A shinobi is a high school student like another - 27

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Light. Warmth. If I could keep my eyes closed for a moment still, the world would go away and leave me alone. I could imagine that the person next too me was someone else, that the fingers tracing the edges of burns on my head belonged to someone else. If I could keep my eyes closed for a moment longer... If I could fake sleep for a moment longer...

"Do you want something to eat?"

I answered no with a move of my head from between her arms. What need did I had to keep dreaming? Reality was coming back to kick my ass fast enough as it was. Rin didn't get her arms from around me, and I didn't try to get away. She nudged me after a while, forcing me to wake up completely.

"Go take a shower before I change your dressings." 

And then she got out of the bed, walked to the kitchen, her legs white under her too-large and well-worn Tee-shirt. I rolled on my back and contemplated the ceiling. My hair -what little of it that had grown back, just enough to guess the skin beneath- felt sticky and dirty under my fingers. My stomach growled. I drowned its protests under the water, focusing on the sound of the spray and the ache of the burns.

Rin sat a bowl of milk-droned cereals before me when I sat in the kitchen. I didn't even try to protest, and she put back clean bandages around my arm while I ate slowly the soggy stuff - I had no more want to puke them out later than to eat them. She kept her hands on my arm when she was done.

"What happened?"

It could still have been night time. The table was shining white under the three little lamps thingies hanging from the ceiling. The fridge, covered with artistically doodled papers, some pictures and magnets, was lazily purring. The clock on the wall opposite the window, shaped like a smiling and totally high flower, was softly tick-tacking in the silence. The cars were passing outside, lower, without attaining us. I hadn't said a word since I had came in.

"Kakashi?"

I opened my mouth, staring at the slightly chipped edge of the bowl, closed it. I didn't knew how to begin. So I didn't began at all.

I don't know really how to explain this reluctance to explain, just to talk to Rin at this point, which made that I left her place for the HQ with just a "thanks" at the end. I didn't want - I couldn't tell her what was going on. I even couldn't just to explain the slow ticking bomb named Itachi - and anyway it was linked to Iruka.

Was it the perspective of admitting a weakness that was keeping me from talking? Not that I was considering any of what was happening as a weakness, but it was something an enemy could use against me... The lessons that had been beaten into me while growing up were far from erased from my mind - and I doubted it would ever cease to have a part in how and who I was.

I had never told her I had been with Tatsuki last year either.

Kami, I'm so messed up.

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I rode the bus only for half of the way. I climbed down earlier than sheer paranoia and classic prudence would have wanted, but the metal box full of people had put me ill-at-ease. The low pain accompanying each step was surprisingly welcome - I could still feel something. I didn't stop to wonder if that reaction was very normale, or healthy, or no to both. I was too numb, too far - even the cold couldn't get me to wake up completely.

The activity at the HQ was as weird as yesterday - the feeling of not right was even stronger. The car park wasn't full despite the not early time of the morning. The noises of the busy offices seemed exaggerated - as if two people were trying to make as much noise as fifteen. The training rooms were empty save for one or two too serious looking poker-faced teams - too serious looking for an usual week day.

All of this made me shiver, and I tried to not think about the silent locker room while shrugging my uniform back on. My bag - and my dead phone - rejoined  my clothes in the back of the locker. I would need to go back to my place some time later. Three days spent with the same shirt was beginning to smell like it.  Truth to be told, I was more bothered with my phone.

Itachi wasn't in any of the so called public room; Reno nor Vincent were there too. I left a scribbled piece of paper with my location for the day on Sensei's chair, his office empty. I wondered if he had got some sleep - he hadn't sounded ready to call it a day when I had called him from Rin's to give the lastest developments. He had sounded resigned when I had told him that at least one member of Iruka's family was with the European Organisation.

I wondered what was going on too - it felt like the calm before the storm, or the cyclone's eye. None of those scenario was particularly enjoyable to think of.  Then I went to the Infirmary on my own. I didn't let Tsunade fuss on me, just got her to allow me in her archives. Tackling one problem at the time was the logical way to go at it - that meant I didn't look through the doors leading to the proper infirmary, and I didn't wondered about Tsunade's attitude who hadn't try to fuss on me. And then, there in the Medical Archives, I knew what I was looking for: an explanation, a commentary, anything really about the interactions between sharingans. The ancient scrolls and the more modern data piled up without me noticing.

I had tied the badana back on my head, crossing my face, Konoha's symbol on my eye and a hole in my heart.

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I spent the entire day locked up in the archives - and nearly fell flat on my face when I stood up. I had forgot to eat something again. But that wasn't the most important. I had found -maybe- the answers to my questions, but I would really knew only once I'd proof-tried the theory. Itachi apparently hadn't showed up in here - no one had come to drag me off or had called my on the comm. I hadn't seen Shizune either, even if I had expected her to hunt me down through the building and drag me to rehab - which I had managed for now since I had left.

I didn't saw Sensei either.

I kept my gaze locked on the lockers room's floor when I put back the civilian outfit on. Same when I glided through the corridors, when I stepped out - when someone put his hand on my shoulder, forcing me to stop.

"Kakashi."

It was Zabu-man. I barely turn my face toward him to show I was listening.

"You're staying at our place tonight," he said, and I frowned, the move lost under my hat. He added in a whisper: "Yondaime's orders, we've gotta talk."

I nodded, still frowning - and I noticed he was in civilian clothes, not in the uniform, as if he had came directly from school, and this despite the advanced hour of the afternoon and school closed for a few hours. He motioned for me to follow him - from the car-park to his place, the trip was silent, night falling down and casting reflections of lampposts, neons lights and traffic in the windscreen. There was next to no-one in the streets, until it turned completely deserted at the foot of his building.

Haku welcomed us with a smile and a bathrobe on, his hair sticking in every direction, looking like he had just crawled out of the bed. He pecked me on both cheeks before kissing his man.

"Hi - forgive the outfit 'Kashi, I was on the night shift and it began again tonight," he turned closer from Zabuza,"Dinner's already done, you just have to warm it up, will you be all right with it?"
"I'm not that bad, Haku."

I turned away from the couple, my throat closing up. They spoke lower for a few moments before Haku went off toward their room, sounds of shower following. Zabuza put his bag and coat away. I had stayed in the middle of their living room, bag on my shoulder. I heard a sigh.

"Kakashi, put your stuff down somewhere."

I obeyed without even thinking about it, leaving bag in the corner acting as an entrance, jacket and hat next to it. Zabuza-man frowned an eyebrow before my uncovered face and closed eye, obviously noticing the rarity of the event. And then he shrugged it and took it in stride, reminding me once again why I liked the guy.

"What did you want to talk to me about?" I asked.
"Beer?" He said as an answer from behind the fridge door.

I refused and he settled kitchen side, leaving me to climb on the counter's stools. He drank before rolling the bottle between his hands. There was no stoned flower clock here, no drawings on the fridge - but photographies, lists and chipped magnets.

"There were attacks against us," he began without warning. "Four for now, beginning two days ago. Attacks targeting houses and families of four actives agents, different teams. No one was hurt - Sandaime draw the conclusion it was warnings from Otsuka. Ibiki thinks the mole or moles working with Otsuka are on it."

I nodded - it explained the HQ's atmosphere, Sensei's tired voice, the grim-faced teams. I mentally added Ibiki was probably right - no-one outside the HQ knew where lived who; even the cops don't have access to those informations. But those informations might have and had certainly been taken when our entire network had been hacked, what, two, three months ago? So then, it was Otsuka. But that meant various underground moves had gone under our radar. Or that I hadn't been, and wasn't, up to date... Zabuza continued, unaware of the storm raging under my skull.

"You're officially in charge of Itachi."
"He agreed to get in?"
"He didn't really had a choice - there seems to be seriously weird stuff going on at the Uchiha's, for what little he said, and didn't said, to Reno."

The silence follwing this wasn't usual for him. I might have been seriously off my game, but he couldn't hide the fact he was hiding something from me - or many things.

"Does that mean I'm back into active service?"

He stared hard at me from over his bottle, before going back to his bag. The file he extracted from it and put before me landed with a 'vlouf' of too many papers, a photograph sliding out and catching my eye. Zabuza had turned his back on me, too busy to switch the gas on under the waiting diner.

"Everything's in there, don't ask me more."

I had barely heard him, too busy staring at the guy with dyed white hair who was staring back at me from a piece of paper. I was sure I had seen him before, but where?

"I've got a picture we're all in"... Iruka, Kotetsu and Itachi in it, even if the latter seemed nicer and younger here, with a large smile on his face... There was a guy with hair that fell in front of one of his eyes, another with a bandanna tied around his head and circles under his eyes, and the last one had quite long white hair, obviously dyed..."And here, i-it's Mizuki."

Mizuki. This guy was one of Iruka's friends - he had talked about him only once. I frowned and opened the file. Haku passed by at some time, kissed Zabuza, said have a good evening and left. I'm not sure I answered his goodbye. I read all the file - rather, the files - in one breath, until Zabu-man replaced it with a full plate.

Everything was in this - from my orders to Sensei's various leads, a copy of the letter send to the school to explain my 'indefinite absence due to health reasons', a full report and chronology of Uchiha Jr I was thinking that Reno had done... but the one thing that made me stop and stare was the file on Iruka. And it wasn't just two pieces of paper slapped together, there was virtually everything short of his body here : the i.d. of every single person he had meet, his schools, his genealogy, the names and positions of his uncles in the European Organisation, a map of every place he had ever been to, the nins assigned to his watch, the pictures of the guys we had noticed were circling 'round him - and those guys were eating in Otsuka's palm - the pictures, i.ds,  birth, marriage and death certificates of his parents... the article which was relating the "tragic car accident where Margaret Johnson-Umino, 29, and her husband, 30, were killed ... well known in the discrit to have  brought to life with her brothers and husband the now well-known pub... leave behind them a little boy..." My stomach did a somersault at the sight of the bad picture illustrating the article. I had trouble believing anyone had got out of the crash alive - that he had survived it, and with only one visible scar...

There was a copy of a police report, articles and mug-shots clipped together after that. The mug-shots were Mizuki's. There was a copy of a medical report too - murder attempt by stabbing... and I stopped dead when the points made 'bip bip' between them.

They hate me because I send someone to jail...He tried to kill me.

The last page was the notice of one Tôji Mizuki on legal technicality - dated from yesterday.

It's at this moment Zabuza swapped file for plate. I barely had the time to spot  the scribbling left with Sensei's handwriting on this last page - confirmed link between this guy and a minor gang now under Otsuka's orders.

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I didn't polish off the plate, despite the fact it was delicious, that I only had a vague reminder in the depths of my stomach of the cereals of this morning, and that Zabuza was staring at me and the plate a bit too insistently - I suspected Tsunade's influence, if not direct orders. Direct orders and his own protective streak was it.

I wanted to see Iruka. I missed him. There, I said it. I missed him. I missed him even more than when I had been stuck in the Infirmary - because I knew that even if I wanted to see him, him didn't want to see me. It was what I had feared the most, him rejecting me because of what I was doing, because of what I was.

I insisted on sleeping on their battered but comfy couch - 'cause it was more than certain I wouldn't sleep. Zabuza 'accepted' by giving me extra blankets and a set of spare clothes. There's little need of mentioning that it was clothes of him and that I was swimming in them. Literally.

I should have been shocked, angry, something, anything really, but I should have been reacting in some way. That, that was my brain and reason talking. But no, there was nothing; just a kind of bone-deep weariness, of tiredness, a wall all around me - it felt as if the hollow and terribly heavy shell just ready to shatter was back. Empty.

I pulled the too long pant back up with a hand, staring blankly by the window, lost in the plays of lights coming up from the street bellow, the brief flashes of rare traffic, the dark windows on the other side, the invisible sky. I distractedly noted the stuff piling up on the windowsill, depressed plants and stacks of second-hand books, knick-knacks and duster-catchers, polaroids on a string, worn-out couch hidden between pillows and thrift-store blankets, photographs again. The street's light was dirty orange.

The other hand was holding the file I just just finished memorizing down to the last word - the orders were clear on this. Memorize and then make it disappear. I put it down in the sink, reached a hand toward the matchbox, then felt my reserves, and incinerated it with a brief flash of white chakra - the control I put into this made me show my teeth, because this gesture could not me called a grin nor a smile.

A brief light of traffic from three stories below reflected off the old Konoha insignia in the shadows, from the arm of the couch where I had took it out of my bag and left it, my charging phone next to it.

I missed him. I missed him oh so much.

OoOoOoO end twenty-seventh part OoOoOoO


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