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The Sarutobi Clan house was one of the lucky ones that had survived the Kyuubi’s rampage. It was very old, sprawling, and far too big for the tiny remnants of a clan it housed, even with the servants’ families counted in.
Iruka was unused to the archaic architecture. Only the oldest, most traditional clans and the Nara built in this style (all of whom were unlikely to invite a lowly chuunin teacher for a visit); the rest of Konoha had long since switched to building taller and more compact to save space and make living quarters more affordable.
He felt like he should have worn a yukata instead of his uniform.
“Iruka-kun,” Sarutobi-sama addressed him from his armchair. He beckoned Iruka to enter the room and take a seat. In deference to the elder’s still healing injuries, the traditional kotatsu had been replaced by a table and chairs that seemed out of place.
“Hokage-sama,” Iruka replied, and bowed.
It took him some effort to not cough as he stepped into the room. The air was heavy with the smell of tobacco smoke; apparently Sarutobi-sama had already had a few pipes today. Ignoring his iryounin’s orders, undoubtedly.
“Not anymore,” said the living legend, smiling a disingenuous little smile. “And let me just mention what a splendid feeling it is. I have long since forgotten how freedom tastes.”
Iruka, of course, politely let the lie pass. “Thank you for your invitation.”
“You say that now, but you won’t be glad for it afterwards. At ease, shinobi, and sit down. I have far too many secrets that I shall take to my grave anyway. I am old and it weighs on one’s mind.”
“Why me?” Iruka blurted before either his poise or politeness stopped him. He felt blood rushing to his cheeks afterwards, but the damage was done, so he might as well reap the benefits of his blunder.
Sarutobi-sama, true to his character, chuckled at him. “Oh, that shall become clear soon enough. I believe I gave you an order, chuunin.”
You are retired, Iruka pointedly didn’t say out loud; I don’t have to follow your orders.
He was a guest, and in his own specific way he loved the Sandaime. He certainly respected him far too much to use the recent change of their circumstances to attack him where it so obviously still hurt.
Iruka obediently sat down – if with a hint of ill grace.
Predictably, that only served to amuse Sarutobi-sama more.
“Have you seen Hiashi recently?” asked the old man, pulling out his pipe and lighting the tobacco with a flick of his finger. He puffed.
“Hyuuga Hiashi?” Iruka said as though they had many mutual acquaintances named Hiashi. “Very briefly. He seemed preoccupied – but which Leaf shinobi is not, these days?” Hiashi-sama had more reasons than most, admittedly; aside from the barely averted invasion attempt, declared war against Suna and Oto, and the upheaval around the vacated Hokage position (there had already been screaming arguments within both the Civilian and the Ninja Council about the fitness of Kakashi as the interim administrator), Hiashi’s elder daughter was in the hospital with uncertain prognosis, and had been put there by her own cousin.
Granted, Hinata’s injuries were inflicted lawfully, in sanctioned combat, but that did not make them morally or strategically acceptable in a fight between two allied shinobi, much less two shinobi from the same village. When speaking about family – well, the saying about your family being able to hurt you the most held true in this case.
Iruka had been dismayed by the entire situation (he had decided to be an Academy teacher to prevent kids from growing up into ninja like Kakashi or Itachi, and Neji had slipped through his fingers), but he did not have the time or the capacity to reflect upon it, much less even try to figure out what anyone (he) could have done to prevent this outcome.
Right after the event happened Iruka had had a brief fantasy of strangling Neji before the boy had ever received a hitai-ate, but that stopped seeming plausible after he had gotten some sleep. Neji was not usually nearly as bad. If he acted with such unbridled hatred and cruelty, there must have been a trigger for it.
Iruka would have just bet that the original impetus came either from the Hyuuga Elders or from Hiashi-sama himself. Fond as Iruka was of Hinata, there was a smidgen of satisfaction in the idea of Hyuuga Hiashi losing his prized daughter to his inability to treat his nephew like a human being. Iruka wasn’t proud of the feeling – no more than he was comfortable with the fantasy of murdering Neji – but Hyuuga inspired schadenfreude by condescending to anyone and everyone with pupils in their eyes.
“To this day,” Sarutobi-sama spoke (without offering refreshments, so this wasn’t to be informal coaching, rather a strategy session), “I wonder if I did those boys a disservice by putting them on a gennin team together.”
Iruka, with some effort, did not react. He wanted to, though. ‘The boys’ - the Hyuuga twins – Hiashi and Hizashi – were infamous for their codependence. Theirs was one of the very few true and honest relationships within that Clan.
Of course it ended up being used against them in the most destructive way possible.
“I agonised over it for four days,” admitted Sarutobi-sama. “That was the longest I ever needed to approve team assignments.”
Iruka took his cue with barely half a second’s delay. “What made you decide as you did in the end?”
“I figured out what the Hyuuga Elders wanted, and did the opposite.”
The Elders would have seen the brotherly love and the potential for disaster; putting the boys onto the same team just to spite the Clan would have been short-sighted at best. The Sandaime was not a petty man.
In fact, Iruka had to admit that without Hizashi-san’s influence, Hiashi-sama seemed to fall apart. His family was in tatters, his potential heirs damaged (whether physically or in reputation), his name carried a black mark for what he ordered (or perhaps merely allowed?) to be done to his brother. He seemed to have lost sight of what was important, and floundered when confronted about his choices.
“It cost me in the end.” Sarutobi-sama grimaced. “Hyuuga took it as a sign that I was displeased with them, which in the clan politics somehow translated into the Uchiha automatically being in favour. At least so Himawari-chan told me afterwards.”
That was, at best, a short-sighted interpretation. Iruka was fairly certain that the true cause for the sharp rise of confrontations between the two inimical clans lay in the fact that the internal security of the village was the responsibility of the Uchiha – it begged the question how did a Kumo nin, even though officially a diplomat, get to little Hinata? Even Iruka suspected sabotage, and he did not have a history of mutual resentment with any of the people involved.
“The Main Family took it upon themselves to harass any and all Uchiha, and you are familiar enough with Sasuke that you can imagine what was the typical reaction of a harassed Uchiha.”
“Katon jutsu?” Iruka hazarded.
“Indeed.” Sarutobi-sama sighed. “A lot of collateral property damage, many injuries and – eventually – a casualty.”
“Hyuuga?” Iruka frowned, trying to remember. He would have been only about thirteen, a fresh gennin, but such a death would have been the cause of a village-wide (or wider) buzz.
“Worse. A civilian.” Sarutobi-sama looked as though he still, almost a decade later, wanted to flay the perpetrator alive. “Our strained inter-clan relationships erupted into a cold war. The Hyuuga held the strategic positions necessary to push the Uchiha so far that at some point the tension just snapped. I personally never blamed Fugaku for his ultimatum. He acted from the position of a cornered man; a man who watched his family, whom he had vowed to protect, being abused. In the end it was his hesitation before he initiated wholesale slaughter that saved Konoha.”
“I believe Sasuke should hear this, Hokage-sama.”
There was so much pain, injured pride and second-hand shame in that boy, that Iruka could not even honestly regret that Team Seven had fallen apart. He wished he could put more distance between Naruto and the ‘last loyal Uchiha’, but it was nigh on impossible to meddle in Naruto’s life without the boy finding out.
And meddling back. That was one shinobi Iruka did not dare inspire to plot revenge against him.
“I am not the Hokage anymore, Iruka-kun,” Sarutobi-sama reminded him, pleased to have it both ways. “And I am the one that signed the Uchiha Clan’s death warrants. Perhaps not literally – but it was I who stood by and let my specialists neutralise the threat expediently. I am the second to last man who should speak to Sasuke-kun about his family.”
“Itachi-san…” Iruka breathed. He remembered Itachi, for all that he had met him only very briefly.
The Uchiha genius had a presence that was impossible to imitate and apparently equally impossible to forget. Iruka could still, years later, recall the sensation to mind; almost as if he was standing within Itachi-san's presence, he felt the thrum of chakra in his bones, smelled the sweet scent of lifeblood and intrinsically understood why the prefix 'life' was so apt and so necessary. Itachi-san had, without speaking a word, taught Iruka that blood did not mean only death – it meant strength, loyalty and, before all, the Will of Fire.
“No, Iruka-kun,” said the old, stooped man around the mouthpiece of his pipe. “Itachi is a good person, and for that a perilous subordinate.”
Did that mean…? Oh. Iruka couldn’t even formulate a response to this revelation beyond oh.
“The man I spoke of is the opposite – but I already told you enough to see you murdered in the dead of night, and I would rather not have Kakashi come at me with his chokuto again. I dare say these days he would easily succeed in killing me, and I shudder to imagine how the village would react to that. Granted, it is a historically valid method of succession, but I hoped to see Konoha one day rise above its past.”
He pulled a deep breath and exhaled a cloud of bluish grey smoke.
Iruka took a deep breath, too. Sarutobi-sama was Konoha’s past – that was the underlying message here. The Professor, teaching the chibi-sensei one more lesson. You do your job, and then you let others take over. Hanging onto things you know you can’t hold onto is foolish.
And, the most damning of all: it is your turn now, young man.
“You may not wear the Hat, Iruka-kun,” said Sarutobi-sama with a grin that was probably meant to be confidential, but to Iruka seemed simply terrifying, “but you carry the Will of Fire. You and Kakashi are partners in this endeavour.” He expectantly stared at Iruka through the haze of the smoke.
Partners. Of course they were partners. In all walks of life, nowadays, Iruka thought a little pithily. They had been partners in some manner for more than a decade; they had been put through all the obligatory gauntlets (and a few additional ones, due to Kakashi’s status as a Contender) and they prevailed.
So what was Sarutobi-sama’s point now?
The old man scoffed.
“Think, boy!” he demanded, genuinely exasperated, as if Iruka was being inexcusably slow. “Think! You teach our children – who could have better perspective?”
Iruka thought so hard that his eyes watered – the smoke wasn’t helping. In fact, he felt a little light-headed from sitting inside this hot-boxed room. He wished Kakashi were here, with his obscure hints that still somehow managed to guide Iruka to the right answers.
Barring that, he wished Naruto were here, with his irreverent manner of cutting through bullshit. Oh, kami-sama, if that boy ever became Hokage as he wished to, he would need someone to speak for him, because he didn’t have a single… diplomatic bone… in his… body…
Iruka blinked. And blinked again. Suddenly, all the clues fit together. The picture coalesced – it left him momentarily reeling, and then sent him into a fit of laughter that verged on hysterical. He realised absently that normally he would have had better grip on himself, but the tobacco was messing with him.
No wonder Sarutobi-sama had seemed insane a quarter of the time. If he smoked this daily…
“Ha!” The old man grinned and leant back into the soft backrest of his armchair with a self-satisfied expression. “I knew there was more than romance and lesson plans in your head.”
“Lesson plans, indeed,” Iruka replied dryly once he got himself back under a semblance of control. Then he had to inquire: “Is that specific to Konoha? We never hear of any other Kage positions being partnerships, but then, we never hear about Konoha being anything but a dictatorship of one…”
His mind was already at the founding of the village. Hashirama-sama and Uchiha Madara. Then Tobirama-sama and – who? There must have been someone. For Minato-sama there was Kushina-san, clearly. Their partnership also crossed the line of romance, and Iruka had to wonder how many of those partnerships had crossed similar lines. He felt uncomfortable thinking about the Shodai in such context, even though he was little more than a historical figure anymore.
He forbade himself from thinking about Sarutobi-sama at all. There was someone, clearly – that mysterious ‘last man who should speak to Sasuke’ – but whoever that was had never become obvious enough to note. At least Iruka could be certain that it had not been an obscure way of referring to Biwako-san, since she had tragically died during the Kyuubi rampage, years before the Uchiha Massacre.
“Not as a tradition, I do not think,” replied the old man, contemplatively gnawing at the pipe. “Hence why so many Kage go power-mad – or just plain mad. But here and there, once in a while, you do encounter a leader wise enough to figure out that being alone at the top means you have no one to cover your back.”
What happened? The question was at the tip of Iruka’s tongue, but he had known Sandaime-sama for long years, and learnt that when the Professor wished to teach, it was your privilege to shut up and listen.
It occurred to him that the monster they had chained in T&I, under a layer of seals, had once sat here like this. Orochimaru, too, had once upon a time learnt from the God of Shinobi, exactly the same way. Perhaps he had listened to the exact same lessons, except that after the other two Sannin departed Orochimaru did not have anyone left to anchor him, and he twisted all his wisdom into cunning and pursued knowledge without empathy.
“I was selfish, Iruka-kun,” the old man admitted, rueful. “I had so many ambitions, and so few of them were in the best interest of my village. I wished to be a teacher and a father, and thus I happily handed over the more time-consuming aspects of the Hokage position to a man I trusted. He was contented to stand behind me, to work from my shadow – and all the more effective for it.”
Sarutobi-sama looked away for an instant, grimace betraying his disgust at his own once-upon-a-time folly. A Hokage usurped by his second. A teacher whose three students abandoned or outright betrayed their village. A father whose sons did not speak to him – one of whom had fled all the way to the Daimyo’s court.
A God of Shinobi, Iruka reflected. And then, with unprecedented insight, he noticed that he was looking at a frail old man who had taken on too much and in small ways failed on nearly all accounts.
He shook off the unforgiving perspective and reminded himself of Sarutobi Hiruzen’s many great deeds and well-deserved legend.
Sandaime-sama pushed a plate of pastries across the table, closer to Iruka. So there was to be refreshment after all – even though at this point is seemed like a conciliatory gesture rather than a welcoming one.
Iruka gladly took a bun, since the smoke had begun inducing hunger pangs.
“This man, Iruka-kun…” Sandaime-sama shook his head, lips stretched into a venomous snarl such as Iruka had never before seen on that wrinkled face. “A man who has long since become accustomed to the position of power he occupies. Who has come to hunger for it enough to find his ways to subvert me, despite the Hat I used to wear. Who, I suspect, at one point smiled in the face of my successor – of our successors, should I say? – and plotted to remove them from his way.”
Was the Kyuubi attack a complot? Iruka clenched his teeth to keep his jaw from falling. Was the death of so many shinobi – of Iruka’s parents – a mere act of domestic terrorism aimed against the Yondaime?
Who could even conceive of such a plot? What sort of a sick mind-?
Sarutobi-sama watched him, narrow-eyed. “That is who you are facing now. I may be out of the game, but he is not, and he will not cede ground to Kakashi any more willingly than he did to Minato. In hindsight, I am fairly certain it was he who initially implicated Orochimaru as well – yet another Contender out of his way, and through such means as kept him out of suspicion. You must not trust anyone now, Iruka-kun.”
“If… Provided we succeed and manage to bring Tsunade-sama back? Who will be her partner?”
“Who do you think?” Sarutobi-sama inquired drolly.
Alright, Iruka conceded that it may have been a stupid question. “But Jiraiya-sama’s duties keep him out of the village-”
“And that is why Tsunade has an assistant.”
That didn’t sound convincing. Was Sarutobi-sama hoping that Jiraiya-sama would stay in the village, too? Was there someone else for whom Jiraiya-sama was to be a cover? Or was this simply an old man’s tired hope that the problem would go away if he ignored it hard enough?
“Now go, Iruka-kun,” ordered the old man. “You have dithered long enough, and there is a difficult mission ahead of you. Tsunade will not let herself be convinced easily.”
Iruka obediently stood, bowed, and set out toward the door. He paused before he got there, and looked back.
Sarutobi-sama was watching him.
“You will not tell me his name?” Iruka asked. Knowing that it was a man narrowed the pool of potentials, but there were still too many. And still too great a chance that this was a shinobi that did not exist on paper at all. An ANBU for life, or a refugee that was for some reason accepted straight into the Hokage’s Guard.
“No,” said the old man. “I will tell the name to the person who wears the Hat officially, on the date of their inauguration. If they tell you afterwards, then that is their prerogative.” Sarutobi-sama’s teeth appeared around the mouthpiece in a shade of a grin. “Just a little added incentive for you to convince Kakashi to change his mind.”
Iruka left, a little angry at being baited, somewhat annoyed at the former Hokage’s reticence regarding a threat to Kakashi’s and Iruka’s lives, but mostly firmly resolved to stand by Kakashi in his decision to not accept the Hokageship.
He politely nodded to Kasumi-san, Konohamaru-kun’s mother, in the hallway outside. To be honest, he mused, with every day he found more and more reasons to stay at the Academy for the duration of his career and never, ever make himself a target in some messed-up political power play.
Unfortunately, it seemed that it was too late for him already.