes that belies her true feelings. “I’m just glad you all enjoy it, ya know! There’s heaps more—eat as much as you like, alright?”

“You should be a chef,” Obito says through a mouthful of noodles, only it comes out more like

Ywofu smfhd bwe a chef!

He swallows and gestures with his chopsticks, excited by his own ideas. “No, a ninja chef! You kick ass and cook ramen! Like the comics—what’s his name, the Iron—”

“—The Iron Samurai,” Chie contributes. Quietly.

But quietly doesn’t mean much in a room full of ninja.

“Yeah! The Iron Samurai! He wanders the land and cooks food for the hungry, and kicks the asses of the evil! You’re cool like that, Kushina-san!” Obito pauses and gawks at Chie, his head catching up to his mouth. “Wait, you... you...?”

She shifts, suddenly uncomfortable with everyone’s curious gazes on her. Oh

no.

Minato and Kushina both have that look in their eyes, the one she recognizes from Inoichi and Shikaku, that burning, amused interest. “What? They’re good.”

“You act tough... but anyone who reads the Iron Samurai has justice burning in their heart!” Is he starry-eyed? He is. “You have to teach me now!”

“...Teach you what?”

Gai hums. “That’s not very youthful of you, Chie-chan.”

“What?” Chie gives him an odd look. She really can’t think of anything she’d contribute to Obito’s training; aside from helping him with his information gathering skills by giving him the option of running around the village until he figures out her schedule, she’s not much better than he is... she thinks. Obito’s a skilled fighter, and being on Team Minato has only made him better.

She has no idea why Kakashi took to thinking of him as a dunce. An idiot, yes, interpersonally, but as a ninja he’s always had promise. Just because the Academy didn’t work for him...

It probably isn’t fair that she knows exactly what he could become, given time he’d never had as a genin of Konoha in a war started by men who were old long before he was ever young. And training. But she can only imagine that training of the sort the future Obito might one day undergo, unless Kannabi has already passed, and to her it will only ever seem like torment. There’s training and then there’s abuse. Senseis are censured for the latter. Unfortunate that Uchiha Madara always thought himself above the law.

Gai smiles. “That’s not very youthful of you.”

He’s

teasing

her.

“I’m an old woman,” she informs him. She stretches out one arm and relishes the sick cracking noise her elbow joint makes, like glowstick juice. One constant across both worlds: bones so crackly they might as well be composed of glowsticks. “Oh, look—my bones are creaking... ah, that was one of my joints. I’m not suited to teach anything, I’m afraid.”

“You can fix that, you know. The cracking,” Rin says.

Chie blinks in surprise. “Really?”

She nods, a gleam in her eyes as she leans forward and gestures with her hands. “Most medic nin learn how to do it as a matter of basic enhancements—you know, like strengthening bones to make them harder to break, and helping chakra systems integrate with the physical function of the body, and, well, suppressing or enhancing the functions of certain parts of the body—”

“—which came in handy on our last mission,” Minato says cheerfully. “Rin’s very good at it, you know. Obito had to pretend he couldn’t use his leg without actually damaging it, and Rin numbed it and fixed it up as needed.”

“I think it works even better than before!” Obito hurries to add, pink creeping up his cheeks as Rin flushes and ducks her head.

“Sounds useful,” Ibiki says. “We could use a talent like that.”

He really is just like that. T&I did not make Morino Ibiki ominous; it’s something he carries with him, deep in the core of his being, which amuses her more than she could ever truly say. Soon enough he’ll start getting a kick out of it, too. For now he’s a young boy who takes very much after his father, whatever disagreements he seems to have with the man, and that means a very serious and terribly unflappable child with a penchant for sarcasm and mind games.

Not for the first time, she wonders what mission in the story she knew led to the scars he will one day gain.

Maybe he won’t get them at all. If she’s in the picture...

“I’m afraid none of us are medically inclined,” Chie says, thinking with some irony of Gai’s singular attempt to resurrect a dead fish.

“Oh, just let me know if you need help with any of that.” Rin’s smile is sweet. There’s steel behind it. “I always need more practice, you know? If I get fast enough, Yuna-san at the hospital has promised to teach me even more techniques. Did you know she knows the theory behind the Strength of a Hundred Seal—the one Tsunade-sama uses?”

For the first time, Chie thinks she might grow fond of Nohara Rin.

-

Later that night:

“Hey, how do you know Chie-chan?”

Kushina stretches across one of her couches and gives Minato that familiar crooked smile she reserves for only him. “You heard us talking about ramen, right? She’s another Ichiraku’s regular.”

“Ah, good company, then.” Minato grins.

She nods. “Why do you ask?”

“Oh, no reason, really,” which with Minato could mean anything and everything, but as always, he bends for her. “I just... thought she looked sad, except when spoken to.”

“Mhm. She’s looked like that for as long as I’ve known her—about three years, ya know?” She swings up and her hair cascades over her torso like a red waterfall. “I pay for her ramen sometimes. She eats just as much as I do, but she doesn’t seem to put on much weight, ya know.”

Minato frowns. “That’s not supposed to happen, is it?”

“Nope. If she’s gaining anything, it’s muscle. But, ya know, I asked her where her parents were once...”

“Ah.” He knows how this story ends. It’s his own, in a way, and it became Kushina’s in the worst possible way.

Kushina sighs. “Yeah. Kid cooks, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she has a hard time eating things that aren’t ramen.”

“Or looking after herself. I know enough about little geniuses to spot poorly-bandaged hands,” Minato mutters, and yelps in surprise when Kushina shoves him with a laugh. “W-What was that for?”

“You’re a genius,” she says, like he’s forgotten.

He gives her the goofiest grin he can muster. “You really think so?”

“I know so.” She laughs again when he tackles her in an adoring hug, her own arms closing around him and holding him with all the fervor and red fire that saw her through the battlefield unscorched.

Uzumaki Kushina is in love. She prays she always will be.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Chie returns home after dinner with a full stomach and an absolutely batty mind. Or, at least, she feels that way as she drifts through the apartment building like a wanderer in a waking dream.

She sighs and lets her forehead hit her front door with a

thunk.

Minato insisted on walking them all as far as the crossroads where Kushina’s neighborhood came up flush against the district market Chie frequented as a child, and from there walked Rin and a reluctant Gai (who dearly wanted to wait with Kushina for the Hatake clan to finish its meeting but was too sensitive to propriety to insist upon anything but profuse thanks to Kushina for the meal) home.

After that, Ibiki somehow managed to melt into the shadows—Inoki must have started teaching him stealth tactics—and Obito swung his arms back and forth, looking oddly at Chie, something hesitant in his expression.

“What is it?” she asked, not bothering to conceal her frown.

Obito gulped. “You... you really care about them, don’t you?”

“What?”

“I thought you must be angling for something at first,” he said, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “Only you were always so quiet nobody really knew it until it happened. You managed to get apprenticed to Ba-Kakashi’s dad! You made sure it would happen! But, after tonight, I guess I was wrong. You really care. About both of them.”

Chie

stared

. “I...”

“You’re not so bad,” Obito said with a bright, young smile, so peaceful and assured.

“I’m not Sensei’s apprentice,” she said feebly. He snorted. She shook her head. “No, really, I... we’re a genin team. And I didn’t have any hand in team assignments. The Hokage had his reasons. I’m just... I’m...”

I’m no one.

The thought stuck in her mind like a rock caught in the dip of a riverbed, vibrating under the force of an unseen current, and even as Obito smiled again, shrugged, and bade her good night, striding off with a jaunty step toward the Uchiha district, she couldn’t get it to go away.

Now, she sits on her threadbare couch with her feet tucked up against her, chin on her knees, alone in the dark, staring out her window at the night sky and the constellations that are far, far away, trying very hard to breathe and finding it difficult to get enough air with how tightly she’s curled in on herself.

No one no one no one

beats in the back of her head like a neverending refrain, and it’s not really that Chie wants to be someone, anyone, not when she thinks about it. Change fate? Sure. Live well, and waste no chances given to her? Absolutely.

But being someone is a very different thing from being no one, and no matter her insistence that she’s not Sakumo’s apprentice and she’s not angling for anything and she’s not trying to take someone else’s place, nobody in this world seems to get that. Chie buries her head in her knees, feeling a miserable clenching in her heart at the truth of this new existence reinforcing its facts upon her, however reconciled to it she has necessarily become in the interim between her first awareness and now.

I...

The window rattles.

Chie is behind her kitchen counter with a kunai in her hand before she really registers anything that’s happening. A dark figure looms behind the panes, and she watches as they pause... and rap smartly on the glass with two fingers.

She stares at the knife in her hands. The metal gleams, even in the shadows.

Electing to ignore the way her heart is pounding in her mouth, she stands and approaches the window. On the other side, Kakashi has the good grace to look at least a little sheepish. Chie laughs—more like a weak chuckle, leaking from her as if she is some cracked vessel,

oh

her voice is still so high and young and small—and covers the lock from his sight while she undoes it and slides the frame up. “Hatake-kun.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, almost before she’s gotten the suffix out.

She blinks. “I—what?”

“I’m sorry,” he repeats. She steps aside to let him in; in a matter of moments he’s standing across from her, bowing deeply. “I’ve caused you trouble recently. I apologize.”

“What did you do?” she asks, bewildered and not a little discomfited. “Would you—like to come in? Have some tea...?”

Kakashi makes a noise in his throat that sounds almost like a strangled cat.

Chie freezes, recognizing that was likely

not

the correct response in this situation. “Um. I... accept your apology. Truly. Whatever it was that you did, it’s okay—”

“I haven’t treated you like a comrade should,” he blurts out guiltily, the bow only deepening. “I—accused you of trying to take my place—and I cast undue suspicion on you when you were only trying to assist my father—”

“Hatake-kun...” Her face is burning. Whatever misery she was feeling earlier, this is just about a thousand times worse.

“Kakashi!”

Shocked, he looks up at her with round eyes. He’s so young. He’s just nine. Maybe ten. She really should check on that sometime, but the point is that he’s a child. Chie never made it past twenty—never made it further than about ten years older than he is right now. The sight of his reddened eyes and wet lashes makes something inside her that remembers being

nearly

an adult roil with guilt. Pint-sized killing machines they may all be, but they’re all still

human.

She slowly extends her hand in his direction, as if he might be scared away by the motion, and when he does nothing she gently takes his shoulder and guides him to straighten up.

“I accept your apology. Don’t be troubled about that any more. Alright?”

“I—!” he protests, cutting himself off when she shakes her head.

“You didn’t have any reason to think differently, and the village gossip hasn’t helped anything.” Herding him into a chair and busying herself with tea to give him some time to compose himself takes little to no effort. She has the mad urge to start laughing at the absurdity of the situation and tamps down on it, all too aware that she’s not in the best way at the moment.

Quiet settles in, broken only by the low burbling of the kettle as the oven top slowly heats up.

“I don’t understand you at all,” Kakashi says softly.

Chie does smile, then, dry and crumbling, but the night hides most of that. “You’d be far from the first to feel that way.”

“You give without any thought of reward.” His little genius brain is working hard. “No ninja is like that. We all want something in return.”

“Who says I don’t?” she asks. The question is more rhetorical than anything, but he doesn’t need to know that.

He gives her a narrow-eyed look. “You’re sure waiting a long time to collect, then.”

“Maybe I’m playing the long game.”

“Maybe,” he echoes, with just enough doubt to be a tad insulting.

The kettle whistles. She turns and attends to it, pouring the tea with careful deliberation; Kakashi watches her movements without comment. “This is an herbal tea. It helps soothe the joints and encourages the body to regulate its sleep better.”

“Do you really want to learn kenjutsu?”

“It’s useful,” Chie says. “Short-range melee to back up tactical mid-range and defend supportive long-range. In a team, you want to cover each other’s bases.”

“Huh.” Kakashi sips at his tea, still looking ragged at the edges, but not quite as bad as before.

She desperately wants to know the results of his chat with Sakumo. Maybe the details, too, if she pressed a little further into her own motives, but aside from ninja nosiness she equally strongly does not want to invade their privacy. Whatever happened had inspired him to come here, after all.

Kakashi tilts his head, studying her with a coy look on his face.

I have a bad feeling about this,

she thinks, eyeing him back. "Do you need something, Hatake-kun?"

"You called me Kakashi before," he points out.

Chie raises a brow. "I needed to grab your attention."

"So you're willing to discard politeness when you need to achieve your goals." He's smiling. Why is this notoriously hardass ten-year-old smiling? "Good to know."

"Is your tea finished? Here, hand me the cup," she says, taking it from him. "I'll wash up."

Kakashi gamely lets her. She likes that even less. He stands and bows lightly to her. "Thank you for your hospitality, Izumi-kun. I won't take up any more of your time tonight."

"Don't worry about it," she says absently, fiddling with the sink so the water is just warm enough that her fingers don't get even colder than they already are.

He takes the door this time. Pausing just before he leaves, he says over his shoulder, "Father was right. You

are

an interesting person. See you around."

Chie frowns at the closed door. "What the hell does

that

mean?"

Unfortunately, only the silence of the apartment answers her.

-

The next day, she arrives early for training, as usual, and finds Sakumo already waiting. He has a black eye, but when he spots her, he smiles.

"Thank you, Chie-chan," he says, sincerely.

Chie looks away, focusing on the nearby stream. "For what? Showing up on time?"

Sakumo laughs. It rings out in the early morning air, a strong laugh for a man who is learning to live again, and Chie finds some of her worry abating at the sound. He ruffles her hair. "Why don't we get you started, since you're here? Get running, and then do your katas."

"Yes, Sensei." Almost without her noticing, something that has been cold and frozen in her chest for a very long time cracks and begins to thaw.

Chie feels the wind in her hair and her blood pumping through her veins as she runs and runs and runs, and thinks that one day, she might know what peace tastes of.

-

Some days after this, Chie tidies up another stack of papers during desk time and walks past Inoki, whose head is buried in his hands at the theoretical physics problem Ibiki has presented to him, and into T&I's record room.

She looks around. There are tottering file cabinets, all with locks installed, and she can see dust coating each and every one of them except for the one behind the desk Shikanai is napping at.

"What," Chie says presently, "the hell is this?"

Shikanai yawns, taking their time to stretch, and then they lean forward and rest their elbows on the desk. "What the hell is what?"

"This. Do these even have files in them, to pass as vaguely realistic?" Chie asks, waving at the cabinets.

All she gets in response is a sigh. "Do you know, I don't actually know. I just come in here to nap."

"Just look at this mess," she mutters to herself, rapping her gloved knuckles against the nearest cabinet. An empty metal

clang

sounds. She nods to herself. "Right. I'm going to fix this."

"What?" Shikanai asks, brushing their bangs out of their eyes to peer at her with mild disbelief.

"I'm going to fix this," Chie says. "Inoki will help me."

They settle back into their chair. "Try not to get swamp stuff in his hair this time."

"He needs to be more aware of his surroundings." She

knows

she's smirking. With an effort, she forces herself to behave.

"Looking for more of a challenge?" Shikanai asks, entirely too dryly.

She hums. "Maybe so.

Inoki,

come here!"

"What is it now, brat?!"

"Do you

want

Inoichi-san to know what you called me the other day, Inoki?"

Inoki appears in the doorway, pale and glaring at her. "Some day, the gods will judge you."

"And I look forward to it," she says. Being called a grubby orphan is more a subject of hilarity to her than anything, but, well, Inoki made the mistake of saying it out loud, so she's happy to use it. "But for now, we have a mystery on our hands."

"What? Where?" He bends out of the doorway, looking at either side of the front lobby like there might be something waiting for him out there. His braid dangles.

Chie clenches her fist.

I want to yank on that,

she thinks, a lot more like an actual child of eleven years might. She forces herself to loosen it up. "In here. In the filing cabinets."

"Oh, they're fake," Inoki says. "I mean, I think they are..."

Shikanai snorts.

"You know what? I'll check." He strides over to one, makes sure his back is to Chie, and makes a few handsigns she sees anyways because he forgot to check if she'd moved again after he did. The lock unclicks and he slides the drawer open.

"Well?" Chie asks.

Inoki is staring at the contents. "Huh," he remarks to the air. "I'll be damned."

She sidles up to the cabinet and stretches on her toes to see what he's seeing. Messy folders full of paper fill the interior of the drawer. Several of the papers sticking out have the familiar layout of most T&I-associated observation forms, but when he pulls one up, she sees that it's completely blank save for a redacted name. "Ah, the records."

"So what about this is a mystery?"

Inoki looks like he doesn't really want to know the answer. Chie answers specifically because of that. "I've been looking into the inconsistency in some of our paperwork for a bit—just what's been coming in about admittance of prisoners, that kind of thing. This was the next step. Look at this place. It's dusty and obviously disused. It wouldn't deter an enemy ninja in the least, would it?"

"Maybe the enemy ninja would think something so obvious was a trap to make them think nothing was there," Shikanai contributes, looking half-asleep.

"Maybe so," Chie agrees. "But at the very least, the appearance of an organized room would throw them off. I want to tidy things up here, put in a few simple tricks, make it look like what it isn't."

"You're really serious about this." Inoki flips his hair out of his face. "And you want me to help because...?"

"You're easy and available," she says promptly.

Shikanai chokes. So does Inoki.

Feeling a little bad about that one, Chie reaches into the drawer, pulls out a folder, and presses it into Inoki's hands. "You have better vision, too. You won't be squinting all the time to scan these and sort them by amount of information."

"Wait, are you... is that why you're so bad at hitting targets?" Inoki asks.

"Glasses cost money," she says, annoyed all over again with herself for breaking the pair she had months ago. That pair was Keiko's. "I'm on a budget. Orphan stipends don't do much to supplement a genin's pay."

It is, unfortunately, true. Especially with the war. She can pay her rent and get herself groceries, which not everyone can do, but her vision hadn't been

as

bad when she was younger, so she'd never thought to save for it—and now she

could,

but it'd stretch her a few months thanks to the inflated prices for the needed materials. Inflated prices caused by the war and the collapse of diplomatic relations between most all the ninja villages, albeit not the individual non-ninja villages.

Her body and the war just seem to have bad timing all around. Luckily, she's used to dealing with piss-poor eyesight.

"...Let me do the reading, and you do the sorting."

-

Neither Inoki or Inoichi say anything about it, but the next day, she turns up to T&I and Shikanai absently passes her a simple triangular box that unfolds outwards, by the looks of it.

"What's this?" she asks.

Shikanai gives her a mildly scornful look. "What d'you think?"

"Well, obviously, it's... that's not what I meant."

"I don't know." They look very carefully blase. "Showed up at the desk with a note for you when I came in today. Go on, open it."

Chie does. Inside a pair of glasses are nestled within a navy blue frame, simple and rectangular; without quite realizing it, she lets out the breath she was holding. She slides the glasses on and blinks as she can suddenly see the fine details of Shikanai's intricately-stitched vest, all the applique standing out in a way it never has before. "Is that... a bumblebee?"

"Yes, it is. My little brother did it. This was my gift from the clan for making chunin," Shikanai says, a hint of pride leaking into their voice.

She smiles. "It's wonderful."

"Sure is." They pause. "You gonna keep wearing them? They suit you."

"Oh, I'm not ever going to take them off," Chie says, quite serious. Shikanai laughs her off, ambling in the direction of the lower levels, and Chie stands quite alone in the front lobby for a few moments before she remembers that she does, in fact, have work to do today.

-

The war officially ends in midsummer.

Team Minato is gone for several weeks during the armistice process between Konoha and Iwa, and Sakumo, who had started to get some color back, is drawn and pale again despite the daily temperatures ranging from "broiling" to "just absolutely stewing".

"Hey, Sensei, can we have team lunch at Gai's?" Chie asks at Ibiki's terribly unsubtle nudge. (Ibiki has started to treat social interactions like a science, and she's made it into a game for the three of them to keep up with each other. It will be useful later, she thinks.)

Sakumo's distant gaze flickers back to reality and falls upon Ibiki, laid out painfully on the ground, holding his stomach and glaring at Chie. "Of course. But how did Ibiki get there, Chie-chan?"

Chie looks expectantly at Ibiki.

"I tripped," Ibiki deadpans. Part of the game is not giving it up.

"Did you."

He nods. "Over that rock."

Mysteriously, a perfectly-placed rock is indeed nestled in the grass right behind where Ibiki had been standing.

Sakumo looks amused. "Right. Gai, does your father have a grocery list for you?"

"Yes, Sensei! I have it in my bag!" Gai trots over and fishes the paper out, handing it to Sakumo with a blinding grin.

"Eggplant," Sakumo reads off. "Rice, sesame seeds, cucumber... We should be able to find all this at the market nearby."

Chie and Ibiki exchange glances. Sakumo's tone is leading somewhere, likely one of his unofficial D-rank missions, and both of them have places to be fairly soon after lunch. They hadn't planned on a long lunch.

"Don't worry, I'll take care of it. Gai too," Sakumo adds. "Chie-chan, if you could tell Yamanaka-san and Uchiha-san that I have an answer for them, I would appreciate that."

An answer?

Chie wonders. But she nods anyways. "I can go take care of that now."

"Go ahead." Sakumo waves her off, and Ibiki soon after; he trots to keep up with her. For half a moment she almost expects Obito to pop out of the brush and attempt to ambush them, as he's taken to doing in the past few months.

Chie trips on thin air as she realizes, with the abruptness of one who has quite forgotten that there was anything to be concerned about in the first place, that Kannabi Bridge must have happened months ago. Before the first dinner at Kushina's, even.

"It's not very ninjalike to be clumsy," Ibiki observes, clinical, as she picks herself up and dusts herself off.

"There was a rock and I was thinking," she grumps, albeit not especially put out by her own foolishness.

Ibiki looks at the ground. Sure enough, a perfectly placed rock is situated right where she was walking. Unimpressed, he looks back up.

Carefully uncrossing her fingers behind her back, she gives him a

what-can-you-do

sort of shrug and keeps walking. "Anyways, look at the village. Are those festival preparations happening over there?"

"Looks like it." Ibiki gives the brightly-colored party supplies a few civilians are carrying into a warehouse a sideways look.

"They even put the Uchiha clan symbol in full color on the Four Clans banners. Must have been commissioned." And isn't that a headache and a half. Even now, the Uchiha clan isn't exactly the most popular in the village. Respected as the police force, maybe, but liked?

That's a harder stance for most people to take. Even Obito, most un-Uchiha of the Uchihas, still gets wary looks around the village—especially now that his Sharingan...

Now that his Sharingan is active.

Chie feels a distinct urge to knock her head against a tree.

The Sharingan! He has the Sharingan and he isn't horribly scarred! Kakashi still had that scar on his eye and I didn't notice because it's normal to me! But he's still showing both of his eyes—did he even get the Sharingan? And Rin—

"Who died?" Ibiki asks.

She looks at him askance. "Pardon?"

"You're worried. It's all over your face."

Do better, I don't want to cover for you while we're out.

With a great sigh, she arranges her face into a semblance of neutrality. "Happy?"

Ibiki shrugs. "Is anyone?"

"Well, the war is ending, so it's possible."

"This one took fifteen years to build up and four years from start to finish. There'll just be another like it in a decade or two, and skirmishes in between, besides."

She doesn't bother to hide her surprise, looking Ibiki over with raised brows. "I didn't know you thought that way."

"It's human nature, isn't it? We're always fighting."

"Wait," Chie says. "Four years?"

"Did you forget how to count?" Ibiki is

probably

joking, but he's starting to look concerned, too.

"It just seemed like so much longer. My mother died at the onset." She isn't even lying about that part, although it's not the real reason she's feeling so utterly shellshocked.

No, the real reason is that she's just realized the timeline they're working with is completely different—

accelerated!

—from the one she once read about all those years ago. She's not sure Itachi Uchiha is even

born

yet. In the world she'd known to be fiction, he was five by the time the war ended—old enough to have found his way into trouble and be traumatized by it.

Is that it? Are we measuring time in Uchiha now?

she asks herself.

"Sometimes I forget," Ibiki says, and his lack of discomfort would be almost nice if it wasn't an eleven-year-old trying to be grown up and adult. "You play things so casually."

"Death is part of life. And she would have wanted me to live well." They arrive at T&I by then, walking through the exterior archive of records of economic transactions to the door hidden behind the sixth bookcase on the left wall.

In the T&I front lobby, Inoki looks up from some papers. There are bags under his eyes. "Finally decided to show up?"

"We still have team training, and lunch," Chie responds, patting him on the head as she walks by.

"Hey, Chie-chan, hold up a second." Inoki sounds serious, so she does. "Best wait until Mikoto-sama comes back up, alright? She's observing today, but I hear it's not a pretty sight."

So they have a prisoner being interrogated right now. Thinking of Sakumo's wishes, she nods and takes a seat across from the door. Inoki looks relieved. "I

can

follow orders, you know."

"It took me

weeks

to get the swamp mud out of my hair," he complains.

"And did Shikanai feel any different about what you said to them?"

Inoki groans. "Worse. They

laughed

at me."

"This is all very interesting, but I'll be needing that sign-up sheet," Ibiki says, nodding at the information for the summer course for junior interrogators, folded neatly into a triangle on the front desk. Usually only people who are already T&I chunin can sign up, but Ibiki somehow managed to wrangle special permission out of Inoichi and Chie doesn't really want to know what he used as leverage.

"I'm not surprised," is all Inoki says, disappearing beneath the desk for a bit as he fiddles with the sealed and keyed cabinets carved into it.

Neither is Chie, not really. But still: "Leaving us so soon?"

Ibiki gives her a mild look designed to shame, like the question is ridiculous in the first place. "We have at

least

a few years together as a team, since we'll be needed for missions. This is for after that."

"That makes sense. I think you'll be suited to it."

"So do I," is all Ibiki says to that. Like he'd expected it from the beginning.

She did

not

calculate how quickly he would grow into his propensity for mind games. Soon enough she'll have to be scrambling to keep up with him rather than running a tad ahead—he's already started to display that scarily analytical talent for getting deep into the heart of a person with a few exchanged sentences, and exposing him to psychological studies with the Yamanaka only inspired him to make use of it earlier.

It is at least thirty-five percent her fault that she's got to deal with this now.

Chie sighs. "Don't grow up too fast."

Ibiki just snorts at her.

"Don't you have to do taxes when you're an adult?" she asks, ignoring the fact that she does, in fact, have to do taxes, being an independent minor ninja. She gets help, but she still has to do it. "That doesn't seem very fun."

"I'm sure there are applications." Ibiki hands his finished form back to Inoki, who tucks it into the desk drawer. "Why are you upset with the idea of me growing older?"

She shrugs. "Not upset. Just... wistful, I guess."

Ibiki says nothing, but he considers her speculatively. It makes her uncomfortable enough that she wants to fidget. Knowing that the look is working on her

already

just makes it even worse—when he turns to ask Inoki about some particular of the program, she very nearly cries in relief.

He's a force to be reckoned with,

she thinks.

Definitely glad we're not enemies.

Then she realizes it's only going to get worse as he gets older.

"Damn," she mutters. Ibiki and Inoki look over at her. She lets the back of her head go

thunk

against the wall. "I forgot to put out food for the stray cat near my apartment..."

"You feed stray cats?" Ibiki looks incredulous.

"Why not?"

He tilts his head. "Disease?"

"I wash my hands."

"And you've never been bitten."

"Not once," she confirms, although she can't help but feel like he's boring into her soul with that gaze. "What can I say? Animals love me."

"I didn't take you for an animal lover." Ibiki is looking thoughtful again.

Not for the first time this month, she gets the feeling that she's going to have to deal with this a lot from now on.

-

It really isn't all that long until Uchiha Mikoto makes her way out of the observation room and back up to the front desk. Chie, not having seen the woman in several months as things ramped up toward the armistice and T&I found itself jointly working with ANBU for a great many secret operations that she and Ibiki were not technically supposed to be aware of, stands up to bow automatically before she registers how large Mikoto's stomach has grown.

"Oh!" Chie looks up at Mikoto, who's smiling. "I take it your child is due soon?"

"Yes, they are. Quite literally any day, but the war came first," Mikoto confesses. "My leave starts right when I leave this room."

Chie nods. "Best wishes for both your health and your child's. Do you know if Inoichi-san is in his office?"

"By the time you get there, he ought to be. I take it Sakumo-san has an answer?"

How...

she thinks, doing her best not to let it show on her face. Mikoto only smiles. Chie shrugs. "Something along those lines."

"Inoichi will be pleased to hear it. Head on in, Chie-chan."

Chie bows again and heads in, finding herself nonplussed by the confirmation that this world is shifting and changing as organically as the one before ever did. It still seems half a dream, sometimes, even with the blood and the death and the violence.

But Mikoto seems as pleased as anyone relatively sane can be coming out of observing a T&I session of some unspecified sort. And just like Kushina, her eyes are bright with a kind of happiness a ninja can afford to show within their village—a happiness untouched by death, even if it is a very mortal thing indeed.

Presently, she comes to Inoichi's door. After a moment of thought, she knocks.

"Come in," Inoichi says, and coughs loudly.

That bodes well,

Chie thinks as she enters. Inoichi is slumped over the desk, one hand pressed up against his forehead, and squints as the electronic light filters in from outside. Realizing that the room is completely dark, she holds the door open with a frown. "Uh..."

He sighs. "Can you turn the lamp on?"

"Right, yes," she murmurs, reaching to her left and flipping the switch on the tall floor lamp. Soft light, albeit not any warmer than the overheads outside, floods the room. "Sensei sent me to deliver a message."

Inoichi perks up a little at that. "Oh, is that so? What did he say?"

"That he has an answer." Chie tries not to be too amused when her technical boss slumps again.

"Damn his caginess." The words are muffled, as he is currently burying his head in his arms. Another very sad and pathetic cough escapes him. "After that session, I could really use something definitive."

"Did it not go well?"

He snorts. "Terribly. Shikaku's going to rib me when I tell him about it. Chouza will make a meal out of me."

Not quite sure whether he means it literally or not, Chie elects to ignore his impending death in favor of nodding. "And whatever you asked of Sensei..."

"He'd be very useful," Inoichi says ruefully. "But no, Chie-chan, I'm not going to tell you what it is. You'll have to be stealthier than that."

Chie sighs. "I guess. He's just been looking paler recently."

"Has he? Well, I suppose that's what a father does—worry. My own father still checks up on my wellbeing—in his own way, of course."

"I thought it might be that, too," Chie agrees, and keeps an even face when Inoichi looks up at her with raised brows.

"You aren't really supposed to know where Minato's team is, you know," is the mild comment. Inoichi seems to have recovered—he sits up and folds his arms together. "Anyways, was there anything else you needed?"

Chie hums. "Not at this moment, Inoichi-san, but you will find my report on the paperwork situation in that folder you've been leaning on. Inoki double-checked it, as requested."

"Ah. Good work," he says, looking surprised to find that there's a folder on the desk at all.

Did he have to use his clan techniques? Do the techniques make him scatterbrained or does he have a bad cold?

she wonders to herself. "If you'll excuse me, team lunch will be soon."

"Right, right. Come back afterwards, as usual." Inoichi opens the folder and leafs through the documents. He has a curious expression on his face when Chie turns and leaves, like this wasn't at all what he expected.

Just as well. She can't say

she

expected to find that T&I's recordkeeping situation was worse than it seemed at first—it's nearly ludicrous how disorganized the information is.

But she's done her best to put it to rights. If the danger in proper records is the possibility of their discovery and theft, well, a ninja knows what to do with secrets on home turf, don't they?

-

Team lunch goes about as well as could be expected. Gai's father Dai is an incredible cook, and dotes on Gai besides. Half the fun for the rest of them is watching the pair interact—Chie is sure she's never seen a better father in all of Konoha.

Sakumo is quiet, for the most part. After lunch is finished, he insists on clearing away their dishes and helping Dai wash up; Chie realizes, watching them talk, that he may have found a real friend in Gai's father.

Huh.

But when she thinks about it, there's a certain degree of sense to it. Their sons are friends despite Kakashi pretending otherwise—Gai takes it all in stride, especially now that Kakashi isn't living with him—and besides, Gai is Sensei's student. Now that Kakashi and Sakumo are tentatively reconciled, Gai and Dai probably find it easier to speak with him.

It just goes to show that however closely you know someone else, you'll never entirely know all there is to know. Not unless you

are

them, and Chie didn't happen to have that kind of reincarnation happen to her.

She feels a little cold at the thought.

It's not entirely a bad thing, not knowing everything about a person,

she reasons, habitually pushing aside reincarnation thoughts. There are things she doesn't care to know about any of her teammates, the things only the self is meant to know—she's primarily here to help, to assist as a part of the team, and to learn some swordsmanship like she had always wanted.

"The pickled radish is my favorite," Gai is explaining to Ibiki. "That is responsible for the smell of my lunchbox, my friend."

"Strong smells can be debilitating to people with sensitive noses," Ibiki muses.

It gets him a nod in return. "I have learned to be careful among comrades, particularly the Inuzuka! They have difficulty in the pre-adolescent stage—"

"—since they're honing their sense of smell. I'm aware."

"You probably ought to know that the Hatake clan deals with the same thing," Sakumo advises, stepping back into the room. "Sit up, you three. Slouching like that is bad for your posture."

They do. Sakumo takes a seat across from them. Dai's house rests in the shade of many trees, and the early noon light streaming in through the window on their left is sun-dappled and inviting.

"I didn't know your clan had heightened sensitivity, Sensei," Ibiki says.

He inclines his head. "Yes, you could say that. It's mostly our noses—we have pacts with the Dog clan in the summoning realms."

"Like summoning contracts?" Chie asks. It wouldn't do to have her interest be

too

apparent, but she'd be lying if she said the prospect of having a contract was too formidable to contemplate.

But hey, ninja. Lying is part of the frenetic pace. Part of the militaristic industry the Five Elemental Nations are currently built on.

That's an even more depressing thought than that of the different kinds of reincarnation.

Sakumo nods. "That's right. You'll want to know this for the future, so think of this as some advice from sensei—the Hatake clan has the Dog summoning contract, the Inuzukas have the Wolf summoning contract, and the Aburames have some kind of insect contract that they don't speak of outside the clan. Those are some of the bigger in-Konoha contracts."

"What about octopi—or mongeese—" Chie starts. Sakumo and Ibiki both give her dry looks. "Never mind. I'll go to the library."

"You'll need higher clearance for summoning contract information," Sakumo informs her, entertained by her misfortune if the small smile on his face is any indication. She droops. "Sit

up,

Chie-chan. That's an order from your sensei."

With a great disappointed sigh, she sits up. "Yes, Sensei."

"I'll look with you, Chie-chan," Gai volunteers.

Chie blinks, tentatively anticipatory of the afternoon of fun that seems like it'll be, but (not for the first time with him) somewhat surprised about the things he enjoys. "You will?"

Gai nods. "Even if we only find introductory texts! I wish to know more about these contracts as well!"

"Sounds like it's settled." Sakumo spares them an approving look—he

still

prizes teamwork over everything, after all he's been through—and pauses for a moment as he gathers his thoughts. "So, my students. The months ahead will be busy ones. Up until now we've been working in the village and focusing on teamwork and special skills. I would have you hone those skills further, but the war will be ended within a fortnight. When official word arrives, you'll likely start to be sent out on missions to repair infrastructure in the Fire Nation. Closer to home at first, but as you grow as operatives, you'll be sent further and further afield. I won't always be with you on these missions."

He pauses, gauging their reactions. The three of them look between each other—they had mostly expected this. Chie herself is privately surprised they've had his undivided attention for this long. During the war, of course, the genin corps had been divided into intravillage and outravillage—or at least she's termed the distinctions that way. Team Sakumo had very conveniently fallen into the former category despite shaping up to be a balanced combat unit not unlike the original distribution of strength the Sannin had before they became legends.

If nothing else, the Hokage knows what he's doing.

That doesn't mean she entirely looks forward to the prospect of having their reins loosened a bit. She frowns. "I understand the necessity, Sensei, but... does this have anything to do with T&I?"

"Yes," Sakumo says after a weighing moment. "I'll be working with T&I in a certain capacity, including overseeing some of your additional training in their division. But the larger part of it is the natural chaos of the world after war, Chie-chan. The Land of Fire must rebuild."

He's lived through two by now. Chie supposes he would know. She inclines her head. "I understand."

"That doesn't mean I won't be around. I'll help you prepare for missions for a time and determine team leader when you don't have a leading fourth. Usually the one closest to chunin level would take the lead, but, well. These are strange times." He leans forward a bit and has to brush his bangs out of his face to see them properly. "I want you three to be sure you know this. As your sensei, you can come to me any time you have a problem. Is this understood?"

"Yes, Sensei," they agree.

What a difference time makes. Sakumo sits back, satisfied.

And Chie tucks the part of her that was afraid for him into the back of her mind. For now.

-

When she returns to T&I after lunch, as instructed, Inoki greets her at the actual door and leads her in with that same unnervingly serious look on his face.

"What's eating you?" Chie asks, and Inoki looks her dead in the eye, which he never does. "...Inoki?"

"Inoichi-sama wants to talk to both of us about the report," he says, and like this, she can see that his usual uneasiness is still very present—he's just hiding it better.

She makes a

hmm

noise. "I assumed he would..."

"Trust me, this is different."

That's the most she gets out of him until they get to the office. He very nearly vibrates with an unparalleled fidgety energy, something that starts to get irritating about two minutes into their walk. Inoichi calls out an

enter

just milliseconds after Inoki knocks.

Feeling very uneasy herself but not entirely willing to admit it, Chie enters the room with her chin held high and falters in confusion when she sees a dozen clearly disorganized filing cabinets situated behind Inoichi's desk, with the man himself sitting

on

the desk with his fingers steepled in front of his face.

This is... entirely irregular,

she thinks, and is very sure that she doesn't like the look of this. Not only does he not normally have filing cabinets in here, he doesn't usually sit on his desk... unless he just doesn't do it in front of subordinates. She wouldn't know.

This can only be some kind of test, right? It's got to be.

"Chie-chan, Inoki-kun," Inoichi says without preamble. "Organize these cabinets—together," he adds when Inoki starts to move forward. "When you're done, call me in."

"Wha—" Chie and Inoki start as one, but Inoichi hops off the desk and walks out of the room without any further comment. They look at each other. Chie sees herself reflected in Inoki's wide eyes and immediately composes herself—does she look like that

all

the time? Like an offended cat?

Inoki, unexpectedly, laughs. "Kind of."

"Did I say that out loud?"

"You did," Inoki confirms. They fall into silence again.

"Well, I guess we'd better get organizing," Chie says. "I heard the lock click when he left. We'll do this the same way as the records—bottom to top, sorted by amount of information, special measures for the bigger papers."

He snorts. "What, you're not going to check for genjutsu or see if it's really locked?"

"...You weren't entirely unhelpful with the records room," she mutters.

"Wait. Wait, wait, wait," Inoki says, holding his hands in the air with a shit-eating grin. "What was that? What did you just say?"

"I

said

we'd better get organizing or you might find some swamps coming your way soon." Chie huffs and goes to the first cabinet on the left, sitting down to open the first drawer. Inoichi has left her a headache and a half to deal with: even the papers that are meant to go together aren't in any kind of order. She picks one up and scans it.

Really?

Entirely

redacted? Who is this?

She can

hear

Inoki's smirk from across the room. "Sure,

boss.

Whatever you say."

-

"I think this man has been dead for at

least

fifty years."

"What? Let me see—no, I recognize that face. This is from the fifth cabinet upstairs, Chie-chan."

"I guess they didn't have cameras back then. He certainly looks old enough to have been dead for fifty years."

"Oh... oh

no..."

"What?"

"We're going to have to cross-reference

all

of these. They're all out of order!"

"That's why I'm making a pile on the floor, Inoki. Look—I'm color-coding it. We'll flip it all later with the duplicating jutsu."

"I... I knew that. What I

didn't

know is that you apparently carry markers on you at all times."

Silence.

"It's... it's just a habit."

Chie sounds awfully embarrassed. What a strange child. Inoichi lets the long-range hearing genjutsu fade and looks at Shikaku with a raised brow. "So, finding everything you're hoping for?"

"Maybe," Shikaku says. "Did the babysitter watch ever figure out what she was writing down in that cipher back when she was a kid?"

"Oh, that. Yes, actually. She put a book of fairy tales from the library into her own words, and wrote some poetry, too. Plus some stories of her own." Inoichi raises a brow at Shikaku, knowing there's more to it than Shikaku is letting on.

"Hmm."

"Want to go get some barbeque? Knowing those two, it'll take just long enough for us to get through a few skewers."

Shikaku finally smiles, the scars on his face looking less harsh and more dignified with the motion. "Sure, I could go for that."

-

Chie tries to keep internal time by the flickering of the electronic light from outside, but she gives it up fairly quickly as she learns all sorts of information about prisoners who had entire pages redacted up in the main records. It's mostly all stuff from between the Second and Third World Wars, she figures out pretty quickly. Most of the people she's reading about are dead. After what seems like an endless moment in time, she stacks the final set of papers together and slides them into a folder.

"Ready?" Inoki asks.

Chie nods.

"Duplication no Jutsu!" he cries, and quickly casts out an additional net of genjutsu on both of them that makes the room flare in a bright white light. She blinks it away, muttering

kai

under her breath, and finds an additional pile of folders on top of the already extant one. Somehow it all manages to balance without falling apart.

Okay, that

might

be because they made a pyramid of folders, and the new ones had the decency to appear in exactly the right places to build a second pyramid over the first.

"Can't you name it something more... fitting?" she asks, picking up the top stack and sliding open the tallest cabinet in the back. "It's not very inspired."

"Once you say the name of a technique, you can't take it back." Inoki sighs, woebegone and valorous.

She rolls her eyes.

Apparently deciding that silence is the better part of valor, he helps her heave the rest of the necessary folders into the cabinet before standing back. "Ready for the next one?"

"Go right ahead."

This time he claps his hands together. "Mix'n'Match no Jutsu!"

"Seriously?" Chie asks, exasperated. The folders swirl around their heads as they decide where to go, guided by his chakra; soon enough they have stacks all set up against the cabinets, and they happily put each in its place, complete with secret color-coded indications of all manner of things from in-text citations to the one fifty-page dossier on an apparent shark infestation that is, like all the really juicy stuff, redacted and marked through at several key points.

"You try coming up with something better."

"Elegant Swan Lotus no Jutsu," she suggests. "Diving Paper no Jutsu."

Inoki makes a face. "Those are jokes, right?"

"Never mind. Let's call for Inoichi-san."

-

"Wow," Inoichi says, surveying his own office like he's never seen it before. "I think this is the cleanest it's

ever

been."

"That was me." Inoki looks proud of himself.

He blinks. "...Thank you, Inoki. You're a good nephew."

"Any time," is the returned promise.

"So, your verdict?" Chie asks, looking up at Inoichi. "This took us four hours."

She thinks. Probably.

"It was about three hours and twenty-eight minutes, actually," Inoichi says. "But give me some time. I have to actually see what you did."

Sensing mischief, Chie pauses. "And how long will that take?"

"Oh, about a week. Anyways, you're off for the day. Go have fun!" He waves them out.

Banished to the realm of the hallway, Chie and Inoki blink at each other under the electronic light.

"...Wanna grab Shikanai and get some dinner?" Inoki asks.

She sighs. What else is she going to do on a Tuesday night, really, but eat with two nineteen-year-olds who seem to have decided that they're her friends? "Sure. Why not."

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“Sensei.”

“Yes, Chie-chan?”

Another cool night on the Naka, two hands drifting in the stream. There’s a rare peace under the full moon in the late summer. (There are myths, too. Myths from worlds long dead—)

“It’s my eleventh birthday tomorrow.”

“Oh, is it?”

“Yes.”

“And you have a reason for mentioning it, because you wouldn’t normally want anyone to know.”

A small, chagrined smile. “Sensei. It’s been two years since the war. Teach me the way of the blade.”

Silence.

“You said you wanted to change the world once, Chie-chan.”

Did you mean it?

“I’m small, Sensei, but all that means is that a smaller blade suits me. A dagger in the ribs does just as well as any other weapon, once you know how to make it strike true.”

Sakumo chuckles, but it’s sad. “Chie-chan, there’s something I need to tell you.”

“I know Mother used swords.”

“Are you doing it for her?”

Chie shakes her head, firm. “I want to change the world.”

“To think that I’d end up teaching an idealist.” The hand Sakumo isn’t bobbing idly in the stream lands on her head, ruffling her hair. “We’ll make it official in the morning. Maybe this world could use peaceful ideals, someday.”

-

“Again.”

She grows older. She swings the blade a thousand times and more in the hazy afternoon light, trying to ignore Kakashi’s intent study of her form as Sakumo instructs her in the Hatake Estate’s backyard. She gains muscle. Sakumo insists on feeding her—”if you’re going to be doing this kind of physical work, you’re going to have to stop eating like a bird”—and she gains weight, losing the bony tautness to her cheekbones.

“Again. Move in with us.”

Chie stumbles and trips in the process of narrowly avoiding cutting herself on her own sword. “What?”

“You’re my ward,” Sakumo says, chiding. “You should’ve moved in from the beginning, but you refused to.”

“I’m your what?” Chie says from the ground, sweaty, dazed, twelve years old, and very confused.

Sakumo pauses. Is silent for a very long time. Has a completely blank face. “...You... you didn’t know.”

“I didn’t know what?” Clarity, she thinks, would be fantastic right about now, because Sakumo’s blankness has morphed into a look on his face that she couldn’t even begin to decipher. He squats down beside her, offering her the canteen she got from Gai as an ambush of a birthday gift, and she takes it, watching him with furrowed brows.

He sighs, rubbing his forehead, and gestures vaguely with his hand. “Chie-chan. What did you think all of this was?”

“...An apprenticeship?” Her voice comes out smaller than she’d have liked it to.

A nod. “Yes. It is. It’s also...” He fumbles for words for a moment. “...more. It means you’re... a part of us. If a more traditional clan had taken you on as an apprentice, they would’ve had you change your last name to theirs, and you’d have a lot more expectations clanwise. As it happens, well, there’s only Kakashi and me.” A rueful smile. “Since you were a ward of the state, I assumed you knew.”

“I’ve still been getting a stipend from the orphan fund,” Chie says, slowly, and when Sakumo pauses, she scowls. “Sensei...”

Before she can really say anything, or get up the energy to process the massive shock that’s slowly melting into deep irritation, Sakumo clasps her on the shoulder.

“Chie,” he says, earnest, and what little fight there was goes out of her. “You saved me. Let me be your guardian.”

Let me protect you, now.

She turns her head away so he can’t see the tears forming, but she thinks he sees them anyway.

“Okay,” she says, softly, when her voice is steady enough. “I’ll pack my things.”

His steady hand squeezes her shoulder. For just that moment, it feels like something that could be acceptance.

-

Kakashi is burning eggplant on the stove the first morning she stays in the Estate.

Chie stares at Kakashi.

Kakashi stares at his eggplants. The tips of his ears are red. Sakumo watches with sharp eyes that have the look of someone assessing a combat situation, but for the life of her, she can’t figure out why he’s just sitting at the table and not doing anything to help his son.

“Why,” she starts, stops, shakes her head, elbows him out of the way. “Look, just—go sit. I’ll make breakfast.”

“I...”

She’s only half-paying attention, preoccupied with rescuing the stove and the pan and discarding the eggplant. “Yes?”

Kakashi will later count it as a blessing that she never hears him mumble that he was trying to cook her breakfast.

-

Uchiha Itachi is born on a cold morning in the early fall, as the leaves are beginning to turn colors and fall from the trees. Chie hears of it because T&I has been keeping track, and Inoichi bargained extensively with Mikoto’s husband to give Mikoto a set of very traditional gifts (as thanks for her service in the war, and congratulations on the birth of her heir) that Chie can only assume are hoity-toity clan baubles, judging by the ornate carvings in the lacquer jewelry box and teething kunai she is requisitioned to bring to the Uchiha District.

“Why me?” she’d asked Inoichi, who flat-out smirked.

“A good ninja doesn’t question orders, Chie-chan,” he said, sweet as belladonna.

She gave him a rather impressive stink-eye, if she did say so herself.

“A better ninja,” he told her with relish, “finds more subtle ways to get their information. Starting now, with Sakumo’s express permission, you’re going to learn the art of intel.”

“Not interrogation?”

Something bittersweet flickered across his face, then, and she knew it was visible because he wanted her to see it. “No,” he said ruefully. “I’ll be frank with you just once, Chie-chan. You don’t have the temperament.”

And that was that.

Now, as Chie meanders through her favorite village paths in the direction of the Uchiha District, not meant to arrive too early or too late, she muses on that little exchange. They both know who does have the temperament, of course, but Ibiki’s taciturn, careful, and ever-calculating personality will require some honing before he grows into the fearsome chief of interrogation she once read about.

She is no longer any stranger to the brutality of their lifestyle. There are procedures to be followed. A certain capacity has to be beaten into him. It’s a pity, but the kindness in him won’t stay for long once their training truly gets going.

When she arrives at the District, the signs of unrest are immediately apparent in the air. The guards, aware of her acquaintanceship with Obito, let her pass with looks that are too neutral. Chie strives to match them, but everywhere she looks, Mikoto’s kin look... tense. Wary.

What in the actual hell,

she thinks, brow furrowing as she watches Uchiha children play with subdued enthusiasm under the watchful gaze of an older woman with one arm and an eyepatch.

The reason becomes apparent when she reaches the house of the Head family. Inside, Mikoto’s husband is yelling. She pauses outside to listen, then, and when she understands what she’s hearing, she freezes.

“—my son,” Fugaku says, furious, “has just been born, and you bring this to me while my wife is recovering from twelve hours of labor?”

“Fugaku-sama,” an ancient voice attempts to begin.

This cannot be happening to me,

she thinks, fending off the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose in cosmic frustration. When she looks about her to scope things out, she finds that the place is deserted so intentionally that there have to be people watching in the shadows.

Something faint tickles at the back of her mind, half-remembered danger pulling at her memories, but—

A snarl. Fugaku, angrier. “No. Not now. The boy hasn’t even drawn breath for a week and you’d take him under your auspicious eaves already? Get out, honored elders.”

“Mikoto’s father would have seen the sense in this,” another voice says, quieter, pointed.

That’s about when movement sounds from inside. Alarm bells ring in Chie’s mind. Looking around, she finds that much to her chagrin, the only viable place to hide is the roof. She is momentarily thankful for her stunted growth: at twelve she is still a tiny thing, even with the ninja life taking out her softness years and years ago. It makes cushioning her impact on the roof tiles with her chakra easier. Tucking herself away in one of the overhangs beside the corner of a window? Child’s play.

Three of the elders have deigned to visit the Uchiha Head and her family on this auspicious day. Chie sees the tops of their heads as they leave, each of them streaked through with white, and holds her breath.

Don’t turn around, don’t turn around—

Next to her, the window slides open.

“Chie-chan,” Mikoto, tired and beautiful, says with amusement lurking in the set of her brows. “Come in here before they see you.”

-

“These are from the boss,” Chie says, laying out the lacquered jewelry box and the teething kunai. Mikoto takes the kunai with a smirk, turning it over in her hands and twirling it around with one finger. This small upper room is a hidden one. The only exit Chie can see is the trapdoor hidden beneath the tatami rush mat, and the fact that a room like this exists at all—however cutely decorated, however much the quiet Itachi resting in Mikoto’s other arm eases the air—makes her wonder what could’ve necessitated it.

Mikoto seems content to examine her gifts in silence, handing Itachi over to Chie so easily and absently she nearly has a heart attack.

What the hell, woman? This is your heir!

Chie sits, gobsmacked, with her arms full of baby. Soft, warm, and alarmingly adorable baby,
blinking up at her with silent and too-knowing eyes, as if Itachi were born into the world already aware of it all. She holds him as gently as she can, her heart taking up residence primarily in her mouth at the unexpected.

What in the world—why is this my life—

Mikoto brings the kunai teasingly to Itachi’s mouth. Itachi only blinks, which Chie supposes makes sense, because he is, at best, twelve hours old. After a while, she puts the kunai on the small low table between her and Chie and takes Itachi back, cradling him in her arms with a private smile that suffuses her whole face with a rare, open-faced happiness. “Thank you, Chie-chan. Be sure to convey my thanks to Inoichi-san as well. The Yamanaka have given me and Itachi a fine gift. I’m quite pleased.”

“Of course,” Chie replies numbly.

“Are your glasses new?” Mikoto asks, sudden, tilting her head as if the question is an innocent curiosity that just happened to come to mind.

She pushes them up the bridge of her nose. “Yes, actually. They were a gift.” A pause. “...Why do you ask?”

Mikoto smiles. A shiver goes down Chie’s spine at the look in the older woman’s eyes—assessing, sharp, and intensely calculating. “You’re clever, Chie-chan, but you’re not subtle. You wouldn’t last a minute in this compound.”

What do I even say to that?

she wonders, and settles on a hesitant nod, hoping that whatever Mikoto is angling for will become clear soon.

“You heard the elders outside,” Mikoto says. “Luckily for you, they were preoccupied. Even being Sakumo-san’s apprentice wouldn’t have saved you had they known of your presence.”

Chie holds out a hand. “Hold up. What?”

“You could’ve died,” is the serene answer.

“I knew things were tense between the village and the clan,” Chie mumbles, growing preoccupied with the whirling maelstrom inside her head despite herself. “But within the clan—?”

Mikoto taps the table. Chie looks up. “There is a long history of conflict, Chie-chan, in nearly every major clan that has had a sustained presence since the Warring Clans Era. It may not be easy to see from the outside, especially not when a clan is at pains to keep it concealed. But that same history is why I’m keeping you longer than expected.” She strokes Itachi’s hair as she gathers her thoughts. “My son has been alive for less than a day, and already my father’s generation would use him for their own ends. Fugaku and I can only do so much. But someone outside the clan could do more.”

“Like Kushina-san,” she tries, only to sit back when Mikoto shakes her head with a smile. “...Minato-san?”

“They’re about to have a daughter of their own,” is the sly response. Thoroughly ignorant of the way she’s just absolutely shattered Chie’s world on its axis, she carries on. “But no. Though Kushina is his godmother, I find myself in need of someone who has the patience to learn to last more than a minute in this compound. Someone who can offer Itachi skills he will inarguably need as a ninja... including the social graces.”

Chie swallows. She knows exactly what Mikoto wants now and it is terrifying. “I, uh. Don’t have much in the way of those.”

“And yet you’ve won allies across Konoha, from the Hokage himself to little Obito,” Mikoto points out.

She frowns. “I’m not sure about the Hokage, I think it’s just that I’m an orphan.”

Mikoto just keeps smiling. "I will not pretend that I am asking something small of you—but will you listen to my request?”

“Yes, Mikoto-sama.” Chie’s hands tighten into nervous fists on the tops of her thighs.

“Tutor my son,” Mikoto says. “Show him the world outside the clan. Show him that there is always more than one choice.”

Chie sucks in a breath. Her heart is racing. “I need to know something.”

“Yes?”

“Did you choose me,” she asks, “because I’m a nobody? I could very easily disappear if the wrong person finds fault with me.”

Mikoto takes the question in, and then she laughs, soft and wondering. “I called you Sakumo’s apprentice and you still don’t understand. We’ll have to work on that.”

“Work on

what?”

Chie asks, a thread of desperation weaving its way into her voice. What is it with these goddamn ninja and the way they dance around the bullet instead of ever just biting it?

“Izumi Chie, the moment you formalized your training agreement with your sensei and took up one of his blades, you ensured that you would never be nobody again,” Mikoto says with amusement glinting behind her eyes. “You have an instinct for self-preservation. You build connections. You make yourself useful.

That

is why I am asking this of you.”

Chie’s eyes drift from Mikoto’s steady gaze to Itachi. He drifted off to sleep sometime during their conversation. His hair is downy and fine, and the tear troughs he inherited from Fugaku are not yet severe.

He looks... peaceful.

In a matter of years, when he’s hardly begun to grow into himself, it’s terribly, terribly likely that he’ll find himself stretched to the brink, caught in a cold tug-of-war where three sides all demand that which is equally impossible of him. All because ninja mistake genius for maturity and force children to fight on the front lines of their conflicts—and, for Itachi, because by virtue of his position alone he is a pawn in a game he never wanted to play.

Someone who always seemed alone. Someone with very few friends, surrounded by people who never stopped sharpening their knives.

Someone just like her.

“I’ll do it,” Chie says, aware that Mikoto has just plied her with some pretty words and a cute baby. “Tell me what I need to do to keep him safe.”

Mikoto pulls a very sharp, very much live kunai from within her robes, and she smiles.

Then she slices her own thumb open.

“Hand me that scroll, won’t you, Chie-chan?” she asks, very calmly.

-

Inoichi spots the cut on her finger by the time she returns in the late afternoon, because of course he does. But he doesn’t say anything about it. Instead: “So, how did Mikoto-san find the gifts?”

“She was very appreciative,” Chie says, curling the injured hand into a loose fist and tucking it away inside her vest pocket.

He nods slowly. “Mm-hmm. And did she say anything else?”

“She thanks the Yamanaka clan for their consideration.”

“Good to know,” is the dry response. Inoichi meanders over to his desk, pulls his chair out, and sits down. He waves her over to the chair opposite him. “Tell me what you saw at the compound. Don’t leave out any details, okay? Consider this a mission report.”

Brows raised—so he’ll know what she thinks of the fact that this is absolutely going to be used for some kind of assessment of the clan—she complies.

-

Where Itachi was born in early fall, Uzumaki Akari is born peacefully in the dead of winter, with a wild shock of red hair and lungs powerful enough to wake the ancestor gods of this world. She looks just like her mother, a fact that is very fortunate for Kushina and Minato, because despite Kushina’s pregnancy, they’re still not exactly public about their relationship. Oh, it’s an open secret in Konoha, and by extension their allied nations, but (and they don’t know that Chie knows exactly why) there’s simply too many safety concerns with the state of the world as it is.

And the state of the world as it is—well, to call it

not great

would be to put it lightly. Ibiki had a point when he’d told her that ninja tend to have short memories, but he hadn’t been entirely right.

Uzushiogakure falls the day Akari is born.

Chie hears the news first only because she’s delivering some paperwork to the Hokage from Inoichi when the messengers shunshin in.

“Hokage-sama,” says a man in a fox mask, kneeling on the floor. “Uzushiogakure is under attack. The Mist has gathered allies and advanced on the archipelago.”

Sarutobi takes the papers from Chie and sets them on the desk. His face could be carved out of stone. “And their motives?”

The fox mask looks up, the ninja behind it glancing at Chie. “Justice, Hokage-sama.”

“I see.” Sarutobi takes a long drag from his pipe and releases the smoke into the air, then sighs heavily. “Continue.”

“...That is not all. Mount Kaigara has erupted, clouding the archipelago in a storm of ash. Our scouts could not see anything of the battles.”

It’s then that Chie sees a sight she thinks very few people in living memory have seen: wide-eyed surprise on Sarutobi’s face, cracking his mask for a split second. It passes quickly, but still. He turns to her. “Chie-chan, thank you for your report. I have a request for you.”

“Yes, Hokage-sama,” she says, with a terrible feeling that she already knows.

“Please tell Uzumaki Kushina that Uzushiogakure has fallen, and to report to me by eighteen hundred hours,” Sarutobi says. With nary so much as a twitch of the eye, another ANBU shadow appears behind him. “Turtle here will lead the way to her.”

Feeling sick to her stomach, Chie bows. “I will do as you ask, Hokage-sama.”

-

Kushina doesn’t scream, or rage, or break into tears when she hears the news. Chie isn’t sure what she expected—just that she didn’t expect the thoughtful look in Kushina’s eyes as her daughter breastfeeds, or the extended silence before she finally says “So it ends,” in a quiet voice.

“We’ll have to be careful.” Minato, always by Kushina’s side, looks equally as thoughtful.

Chie looks between the two with the distinct sense that she’s missing something very, very important.

“Thank you for delivering the news, Chie-chan,” Kushina says. “Do you know anything else? Any survivors?”

“I don’t know.” She frowns. “I... I’m sorry.”

Blinking in surprise, Kushina smiles. “Oh, no, don’t be. I’ve been a citizen of Konoha for many years now, and being the princess of Whirlpool wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Anyways, ‘ttebane, can you tell Hokage-sama that I may need more time to recover? Childbirth is no joke.”

“Of course. Please rest up.” Chie pauses. Her eyes focus on the rough-hewn stone flooring. “Um... Akari... it’s a beautiful name. Bye now.”

She hurries out of the secret room with red ears, Turtle trailing after her, trying very hard to ignore the warm smiles being directed her way. When her footsteps fade away, Minato and Kushina look at each other with significantly less levity.

“Uzu gone,” Kushina says, shaking her head. “Right after the war, too. Mist—and the Kami, I guess—chose their moment very carefully, ‘ttebane. Konoha will need to vet any survivors. If my family made it out—they can’t know about Akari.”

“No, they can’t,” Minato agrees.

“There’s something we need to do when I can walk again.” She reaches over and grasps Minato’s hand; he watches her, briefly and gently squeezing her fingers with affection. “Remember before we were respectable adults? When I dragged you into all kinds of messes?”

He understands immediately, brows raising. “Hime, you want me to commit arson? Again?”

“You love it,” Kushina teases.

Minato scratches the back of his head and sighs. “Well... I guess it’ll be for a good cause...”

“That’s the spirit,” she says with a wicked little grin, and for that, Minato leans over with a careful hand on Akari’s back and kisses Kushina fully.