I don't own Naruto.

Enjoy.

.:Patience:.

"Satsu! Satsu!" Kana called after her daughter as she ran down the dirt roads and away from her side. "Satsu, what has mommy told you about running off?" she quickly grabbed her child's hand and held it tightly as to not let her escape again.

She tried to pull her daughter back towards the market, where they had been headed, but Satsu held her ground staring off towards the gate to the village. Kana looked off through the archway of trees surrounding them trying to find the source of her seven year olds gaze.

"Mama?" Kana looked down to her daughter who was still focusing on something in the distance.

"Yes?" she smiled warmly, albeit her growing impatience.

"She's there again," Satsu looked up at her mother with large green eyes and pointed.

Kana looked at where her daughter was pointing and drew in a slow steady breath. Her daughter's fixation was with the old woman on a bench near the entrance to the village. Satsu's fascination mirrored her own with a much younger woman sitting on that very same bench from when she was a young girl.

She still remembered the beautiful young woman with the hard brown eyes and tightly bound hair sitting with a stiff back against the hard stone staring off to the village entrance.

Waiting.

The woman who sat there now was a shadow of the beautiful adult she remembered. Her chocolate hair had faded over the many years and the lines in her face became more pronounced, her posture was no longer stiff and proud, but bent and tired. Her eyes remained the same though. After all these years they still held a kind of harsh understanding and crushing sadness in them.

She still watched the village gates, waiting.

"She's always there mama. Me and Ren saw her there yesterday and the day before and since like forever before that," Satsu made large sweeping motions with her hand to exaggerate the point. "Why is she always there mama?"

Kana was silent still watching the older woman with her hands folded neatly in her lap. The tell tale garb of a soldier she had worn all those years ago had been traded in for a long plain red dress and a grey apron. She had a knit white blanket draped over her shoulder to block out the early fall breeze sweeping through the forest.

She looked so tired.

"She's waiting," Kana said finally as Satsu began to pull on her hand.

"Waiting? What's she waiting for?" Kana glanced down at her daughter who was fidgeting restlessly on the heels of her feet.

"For the return of a person very precious to her," Kana spoke in soft tones recalling the stories she would listen and pass on to her other friends as a child about the 'pretty lady on the bench'.

"Precious…" her daughter rolled the word around for a minute. "Like you and daddy?"

"Like me and daddy," she repeated nodding her head lightly.

"Where did he go?" Satsu looked up at her mother with innocent curiosity.

Kana was quiet for a moment before reaching down and held her daughter's hand tightly in her own.

"He went to a very faraway place," she could hear the tales of the fourth great shinobi war her older cousin had gone on and on about in her youth ringing in her ears.

"Why doesn't she go after him?" Satsu's lips pouted in confusion.

"It's not time for them to meet again," she answered softly.

"Is she sick?" Kana's eyes got rounder as she looked back from the woman on the bench to her mother.

Kana frowned for a moment. "In a way, her heart is very sad…" Kana trailed off, "like when daddy went to Tea Country to sell some of his spices. Do you remember how mommy was very sad?"

Satsu nodded slowly.

"She's heart sick….but mommy got better when daddy came back and you weren't heart sick no more. So when her precious person comes back she won't be sick anymore, right?" Satsu gave her mother a brilliant smile.

Kana smiled softly off into the distance. She bent down and picked up her daughter and placed her comfortably against her hip.

"That's right, but for now she will wait until he can come home to her."

Kana spared one last glance at the woman on the bench and was surprised to find her staring right back with those deep brown eyes. A small smiled played at the corners of the older woman's lips. Kana's cheeks flushed in slight embarrassment, but she smile back and nodded her head in greeting.

She watched in silent fascination as a small white bird came to rest on the older woman's shoulder. The woman's smile spread just a little further as turned back towards the gates.

Waiting once more.

Comments?

This has heavy implications laced throughout. Nothing is definitively stated, but this is NejiTen so I'm sure you've worked things out. I thought I'd play on POV, just a bit of an experiment really. I actually like this one quite a bit.

I'm curious to know what you think. Let me know, leave a review.

I want to do a happy NejiTen story next.