Characters: Chiyo
Summary: She's not quite as whole as she used to be.
Pairings: None
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
Sometimes, Chiyo gets an itch on the arm that's no longer there. Sometimes, there's wood where flesh once was and still it itches, and she can't scratch it no matter how much she wants to, no matter how much she needs to.
It's late and as usual, Chiyo wakes up at exactly two seventeen in the morning, her body clicking on. She has woken up at this time every night for the past twenty years no matter where she is and this is no different.
There's only silence, apart from the howling of the wind outside. Chiyo is lying on her back in bed and staring up at the dark ceiling. Though she can't hear him she knows her brother is in the next room; Ebizo sleeps far more deeply than Chiyo ever could. Sandstorms aren't enough to wake him.
Chiyo sighs, and starts towards the kitchen. Maybe a few gulps of that old strawberry wine her brother brought home will help put her to drowsiness again.
Out of all the things Chiyo is known for around Sunagakure, liking to drink wine straight from the bottle isn't one of them but it is one of her many talents, to drink wine without getting drunk. It's on maybe the second swallow that the itching starts.
Chiyo found herself without an arm on the battlefield, one day many years ago, because Tsunade decided to get vindictive and put her rival out of commission once and for all, all without even killing her. Tsunade must have assumed that Chiyo would be useless with only one arm, that she would sink into ignominy but what Tsunade forgot was that Chiyo was a puppeteer. She was good with wood.
The old puppet mistress fashioned this prosthetic limb herself. She chose the best wood, treated it so it would never shatter or splinter and tricked it out so she could channel chakra through it and utilize the arm as a weapon. Chiyo's wooden hand worked just as well as her flesh one and she had no complaints about its quality.
But it starts to itch. It always starts to itch.
Chiyo clenches her flesh hand to keep it from prying at the wood. This is something she has never been able to understand. Oh sure, she knows the concept: the brain is still firing off signals to a place on her body that no longer exists. Chiyo has all the technical knowledge but none of the reality. She doesn't understand why it has to be this way.
Every moment of phantom itching or phantom pain serves to remind her that she's not quite as whole as she used to be.
Chiyo takes her last swig of the wine and starts back to bed. It galls that she has to use alcohol to dull the wrongness of that itching. Even the sandstorm seems to recognize Chiyo's frustration as it hisses What's the matter? through the shutters.
She wishes she knew.