Leaf mould and desert wind
Naruto had been… angry with Kakashi sensei, at least at first. Angry and hurt and resentful. The exams were coming up and Kakashi sensei had just left him, Naruto wasn’t good at dealing with being left, with feeling unwanted. He’d had altogether too much of that in his life already, more than anyone could be expected to bear.
He’d been angry at first, it had been such a very easy thing to feel. Anger and abandonment and hurt, were such familiar feelings, feelings he knew better than his own name, old bitter friends that wrapped him in their embrace tight enough to choke. They’d been his constant companions for years and it was so so easy to fall back into their arms.
It was so easy, or at least it should have been, but Kakashi had taught him too well and nothing was simple anymore. He almost resented Kakashi for it. That he couldn’t help but dig deeper, couldn’t help but second guess his first reactions. The truly important things were never easy, no matter how much he wanted them to be, and he couldn’t pretend he didn’t know that, not with the weight of the kyuubi and everything it meant, sitting like a stone in his heart.
He thought about Kakashi sensei trying his best, always trying his best, no matter how hard it was. He thought about the fear in his teacher’s eyes when they were told that Sasuke would fight Gaara. He thought about blood under the carpets, and a monster in his soul, and the way Gaara felt too much like kin, like a warped fairground mirror, himself all twisted up wrong. He thought about all those things and the anger slipped through his fingers like smoke, leaving only the cold bleak fear that had so often followed Kakashi sensei’s lessons, the out of village ones. The ones that left him questioning everything he’d thought he believed in, desperately looking for a place to stand as the foundations of his world were shaken. The anger was easier to stomach, but lying to themselves was something Kakashi had never allowed any of them to indulge in, and he found he was out of the habit.
…
With the anger lost to him he was left to make what he could of what he was left with. Trust, in the end it all came down to trust. He didn’t know why Kakashi had left him with Ebisu, he didn’t really know Ebisu. He didn’t know why, and he wasn’t Sakura or Sasuke, cool and analytical, able to pull together subtle hints and calculate all the angles of a situation. His talent had always, would always, lie in his judgement of people, in caring, in understanding, in knowing who he could trust. Ebisu wasn’t the heroic mentor children dreamed of, but… Kakashi sensei had said that he trusted him, that he was a good teacher, and when it came down to it Naruto would always give people the benefit of the doubt. That was just a part of who he was. He didn’t know Ebisu, but he knew Kakashi sensei, possibly better than Kakashi sensei realised. And he knew with a bone deep, soul deep knowing, that Kakashi cared about them, all of them. If he was leaving Naruto with Ebisu there was a reason, and Naruto would have to trust it was a good one. Trust after all, could save your life.
So he trusted Ebisu, and found that underneath the slightly stuffy exterior was a genuinely good teacher. He’d been patient, and steady as he’d run through the things that Naruto had never quite learned properly before. It hadn’t been flashy or glamorous, but it had worked, and the way Ebisu smiled, quietly but honestly, as he finally managed to do an ordinary clone jutsu had told Naruto something else. That Ebisu genuinely cared about his students, the way Iruka sensei did, the way Kakashi sensei did, the way that truly great teachers always do. He didn’t know why exactly Kakashi sensei had left him with Ebisu even if he did have suspicions, but whatever the reason, in doing so he’d given him another person who cared, and that was worth more to Naruto than almost anything.
It wasn’t what he’d dreamed of when he was younger, rescuing princesses and being the hero, and being loved for it. Because that was what it boiled down to in the end. He wanted to be loved. But love wasn’t like that. Love wasn’t the adulation of crowds, or a kiss from the damsel in distress, or having a bridge named after him. Love was Sasuke’s hand in his as Kakashi hunted them through an illusory forest, was Sakura surrendering in hopes of saving his life, it was Iruka with a fuuma shuriken in the back telling him to run, and Kakashi sensei watching over them with tired worried eyes, and Ebisu smiling at him and telling him he’d done well. It wasn’t glamorous, or flashy but a part of Naruto was starting to understand it was all the better, all the more real for that fact.
He knew now, with the kind of knowledge that weighed like lead on the soul that being a ninja was nothing like he’d dreamed of. If there was one thing that had been clear in Kakashi’s lessons it was that. There were no heroes. Being a ninja was hours spent cleaning the river, or weeding gardens in the midday sun, was catching a cat and handing it back to an owner that didn’t know how to care for it, without a word of criticism. It was Zabuza and Kakashi sensei doing their level best to kill each other because their clients told them to, was Iruka sensei bleeding with a fuuma shuriken in the back. It was the awful responsibility of the Kyuubi trapped in his soul, the terrible grief in Sasuke’s eyes whenever his family was mentioned. It was Sakura in the forest of death, covered in blood, and shaking, and refusing to fall apart after using her tears to kill.
That realisation alone gave him a new respect for Ebisu sensei’s patient ordinary lessons. They weren’t the stuff legend was made of, but they were what life was made of, and somehow over the last few months Naruto had started to think that maybe that was more important.
He suspected that maybe the toad sage had forgotten that, in fact he suspected he might have forgotten it on purpose. There was only so much grief a man could bear, and it rolled off of Jiraiya san so thick he could almost taste it. Old grief, old shame, old failures, and years of not daring to look too close for fear it might break him. Naruto’s gift always lay in reading people, and Jiraiya’s mask of arrogance and perversion was nowhere near enough to hide from him.
…
He wanted Naruto to go with him, to learn from him, and Naruto had considered it. Jiraiya was one of the Sannin, a living legend, and even Naruto knew that it was an honour to learn from him. Whatever Jiraiya taught him would no doubt be the kind of showstopping technique that might even win him the chuunin exams. But… there was Ebisu, who had been patiently teaching him all the things he had never quite learned properly, Ebisu who Kakashi had trusted with him, Ebisu who looked at him like being set aside in favour of a more famous teacher was a foregone conclusion. And so Naruto had a choice to make that he wouldn’t even have seen a few months ago. Naruto wondered if this was what growing up felt like.
Because some things mattered more than power. And so he found himself saying no to the legendary Sannin, because he trusted Kakashi, and Kakashi had left him with Ebisu. Because Kakashi had never once been anything but painfully honest with him, and he could tell Jiraiya was hiding something. Because he knew too much about the nature of hidden villages to blindly trust a stranger, even if he wore a Konoha headband. Because Ebisu cared, and Naruto was starting to understand that he wasn’t the only one who’d ever felt abandoned.
The look of shock on Jiraiya’s face would have been worth recording, but it was the happiness on Ebisu’s face that Naruto would hold in his heart. Being a teacher mattered to Ebisu, having a student choose him over one of the Sannin, was enough to make his week.
Once Jiraiya’s shock had faded Naruto had felt a little bad, because when the man’s mask slipped it was clear that he’d cared more than Naruto thought. That for some reason Naruto mattered to him, and Naruto didn’t like the traces of hurt he’d left in the man’s eyes. But whatever he felt for Naruto it was nothing like Ebisu’s simple support. It was wrapped up in grief, and shame, and old old pain, and Naruto suspected that whoever Jiraiya was seeing when he looked at him, it wasn’t Naruto. Naruto had spent his whole life with people looking at him and seeing someone else, it wasn’t something he wanted from his teacher. He felt a little bad for hurting the man but he didn’t think he made the wrong decision.
The day the chuunin exams dawned Naruto still didn’t feel like he’d made the wrong choice, win or lose he didn’t regret trusting Kakashi sensei.
…
Once, a long time ago, back when Kakashi had still been a Kiri nin, he’d taken a bodyguard mission in mountain country. While he was there he’d had to escort the client to a bear baiting event. He still remembered the way the crowd had felt, the air thick with a predatory anticipation, the knowledge that blood was about to be spilt for their amusement. At the time he’d been surprised at how much that feeling disturbed him, a jounin of the bloody mist, who’d killed for the first time when he was five years ld and hadn’t stopped since.
Walking into the chunin exams he felt that maybe he understood a little better. It was the bloodlust of those who didn’t know how it felt to bleed, the cruelty of the ignorant, and the sheltered. It was violence as a spectator sport, for people who would never understand the full weight of what they’d seen. His student walked into the ring to face a mad rabid animal, and the crowd cheered in excitement at the blood they expected to see.
Gaara’s chakra flared and twisted, its touch like the desert sandstorms that could strip the flesh from a man’s bones if he were unwise enough to be caught out in them. His eyes were as desperately vicious as a bear chained and brutalised until all it could do was lash out, and Kakashi was almost overcome by a familiar wave of loathing for the whole bloody shinobi system. Nobody got eyes like those by accident, someone had broken him on purpose. Yet another sin to lay at the feet of the endless patchwork of violence that ruled the lands they lived in.
All hell broke loose when Sasuke forfeited. The crowd and his opponent equally angry at being denied the blood they considered their due. He could see the way the village elders were looking at him, angry and judgemental, and he didn’t care. His student’s life was worth more than Konoha’s pride, and if Kakashi had to pay the price for that then he would take the hit gladly. Some battles weren’t worth fighting, some were. He’d decided the day he’d taken them on, his students were worth fighting for.
Then the village was invaded, and the elders’ opinions were the last of their problems. He cursed when he saw Naruto chase after the crazed Suna jinchuriki, cursed and sent Sasuke and Sakura after them, because he couldn’t afford to leave the field, not when he wasn’t truly Konoha. People’s memories were long, never longer than when they were in the grip of grief, and he had to be seen fighting the enemy, or they might just start wondering which side he’d fought on, and that would lead to trouble Kakashi couldn’t fix. So he’d let his students chase down a spirit of destruction and malice, and prayed that Naruto knew what he was doing. Trusted that they were strong and smart enough to live. And he fought.
He’d fought in a whirl of blood and death, that came almost as easy as breathing. He’d twisted, and struck, and reminded the whole world that heart and bone, he was born and shaped in the bloody mist. He brought up the mists and fought blind as all mist nin knew how to. Identifying the sand nin by the dry desert smell of sand that clung to their clothes and hair, and skin, identifying the sound nin by the pervasive scent of rotten leaves and unnatural chemicals that was almost poetic in its appropriateness. After all, sound was Orochimaru’s village, born of a leaf nin turned too rotten and unnatural for even a ninja village to stomach. He brought the mists back down and struck while the enemy was still too dazed to react. He killed with ninjutsu, and kunai, and his bare bloodied hands. Out the corner of his eye he could see Asuma slicing through his opponents like a knife through butter, out his other eye, the one that saw everything all too clearly he could see Gai’s green jumpsuit splattered with red. And he smiled vicious and wild under the mask, he’d forgotten how much he loved war, and hated it, and hated how much he loved it.
In the end Konoha prevailed, his students lived, and Kakashi chose to view it as a victory, because in the end you had to take your victories where you could find them.
He’d almost had to laugh when he’d heard what Naruto had done, though. He had after all, told him to trust his instincts, and Naruto out of all his kids was the one that had listened closest when he told them that the enemy were always human beings in their own right. Somehow, he’d managed to talk the humanity back into a child that had become a rabid animal. Kakashi suspected that warm feeling in his chest might just be pride. It was a comfort in the chaos and grief that had followed the invasion.
The Sandaime was dead and cold in the ground, and the village was grieving. Kakashi had never been especially close to the Sandaime, it was the Yondaime that had taken him in and given him a home, and that grief was an old wound. But the real Konoha nins had lived most of their lives under the Sandaime’s rule, could barely conceive of a world without him, and his death had shattered something fundamental in the village. The Sandaime’s death marked the ending of an era, and while he might not feel much personal grief, he couldn’t pretend it meant nothing. It meant a great deal. Aside from the political implications, Kakashi had respected the Sandaime, and he knew Naruto had loved him, and that was more than enough to make him regret the man’s death.
It wasn’t enough to keep him from worrying about what would happen next though. His position in Konoha had never been solid and this was a dangerous time. The Sandaime was dead, and without a clear successor. There were people in a position to take power who Kakashi would not serve and more than one of them would be happier with him dead than in the village. Changes of regime were always a delicate time, and Kakashi was concerned. He suspected some of his concern must have transmitted itself to his genin because they were sticking unusually close to him. He didn’t chase them away. In it’s own way it was oddly comforting, and it would be good if they were close by if he did end up needing to run. They deserved to hear it from him at least, and make their own choice about whether to follow.