Frost and spring growth
They hadn’t been long in the village. After all barely more than a week before Kakashi sensei had them moving again, and no-one said anything but they all knew that it was because of Naruto and Sasuke, because the village wasn’t safe for them, and… because they weren’t safe for the village. Not with Orochimaru after Sasuke, and the Akatsuki after Naruto, and Itachi after them both.
Barely more than a week and Kakashi sensei had heard something, or suspected something, or just seen an opportunity and so they’d all been packed off to the land of Iron. On a diplomatic mission of all things, and a part of Sakura was a little concerned about combining Sasuke and Naruto and diplomacy.
After all, neither of them was exactly subtle.
Then again, for all his lack of tact, Naruto did have a certain way with people, and Sasuke’s name was its own kind of currency, so maybe Kakashi sensei was on to something. And of course team ten was the obvious choice if you were going to send a genin team on a diplomatic mission, so perhaps they’d balance out the… unconventionality of team seven.
Or maybe Kakashi sensei just wanted them out of the village and had seized the first even vaguely viable opportunity. Because their presence drew the kind of attacks the village couldn’t afford, or, perhaps, because he feared what the village might ask of them, if they were too readily available.
“Sometimes.” Kakashi sensei had told them once, “A village asks more than it should, more than a human being can bear. And once the demand has been made well, then your options are limited, and so are theirs, after all the village can’t back off without losing face, and it can’t abide defiance, even if it is warranted. Sometimes it’s best to make sure they don’t have the opportunity to ask certain things of you.” He’d been looking at Sasuke especially when he said it, but she knew the words were meant for them all, and she’d listened, they all had.
In any case they’d left quickly enough, more quickly, perhaps than her parents would have liked. Between her leaving on this mission, and her parents returning from their latest business trip to tea country there had been only four days of overlap.
Four days of awkward silences, and stilted conversations, and talking at cross purposes. Four days of unspoken tension between the child they saw when they looked at her and the adult she was becoming.
In some ways getting out of the village was as much a relief to her as it had been to Sasuke and Naruto, and she wondered if that made her a terrible person. After all, she didn’t have to spend her days surrounded by the hatred of the whole village, or her nights surrounded by the ghosts of all her kin, there were no living nightmares haunting her, or village politics set to tangle her in its web. There was just a little girl’s room done up in pink, a pretty new dress from tea country with nowhere to hide a blade, and endless questions about when she was going to give up on this ninja business and let them arrange an appropriate marriage for her. There were just the endless silences of all the things she couldn’t tell them, the sickening frustration of the things they wouldn’t speak to her about, the bland conversation where they met in the middle and found they had nothing of any meaning left to say to each other.
She loved her parents, and they loved her, she knew that, but in some ways that made it worse, that they loved each other and yet still somehow they’d managed to become strangers to each other, and they couldn’t seem to bridge the gap. It was too much, too much expectation, too little understanding, and she’d felt like she was suffocating. It had been a relief when Kakashi sensei had announced the mission, because there were things in the silence between her and her parents that she just wasn’t ready to speak.
Iron country was beautiful though, like and unlike Snow country had been. The biting cold was the same, as was the glittering white of snow in sunlight, but where Snow country was endless plains of white and impossibly wide horizons, the land of Iron was broken up by mountains, great teeth of grey stone and white snow that rose up to bite at the sky. And in the valleys the snow was thin, patchy, frost melting to reveal new green growth as winter shifted into spring.
Iron country was beautiful and the air felt so clear, away from her parents and a thousand things they couldn't understand, and she couldn't explain.
Kakashi sensei didn't ask about it, but Sakura was pretty sure he could tell. After all there wasn't much about his students that Kakashi sensei didn't know. Iruka sensei had been the same way, maybe it was part of being a good teacher, although in almost every other respect Kakashi sensei and Iruka sensei's teaching was different. Of the two of them Kakashi sensei was less kind, less easy. More often than not he'd leave her with more questions than answers, and the answers he had were never reassuring.
Iruka sensei might have tried to comfort her, promised things would be okay, that the distance between Sakura and her kin was fixable, and it would have been kind but not entirely honest. It wasn't something Kakashi sensei could offer her. Kakashi sensei had never been anything but brutally honest with any of them, even when it cut right to the bone, and the only kindness he could give her was his silence.
He knew, but he wouldn't ask, wouldn't speak of it unless she asked him to, and she was grateful for that. She wasn't sure if she was ready to hear the truths Kakashi sensei would have to say about civilian families and little girls that became kunoichi. There would be nothing kind about those truths.
Kakashi sensei saw clearly enough, and chose to hold his silence, but Sasuke and Naruto probably didn't even realise anything was wrong. Sakura wasn't sure whether to feel relieved or resentful about that.
Sasuke didn't know because he was never much good at paying attention to other people's troubles. He was better than he had been, Kakashi's steady challenges, and Naruto's bright determination, and the realities of life as an adult ninja had been wearing away at him, forcing him to realise that his personal grief didn't encompass the world. But still, he was never the first to notice or care about other people's problems and she didn't really expect it from him.
Naruto though, she might have expected to notice something, even if he couldn't pin down what it was. Naruto was good with people, and invested enough in their team that little if any of their emotional states escaped him. Even Kakashi sensei had trouble hiding his mood from Naruto. If he'd been paying attention, he would have noticed. But then, just now it was understandable for his thoughts to be elsewhere.
Hidden villages were built on blood and secrets, Kakashi sensei had told them so again and again in a dozen different ways, but still, what they had found out about Naruto was... a lot. Of course Naruto was distracted. Sakura didn't blame him, not really.
Shikamaru and Asuma were of course smart enough to draw their own conclusions. They wouldn't say a word of course, they weren't the sort to interfere in other people's problems uninvited, and if Chouji had picked up on anything, he'd follow Shikamaru's lead. She wouldn't have welcomed their interference anyway. After all, clan children that they were, what would they know about the expectations of civilian families.
She didn't welcome Ino's interference either, but then, Ino had never been the sort to let that stop her. She'd taken one look at Sakura as they set off for the mission and she'd seen all the things that Sakura wasn't saying. Ino always saw Sakura. From that day when they first met as children, through friendship, and feuding, and everything that had happened to them since. Ino had always seen Sakura, and she'd never been willing to let her be.
"Talk to me forehead. Something's been bothering you." She said and Sakura didn't have it in her to brush aside Ino's concern. So she answered her, she told her a hundred things she barely had words for, that she hadn't been able to say to her parents. And Ino had listened, she'd listened and understood where words fell short, and some things just didn't bear saying out loud. She listened to Sakura's words, and the silences between the words, and she understood.
It was one of the reasons why, for all that Sakura loved her parents, she'd chosen Ino a lifetime ago, and given that choice again she wouldn't change it. She'd turned away from the civilian life her parents offered and followed Ino into the shadows of the ninja's path. In many ways, Ino defined Sakura's life, far more than her parents ever had. It was good to be reminded of that sometimes.
...
Shikamaru was keeping secrets again. Chouji could tell. Chouji could always tell. He knew Shikamaru too well, better than he knew himself sometimes, and so he knew when Shikamaru was keeping secrets.
It was in the little things, the way he looked at team seven when he thought no-one was looking, the way he looked at his own team, when he thought they'd seen more than he wanted them to, the subtle hesitations and shifts in his speech where something went unsaid. It was nothing a stranger would notice, nothing even a friend would notice unless they were watching carefully, but Chouji was Shikamaru's best friend, and he couldn't help but see it.
It was in the not so little things too, this time. In the quiet secret conversations Ino held with Sakura, and the way bright, irrepressible Naruto had been so uncharacteristically quiet during their journey, and the tense look in Asuma sensei, and Kakashi sensei's eyes that had eased as they crossed the border out of Fire country, and more than any of that, in the careful way Shikamaru failed to comment on any of those things. Shikamaru wasn't the only one capable of being observant.
There was no point pushing though. Shikamaru would talk when he was ready and not before, and Chouji hadn't been his best friend for so many years without being able to spot a losing battle when he saw one. That was fine, Chouji could be patient. He didn't take things like that personally, not the way Ino did.
Ino always took secrets personally, she couldn't help it. After all, she was a Yamanaka, she was supposed to know everything, about friends and enemies alike, and when Shikamaru kept things from her it felt like lack of trust and a challenge to her skills all wrapped up in one. Her reaction was always the same, sharp words and vicious flashes of temper towards anyone in the general area. And the worst of it was that Ino knew what was happening, she knew that Shikamaru didn't mean it that way, and that her reactions wouldn't make anything easier, but she still couldn't help it. Couldn't help the way it hurt her, not to be trusted with information, when all her training, everything she'd learned growing up told her that everything depended on her knowing everything.
Chouji was the patient one though, the one that waited, and listened, and didn't push. He didn't much like confrontation, and sometimes that was a disadvantage as a ninja, but sometimes, just sometimes, being patient, and willing to wait brought its own advantages.
As it had on this trip. They had only been on the road for a week, when Naruto approached him, quiet and unsure the way Chouji had only seen from him a handful of times.
It was late, the two of them sharing the midwatch, and Chouji had said nothing at first when Naruto sat down next to him. He could wait for Naruto to decide what he wanted to say.
"Hey Chouji." He said, with a smile that was no match to his usual blazing energy. "Can I talk to youu about something I maybe shouldn't be telling you?" There was really only one right answer to give to a question like that.
"Sure." Chouji said. "What's the matter."
"It's just that, well Sakura and Sasuke know, but Sakura has all these opinions, and Sasuke isn't exactly the world's best listener, and I kind of just want someone to tell me it's ok. You know." Chouji nodded and waited.
"I... well I'm pretty sure we figured out who my parents were." And yet he seemed more conflicted and overwhelmed than happy. Chouji himself couldn't imagine how it must have been to grow up not even knowing his parents names, but he did know that family was one of the few subjects that could cut through Naruto's usual optimism. Chouji would have expected him to be dancing with joy after finding the answers he'd been dreaming of as long as Chouji remembered.
If he wasn't then there must be more to it. Were his parents criminals or something? Sometimes that sort of thing was covered up to prevent children being blamed for their parents crimes. It would even explain why the villagers gave Naruto such a hard time, if someone had let something slip.
"It's just, now that I know it seems so obvious. It was right there, and I didn't see it, and I mean, I was a baby when they died, I never saw them in person. People must have known. The clues are all there, plenty of people must have seen it, it's not like there are that many blond ninja in Konoha. I even have my mother's name." Or maybe it was worse than that. Naruto was right, blond was not a common hair colour in Konoha, not outside the Yamanaka, but it was common enough in Iwa, and in war, sometimes bad things happened. There were names for that kind of thing among the clans, and for the children born as a result, war child was one of the kindest of them.
"What did you find out?" Chouji asked gently.
"Did you know that the Yondaime married Uzumaki Kushina." Naruto said and Chouji froze, pieces suddenly coming together in his mind. That, he had not been expecting, and for a moment he wondered why Naruto was so upset, he'd practically worshipped the Yondaime growing up. Then he thought about it some more, and he realised it wasn't his parents Naruto was upset about at all. They must have known, he'd said, and that meant that people had known who his parents were and they'd still cursed Naruto in the same breath that they'd called his father a hero. Yeah, Choiji could see why that would bother someone like Naruto, who always wanted to see the best in people.
The thing was, Naruto was right, now that he had the pieces, it was obvious. Naruto even looked like the Yondaime. There was no way people hadn't worked it out. Maybe not everyone, not the civilians, not even all the ninja, but there were people still alive that had considered the Yondaime Hokage close personal friends, that had attended the academy with him and Uzumaki Kushina, people who would have known Kushina was pregnant and when, and ninja were trained to be observant.
Chouji's own parents probably knew, Shikamaru and Ino's parents too, and the scale of the deception was actually kind of dizzying when Chouji thought about how many people must have at least had suspicions.
"They probably had orders not to talk about it." Chouji said, "The people that were close enough to know, they'd have been given orders." Naruto slumped a little.
"Yeah, I know. We guessed that much from the hints Kakashi sensei kept dropping. He talked around it enough that we guessed there was something important and we went looking. I don't, I don't blame people for keeping it secret exactly, but..."
"It still hurts." Chouji guessed.
"Yeah, it still hurts." Naruto said, and really what was there to say to that. After a moment's consideration, Chouji offered him a crisp in silent commiseration.