Warnings: graphic imagery, blood, violence.

Team 7 post-series ANBU fic; Sasuke is back in the village, it is at least 10 years after the series.

Retrieval
by vernajast

ANBU Fox, Dragon, Dove, and Hound

(we were a team)

When Naruto is nervous, he actually gets louder. When he is scared-rare these days-regular conversation resembles a shouting match. But it is silent Naruto, when he is preparing to break down, preparing for the worst, that his teammates fear the most.

Today, they keep a vigil, and it is silent Fox, silent Dove, silent Dragon who travel from the Fire country deep into the Lightning, to the last known whereabouts of their former captain. Dragon fingers the mission scroll through the fabric of his pocket, the words thrumming inside his head: Hatake Kakashi, ID 009720, secure and transport to Konoha. "Secure" and "transport" do not describe actions taken toward a teammate, mentor, friend, but an object on a retrieval mission. Behind the mask, Sasuke frowns and wishes he hadn't seen that this was the real classification of their search and rescue.

Moving together through the shadowed trees, this is the team that should never have been, has broken apart more times than they can remember, try to forget. Years have come and gone since they were twelve, sixteen, eighteen...Still a team before all else, and the past is nothing between them any longer.

Fox shifts, anxious, and shapes and pushes a tiny pellet of ambient chakra toward the back of Dragon's head. It is absorbed without reaction except a hand going up and the three halting together on a wide branch, mid-level canopy.

"What?"

"The fox. You know it hates Mutt, but it says we're going the wrong way." Dog, Hound, Mutt...Kakashi answered to them all, and each had its own endearing quality. Naruto had always favored Mutt; he would.

"Why should we trust it?"

"We shouldn't." The fox mask tilts away from a thin lined mouth, the rest of the face still covered, and Naruto takes a drink from his canteen. "Except, it wants to find him." The carefully controlled voice still sounds miserable and small no longer hidden behind the mask.

Of course, it wants to find Kakashi, if it believes him dead.

Sakura and Sasuke (no, Dove and Dragon) each place a hand on Naruto. And then, by silent agreement, the former Team 7 starts off again, Fox now in the lead.

It doesn't take them long to come upon a small cave, and inside, remains that can't belong to anyone except a certain broken man with a silver mane and an empty socket where the remnants of his biggest failure once dwelt. Uchiha Obito's eye is nowhere to be found; it has disappeared along with Kakashi's hitai-ate, tags, and mask. His green jounin vest is stained black. One of his gloves is missing.

Kakashi's previously unglimpsed face is bare, and all three can honestly say they wish they couldn't see it. He should be standing there taunting them from behind the confounding mask, face still a mystery, safe, alive.

The missing glove bothers Dragon more than the eye. The Sharingan are a dying trait. The glove...the mask...are... "Trophies."

Dove nods, still kneeling beside the body, determining time of death, cause. "You think...a bounty hunter?"

"Likely."

Fox is silent in the corner, standing perfectly still, watching his partners with arms crossed. They've never seen him like this, but decide through mutual inaction to wait until they've returned to the village to question it. It's understandable, after all; Kakashi was like a family member to each of them. Sasuke has lost count of the family funerals he has attended, but it will be Naruto's first. Sakura is reminded why she's glad her family is made up of civilians.

The body is circled in seals and committed to the realm of kuchiyose, into a summoning scroll, and just as Dragon is slipping it into his pocket alongside the mission scroll, Fox holds out his hand. "I'll carry it."

The scroll passes to Fox without hesitation.

"Are we done here?" Dove's voice is anything but gentle. It's too hard, and the edge is telling. The boys nod.

Then, they're running again and arrive back in the village an hour before dawn. Three silent sentinels wait outside the solid oak doors of Tsunade's office and the scroll is heavy in Naruto's pocket, fingers holding it tight, holding Kakashi. He isn't ashamed of his tears, though he's thankful for the mask that hides them. Especially when Tsunade is suddenly standing before the former Team 7, lip drawn in between her teeth, eyes dry, but sparkling with the promise of her own tears.

Inside the office, she finally speaks-"Report."-and it is the word they have been dreading, but they manage to relate the details with an accuracy she has come to expect from her best squad. The scroll is handed off again, this time with obvious hesitation, and Dove and Dragon tug Fox's arms and pull him gently from the office.

The Hokage watches them go, and the weight of her title is almost too much on this day, when the children of children she remembers have brought her the body of another child she helped to raise. She says a silent prayer and asks Sakumo, Minato, and Jiraiya to watch over Kakashi as they must always have done. The scrape of a bottle on her desk precedes the tinkling clink of glass against glass, and Tsunade locks the scroll away, preparing to mourn properly.

Two weeks later, the Hokage of Leaf receives a message from the Raikage of Cloud. A patrol of Cloud nin had come upon a man in the woods. He was bleeding to death, face bashed in beyond recognition, barely able to form words through swollen lips and tongue as he died. But he did manage talk of a demon with swirling eyes and a fist that could punch through trees and...Tsunade's mouth curls into a sad smile and she lets the report drop to her desk. Yes, they are very much like a demon, I suppose.

She doesn't ask, but if she did, Tsunade might find it interesting to learn that, one week after their mission, Naruto had remembered another item the bounty hunter had taken: a very special sealed kunai gifted to Kakashi by his sensei many years ago on the occasion of his promotion to jounin. A kunai now hanging at Naruto's belt.

[end.]

[next chapter: epilogue of sorts]

* In case the reference to Minato's kunai isn't completely understood, it's a kunai with a special seal on it that allows someone using Minato's Hiraishin technique to summon himself to the location of that kunai. Thus, also, in this case, to the person who stole it. I hope this wasn't confusing. :D vj