Death is
A strange thought that came to me, in a fit of angsty emo-ness worthy of Sasuke.
So I present to you a collection of ficlets centered around the prologue and premise of what death is.
Mayhaps I will do more of them, who knows. It is certainly much more entertaining than doing my real homework.
Prologue:
Kari could only stare at the weird lady, surprised by the question. She was staying with Kanna for the night because Daddy had to work the night patrol. She supposed she could have stayed with Ruka and Kashi daddy but she liked staying at Kanna’s house on Friday nights. Ruka and Kashi daddy were doing fun things that Ruka daddy wouldn’t let Kashi daddy to on a school night and Kari was pretty sure that she didn’t want to know what those things were because they always made Ruka daddy blush and Kashi daddy’s eye gleam just a little to scarily for her.
Friday nights were girls’ nights. That is what Kanna always said, so she would get ice cream and chocolate sauce and her and Kari would watch cartoons and stay up late. But Kanna’s mom was visiting from a small village somewhere a day or two by anbu travel from Konoha and apparently didn’t know that she shouldn’t ask those things. She had been scolding Kanna earlier for not talking about the Big D word in relation to something that had happened at the hospital, whatever word that was and now this. She had even said it in that funny tone of voice that made Kari want to roll her eyes at her.
“We don’t talk about death,” she said firmly and slowly to the woman. “Death is something that everyone knows about but we don’t talk about it.”
The woman seemed surprised, “why not dear.”
Kari sighed, giving her the grown up look that only a 4 year old can give an obtuse adult. “Death is the tears in Kanna’s eyes when she shows up at Ruka daddy’s apartment sometimes and she says she failed to protect someone she knew. Death is the look in Ruka daddy’s eyes when he comes home from the mission office and tells Kashi daddy that we need to go to the stone that night for another memorial for another nin who didn’t make it home. It is daddy coming home covered in blood but you don’t care because you can still hug him even though you know the blood means that someone else’s daddy won’t be going home that night and you feel slightly guilty for being relieved about that.”
Kari paused and sighed, “Death is staring at the stone with Kashi daddy knowing that the names won’t talk back, but you still say hi to them anyway, and sometimes wish they could answer back. Death is staring at the stone while the names are said in a sad voice, while holding tightly to daddy’s hand and listening to someone else cry because their mommy or daddy didn’t make it home. Death is the way that Ruka daddy always tells Kashi daddy that he loves him before a mission. It is Ruka daddy sometimes crying at night, when he thinks you can’t hear, because Kashi daddy is gone longer than he should be or when he comes home badly injured. It is Kanna asking one of the anbu to take her into the forest of death with a sad look of despair on her face and she comes back home dirty and with her hands wrapped up in bloody bandages she refuses to heal that day. It is daddy when he practices all night long, trying to improve his skill so that another under his command won’t die on the next mission. Death is daddy in anbu mode, because anbu means death.” She paused for a moment, thinking hard. “But anbu means life too. Anbu is the strength to protect those you love, even if the cost is your own life for theirs. That’s what Kanna always says. She says that is why she became an anbu medic, to protect those who protect us from harm.”
She nodded knowingly at the woman, “We don’t talk about death. Because you don’t want the last conversation you have with the ones you love to be about sad things.” She nodded firmly. “Death makes peoples’ eyes go all sad and they look far away as if remembering life. So it is better to live now so that you have memories to hold against the pain when death finally comes to your door. Uncle Gaara says that good memories help the pain and bad memories only make your sorrow that much harder to bear.” She seemed to think for a moment, “it already hurts lots to lose someone you love, so I don’t want to know how much more it would hurt with bad memories.”
Death is:
Kakashi grabbed her hands, torn and bleeding from repeated blows on the unyielding tree, preventing her from breaking her fists upon the hard bark.
“You can’t bring them back by sacrificing yourself,” he told her in a low calm voice. Wild crying eyes caught and held his, reminding him more of a wounded animal than the self contained medic.
“What does it matter if they break or bleed,” her voice was probably trying to scream but the last half hour of uncontrolled rage had left her throat raw and incapable of more than a whisper. “They are useless. They can’t save anyone. I can’t save anyone.” She tried to wrench them free, but he refused to allow it. She fought him then, kicking and hitting with all her strength but he never wavered nor flinched. Absently he noted that she instinctively avoided any real blow on his body that may hit a vital spot, proof that she wasn’t so far gone in her grief as to completely forget herself and him.
Her rage finally ran out with the last of her energy, her body slumping to the ground as if it could swallow her up. He knelt down beside her, carefully inspecting her hands before deciding that they simply needed a good cleaning and bandages. Swiftly he worked, wrapping them carefully, frowning as the blood seeped through the wounds. She wasn’t helping him, nor was she trying to heal them herself.
“Iruka is going to hate me for failing,” she whispered.
Kakashi frowned at her, “he won’t blame you. You did everything you could.”
“His student died,” she retorted though there was no force behind it, only resignation. “He won’t forgive me for that.”
“You are wrong, you know.” Kakashi finished bandaging her hands. “Iruka will blame himself before he blames you.”
“He wasn’t even there, he did everything right in her training. As long as she had stayed training with him, she would have been fine.”
“And there you have your answer. If only. No one could have predicted that a simple training attempt by her civilian father could have gone so wrong. It wasn’t anyone’s fault really. A freak accident.”
“A freak accident that cost a child her life,” Kanna reminded him. “I couldn’t save her.”
“You tried, that is all that matters. You can’t always save everyone, Kanna. Neither the small babies born too soon nor the old people facing death. Death is inevitable and sometimes you have to face the fact that you are not always going to be able to defeat him in that hand of poker.”
“I suck at poker,” she laughed, half hysterically.
“You win as often as you lose,” he shrugged. “And you cheat and we all know it. Sometimes you cheat death too, but sometimes he out cheats you.”
She sighed, a little calmer but still wounded inside. “What happens when it is Iruka or you lying on that table and I can’t cheat death then?”
“We face it and go on. We are shinobi, Kanna. You are an anbu medic. Death is inevitable, that is something we all understand. We know that we cheat death every time we go out on a mission that suddenly goes bad but somehow we make it home anyway. We gamble with our lives every time that mission scroll is placed in our hands. You are sometimes our trump card in that gamble, but sometimes death trumps the trump and we know this.” Kakashi sighed, “I won’t lie, losing Iruka would probably kill me. But even then, I wouldn’t blame you.” He laughed bitterly, “More than likely, I would be the one to knock you cold to prevent you from killing yourself trying to save him when he is already gone.”
She sighed, “he wouldn’t be happy with either of us if we went that far.” She shrugged, “he would tell us to keep living. But then again, I would do the same for you and a few others if you were the ones laying on that table.” She stared at her hands, the bandages bloodstained as the red still spread. “No matter how much they bleed and hurt, it can’t compare to the pain in my soul.”
“It never will,” Kakashi told her. “No torture yet devised by man hurts more than the pain of failing to protect someone under our care. It doesn’t fade in time nor does it get better, but we just learn to live with it and go on with our life.”
Kanna sighed, “I don’t always remember the faces of those I have saved, but the faces I have failed are engraved in my memory forever.” She laughed mockingly, “Funny how you remember what went wrong rather than what is going right.”
“Iruka is going to scold you,” Kakashi reminded her, changing the topic before she could sink too much farther into her guilt again.
“Probably,” she sighed.
He pulled her to her feet and then scooped her up bridal style, “time to go home so that Iruka can fuss over his favorite little sister.”
“You realize he is going to yell at you too.”
Kakashi shrugged, “it is good for him, reminds him that he is alive.”
Kanna’s voice was almost too soft to be heard, “we all need to remember that some days more than others. But who reminds those who are alone that they are still alive?”
Kakashi just took off for the village, he didn’t have an answer. He wondered if any one really did.
Death Is:
Anbu wore black and white because they were the traditional colors of funerals. It didn’t have much to do with camouflage because any ninja worth the anbu colors didn’t need to have clothes to camoflauge themselves. They could be dressed in flaming red and purple in a bright green room and you still wouldn’t be able to see them. They were after all ninjas before they became anbu. And Anbu meant death, for the members as well as those they were sent after, so black and white had seemed appropriate and intimidating at the time the anbu founders had picked them. Granted the white had trended to a more gray for many members for another funeral reason. White traditionally meant that the spirit was crossing over into heaven, whereas many anbu members highly doubted they would ever make it there. So gray become a more reasonable substitute, a kind of acknowledgment of what they were giving up when they picked up that bone white mask.
Sasuke stared at his mask, holding it in his hands letting the blood from the wound in his arm drop on the unflinching face. It seemed fitting that it should be covered in blood. Warm arms wrapped around him, holding him unflinchingly in their soft embrace. He leaned against her, letting himself be weak for a moment, but only for a moment and only where she could see him. She was like the sister he never had and wasn’t sure he wanted, but she had sort of slipped into the spot without him really noticing until it was too late to let her go.
“He will live,” she whispered gently, a soft hand stroking the unruly hair away from his face.
“No thanks to me,” came the bitter reply.
“It is thanks to you that he came back at all,” she retorted. Her chakra was wrapping around him, soothing him, but not healing. Not yet. She wouldn’t heal until he gave her the okay. It was part of their unspoken agreement. Her hand kept gently massaging his temples, helping to ease the tension headache that had been building between his eyes. “I don’t know many anbu who could have managed to do what you did and bring him back at all.”
“If I had…” Sasuke trailed off as she smacked him upside the head.
“If I had a piece of chocolate for every time I heard that phrase I would be fat and severely sugar sick.” She sighed, “They say hindsight is 20/20 but personally I think it is more like 400/400. Because all you see is the could have, should have, would have’s but you don’t see how the consequences of changing what you did would have effected the outcome. If you had changed one thing, can you truly say that things would have turned out better or would you be standing here in your blacks if you were standing here at all?”
“Don’t be logical when I am trying to be angsty,” he grumbled but it held no heat in it.
“Sorry dear, far be it from me to stop you from being the poster child for the Emo culture.”
“You have been hanging around with Iruka sensei too much,” he retorted.
“Iruka does tend to have a tendency to talk about your tender years a lot. All of you. He has stories that make Neji blush and Kiba whine like a child.” She tilted her head and laughed, “but to be fair, Kotetsu and Izumo tell as many stories about Iruka and sometimes Kakashi as those two tell about their students.”
Sasuke shrugged, the familiar washing over him easing his burden a bit. The loosening of his shoulders was her signal and he felt her power washing over him as well, healing his wounds both seen and unseen.
“You are wrong you know.” She looked at him for a moment, her eyes serious. “Anbu doesn’t mean death, not always. Anbu means life too. It is the strength to protect those who are precious to you. The skills to keep them safe and laughing in the light that casts you into the shadows. When you took that mask you became death, but you also became life.”
“Is that what you keep telling yourself when you see us so you won’t fear and hate us,” his bitter voice was tinged with anger and pain.
“No, that is the reason why I chose to become an anbu medic. Because someone had to protect the ones who protect us all. If my life and skill can be used to give another a chance to live than so be it. I would make that choice without hesitation.”
Sasuke shook his head, “I don’t think any one of us would be particularly happy with you if you did that.”
“Isn’t that a little hypocritical,” she grumbled. “It is alright for you to be all emo guilt boy about not protecting another with your life, but I am not allowed to do the same thing.”
“It is the whole anbu vs. medic thing,” he attempted to defend himself only to trail off sort of lamely, “just accept it.”
“I will accept that when you accept your sacred duty from the council and settle down and have another kid. This time a blood child.”
He shuddered, “I think one Uchiha child is enough. Kari is enough for 4 sets of parents. She does not need siblings.”
“I keep saying that but no one listens to me.” She paused laughing for a moment, “you should have seen the look on one of those kunoichi’s faces the other day.”
Sasuke tilted his head questioningly.
“She was lecturing me on how I should not even begin to think that I was good enough to pursue you since I wasn’t a ninja and therefore not worthy of your time type of thing.” Sasuke frowned at this. There wasn’t an anbu out there who wouldn’t say that Kanna on the warpath was more than a match for all of them, but that was beside the point. Kanna continued, ignoring his frown. “Anyway, the look on her face when I gave her this horrified look and said ‘but that would require actually having sex with him which is rather disturbing and possibly nightmare inducing for the both of us.’ I thought she was going to faint in outrage.” Kanna snickered over the memory.
Sasuke shook his head, “statements like that will not endear you to the kuonichi population of Konoha.”
Kanna shrugged, “the fact that I am allowed to run my hands up and down your body at will has already marked me as the most vilest creature on the face of the planet so I highly doubt there is anything I can say that will make me go down in their estimation. I once tried to point out to them that that fact went for all of anbu and if they wanted to become anbu medics, they could do the same thing, granted usually with blood, guts, and gore involved but they didn’t seem to think that was a good thing.” She sighed, “they want all the glory of being an anbu medic but none of the work involved with it.”
“Not everyone can handle random anbu members dripping all manners of icky things on their carpets at 3 am with as much aplomb as you do.” Sasuke snickered.
“I imagine not.” Kanna sighed before she turned and caught his face in her hand forcing him to look in her eyes, “and for the record, I have never feared or hated any of you. Ever. You may all drive me insane with your stupidity and worry, but never with fear or hatred.” She finished bandaging him up, a soft smile on her lips. “You all mean far too much to me as a family to ever fear or hate you. Want to beat you senseless, well maybe that. But I keep hoping that repeated applications of force to the back of your skulls with a blunt object over a period of time will knock some sense into you. So far the experiment is a failure but I am sure that eventually I will find the right blunt object that will achieve my goal.”
Sasuke laughed, his heart feeling slightly better for talking to her. This is why he did it, why this one medic meant so much to him as well as the rest of anbu. She listened, she understood, and she found the gray thread in the blackness and managed to throttle them with it until they finally saw it too.
She turned and left with a soft smile, heading to the next anbu member who needed her medic skills. Sasuke turned and went after Kari, pausing to wonder if Naruto would like to join them for dinner that night. Sasuke could use the company and he was sure that Naruto could use the vegetables.
Death is.
Iruka heard, or rather didn’t hear Kakashi come home. However, the steady drip of blood upon the floor alerted him to the other’s presence. Kakashi stood there, his white mask in stark relief to his blood stained clothes. Iruka never hesitated, his faith and trust in his lover unshakeable and absolute, but threw himself at his husband with a glad cry of joy and relief. Those warm, strong arms closed around him as Iruka clung to him shaking with emotion.
“You’re late,” he managed to choke out, half laughing, half-sobbing.
“Mah,” the beloved voice sounded so cool against his ear, “I got lost in the forest where I stumbled across these women being attacked by bandits at a hot spring. Naturally I had to save them.”
Iruka chuckled weakly. “Naturally. Did they turn out to be the Ichi Ichi babes from the last book, having been in search of the lustful hero with whom they must have wild, passionate sex with multiple times to insure their villages prosperity.”
Kakashi laughed a rich clear sound that warmed Iruka’s soul. “Why sensei, have you been reading my books again?”
Iruka blushed as he confessed, “well the movie came out his past weekend. I had to read the book so I could know what was going on when we went to see it.”
Kakashi removed his anbu mask, those beloved eyes sparkling with mirth. “Oh sensei,” he leered happily.
“Lets get you cleaned up and bandaged before you continue that thought,” Iruka scolded, his eyes running critically over his lover’s body. “Since you came here and not the hospital, I am guessing that your injuries are mainly minor.”
Kakashi shrugged, “most of it is someone else’s blood.” Kakashi frowned as he peeled off a glove, wiping at the blood he had left on Iruka’s cheek then frowning more when he only smeared more on rather than taking it off.
“Don’t worry about it,” Iruka shrugged. “It will wash off in the shower. You are home, that is all that matters to me.”
“But I may ruin your chances at attaining salvation,” Kakashi mused aloud.
“I don’t care if I come back as a bug,” he smiled, “so long as I remain by your side, I am happy. Besides Nirvana is seriously overrated if you ask me. Enlightenment sounds a lot like abstinence in my opinion.”
Kakashi grinned lecheorulsy, “heaven forbid that you have to do without.”
Iruka gave him a look, “I am more worried about you. You couldn’t go a day without your porn and heaven help us all if you have to do without your ‘Ruka fix’.” Iruka even did the air quotes at ‘Ruka fix’, making Kakashi laugh.
Iruka yelped as Kakashi picked him up, slung him over his shoulder and carried him off to the bathroom. “Speaking of ‘Ruka fixes’, I have been going into withdrawal lately. I may have to overdose in order to save myself from some really nasty symptoms.”
Iruka only laughed, a sound that was muffled as a warm pair of lips covered his as the bath room door closed behind them.
So I present to you a collection of ficlets centered around the prologue and premise of what death is.
Mayhaps I will do more of them, who knows. It is certainly much more entertaining than doing my real homework.
Prologue:
Kari could only stare at the weird lady, surprised by the question. She was staying with Kanna for the night because Daddy had to work the night patrol. She supposed she could have stayed with Ruka and Kashi daddy but she liked staying at Kanna’s house on Friday nights. Ruka and Kashi daddy were doing fun things that Ruka daddy wouldn’t let Kashi daddy to on a school night and Kari was pretty sure that she didn’t want to know what those things were because they always made Ruka daddy blush and Kashi daddy’s eye gleam just a little to scarily for her.
Friday nights were girls’ nights. That is what Kanna always said, so she would get ice cream and chocolate sauce and her and Kari would watch cartoons and stay up late. But Kanna’s mom was visiting from a small village somewhere a day or two by anbu travel from Konoha and apparently didn’t know that she shouldn’t ask those things. She had been scolding Kanna earlier for not talking about the Big D word in relation to something that had happened at the hospital, whatever word that was and now this. She had even said it in that funny tone of voice that made Kari want to roll her eyes at her.
“We don’t talk about death,” she said firmly and slowly to the woman. “Death is something that everyone knows about but we don’t talk about it.”
The woman seemed surprised, “why not dear.”
Kari sighed, giving her the grown up look that only a 4 year old can give an obtuse adult. “Death is the tears in Kanna’s eyes when she shows up at Ruka daddy’s apartment sometimes and she says she failed to protect someone she knew. Death is the look in Ruka daddy’s eyes when he comes home from the mission office and tells Kashi daddy that we need to go to the stone that night for another memorial for another nin who didn’t make it home. It is daddy coming home covered in blood but you don’t care because you can still hug him even though you know the blood means that someone else’s daddy won’t be going home that night and you feel slightly guilty for being relieved about that.”
Kari paused and sighed, “Death is staring at the stone with Kashi daddy knowing that the names won’t talk back, but you still say hi to them anyway, and sometimes wish they could answer back. Death is staring at the stone while the names are said in a sad voice, while holding tightly to daddy’s hand and listening to someone else cry because their mommy or daddy didn’t make it home. Death is the way that Ruka daddy always tells Kashi daddy that he loves him before a mission. It is Ruka daddy sometimes crying at night, when he thinks you can’t hear, because Kashi daddy is gone longer than he should be or when he comes home badly injured. It is Kanna asking one of the anbu to take her into the forest of death with a sad look of despair on her face and she comes back home dirty and with her hands wrapped up in bloody bandages she refuses to heal that day. It is daddy when he practices all night long, trying to improve his skill so that another under his command won’t die on the next mission. Death is daddy in anbu mode, because anbu means death.” She paused for a moment, thinking hard. “But anbu means life too. Anbu is the strength to protect those you love, even if the cost is your own life for theirs. That’s what Kanna always says. She says that is why she became an anbu medic, to protect those who protect us from harm.”
She nodded knowingly at the woman, “We don’t talk about death. Because you don’t want the last conversation you have with the ones you love to be about sad things.” She nodded firmly. “Death makes peoples’ eyes go all sad and they look far away as if remembering life. So it is better to live now so that you have memories to hold against the pain when death finally comes to your door. Uncle Gaara says that good memories help the pain and bad memories only make your sorrow that much harder to bear.” She seemed to think for a moment, “it already hurts lots to lose someone you love, so I don’t want to know how much more it would hurt with bad memories.”
Death is:
Kakashi grabbed her hands, torn and bleeding from repeated blows on the unyielding tree, preventing her from breaking her fists upon the hard bark.
“You can’t bring them back by sacrificing yourself,” he told her in a low calm voice. Wild crying eyes caught and held his, reminding him more of a wounded animal than the self contained medic.
“What does it matter if they break or bleed,” her voice was probably trying to scream but the last half hour of uncontrolled rage had left her throat raw and incapable of more than a whisper. “They are useless. They can’t save anyone. I can’t save anyone.” She tried to wrench them free, but he refused to allow it. She fought him then, kicking and hitting with all her strength but he never wavered nor flinched. Absently he noted that she instinctively avoided any real blow on his body that may hit a vital spot, proof that she wasn’t so far gone in her grief as to completely forget herself and him.
Her rage finally ran out with the last of her energy, her body slumping to the ground as if it could swallow her up. He knelt down beside her, carefully inspecting her hands before deciding that they simply needed a good cleaning and bandages. Swiftly he worked, wrapping them carefully, frowning as the blood seeped through the wounds. She wasn’t helping him, nor was she trying to heal them herself.
“Iruka is going to hate me for failing,” she whispered.
Kakashi frowned at her, “he won’t blame you. You did everything you could.”
“His student died,” she retorted though there was no force behind it, only resignation. “He won’t forgive me for that.”
“You are wrong, you know.” Kakashi finished bandaging her hands. “Iruka will blame himself before he blames you.”
“He wasn’t even there, he did everything right in her training. As long as she had stayed training with him, she would have been fine.”
“And there you have your answer. If only. No one could have predicted that a simple training attempt by her civilian father could have gone so wrong. It wasn’t anyone’s fault really. A freak accident.”
“A freak accident that cost a child her life,” Kanna reminded him. “I couldn’t save her.”
“You tried, that is all that matters. You can’t always save everyone, Kanna. Neither the small babies born too soon nor the old people facing death. Death is inevitable and sometimes you have to face the fact that you are not always going to be able to defeat him in that hand of poker.”
“I suck at poker,” she laughed, half hysterically.
“You win as often as you lose,” he shrugged. “And you cheat and we all know it. Sometimes you cheat death too, but sometimes he out cheats you.”
She sighed, a little calmer but still wounded inside. “What happens when it is Iruka or you lying on that table and I can’t cheat death then?”
“We face it and go on. We are shinobi, Kanna. You are an anbu medic. Death is inevitable, that is something we all understand. We know that we cheat death every time we go out on a mission that suddenly goes bad but somehow we make it home anyway. We gamble with our lives every time that mission scroll is placed in our hands. You are sometimes our trump card in that gamble, but sometimes death trumps the trump and we know this.” Kakashi sighed, “I won’t lie, losing Iruka would probably kill me. But even then, I wouldn’t blame you.” He laughed bitterly, “More than likely, I would be the one to knock you cold to prevent you from killing yourself trying to save him when he is already gone.”
She sighed, “he wouldn’t be happy with either of us if we went that far.” She shrugged, “he would tell us to keep living. But then again, I would do the same for you and a few others if you were the ones laying on that table.” She stared at her hands, the bandages bloodstained as the red still spread. “No matter how much they bleed and hurt, it can’t compare to the pain in my soul.”
“It never will,” Kakashi told her. “No torture yet devised by man hurts more than the pain of failing to protect someone under our care. It doesn’t fade in time nor does it get better, but we just learn to live with it and go on with our life.”
Kanna sighed, “I don’t always remember the faces of those I have saved, but the faces I have failed are engraved in my memory forever.” She laughed mockingly, “Funny how you remember what went wrong rather than what is going right.”
“Iruka is going to scold you,” Kakashi reminded her, changing the topic before she could sink too much farther into her guilt again.
“Probably,” she sighed.
He pulled her to her feet and then scooped her up bridal style, “time to go home so that Iruka can fuss over his favorite little sister.”
“You realize he is going to yell at you too.”
Kakashi shrugged, “it is good for him, reminds him that he is alive.”
Kanna’s voice was almost too soft to be heard, “we all need to remember that some days more than others. But who reminds those who are alone that they are still alive?”
Kakashi just took off for the village, he didn’t have an answer. He wondered if any one really did.
Death Is:
Anbu wore black and white because they were the traditional colors of funerals. It didn’t have much to do with camouflage because any ninja worth the anbu colors didn’t need to have clothes to camoflauge themselves. They could be dressed in flaming red and purple in a bright green room and you still wouldn’t be able to see them. They were after all ninjas before they became anbu. And Anbu meant death, for the members as well as those they were sent after, so black and white had seemed appropriate and intimidating at the time the anbu founders had picked them. Granted the white had trended to a more gray for many members for another funeral reason. White traditionally meant that the spirit was crossing over into heaven, whereas many anbu members highly doubted they would ever make it there. So gray become a more reasonable substitute, a kind of acknowledgment of what they were giving up when they picked up that bone white mask.
Sasuke stared at his mask, holding it in his hands letting the blood from the wound in his arm drop on the unflinching face. It seemed fitting that it should be covered in blood. Warm arms wrapped around him, holding him unflinchingly in their soft embrace. He leaned against her, letting himself be weak for a moment, but only for a moment and only where she could see him. She was like the sister he never had and wasn’t sure he wanted, but she had sort of slipped into the spot without him really noticing until it was too late to let her go.
“He will live,” she whispered gently, a soft hand stroking the unruly hair away from his face.
“No thanks to me,” came the bitter reply.
“It is thanks to you that he came back at all,” she retorted. Her chakra was wrapping around him, soothing him, but not healing. Not yet. She wouldn’t heal until he gave her the okay. It was part of their unspoken agreement. Her hand kept gently massaging his temples, helping to ease the tension headache that had been building between his eyes. “I don’t know many anbu who could have managed to do what you did and bring him back at all.”
“If I had…” Sasuke trailed off as she smacked him upside the head.
“If I had a piece of chocolate for every time I heard that phrase I would be fat and severely sugar sick.” She sighed, “They say hindsight is 20/20 but personally I think it is more like 400/400. Because all you see is the could have, should have, would have’s but you don’t see how the consequences of changing what you did would have effected the outcome. If you had changed one thing, can you truly say that things would have turned out better or would you be standing here in your blacks if you were standing here at all?”
“Don’t be logical when I am trying to be angsty,” he grumbled but it held no heat in it.
“Sorry dear, far be it from me to stop you from being the poster child for the Emo culture.”
“You have been hanging around with Iruka sensei too much,” he retorted.
“Iruka does tend to have a tendency to talk about your tender years a lot. All of you. He has stories that make Neji blush and Kiba whine like a child.” She tilted her head and laughed, “but to be fair, Kotetsu and Izumo tell as many stories about Iruka and sometimes Kakashi as those two tell about their students.”
Sasuke shrugged, the familiar washing over him easing his burden a bit. The loosening of his shoulders was her signal and he felt her power washing over him as well, healing his wounds both seen and unseen.
“You are wrong you know.” She looked at him for a moment, her eyes serious. “Anbu doesn’t mean death, not always. Anbu means life too. It is the strength to protect those who are precious to you. The skills to keep them safe and laughing in the light that casts you into the shadows. When you took that mask you became death, but you also became life.”
“Is that what you keep telling yourself when you see us so you won’t fear and hate us,” his bitter voice was tinged with anger and pain.
“No, that is the reason why I chose to become an anbu medic. Because someone had to protect the ones who protect us all. If my life and skill can be used to give another a chance to live than so be it. I would make that choice without hesitation.”
Sasuke shook his head, “I don’t think any one of us would be particularly happy with you if you did that.”
“Isn’t that a little hypocritical,” she grumbled. “It is alright for you to be all emo guilt boy about not protecting another with your life, but I am not allowed to do the same thing.”
“It is the whole anbu vs. medic thing,” he attempted to defend himself only to trail off sort of lamely, “just accept it.”
“I will accept that when you accept your sacred duty from the council and settle down and have another kid. This time a blood child.”
He shuddered, “I think one Uchiha child is enough. Kari is enough for 4 sets of parents. She does not need siblings.”
“I keep saying that but no one listens to me.” She paused laughing for a moment, “you should have seen the look on one of those kunoichi’s faces the other day.”
Sasuke tilted his head questioningly.
“She was lecturing me on how I should not even begin to think that I was good enough to pursue you since I wasn’t a ninja and therefore not worthy of your time type of thing.” Sasuke frowned at this. There wasn’t an anbu out there who wouldn’t say that Kanna on the warpath was more than a match for all of them, but that was beside the point. Kanna continued, ignoring his frown. “Anyway, the look on her face when I gave her this horrified look and said ‘but that would require actually having sex with him which is rather disturbing and possibly nightmare inducing for the both of us.’ I thought she was going to faint in outrage.” Kanna snickered over the memory.
Sasuke shook his head, “statements like that will not endear you to the kuonichi population of Konoha.”
Kanna shrugged, “the fact that I am allowed to run my hands up and down your body at will has already marked me as the most vilest creature on the face of the planet so I highly doubt there is anything I can say that will make me go down in their estimation. I once tried to point out to them that that fact went for all of anbu and if they wanted to become anbu medics, they could do the same thing, granted usually with blood, guts, and gore involved but they didn’t seem to think that was a good thing.” She sighed, “they want all the glory of being an anbu medic but none of the work involved with it.”
“Not everyone can handle random anbu members dripping all manners of icky things on their carpets at 3 am with as much aplomb as you do.” Sasuke snickered.
“I imagine not.” Kanna sighed before she turned and caught his face in her hand forcing him to look in her eyes, “and for the record, I have never feared or hated any of you. Ever. You may all drive me insane with your stupidity and worry, but never with fear or hatred.” She finished bandaging him up, a soft smile on her lips. “You all mean far too much to me as a family to ever fear or hate you. Want to beat you senseless, well maybe that. But I keep hoping that repeated applications of force to the back of your skulls with a blunt object over a period of time will knock some sense into you. So far the experiment is a failure but I am sure that eventually I will find the right blunt object that will achieve my goal.”
Sasuke laughed, his heart feeling slightly better for talking to her. This is why he did it, why this one medic meant so much to him as well as the rest of anbu. She listened, she understood, and she found the gray thread in the blackness and managed to throttle them with it until they finally saw it too.
She turned and left with a soft smile, heading to the next anbu member who needed her medic skills. Sasuke turned and went after Kari, pausing to wonder if Naruto would like to join them for dinner that night. Sasuke could use the company and he was sure that Naruto could use the vegetables.
Death is.
Iruka heard, or rather didn’t hear Kakashi come home. However, the steady drip of blood upon the floor alerted him to the other’s presence. Kakashi stood there, his white mask in stark relief to his blood stained clothes. Iruka never hesitated, his faith and trust in his lover unshakeable and absolute, but threw himself at his husband with a glad cry of joy and relief. Those warm, strong arms closed around him as Iruka clung to him shaking with emotion.
“You’re late,” he managed to choke out, half laughing, half-sobbing.
“Mah,” the beloved voice sounded so cool against his ear, “I got lost in the forest where I stumbled across these women being attacked by bandits at a hot spring. Naturally I had to save them.”
Iruka chuckled weakly. “Naturally. Did they turn out to be the Ichi Ichi babes from the last book, having been in search of the lustful hero with whom they must have wild, passionate sex with multiple times to insure their villages prosperity.”
Kakashi laughed a rich clear sound that warmed Iruka’s soul. “Why sensei, have you been reading my books again?”
Iruka blushed as he confessed, “well the movie came out his past weekend. I had to read the book so I could know what was going on when we went to see it.”
Kakashi removed his anbu mask, those beloved eyes sparkling with mirth. “Oh sensei,” he leered happily.
“Lets get you cleaned up and bandaged before you continue that thought,” Iruka scolded, his eyes running critically over his lover’s body. “Since you came here and not the hospital, I am guessing that your injuries are mainly minor.”
Kakashi shrugged, “most of it is someone else’s blood.” Kakashi frowned as he peeled off a glove, wiping at the blood he had left on Iruka’s cheek then frowning more when he only smeared more on rather than taking it off.
“Don’t worry about it,” Iruka shrugged. “It will wash off in the shower. You are home, that is all that matters to me.”
“But I may ruin your chances at attaining salvation,” Kakashi mused aloud.
“I don’t care if I come back as a bug,” he smiled, “so long as I remain by your side, I am happy. Besides Nirvana is seriously overrated if you ask me. Enlightenment sounds a lot like abstinence in my opinion.”
Kakashi grinned lecheorulsy, “heaven forbid that you have to do without.”
Iruka gave him a look, “I am more worried about you. You couldn’t go a day without your porn and heaven help us all if you have to do without your ‘Ruka fix’.” Iruka even did the air quotes at ‘Ruka fix’, making Kakashi laugh.
Iruka yelped as Kakashi picked him up, slung him over his shoulder and carried him off to the bathroom. “Speaking of ‘Ruka fixes’, I have been going into withdrawal lately. I may have to overdose in order to save myself from some really nasty symptoms.”
Iruka only laughed, a sound that was muffled as a warm pair of lips covered his as the bath room door closed behind them.