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Another Perfect Wonder	By : jaded_priceless Category: Naruto > Yaoi - Male/Male > Kakashi/Iruka Views: 10014 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 4
Disclaimer: I make no profit from this work of fiction. Full disclaimer inside

Chapter List
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Chapter 35

Kaede wasn’t sure why each somewhat controlled flare of Rui’s chakra turned her intestines into a writhing mass of serpents. Her father was a civilian from Snow Country descended from a long line of healers. Her mother was from one of Kumogakure’s most prominent ninja clans and had chosen to become a medic despite their misgivings. She like the rest of them had been born an exceptional sensor.

Kaede had inherited more than her fair share of abilities from her maternal kin and honed them to perfection towards medical applications. They were sharp as a razor when it came to detecting abnormalities in the human body and remembering others by chakra signature but woefully lacking in other areas. For the first time in her life she regretted neglecting that portion of her training. Her more advanced kinsmen could identify ninja bloodlines and clans in distantly related civilians.

Shishi’s chakra was murky. She was unable to discern if it was due to his injuries or the overwhelming influence of his lover. Rui’s chakra was strong and clear. For some odd reason it danced on the edge of her memory like a familiar dish prepared by an unknown chef who used different quantities of the same ingredients.

She was able to convince herself that anyone sliced by a kunai without access to a medical ninja would scar in that manner and that the feeling in the pit of her stomach and the reason for Ryuu’s happiness was due to the unannounced and barely detectable chakra mass created when the two of them had last spent the night with their husband.

Kaede had just walked into the common room of the fortress when a slightly crooked but cute button nose nuzzled the back of her shoulder and strong slender arms wrapped around her body, the palms coming to settle somewhat low on her stomach. “I’ve missed you. Where did you disappear to for so long?”

That teasing tone and affectionate greeting fooled the others, but Kaede and Tetsuryuu been playmates since they were toddlers. The desire in Tetsuryuu’s voice did nothing to mask her anger. It was true that Tetsuryuu was the head of their unusual family and aside from the children she was the only non-S classed jounin member but Kaede wasn’t some obedient clan matriarch or trophy wife.

“How much did you miss me?” Kaede responded in the same dangerously flirtatious manner. She blushed when she felt Tetsuryuu’s firm but small breast slide against her back as the shorter woman rose to her tip toes to whisper in her ear.

They received a few bemused nods or were ignored all together when they disappeared to their bedchamber. No one was foolish enough to show disproval at their life choice. Once they worked off their aggression and lay sweaty in the other’s arms Tetsuryuu repeated her question this time with concern, “Kaede where were you?”

“I went to Shibata-san’s to check on Tomoko and the baby but they were gone. She asked me to deliver a package to those civilians renting Mama-san’s cabins. I did that after our lunch,” Kaede answered honestly as Ryuu began to frown. “I took the pneumonia from Shishi’s lungs and taught Rui how to summon healing supplies for his internal injuries.”

“Did you check the other civilians?” Ryuu asked tersely.

“No, just those. Did I do something wrong?” Kaede inquired. She had just performed the civilian check before Ryuu sent her to Lord Washizu’s castle. It shouldn’t be due for another month.

Ryuu cursed, “Perform the civilian clinic in Kaibara over the next three days. I’ll escort you to Akimoto on the fifth. Spend three days on the clinic there as well. I’ll notify the supply convoy to meet you there and bring you back here. Once Shinsuke gets back the two of you will make your normal rounds, spend three days in each village and take a day to rest before traveling. I’ll contact Darui to take you back home once you get back here.”

“Why are you sending me away? Does it have anything to do with that man in the cabin?” Kaede asked narrowing her eyes in anger. It wasn’t that she didn’t miss Darui and their children but she didn’t like being sent home like some petulant child being punished.

Ryuu smiled wryly and reached to tuck a lock of her wife’s hair only to have her hand knocked away. Her voice was low, barely a whisper, “You will stay away from him. I sent you to Lady Washizu because you are a capable medic and I know you can be trusted. It was selfish of me to bring you here, but I wanted to confirm what Mizore sensed for myself.”

Ryuu trapped Kaede’s hands in one of hers then rolled the taller woman onto her back. She perched a knee on each side of her hips so she loomed over her like a predator. Ryuu settled her hand on Kaede’s stomach and gently flared her chakra tickling the fetus inside it, “You will do as I say. That is not a request, Chuunin; it is an order from your superior and the head of your house. Your life, the one you carry, and the little ones at home are far too precious for me to involve you in this.”

“You will tell no one about this conversation, not my uncle or our husband. You will stay away from those men in the cabin. Rui is not to be touched. If anyone asks you made the rounds early and I sent you back home because you are pregnant. Nothing else. Do you understand me?” Ryuu demanded.

“Kaede, do you understand me?” Ryuu hissed. Kaede nodded. “Good then repeat it.”

Kaede repeated her superior’s words while looking up at her. This position caused Ryuu’s bobbed hair to swing forward so the angled ends drew attention the vertical scar bisecting her jaw. Ryuu was pretty, without the scar she would have easily been one of the most beautiful women Lightning Country had ever produced.

The day her sensei went missing she raised her hand to her student, slitting her face from her left temple to her lower jawbone. There had been so much chakra infused into the kunai the blade cauterized as it cut causing a scar so deep it repelled all medical attempts to remove it. That single slash from her sensei irreparably changed the course of Ryuu’s life; of all their lives.

She’d been removed from the classes geared towards solo seductions, infiltrations, and assassinations and placed with the regular students for general training. She had been placed on the genin team that included Kaede and Darui. That initial bond that grew into love and the trio later married to form a single family unit the likes of which Lightning had never seen. Even now, twenty seven years later the mark still hummed faintly with the traitor’s residual chakra; chakra that she encouraged Kaede and Darui to feel and memorize should they ever encounter it.

Such an encounter was impossible. That woman was rumored to have been dead for almost 20 years. Ryuu was one of the hunters who killed her.

Kaede would never forget the day Ryuu and her teammates returned to Kumo more dead than alive. Ryuu was smiling and crying as she carried a pile of ashes equivalent to a human body that was infused with the traitor’s chakra. Whale and Seal had been knocked out, but Walrus faintly remembered seeing the flash of Raijin no Fungeki.

Her sensei had taught her that technique and they were the only two capable of performing it. In the three decades Kaede had known Ryuu, this was the first time the smaller and more powerful woman had ever given her a sense of absolute dread and terror. Her sensei, “Raijin no Ryuuko”, daughter of the second Raikage and sister of the Third, had abandoned their village when they were eight year old children. At that time Testsuryuu did not have the chakra reserves or control needed for a jutsu the likes of the Thunder God’s Fury let alone how to Sit Upon the Thunder God’s Throne.

When exactly did she learn it?

Kakashi rolled his eyes as Iruka practiced his newly acquired sealing technique. This was far worse than Sasuke’s exuberance when he learned chidori. That was a new jutsu. This was a new way of doing something he already knew.

So far Iruka had sealed his shoes, their bedding, a dirty pot which came back clean, a pile of snow, the hammer, the leftover turtle stew and a pile of rice balls. The two food items had been cold but returned warm.

“Do you know what this means, Shishi?” Iruka squealed dancing around his partner like an excited child.

“That you can always find work as a magician or dishwasher wherever we end up?” Kakashi replied sarcastically. They were pretending to be civilians but Iruka being was too frivolous.

“Yes! And that we won’t get targeted by bandits while we move. They won’t bother to stop us since we have so little!” Iruka exclaimed pausing to place a kiss on Kakashi’s cheek.

“You do realize it will still be heavy,” Kakashi reminded his frolicking cohort.

“Yep, that’s why it will be on the sled with you,” Iruka sing-songed, looking for something else to practice with.

“Will you be still? All that flitting is making me dizzy,” Kakashi groused closing his eyes and lowering his head. The woman had meant no harm but she had still been able to sneak up on him. He had it on good authority her cohorts lingering overhead didn’t have such good intentions.

Iruka stopped playing with the scrolls and walked over to Kakashi. The woman had forcibly cured his pneumonia and caused him to throw up. He should have been more mindful of his condition, “Would you like me to heat some broth for you?”

“I’m not hungry,” Kakashi replied. “Can you stoke the fires beneath the tub? I would like a soak before I go to bed.”

Kakashi watched as Iruka obediently took an ash bucket and a few small pieces of wood to the bathroom. The chuunin was humming when he returned. He cheerfully set the ashes on the hearth while he tended to the fire in the main room as though enemy ninja were not camped out above them, eagerly waiting for them to make a wrong move or that the one who’d just left could have easily killed or detected both of them when she brushed them with her chakra.

For all he knew she was giving a detailed report to her superiors requesting they be brought in for questioning. Kakashi knew he was being absurd. If she suspected they were anything other than what they pretended to be she would have called down her companions instead of flaring her chakra in silent communication. She would not have made Iruka perform the jutsu over and over again so her companions could grow accustomed to the feel of his energy as it gathered and spiked beneath them. They would not have heard her leaping onto the roof and explaining that she had taught him how to summon and seal items into a storage scroll. They would have already been captured.

Kakashi was tired of feeling like his freedom was someone else’s whim and that his destiny and well being was not in his hands.

“The water’s ready.”

Iruka’s voice roused him from his thoughts. Kakashi rose. He silently moved to the chest of drawers, well as silently as a partially healed broken ankle allowed and gathered a clean pair of boxers for sleeping. He had undressed and was hanging his clothes over a chair when Iruka once again interrupted his thoughts and pressed something in his hand, “Don’t forget this.”

The enema kit.

Kakashi’s temper flared as he remembered the last time he was unable to go to the medics and had to use one to heal internal injuries. He’d been betrayed. Iruka had not violated him in that manner, but in some ways this was worse. His eyes narrowed at he looked at the device in the chuunin’s hands. He vaguely heard Iruka’s instructions to call for him when he was nearing the end of the soak and he’ll bring the water he was boiling, by then it should have cooled. The last part of “Hold it in as long as possible. The longer you wait, the more it will help your internal injuries,” was all too clear.

“The longer you wait, how appropriate coming from you.” Kakashi snarled, “You’re so concerned now but you weren’t so concerned two weeks ago when you were making friends with these damn ninja. I couldn’t stand. I could barely move. I wasn’t sure if I was using the restroom or having a menstrual cycle.”

He snatched the kit from Iruka’s slack hand and lifted the pot from the ash pile where it had been boiling. “Did you ever stop to think the internal injuries you’re so concerned about might not have been so bad if you wouldn’t have taken so long?”

He paused leveling a final accusation, roughly pushing past Iruka on his way to the bathroom, “Worthless.”

Kakashi heard the front door slam before he’d barely taken two steps. He thought the look of agony in Iruka’s eyes was partially gratifying as he cleaned himself, outside and in, then outside once more before falling asleep in the soothing waters of the bath.

Kakashi thought he was worthless. It wasn’t surprising. Everyone else did. Worthless Iruka. He did what he always did when faced with that unwanted truth – he ran.

His footsteps took him farther away from the cabin as he remembered the conversations his parents often had when they thought he was sleeping:

“Iruka is not strong enough.”

“That cannot be helped.”

“We will give him our strength.”

“We will help him as best we can”

“We should have waited before coming to this village.”

“Using S class chakra suppressors on a pregnant woman seeking refuge. Disgraceful.”

“I am thankful he survived my womb.”

“It took all of his strength to be born.”

“Iruka is special.”

“He is our son.”

“It is a blessing in disquise that our abilities were not passed onto him. He will define for himself what it means to be strong.”

“Iruka will be happy. He will not carry our burden”.

“Our talents have not decided his future for him.”

“Our son will know true freedom.”

He sped up remembering the disappointment in their eyes when they tried to teach him family jutsu that most children his age could easily perform. Their words and actions were always encouraging but he could tell they were saddened by his limited abilities. His mother would often tell him, “Be patient, Little One, even the mightiest of oaks began as acorns. In time you too will find your strength. Once that happens nothing can stop you.”

His father would pull out a map of his homeland and tell him “the islands of Water Country were once part of the mainland until a tiny drop of water decided it wanted to see the ocean. It took centuries, but did not stop once it begun.”

Iruka took heed of that lesson. He ran. Harder, faster, the cold air singing his lungs, making breathe became unbearable. He had long stopped feeling his fingers or his toes or the cold. He ran until the earth opened up before him.

Then he went down.

MisatosPenPen: Yes, that one was rather short. The plot bunny didn’t really start to cooperate until last night so I’m posting a longer one.

Kc: The story is going slowly because of real life and uncooperative plot bunnies. I managed to wrangle one last night so hopefully the rest will fall into line. I’m glad I was able to make your day.
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Another Perfect Wonder