Ferret

Restoration

Team Canon: Ferret (Kita-the-spaz)

Story Notes

Prompt: Beginnings

Rating: PG-13

Pairing(s): Kakashi/Iruka

Summary: After the death of his parents, Umino Iruka had let some things fall into obsolescence. But sometimes, it is time to take up responsibilities again; time to restore, among other things, a legacy.

Contains [warnings]: (highlight for triggers/spoilers) Spoilers up to and including the Pain arc. Adult Language.

Word Count: 4775

Author's Notes: Many thanks to my invaluable crew of beta-readers, without whom, this fic would have died aborning. They provided encouragement, incredible insight, feedback and when needed, a fist to the top of the head.

Umino Iruka stood at the foot of the path that led up to the temple and inhaled deeply, ignoring the sultry heat that bathed his skin in perspiration. His regulation blacks hung limply against his skin, making the muggy warmth just that much more unbearable. He drew another breath in slowly, identifying the varied scents that hung in the humid air, one by one cataloguing and then disregarding them. The sickly-sweet odor of the azaleas, the damp earth, the green tang of the rank grasses he himself had cleared from the long overgrown path; all acknowledged and put aside, much the same as he had noted and paid no mind to the chirr of the cicadas or the lazy buzz of the crickets and the various twittering birdcalls from the greenery surrounding him.

He now knew every note in the symphony of nature surrounding him and would be warned of any incursions by the disruption they would make in the melody. Letting out his breath in a drawn-out sigh, Iruka started up the path. It was a long climb, made longer by the oppressive heat. At last, the red torii arch was visible through the draping swathes of greenery. Like the path, it was badly neglected, the vermillion paint peeling and chipped. The name of the shrine had fallen from the gakuzuka ages ago, the bare wood where it had once been, now weathered and dark.

Iruka stepped under the arch, feeling both welcome and strangely like an intruder. He brushed his fingers gently against the pitted wood, flakes of paint falling away. He sighed heavily. “I’m sorry,” he whispered aloud to the still, humid air. Only silence answered him.

Feeling like the air was crushing him against the stone, Iruka glanced around the courtyard. Evidence of neglect was everywhere, from the plants struggling up through the cracked and crazed flagstone, to the heap of windblown earth lodged in one corner of the sagging fence that played host to a tangled bramble. A rabbit watched him warily from beneath the shelter of the thorns, nose twitching rapidly.

Turning his attention toward the small shrine, Iruka winced, feeling physically ill at the sight. A corner of the arched roof had collapsed, taking with it one of the guardian statues. The statue had broken on impact with the stone, forelegs shattered and head missing. A quick scan of the surroundings showed the head lying in the ruined doorway, eyes gleaming uncannily lifelike in the shadows.

Iruka strode across the crazed courtyard and scooped up the vulpine head from where it lay, whispering another apology into one chipped ear. For a moment, the courtyard softened and blurred in his vision and he blinked stinging eyes.

He could almost see his mother sweeping the flagstones, her dark hair bound in a braid down her back. She’d never worn Miko garb to clean the shrine, though she had a set neatly folded and stored in a chest, beneath her regulation blacks. She’d been the last daughter of the family, and had kept the shrine up, stopping back at it before every mission to sweep and clean. When she’d been on medical leave for an injury incurred on one brutal mission, she had brought Iruka up here with her every day, teaching him how to sweep the courtyard with a broom she’d cut down to his size.

While they worked, she would tell him tales of Inari Ōkami and the clever white foxes that were Inari’s servants. Iruka had delighted in the tales and imagined the two great stone foxes that guarded the shrine leaving their perches to answer Inari’s commands.

She had told him that the two great statues had been brought to Konoha before the destruction of Uzushiogakure no Sato, the Whirling Tide village, the same year Uzumaki Kushina had moved to Konoha. The shrine had been one of her favorite places because it had reminded her of home, Kushina had once confided to Iruka’s mother.

If the statues were from the Whirling Tide village, Iruka had asked, why didn’t Kushina tend the shrine, instead of her?

His mother had collapsed in giggles then, dragging him down with her and tickling him until he was laughing too. When they were both sprawled on the cool stone, gasping for breath, she let out one of her loud, infectious laughs, the kind his father had often said was the reason he fell in love with her. “I can’t even imagine Kushina trying to tend the shrine. We’d find her standing in the courtyard, yelling at the trees to stop dropping leaves so she wouldn’t have to sweep so much!”

Chortling, she’d fingered her braid of dark brown hair. “My grandfather was from the Senju clan-- though my father took the name of his wife’s family as his own-- so in a sense, we’re very distantly related, though I’m mortally glad I didn’t get enough of the bloodline to have that flaming mane of hers. Though,” she screwed her face up into a scowl that was more comical than ferocious and crooked her fingers into claws. “I did inherit that temper, and you better get your share of the sweeping done before I go off on you!”

She’d chased him up and down the courtyard, snarling and swiping at him with her ‘claws,’ with Iruka somehow staying just out of her reach until they were both worn out.

Iruka found his lips curving in a melancholy smile, and blinked away the haze of memories. He dusted his fingers gently over the sleek muzzle of the broken head in his hands. “I’m sorry,” he apologized again to the spirits of the past and the broken remnants of today.

The air seemed to still around him, tensed and waiting. The stone head in his hands grew heavier, a wordless accusation.

Ignoring the twinge in his aching back, Iruka bent in a careful and respectful bow toward the shrine. “I haven’t enough words to say how sorry I am, both for my own prejudice and neglect that allowed this and for the people of Konoha having deliberately forgotten both their duty and respect for this place.”

Carefully, reverently, he lay the damaged head at the feet of its unbroken counterpart.

Almost as if in response to his actions, a breeze rustled the leaves in the trees and breathed cool air down the sticky back of his neck, like a gentle benediction.

Iruka found a smile curving his lips and breathed easier. “Thank you.” He glanced around the courtyard again, this time taking careful note of all the damage. He’d begin his penance by doing what he could to restore the shrine.

Grimacing at yet another rivulet of sweat trickling down the back of his neck, Iruka skinned off his clinging, damp shirt. He winced at the pull of the bandages across his shoulders and back. Despite the efforts of the medics, any careless movement sent agony thrilling through him. They had told him that it was only sheerest chance that he hadn't been permanently crippled by the attack.

Just draping his shirt over an undamaged portion of the stone retaining wall sent the ghostly sensation of the shuriken slicing into his flesh jangling along his nerves and Iruka paused to catch his breath, fingers white-knuckled on the top of the stout wall. When the pain had ebbed to the point where he could move again, he took a deep breath, thinking ruefully that the agonizing pain was punishment indeed for his neglect.

Hissing through his teeth, Iruka unclenched his fingers and cast about for a good stout branch. When he found one, he improvised a broom from the branch, a triple-handful of dried sedge grass and some chakra wire from his pouch. After a couple of experimental sweeps, he concluded it would do for the moment.

First though, he went to the fallen guardian statue and gathered up all the pieces that he could find, stacking them on the pedestal the statue had once occupied. Iruka tried once to right the statue, but the motion shot red agony down his back. He leaned against the statue and waited for the pain to pass. Hissing through his teeth, he patted one carved flank in apology. “I promise I’ll set you to rights when I’ve healed.”

The debris from the caved-in corner of the roof was easier to handle, being mostly wood, slate and painted plaster. Iruka hauled it, piece by piece, into the thick undergrowth just beyond the courtyard, pausing often when the pain in his savaged back became too strident to ignore. The weeds would have to wait, he decided after a single attempt to pull one nearly had him blacking out. He chuckled a little sadly, dusting his hands on his pant legs. “Maybe I should just wait until Naruto is on a genin team and then hire them myself to do some work up here,” he told the still, expectant air of the shrine with a rueful smile. “Besides, if there’s anyone in this whole village who should come here, it’s him.”

The wind swirled around him again and Iruka smiled. It seemed the god agreed with him. He paused and took a deep breath. He could almost feel the gentle regard, accepting his words as a promise. In a way, the quiet observation reminded him of his mother’s presence, how she would look at him the same way, smiling and watchful. It felt so much like her that he could almost swear she was standing right there at the shrine with him.

A bird screamed alarm near the foot of the trail and Iruka stilled instantly, listening.

“Oi, Iruka-sensei? Where are you?”

Iruka recognized the voice immediately, though he had only met the other chūnin a few weeks beforehand.

Kamizuki Izumo had come to see him that first terrible night in the hospital, telling him that the Hokage wondered that if, while he was still recovering, he might take a few shifts in the Mission Room, as the school year was nearly over and Iruka was in no shape to take on an actual mission.

Iruka had agreed and Izumo had promised to shepherd him through a few shifts for training. Apparently, Izumo had decided that today was going to be his first training session and had come looking for him.

“Iruka-sensei? You around here? Iwashi-san said he saw you coming this way,” Then quieter, “He better not have been shitting me, either. It’s too damned hot for this.”

Iruka debated remaining quiet for a moment in the hopes that Izumo would leave, but concluded with his luck, Izumo would stumble up the path. Honestly, he didn’t want him up here, at least not until he had done more to restore the shrine. It would not be respectful to the spirits here, for this place to be seen in such disrepair. With a sigh and and a brief bow, Iruka grabbed his shirt and hurried down the path.

**********

He was unable to return for the better part of a week, for it seemed the entire village was conspiring to find make-work for him while he healed, but eventually Iruka was able to get away, shortly after all the new-minted genin had been assigned to their jōnin-sensei. He was smiling when he thought of Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura being forced to work as a team under their new sensei. He wished much luck to Hatake Kakashi-san. The man would certainly need it with those three.

The stifling heat had broken that morning with a thunderstorm that had dropped the temperature a good bit and washed the thickness out of the air, so the climb up to the shrine was pleasant. He stretched his shoulders as he climbed, reveling in the restored motion and the lack of agony when he moved. He’d been seen by the medics twice more and now, though his back was still tender and often sent twinges down his nerves, he could move freely enough. Enough to do some of the work he’d been unable to last time.

He bowed upon entering the courtyard, and raised his eyes to the shrine and its single remaining guardian statue.

Something very like distress coiled low in his belly when he noticed the head of the broken statue missing from the place he had set it, between the forefeet of the other. Instinctively, he whirled to check the pillar that held the fragments of the other statue. For a moment, his eyes refused to make sense of what he was seeing.

The statue once again occupied its place of pride on the pillar, upright and whole. Iruka, breath caught in his throat, staggered a few steps closer to it. The closer he got, the more the illusion of wholeness faded, for he could see the missing tip of one ear and the myriad chips and cracks that riddled the once shattered forelegs. When he laid a hand on the stone, he could see that someone had painstakingly fitted all the broken shards back together, cementing them in place with the quick-drying epoxy that all shinobi carried in their kits and a net of hair-fine chakra-wire, invisible except when it caught the sunlight.

Letting out his breath in a sigh, Iruka pulled his hand away from the foreleg of the statue and glanced around. There was no other trace that anyone had been here, and nothing else had been done. Iruka lowered his head, but pitched his voice to carry over the various sounds of the forest surrounding the shrine. “Thank you, whoever you are.”

There was no response, but he had expected none. Smiling faintly, he pulled on a pair of work gloves and climbed up onto the roof of the shrine to see if there was more damage than just the collapsed corner. There was a hole near the peak of the roof where it looked like a branch had fallen through and several places where the slate was cracked or had given way. He’d have to get some supplies in the village tonight and bring them up tomorrow. He considered the cost of hiring a donkey cart to haul the slate tiles and decided he’d have to absorb it, because there was simply no way he’d be up to several trips up and down the long trail, loaded down with roofing material and tools.

He slid down off the roof and dusted his gloved hands on his thighs, considering what to do next. Weeding could wait and sweeping also, as he’d just be making more work for himself with the sawdust and broken slate while he was repairing the roof. He entered the interior of the small shrine and decided this was a good place to start, dragging out debris that had fallen through the holes in the roof and ousting birds and other creatures who had taken up occupation in the ruins.

Behind the statue of the god, the remnants of a wooden screen had fallen over, knocking loose several of the marble tiles. Something enterprising had dug a burrow under the temple through the broken wood beneath the tiles. Cautiously, Iruka pulled the rotted screens away, baring the mouth of the den. Faint rustlings, squeaks, and a sharp, musky odor warned that the burrow was definitely occupied.

A sharp, threatening bark startled him, coming not from the bared den but the open entrance. He turned slowly.

A vixen stood there, a dead rabbit at her feet and her hackles up. The sinking sun painted her red fur a glory of scarlet. She snarled threateningly at him.

Iruka rose slowly and the vixen flinched, but added a racket of vicious yips to her threats. Iruka could see from her thin flanks and the distended teats that she had kits. And if he were to guess, he’d bet they were in the burrow he’d just uncovered. Backing away from the den, Iruka laughed under his breath. Where better for a vixen to hide her kits than in a shrine to Inari?

Iruka moved slowly, so as not to threaten her more. “Easy, little mother. I mean no harm to you or your children.” He kept his voice low and gentle.

When he’d retreated as far as the confines of the shrine would let him, the vixen edged past him warily, snatching up her fallen rabbit and bolting into the dark mouth of the opening.

Iruka retreated from the shrine entirely, feeling laughter bubbling in his chest. She’d be gone tomorrow, having moved her offspring to another den far from here, but just knowing that she had found shelter to bear her kits in the shrine made him feel better than he had since the first time he returned here.

He glanced again at the setting sun and decided he’d best head back if he wanted to get his supplies before the shops closed. Descending the path, he found himself still smiling.

**********

Iruka rose early the next morning and rented a small cart and donkey from the cheerful old man who lent his carts and the donkeys that pulled them to everyone from the local bake shop to the farmers who ran produce stalls at the village market. He loaded the cart with the supplies he’d bought the previous night and led the donkey carefully up the steep path.

He tied the donkey to the gatepost and pulled up a heap of grasses to keep it occupied while he worked. Before he started any hammering or sawing, Iruka checked the den again. He’d been right. The little vixen had taken her family and fled. He was sorry she had, but it was for the best. His efforts at repair would only have frightened the poor thing out of her wits.

He’d only just climbed up onto the roof when the riotous screaming of a flock of crows began at the base of the slope, near where the path to the temple started.

Alert, Iruka rose to his feet. He would not be able to see anyone approaching through the tangle of greenery that crowned the slope, so he closed his eyes and stilled his breath and listened. Every ounce of concentration was directed at what his ears were telling him. For long moments all he could hear were the sounds of the disturbed animals, but suddenly a voice rose above the noise.

“Naruto, you idiot!” The words rang loud and clear and oh-so-familiar.

“But, Sakura-chan...” Naruto’s over-loud voice replied, overlaid with the ingratiating tone that the boy only ever directed at Sakura.

Iruka swiftly leapt down from the roof and hurried out the gate toward the sound of their voices. What on earth?

He was halfway down the slope when he met them. Naruto was rubbing his head and complaining that Sakura didn’t have to hit him quite so hard, and Sakura stood with fist clenched and threatening another blow. Sasuke, of course, just looked bored with it all and behind him stood their jōnin-sensei, Hatake Kakashi, his single uncovered eye curved upward in what appeared to be an amused expression, though for all Iruka could tell, the man could just be suffering from indigestion. It was hard to read anything on a face that was three-quarters covered.

“Naruto-kun? Sasuke-kun? Sakura-chan?” Iruka smiled at them, allowing none of his bewilderment to show. “What are you all doing out here?”

Naruto brightened and ran forward to tug at Iruka’s sleeve. “Iruka-sensei! We have a mission. What about you? What are you doing?”

Iruka shrugged one shoulder. “It’s my day off and I had some work to do out this way.” He interrupted himself with a shake of his head. “A mission? What is it this time?”

Naruto slumped. “More boring stuff. I wanna go on a good mission, not just weeding gardens an’ looking for lost cats!”

Iruka chuckled and affectionately bopped the boy on the head. “I’ve told you before, you have to start small. Even the best of us started out doing all these D-ranks.”

“But they’re booooring,” Naruto complained. “I mean, seriously... fixing up a temple that nobody goes to?”

Iruka froze and turned his gaze to the silver-haired jōnin behind the children, who was watching him with an unreadable gaze. “Oh?”

Kakashi just shrugged fluidly and tugged a mission scroll from a vest pocket. “Something like that.” He tossed the scroll in the air toward Iruka.

Iruka deftly snagged the scroll and unrolled it. It was indeed a standard mission scroll, filled out with the details of the shrine and the expected work. The name of the party who had requested the work was an illegible scrawl and the hanko seal below it almost as unreadable.

The Hokage’s seal was on the ‘authorizing’ line, but Iruka could not make heads or tails of who had requested and paid for the mission.

Iruka squinted again at the indecipherable signature. “Who-?”

Kakashi stepped closer and gazed down at the scroll. “Looks like Sphere, maybe? But that makes no sense.” He shrugged again. “No one I recognize, but I’m hardly conversant with all the minor lords around here. I just go where I’m told and do what I’m assigned.”

Iruka smiled hesitantly. “I was actually just there, at the shrine,” he offered. “Before she died, my mother was the caretaker. I’ve been trying to repair it.” Sheepishly, he hunched his shoulders. “I’m afraid I neglected it too, at least until just recently.”

Kakashi nodded, his face unreadable behind the mask. “We’ve all put off things before, sensei. Be grateful that it wasn’t too late when you realized it.”

Iruka turned to look at him when Naruto bounded up, finger pointing up the path. He was practically quivering with excitement. “Hey, Iruka-sensei, I know this place!”

Startled, Iruka turned his attention from Kakashi to the boy. How? “You do?”

Naruto nodded, bouncing up on the tips of his toes. “Uh-hum. There are these two big statues, but one of them fell down an’ broke when we had that big storm last winter.”

“So you’ve been up there already, Naruto?” Kakashi’s tone was mild, but a sideways glance at him proved that his eye was keen and interested.

Naruto nodded, shaggy blond hair falling into his eyes. “Yep, I used to come out here all the time. Nobody-” He stilled and lost some of that nervous energy, looking down at his sandals and scuffing the toe of one in the dirt. “Nobody would bother me here.” Naruto’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I’d come up here when everyone was being mean to me.”

Even Sakura had gone still, her tanned face paling. Sasuke regarded his teammate sharply, while Kakashi simply observed, seemingly unaffected by it at all.

Iruka smiled, forcing his own anguish for Naruto back behind the expression. “Well, a shrine is a sanctuary too, Naruto-kun. And if nothing disturbed you up here, it’s obvious you were welcomed.”

Naruto’s shoulders straightened and he grinned up at Iruka, sadness forgotten in an instant. “Right!”

Iruka smiled and turned to lead them all up the path to the temple, thinking that this would be a good start to restoring the shrine. If anyone belonged there, it was Naruto.

**********

It had been too many years since that moment, Iruka thought ruefully, closing his eyes against the stab of pain that the idea brought him. Too many years and too much water under the bridge. Naruto grown from the boy who had once hidden out at the shrine. Sasuke gone, a betrayer. Sakura, a med-nin, trained under the best, the Fifth Hokage. The team’s sensei, more often than not, out on missions, wearing the haggard look of a man who was trying to outrun his demons.

Iruka had thought, in that instant when Kakashi had saved him from Pain’s attack, that there was something dark in Kakashi’s voice, a note that said he might welcome that final darkness, if only to silence the regrets that hounded him.

He had not seen the other man since the rebuilding began, though Sakura was everywhere, a regular drill-sergeant, barking orders at all and sundry to rest, to drink more water, to go straight to the hospital-tent before she dragged them there herself. Iruka was quite proud of her, too.

Naruto had been the hero of the hour and Iruka could not have tried to disguise the pride that filled him.

Iruka had resolved to go up to the shrine and offer his thanks and prayers at the altar, but he had not thought that the devastation would have reached quite so far. The stone path was heat-crazed and broken under his sandaled feet, bits of it utterly destroyed in the turmoil. His first sign of just how far the ruination had spread was the torii arch; an arch no longer, only shattered stumps of wood where it had once stood. Bits of vermillion painted wood showed where it had fallen, destroying trees and part of the gate in its demise.

Iruka stepped carefully over the debris, dreading to see what had become of the shrine he and Team Seven had painstakingly restored during those long-ago summer days.

The small building still stood, though it leaned precariously to the left, one of the four columns supporting the roof shattered. But that wasn’t what attracted his attention.

He wasn’t alone.

Kakashi stood in the courtyard, wearing only his regulation blacks and a mask. His shoulders were bowed and he had the look of a man staring at a grave marker.

He was staring at one of the two guardians, which surprisingly, still stood. At least it was surprising until Iruka saw the new chips on the statue that had fallen before and a wide crack in the body of the other. They were both anchored to their bases by a spider’s web of chakra wire.

Iruka quietly moved up to stand beside Kakashi. “Kakashi-san,” he greeted quietly.

Kakashi didn’t move other than to tilt his head so he could regard Iruka out of his good eye. “Iruka-sensei. Fancy seeing you here.”

Iruka managed a sharp laugh, more a bark that made his throat hurt than anything else. “Where else would I be? I still have a duty to this place.”

“What about the rebuilding efforts?” Kakashi’s voice displayed only polite interest in his answer.

Iruka shrugged. “I’ve been told to get a bit of rest. This was the only place I could think of that wouldn’t be swarming with work crews.”

Kakashi nodded. “Makes sense. I’ve more or less been told to stay out of everyone’s hair until my chakra pathways heal a bit. Needless to say they aren’t interested in having me around when I can’t offer more than another pair of unskilled hands.”

Iruka found a chuckle emerging from his throat, “I’m sure you're not that useless.”

Kakashi’s tone was self-denigrating. “Ask Yamato sometimes about my skill with a hammer. Only be prepared to run when you do so. It brings back traumatic memories for him.”

“So you’re up here, repairing the statues, then?” Iruka couldn’t help but be amused at the man who professed not to be skilled at repairing things delicately gluing broken stone foxes back together.

Kakashi glanced at him and his eye was curved upwards in a smile. “Why not?”

Iruka chuckled and looked around for the small shed where he had stored various tools for working around the shrine. Astonishingly, it still stood, though a tree had fallen beside it. He opened the door and withdrew a pair of brooms, handing one off to Kakashi. “Well, thank you for volunteering. You can help me clean up the place. Too bad you’re not getting paid for it.”

Kakashi grinned behind his mask and accepted the broom.

They swept in silence for a few moments before Iruka spoke. “You know, one learns all sorts of things, working shifts in the mission room.”

“Oh?” Kakashi didn’t seem disturbed by the non sequitur.

Iruka hummed under his breath, “Indeed. All kinds of things.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, like info on shinobi, and things about the people who hire them, stuff like that.” Iruka smirked. “You gave yourself away, you know, all that time ago.”

“I’m sure I have no idea what you're talking about, so why don’t you enlighten me?” Kakashi’s tone was dry.

Iruka set his broom aside and turned to face him. “If you look hard and far back enough, you find out that another translation for Hatake is ‘sphere.’ Funny, isn’t it, how someone with that name hired your team to help out at the shrine?”

Kakashi’s nonplussed blink made Iruka laugh.

**********

Additional Note: The translation for Hatake (畑) is found here; the second definition. 畑 [はたけ] {noun} (also: 天地, 範囲, 分野, 球) sphere.

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