Beta-reading credits: Hokuto and Sessalisk.
"… So there we were, minding our own business, you know, innocuous genin stuff, waiting for Hokage-sensei to arrive, 'cuz he's late again. And then all of a sudden, like a sword in the night, out from the blue sky dropped a rogue ANBU! He struck at O-himesama, but quick Orochimaru used his body to shield her! But he underestimated her! Filled with grief and vengeance, O-himesama drew on an unprecedented hidden power and unleashed punishing righteous fury on the perpetrator!"
Trust Jiraiya to take an audience with the Hokage to mean an audience in the Hokage Tower. Tsunade's fist itched. The last thing she needed was for the whole world—the Hokage, his ANBU Commander, the head of her clan, and Grandma, so the whole world—to think she'd revelled in the demon's power. Kagami, who'd had previous exposure to Team Sarutobi, didn't so much as raise an eyebrow. The current head of the Senju Touka-sama, who hadn't had such exposure, turned her glare at Tsunade. "Is this true?"
Kagami unsteepled his fingers. "Jiraiya's account matches with what Tsunade has told me earlier, I see no reason to doubt him."
"Of course. And they are such good comrades to our Tsunade."
"You implyin' something, lady," Jiraiya began before Tsunade stepped on his toes.
"Not at all. Only my gratitude for your support of her, even now. And I do remember being so young, and thinking innocent what could easily pass as aggression."
"Shut up," hissed Tsunade, and Jiraiya did, scowling.
Kagami had no such inclination. "I, for one, would like to know why one of my ANBU, who so happens to be Tsunade's kin, would feel compelled to attack her. Tsunade." Kagami's deep voice sharpened around the edge—his Hokage voice, the one clear advantage over his predecessor. It had the uncanny effect of making her holding her breath and standing ramrod straight and. "Did you use the demon's power at all, especially prior to your confrontation with Kabema?"
Straightforward, but airtight questions. Kagami knew her so well. She told him. She fully understood that due to the rawness of her seal she had been restricted from using chakra. As a shinobi of Konoha, even a chuunin, Tsunade couldn't bear being useless. She'd had excellent chakra control, surely she could manage without drawing the demon's power, which was after all chakra like any other. She'd started small, and thus discovered that Sarutobi's seal was as effective as a piece of paper against a deluge.
"I stopped as soon as I sensed its contamination," she insisted. She'd meant to, and would have had no issue but for Kabema. It occurred to her that maybe, just maybe, it had ended so tragically for her cousin precisely because the demon's chakra had been on the tips of her fingers, quite literally. But the Hokage wouldn't be interested in speculations.
Touka-sama, unfortunately, was. "So it was always under your control. And with Kabema… self-defence? Your body moved on its own, because your comrade and yourself were harmed?"
Tsunade pre-emptively stepped on Jiraiya's toes. Touka-sama was as patronising as she was accurate. Orochimaru would scoff at the idea of apologising for self-defence, even murder in self-defence. Faced with Touka's thinning lips and inhuman calm, Tsunade couldn't. Here was someone who definitely believed otherwise. Here was the one person who deserved an apology, and since Kabema wasn't available, it fell to Tsunade to make it.
She bowed from her waist. "Touka-sama, words cannot express how sorry I am. I never meant to kill Kabema-oniisan."
"But you did, and now he's dead, and you think an apology could make up for it. Save your bowing for someone who cares, girl."
Cold wind raged in her bones so suddenly she forgot to breathe. Then a moment later it was gone, leaving Tsunade wondering… not genjutsu, not in front of the Hokage, even if Touka was a master of that art. More artefacts of the demon? Touka's voice was just as cold, and when Tsunade dared to look up she saw the profile of a long column of ice. Tsunade blinked. It was only Touka's slender neck, riddled as it was with stark blue veins.
"But, Kagami," Grandma said from the back. Aside from the Hokage, only she was allowed a seat. No wonder Grandma had always liked Kagami best of her husband's students. Presently, Grandma mustered her strength to say, "Is it possible for your ANBU to have… misconstrued your instructions?"
"No," Kagami said curtly. "As I told Tsunade, there was never an order to kill, under whatever circumstances, without my explicit permission."
"That seems unwise, Hokage-sama," Touka-sama muttered, now sufficiently collected.
"My understanding was that the seal should have been impossible to break without drastic measures." Was he glaring at Tsunade? "Sabotage by a highly skilled enemy shinobi, to end in a certain death for the host." Yes, he was.
Tsunade looked away. Kagami's eyes might have been all the colours of the rainbow and she would always see the dark blades whirling on crimson field. She saw his arms crossed and uncrossed, then his head tilted ever so slightly, as if listening to the whispered wisdoms of the Hokage past. His chair creaked. It looked old, and a fair bit shorter than the chair she was used to. Grandpa's old chair, she realised, the Takigakure import which Saru-sensei had traded for one more suitable for his height.
Incidentally, Grandma said, "That is how Hiruzen intended it… poor boy, he gave his life for it."
"Yes, well, my predecessor was never known for his fuuinjutsu." Again with playing peek-a-boo with the old Kagami. The Hokage hid his grimace behind steepled fingers, then lifted his chin. "Mito-sama and I will look into it later. For now, let me see if I understand this correctly: ANBU Senju Kabema noticed the demon's chakra stirring and jumped the blade, injuring chuunin Orochimaru in the process. Chuunin Senju Tsunade reacted in self-defence, leading to the ANBU's death."
Kagami paused, but Tsunade wasn't going to tell him that Kabema hadn't been known as a sensor. Anyway, Touka-sama seemed suspiciously serene. The Hokage went on. "Sparring accidents happen, so do disastrous awakenings of volatile kekkei genkai, though perhaps not always as tragic.
"Tsunade, I'm putting you on indefinite suspension from any and all missions—yes, even D-rank missions. You are forbidden from training alone. I will personally supervise your efforts to control the demon. And you will control it."
Or die trying, Hokage-sama? Tsunade looked past his shoulder and out the great window overlooking the village, at the stone image of her grandfather, the half of his lower jaw that remained. She voiced her acceptance; the Hokage didn't need it but Touka-sama did. All things considered, Tsunade had gotten off lightly. A barely perceptible nod, and she was dismissed while the adults finagled.
It didn't occur to her until much later that Touka-sama might have been smarting from an Uchiha, even if he was the Hokage, meddling in Senju business. Jiraiya, whom Tsunade had almost forgotten, had a different perspective. "Man, what's her problem? Some clan head, trying to get Hokage-sensei to execute you."
"Eh," Tsunade said, glaring half-heartedly at the silver-haired ANBU following her. There were more hanging around, invisible but not bothering to conceal their sulphuric trail.
Tsunade halted so suddenly Jiraiya gave her a look. "Shouldn't you be at the hospital—"
"No!" she said. Jiraiya merely looked worried, she reasoned, but not freaked out, so she hadn't grown a fox snout or anything. Calmer now, she said, "I mean, I'm good… and if it's about Orochimaru, no way they'd be done with him. Anyway, you shut up and stay out of this. It was her son, and Touka-sama only had the one."
With the ANBU Silver Rat at her back, Tsunade managed to pass the major streets of Konoha without the Uchiha-crested police descending on her. At noon only shadows roamed the Senju's complex, and she evaded all the well-meaning, but nosy few staying at home. Neither Grandma nor Nawaki had returned. Silver Rat didn't follow her inside, but he and the other ANBU took positions around her house.
She slipped into her room. Soiled clothes went into the trash bin and Tsunade to the bed. She had just enough care to throw on something cleaner and untie the tangle of flaxen mop her hair had become. Finally, she laid down. Not to sleep, but a few seconds of shuteye couldn't hurt…
There was moonlight in her eyes, glittering hoarfrost of the night falling through trees, alighting on her hair, dull embers of a dying flame. Fire had raced through her breast, and she had borne it in her veins, allowed it to consume until all was ash. Ashes were her limbs, scattered uselessly to the four winds, on her tongue as her fingers clutched at air. The door had closed behind him; his brother's shadow, so easily forgotten in the heat, loomed large over them with the return of light. She was cold, every beat was a hammer to her heart. So it was shame her bedfellow, and contempt fuel for light, until the next …
The door slammed open. Tsunade started. She blinked against the sunlight filtering through the curtains. It was noon, and her little brother was trying to get her attention.
"Nee-chan, why're you sleeping in the afternoon? Why's your face all red? Nee-chan, are you sick? Injured? No? But there's blood in your hair and why didn't you take a bath before sleeping, that's gross! Where's Baa-chan?"
Tsunade caught his hand. However hard she blinked, purple dots persisted on Nawaki's face. She rose, pulled him closer and, ignoring his protests, lifted his shirt, in an instant wide awake. His right eye was swollen shut, and his face and torso were mottled with bruises.
"Really, Nawaki? School started just a few months ago," she grumbled under her breath. Without thinking, she started to heal him only to abort as red crept into her vision. The distraction allowed Nawaki to squirm out of her grasp.
"It's nothing! But Sensei wants to see Baa-chan, but I couldn't find her. Hey, Nee-chan, you're a chuunin, aren't you? So that makes you an adult, so you can talk to Sensei, right?"
"What kind of logic is that?" Tsunade grumbled. She couldn't argue against the absence of a more suitable person for the task, however, so she threw him out. She hastily scrubbed the remaining bloodstains, gave up in disgust and rolled the rest into a messy bun, and changed into something more suitable for receiving guests. By then her face had cooled, and she had almost forgotten about the dream.
Nawaki's teacher was waiting in the living room, his tea no longer steaming. Tsunade vaguely remembered him from her short stint at the Academy, mostly because he was one of the few who'd protested when Sarutobi-sensei had come to collect his genin cell. When told that Grandma wasn't available, he said, "That's quite all right, I can wait. That is, if you don't mind," he said, blandly nodding to Tsunade.
While she hesitated, Nawaki said, "Nee-chan's a chuunin, just like you, Sensei! Same rank and everything, so you can just talk to her, right?"
The teacher gave her an appraising gaze. "This is true. Then, Nawaki-kun, please demonstrate for your sister." With one last anxious look at Tsunade, Nawaki held a piece of paper between his fingers—a chakra testing paper. He made the tiger seal, eyes closed and face scrunched in deep concentration. The paper crinkled and twisted and hardened, and seconds later he was holding a fresh branch between his fingers. She recognised the type: blood sandalwood, the same wood as beneath her legs and above her head. It was Grandpa's signature, if she hadn't known already from the red tinting the edge of her vision, or the urge to snarl. Shut up, fox.
Nawaki was anxiously watching her staring at the branch. His face fell when she turned to the teacher and said, "Wasn't there a fight, Sensei?" She'd bet there had been bullies, and being a boy raised on the heroic deeds of their grandfather, Nawaki had tried to fight them off. And probably lost, and now he wouldn't meet her eye, as if Tsunade cared about winning.
The teacher took a sip of his tea before answering. "There was a… squabble that started between Nawaki-kun and Hatake Sakumo-kun, although by the time the mokuton manifested it had become bigger."
"And this Hatake Sakumo is…"
"I gather it was not the first time that Nawaki-kun has taunted Sakumo-kun, although this is the first time he's instigated a physical fight."
The fox had tampered with her sight and smell, why not hearing too? Yet she was awake, and Nawaki didn't object. Instead he continued to study the crude leaf-spiral his toddler self had etched into the table.
The teacher said, not unkindly, "Sakumo-kun is an excellent student and a respectful classmate. By all accounts, he has never deliberately tried to provoke Nawaki-kun. I'm afraid the instigator was, and always has been, Nawaki-kun. But that is not why I'm here, Tsunade-hime.
"The Academy takes the education of young shinobi very seriously. Our policy is to allow students to resolve differences among themselves, and only to step in when a harmful pattern persisted. Now, this is only one incidence, and I am confident it will never happen again. It is also the Academy's policy to discuss with the student's family in the event that a kekkei genkai manifested, so as to arrange a proper training."
Training was the furthest thing from her mind, but Tsunade managed, "I'll, uh, I don't think Nawaki needs any special treatment or training or whatever from the Academy."
"Very well. Then I thank you for your hospitality. Please give my regards to Mito-sama." He rose. Tsunade had the presence of mind to drag Nawaki with her to see his teacher off.
"Nee-chan, can you let me go now?" Nawaki whined once he was out of earshot.
"No." She herded him back inside and told him to fetch the medical kit. Back in his room, she poked him into taking off his shirt. A bit more prodding got him to stand still while she applied salve on his bruises. She could do without the pouting, though. "Stop that, do you want to be stuck looking like a duck forever?" Tsunade sighed. "Look, I'm not gonna yell at you." That was Grandma's job, although Grandma preferred frosty, reproachful silence. "Just tell me what the hell has Hatake Sakumo ever done to you. Turn around, let me see your back."
Maybe the Hatake kid was a little prick. Tsunade could sympathise with wanting to knock a few teeth out once certain lines were crossed (and at his age, she had). Her optimism was dashed, first by the scowl she could feel radiating off his scalp, and then, "He looks at me funny! He thinks he's so much better than everyone, but he's just a–ow, Nee-chan!"
"Done." She capped the salve, snatched the first clean shirt she saw on the bed and tossed it haphazardly on his head. "Just a civilian kid, eh?" Tsunade hadn't known any shinobi clan with that name. Well, not 'just', she thought, counting almost a dozen of kid-sized welts on Nawaki's back alone. "Okay, but did you at least win?"
"He's gotta be cheating! And then the teachers stopped us when I was winning," he said from within the shirt.
"Yeah, sure he was." Tsunade stood and shoved the kit into his hands. Six, and not even reaching past her waist. Her little bully. Red mist seeped through her teeth and curled under her eyes. She saw Nawaki's eyes widened, and spat, "That's O-jiichan's powers you bullied a civilian kid with, and even then you still got your ass beat. Face it, you're pathetic."
Tsunade didn't trust herself to leave her room until the red cleared, and by then it was past afternoon. Grandma still hadn't returned. She couldn't care less about Nawaki; the kid was old enough to beat a civilian to pump his big head, he could take care of himself. Anyway he was not wanting: the Academy was too eager to look the other way, and the clan would be all too happy to pick up the slack. Finally a descendant of Hashirama who turned out right, eh, and of course it would be the boy. All the women in his family were demons.
Grandma came home around the evening, escorted by an ANBU and Nawaki. His chatter died when he saw Tsunade through the study's open doors. Mumbling to Grandma, he disappeared into his room. Grandma, meanwhile, hobbled inside and declined when Tsunade offered Grandpa's masterpiece, his throne which she'd been sitting on, and opting for the other relic, a gift from the Shodai Takikage. It creaked ominously as she leaned forward on her cane, faint lines spoiling her otherwise smooth forehead as she regarded Tsunade's work. "Practicing your sutures, Tsunade?"
"Kid outgrows everything the moment he wears them." Tsunade folded the shirt and packed the sewing kit more noisily than was necessary. "What with my being suspended indefinitely—so never ever taking missions again—and Nawaki far too young to take missions, I can't just buy new stuff all the time."
Grandma's features softened somewhat. "My dear, you fret too much. Your Kagami-sama will never let us starve, and neither is Touka-san a cruel woman. In fact, I am to remind you that she will be expecting your presence at the funeral tomorrow."
"Thought I should save the apology for someone who cares?" There it was, Grandma's frosty reproach. Tsunade spread her hands in surrender. "Of course I'll be there. Let the whole clan know I'm a kin slaughterer, keeps everyone on their toes. And maybe remorse will bring Kabema-niisan back, how about that."
Grandma didn't slouch, ever, but as she sighed and sat back she looked like iron forged the wrong way, hammered thin and folded to the point of breaking. Tsunade forced her jaws to unclench, even sketched a girlish smile. "Joking, Baa-chan, just a thoughtless joke as usual."
"Was it also a joke that my grandson now believes everything is permissible so long as he has the strength? That is not how I raised you. Is something wrong?"
Tsunade turned her shudder into a shrug at the last moment. Grandma's lips were like rusty doors, creaking open and shut with each breath. Shut up, fox. "I didn't mean it like that. Anyway, Nawaki doesn't listen to me, so no harm done."
Grandma shook her head. "This coming year Nawaki will be seven, and by then, he thinks, he must be inducted as a genin, as his sister before him. So if he doesn't listen, he's only following your excellent example."
"But I've never told him anything like that." Though as she protested, Tsunade began wondering if she had, even if unconsciously, imposed such an impossible standard. Not necessarily, she decided, kids generated weird ideas about the world on their own. "Fine, I'll talk to him tomorrow."
Grandma said nothing. If a moth wandered in, it would be cut by the silence in the library. Tsunade exhaled. "Well, good night, Baa-chan."
She rose and went around the desk and past Grandma, freezing when Grandma raised a hand to her cheek. Her skin crawled and clawed to escape from Grandma's caress.
"Is your grandmother so repulsive to you?" Grandma said.
Tsunade ducked and turned away. Her teeth itched for the crone's flesh. She would have chewed her own hand if Grandma hadn't said, "Do you hate me, Tsunade?"
"No!" Tsunade said, aghast. "How could you think that?"
Grandma gave her a wry look. "I had borne the demon fox long before your mother was a thought. I know that presently it is tampering with your senses. Sensibilities, too. Even now you don't think to ask for my help. Allow me."
A storm was brewing inside her, but Tsunade forced her head down between Grandma's hands. Once again her chakra came between Tsunade's and the fox. Tsunade might as well have gone blind and deaf, but it was a blissful silence and stillness, punctuated only by Grandma's soothing voice.
"You are now a jinchuuriki, a girl sacrificed to contain the primordial spirit of malice and disaster. You will know more than you ever wish of the depravity of mankind, its passion and lust, the depths we will sink to, and all the petty justifications thereof. Nevertheless, however I deserve it you must not hate. I do not tell you this for my own sake, but for Konoha's, and yours most of all." Grandma patted her cheek. "You're not listening."
Tsunade opened her eyes, smiling sheepishly. "I was. I'm… sorry for not asking you first before experimenting with the fox. But it wasn't because I hated you. I could never hate you, Baa-chan."
"Not even a little, for making you bear all the punishment for my sins?"
Grandma had a knack for saying dramatic, even hysterical things, and making Tsunade take her seriously anyway. "Just… maybe a bit angry, 'cause if Sarutobi-sensei hadn't acted quickly you'd've left Nawaki growing up without any adults," Tsunade muttered.
Grandma made a small noise—a snort, really, except she made everything seemed more dignified. "Just Nawaki?" And she sobered quickly. "I wonder if today's tragedy could have been avoided had I insisted on teaching you." Tsunade opened her mouth, but Grandma tapped both cheeks. "Not now, Tsunade. I'm tired. Come help your grandmother to bed."
Shortly before his death, in the last days of peace before war engulfed the world, Granduncle had once said Grandpa built his house like his village: grown from the seed of hope on the humble soil of earth. There was only one floor, which was a boon to Grandma in her current state, and there were always more rooms than people. Nawaki's room was quiet and dark. Tomorrow then, after all.
Grandma didn't want the lights turned on; the moon was out, fat and generously shining through the trees. Tsunade unwound the obi, then the hair, tumbling out in a cascade of red, thinner than it once had been. But no less radiant, she thought while absently teasing out the tangles. Mother had had the same, and young Tsunade had loved running her hand through it. Silky flames, flecked with the glittering hoarfrost come down from the moon…
"Tsunade," Grandma said as though she had called her for the hundredth time.
She shook out the image and answered, "Oh, sorry. Your hair's just so amazing, Baa-chan. Why couldn't O-kaasan have passed it to either of her children?" Grandma just snorted.
Tsunade bounced off the bedside, not for the first time noting its size. Grandma only ever used one side. The other she kept pristine, the shrine to Grandpa they otherwise wouldn't have. Scrolls and books and even clothes cluttered the remaining space, but there was not a single thing she could conscientiously call decoration. Too big for one person, Tsunade thought. "Do you want me to sleep here for the night?"
"Tsuna-chan, you're not a child anymore," Grandma chided even as she used her childhood nickname. Grandma fell quiet, then pointed her cane at a pile of ink—Grandma's attempts at reclaiming her lost mastery, she realised with a pang. "O-jiichan's book, to help you sleep. Now go bounce in your own room."
Some days Grandma's omniscience would annoy her. This time Tsunade dug said book out of the pile and almost forgot to say goodnight in her haste to return to her room. Once there she swept the clutter on her desk to the floor and set the book down with an uncharacteristic reverence. For it was the book Grandpa had written, a thing she never could have imagined would exist. Shinobi, as a rule, did not write anything of import down. Everything that was worth passing down was worth oral teaching from one generation to the next. But she had in her hand whatever the god of shinobi found important to write, and his wife the consummate scholar to pass to Tsunade.
Her excitement lasted only an hour and a book, evaporating into the feeling of having watched a squirrel zip from one tree to another, stopping only long enough to pluck a nut at each only to abandon it. No wonder Grandma lent it to her. It was an interesting glimpse at the world, to be sure. Shinobi clans, including the Senju, had been nomadic before the revolution of shinobi villages. Fearing raids, they would move at unpredictable seasons, and even the smallest of clans had an outpost or two. Grandpa had once lived that lifestyle, and he always found something new and exciting in each place. The problem was only Grandpa would find them new and exciting. When there was a giant slug thingy (Grandpa's words) in the area, only Grandpa would choose to catalogue all the trees in the forest because it was an impossibly humid forest.
She let the book languish in her disappointment for a moment. She had… well she didn't have anything to do tomorrow, or the rest of her life. Tsunade took out a pen and began working. True to Grandma's prediction, she spent the night putting the book through every cypher she knew of. There had to be something in the middle of all the trees, even if sometimes it seemed Grandpa lived in a world of trees…
The leaves swayed long after the wind stopped blowing. They had him cornered, her siblings and her in a neat circle around the human. And should he sprout wings and escape by air, well, they had a sibling just for that. She snapped pearly teeth at air, sharp and each about as long as the man's blade, a metallic toothpick as far as she was concerned. She could break him, each of them could a thousand times over, and the man knew it, she could smell it about him: fear, hatred even at this time, and something rank and uniquely him.
She had nothing but contempt for this puny creature before her, petty whims and selfish desires wrapped in cheap iron and an accident of birth that somehow enthralled the other puny creatures to debase themselves before him. Not that she cared. These petty creatures calling themselves humans could exterminate themselves as far as she and her siblings were concerned. But Father did, noble and compassionate Father, whose dignity so far outstripped anything on earth. And Father had gone and prostrated himself before this man, even begged for him to see reason. Father might have left his ideals at whims of a man, but she was not so sanguine, and neither were her siblings.
But a voice called for their names one by one, and she obliged, snapping her teeth as a warning for one last time. Father walked like the common man he was not, and he even apologised to the ungrateful sod, and invited him to his home. The children were strictly and explicitly forbidden to join. The meeting bore nothing. The man was free to go home, to mount his forces to their doom, the exact thing Father was exhorting him against. The whole farce was so preposterous it pained her, and she said so to Father.
And Father looked at her with eyes that defied age, and he said things to her, things that made her, for that brief moment, to share his hope and compassion and faith, but she was already falling…
It was sunset, and the sky was bleeding into the sea. Where the sky ended the sea began, and thus awakened, the sea raged. Little storms roared all around, whirling themselves into a deafening frenzy. Somewhere in there was Tsunade, dazed and stuck figuring out where exactly she was, in the sky, with the sun, looking down at the whirlpools? Among the waters, and yet also apart from it? Ah, Tsunade thought, this must be what gives Uzushiogakure its name. Grandma had always said she was not her granddaughter until Tsunade had seen the sunset at Uzushiogakure.
The sea gurgled, and the whirlpools coalesced into eyes and a row of teeth. "You!" gurgled the Kyuubi. She hoped it was the demon fox itself, because she didn't think she could handle more than one parasite at a time. The sea raged anew, and she was snatched in its waves. Tsunade felt sick being thrashed by the current. "Get out!" the Kyuubi shrieked, and with a violent jerk, Tsunade was thrusted into darkness.
For a few moments she blinked groggily at the soft light of her desk lamp, then Tsunade had just enough presence of mind to turn her head and vomit on her floor instead of Grandpa's book. The Kyuubi gave her one last kick to the spleen, and she spent most of the night kneeling on the floor wheezing and cursing Sarutobi-sensei for his ineptitude.