a/n: A conjoined story with The mute Kunoichi and will hop around as far as time.
"Talking"
"Thoughts" and Sound effects
"Telepathic speech"
~X~X~X~X~ is a change in scene
~X~ a change in time and sometimes scene too
~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~
Kakashi was doing something he hadn't in a while.
Panic.
It is silent and carefully removed from his face, but definitely there in his frontal lobe. During his fight with Zabuza Momochi, one of his students had disappeared. The mist boy had spoken of her departure being proceeded with odd attacks at the air before dashing off and it worried him...Team 7 had to focus on the current situation, but once it was over, their first concern was where their soon to be ex-teammate had gone. But she was no where to be found. The grandson of their client told them he saw her head off into the water , not the same direction they had arrived from, but another direction that was clear of fog.
Kakashi was worried, the way Haku had descibed her behavior, it sounded like genjutsu. Though Bokuso-chi members usually can't fall for genjutsu since it's just a manipulation of chakra in the brain and the brain was their specialty, It's still possible that a child like Yuyake could have fallen for it since she lacked experience. That would mean someone was trying to lure her away on purpose.
Something twisted in his gut. She had been targeted.
He should have watched for her better.
He summoned a trained pug named Paku to his call, and he picks up a scent. However he is further sunken into his worry when it simply disappears amongst the waves of the water. How was that possible?
Empty, the two, man and dog, return to the shore where the boys had been waiting. One in eagerness, the other in unreadable quiet. "They're back!" the blond informed but his excitement dwindles as he noticed it was only two of them. Where was Yuyake? "Hey, what's going on? Where is she?" he voiced. "Her trail stops in the middle of the water" Kakashi relayed and Naruto is frowning. No matter, he was always upset.
The join glanced to the canine on the floor, "And you're sure you can't smell her anywhere else?" he inquired. The pooch scratched his ear with his hind leg and spoke the truth, "It's no use, that was her most recent trail," and the dog doesn't say it but... maybe she drowned?
The thought crosses the man's mind as well, but he doesn't dare speak it to the boys. "What? What use are you!? If you can't find her!" "That's enough" Kakashi stopped the jinguriki. He hadn't the time for his misplaced anger. The Uchiha besides him was in a wallow. "Paku did what he could. It makes no sense to waste time on blaming someone who didn't do anything." the teacher made eye contact with the boy in blue. "We all lost her" he distributed the blame, but it doesn't help. Sasuke frowned deeper and turned away.
It was not they, it was he. He had been right there. Naruto wasn't there and Kakashi had been in the heat of battle. Sasuke's fists clamp up. It was him who was right beside her and let her run off. He should have paid attention. He should have done something!
"Are you done blaming yourself? Cause we're heading back to bridge builder's for a night and we leave tomorrow"
The boys turn to regard the jonin. Leave? As in the village? But what about their team mate!? "What?! What happened to all that stuff you said about abandoning you team!" Naruto roars at the betrayal, no way was he giving up that easy.
"There's no more we can do, we've been over the entire island and there's no sign of her attacker of Yuyake herself, now let's go," he ordered the the twitch the boy's have in their furrowed brows warms the ex-anbu's heart. As well as cracks it a little.
The pup poofs when his uselessness is revealed.
~X~
SPLASH!
Kakashi emerged from the dark water.
Where was she!?
While his children attempt to dream, the charge returned to the end of Yuyake's scent. He spent hours diving and the shroud of darkness leads him to pat around for the body of a young girl.
But she wasn't there.
It's a bittersweet feeling.
All it really tells him is that her body isn't here. She could be dead and in the hands of the enemy, or alive and being tortured, There's so much information he's left with out and it's frustrating!
He wallows in his failure for a moment as the sky and waters merge around him in a void of black poked by the dim circle of moon and stars.
He'd better head back...
~X~
It was today! The team to which the daughter of Yoru Bokuso-chi belonged was returning from their mission. It was the first time her darling had been outside the village and she was so excited to hear about her experience.
"Having her hold back will kill her"
Oh gosh she hated that voice in the back of her head. It had been there ever since she took over the clan at such a young age. In particular, it sponded the day after the Uchiha massacre. She remembered staying up all through the night when she 'd received the news. She had originally pursued the same goal of strengthen her people and eventually getting the recognition they deserved and out shine the smug pretty boys of the village. Then they died, and it was like a bright light being shined in her face, first it was painful, then everything became clear.
Their strength, their brilliance, it fed into the babes of fear that were birthed on the night of the nine tailed fox's rampage. What if the Bokuso-chi fell into a similar position? Her children, her cousins, their children! It was dangerous. So in a fit of fear she announced that they'd continue to grow strong, but in silence, it was what they were best at anyway, being a clan of mutes, right? Some thought the notion stupid, that such actions would lead to the death of the clan, others thought it the best motion. The generation below was forced into submission, some rebel but eventually broke, and very few broke from it completely, those few? The legendary Honoo Bokuso-chi and Akane Bokuso-chi, the woman's younger cousin and eldest daughter, respectively.
It had been easy to keep up the moral code, until she had her child, Yuyake, running about, holding her skill back, and it put her at grave risk for death.
It frustrated her how hypocritical she was.
Maybe... maybe she should lift the order?
Oh how many times she'd tossed that idea in her head, turning it over to examine all aspects until her resolve would knocked it out her grasp for another week.
She'd think about it later, now she needed to prep for the return of her daughter.
~X~
Hours.
They had passed like old friends as the mother laid in wait, and the moon came home, but never her daughter.
Where was she? She past her thumbs over her nails in a nervous tick. It was almost midnight. Her food was cold and everyone had gone to bed. She stood on her porch, waiting; The quiet of the compound was usually comforting, but now it was an antithesis. The way it curled around the base of her mind and squeezed out the darkest thoughts like a puss, they oozed down and played scenarios behind her lids with every blink. The silence squeezed too much and blood soon poured out, splattering all over the images of her child lying lifeless.
DAHK! She punched the patio railing. Then her fist gripped the wood, pulling her feet to join its seige. The index and pointer finger on her free hand straightened and she was gone when a breeze stroked the vegetation
~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~
A simmering blue light made the presence of a certain clan leader known in the household of Kakashi Hatake.
Said jonin had been staring blankly into the darkness of his quarters, wondering if it would finally swallow him as punishment for all the wrong he's done. the silver haired male turned to the clan leader and the way her ombre blue to purple eyes caught the glow of her visible chakra was hauntingly familiar. The way her wavey hair rippled in the air around her crouching form was too, just in a hostile way he was used to seeing others receive. He held similar feelings about the whispers that seemed to come from her chakra.
Her flow-y garments and hair follicles dropped as she rose above them. She looked down at him from his windowsill like a goddess of destruction that had been toyed with to the points of her limits. He knew this was coming. "Where is my child, Hatake?" Gosh when was the last time he'd heard that voice? 6? 7 years? 13?
"Speak, Copy Ninja!" she shot to him, a gust that served her slammed objects into the far wall. Her hand bunched up the neck of his shirt while his dull eyes seemed to barely registrar everything. "I. Don't know," his lips parted with an ugly truth that irritated the heart of a mother. "What do you mean you don't know?" Was his words to indicate that she was in the village but avoiding home, or...
"I lost her on the mission." he took full responsibility. He should have watched after her better. Sure he was irate she'd broken his code, Obito's code, on her first mission, to such a high degree, but that was her mother's fault, he should have at least attempted to teach her out of it, not shut her out and disown her as a student at first sign of trouble.
It was stupid, disgusting what he'd done. It was exactly what he had been fighting with himself to no longer do.
The way Yoru's face fell and how her arms weakened to the strengthen of a toothpick was like torture. It was like when he'd realized Yuyake was really gone. She was just freaking gone.
It was defeating, it made one self-destructive. It made him a failure.
The woman stumbled into the wall, her mouth open in a silent sob that fell upon the floor. Her hand slowed her decent to into a pitiful curl of meat. Her baby, the only piece of immediate family she had left, gone. Snatched from her. Kakashi placed his shadow over her figure, his head weighed down by his guilt.
The powerful leader of the Bokuso-chi clan reduced to a broken pile of woman by merely his words. "I was fighting Zabuza of the mist. When the battle was over, she was just gone. and tracking her was impossible" He relayed, trying to fill in as many holes as possible in the woman leaking so many upon his floor.
Jeeze, the first time he saw her after he broke off the affair so many years ago and this is what it's about: how he lost the only child she had that was speaking to her.
It was hours before her tears dried on her brown cheeks, The whole time Kakashi had just stood there watching, raking his brain for what to say. Yoru was always one who liked to be left in silence though, so perhaps his cat-caught-tongue was for the best.
"I'm sorry." he spoke first at day break. The broken mother did not respond. She did not twitch. She did not even look at him. She simply flung herself onto her unstable legs and let them lead her out the door. When she had parted from the premises, Kakashi took a deep breath and moved to his desk to go over forms for a replacement for the girl. He might as well torture himself a bit more, he deserved it.