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There was something to be said about severe blood loss. Konoha’s gates and her colorful roofs swam in Iruka’s vision like a dazzling kaleidoscope of relief, and with the last vestiges of his strength he pushed through and collapsed in one of the guard towers. Even lying still on the ground, Iruka felt the axis of his world shift as if he were on a boat.
His blood was rhythmically pumping out from the deep cut on his thigh. He’d bandaged it and used one of his dead teammates’ belts as a makeshift tourniquet, and he’d held out somehow, despite the nick in his artery. Now there were hands on him, pushing hair out of his face, checking his pulse, pressing a deep gouge of pain right in the injury. He flared his chakra at the prod that came from a guard, a silent signal that he hoped was enough to award recognition.
Iruka’s eyes were closed, but he was still aware of the presence of multiple chūnins in the walled off part of the watchtower. He could hear them, despite the insistent thumping of his heart filling his ears. They were watching and waiting, ready to pounce even at the slightest sign of a threat. It was protocol.
It took a while for Iruka to be deemed safe or incapacitated enough to be allowed entrance in Konoha. In that time the last remnants of Iruka’s rational thought slipped from his grasp. He felt drunk, a haziness overcoming his mind, and when two pairs of arms wrapped around him and hefted him onto a stretcher he found it so ridiculous he started giggling. There was a dark-haired chūnin looking at him like he’d grown a second head, so Iruka grinned his best shit-eating grin, which in his current state looked more like a bloodied snarl, and ended up terrifying the young recruit.
At last, Iruka felt like he could relax. He’d made it home. He watched the striking blue sky and the crowns of the trees move far above him in the rhythm he was being carried with. Soon his vision started going dark, so he closed his eyes and let himself go under.
When Iruka awoke, it was to a dull, throbbing pain in his thigh and the sterile white of Konoha’s hospital walls. Every little movement he made pulled at the stitching that, after uncovering his leg, Iruka realised went down the length of his thigh where the wound had originally been. So they’d operated on him.
“That bad, huh?” he winced and looked up at the ceiling, trying to piece together how terribly he’d fucked up in order to get his whole team murdered and himself so close to bleeding out to death. He’d never experienced anything like it until then. Sure, shinobi died in battle. Teammates of his had succumbed to their injuries before and he’d seen them fight to the death when there had been no other option. But never a team he’d been responsible for. This was the first time.
A wave of nausea and self-loathing crashed down on him, and he gave himself a moment to be washed away by it. Grief gripped his chest tight until Iruka felt like even breathing burnt his lungs, and he gasped, clutching the bed sheets tightly, fighting for air against it.
He stayed like that — wound up tight and waging a silent war between his humanity and his duty — until he heard footsteps outside his room.
Iruka was careful to smooth out the sheets beneath his hands as he straightened up with a grimace. His hair had been let loose from the braid he wore it in, its long strands almost reaching his waist. He noted no one had washed it, however, as it was still mussed with caked dirt and blood.
The door opened, breaking Iruka out of his thoughts, carrying in a colorful entourage of shinobi of various ranks and stations. Up first was a medical ninja who checked his vitals and confirmed there had been no side effects from the anaesthetic he’d been put under. Next came a glum-looking jōnin who informed Iruka he was to visit the Intelligence division for his debrief at his earliest convenience, which meant as soon as Iruka could walk without falling over. Iruka’s stomach churned at having to explain, in vivid detail, exactly what had happened on his mission, but it had to be done.
The last person to come into Iruka's hospital room was none other than the Third himself.
"Hokage-sama!" Iruka jolted, the man’s presence cutting through the last of Iruka’s brain fog.
Folding himself into the chair next to the bed, Hiruzen put his hands in his lap and looked at Iruka with a serene smile on his face. “Ah, Iruka,” he said, as if he was surprised to see him, using the same intonation and expression he always had when Iruka decided to visit. Iruka had never been fooled, but there was no reason to comment on it.
“What brings you here, Hokage-sama?” Iruka asked, then squirmed under the man’s gaze, unable to sit still.
Hiruzen hummed. “I’ve been told your mission did not go very well.”
Iruka looked away. The pristine interior of the room sure was… interesting. Better than returning the Third’s penetrating gaze, which had the propensity to make Iruka feel like he was thirteen again, being scolded for a mishap or prank. Except this time, it was much more serious, and Iruka had blood on his hands. Not paint.
“I am not blaming you, Iruka,” Hiruzen said, soft in the silence.
“But I am to blame,” Iruka choked out. He gripped the sheets tight on reflex, the coil in his chest winding tighter and tighter again. “It was my team. I failed them.” He took a shuddering breath. “I failed Konoha.”
“We all have, at one point or another,” mumbled Hiruzen gravelly. Iruka looked up at him then, and wondered what secrets the Hokage was hiding — how many mistakes he’d made, how much blood he’d shed, how many bodies he had buried in the name of their village. Iruka would never know, but in that moment he saw a fraction of the reality behind the mask Hiruzen wore. Still, he couldn’t help but wonder whether that was part of the mask, too.
“The first time is always the hardest,” the Hokage continued.
“Do you visit every fresh jōnin to comfort them when they’ve made a total mess of things?” Iruka bit out.
Unexpectedly, Hiruzen laughed, bringing sudden animation to his frame. “No. I do not. Neither do I have a monthly cup of tea with every prankster in Konoha. You are special in many ways, Iruka. That is why I am here.”
“I only became jōnin this year. There’s nothing special in that.” Iruka was thinking of Konoha’s prodigies, soldiers like the Uchiha and Hatake, whose levels of expertise he was doubtful anyone average could ever aspire to.
“Getting to jōnin is not a small feat, do not underestimate it. Many of our most valuable assets acquired their ranks later than you did. You are barely eighteen years old.”
Iruka sighed, suddenly weary. “Do you think I’ve made a mistake?” he asked.
Hiruzen blinked, and the serene smile was back. “A mistake of what kind?”
“Trying to be better. Staying on active duty, despite how badly I handled my first kill. And now this. I still have doubts.”
“Are you dead, Iruka?” Hiruzen asked. Confused, Iruka waited for the man to continue, but it soon became apparent the Hokage was waiting for Iruka’s answer.
“I’m… not?”
“You’re not. That is a lot more than what some other shinobi can say after their first mission gone wrong.”
Iruka bit his lip. If the Third thought this was helping, it wasn’t. He was alive, but it only reminded Iruka of the price he’d paid for that. “I don’t want my life to be a trade-off for others’.”
“We cannot predict the circumstances we find ourselves in, nor how we will react, despite our insistence to control such reactions. I do not blame you, Iruka. If I had to blame anyone, I would blame the enemy shinobi, or even beyond that, man’s desire for violence itself.” Hiruzen said. “I know this does not bring you much comfort. But you will have to find some, one way or another. If you cannot, there is no shame in giving it up.”
They were silent for a moment.
“What would I do?” Iruka asked, a little insecurity slipping through the cracks of the wall he was trying to put up.
“Your friend Mizuki. He seems to be doing well at the Academy,” answered Hiruzen in his roundabout way.
Frowning, Iruka considered a teaching post at the Academy for the umpteenth time. He’d already thought about it before taking the jōnin test. He’d turned the topic over extensively, spent sleepless nights pondering whether he should stay on active duty or retire after his short-lived career as an active chūnin. Every time, he’d come to the same conclusion. He came to it now as well.
“How is killing on active duty any better than training children to kill?” he asked. It was the same question he’d been asking himself for a long time, up to the point when he’d realised it was actually rhetorical.
Hiruzen smiled, maybe the first real smile in this entire visit so far. It held a measure of sadness, but in Hiruzen’s eyes there was that sly glint which hinted at hidden agendas and fighting dirty that Iruka had become aware of when he’d been roped into those meetings with him many years ago. The Third had seen Iruka’s potential, and seen how he’d been squandering it. He hadn’t seen Iruka as a grieving child, rather as an asset to be set straight, and so he’d leashed Iruka in.
“I see you’ve come to the crux of the issue,” Hiruzen chuckled. “They are both necessary tasks. Which one you are suited to does not make much of a difference. For some it is easier to take matters into their own hands. For some, to support the village from the inside. But your dilemma isn’t being afraid or incapable of close combat, is it?”
The fact was, however, that Iruka had gained more than just a sense of duty from those visits. Hiruzen was sly, but Iruka matched him well, and so he’d let himself be honed to sharpness, because he knew the Hokage was offering something in return. Iruka had gained understanding the likes of which he hadn’t had from anyone before — he’d been too young for it before his parents died — and he’d welcomed that warmth with open arms, choosing to ignore the real reason behind it. In the shinobi world, the only certainty was death. Anything else you had to be thankful for.
Iruka smiled back. “You know me well, Hokage-sama. No, the problem is not that I feel incapable of the action. It does get easier with time.” He paused, wondering whether saying what he was about to say would get him executed for treason or not. In the end, he decided to push. “I just didn’t know whether it was worth it.”
“Ah,” the Hokage said, his expression unchanged. “And do you know now?”
“I do,” Iruka answered. He did not elaborate, but he felt it in his heart.
He could not live in denial. As long as the hidden villages existed and he was alive, turning a blind eye to the machinations going on in and between them was cowardice. Turning a blind eye — by working at the Academy, or simply choosing not to take missions anymore — would mean other lives lost that Iruka could have had a hand in saving. It wasn’t that Iruka overestimated his value. His type of work, though — search, capture, contain, destroy — it was highly specific. They were eager to have him on the team, as a secure or unsteady barrier seal was often the difference between life or death.
So he’d work. Even if it ruined him, or maybe simply changed him. He was fine with that. Not for Konoha, but for its people, and for the future.
“I see the Will of Fire burning in your eyes, Iruka,” Hiruzen said, serious now. “Do not let this loss dissuade you. Let it be a learning lesson.”
Iruka did. He learned, and lived on.