A shinobi is a high school student like another - 20

Beta by the mighty Nine Tailed Vixen - thank you!
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I was expecting the lunch to be tense, awkward, something... I don't know...

I was expecting Rin to tease us-me to death, given that she had this tiny little smirk of hers that was saying "you, you're going to tell me everything" when she was looking at me. She didn't do anything tough. It was the best lunch I've ever had. And don't believe it if you want, but Naruto and Iruka were like peas in a pod. I wasn't really expecting this, because of Naruto's chakra on one hand, and because Iruka had to have gone past 'forced babysitting' with his cousin... no?

Naruto talked with Iruka the whole lunch long, from school to his now-abandonned again action figures, without forgetting his mom's fixation on orange.

They were still happily chatting, and Rin and I were busy tidying her kitchen, when someone knocked at the door and stepped in. Raidou's head quickly showed up in the kitchen, as if to know who could be there - I bet there was a bit more noise than when there was only Rin and Naruto for lunch. He smiled at me first then raised an eyebrow, his eyes making a slight slide to Iruka. Rin promptly caught his neck, Naruto screamed a 'Hi!' and Iruka rose his head, smiling, to introduce himself.

Raidou's arrival was showing (to me at least) the time to leave, since I had took those good resolutions for my almost-sister and almost-brother-in-laws to get some time quiet together - tough I'm not sure 'quiet' is a word one can use with Naruto around... Bah, the worse it can lead to is for them to think twice before having brats of their own.

I quickly introduced Iruka to Raidou (and left behind the details), then we were out again, where the temperatures hadn't warmed up at all during the hour and a half we were inside. We began to stroll toward the river that was cutting Konoha in two parts, the old town, with the monument and all the districts of the ancient clans, and the 'new' city, where we were for now, and where the school and the city center were. It was also the cleanest way to get out of this part of the town.

I realized while walking that I hadn't told Rin about my 'dream'... dream that I was more or less digesting - but to be exact, something else had taken its place, something else that was nibbling my heart : Iruka and me. You're going to tell me I've been feeding you up with this for quite some time and that it could mean anything too, but the thing was that I wasn't that far from the panic mode again with emotional overload on top.

It was really the first time this kind of stuff was happening to me - and then, you can say when talking about feelings and sentiments, and me, there's not a lot of training between us. Hey, watch out, I'm not saying I'm in love or anything, far from it. I'm just saying that I appreciated him a lot...

... why is he wearing those pants, they're not baggy enough... Breathe, breathe.

Little by little, even if I was dragging a bit behind and not just because of Iruka's ass, we made it to the wharves, in the profile of the Hokages set in stone. 

Well, saying 'the wharves' is a bit of an abuse of language. On the side of the river where we were, it was the territory of the former port facilities, as well as the new ones, for now covered with snow and so useless - the river only iced on a few centimeters in Konoha, but it ran to the ocean, a few hundred of kilometers up to the north, and covered by ice floe this time of the year. So the ports were shutting down in winter and were waiting for the ice to break up under their white blankets, or, as here, the port facilities had long since moved toward the exterior of the city, just leaving behind them tagged old buildings and equipments not rehabilitated yet, and waste grounds which were turning to snowmen fields once winter had settled.

On the other side of the river, the embankments had been converted a long time ago into a promenade, wiping out in the process bits of olds districts here and there - bits that only my clan's records still had the memory of.

There was still a good thickness of fresh snow here. Five minutes later, we were throwing snowballs at each other. We weren't about to restrain ourselves, the only other person around was an old woman who was walking her dog, and who had turned around at Iruka's first iced 'yelp' when getting hit by a snowball.

I used the relative isolation to 'infuse' some of my snowballs with some chakra. And as I had more or less expected, and more 'more' than 'less', Iruka avoided those ones more easily.

I was surprised he had never realized his capability; him, or someone of his family, or even the doctors he had seen for his headaches when he was a kid. But, at the same time, there was few people who still know about the ninja's ways and mysteries, and I had read in Tsunade's archives that chakra wasn't easy to find with modern medical techniques. I couldn't help but find it a bit strange that no-one had paid attention to it before... and that, maybe it was time to give him clues about his hidden skills...

... It would really bug me off if someone else than someone I trusted a little bit was taking an interest in him and showed him what he could do... say, someone like Otsuka... someone who wouldn't mind using a person as a weapon, with the rights and liberties this status entail - yeah, as in 'no rights' and 'no liberties'.

And how, are you going to ask me, this someone could know about the ninja's ways?

Missing-nins still exist nowadays, getting rid of them is just a tad bit more complicated.

The snowballs' drumfire - as much as a drumfire of snowballs can exist when there's just two hands on each side - suddenly stopped, and Iruka fell bonelessly with a 'oof' in a area of snow thicker, leaving a deep trace. Then he slowly breathed before spreading the snow around him with his legs and arms. I stepped closer. His eyes were closed, and his cheeks and nose were flushed pink with the cold.

"You're gonna be soaked to the bone," I said, before laying down in the snow next to him.

"All the more reasons to take off all the unnecessary layers later, don't you think?"

I laughed, my face raised toward the sky. We could catch glimpses of blue sky between the shoals of clouds which were swimming up there over our heads. A flock of birds passed between the white and the blue ; from here, they were just black moving pinpoints.

He straightened, sitting up in his already frozen traces, and turned his head to look at the monument. Shodaime, Nidaime, Sandaime, Yondaime, Godaime and Rokudaime were gazing at their village with their stares frozen in stone. The monument is the pride and the easiest way to get money into Konoha's vaults, since it was The touristic attraction. Looking at it made me want to gag, or to scream ; to do something not very polite and not very accepted in our 'civilized societies'.

Konoha's last Hokage, Rokudaime, gaze at his village with the half of a face. Godaime was targeted during the last wars to the point she's barely recognizable. Sandaime's stone face has been cut in half by an collapse of the bit of cliff above. Time passed upon the death masks of the three other Hokages. No one in Konoha really remember the faces of the woman and men who had been carved there in stone to remember.

Yeah, great. Die for your country, we'll remember you.

Stone-Sandaime didn't look one bit like my Sandaime, and the same could be said for Yondaime and Sensei. It was better this way.

Shit, just thinking about the monument lead me to brooding. I find my reaction rather irrational but I don't really know where to begin to 'cure' that.

The wind was playing with Iruka's stray locks. He looked tired, like someone harassed by his thoughts, or harassed by real people. Maybe I could ask him now why so many people seemed to not hold him in their hearts back at school...

"Iruka?"

He turned his head away from the monument to look at me, laying in the snow next to him, my hands crossed behind my head.

"Mm?"

I had already mentally reviewed ten or so way to begin, and I had tried to mouth half of it. And then a detail came back to my mind : a guy I knew was part of the much hated school's 'newspaper' had crossed us -Iruka and me- this morning before the first class, when Zabuza was busy taking his shift at Itachi's tail outside. This guy had pulled a face when looking at Iruka. It had seemed to me that Iruka hadn't noticed.

"What's the newspaper's people problem with you?... I think it would be more right to say that half the people in school got something against you..."

His eyes went from mine to the snow covered area around us, then slide to what little we could see of the frozen river from where we were sprawled. I couldn't catch a single glimpse of blue in the white overhead, and I felt the wind with a renewed acuity. Of course, we had to count with our clothes which weren't exactly adapted to prolonged stay in snow.

I got up, sweeping with a hand the small blocks of snow which had frozen to my jeans, before reaching to Iruka - Iruka who still hadn't replied to my question, and whose stare had lost itself on the river. He noticed my hand just when it entered his field of vision, and he looked absently at it for a little while. I moved it.

"Gotta move before becoming snowmen. And passing to the 'later' from 'taking off all the unnecessary layers' you talked about earlier sounds like a good idea, don't you think?"

Iruka's face changed of expression - it went from 'lost somewhere' to a hard-to-describe mix of 'pervert!' and well-hidden impatience. He sure knew how to hide his game.

He grabbed my hand to get up, but he didn't let go straight after - his hands were cold, unlike mines.

Behind us, all that was left was two traces in the snow - a long one, and one which looked like it had been done by an angel who had fell here.

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We went back to my place, with the help of a bus. The clouds were threateningly heavy with snow.

It was strange to have someone else in my kitchen... it wasn't usual. I fished some chocolate power from the back of a cupboard, and Iruka assured me that the unopened bottle of milk in my fridge could still be drank.

The almost tangible silence settling in the room once our hot cocoa in hand was like a blanket - thick, heavy without being uncomfortable, warm and fluffy. Before someone ask, yeah, I had forgot again to get the heater on - but fortunately, it was warmer in than out. Our jackets and pull-overs had been spread on every free space in the living-room in the hope it would dry up, and my sockets had followed the same fate when Iruka had made me notice that I was leaving ponds behind me once our dripping shoes left at the door. I hadn't realized it, but my feet were feeling and looking like ice blocks.

We were sitting one across the other, and by a game of chance our legs had gotten entwined together... I got to note that this table wasn't very large, even if four people could supposedly take place on.

"They hate me because I send someone to jail."

Iruka cut brutally the silence, and it took me a few minutes to register that he had say something and the to digest said thing.

"Huh?"

Iruka let go of his steaming mug to run a hand in his hair, and he turned his face to the window - the one who was opening on my miserable garden.

"I don't know where to began," he blurted out, sounding lost.

He seemed to sink down on the chair. I reached for his hand on the other side of the table. They were still cold.

"And what about beginning by the start?"

He clutched at my hand in response, his eyes on our hands together. Beuh, it sounds like a bad cliché, but it was obvious he needed a minimum of support here. Support that I had no problem giving.

Shit.

I don't know exactly what was happening, but one thing was for sure : the more it would last, the more I would put him in danger. And I wouldn't put only him in danger. I was about to put our whole organization in jeopardy if I went on, because if he asked me just one question about my scars, I wouldn't lie to him, nor omit the truth, and it would lead to say everything.

My thoughts were quickly stopped. He had put his half-open lips against mines, and after the first surprise, I answered to the kiss. It was a bit like the first time we had kissed, the first time we had had sex. His kiss tasted like despair.

His eyes were wide open, glued to mine.

Kissing to forget. I had done it too. I understood. My hands slide under the few clothes he still had on.

He didn't close his eyes.

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I hadn't switched the light on in my room - the bleak light coming through the window was enough. We were entwined, hidden into the haphazardly thrown on blankets.

"I send a motherfucker to jail, but it's so much easier to blame on the fairy queen, isn't it?"

Iruka's voice was strangely empty against my throat. His question wasn't expecting an answer - or, not an answer coming from me - and I tightened my arms around him. He continued with the same cold tone of voice, almost clinical; the tone of voice of a pathologist in front of his corpse du jour.

"Especially when all buddies of said fucker are the local jocks... and a good part of the rest of the school..."

"It's him who...?" I asked with saying more, my fingers brushing the scars on his back.

He just nodded against my neck, then he froze when my fingers touched the larger scar, the one which was dangerously close from his spine, the one which was still pinkish. His voice came out muffled when he answered to the unspoken question of my fingers:
"He tried to kill me."

And that was all. He silently sighed. I didn't ask anymore questions, he didn't elaborate - he had answered my question, and it was all he wanted to tell me for now. I was all right with that.

I had a feeling like I would get the links between the clues soon enough.

It was good there, hidden in the blankets. Nothing could happen to us. The light had dropped, outside. I didn't know what time it was and I didn't gave it a damn. If Iruka decided to stay right there for the next three weeks, I was more than agreeing.

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