Naruto Grateful

Grateful

This is a scene that's been stuck in my head for a while, so I decided to inflict it on all you guys. Minor spoilers for the end of the Chuunin Exam arc, nothing you won't be familiar with already if you're up to date on the series, anime or manga.

I may not be updating again for a while, as I'm going to be busy studying in Japan. Please consider this my parting gift to all my lovely lovely WONDERFUL readers and reviewers. Hearing your feedback puts such a smile on my face.  
-  
-  
-  
-  
-  
-  
-  
He had had a long day. The mission had been a success, which was to say they'd managed to get their hands on the scrolls of information that had been their objective. They'd gotten out undetected, which was to say that every single person in the compound was dead thanks to Gaara's enthusiasm, so there would be no one to report what had happened until somebody discovered the bodies. He reflected absently that he was glad Gaara and Temari's respective talents made them decent gravediggers as well as deadly shinobi. Puppets, on the other hand, weren't very good at digging. He'd been the one to chuck in most of the bodies instead.

It had been a long day, and a long mission, and now he was home, and all he really wanted to do was take a shower and sleep it off. Karasu needed some repairs, but they could wait. At the moment, being unconscious for a few hours could only be helpful to his sanity. It wasn't that he couldn't handle stuff like this - he was thirteen years old, a member of Suna's most formidable genin team in remembered history; it wasn't as if he couldn't watch a few people being crushed to death and then stab a few more himself without batting an eye at any of it - it was just that he...

...A person got tired, after a while.

His room in the Kazekage's palace was dark and messy and familiar and welcoming. He stumbled inside and dumped Karasu a few paces from the door, probably with slightly less care than was wise, and reached up to pull off his hood; he left a trail of clothing behind him as he headed toward the bathroom of the spacious suite, not bothering to turn on any lights. He knew the layout of his space thoroughly, and there was something comforting about the darkness, unbroken save for the faint light filtering through the windows and the curtained-off balcony arches on the far side of the room. He stepped into the shower, turned on the tap, and washed himself off in the dark too, listening to the water splashing on the stone below his feet amid the empty echoing silence of the palace at night.

When he was done, he pulled on a random shirt and some new underwear, and laid down to discover that there was no possible way he was getting to sleep.

He stayed there and made a valiant attempt for a while, but his mind kept going over the evening's - well, _fight _wasn't really a fair word, it would take a higher caliber of shinobi than the ones that had been at that compound to challenge Gaara - going over the... mission, remembering the way the one guy's eyes had bulged like they were going to pop out of their sockets, wondering just how long it took ribs to shatter under the pressure of several pounds of sand, debating for a minute whether it was the poison on Karasu's blade or the angle of the thrust that had made that girl convulse so interestingly as she went down, it could really have been either, and he... was supposed to go hold court with Kazekage-sama tomorrow, wasn't he?

Being the oldest son of the family was a bitch.

He hated court. In the shinobi world, thirteen meant you were a man. Thirteen meant you were old enough to kill and die and everyone treated you like an equal as long as you could keep up. In the world of politics, the other sphere that the Windshadow of the Sand moved in, thirteen was nothing. Thirteen meant you were a child, a little pawn worthy of consideration only for whatever power you might inherit when your caretakers were old and looking for someone to give some of theirs to. Thirteen meant people did what they wanted with you and ignored you when your usefuless was finished. And thirteen meant that you couldn't _do_ anything about it until you grew up.

Thirteen, he concluded with a harsh mental laugh, meant you were a puppet.

God, he hated court.

It had been a regular fixture in his life for years now, ever since he'd come home from training with the puppet troupe, and he knew he was supposed to be learning something from it (Kazekage-sama never did anything without a specific goal in mind, and he knew the goal of this particular exercise was to raise him into a good little head-of-household and, shudder, possible future Kazekage), but he sure as hell didn't know _what _yet. The main thing he ever did was sit at his father's side in the office-cum-throne room and look appropriately solemn or intimidating at turns as people approached Kazekage-sama with their various entreaties. Occasionally, some of these supplicants sought him out before or afterwards, hoping to catch the Kazekage's ear by endearing themselves to his _beloved _son. He usually turned down the gifts and bribes; if there was one thing they were never lacking for in his house, it was money, and if he wanted gifts he'd buy them for himself. Some of the younger and better-looking supplicants, however, offered compensations that were not so easily turned away; thirteen wasn't as old in the world of politics as it was in the world of shinobi, but it was still old enough to be seduced. He'd met a few dazzlingly beautiful young men and women this way, and took vindictive pleasure in turning every last one out of his bed the following morning with a cruel smile and a declaration, whether true or not, of how _terrible _they had been.

He knew of whence he spoke, at any rate. After all, he was thirteen years old. He was nothing if not educated.

His bedroom door whispered open.

A hushed, too-calm sort of feeling crept over him as he noticed. He looked toward it for a long moment in silence, before at last a cold, vicious smile surfaced briefly on his face, and he rose from his bed. Oh, yes, he was educated.

There was some proverb about how people never stopped learning.

He had long since come to understand when he was being beckoned, and so he departed out of his room silently, pulling the door shut behind him and padding down cold stone tiles beneath the empty, soaring archways of Kazekage's palace. He walked until he came to a single door bathed in the blue moonlight of the massive open balcony on the opposite side of the hall, columns towering over him for what felt like miles; and he turned his gaze away from them and pushed open the door, and shut it quietly as he walked inside. He was expected.

It was a remarkably small bedroom, compared to the opulence of the massive halls and towering arches that surrounded it. Kazekage-sama was sitting by the fireplace on one side in his favorite chair. For long minutes he perused the scroll in his lap with an intent expression, not acknowledging that anyone else had entered; and his son leaned against the door and waited quietly. Kazekage-sama sipped at the cup of tea sitting on the end table, and read his scroll, and it was quiet still in this one small room of the big empty palace, save for the muted crackles and snaps of the fireplace.

"My son."

He answered the quiet excuse for a greeting by moving away from the door to stand at attention, expression neutral. His father deigned at last to glance over at him. As always, he avoided his son's eyes. Kazekage-sama never looked his children in the eyes. They were all too quietly, hauntingly, evocatively _green_.

"You had a mission today," his father murmured at last. "You must be tired." That was a trap lying in wait, if he'd ever heard one. Conversations with Kazekage-sama tended to be a practical exercise in ninja philosophy.

"A bit. But a good shinobi pushes themselves as far as they need to go," he murmured in reply, because it was expected, and just a little bit because it was true. But the truth was not what mattered in this room, at this time of night.

"Hmm. Truer words have never been spoken. You have made much of yourself over the past few years," his father said, a peculiar gleam cast into his dark eyes by the flicker of the fireplace. "You will become a fine shinobi. I'm proud of you."

"I would never have made it this far if not for you, Kazekage-sama," he responded quietly. Because it was expected. It was truer than he would like it to be, but... Above all, it was expected.

"I'm grateful."

His father smiled at him, just a little. Except for the way it did not even slightly meet his eyes, it was really quite a handsome smile. He could understand why the women of Suna's court had competed for his father's favors even before he had become Kazekage.

"I know," his father murmured. He set down the scroll on the table next to him, took a sip of his tea, and leisurely canted his head to one side as he regarded his son again. He was wearing a loose dark robe. There was probably nothing underneath.

"You are ever a dutiful son," he said quietly, blinking with sleepy half-lidded eyes, still lined with kohl that he had not removed yet. "Always so good at showing your gratitude."

He watched his father's eyes watching his mouth, or maybe it was his neck, or maybe the top of his chest. His own gaze trailed down to his father's lap, though he already knew what he would see there.

Aren't you grateful?

He was glad to be alive, so he walked over to kneel down before his father's chair and tell him all about it.  
-  
-  
-  
-  
That would have been the happy ending. If he had done what was expected.

Instead, just for once, because he was tired and heartsick and too old by half, he did what was true.  
-  
-  
-  
-  
It was a remarkably small bedroom, compared to the opulence of the massive halls and towering arches that surrounded it. Kazekage-sama was sitting by the fireplace on one side in his favorite chair. For long minutes he perused the scroll in his lap with an intent expression, not acknowledging that anyone else had entered; and his son leaned against the door and waited quietly. Kazekage-sama sipped at the cup of tea sitting on the end table, and read his scroll, and it was quiet still in this one small room of the big empty palace, save for the muted crackles and snaps of the fireplace.

"My son."

He answered the quiet excuse for a greeting by moving away from the door to stand at attention, expression neutral. His father deigned at last to glance over at him. As always, he avoided his son's eyes. Kazekage-sama never looked his children in the eyes. They were all too quietly, hauntingly, evocatively _green_.

"You had a mission today," his father murmured at last. "You must be tired." That was a trap lying in wait, if he'd ever heard one. Conversations with Kazekage-sama tended to be a practical exercise in ninja philosophy.

"A bit. But a good shinobi pushes themselves as far as they need to go," he murmured in reply, because it was true, and just a little bit because it was expected. But at this very moment, he could not really bring himself to care about what was expected.

"Hmm. Truer words have never been spoken. You have made much of yourself over the past few years," his father said, a peculiar gleam cast into his dark eyes by the flicker of the fireplace. "You will become a fine shinobi. I'm proud of you."

"Thank you," he murmured, too weary to bother with tact. He wanted nothing more than to get this over with, to go curl up in his room in the dark and not-sleep some more.

His father's eyes narrowed slightly, and of a sudden he remembered what was expected, and knew he had misstepped.

Gaara had been gleeful tonight. So many little sacks of flesh to play with, to break and burst and watch the blood dribble out from between skin and bones.

"You should not forget, however, who has brought you this far," his father was saying quietly. "Without the opportunities I have provided you..."

Temari had sliced several men to ribbons, of course, but she had made a rare miscalculation, slipped in a puddle of blood - there'd been so _much _it had been hard to avoid it - and she'd nearly taken three kunai to the chest. If Karasu hadn't been close enough to deflect them...

"Aren't you grateful?" his father asked him.

A silence filled the room, so heavy that he could almost taste it.

If they had made anything of themselves... it was despite this man. It was _to _spite this man. He realized suddenly that every minute of every hour of every day he had spent in training, in learning, in killing had been leading up to this moment where he would finally prove that his father was not all-powerful. Where he could say that he owned himself. The puppeteer, and not the puppet.

Aren't you grateful?

Sabaku no Kankurou met Kazekage-sama's gaze with haunting green eyes, and told him no.  
-  
-  
-  
-  
Afterwards, he limped out onto the balcony, leaned one arm against a pillar, and looked out on the mesa and thought of nothing at all.

There was a kind of strange dreamlike haze surrounding everything, and he thought for a moment that he might have fallen asleep, until he heard Temari's strangled gasp behind him. It seemed too much effort to look back at her, so he just waited there staring out over the balcony for her own gaze to follow the trail of blood on the floor and finally reach where he was standing.

His backside and the insides of his thighs were still wet, and rather cold; and he wondered with detached curiosity which was more likely to happen in this situation, clotting or bleeding to death.

"Kankurou...!" Temari was rushing over to him now, and he swayed on his feet a little as her arm against his shoulder jostled him. He blinked once, and kept staring past her. "Kankurou, are you... what..."

She had seen which door the blood started at. And it wasn't as if she was unaware. But there were some questions one couldn't help oneself from asking.

"Kankurou, _talk _to me, dammit," she snapped, with a faintly hysterical tinge to the anger in her voice. Kankurou's eyes drifted down slowly, so slowly to the floor tiles, head cocked almost speculatively; and as was his habit, said the first thing that came to his lips.

"I kinda want to die," he murmured, absently.

Temari went utterly still next to him.

He found he couldn't quite make his eyes focus on the tiles below, and for some reason, this vaguely bothered him. He blinked a couple of times, took his unsteady hand away from the pillar, and swayed and crumpled into his sister's arms.

As always, she was warm.  
-  
-  
-  
-  
He spent the next few days huddled in a corner of his room, reciting plays to himself like a good puppeteer, so he didn't have to hear anything else that his head wanted to tell him. He mostly didn't bother to get dressed, but he put his facepaint on every day. It made him feel a little better.

Temari brought him a medic, nudged him to eat once or twice, and left him alone. They departed on their next mission a week later.  
-  
-  
-  
-  
He was disappointed, in some several months' time, when he learned the old man had been killed. Of course there were few people in the world who were capable of stopping Orochimaru from doing anything, but he wished he had been present at the event even so. For the sake of their village's security. For the sake of the job that he had staked out as his, somewhere in the darkness of his mind, untold years ago.

Because it was expected.

Because it was true.

Because even if he didn't get to slit the man open from one end to the other, stab his eyes out, bathe in his blood to wear as a proud trophy, piss on the remains and MAKE HIM SCREAM, he wished he could have watched someone else do it.

He was a dutiful son, you see. He always made sure to show his father his gratitude.  
-  
-  
-  
-  
-  
-  
-


End file.
