The report had been open on the desk for an hour and it had not improved with attention.
Sunagakure was dying. Being taken apart piece by piece slowly. Stone chipping away at the northern border. Cloud's people drifting down through the Land of Rivers to rip away at the eastern edge, pulling back, testing again. A village that had spent its strongest blood on an invasion it lost, and its jinchuriki along with it, and sat out in the desert with too many borders and not enough hands and something hungry on every horizon.
They were allies. That was the whole of it, and it was enough.
And he had nothing to send them.
The Hokage's office was dark except for the desk lamp. The hat sat on its stand across the room, white and red, watching like a patient old man. The clock on the wall said something unreasonable and neither of them cared.
"There has to be someone else." Guy said it to the report, not to the man leaning against the wall behind him, but the man behind him answered anyway.
"There isn't." Kakashi had the little orange book closed on his knee. "Every other jonin is on a mission or doing something equally as important. The ones you could spare aren't strong enough to matter, and the ones who are strong enough can't be spared." He let that sit for a moment. "You know who we have to send."
"He just got home." Guy's hands were flat on the desk, pressing down on the report like he could hold the answer under it. "He has been home for less than a week. He has not even finished telling me about his mission, Kakashi, we were at the barbecue and he was laughing, and you are asking me to put him on a road back into a desert full of people who want him dead."
"I'm asking you to be realistic." Kakashi's voice stayed mild. "You are the Hokage. That means you send people where they are needed, not where it is comfortable. Lee would be more than happy to do this. You know that. He would volunteer before you finished the sentence."
"That is exactly the problem! He will say yes to anything!"
"And you want to protect him from himself. I understand. But the alternative is sending an army of shinobi you can't afford to lose, and hoping numbers replace what he does alone." Kakashi uncrossed his arms. "Could your conscience handle that, Guy? Sending hundreds of men to bleed for what one could do, because you didn't want to burden the one?"
Guy did not answer.
"I need an answer, Guy." Kakashi said.
The clock ticked three times in the dark.
"...I'll send Lee." Guy sighed.
And Kakashi nodded, and said nothing more.
"Thanks Kakashi… I don't know how I could handle the weight of this hat without you."
"You would've been just fine without me." Kakashi flipped open his book again. "I don't even do much."
Guy had a small smirk. There his eternal rival was acting cool again. It was nice to see some things didn't change even with this hat and robe…
…
The four of them came in and stood in a rough line in front of the desk.
Lee at the front, spine like a post, eyes already wide and bright. Behind him, Shikamaru, hands in his pockets, not looking forward to whatever was about to be assigned to him. And to either side of them, the two from the front gate, Izumo and Kotetsu, standing leisurely.
"Our allies from the Sand are in trouble." Guy announced.
Lee's posture, somehow, got straighter.
"Stone is on their northern border. Cloud is in the Land of Rivers for the eastern one. They lost too much in the invasion to cover both, and anyone with a map can see it." He let them get the general picture. "You four are going to go make sure they do not get wiped off that map. That is the mission. The particulars of who is pushing where, our allies will help you out with that."
Kotetsu and Izumo traded the briefest of looks, not expecting such an important mission. Shikamaru's shoulders drooped. Lee had not moved at all, except that the shine in his eyes had shifted somewhat. The last time he'd seen a Sand ninja he was taking their head with his leg.
"I would send jonin." Guy's voice filled the office without rising. "I do not have jonin to send. Every one I have is holding a piece of our own house up." He looked at Lee, and he made himself look at him straight, because the next part was owed straight. "What I have is you. And I am sending you, specifically, because there is no one else in this village who can do what Sunagakure is going to need done. They are going to need someone who can do what you do." He stopped. "I have jonin who have fought through two wars. Not one of them has ever killed a tailed beast. You have."
Here was the part that had kept Guy at his desk all night. Because the boy in front of him was not just the strongest thing he could send. He was the one thing Sunagakure would least want to see come through their gate, the one they buried their dead and blamed. And Guy could not hand this mission to anyone else, because nobody else could carry it, and he could not go himself, because the hat had nailed him to this office and the village needed its Hokage behind the desk, and that was the cruelest part of all: he was strong enough to do what he was asking of a fourteen-year-old, and he was not allowed to.
"Lee," he said. "You understand what you are walking into. To a great many of them, you are the reason they are burying their loved ones. They are not going to thank you. Some of them are going to hate the sight of you more than they hate their current enemies." He held his eyes. "I am sending the man they blame into the village that blames him, because I have no one better and they have no time. I want you to hear me say it, so you cannot tell me later that nobody did."
He waited for the flinch. There was no flinch.
"I hear you, Guy-sensei. They have their reasons that I understand." He did not look away while he said it, and there was nothing in his face asking to be forgiven for anything. "I would feel the same, in their place. I am sure of it." Lee responded.
And then he smiled a bright white smile.
"But that has nothing to do with the mission!" He was up on the balls of his feet now, the whole of him leaning toward the door like a sprinter at the line. "Our allies are in danger, and I am able to help them. That is the only part that is mine to carry, Guy-sensei, and I will carry it all the way to the desert and back!" The grin split his face. "And I swear to you, here, in front of everyone, that if I cannot help Sunagakure stand back up on its own two feet, I will run one thousand laps around this entire village. On my hands."
Behind him, Kotetsu burst out in laughter for a second before he covered his mouth and stifled it. "Sorry. Sorry. That was unprofessional of me."
Guy looked at the boy for a moment.
He was grateful for this young man. More than the boy would ever know, and more than the Hokage was allowed to say.
"It is your squad. You are the captain. I am not assigning you a second. That one is yours to pick."
"Shikamaru," Lee said. Instantly. No thought visible at all, because the thought had been finished long before he asked.
"What a drag…" said Shikamaru, to the ceiling.
"Kamizuki. Hagane." Guy nodded at the two veterans. "You have held the gate together for years. I want that experience and steadiness out there. Lee leads, Nara is his second, and you two are the spine that keeps the thing standing when it gets hard." He picked the scroll up off the desk and held it out. "You leave at first light. Go pack."
Lee took the scroll like it was a medal.
"You will not regret this, Guy-sensei!"
"I believe in you, Lee. I believe in all of you. Go do me and our village proud." Guy flashed them a smile and a thumbs up.
They went. He watched the door close behind the four of them.
Kakashi looked at him.
Guy was still looking at the door.
Shikamaru caught up with him on the way out.
"That was a mistake."
Lee did not slow. "Which part?"
"The second part." Shikamaru kept his hands in his pockets and his voice flat, the way he said important things so they would not sound important. "Naming me. You should have named Izumo or Kotetsu." A breath. "I don't want it. I am not a leader, Lee. Especially after that Sasuke mission. I don't think I'm ready."
They reached the bottom of the stairs. Lee stopped, and turned, and looked at him dead in his eyes.
"You led the team that went after Sasuke-kun," Lee said.
Shikamaru scratched his head. "That one did not end so well, in case it slipped your mind."
"You made the calls that brought them back, and the calls that cost have not let you sleep right since. I know that, because I watched you weep over it and swear you would do better," Lee said, as though he had not heard the second part, or had heard it and set it aside as not relevant. "That is the man I want one step from the top, Shikamaru." The grin came back, gentler this time. "The one who feels every single one he could lose, before it happens, so hard that he plans around it in his sleep. You think that is a weakness. I think it is the most important thing a leader can worry about."
For a moment Shikamaru said nothing.
"That is a really annoying thing to say." he said, finally.
"I'm happy to hear it."
"...What a drag." But it came out softer than the first one had, and he fell into step beside Lee on the way out into the afternoon.
…
He found her, or she found him, at the edge of the third training ground where they always seemed to end up, in the long gold light. She was not pretending to train this time. She was just there, sitting on the same stump with her hands wrapped, and she stood when she saw him come up the path with his pack on his shoulder.
"You're going out on a new mission?"
"At first light!" Lee set the pack down. "Guy-sensei gave the mission to my cell himself. We are going to help our allies hold their borders and get back on their feet." And then, because he could not help himself, "and if we fail, I have already committed to one thousand laps around the village, on my hands, so you can see that I am highly motivated."
She laughed, not expecting anything different from Lee. He probably made a rule like that every mission.
"Aren't we only allied with the Hidden Sand Village?" She thought for a moment. "I'm pretty sure they hate your guts…"
"I know."
"You are going somewhere full of people who want you dead."
"I am going somewhere full of people who need help," Lee said, "and some of them want me dead. Both are true. Only one of them is the mission." He said it lightly, and meant it lightly, and she could see that he did, and that was somehow the part that frightened her most. He was not afraid of the thing she was afraid of for him.
She crossed the space between them and put her arms around him.
Lee froze as his face flushed.
Her face turned into his shoulder, her arms tight, the words coming out muffled into the cloth. "Come back safe," she said. "I mean it. Come back safe, and I will be here. I will be waiting."
Lee's heart thumped rapidly and deeply. He set his hands on her shoulders carefully and he held her back just far enough to see her face.
"Sakura-chan," he said. "I have made a great many promises in my life." The grin was there, but his voice underneath it was quieter than the grin, softer than she had heard it. "And I have kept every single one. Ask anyone. It is becoming a character trait; people are starting to expect things of me." He chuckled.
"So I am only going to make you the one." He held her eyes. "I am going to come back. The desert is very large, and very dangerous, and full of people who do not like me, and not one grain of it is going to keep me from a girl who said she would wait." The grin softened into something he had no idea was on his face. "It is the easiest mission anyone has ever handed me, Sakura-chan. The reward at the end of it is the best one there has ever been. I would have to be a fool to lose."
She hit him in the chest softly.
"You are so stupid." she said, into his shoulder, holding on.
"I am the stupidest and most motivated shinobi in the entire Leaf Village," Lee agreed, warmly, and held her there in the gold light until the gold went out of it, and neither of them was in any hurry at all.