Disclaimer: Naruto is not mine.

A/N: Sometimes I wonder why someone as ill-suited to teaching as Kakashi got a genin team. Maybe he was the best there was.

Teaching

Genma looked at the three brats. They were not impressive. He sighed and chewed his senbon. "Goal of the test is to get the bells. You need one to pass. Otherwise you go back to the Academy. Now, can we get this over with?"

The children gave each other uncertain glances. "Any other rules?" the girl asked hesitantly. Genma had forgotten her name. Old ANBU habit, he supposed. Don't remember names, because they're just going to die.

"You have two hours. Get one by then, or you fail." He shoved his hands in his pockets, and let his eyes drift closed. "Hurry up." In the darkness of his head, he cursed the Hokage for suggesting him as a jounin-sensei. "Oh, and weapons are fine, too," he added, as none of them moved.

"Excuse me, Sensei, do we start now?" That was the girl again.

"Didn't I say so?"

"But you're..."

Genma cracked an eye open. "It's not like you're attacking, is it? So I'm going to take a nap." He closed it again and yawned widely, the senbon balanced perfectly on his lower lip. Damn Shikaku and his parties... No, scratch that. Damn the Hokage for making him get up after Shikaku's party.

One of them finally attacked. Genma leaned to the side, and the single shuriken passed harmlessly by his cheek. Then the boy was rushing him, and the jounin opened his eyes long enough to determine that the other two were just standing in place, before pinning his assailant easily to the ground. He yawned again, and ducked a rain of shuriken. The girl had decided that his seated position was a weakness. Too bad her other teammate had decided to take the same opportunity to tackle Genma. The jounin slid out of the way of the projectiles, but the boy caught three in his shoulder.

The girl screamed. "Oh no! Are you okay? I'm so sorry!"

Genma watched in interest, still holding the third head into the dirt, even as it squirmed to try and see what was going on and spat curses at him. The girl started crying and the injured boy stared in fascinated shock at his own blood. So the teamwork had backfired...not very good teamwork then. He cast a trained glance at the wounds. Superficial. "Pull out the shuriken and stop acting like you got stabbed," he advised sharply, standing up—finally—to let the other boy go. "You still have to get the bells."

"But he's hurt!" the girl shrieked. "We need a doctor now!"

"There won't be a doctor if you get hurt on a mission," Genma snapped. "And I should fail you right now for wounding your own teammate."

At that, the bleeding kid straightened. "Don't do that," he said. "It was my fault. I can keep going." His shoulder was oozing blood sluggishly, staining his blue shirt brown.

Genma nodded once. "Then come on."

Later, curled up next to Anko on the bed, her purple hair fanned out across the pillow and tickling his nose, she remembered to ask him about the Academy brats. "Did you pass them?" she inquired, tilting her head just slightly, gazing at him through the darkness of the room.

He shook his head. "They might pass next time," he said quietly, "But not now."

"What did they do?" She laughed, her harsh, coarse laugh that Genma alternately loved and hated. "Insult your hair?"

He grinned at her, sliding a hand up to tangle in her own dark locks. "No one insults my hair, Anko-chan. It's just too beautiful."

"Well? You've been bitching about this since you were nominated, I deserve to hear what happened."

Genma sighed. Nothing distracted Anko when she wanted something. "The girl hit her teammate with shuriken."

"Accidents happen," Anko said philosophically. "At least she was using shuriken."

"True." He toyed with her hair, sliding the strands through his fingers. "Four things, I guess. The girl wanted to give up to get him to the hospital. The boy froze when he got hit. And the one I was sitting on did nothing to help them, and they did nothing to help him."

"That's three."

"The last one was two."

"What's five?"

"The hell are you talking about, Anko? I said four."

"None of them are any good. Any genin is going to freeze up the first time he takes a hit. It's only natural to want to get medical help for a teammate when it's nearby, and she had no way of knowing if it was serious. And you were sitting on him, Genma? What did you expect them to do?"

He didn't answer, just closed his eyes again. "I've got a mission tomorrow," he said, abruptly changing the subject. "I'll be gone two weeks or so."

Anko touched his face. She wasn't usually a gentle person; the world had beaten softness out of her years ago. But he was in pain, and it was the only thing she could think of to do. "Go and come home," she muttered, the words from an inescapable life bitter on her lips. Black ops never let you go.

But his lips twitched, suddenly, and he pushed his face close to hers and kissed her. "I will. But don't you dare add shinobi to the end of that, or I'll never kiss you again," he whispered in her ear.

Genma knew why he had failed his team, and knew it had nothing to do with a bleeding shoulder and a panicked pre-kunoichi. In the end, they had failed to get the bells. Genma knew Kakashi would have passed them just for the way they pulled together as a team. But while Kakashi lived with the torment of the price of friendship, Genma's nightmares were of betrayal. Failure, and a comrade he thought he could trust. Perhaps that was why he had found Anko. She understood betrayal, and would have no part of it.

But even Genma didn't know whether it had been them he didn't trust, or himself. And he supposed, in the end, it didn't matter. If they were serious about being ninja, they'd try again, and find a sensei better than him. And he'd be able to stay safely in his constructed world where he only needed to trust one person, protected by the walls that only let him trust one person.

He didn't think about their crushed expressions and tear-filled eyes. Some people were not meant to be teachers.