She was always the first civilian to know when an ANBU fell. There would be a sudden displacement of air, and two figures would be standing in her shop, black cloaks unnaturally still and eyes unreadable. One of them would hold out the broken pieces of a mask and request another be made. The money is good, so she doesn't complain that they disregard regular store hours, appearing in her living quarters above the store if it's already closed for the day.
Her family have been potters for as long as anyone can remember. The best potters in Konoha, everyone says. So she was not surprised when her father took her aside at the end of her apprenticeship and told her about some of the more unusual customers she would be inheriting and the importance of keeping silent about their visits.
And then he took her to the back room, the one she had never been allowed to enter, even after she'd taken over most of the shop's duties. He showed her the shelves, the broken shards, and the red paint that had to be kept cold and smelled faintly of copper. Finally, he gave her a scroll half-filled with the names of animals. Don't repeat any, he'd said. They get funny about that.
The first time, she wasn't sure what to do with the broken mask. Would they be back for it? She finally set it on one of the top shelves in her workroom, out of the line-of-sight of regular customers. The ANBU never asked for it, or for any of the others, and the shards slowly grew to fill three shelves. Ever the artist, she arranged them so the red from one piece connected with that of another, forming an unbroken thread of color that wound halfway around the room.
Their appearances aren't anything approaching regular. Months could go by without the potter being disturbed, and then she'd receive three visits in a week. The worst visit was half a year ago, when both ANBU showed up with their cloaks full of shards. She'd spent the evening sorting them into eleven small piles, eleven dead. Most of them had been her father's work, but one was her own, made just two weeks before. The potter had stared at the wall for a long time after she recognized it. She wished, as never before, that her father had stayed in Konoha after he retired. How did you bear it? she wanted ask. She knew how very young most of the ninja were, and how Konoha never let youth stand in the way of promotion.
The ANBU had only appeared once since then, and the potter hoped it would be another long stretch of no visits. It was early spring, and the warming weather meant she'd soon be getting a large order for vases and pots from the Yamanaka clan. The Godaime's assistant had been by recently to order a new set of sake cups, muttering something about ungracious losers, and she wanted time to experiment with her glazes. The next few months would be busy.
She had her months and more. The respite lasted almost seven months, so long that the potter started to wonder if they'd found someone else to provide their masks. It was late one unusually hot fall afternoon when they finally made a reappearance. The potter had just come in from checking the kiln fires and wanted nothing more than a cold shower to wash off the sweat and grime. She pulled down the shop sign, slid the front door shut, and nearly jumped out of her skin when she turned around and into one of the two silent figures that had just appeared.
She stammered an apology to him (there were few women in the village so tall), embarrassed to have reacted like a common civilian. The man just stared at her, the long afternoon shadows making it even harder than usual to read his eyes. The other figure cleared his throat, and the potter shifted her attention to his outstretched hands. Two this time, judging by the number of shards. She took them carefully from his hands, bowing slightly as she did so. He bowed back and requested two new masks before disappearing again.
It took a moment for the potter to realize that the first man had not followed his companion. He had stopped staring at her and was looking around the shop. When he moved to examine a long platter she making for the Hyuuga clan head, she shrugged to herself and went into the back room. ANBU had to eat off plates like everyone else. If he was thinking about becoming a paying customer, she wasn't going to interfere. The potter sorted the shards and began placing them on the shelves. She tried to keep the pieces of a mask together as much as possible. Jumbling them together somehow felt obscene.
A slight scuffing noise behind her made her turn. The man stood in the doorway, staring at her again. His gaze moved to the shelves and he stepped into the room. The potter held her breath. None of the ANBU had ever crossed the threshold into the back room before. He was silent, looking at the broken masks. The silence stretched, and she began to wonder if she hadn't broken one of the big unspoken rules. She had barely opened her mouth to apologize when the ANBU spoke.
"Your father used to bury the pieces." It's a woman's voice after all. "I like this better." The woman raised a hand to one piece, stopping just short of touching it. She followed the red line as it ran over the broken shards, not quite brushing their surface. Her hand reached the end of the shelf and stopped at the small bowl with the remains of an incense stick. Her head turned. "You pray for them?"
The potter wished she could see the woman's face; her voice was unreadable and the mask intimidating. "Yes," she said. "it started to feel like a shrine." The woman said nothing. "It felt like the right thing to do," the potter added, suddenly feeling very young.
"It was," the woman said softly. "Thank you."
The woman couldn't be that much older than she was, the potter realized. The goat mask that faced her was one of the last made by her father before he retired. "You're welcome to visit whenever you like," she heard herself saying. "I'm sure they'd prefer a friend over a stranger."
The woman did visit after that. She always came after the shop was closed, and she always wore her mask. Sometimes she would linger after paying her respects, watching the potter clean and speaking of nothing important. The potter didn't see the woman every time she visited. Often a new stick of incense burning when she opened shop was the only sign she'd had a visitor. The potter tried not to dwell on it, but she kept thinking of the woman's voice, curiously husky, like she'd sustained a throat wound that never healed properly, and then the potter would wonder again what the woman looked like.
She began playing with the lines of her pottery more. A new vase echoed the line of the woman's neck, briefly glimpsed when she bent her head to pray. The hollow of a bowl was her hands cupped around the shards of a mask. The blackened edges of a deep green glaze was the rasp of a voice haunting dreams that left her hot and yearning. The potter displayed the pieces in her shop, but couldn't bear to sell them, telling those who inquired that they were already spoken for.
Fall cooled into winter and the woman's visits stopped with the first snowfall. Shortly after that the official ANBU visits started occurring again with frightening regularity. The potter began to dread the sudden shift in the air. After each visit she rushed to piece the shards together, her whole body tense, until the shape of some animal not a goat became evident. And then she hated herself for feeling relieved. She always arranged what was left of those masks with particular care, as if to apologize that she was grateful they had not belonged to another.
The woman returned with the first flowers of spring. She came with a companion and a broken mask and a curious tension that made the potter want to ask questions she had no right to. The woman did not stay and the potter did not know if the tears that came were from relief or disappointment. She put the pieces aside, and did not return to them until she closed shop.
The sun was going down when she recognized the mask. It was a squirrel – the first she'd ever made. Suddenly she was furious, though at what she couldn't say. At Konoha, for asking everything and accepting it when it was given. At the woman, for making her fall in love without even knowing her name. At herself maybe, for making the masks that made their lives secret and their deaths anonymous. The coppery scent of the paint seemed to fill the room, and she found herself scrambling for the window latch.
Her ears popped, and she spun around angrily, ANBU or no, to tell them the shop was closed and they could very well come back tomorrow when the sun was shining and she didn't feel like she was choking on death.
The goat mask stared at her from across the room and the words piled up behind her tongue. She blinked, and the woman was kneeling in front of her.
"Let go," the woman said. The potter didn't know what she meant, until the woman repeated it and pulled at her fingers. Pain crept into her awareness as her fingers began to uncurl, and she looked down to see that she was holding one of the shards in a deathgrip. The sharper end had embedded itself in the fleshy part of her palm and the woman had to pull a bit to get it out. Her thumb didn't seem to be working properly. The woman frowned at it before flashing some kind of jutsu and laying her hand over the gash.
"I only know basic medical jutsu," she said. "If it gives you any trouble tomorrow, go see the medical staff." The woman moved her hand away from the cut, fingers sliding along the back of the potter's hand. A strip of shiny new skin was the only sign the potter had been injured.
"Thank you," the potter said. The calluses on the woman's hand were rough against her skin. She'd never thought of her skin as soft, but the woman's fingers were stroking it the way her mother had stroked the silk scarf her father had bought for her birthday. The touch moved up, then back down on the inside of her wrist. The potter shivered.
"I'm sorry," the woman said. "Your father had this duty for so long, and then you seemed to be handling it well. We forgot you haven't been trained to deal with this."
"It was the first mask I ever made," the potter said, watching the woman's fingers move on her wrist. "I didn't – I cared before, but – it's real and I don't know why."
"The personal connection." The woman's voice was clinical. "Why and how is different for everyone. There's no shame in only feeling it now. You had no reason to take any of it personally, that's the point of the masks we wear. No one asks for more than the respect you've already shown."
The potter raised her eyes to look at the woman. Her words were impersonal, but her hands were gentle.
"I want to see you without your mask," the potter said. "I want to know your name." She didn't add: And I want to kiss you. I want you to stay the night. I want it to be personal, with you.
A sharp, amused sound came from behind the mask. "You will. I started walking past when I was off duty months ago, just so I could visit in civilian clothes without raising suspicion."
"You did?" The potter started to reach for her, then caught herself just in time, hand hovering a hairsbreadth from the woman's vest. "Sorry. I know I'm not supposed to—" She broke off as the woman took her hand and brought it up to rest along the side of her throat, just under the edge of the mask. The woman's skin was soft there, and the potter felt the beat of a pulse under the palm of her hand, as her fingers rubbed against the bristles of the woman's close-cropped hair. The woman swallowed, and the potter's hand moved with the slight motion. "When?" she breathed.
"Soon." It sounded like a promise, the kind a woman like her wasn't supposed to make.
The potter lifted her other hand and slowly ran a finger down the side of the goat mask, following the swirl of red paint. Someday, it might come to her broken. Someday, she might end the thread of color.
Someday.
"Soon," she agreed.