#so guys... is kotetsu an impostor? u tell me ;D | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

rikacain · 3 years

Text

if you remember who they are

a halloween fic for @pinkcatharsis!

title from regina spektor’s call them brothers

summary:

Because it just had to be their luck to suffer an infestation on the way back to Konoha. The Zetsu collective was a known threat to all spacefaring civilizations in the Interstellar Union, perhaps one of the deadliest. Protocols had been put in place for every spacecraft - but sometimes they managed to slip through.

(It leaves you changed, Kakashi had told him once, quiet and withdrawn. His mechanical eye whirred in place, an ominous scarlet in the dimness of the bar. All that doubt and distrust. An infestation is a hell of its own.)

All Tenzou wants is to survive with Iruka.

read it on: ao3

---

This is how it ends: Tenzou’s knife on its throat.

He straddles the body as it weakly convulses beneath him, keeping it pinned against the cold metal panels of the spaceship. The space around them was littered with appendages of grotesque shapes and sharpness, each battered and bruised with what seemed like sinew clinging to their violently removed ends. Some of them still twitch as though in response to a phantom nerve; the rest lay still.

Laying still is all that it can do now after all that Tenzou put it through. His plasma knife, the makeshift flamethrower, the now-defunct bulk of the bio-scan machine. To slice, to burn, to bludgeon - he had to use anything and everything that was in his arsenal just to stay on equal footing, and beyond to gain the upper hand. Now, there is little it can do but squirm like a butterfly pinned to the board. Little but for Tenzou to put it out of its misery.

His heart pounds in his ear. All he has to do is to end this. Only to press harder, hard enough for the knife to push through skin and flesh, for it to push through all the lies - and split open whatever laid beneath.

But he has to ask. He has to know.

“How long?"

Tenzou blinked. Across him, Iruka grinned bashfully, the flush of his skin dusted high across the arch of his cheeks.

“How long had you…” Iruka elaborated, his hand gesturing at the space between them as though he could pluck the words he needed from it. “Thought of this? Thought of us?”

How long had it been? Tenzou wasn’t quite sure. Iruka had been introduced to him as Naruto’s previous space cadet instructor, but it had been clear that he was more than just that to the boy. His first impression of him was that Iruka was bold, bold enough to ask him for regular updates on Naruto’s progress.

His previous mentor was dedicated enough to provide them, he told Tenzou earnestly, his eyes bright and expectant, honest. Tenzou knew that Kakashi was dedicated, yes, but he wasn’t quite sure if the man was dedicated to being a mentor. The stars knew how many times the man attempted to weasel out of the job. It was pure irony that his success which landed Tenzou as his replacement was wholly unintentional.

But Kakashi might be weak to a pretty face - and that was his second impression of Iruka, that he was quite nice to look at. Very nice to look at, Tenzou came to think over the following updates he provided Iruka.

"Tenzou?" He was jerked back into the present by Iruka's suddenly anxious demeanour, marked by his hand rising to scratch uncertainly at his scar. "Sorry, that was rather out of the blue, wasn't it?"

Ah. Tenzou shook his head. "No, I was just lost in thought." He reached over and took Iruka's warm and calloused hand in his own. His heart did a funny leap of joy, that Iruka let him do so - that he was letting him do so. "I'll tell you if you tell me?"

"Deal," Iruka said immediately, that smile returning easily to his face. He leant in, conspiring, and like a sunflower turning towards the sun Tenzou couldn't help but lean closer, too. "I've always had a taste for men in uniform."

"You just described all of our colleagues."

"Why else would I enlist?" Iruka asked cheekily, and added, his voice dipping low, "if it's any consolation, you pull it off the best."

"Do I now," Tenzou murmured as a warmth spread across his cheeks.

Iruka hummed. "It's a shame the spacesuit hides it.” He winked. “But when... I can't exactly say. Over all the dinners. I just realised it, one day."

"You mean you find progress reports attractive?" Tenzou teased, only to be subjected to Iruka pouting at him.

"I find competence attractive," he sniffed. "Now you. Your turn."

"Alright, alright." Tenzou closed his eyes, mulling it over. There had been a point, hadn't there - when he had a chance to breathe, when he had a moment to think of the future, that he would think of Iruka. Think of their dinners, with conversation and warmth filling Tenzou up more than any meal ever could. "It was gradual for me too. I only really knew when we hadn't met for several months."

"I guess absence really makes the heart fonder."

"I guess." Tenzou huffed, suddenly feeling all kinds of bashful on his part. "Do you want... after we get back to Konoha. If we survive this. Do you - go out for dinner with me?"

For all of his years of experience, Tenzou had yet to experience an infestation - until now. It had been all so sudden, with nothing happening for several cycles until Hayate's corpse was discovered in the medical bay. They found Asuma and Kurenai's corpses in the cockpit next, bloody and bruised; both of them had put up a fight.

From what Tenzou could recall, the collective tended to work in pairs - so it was safer to assume that there were two in their midst. Protocol dictated the scan of every crew member the moment they suspected a breach, but the ship’s bio-scan machine had been tampered with to the point of being little more than junk metal. Save for stabbing everyone clean through the chest, there was no other way of telling the collective apart from a human.

It meant that he had to keep his wits about him. Keep a sharp eye and ear out, and a knife handy in the slot of his utility belt. Anything to survive - anything to get both of them, him and Iruka, out. Safe.

Iruka's smile had turned sombre and melancholy. "If we survive this,” he echoed. “We'll have as many dinners as we want."

"And lunches," Tenzou added, in a rare impetuous spark of selfishness and hope.

"Lunches and breakfasts.” The laugh was faint, but it was there - it was all that mattered. "Just to complete the set."

Lunches and breakfasts and dinners. The promise felt like a future that Tenzou could reach for.

Tenzou would hold him to it.

“How long?” His voice is hoarse, foreign, unrecognizable. As unrecognizable as the fool he had been. The mass beneath him coughs wetly, and he repeats, “how long?”

It bares its teeth in an approximation of a smile, cruel and bloody and wholly alien. “Janus. Just before you all boarded the shuttle."

The truth does not make him feel better. It was never meant to.

The stars had a cold beauty to them.

They were in the cafeteria, all the remaining survivors. A crew of fifteen reduced to nine. It had been Iruka's suggestion that they all sleep here rather than in the privacy of their easily breached crew quarters; it had been Tenzou's to set up a night watch.

He took first shift, seating himself in the corner of the cafeteria, his back firmly against the wall. Yugao followed suit in another corner. He would have preferred her to sit in the corner further away from the vent, upon which tables and chairs were piled in the hopes that it would prevent ingress, if only for her safety - but her cold and drawn face dissuaded any attempts at discussion. In the aftermath of Hayate's murder, the only thing left on her mind was likely vengeance and a deep distrust of anyone around her.

That latter emotion was shared by most of their colleagues - so it took him by surprise when Iruka sat down next to him. The part of Tenzou's mind suffused with protocols and risks and best practices told him that the watchers should sit as far from each other as possible, to protect both themselves and their chances of raising the alarm -

But then Iruka smiled at him and said, you look like you could use some company - and. And.

Death was only ever a mistake away, and Tenzou was only a man.

So there they sat, watching over their colleagues as the stars watched over them. Iruka was a warm weight against his side, chasing away the chill of the metal wall against his back; when he tipped his head against Tenzou's shoulder, Tenzou could smell pine and musk - could smell Iruka.

The words slipped out, a warning borne out of worry more than caution. "Don't fall asleep."

"I won't," came the steady reply. Then, just a few moments later, quietly: "I don't think I can."

It sent a frisson of discomfort through Tenzou to hear those words, one that brought him to turn his head, just the slightest bit. A movement that brought his mouth incrementally closer to Iruka's hair, that he might press a kiss to it that might reassure the other man if he tilted his head just so. It took far more courage than Tenzou had to do an action that felt unbearably, monumentally intimate - every mission he had taken, every enemy he had faced down, there was no enemy more daunting than to close that gap.

So instead, he murmured, "I'll be here even if you can't."

Iruka did not say anything, only pressed himself closer into Tenzou's space. An answer louder than any reply he could have given.

(He woke up the next day to the numbness in his left shoulder and Iruka's bleary eyes - and the loud and accusatory voices of their colleagues over another dead body in their midst.)

He grips the blade, hard enough that his knuckles turn white, and begins to push the edge of his knife downwards. The stench of burnt flesh rises to meet him, both scent and sight enough to make any man gag. But Tenzou was used to swallowing his own bile down, to taking a life that begged for mercy in its very last moments.

The knife sunk past the weak spluttering of what seemed to be blood attempting to force itself through cauterized veins, as crimson as any human’s. Past the easy give of fat curling into itself into a putrid yellow, past the flesh that for all purposes looked human -

And into a spongey white mass.

There could be no doubt, after this. Not that Tenzou had had any, at this moment.

“He thought of you,” it says, smiling wide as the knife sinks through a flimsy imitation of a vocal cord. Tenzou leans forward when the blade will go no further, when it hits something that has the density of a human bone but in the wrong place. Too high, too hard, too unyielding. “In his last moments, he thought - “

"I thought he was Kotetsu."

Iruka's voice wavered audibly under the unceasing hum of the engines room, the pneumatic hisses of the container releasing more dilithium crystals into the converter for decomposition. Tenzou had dragged him here, away from the rest of the bunch. "I can't believe - I thought - "

"We all did," Tenzou said quietly.

Only minutes ago, they had forced Kotetsu into the airlock. No, Tenzou reminded himself, they had forced what only looked like Kotetsu into the airlock. It had been its testimony against Genma's. Genma, who had found Izumo's body - and, he insisted, Kotetsu standing over him. A fresh kill.

Kotetsu denied it, of course. Claimed that Genma was a liar, that he saw Genma kill Izumo in front of his very eyes. He'd been with Izumo all this time - he would be an idiot to kill the only person who would back him up that he wasn't the killer.

"Not if Izumo wouldn't back you up anymore," Genma spat back. His easy-going grin had all but disappeared, now that there were only five of them left. Now that Raidou was dead. "Not if he knew what you truly were."

"Yeah, that's why you killed him," Kotetsu snarled right back. "Isn't that right, Shiranui?"

Genma's bark of laughter sounded more like it was torn out of his throat. He turned to the rest of them and said, "if you don't put this bastard in an airlock, right now, we might as well die in this ship." His eyes bored into each and every one of them. "Forget about going back to Konoha. He'll pick us off one by one and save our corpses for desserts."

"I could say the same for you, you utter - "

"Genma's right." All eyes snapped to Ebisu, his skin clammy and pallid. He pushed his tinted glasses back up from where it slipped down his sweaty nose, and repeated, "he's right. I've... I've been on the security cameras. Watching." He swallowed, and admitted in a thin, reedy voice, "I saw him kill Izumo."

"Oh, you're both in this together," Kotetsu accused. He turned to Tenzou and Iruka, his eyes wide and beseeching. "Iruka, come on. You gotta believe me. Iruka?"

He took one step towards them. Tenzou stepped forward into his path, automatically shielding Iruka. Kotetsu's eyes narrowed.

"Oh, you fucker," he spat, low and ugly. "You absolute fucker - "

He turned and ran for the open door to the rest of the ship - but Yugao got to him first. She took him down, slamming an elbow into the back of his neck; Genma dragged him up barely a moment later, restraining his arms.

"Get the airlock, before he runs again," he snapped.

Yugao and Genma dragged and shoved him through the open door; Ebisu pulled on the lever and shut it behind him. The sound of banging on the reinforced metal doors resounded throughout the ship, echoing down its corridors; it was soon followed by the sound of insults, of threats, and finally, of pleading.

And then the outer gates opened, and they couldn't hear anything anymore.

"Could we have been wrong," Iruka was saying, babbling. "I know Ebisu and Genma said, but I can't help but think if we've been wrong, and we killed someone innocent - we killed Kotestu - "

"He wasn't Kotetsu," Tenzou said firmly, putting his hands on Iruka's shoulders. "Listen to me. He wasn't Kotetsu."

"I know," Iruka moaned. "I know, I - " He shuddered, and curled into himself. "There could be one more of them. It could be any of us. I, I - "

"You have to calm down." All caution thrown to the winds, he pulled Iruka into an embrace; Iruka clung to him like a man to a plank of wood in a storm-tossed sea. The weight of him in Tenzou's arms was the only thing that anchored Tenzou to reality, and Tenzou could only hold him tighter. "Breathe. Kotetsu wouldn't kill Izumo. You know that."

"He wouldn't," Iruka repeated. "He wouldn't, Izumo, they - "

"So it wasn't Kotetsu." Tenzou murmured. His hand rose up to stroke at Iruka's hair, tousled and messy. Appearance wasn't much of a concern, nowadays. "It wasn't Kotetsu."

"It wasn't Kotetsu," Iruka repeated after him in a daze. "I... I just want to go home."

"I know."

"I want - I just want this to be over, I just want to survive this. I'm... just terrified. So terrified."

"I know."

Iruka laughed, a wet sound. "Stars, you must think me so weak."

"Never," Tenzou answered him immediately. He pulled back and looked at Iruka in the eyes, those bright and brimming eyes. If I could guarantee your survival, he thought, I would do anything. Everything. "Iruka, never."

That was when Iruka kissed him - desperately, like a man drowning.

"Stay with me," he gasped against Tenzou's mouth. "Please, stay with me."

Tenzou would drown in him if he could. He was drowning, now, in the constant beat of the drum within his head, that one singular thought. I'll protect you.

"I will." I'll protect you. "I promise."

The knife makes a loud clang as it hits the metal floor.

Slowly, carefully, Tenzou lets go of the knife. He tenses for another attack, for white flesh to knit back together across the plasma blade, for an appendage to regain sentience and pierce him through. For his death.

But the body beneath him lay still, as still as Tenzou himself.

"It's dead."

Tenzou nods jerkily, once. Yugao lets out a long breath, far longer than a sigh would be.

"Thought you'd take his words over mine," she says. "You guys got awfully close over the past few cycles."

He hears the unspoken question. He had second-guessed himself, even as he remained firm on his convictions - up until it hurled itself at them and began its final assault.

"That was why." He stares down at the cadaver, before dragging himself up onto his feet and away from it. Past the doorway and into the hallway proper. "It was... the timing was too suspicious." Too good to be true. "It felt like an opportunity I would have taken."

It's a truth easier to tell than the whole of it: that it was only the Zetsu's error to overplay his card. That Tenzou had only realised at the very last moment - that it was a realisation that came far too late.

Yugao lets out a scoff, short and mirthless. "Glad you're a still paranoid bastard, taichou."

Maybe it would have been easier if he wasn't. They say that ignorance is bliss - and Tenzou only understood now what it meant. He had been happy, so happy - death would have been sweeter than the bitter truth.

(But it never mentioned Naruto, not even once.)

Tenzou turns away from the door and leaves the corpse that once wore Umino Iruka’s face behind.

#yamairu #teniru #tenzou #yamato #umino iruka #fic #it's a space au #or more accurately #an among us au #mmmhmmm #so guys... is kotetsu an impostor? u tell me ;D

4 notes · View notes