A/N: Hi... I...
All of my emotions are in the Author's Note AFTER the chapter.
I'll let this speak for itself~!
Enjoy, my lovely snowflakes!
"Unc," To the tune of jingling keys that were haphazardly snatched from a keyhole, the voice rang out in a calm shred of apathy. Motsuki pocketed the keys, pushing the door shut behind her with the sole of her shoe. "I'm home."
It never needed to travel too far. He was seated right at the table in the kitchen, his elbow seated upon the surface of the wooden surface, whilst his chin sat upon the bottom of his palm. He peered up, as was commonality, lit cigarette woven between his fingers. It was a normal occurrence for him to be seen with a cigarette like that, but for it to be lit...
Motsuki offered a glance that cut through the indifferent surface of her brown eyes to offer a faint hint of masked sympathy. She could see it. Every day since Hiruzen had passed, she could see his eyes growing duller. He often hid it with the jovial, often kiddish grin he presented people, but she knew him longer. It wasn't the same. Like every day something was eating away at him. Her hand drove into the pocket of the tool holster attached to her leg, fingers lifting a bag that rang with the bell-like chime of metal hitting metal. Coins, one could assume. With a casual flick of her wrist, she let the small sack slide across the table to land just in front of her uncle.
With everything that had taken place, she put a little more effort into helping him provide. She considered it to be allowing him flexibility, or at least a grace period to really pull together, but let him tell it, there was no problem with this productivity to begin with.
"Civilian pay." He only needed to look at the bag and hear the weight of it when he hit the table to reach this conclusion. The hand that sat beneath his chin moved to let his fingers slip the top of the bag between them, "You're taking easy missions again."
A pulse of disdain shot through her head, as signaled by the rather large growth of a vein. 'For one accepting this pay, he's being awful picky.' She mentally chided his seemingly ungrateful word choice.
Her hands, as a result, pulled out the neighboring chair a little too roughly. She plopped into the seat carelessly, letting her own elbows prop up onto the table with an audible thud. "Well, hey," She shot, "they're easy, fast, and together they make pretty good pay for a day's worth of work." It was solid logic, but her reasoning didn't seem to fly well with him.
"Taking a day's worth of D-rank missions may add up to a C-rank or two, but you're not even playing in the same field as missions above that." He returned to his bored posture an dropped the bag of hers back down to the table.
"I think it's enough." Her hand gestured as she spoke, clearly displaying the displeasure that accompanied her tone, "Together we make plenty."
"Together," Asuma scoffed. "You've got the rank and experience to handle missions better than this."
By this point, a shock of sorts began to foster within Motsuki. The casual conversation they had was beginning to register to her as a sort of personal attack. What had him bringing this up now..? And what the Hell was so wrong with pulling their revenue together? "Well maybe if I didn't have a reckless uncle back home, I could leave the village for days at a time without worrying."
"This doesn't have anything to do with me," He raised his palm, dismissively pushing her fiery response back. "You have a different problem."
"I didn't have a problem until I walked through this damned door!" She was beginning to get a bit temperamental. It was common for her - being the outspoken one she was, she had buttons that were extremely sensitive to pushing. "What the Hell are you trying to do?"
"Heh." He didn't say a word for a moment, only fixed her with that usual smirk-like smile amidst the shaking of his head. His eyes opened slightly, taking to her with a gaze that completely antagonized her, despite the calm demeanor he so simply kept. "When did you stop taking missions outside the village?"
"I don't know..!?" Was she supposed to? It was just something that happened over the course of time! It was a time-saver! "I just did! What... Two? Three years ago?"
She never had a team to perform with, having come to the village and experienced the preparation for becoming a kunoichi so much later than most others. As a result, she often stuck close to her uncle and his team, or just did the simpler missions on her own. Traveling outside the village as a genin was only done as a substitute within another team, but... how was that relevant here?
"You used to get so excited about them."
Just like that - with that simple sentence -, her wrath evaporated.
Her risen hand that has shot up to convey her flaring emotions began to slowly coil down against her wrist; the stiffened nature of it was recoiling into a flimsy state of resignation. Her eyes dropped to her lap, brow gently knitted to display the depth of her contemplation.
It was true, wasn't it?
There was a child-like evocation in the way she couldn't sit still the night before traveling outside of the village. The way she carried herself differently with unfamiliar teams - trying to 'play it cool' and hide the way she inwardly jumped out of her skin at the thought of seeing new places. New adventures and challenges that made her quake with anticipation.
Motsuki steeled her tongue. She was far from ready to accept he was right - and never ready to accept she could have been wrong.
"Tsk..." Her shoulders shrugged, hand dropping to the table, "Fine... Fine... what do you think is the problem then?"
"I think you're scared." He blatantly stated without a moment lost. He didn't wait for her to protest -as he knew she would, and instead, moved right into his point. "Now imagine how hard it must have been." He settled his hand upon her shoulder, "You lost someone out there to that world."
"Mm..." An utterance of reluctant surprise. He hadn't expected him to be so blunt... well... he wasn't. But she still knew full-well who he was speaking of. 'Kiyowa...' Her fingers curled in against the tabletop, scraping lightly against it on their way to retreating into her palm. "That's what being a ninja's all about, isn't it? Tch..." Her head turned quickly away, helping her eyes to evade meeting Asuma's prying eyes.
"That's what you're taught, yeah." He plucked the cigarette from between his fingers, looking at the stick that had burned away on its own. He dragged it through the ash tray, leaving the butt to several of the others, "Doesn't make it any easier."
It was quiet for a while, the silence lingering and saturating between the two of them.
It was easy for the both of them to identify with the problem at hand. And just as Asuma said: Understanding the difficulty and strife that it formed made it no easier, whether that being experiencing it, or just speaking of it.
"So what?" She didn't deny it. She just broke the silence wafting, flattening her palms against the sides of her neck, "Why does this matter now?" She offered a mere shrug, "I could just get over it, right? Take a couple of years or however long to chill out. Problem solved."
"I know what you're thinking," He replied, looking away for a moment as if to gather the words he intended to use, "But I think the sooner the better. You need to learn how to take care of yourself." His brown eyes shifted to her, begging a question of sorts, "That's the whole point, right?"
Motsuki never had the ability to understand people very well. She usually spoke her mind, begging the necessary questions for someone to blatantly explain their problems or turmoil. The only reason she could understand Asuma so well was most-likely with respect to the length of time he had been involved in her life. Whatever the case was, she knew that the dismissive line he had just fed her was beginning to hint to more than just a well-placed poke at her future goals.
There was something else - and if she wasn't so skilled as to find it on her own, she would have to ask to know. Why was he more-or-less telling her to learn how to live without him? "What the Hell is that supposed to mean?" Maybe it came out too coarsely, but she felt it was the kind of edge she needed. Her uncle was a stubborn man, and he didn't respond to softness like most.
He uttered a hefty sigh, rubbing his hand around the back of his neck, "Dunno..." He stood from his chair, fingers killing the light from the candle's flame that sat affront them on the table. "Maybe I'm just tired's all." His hands pressed the chair in under the table, and he moved to go down the hall.
"No no. Hell no." Motsuki quickly moved to stand affront him, not willing to let bygones be bygones. She demanded answers by reiterating her previous question. "What are those death sticks giving you some kind of omen now?!" He bypassed her with relative ease, leaving her to pursue him down the hallway to desperately attempt to retrieve her answer, "What is it!?"
Finally catching up to close in on him down the hall, she found herself greeted with the wooden surface of his shut door.
Her hand rose up, pressing against the door - though still firmly, much more gentle than what was considered possible for her.
She kept it there for a moment, a strong surge of frustration coming to life inside of her as she pulled her hand into a rough fist and snatched it back from the door, "Fine. Don't tell me then." She yanked away roughly and retreated into her own room, shutting the door in a way much harsher than what was originally intended.
Her body collapsed against her bed, face burying into the cushion that it offered.
She didn't understand.
Surely, Motsuki was aware that her Uncle Asuma was not the most affectionate man in the world. Even when she was younger, he didn't bathe her in the kind of outward love that would be expected. She didn't mind. Despite their nonverbal agreement to such a relationship, she could feel that he was always proud of her. It was prevalent in the way he spoke to her, or the little physical signs he'd give - like the famous ruffles of his hair.
But she was also well-aware that in the recent years, he had grown almost cold. She could relate that to the stress of losing Hiruzen - which seemed to be a strong theme of the night's conversation. But some of those hints just never added up.
His attitude had barely faltered with his team. He spoke of them highly, spent so much time with them. Especially Shikamaru, she knew. She could tell he was her favorite - even if he would never explicitly state otherwise. But if his grief was the reasoning behind him acting that way... why did he treat her so differently?
Her back was now rested upon her bed, and her eyes focused a glare on the ceiling so harsh that the wood could have very-well receded out of fright.
The brown eyes that once held a spark of life began to die down into an unreadable fraction of its former self. She thought she had faced this before, and overcome the state of grief she had suffered through once before, but it was all coming back to her like it never left. Before, she lost her best friend - now, it was like she was losing her uncle too.
Having enough of the pain that stemmed from letting her mind wander, she threw her arm over her, pulling a mass of blankets along with her and shifted to lie on her side. She was tired.
Despite her emotional turmoil, it didn't take her too long to fall asleep.
The door to her room opened with an almost silent sound of sliding wood. There cast no light from the outside - the entire house having been resting in darkness aside from the limited light that peaked in through windows from the outside.
A hand brushed through her short black hair, and the figure it belonged to remained momentarily stationary. It lasted a moment, before his fingers left through the edge of her hair, recoiling to drop by his side.
"Sorry, kid."
A/N: *Writhes from the feels*
Way to make a comeback, right? I thought this would be some good insight into what's going on with poor Motsuki.
I know it's been such a long time, but life's been very heavy on me lately!
To be completely honest, though... I checked Fanfiction for the first time in months yesterday, and I saw a new comment on the story, so I checked it. I was surprised anyone really remembered this story, but that they cared for it so much? I was really shocked, but so happy to find this:
PurpleKetloom chapter 3 . Feb 16
... Please come back. T_T
A comment from literally less than a month ago. It touched my heart... Literally... Don't worry, it didn't hurt. It felt magical.
(◕‿◕) Thank you to all of you that didn't give up on me! I love you
So I hope you enjoyed this chapter after so long!
With Love ,
Princess Santa Clause The 45th