Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or any characters therein.
A/N: What the heck spawned this? I suppose I just liked the notion of Shisui's cell. I tell ya, it was a nightmare royale trying to figure out all the ages and who would be too old and whatnot, especially in the case of their sensei. But ah well; it all worked out in the end. Enjoy. ^^
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Fifteen
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When Nara Yoshino hears that she is being given charge of a Genin cell, she is angry. She has a four-year-old son to care for and raise, and generally she isn't a big fan of children anyway.
But there isn't any choice offered to her. There is an alarming lack of shinobi willing to take on cells, and the higher-ups are taking any Chunin they can find at this point.
So, faced with a glaring lack of options, Yoshino accepts, unhappily figuring she'll hate every minute of it.
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Gekko Hayate is sickly, snarky and pale. He sets Yoshino's teeth on edge with his constant coughing, and she can never tell if he's being a sarcastic little twerp or not.
Dark bags hang under his eyes; on top of everything else-and with this kid, there's quite a lot of 'else'-he is an insomniac. It gets on almost everyone's nerves during missions; while the rest of them lay down to sleep, he sits up and stares at them. They can feel his dark but calm gaze boring into their backs; Yoshino swears he does it just to irk them.
He's as skinny as his first name would testify, and seems generally apathetic about the world, about life in general. He seems like the kind of kid who would face even death with a bored expression on his face.
Yoshino decides almost on sight that she doesn't like him.
{~}
Uzuki Yugao is somber and serious and violet-haired. She doesn't say much, keeps her opinions to herself; the exact opposite of Yoshino, in other words.
Her face is as blank as the Anbu mask her family expects her to eventually wear; people would think her emotions had shriveled and died inside of her head. Some do. Yoshino does not. Because she sees the girl when she's behaving like a girl, when she's laughing at something Shisui's done or smiling-a quick smile, like a shy flash-at Hayate.
Despite being enough to make clear that she's not an unfeeling machine, those moments are rare. Her thoughts are a mystery for the time being.
Yoshino really doesn't like that.
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Uchiha Shisui is an idiot. Yoshino decides that almost immediately; when they're not on serious missions he's always smiling and trying to make his teammates laugh. He pushes himself, but often doesn't need to. That ticks her off; it's because he's an Uchiha, and she loathes the Uchihas, for their arrogance and their air of superiority and dangerousness.
He's handsome in his own little way, she supposes; for awhile she thinks privately that he might have a crush on Yugao, but after some time she smartens up-she is a ninja, after all. It's easy enough to piece together; his eyes are always kind but distant when he looks at or speaks to them. He smiles for people easily, but he doesn't get really close to anyone outside of his own clan. It's the inbred arrogance, Yoshino thinks as her blood boils; the line of thought that scoffs 'I'm better than everyone else'.
After some time she'll find only parts of this assessment are true; and also that when Shisui looks at Yugao with that mostly buried light in his eyes, he is thinking of someone else with long dark hair.
But that's not for a while, and in the meantime Yoshino manages not to make her dislike overly obvious.
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Time goes by and they learn to synchronize. They recognize the collective name 'Team Fifteen' and accept it as their own.
Yoshino watches all of it as though from an outsider's perspective. She watches, outwardly impassive, when Shisui learns to activate his bloodline trait in the aftermath of a brutal fight. She watches Hayate perfect the art of downing ten pills in one go. She notes the bruises on Yugao's upper arms after a failed mission and refuses to wonder. She sees her charges make their first kills (one vomits, one cries when they think no one can hear, and one doesn't speak for three days afterward).
When Yugao and Hayate finally become lovers and no one is surprised, she allows herself some amusement as Shisui sighs and dubs them lovebirds. When Hayate and Shisui finally manage to have an actual conversation with each other she smacks them both upside the head for making her wait so long. When Yugao comes and privately confesses her intention of entering into Anbu eventually, Yoshino nods (she knew long before) and promises a letter of recommendation.
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In the world of shinobi, all families shatter sooner or later. Hers is the exception, but her cell-her little second family-follows the rule.
Shisui dies before eighteen, and his teammates mourn. Yoshino eyes his lover at the funeral, and for a slow minute she does wonder. But she shakes it off eventually.
Hayate comes to her in his early twenties with a wedding ring for her to preview. She raises an eyebrow but wishes him luck. Before long another former charge of Yoshino's is buried in the ground; she finds out afterward-when a silent and expressionless Yugao is crouching before a cold gravestone-that he did manage to ask, and that the answer was yes.
Yugao is left behind; at some point she stops being emotionless and starts being sad. She follows her orders-she made Anbu; Yoshino can't bring herself to feel proud-with perhaps more vigor than is necessary. And Yoshino sighs to herself and knows it is only a matter of time before she is forced to outlive all three of her charges.
{~}
Yoshino hands in her resignation at twenty-six. She still has a son to raise, and she has had enough of life in the shinobi world. Family seems a somewhat better priority than killing, after everything is said and done.
She doesn't speak of her old ill-fated cell anymore, and her son and husband don't ask. Occasionally she'll catch a glimpse of Yugao-Yugao, who now serves as a walking carrier of all those sad memories-but only occasionally. The girl's smile is dead and buried just like her comrades, and there is nothing Yoshino can do.
She doesn't think about them much anymore; time heals all wounds, they say. But once in a violet moon Nara Yoshino will sit down and close her eyes, and unthinkingly retreat to a vivid other life where a pale boy coughs but smiles, a grinning boy cracks a terrible joke, and a quiet girl shakes her head at him for it.
{Owari}