Wildflowers and dust
There was a terrible, desolate, beauty to the ruins of Uzushio. Mighty buildings shattered and left in piles of jumbled stone, testament to greatness fallen. The sea and sky impossibly wide, and silent, where once the chaos of humanity ruled, a memorial for the dead. But also wildflowers, breaking through paving slabs, twining over crumbled walls, bright, and sweet, and resilient, proof that life finds a way, even in the wake of disaster.
Kakashi looked at Naruto, and wondered why he found it so disconcerting that Naruto showed no hint of familiarity at the sight of his mother’s birthplace. After all there was no reason for him to feel anything, Uzushio was long since fallen before he was even born, even Kushina had spent most of her life away from it. There was no reason for Naruto to know Uzushio and yet, still it felt strange, to watch the last Uzumaki walk through the ruins of his mother’s village with a stranger’s idle curiosity.
“Why are we here Kakashi sensei?” He asked, with no understanding of the weight of the question, and Kakshi found himself slow to answer. Gai was silent, left Kakashi to find the words.
“There’s a few reasons.” He said eventually. “It’s for the best if we don’t rush back to Konoha, and there is a standing order for ninja who find themselves at a loose end in the area to investigate the ruins for anything that might be useful.”
“It’s not just that though is it?” Naruto pushed, he really was far too god at reading people. Or maybe Kakashi was just getting predictable in his old age.
“No.” He sighed. “I wanted you to see this, all of you. It’s one of history’s lessons to us.” His genin had turned by that point to give him their full attention, and even Gai’s students were listening more closely that usual. “What you see around you is all that remains of the village of Uzushiogakure, once mighty now fallen.” Sasuke’s eyes widened as he looked around, realized the full scale of what must have happened. He had a better frame of reference than most for such things.
“What happened?” Sakura asked, always quick with a question.
“It was destroyed. Uzushio was small, but feared, dangerous. She counted herself Konoha’s ally and so when war broke out Kiri and Iwa struck together and reduced her to rubble.”
“And the people?” Naruto asked softly.
“They died. They fought and they died, and by the end all that remained of the people of Uzushio, of the mighty Uzumaki clan, were the bones in the streets, and a few stray exiles that were elsewhere when the village fell.”
“Uzumaki?” Naruto looked startled. Kakashi answered the unspoken question.
“Your mother’s clan. She was living in Konoha when it happened.” Naruto looked around at the ruins with new fascination.
“I’m from here?”
“Your mother was. She missed it. Sometimes.” Naruto looked back at him then, intense.
“You knew her.” Kakashi inclined his head in agreement. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“It never came up.” Kakashi replied flippantly, he didn’t know what Naruto saw in his eyes then, but he backed down then, and didn’t try to push any further.
Tenten had been looking around them at the destruction wrought by more than time and weather in confusion, and with Naruto silent she spoke up.
“Why destroy it? Why not offer terms for a surrender. Surely a captured village would have been of more use than a destroyed one.”
“Three times, Iwa and Kiri offered terms, three times Uzu refused to hear them. They could have surrendered, they chose to fight instead, to the bitter end, and the streets of this village ran red with blood before the work was done.” Kakashi kept his voice steady, this was old history, important history, they should have known this already bone deep. But hidden villages teach their children useful things, not important ones, and he could tell it was new to them all. “They sold themselves dear, but every man, woman, and child of Uzu died in that fight, for that fight. They would not surrender.” The kids were silent for a moment after that. Surprisingly it was Sasuke who finally spoke up.
“Was it worth it.” And there was something fractured behind his eyes as he said it. “Was it worth dying for? Being able to make their killers pay before the end.” There was a right way and a wrong way to answer that question, but Kakashi refused to lie to his student, not about something o important.
“Only they know that.” He said, eyes on the horizon rather than Sasuke’s face. “Only they can say whether it was worth it in the end, and the dead don’t talk.” Sasuke looked unsatisfied by that answer, but it was the only honest one he had to give. There was silence again for a moment.
“Were you there?” Lee asked suddenly, breaking the tension in a way that Kakashi half suspected might have been intentional, considering just how good the boy’s teacher was at playing the fool. He let his eye crinkle up in amusement.
“Maa maa, Lee chan, I’m not that old.” The other kids snickered slightly at that while Gai smiled at his student in approval. After that it was a simple thing to send the kids off to explore the ruins while he and Gai set up camp.
…
Sasuke wasn’t sure how he’d ended up alone with Tenten. Not that he particularly minded, she was calm enough not to be disruptive, and months on a team with Naruto had taught him to appreciate moments of peace. But still she was the member of team Gai he’d interacted with least. Quieter and less noticeable than Lee and Gai sensei, and unlike Neiji she hadn’t been assigned as his mission partner all that often. They weren’t especially close but he found her surprisingly good company as they wandered through the abandoned streets, past homes, and shops, and public buildings, left untended. There was a poetic melancholy to it and she was easy enough with slinece not to disrupt it. Maybe she appreciated a moment’s peace as much as he did.
They’d been sent off to explore at their leisure, and somehow the two of them had ended up falling into step with each other. They walked in silence for a while, until they came to what must have once been a training ground, overgrown now with wildflowers in fifty different shades of red and orange. In the rich gold light of the sunset it looked almost like it was on fire.
“Flowers for the dead.” She said softly, and he found himself nodding slightly. There were places in the Uchiha compound that were equally overrun now. Back when his clan lived they would have been considered weeds and pulled up, but Sasuke was one child with little interest in gardening, and he found he didn’t have the heart to clear them. They stood for a moment, appreciating the view, then Tenten spoke up again.
“Do you want to train?” He looked over in consideration, in curiosity. “It would be good to practice with someone who isn’t a taijutsu specialist for once.” She explained, and maybe it wasn’t a coincidence that she’d decided to walk with him.
There was still a small, shattered part of him that wanted to refuse, Itachi’s broken voice at the back of his mind whispering that he could trust no-one, rely on no-one, his brother’s memory cut deep always would. But there were other memories, Naruto’s hand in his as they ran through the forest, Kakashi telling them that trust could save their lives, the Anbu swooping in to save him from Orochimaru’s followers after he chose to let them fight for him. And there they were, surrounded by the crumbling ruins of a greater tragedy even than his own. Uzu had stood alone, fought alone, died alone, and now there was no-one left who could say whether their fight had been worthwhile, nothing but memories to give purpose to empty streets. He looked at the desolate loneliness of a dead village, and knew that he wanted something different for himself. He wasn’t sure what yet, but he wanted something more than memory to hold to.
So he ignored the mad whispering of Itachi’s voice at the back of his mind, and instead smiled politely and told her yes, asked if she could get him started on kenjutsu, and allowed himself to enjoy the evening, to appreciate time spent with a comrade, and think of something other than the past.
…
Naruto was bothered. Gai could see it in his uncharacteristic quietness, in the way he couldn’t stop glancing around at the worn stone of the ruins as though they held some great truth he couldn’t, quite, decipher. Naruto was bothered and so Gai looked for an opportunity to speak to him alone.
Kakashi loved his students, more than anything. For all he tried to hide it Gai knew him well enough to know. And he was good for them. But sometimes, just sometimes he pushed a little too hard, failed to soften the blow, because softness wasn’t something he understood. And so Gai looked to speak to Naruto alone, to offer the comfort, the reassurance, that Kakashi couldn’t, because that was what friends did.
“You seem troubled, my youthful friend.” He said to Naruto with a cheerful enthusiasm calculated to put him at ease. In some ways they were a lot alike, the two of them, more heart than head, instinct over logic.
When Naruto answered it was a tumble of words and confusion that Gai found all too familiar. Lee was the same way when he didn’t know how to feel about something.
“Why didn’t I know? I should have known. I had a family, a clan, there’s a whole village that I never knew about that I should have belonged to, and I didn’t know, I don’t know, anything about them. There were all these people, people that I should be connected to, but they’re all just bones in the ground longer than I’ve been alive and… I don’t know how to deal with that. Should I be angry? Sad? They were killed by Kiri, should I hate Kakashi sensei for that?” His eyes were wide with a hurt that was nothing to do with Uzu itself and everything to do with the foundations of his world being shaken again, and Gai paused for a moment, to choose his words carefully.
“Don’t worry so much about what you should be feeling Naruto. Your heart already knows, you just have to trust it. What do you feel, not what do other people think you should feel, but what do you actually feel. Everything else follows from that.”
“Lonely.” Naruto looked away towards the ocean as he made that admission. “I’m always lonely. It’s better now than it was, with Sasuke teme, and Sakura chan, and Kakashi sensei, but this, it drags it all back up to the surface. It’s a hungry empty hollowness that lives inside me, and never really leaves. What do I do with that? ” Gai looked at the small orange clad genin, looking lost, and o very small, and he moved.
Naruto squeaked a little as he was suddenly swept up into a tight hug, but he didn’t protest, instead returning the hug with all the hesitant desperation of the touch starved. People underestimated how much good such a simple thing could do for a lonely child. It was why he took every opportunity to do the same for Lee, and why he resented so bitterly the pride, and emotional repression that made Neiji refuse that comfort. The Hyuuga clan had a lot to answer for, and one day Gai would make them pay for all of it. Kakashi would help if he asked.
Naruto didn’t talk anymore after that, just held on tightly to him until it was time for them to rejoin the others, but Gai could tell from the way the tension had bled out of his posture, and the edge had faded from his eyes that it had helped. Naruto was like him, he’d be able to read the unspoken message in the action, that he wasn’t alone, that someone cared, sometimes that was all that was needed.