Sizheng: This is an engagement present to Novocain, because she read and reread it and calmly endured my fussing and raging when I was stuck so many times, that it's as much her story as mine. Thanks also to my beloved and adored wife Checkerbloom for her gentle support and love. (Remember, kids; polygyny pays.)

We Commit His Body

A Naruto fanstory by Zhang Sizheng

For Novocain

Part One—Earth to Earth

The first shinobi were farmers. They were peasants who tilled the black fields and dredged the brown paddies and hated the lords of chaos and violence who came down from their mountain strongholds to rain fury on them and their families. So they, shinobi, sons of earth, rose up and took up their land-tending tools, sharpened them as they sharpened their wills, and not many remember that the first kunai was an ancient trowel.

His son was nameless for the better part of a year, because Sakumo had left him in the care of Fuyuzora and her pups, and while he was sure Fuyuzora had a name for the naked little infant she had fostered for nearly ten months—several weeks longer than his human mother had carried him—Sakumo had never asked. He had not named his son until Jiraiya came calling one day because he'd taken a shortcut through the fields and seen Sakumo's brat dangling cheerfully from the bamboo frame of a scarecrow.

After that, Sakumo was home more often, watching his child—Kakashi, his name is Kakashi—while Fuyuzora watched him, reproachful and a little petulant at having her last pup taken from her (because the rest had gone to training, too, like Kakashi should).

His son was a genius and strong and how did he get into the fields half a mile from the house? But Fuyuzora simply inclined her shaggy head in response to his inquiries and turned her back to him (which told him more than anything else she could have done that she was disinclined to speak to him until he gave the pup back to his den-mother).

So he did, watched her groom the protesting infant with her tongue, and listened to her proud stories of a boy leaping before he could walk, and lifting before he could grasp. In doing so, he realised he had fathered something of a prodigy in development—not so uncommon in these parts, perhaps, but still rare and a treasure amongst shinobi ranks.

And it was sick and strange and wondrous to Sakumo that all Kakashi wanted to be was a farmer.

Kakashi liked his uncle's honest, brown face and the leathery skin of his hands and the ever-present dirt under his nails. He loved the features he could see, the features that weren't hidden beneath an earth-brown mask, no, not like his father's.

But he loved his father, too, loved him so very much, loved even the mouthless grins and eye-smiles and was anxious to be like him, was proud when his grandfather mentioned their similarities, was grieved when he realised Father did not love the earth so much as he loved those of the earth, which was nice but just… not like Kakashi.

Because Kakashi was a son of the land, like his grandfather and uncle, not like his father, no, not at all, and he had in the three years since his birth inspected every inch of earth on the Hatake property with Fuyuzora-mama's new litter by his side.

When left to his own devices, however, he would take the trowel that had been placed into his hands at birth. He would spend hours turning over the black soil, inhaling the fresh scent of spring and life and it was all so beautiful, beautiful, beautiful he swore he'd never leave the field. But his father would call him, and he would stand on legs too sure for one who hadn't yet seen his third winter, and flow gracefully over the land he loved to the side of the father he loved and his life was so full of beauty he could scarcely breathe.

But he did, and twenty years later, battle-scarred and hardened and looking at the empty, dried up fields of his family's lands, Kakashi wondered if it might not have been better if he'd simply not breathed but died and given his body back to the soil instead of nurturing it with the blood of so many nameless, countless dozens…

For now, however, Kakashi indulged as a child might, sinking his roots deeply into the ground and amusing himself with standing so still he might have been another one of the bamboo and clothing constructs littering the Hatake fields.

Sakumo lived and died by the institutions that had nurtured him when his father could not, loved serving the people who could not serve themselves, took pride in the fact he could help his home flourish, even though it meant being torn from his village and far away from his boy and dogs.

And Sakumo loved his son.

Awkwardly, woodenly, hollowly, but he still cared for the poor boy who loved the land and threw a kunai like nobody's business and was powerful and prodigious and absolutely useless to the village because he spent all day grubbing in the dirt.

He complained to Jiraiya, who snorted and shrugged and reminded him that Sakumo's family had spawned sons of the land since before the Village Hidden in the Leaves had sprouted from the forest.

"Damned shame, with talent like that," Jiraiya had admitted, "but what can you do about it?"

Drag his boy to the Academy by the ear, that's what he'd do.

When Kakashi was four, he learned to lace the ground with the white energy that frothed happily in him and looked like lightning, but was really just a synergy of life and vitality woven through his bones and blood and flesh. All the crops grew so much quicker if he sowed them with a little coaxing from the pale chakra that was his family's secret and curse; it was a flame that could give life and heal and smelled like winter but was stronger than the stirrings of spring.

Kakashi's hair grew several shades lighter within the month of planting, and though he knew his father noticed, it was his grandfather who commented on it, asked him to stop, asked him not to feed the crops with their bloodline. And he soon knew why.

With the paling of his hair and eyes—bleached out, his father murmured, by the white chakra—in him awoke a restless furore, a quickening of the breath and flesh and bone that seized his small, premature body and sprouted it, forced it to become lithe with liquid grace. Made him faster, stronger. Harder.

And, when he looks back twenty years later—not ten, because when Hatake Kakashi was fourteen he was the faceless, chastising rod and heartless flail of the Hokage, couldn't know darkness from day or the twilight between if he opened his eyes, which he didn't—Kakashi thinks that if he had listened to the uncle he loved instead of the father he loved (adored, worshipped), he might have grown content to farm the soil and take a lover and father her children and teach them, too, that to touch the white chakra is to corrupt your connection to the land.

Because when he was four, he severed his bond to the earth by giving it too much love and too much soul, and then left none for himself as Kakashi, son of Sakumo, who wanted to be a farmer and tend the land.

So Kakashi needed no dragging. He went on his own to the Academy. But only after he met Namikaze Minato. And only after he killed the Hollow Man.

Namikaze Minato was a clumsy amalgam of autumn scent and colour, and Kakashi liked him on sight.

He wouldn't admit it, though—was in fact quite appalled—and chagrin stiffened his first greeting. It didn't seem to much faze the older boy, whose features broke into a pleased, crooked grin. Kakashi noticed that Minato's hair was brighter than sunlight on the hayfields, and smelled of applespice and oakfruit.

Unaccustomed to speaking to people other than his father, and grandfather, and the lone uncle with hands like leather, Kakashi smiled a little to show his liking. He hoped Minato's smile meant he liked him, too.

Namikaze Minato was shinobi, like Jiraiya-sama, like his father, though not as wonderful or graceful or beautiful (because, really, who could compare to Konoha's White Fang?), but Kakashi cared for Minato well enough and wondered why Kakashi and his uncle and his grandfather were so unlike the rest of the people he liked.

It made him wonder if there was something strange in his blood. (And there was, but he didn't know it, not while he looked at Minato and felt his mouth turning upwards in a way it was utterly unused to doing). He wouldn't know for years. But he didn't mind.

Not then. Not yet.

The Hollow Man had hated Kakashi's father as much as Kakashi adored him. He'd worn a forehead protector with a scratch drawn neatly through the Leaf insignia Kakashi's father loved so much, and had stolen through the house when only Kakashi and Kakashi's harmless uncle and grandfather had been home, since Sakumo had gone to slay the enemies of Konoha.

Preoccupied with keeping Fuyuzora-mama's newest litter warm (because she had gone to tear out the throats of Sakumo's foes), the Hollow Man had startled Kakashi. The pups turned as one, their scant training barely enough cry havoc upon the Hollow Man's arms and throat before he backhanded two out of the air; with his booted foot he dashed out their tiny brains on the floor where they landed.

Numb with shock, Kakashi never took his eyes off the broken bodies and heads and brains even as the white lightning surged forward, burned the nameless, faceless man to the bone, and the bone had cracked and crumbled and dissolved even as it made as if to fall to the ground.

Kakashi's father had returned home and found his brother and father smiling their last smile, red and wet across their throats, and the dust of the man who had murdered them in their dreams, and Kakashi shivering with fever as he continued to cradle the bloody, pulpy forms of his dead brothers and champions.

Sakumo gave Kakashi a mask like the one he wore, like the one Sakumo's mother had worn when she stood by Shodai's side as he clapped his hands, buried his arms elbow-deep in the earth of Kakashi's forefathers, and a vast forest had sprung up over the course of two sunrises.

And Kakashi had turned from the path of the farmer, had felt the calling and quickening of his blood when the thunder of his family's bloodline had stricken down his family's killer. He turned to the path of shinobi.

Minato found the young Kakashi-kun to be a strange and quiet boy. His eyes were intelligent and peaceful, but the way he moved—quietly, smoothly, silkily—raised the golden hairs on Minato's head and neck and arms and ran a shiver of excitement through him.

Kakashi-kun was natural—unnaturally so. He did what pleased him, and did it well. He did what didn't please him, and still did it well.

He asked Jiraiya-sensei what it would be like if Kakashi-kun trained as a shinobi, and Jiraiya-sensei had grimaced and laughed and said he'd knock Sakumo-sama's teeth out if the man followed through with his threat and dragged Kakashi to the Academy against his will.

"Why?"

Sensei had scratched at the white stubble forming on his chin and made a face. "Because Kakashi's a brat who doesn't know how easy or good he has it, and maybe that's a good thing."

Although he had nodded and hummed and pretended understanding at the time, Minato didn't understand, no, not 'til he came home after the mission that prompted his jōnin promotion and met Kakashi-kun in the streets of Konoha—far away from his beloved fields—and saw that the new, sinister gleam in his eyes almost matched that of the sunlight on his new forehead protector. And that he was alone (no pups gambolling at his feet, no little dog-voices growling at the townspeople's harsh stares, no solid white presence at his back, no Sakumo-sama).

He went to Jiraiya-sensei again, because as perverted and lazy and weird as the old man was, he'd made it his business to know everything important there was to know.

"No one'll take him," his teacher drawled, "because of Sakumo's disgrace. Not to mention he'd be a headache and a half.

From what I hear, he doesn't know how to talk or listen to people. No jōnin-sensei'll trust him to work in a team with shit people skills like that. Not to mention if he gets to chūnin-rank within the next couple of years… well, wouldn't that be a nice sack o'shit? Who the Hell'll take orders from some smartass twerp half their age?"

Minato bristled, because all of those points hit their mark a little too close for comfort. "That's a load of shite."

"Tell that to the conservatives," Jiraiya-sensei said wearily.

"I think I will."

It took Jiraiya-sensei several moments to understand what Minato was implying, and when he did, the wide-eyed stare of disbelief sparked just a little gratification in the younger shinobi. Minato rarely saw his teacher so impressed—or horrified. "You'll regret it."

"Probably," Minato agreed. "So get me an audience with Hokage-sama before I change my mind."

"You know what?" Jiraiya-sensei said, after a long, hard at Minato. "I don't think you will."

Kakashi's happiness was a firefly bottled within his heart.

He and Minato-sensei were different from all the other shinobi teams, who went about in threes and fours, but they were both all the more content with one another for company, because Kakashi didn't talk but liked to hear Minato-sensei's voice, and Minato-sensei understood this (though how he did Kakashi never knew) and talked enough for both of them. And because they understood one another, they liked one another, and Kakashi had never been so happy since the fields had lost their lustre.

But some days—only some days, mind—Kakashi had to quash the remnants of the child-that-once-was crying plaintively, and wondered whether or not Minato-sensei loved him as much as he was growing to love Minato-sensei.

He doubted it, because there were times like the first night they ran into bandits and Kakashi had moulded stamina and spirit into common chakra, then from it drew the essence of his bloodline, white and shining and lethal. When Kakashi had swept his arm in imperious direction and the brigands had been torn apart in a glittering maelstrom of blood and starlight, the look on Minato-sensei's face had been so terribly, deliberately unreadable that Kakashi had felt a tiny flicker of worry amidst his exhilaration, and remembered the Hollow Man.

It was almost enough for him to stop trusting in the white lightning that came to his call, sheathed his arm in pale light and let him cut through whatever he pleased—but it was difficult, so difficult to stop.

So he didn't. Didn't stop, didn't appreciate his teacher's concern, didn't even notice the colour leaching from his hair and eyes again. How could he? He had little reason to look in a mirror when his face was all covered up, anyway, and his father had been distracted lately. Too distracted to notice his son's hair was as silver as his, and his eyes only a little darker.

And it was twenty years later when he looked into a mirror and back in time before reflecting that maybe, just maybe, he'd lost his humanity at five.

So fades the Son of the Land.