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Iruka had long made peace with himself.
He didn’t need fame or glory or power. He didn’t need to be a superstar in every bingo book. He got more than enough threats from shinobi parents about their children’s grades. He did not need to be a great ninja to be an efficient one.
So he should have seen it coming.
If he’d had the good sense to scout the trees more thoroughly ahead of time, he could have. A little echolocation jutsu before the field trip through the woods might have saved them a hundred times over.
Even without being a good shinobi, in the core of his being he knew the tell-tale signs: a taste of brine and salt in the air, the eerie silence of the birds in the trees.
Perhaps it was a momentary flight of fancy -- the sunlight filtering through the trees so beautifully that had distracted him.
Here lay Umino Iruka -- he thought, even as he threw himself in front of the flash of steel he saw out of the corner of his eye -- undone by poetry like a damned fool. The village trusted him with the future of Konoha and he left them wanting.
The attack hit him in the navel, just above his belly button. It slid through his flak jacket and pierced his skin. If he’d been just a moment slower, it would have struck Hanako’s head clean off her pale, narrow neck. As the tang of iron in blood overpowered the scent of tang of the sea in the air a thousand questions filtered through Iruka’s mind.
Pain blurred the lines of reality worse than a genjutsu.
One moment, Iruka was standing.
The next he was kneeling on the ground in a puddle of his own blood, a hot iron searing into him. The pain was deep and throbbing and no amount of pressure stopped the blood flow or the nauseating pain. Iruka breathed deep through his nose, and clamped down on the whimper aching to be let out.
Attached to the sword was a long-fingered hand, and attached to the hand a long arm, and a long figure with a long travelling cloak on. His hair was ratty and streaked with grey. He hunched like an old man, but the skin of his face was smooth and lineless. He could have been twenty. He could have been forty. He pulled his sword--a long, thin thing that almost could have been a fire poker-- from his stomach, flicked Iruka’s blood off his blade and slid it back into the scabbard at his waist.
As the metal left his body, Iruka felt something worse leaving too. It could have been life. It certainly felt warm as blood. It felt like every time blood pulsed between his fingers and his guts pressed against the thin wall of his palms keeping them inside the pulse of whatever-it-was grew a little weaker.
Iruka thought perhaps he might die here, in front of his students. On his knees in front of this strange attacker like Hayate had died, only he’d never know who it was that killed him. He’d never fight back and they’d never get justice for him.
Iruka drew a deep breath and found the strength to groan from somewhere deep inside of him.
“Get out of here!” He tried to yell. It sounded garbled, like his mouth was full of water.
“Sensei?” Hanako whimpered behind him.
“Sensei!” The rest of his class of seven-year-old students screamed. They’d finally realized what had happened.
“Run!” He yelled again. This time it snarled as it tore from his throat. “Get help!”
The peaceful forest was at once filled with the sounds of children scrambling in terror. Trying to remember just how well they’ve been trained for situations just like this. They were too slow, too loud, too helpless. Iruka was going to have to watch them get cut down while he tried in vain to keep his insides from spilling out. He swallowed bile, blood, the lightheadedness, and wobbled to his feet.
It felt like a miracle. It felt like death, dancing a waltz in his stomach.
Young little Tomoyo threw a bag of shuriken at the cloak of the swordsman. The entire bag sailed through the foliage and flopped uselessly at the feet of the foreign shinobi threat.
Oh, we are definitely looking at ninja tool handling again I survive this, he thought as he wavered dangerously in place and fell into a shaky crouch.
Iruka used blood from the wound soaking through his flak vest to draw sloppy characters in the forest floor. He urged chakra into it. It responded sluggishly to his commands but a barrier hummed to life. It was weak and thin and hardly a thing, but it was something between this strange foreigner and his students. Just to be safe, Iruka had left himself on the side with the man. He could slow down the surprise attacker at the very least.
The drain on his chakra was more than it should have been. The effort left him dizzy. The tactician in Iruka knew he wouldn’t have much time.
“Run! Follow your emergency codes!” Iruka threw a kunai at the man with trembling fingers.
The attacker shifted to the side to dodge the kunai, and drew his hand out from under his long cloak.
When he pulled his arm back, Iruka fell forward onto his knees like he was tied to his fingers like a puppet. This time he couldn’t help the cry of pain. He couldn’t look behind him to see if the students actually listened to him, but he heard underbrush being crushed under the soles of sandals that were getting further and further away.
Iruka raised his head.
“I won’t let you get them,” he snarled.
He could see up to his attackers knees.
Hysterically, he noted the man had ninja sandals on. His pinky toe dug into the one next to it. Iruka hoped it was uncomfortable. A little discomfort to bother this man for eternity even after Iruka had gone from this world.
Had his parents thought of hysterical nonsense like this when they died? He couldn’t help but wonder.
A strong hand touched under Iruka’s chin. It drew his head up, up, up, until his neck was hyperextended and their eyes met.
“Who on earth said anything about children?” The man’s voice was almost melancholy in baritone. A deep, soft sound that crawled out of his lips from far beyond his throat. “I am no human thief, I would not steal a child.”
The blood Iruka had left ran cold.
There was no way this man, this tall, hunched stranger, could be after him. Of all the people in this village, who would ever bother searching him out? Was he after village secrets? Or someone close to him? Naruto, his brain supplied. Or perhaps -- even worse. Kakashi?
“Who are you?” Iruka implored, searching those blank eyes for answers.
The man’s face seemed to elongate. The frown on his lips bulled the corner of his mouth down almost past the chin. If the man weren’t in the process of murdering him, perhaps Iruka would have laughed in his face. It almost made him look like a cartoon.
“Have you forgotten the sea?” The voice was deep and menacing and gloomy. His breath smelled like day old fish rotting in the sun.
Nevertheless, Iruka frowned. “I’ve never been there.”
The stranger sighed like Iruka was a child who needed coaching. He drew his thumb across the scar over Iruka’s nose. It tickled, juxtaposing the horror that clung in his throat like chalk.
“Of course you have, child. You were born there.”
The hand holding Iruka’s chin felt like it burned. The man’s mouth didn’t move, he used no jutsu, and yet Iruka felt the flush of one under his skin and through his body. A great pressure pushing down through him, swallowing him up and leaving him gasping for breath.
“It’s where you belong,” the man’s voice was completely emotionless, yet Iruka could almost feel the petulance. The man drew his other hand, the hand holding the thin line of chakra from Iruka’s navel, and pulled hard.
Iruka felt something from deep inside himself fray and snap. The fingers holding Iruka’s chin were tight enough to leave a bruise. Nails dug into his flesh. The scar on his face burned. The wound in his gut was a whirlpool of pain.
The man raised his other hand high in the shape of a claw.
“No,” Iruka whispered, feeling his body shutting down before it did.
Iruka thought of Naruto, his big blue eyes the color of the sky. The big bright dream Iruka wanted to see him accomplish. He thought of the papers on his desk he still had to grade, of the mission desk, and how no one would be able to keep it organized if he were gone. He thought of Kakashi, of how he smelled faintly of dog, of how he used lavender soap. Of how he would never be able to sleep without Iruka there to curl around.
“Stop--”
The claw slammed down into Iruka’s pierced flesh, tearing up and into him. The fingers twisted inside, Iruka felt the seal forming around the wound, winding his chakra around and around it. The wound closed up, leaving life and stealing chakra.
“Come home,” the man whispered against Iruka’s ear. “I’ll bring your soul under the great bridge in the land of Mist.”
Iruka thought of foam from waves, of the gently rocking of water against rock. Of swimming through cold, peaceful waters and hearing the gulls cry high above.
I’ve never been to the sea, Iruka thought as he faded into the void, wondering why it felt like such a lie.
--
He felt mist against his cheeks.
Gulls called above him, the sun was warm on the back of his neck and down his back. Water rolled over his feet and ankles, a cool brush on his skin. Deep under his ribcage, beside his heart, something came loose and fell away. He released a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding, and for once in his life he felt no obligations. The sea asked for nothing from him. He had nothing to prove to it or himself here.
There was only this, the soft sand under his feet, the soft crash of sea against the surf.
It called to him, a steady throb that begged him forward. Iruka took a step, then another, and when the water was up to his knees, he opened his eyes.
The white hospital ceiling stared blankly down at him.
Reality crashed in with his startled breath. His hands fisted into the sheets. The pain in his navel was a stabbing reminder. There was no sea in Konoha. The sea was far and away. Iruka had never been to the sea. He had rarely enough been outside the village his parents had left him to. He’d rarely even thought he had anything to long for, but oh.
Oh how he longed for the sea now.
With every breath he took he thought of waves. With every exhale, he thought of the cool water. If he blinked, behind his eyes he could feel the surf against his skin. The call of the gull was a heartbreaking cry under all thoughts.
“Iruka?”
Iruka turned his head from the ceiling to the window beside him. Kakashi sat there, looking for all the world like he wanted to be anywhere but in the hospital. And yet there he sat, book in hand, turned so his good eye could watch over him and monitor his status.
His stomach gave a familiar swoop at the sight of him. The last time he’d seen Kakashi, the jounin had been leaving two weeks prior before dawn for a solo S rank mission. He hadn’t even known he’d come back.
As soon as Iruka met his eye the book disappeared in his back pocket as he scooted closer, moving to the chair beside the bed so he could lean close.
“What happened?” He asked, silver hair falling over his one eye. His hand brushed Iruka’s. It was wrapped in bandages under his usual fingerless glove, but the tips of his fingers were warm. They pressed the back of his hand for a moment far too short before withdrawing.
Iruka almost reached out to catch it before fell away but a second later the door opened with a slam. The door bounced against the wall twice before it was forced into place with the snap of a powerful hand. Iruka jumped, but Kakashi only flicked his gaze up as the Hokage burst into the room, followed by her two familiar shadows Shizune and Sakura.
“You couldn’t sense them?” Kakashi asked.
The tone of his voice was very carefully bland. The same way his body was very carefully careless. The same way his hand had very carefully touched and released his a moment earlier.
Iruka generally boasted a very good awareness. He could catch a student-thrown projectile thrown behind his back and whip it back at them before they could blink. He could tell when one of the students were cheating even if he were tied up in a sack and buried under six feet of rock.
Iruka may not be a jounin level ninja, but he was very rarely blindsided. Even if he wasn’t elite, he was still a ninja, and even Kakashi struggled to surprise him totally, even on his worst day. Iruka could always, always sense.
Tsunade scoffed, coming to the bedside with crossed arms.
“Of course he couldn’t.” She nearly poked at Iruka’s stomach. “It took hours to get you back to health you little brat and the one thing we couldn’t unravel was whatever curse your attacker left on you.”
Iruka felt his heart sink. He didn’t need her to say it. He couldn’t sense anything from anyone in the room. He couldn’t sense even a flicker of chakra outside the room. He knew if he even tried to form jutsu, nothing would happen.
“What happened?” Kakashi asked for the second time, training his gaze on Tsunade this time. Iruka raised his gaze to the ceiling.
“It was a swordsman,” he started, staring at the tiles. “I thought he was after the children, so I put a barrier between me and them, hoping to by some time. He’d tried to attack one of them first, you see.”
A part of Iruka wanted to laugh. It was a typical ploy, to let the enemy know exactly who was your most precious. “I took the attack in the stomach. I didn’t think it was giving him exactly what he wanted.”
“Where did he come from? What did he want?” Tsunade asked.
“Mist, I think. He said to meet him there at the great bridge.”
Shizune sighed. “There are hundreds of bridges in Mist.”
“But how many are there by the sea?” Iruka asked, finally turning his head to look at the rest of the room. “He told me to ‘return to the sea’, although I’ve never been there.”
Tsunade frowned at him. “Of course you have, Iruka. Your parents migrated from Mist when you were just a baby. I was still in the village then. I worked with your mother on missions sometimes. She told me you were born in the sea.” Tsunade shrugged. “I thought she was just being fanciful.”
“Fancy or no, whoever this attacker was seemed to think sensei belonged there.” Sakura pointed out, hands on her hips. “It took ages to heal his handiwork, and we still couldn’t undo the bind he put on your chakra. What kind of swordsman can do that?”
Iruka could have told them about the great yawning yearning sensation in his chest. That there was a hole there that drew all but the most base needs away. That perhaps more than just chakra was missing from him. That the man had said his soul would be waiting for him in Mist. But perhaps some things he just wanted to hold onto himself. That there were some things he just couldn’t reason away.
“Could it be a trap?” He asked instead, slowly pulling himself onto his elbows.
“A Mist game to get Shinobi back home?” Kakashi asked.
Tsunade waved the thought away. “Nonsense. They’re too much of a mess to try anything that political right now. It’s probably some sort of personal grudge.”
“Either way, we shouldn’t leave things as they are,” Kakashi said with a weary sigh, as though the thought of going to Mist was too troublesome.
Iruka nearly smiled. Was it a genius thing, to feel so put-upon by the rest of the world? He often wondered what it was like to be so many steps ahead of the rest of them, like they were just stuck waiting for the universe to catch up to them. Perhaps that was why Kakashi liked to make everyone wait around all the time.
Tsunade raised an eyebrow at him. “Are you volunteering for a mission Kakashi? You just got back.”
“I’m not going to let Iruka go to Mist by himself.” Kakashi tilted his head to one side like a puppy. His shrug was nonchalant and stubbornness all in one. Despite the air of innocence, even Iruka could sense his killing intent.
Iruka was already shaking his head. “If anyone is walking into a trap, it should be me. I’m the target, so I should be the only one to deal with it.”
“Iruka-kun, you can’t be serious.” Shizune frowned at him over her clipboard. “Walking into a known trap as you are would be a death wish.”
“And we don’t know why they attacked you, sensei! Even if it’s just because you’re from Mist, what if Kakashi-sensei’s right? What if they are trying to draw Mist-nin back home?”
“I’m a shinobi of Konoha, Sakura-chan.” Iruka smiled at her, willing life into it. “I would never defect.”
“And you have the strongest Will of Fire in the village. And there’s no chance I’d let a beloved teacher walk single handedly into a trap. There’d be riots in the street, and we have enough to deal with.” Tsunade put her hands on her hips, huffing as she made a decision. “That’s settled. Sakura and Kakashi will go with you to Mist after you’ve been released from the hospital. Shizune will draw up a mission scroll for you, Sakura can bring it to the meeting place at the gates tomorrow morning.”
Iruka felt a pang of guilt. It felt like overkill. He glanced at Kakashi, but the man was only looking mildly out the window once more.
“Yes, Hokage-sama,” he murmured, looking down at his hands.
“And Iruka?” Tsunade paused on the threshold.
Iruka looked up into her eyes.
“We were able to figure out the seal was a chakra blocker, but it’s an odd one. It’s almost like it used no chakra to be made. If you feel anything odd, I want you to tell Kakashi and Sakura.”
Iruka pursed his lips. It would be foolish to hide it from them, but at the same time, Tsunade was right. He’d sensed almost no chakra from the attacker. And yet, to be caught out on omission by a room full of people who constantly told only what they wanted to reveal was embarrassing, to say the least.
“Of course I will,” he murmured, glancing towards Kakashi again.
Only, Kakashi had vanished out the window while he wasn’t looking. Iruka’s hands clenched in the blanket.
He hadn’t even noticed.
--
There were times when Iruka dreamt of a monstrous fox that burned with fury, whose eyes were fire as it ripped through Konoha, as it raked it’s claws along the streets and razed it to the ground. As it consumed his parents until nothing was left of them.
And the kyuubi was many things, but most of all it was an old monster. One Iruka was used to. One whose visions in his head were as familiar as breathing. Iruka could deal with a familiar monster, and had done for over half of his life.
But now.
Now Iruka dreamt of being swept up by a greater monster. This monster raked through him as a current, ripping him down into the depths of the ocean, wringing his neck with formless hands, choking the air--the life-- out of him. It ripped at his skin. It touched him with frozen fingers.
“Where is your true self?” It shrieked. “What have you done?”
Iruka wanted to scream I am myself but when he opened his mouth the ocean came rushing in, time and time and time again.
His vision blanked out, his chest burned, his stomach ached with too great a pain.
Iruka woke dry heaving, throwing his blankets from his feverish skin. His hair was unbound and he clawed it back, scratching across his skin with his nails as he did. He surged upwards, hurling himself over the wide of the bed and onto his feet.
Two steps took him to the window, open from when Kakashi had vanished through it. He’d never bothered to close it.
He rested his head against the window pane and concentrated on taking deep, slow breaths. Once his heart rate had calmed, he opened his eyes and looked out over Konoha. This village which was his home. The warm glow of signs from the bars downtown, the cool blues of the street lamps. The lights in unwarded windows. It was perhaps three in the morning and yet it was teeming with life. They were at war and yet life still went on. Somewhere off to his right the darkened corner of the Uchiha district was a bleak, black reminder of what war did and yet, despite that, there was laughter in the streets.
Konohagakure was his home.
He clenched a hand around a phantom ache in his abdomen.
It was the only one he knew.
They were leaving in the morning, which didn’t leave a lot of time for Iruka to get affairs in order. He’d have to drop off lesson plans for a week, water his plants, take out the trash. He’d have to drop the plans off at the main office in the morning and hope whoever it was wouldn’t mind his rushed departure. The itch of the pressure under his ribs, he checked himself out of the hospital by 3:30 am, after finding a spare uniform shirt and pants in the drawers of his nightstand. He found his weapons in another, but his scrolls were in a small satchel. His vest had probably been beyond repair, but someone had taken the time to salvage what they could.
The walk home on the street was a quiet affair. Dark shop fronts reflected light back at him, a bleak reminder of the bags under his eyes and the slow speed he had to take. Iruka had spared one wistful glance at the rooftops, where he’d have been able to cut the walk to about two minutes. It wasn’t a realistic option with his chakra bound and his stomach still tender.
It wasn’t until he got up the stairs of the apartment complex and was staring at his door that he realized with a chill that he wouldn’t be able to get past his own wards. A wave of helpless belied up inside him. The dawning horror of what it meant to be truly helpless.
Even after his parents had been killed and he’d lost everything, he’d still had goals. He knew he had a future as a ninja, working hard in service of the village his parents had died for. He didn’t have much, but he’d been quick, and clever, and even when everything took him down he still had the kindness of people around him.
And now, well. Here he was, keys in hand, realizing that even if he knew the steps to unbind the wards and get past the blood-seal he couldn’t actually get inside.
“Fuck,” he muttered. He pushed as much venom as possible into it, hoping it would swallow the well of black despair with a familiar rage.
And by a miracle, the door opened.
That miracle, as it turned out, was a tousle haired Kakashi, blinking mildly at him. Iruka never wanted to kiss him more in his life. He wore his baggy sleep shirt, the cowl down and draping around the long pale neck that nearly shone in the darkness. He’d removed the bandages on his arm at some point and the bruises were inky spots of black peppering his skin.
“Maah, Sensei,” Kakashi smiled. It crinkled the side of his mouth. Iruka was struck by how lucky he was to be one of the few people to ever see this soft smile of his. “Welcome home.”
Iruka wanted to kiss him.
Instead he pushed him back into the entryway, closing the door behind him. He leaned against him for a moment as he slipped his shoes off. Kakashi smelled faintly of dog, and there were telltale familiar white hairs on his nightshirt. Proof that he’d summoned Pakkun earlier.
“I kept the bath hot for you,” Kakashi’s voice rumbled in his chest when he spoke.
Iruka closed his eyes. “Thank you.”
Kakashi was so still under him. Iruka knew he should let go. Take the shower. Make the lesson plans. Prepare to depart. All these things that kept Iruka grounded in place that made him such a bad shinobi.
He peeled himself away from Kakashi and stood in the bathroom for a good minute.
Then he broke.
Fury rose up like a tide, and he tore the shirt from his back. It ripped a little, and he shoved it to one side. The pants followed, and he unwrapped the bandages around him without grace, almost hurting himself when he pulled too fast more than once and dug into the bruises.
Then he crouched over the tiles and cleaned his hair quickly, gracelessly, pulling more than scrubbing and using too much conditioner to get his tangles out. The rage carried him until he reached for the washcloth and knocked half the bottles off the shelf. He glared at the offensive bottles and struck out at the rest of them, knocking the rest to the floor with a crash.
His hands were shaking. His legs gave out on him, bringing him from his crouch to sit on his ass on the wet tiles. No, all of him was shaking.
When he closed his eyes he still saw the mild eyes of the swordsman. The drawl of his voice calling him to the sea.
A touch to his shoulder startled him. He turned, ready to clock whoever it was. Kakashi stopped his hand with a soft palm.
“Let me.”
He took the washcloth from Iruka’s grasp and found the body wash. He foamed it up and scrubbed his back. Iruka sighed as his muscles loosened under his tender ministrations. Kakashi ran it slowly from the back of his neck to the front of his chest and wrapped it around. It didn’t stop, just scrubbed impersonally down the back, over the thighs, his calves, his ass. He rinsed him down and turned the water off.
Planting a kiss to the back of Iruka’s neck, he flipped open the lid to the bath and let the steam consume the both of them.
He shucked off his clothes and got in, pulling Iruka after him. He settled down against the rim of the tub. Iruka sank back against his chest, head under his chin, body loose as the tension finally fell away.
Kakashi’s arms wrapped around him, hands trailing from his arms to the soft hair on his chest, following the happy trail down. They gently prodded at the bruising around the marks of the strange seal, and then crept slowly closer to it.
“Why would you try to go alone?” Kakashi’s voice was a whisper, like he was trying his hardest to keep a timid deer calm. “You’ve never been foolhardy.”
The like me went unsaid, but it was still there in the space between words.
Iruka wasn’t sure how to say it. There was a well inside of him that kept trying to consume him. Since the stranger had looked him in the eye and told him he didn’t belong, Iruka felt like an outsider looking in. Walking home and wistfully wondering, staring at his apartment door and unable to get inside.
“He told me that he’d bring my soul home.” Iruka finally said. It was like confessing a sin. “I don’t know who he is, but he seemed to know me somehow. And he knew that I’d try to protect my students, and he knew where I’d be.”
Iruka shook his head. “If someone like that is only after me then I thought it would be best if we didn’t waste precious resources.”
“You are a precious resource.” Kakashi said. His arms tightened around his waist. His fingers dug unknowingly into the flesh of his sides. Iruka twisted so he could look him in his one open eye.
“I’m being pragmatic Kakashi-no-Sharingan.” Kakashi glared. Iruka continued on, muleish. “I know my value.”
Kakashi raised a hand to Iruka’s cheek, tracing the scar on his face with the soft bend of one finger. “No you don’t.”
Iruka grabbed his hand, bringing it to his lips. “Don’t worry. As long as Naruto is here, I have to see his dream come true. I’m not going anywhere, Kakashi.”
Kakashi’s expression softened at the thought of the little troublemaker who he’d foisted off on Jiraiya. He covered it up by rolling his eyes. “You really want that boy in charge of this village?”
Iruka stood from the bath, wobbling slightly as he stepped out onto the now-cold tile floor. “Of course! Who else, you?”
Kakashi froze from where he’d gotten up behind him. He pulled the plug on the bath. “Don’t joke.”
Iruka smiled, feeling light for the first time since he’d been attacked. “Me? Never.”
He threw a towel over Kakashi’s head and buried his face in another. He had a lot to do yet, but maybe, if they were lucky, the pull inside him that throbbed for the ocean would fade away.
--
Morning dawned in a bleak, rainy day. The sun was out there somewhere, buried behind spring showers and misery. Iruka left early to try and beat the rain, rain-cloak hanging over his shoulders and hiding the briefcase of lesson plans.
He stopped at the academy when the secretaries in the office were only just barely getting ready for the day, still waiting with bleary faces for the coffee pot to stop sputtering. He made his excuses and apologies, but they waved them away.
“We were all really worried for you Iruka-sensei.” Miyame said, taking a timid sip of her coffee. “I’m glad you’re alright. Good luck on your mission, and don’t worry about anything here.”
“Thanks,” Iruka said, feeling humbled. He wish he’d had more time before they had to leave so he could check in on his students. They were worried and he hadn’t been in the hospital long enough for anyone to come visit him.
The lightness he felt carried him to the shops to resupply his weapons and tricks. He may not have access to his chakra but he was still a shinobi, and he could still fight. There was much more to a shinobi than having chakra control after all.
Sakura was waiting at the gate already, travelling cloak over her shoulders and covering her pink hair. She waved at him, smiling brightly, and handed him a pack of onigiri.
“Mom made us all breakfast!” Sakura said, rolling her eyes in exasperated fondness. “I told her not to, but she insisted.”
Iruka sent a prayer to the sky for Sakura’s mom. He remembered a time when Sakura had gotten it in her head to give sweets as gifts to all her teachers. And while Iruka had eaten many horrible concoctions of his own making, it was a self-inflicted pain. That he’d never eaten her heartfelt attempt at manju was a secret that would go with him to the grave, along with the fact that she’d used salt instead of sugar.
“How are you feeling, sensei?” Sakura asked, eyeing him over with a medic’s intense gaze.
“Thanks to you, just fine,” Iruka said after he swallowed a mouthful of rice.
She flushed under his praise. She’d only been working under Tsunade for a couple of years and yet her abilities had flourished. She was a rightful terrifying force, and he couldn’t be more proud of her. Truthfully he’d been worried many times Kakashi had done his best, but while he was a great many impressive things, his boyfriend was a terrible teacher.
Or perhaps it was that he was great at making soldiers, at throwing people to the wolves and letting them evolve on their own. It was the only way Kakashi had lived his life so of course it would be the only way he could teach. But that didn’t mean it had worked for someone like Sakura, who needed a strong teacher who would be willing to pull her potential out and help it flourish.
There was a reason Mr. Ukki was a cactus.
Kakashi body-flickered in beside him then, and Iruka choked, coughing to dislodge rice from his throat. Iruka tried to jab him in the arm but Kakashi dodged easily. His eye twinkling with humor.
“Am I late?” He asked, tilting his head to acknowledge Sakura.
Sakura, who had been watching the two with raised eyebrows, shook her head. “Iruka-sensei must be important to you, Bakashi-sensei. You’ve never been on time to anything else.”
Kakashi sighed, staring up at the rain. Under his breath, Iruka mouthed ‘Bakashi’ at him. Kakashi ignored him. “I guess I got even more lost than I thought, the rain made me believe it was afternoon already.”
Sakura sighed, but gave Kakashi an onigiri too, which Kakashi took after the barest pause of surprise.
“Why Sakura, have I wormed my way into your heart after all?” He bat his eyelashes at her ridiculously. “Where do we marry?”
“Eew, Pervy-sensei!” Sakura shrieked, stalking off ahead of them down the road. Kakashi laughed, and Iruka shook his head, following a step behind. If Kakashi strayed a little closer to him on the road, he made no mention of it.
--
It rained the entire way to the Land Hidden in the Mist. It was uneventful -- Iruka might even say boring if it weren’t for the razer thin line his nerves had left him on. He didn’t realize how much faith he put in his sensory skills until he couldn’t use them. Until every passing shadow could be an enemy with a sword, ready to stab him and finish the job he left undone.
Until every night was filled with dreams of the ocean, rising up around him and rolling him around. He dreamt of great, rippling currents and monsters of the sea that wrapped long tendrils around him, dragging him down into the secretive depths where no human could go.
Iruka woke each night gasping, drenched from the rain, and all along he heard under the pounding of his heart the call of the gulls, the song of the sea, tickling his heart and pulling him forth by an invisible rope.
During the day the need was hazy, but nights were crystal clear, and Kakashi was quiet. Only Sakura kept up a meandering chatter, and that was only some of the time, as though she’d realized that there was only so much she could tell him about medical jutsu before he got lost in his thoughts.
Before the undercurrent of his dreams washed over his ankles and stole his attention from her, calling him home.
--
At dusk on the third day, they reached the beginning of Tazuna’s great bridge. It had been up for at least a year, and already commerce was building for the once-barren land. Small booths and carts lined the edge of the bridge, all along its length. People shopped and fished and bustled along it.
It was so different from what Naruto had described to him of the state of the village, that Iruka actually turned to accuse Kakashi of taking them to the wrong place on purpose.
“Wow it’s really grown!” Sakura exclaimed, shielding her eyes with her palm so she could squint out towards the other side of the bridge. “Do you think Old Man Tazuna and his family are still around?”
Kakashi shrugged, keeping a wary eye on the bustle. “Probably heroes by now,” Kakashi murmured. “I doubt they’d remember us.”
“They’d never forget us, Sensei. Especially not Naruto.”
“Well, true. Naruto’s pretty unforgettable.”
The surge of warmth Iruka felt at the thought of Naruto faded as his eye wandered from the bridge to the sea beneath it. His feet carried him away, towards the edge of the shore. He could hear the sound of the gulls above, calling towards him. The gentle lap of the water, whispering his name.
The water was so cool under his feet, so refreshing. He took another step, in up to his shins before he realized. He wanted to touch it, to sink down to his knees and let it carry him away.
Come home, it seemed to whisper to him, pulling him further, further, further.
“Iruka!”
A hand on his arm yanked him backwards.
Iruka came back to himself in a rush of frigid water, righting himself and splashing as he jerked back. He would have fallen if Kakashi’s other hand hadn’t been on his arm. Kakashi had followed him, standing on top of the water where Iruka had waded in all the way to his thighs before he’d come out of the trance.
“Are you alright?” Kakashi’s hand came up to rest against his collarbone. Iruka’s heart pounded a rapid tempo beneath his palm.
“I’m--” Iruka gasped, shaking his head to clear it. “I’m fine.”
“Well, that can’t be right.” Beside them in the shadow of the bridge, an old woman on a blanket cackled after she spoke. Her voice made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end, neither old nor feeble. It rumbled like the sea, just like the swordsman had.
On the blanket in front of her, a rack of pelts of all shapes and sizes hung. Iruka did a double take, sure she hadn’t been there a moment earlier. And then he looked again. She wore a shawl of a sealskin, her long nose sticking out. Iruka squinted at her, unsure whether there were whiskers on her face or if he was only seeing hair.
“Excuse me?” Sakura asked, glaring at the woman. “Who are you?”
Iruka glanced at Kakashi, who had pulled up his hitai-ate at one point. The red eye glowed eerily in the shadow.
“I am simply a peddler to the lost souls,” the lady said, throwing back her head so she could look Sakura in the eye. “Who are you? Small mortal child?”
Sakura sputtered, hands clenching like she wasn’t sure this lady was real. The lady had already turned her attention back to Iruka, like the rest of them didn’t matter.
“I see you’ve brought a mate with you,” the woman scoffed at him. Sakura gave a knee jerk sound of suppressed surprise. “You can’t bring them where you’re going.”
“And where is he going?” Kakashi asked, blandly. The only way Iruka knew he’d reacted to what the lady called him was when he flinched at her terminology.
“To the sea, of course!” She said, gesturing at her wares. “Darling boy, can’t you hear them calling?”
And Iruka could. In fact, when he listened, it was all he could hear. The gulls, the sea, the longing pull under his navel that whispered for him to keep walking into the sea and never go back to shore. He took a deep breath through his nose.
“I’m afraid not,” he lied, gritting his teeth against the throb of it.
The woman looked at him with great pity in her eyes.
“Oh child, you’ve been lost for such a long time.” She wagged a crooked finger at him. Iruka blinked at it. One moment it was just a wrinkled old finger, and the next it was webbed and clawed, a monstrous thing. “I have something that belongs to you.”
She reached to the stacks of pelts, pulling out a dappled grey one. Iruka’s breath caught in his throat. He let it out with a wet whine of a sound.
“It’s not mine,” he said, tremulously.
He frowned at himself. His skin was tingling. His arms felt like they’d been asleep and were only just waking up. His knees felt like they were going to cave on him in the surf.
The woman paused, raising her eyebrows at him. She pulled the pelt over her knees and stroked the hide.
“Once, long ago, there was a small island that revealed itself a few times a year, when the tide was low and the fish were plenty.” Her fingers curled lovingly around the soft skin. Iruka’s arms shook. “It’s so many miles off shore we thought it would be safe to molt, to bathe and live.”
Her lips twisted. “We didn’t think to watch the pups that went to play off-shore. By the time we realized you had strayed further than the others and were gone, it was too late.” She ran her fingers along a scarred section along the face of the skin. “You’d been taken, and your skin had been left behind.”
Iruka’s blood ran cold.
“Nonsense,” he said. The heat he’d tried to add to his voice only enhanced the waver in it. “What are you talking about?”
“Selkies, child.” The woman’s lips quirked. Her eyes shone inky black in the dark. “Have you not heard of your own kind?”
“My mother said I was born at sea.” His body was vibrating with cold now. Kakashi’s hand felt like fire against his skin.
“The thief was right,” the woman said. “You were born of the sea. And to the sea you will return!”
A shadow of movement in the corner of Iruka’s vision and then --
Kakashi twisted Iruka behind him in a flash, spinning around and blocking the blow the swordsman from Konoha aimed at him with a kunai.
Iruka gasped, gaining his balance with a stagger backwards. Against their ankles, the surf picked up, water twisting and as waves lapped against Iruka’s thighs.
“Well, well,” Kakashi said jauntily. “Did you think you could catch me?”
“It is not easy to catch a ninja off guard,” the man said with a put-upon sigh. The swordsman drew his sword back, swapping to an upright guard to protect himself against the quick strike of Kakashi’s kunai.
Iruka pulled a kunai from the holster at his thigh, aiming it at the woman.
“Tell your man to stand down,” Iruka snarled.
The lady looked at him, unimpressed.
“Do it, then.” She quirked an eyebrow at him. “If you’d hurt an old lady?”
Iruka could. All he had to do was flick his wrist and it would go right through her eye if he were fast enough. It was the right thing to do. Any curses on his body would fade away after the caster was dead, all they had to do was kill them.
Iruka twisted the kunai in his shaking fingers, bringing it to his neck.
The woman’s eyes widened. She stood. The selkie skin slipped from her fingers into the surf. It flicked away of its own accord, slipping into the sea.
Iruka breathed out, heavy and wet. “I’ll do it.”
“Don’t!” The woman cried. “You have no idea-- there are so few of us. You must return.”
Iruka felt his knife pierce his skin. A small dribble of blood tickled as it ran down his neck.
Behind him, Kakashi grunted as the swordsman flicked his wrist in an unexpected way and nicked him in the arm. Kakashi raised his fingers in a water prison jutsu.
The water flowed up to obey, but then the stranger twisted his fingers and the water wobbled away.
“Iruka is not a jinchuuriki,” Kakashi snapped. “He doesn’t have a monster inside of him!”
“No,” the man said. “He is not.”
“You are not a human, child. You are not a monster like them,” she reached out to him. Iruka took a step back in the water. “Come home. Your parents would love to see you.”
Iruka froze.
His parents.
Iruka thought of younger days, of the cherry festival on his father’s back, reaching up towards the blossoms that filled the sky. Of reading, with his mother. Of nights at the dinner table, laughing at his father’s expense whenever he failed to cook. Of stargazing on the roof of their apartment, nestled between them on top of a soft blanket.
His parents, who died because a monster had taken them from him. His parents, who had found him in the sea and given him love.
“My parents are dead,” Iruka said, dropping his arm. “They’re heroes.”
“Those humans! They’re thieves!” The woman shrieked, flinging her arms up.
The sea rose around them, up and over their heads. Iruka heard the shrieking of hundreds of surprised civilians, crying out in shock. Thunder rumbled in the sky. Kakashi grasped for him. His fingers grazed Iruka’s shirt before they were torn away from one another, ripped in opposite directions by separate currents.
Iruka’s stomach burned where the seal was a horrible scar in his navel.
His vision was filled with water. He felt something grab him by the neck. He slashed with the kunai in his hand and the creature shrieked and jerked him bodily through the water, against the current. His skin was torn raw against it, his lungs screamed for air. He tried to swim, to fight against the hand that held him, but he was too weak.
He was going to die in the sea that was once his home.
Kakashi was going to die.
Sakura--
Something warm wrapped itself around his legs. It slithered up his body, cocooning him in warmth. It wrapped up his arms and body. It formed around his head like a soft blanket. Like a hug on a cold winter day.
The seal in his navel whirled and burned itself out and away, releasing him from his fleshy prison.
Iruka kicked -- and his legs were one. The kick propelled him up and away from the creature holding him in place, drowning him. He headbutted hard and she cried out, falling away from him.
He opened his eyes.
The world beneath the waves was teeming with life. He was upside down, rolling in circles as the water lashed every which way like a typhoon.
“You belong here,” the creature beside him cried. The arms were a hybrid between human arms and webbed fins. The legs were one long flipper. The face was more creature than human, twisted with rage but seal-like in manner.
It was hungry, it was fury, it was desperation.
Iruka twisted around in the water, looking down at himself. He could see through the watery gloom despite the whirling churning ocean. Despite how far he’d been dragged out to sea. Iruka’s arms were webbed and long fins, half human, half creature. His legs had fused, like the woman's. His face -- he didn’t need to check. He was a monster. Somehow the skin the woman had been petting had fused with him and saved him.
Iruka didn’t dare open his mouth in case he drowned, but his body held air for him, set in his organs and his skins and his bones. His heart rate had calmed nearly to a crawl, despite the adrenaline pumping through him.
He felt whole.
Whole, in a way he’d never known he could. In a way he thought was just sorrow, clinging to his shoulders. In a way he’d always been running away from. He’d felt like a piece of himself was missing for so long that he never realized it wasn’t -- it wasn’t that he wasn’t good enough, or worthless, or only ever meant to be a career chuunin. It wasn’t that he was too set in his ways or too predictable or too soft.
It was just that all this time he’d been aching so wholly for this lost piece of himself.
The selkie in front of him was crying. It was a lost, soul-breaking sound.
“Please, child,” she whispered. “We are all alone.”
Iruka felt his heart break.
“I can’t,” he said. “Konoha is my home.”
“I won’t be like a human. I won’t force you,” she said sorrowfully. “We thought if we could only bring you here, the call of the sea would take you home.”
Iruka tried to smile. He didn’t know if smiling worked. “Perhaps someday.”
“Your human-- tradition says to give your skin to the one you treasure the most. As long as he has it, and keeps it hidden, you’ll live together. But live together, grow old together, when he’s gone, take the skin. Come home.”
Iruka tipped his head. She returned the gesture, then sighed. “My man will be displeased.”
“I don’t think we would have gotten on,” Iruka tried for airy. It fell flat.
“Perhaps not.” She meandered towards the depths. “Farewell, Umino Iruka.” She kicked hard with her fin then, shooting off into the ocean.
Iruka twisted in the water, listeless for a moment as he attempted to orient himself.
He swallowed water.
It could have been a cool drink.
It could have been a mouthful of blood.
It could have meant drowning, if he’d been just a little less of a monster and a little more human. Iruka was wrapped in the skin of a monster. It should have felt like something monstrous. Instead it felt like he’d been lost without knowing it, all this time.
He could have drowned in this despairing, gloomy sea.
His legs might have remained legs, might have remained useless. Instead, when he kicked out, he shot up, forward, out. Iruka might have burst through the surface of the water gasping for breath, flailing helpless.
Instead it felt like breaking out, like reaching for the sunlight and snatching it up in his arms. Iruka burst forth, wrapped in a skin that was entirely his own. He was one whole person, one whole monster, and he could feel the rhythm of the waves inside of him, calling him forward and out and down and away. To the weather horizon and the call of the gulls. Out in the great depths were horrors and mysteries of the world, yes. But there was home, family, belonging.
Then he caught the scent.
He smelled blood of a human, close by and hurt.
Kakashi!
Iruka twisted around.
His heart leapt. He sped through the water with one--two--three powerful kicks, hurtling through the water faster than any human could ever hope to go. His nose took him straight to Kakashi’s prone form and past, to the figure that smelled like a selkie but who still held a sword.
A sword that stank with Kakashi’s blood.
Iruka rammed into the man, slamming him backwards on impact. Something snapped in the mant. The man rose up out of the water and then back in, crying out in pain. Iruka twisted, slapping him with an imitation of a kick that sent him flying.
“Leave him alone,” he snarled, a keening, aggressive growl.
Kakashi’s body though, had begun to sink.
Iruka dove after him, a searing arrow hurtling through water. He could sense Kakashi’s solid mass. A foreign oddity, drawing blood-seeking creatures towards him. Iruka got there first, wrapping his arms -- solid, long, human enough -- around Kakashi’s limp form. He kicked hard with his one powerful fin.
He hurtled to the surface. The air was frigid as they broke through. Iruka struggled to keep Kakashi above water, bogged down under his heavy, limp body. His head was tucked against his shoulder and still -- so still. His heart beat a rapid tempo as his fin hit land. He wriggled against the surf, flailing useless.
He fumbled Kakashi twice until he finally, in a surge of irritation, Iruka scraped his webbed fingers along his face until it snagged the edge of the scar. He peeled it from his face, from around his neck and let it hang from his shoulders. Cold air rushed in against unprotected human skin, a sharp bite. He pulled his arms free, and the skin tore off the rest of the way.
It fell in the surf with a slap that made his stomach curl.
Iruka dragged Kakashi until his legs gave out, unsure whether they were sea or land legs. They fell in a heap, Kakashi’s head limp against his chest. Iruka laid him out flat on the sand.
Kakashi was deathly still. A wound in his side bled freely.
“Kakashi, please.” Iruka whispered. Horror made his hands shake.
He pulled down the mask and stuck his fingers in his mouth. It opened without resistance and Iruka scraped his nail against his hot tongue for obstructions. He pumped against Kakashi’s chest, hands over his breastbone. He counted compressions under his breath. He fumbled to breathe air into Kakashi’s mouth.
Tried compressions again.
And again, and finally -- finally -- as Sakura ran towards them, Kakashi gasped to life.
He grabbed Iruka’s soaked shirt even as he choked and rolled to the side, half in Iruka’s lap. He coughed with wet, ragged breaths and tried in vain to orient himself. Iruka could see it happen on his face.
“Fuck,” Kakashi muttered, clutching Iruka. “I thought I was dead.”
Iruka closed his eyes. He touched his forehead to Kakashi’s to look him in the eye. He did not say so did I, but then, he didn’t need to.
They lay like that for a beat, maybe two. Maybe more. Perhaps they were there all night. More likely it was no time at all, and Iruka was just keeping his eyes tightly closed so he wouldn’t have to see the look in Kakashi’s eyes as he realized his lover was a monster. Or in Sakura’s clear green, who would never look at him the same again.
“Sensei?” Sakura stood over the both of them. She could have been just as ready to heal them as clock them.
Iruka quirked a half-smile at her.
“We’re alright,” he said.
He fell back against the sand, limp after the ordeal. He looked out over the water. It was calm. The sky was beginning to clear. He looked up at a few stars, twinkling shyly through breaks in the overcast sky.
“What happened to the lady and the man?” Sakura hounded even as she healed Kakashi.
“Back to the sea,” Iruka said, still looking up.
Kakashi’s fingers flexed in their grip on Iruka’s waist. Iruka didn’t want to look at him. Didn’t want to see.
“You were a seal.” Kakashi said, after a beat. “Was I imagining that?”
Iruka blinked through the welling terror in his heart. He looked down at Kakashi, who had both eyes squinting at him. The sharingan tore through him. The eye could have laid his entire soul bare. It could have shredded him in a single second. If Kakashi knew he was a monster -- >
“You were a seal,” Kakashi repeated, tapping the side of his head with the sharingan. Iruka cursed the eye with every fiber of his being.
“Sort of,” Iruka shifted in the sand, sitting up. He gestured to the selkie skin, still bobbing innocently in the surf.
“You headbutted the man and sent him flying.” Kakashi nodded to himself, as though getting the story straight in his head. “And then you dragged me out of the water.”
“You peeled off the skin,” Sakura added. “I saw it too, Sensei. It was kind of gross.”
“She called me a selkie,” Iruka said. He rubbed at the bridge of his nose, where his scar burned faintly.
Sakura grunted as she finished healing Kakashi’s wound. “Selkies are a bedtime story.”
Kakashi put a hand to his side and nodded in thanks to her. “Well, they say all folklore have hidden truths.” He turned to look at Iruka. “What happened to the chakra-bind?”
If he avoided using the word seal, Iruka could only hope to laugh at him someday. Now, though--
“Gone,” Iruka confessed, lifting his shirt so they could see. His skin still felt raw from when he’d been thrown through the tantrum they’d commanded the ocean into, but aside from that only bruising remained. “The, ah. Skin healed it.” He tipped his head at it.
The trio got to their feet, and Iruka walked over it warily. Part of him was scared it would wrap back around him and carry him back to the water. He wasn’t sure he’d have the strength to rest the pull if it did.
He held the skin in his arms, feeling the warmth throbbing from it. Then he shook himself out and turned to Kakashi.
“She said to give it to the one I love.”
Sakura shrieked, a blush coloring her cheeks the same bright pink as her hair. “Sensei!”
Kakashi blushed, pulling his mask up over his face.
Iruka snorted at him, fondly. If only he knew. He held it out to him, making a poor attempt at nonchalance. “Take it, put it somewhere I won’t be able to get to it.”
Kakashi seemed to realize, in his own way, a little of what Iruka was asking him. Perhaps it was because he was a genius after all, no matter how idiotic he pretended to be. He took it in his hands, feeling the soft fur under his fingers. He folded it over his arm.
Iruka looked back to the sea one more time before turning his back on it. He swallowed around the deep ache in his throat.
“Let’s go home, I’m tired of being wet.”