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The guards at the door of the Hokage’s office nodded respectfully to Sarutobi Emiko as she approached; she barely inclined her head in return as she stepped over the threshold, closed the door behind her with a soft click.
She wondered whether this was how Sasuke had felt before a battle, this taut, tense readiness. Very likely not. Sasuke had always laughed before every battle, she remembered now, laughed before every mission – had been laughing the last time she had seen him, when he had said his farewells and promised to come home soon.
Sarutobi Emiko was beginning to lose her faith in promises.
“Emiko-san. Please, sit down.” The newly made Nidaime Hokage indicated a chair that had already been drawn up to the other side of the desk. His voice was gentle, understanding, but his eyes were keen and watchful under his rumpled shock of white hair.
Emiko hated him, with a weariness that told her the fault was not altogether his. It was simply that he now represented everything that had taken her father away from her, her husband, what was now trying to take even her son.
She sat anyway, with a soft, “Thank you,” her spine ramrod straight, not touching the back of the chair, her hands folded neatly in her lap. “I am not trying to waste your valuable time, Hokage-sama. I understand that you have an important meeting with the Hyuuga head in a short while, so I will be as brief as I can.”
Tobirama’s eyes told her that he at least suspected what was coming, but as he leaned forward, his voice held nothing but polite curiosity. “I am sure that no matter that Sasuke’s wife wishes to bring to my attention will ever be a waste of my time. May I ask what it is?”
Kenta’s daughter. Sasuke’s wife. Hiruzen’s mother. Those three things had defined her life, and now even the last was slipping away from her. Her fear lent strength to her voice as she spoke. “I wish to withdraw my son from his team, Hokage-sama. His sensei, your brother, is dead, and everything has changed within the past few weeks, but that is not the only reason. I have thought of this for some time. Sasuke has been missing for two years, and for those two years I have lived almost alone. I want my son by my side, where he belongs.”
Tobirama never shifted from his expression of polite attention, not even when she mentioned the death of his brother. “As you say, these are troubled times,” he said when she paused. “Konoha is in need of every soldier that she can muster, and Hiruzen, while rather scatterbrained -” he smiled for a moment, affection softening the lines of his face, and Emiko felt a flash of jealousy, “– is truly gifted.”
“He is a child,” she said fiercely. “My child, and I need him more than the village does.”
“Hiruzen is twelve,” Tobirama said, “in a short time he will be a man. It is crucial that his education not be interrupted at this time.” He tugged at a piece of his unruly hair. “He has told you, I am sure, that I plan to merge his team with my own?”
Emiko set her lips together. “We are honored, Hokage-sama,” she said coolly. “But that does little to change the set of my mind. As his mother, I must insist. My claim upon him is greater.”
“That point might be argued,” Tobirama said in a soft voice. He looked at her in a contemplative fashion, as if he were a great white tiger debating whether to eat her now or keep her for later. “Emiko-san, you will not offend me by telling me the truth. You may be lonely, but that is not the only reason for your request. You do not wish Hiruzen to become a shinobi at all.”
Emiko’s hands clenched together in her lap. “If that is so I have good reason for it, Hokage-sama,” she said, working hard to keep her voice low and polite. “I see my son in a way you cannot, in a way you never will – he is not suited for the life you want him to live. Hiruzen is a sweet, kind boy, and I have taught him to think the best of others.”
“You’ve done him no favor,” Tobirama said quietly, but Emiko ignored that.
“While Sasuke was alive I did little to keep him from sending Hiruzen away – they both seemed happy enough. But Sasuke is gone, now.” Emiko took a deep breath. “Hiruzen will not be unwilling, I think, to come home with me.”
“Or at least he will not allow you to see any unwillingness,” Tobriama said, and sighed, ruffling up his hair again. “As you have said, he is a sweet child, and an obedient one – if over-confident, at times. Tell me, have you asked him what he wants?”
Emiko hesitated. This was a little more difficult. “I know,” she said finally, “that he has an idea that he must follow his father’s path.” She was careful not to say that she suspected he had gotten it from the Shimura boy, and from the Nidaime himself. “But it is more important to do what is right for him – and I believe that deep down, Hiruzen will be relieved when I give him the news.”
Tobirama pushed his chair back from the desk a little, stood up. “And that is your final answer?”
Emiko looked up at him unflinchingly. “It is,” she said steadily.
“Then hear my final answer,” Tobirama said as he came around the side of the desk, and though he leaned against it casually enough as he looked down at her, Emiko had the feeling of a great weight pressing down on her, a sense of a presence that must have remained hidden behind his elder brother’s until now. “In fifteen minutes, as you mentioned at the beginning of our interview, I am scheduled to meet with certain persons from the Hyuuga clan. You may not be aware that I am speaking with the Uchiha the next day, the Yamanaka and the Nara the day after that – it’s quite a list, as it holds every clan of consequence in the village, and several others who think they are. What do you suppose every one of them wants?”
Emiko had the breathless feeling that she was two steps away from walking into a trap, but she could see no other way to answer. “I do not know, Hokage-sama,” she answered carefully.
“They want to be sure of their security, they want to be sure of their power, that I have no plans to – radically change what was allowed during the time of the First Hokage.” Given the carefully noncommital look on Tobirama’s face as he said this, Emiko rather guessed that the clans did have something to worry about, but she kept quiet, listening. “They want to be assured of Konoha’s safety, in these changing times that are rapidly leading us towards war. And yet every one of them also wishes to make clear that they think they and their dependants should concern themselves with their own clan first, the village second.”
Emiko could see now where this was heading, and she pressed her hands together in her lap, feeling a fresh surge of tired anger. The village, always the village! Sometimes she thought the men in her life had always loved it better than they loved her.
“Now, I cannot allow them to leave still carrying that erroneous belief,” Tobirama said. “I must make them understand that now, of all times, they owe more to the place which is sheltering their homes and their wealth than to grudge it the strength it needs – whatever the cost.”
Emiko wished bitterly that she could fling those words back in his face, scream at him and ask what cost he had paid, but those were not words you could use towards someone who had suffered the recent loss that Tobirama had. His very sincerity turned her stomach, she wanted to be able to accuse him of hypocrisy, but the life he had led offered her no foothold.
“But supposing they were to hear,” Tobirama went on, “that I had allowed a talented and well-known genin to return to his home, at a time when we need every one of our youngsters training as long and hard as they can, to prepare for what they’ll have to face – simply because his mother requested it? My own brother’s former student?” He smiled, a slightly bitter twist of the lips. “There’d be no holding them back, and I could hardly blame them for their anger. We must have trust, we must have cohesion, and I cannot risk that – not even for you, Emiko-san.”
Emiko found herself on her feet, groping for words that felt as if they had been stolen from her. “My son –“
“Is also my student,” Tobirama finished. He was looking at her with a kind of studied gentleness now, and Emiko hated that, she hated that he was so sure of himself that he could afford pity. “I will do everything in my power to ensure that Hiruzen remains safe. But I cannot allow you to take him now, and – let me be honest with you, Emiko-san – he does not want to go.”
Emiko stared at him, one hand on the desk for support and hardly caring now that she was trembling and there was no way he could avoid seeing it. “And what is left for me,” she asked, her voice barely a whisper, “when you have taken what you need?”
“It is not possible for me to take his love away from you,” Tobirama said quietly. “That will always be yours whatever comes, and what is left for you, Emiko-san, is to have faith in your son, and in your village.” His voice turned a little wry. “I suspect that it is too much to ask you to have faith in me.”
“Your brother would have let him go. He would have listened to me.” Emiko knew that it was not the right thing to say, but it was the only thing she could think of.
“You are very likely right,” Tobirama said. “I will not be the kind of Hokage that Hashirama was.”
He did not stumble over his brother’s name, did not even hesitate. He simply stood there, arms folded, looking a little too large and solid for the office that had been used to Hashirama’s warm smile and informal manner, Uchiha Madara’s slouching form and drawling voice.
Emiko had regained a little of her breath, she straightened her shoulders and looked him squarely in the eyes again. “I can see that now,” she said coolly. “There is no use in speaking to you further, Hokage-sama. I will tell Hiruzen that I will not interfere with his duties.”
She had known, she tried to tell herself, that there was the possibility of failure – but she had not wanted to believe it. She had not wanted to believe that she could not protect her son. Emiko looked down at her hands and linked them again so that they hung before her, useless.
“I will not insult you by thanking you,” Tobirama said. “I will only tell you that I hope as fervently as you do, Emiko-san, that we will someday see better days for Konoha – and her people.”
He could not hope as fervently as she did, Emiko thought, he did not have a son, for all that he looked a little more human when he spoke of his students.
“And I will hope,” she said, her voice now almost as steady as it had been when the interview first began, “that my son lives to see those days, Nidaime-sama.”
Tobirama did not reply, but when he inclined his head in answer to her own gesture of farewell, his eyes looked into hers with something of the steadiness his elder brother’s had once held.
Like a reassurance, or a promise. And though she did it bitterly and grudgingly, it seemed to Emiko there was nothing to do but accept it one last time.