Title: Secondhand Faith
Chapter Title:Permafrost
Author: Lell
Current Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Spoilers…pretty much up until the current chapters. While considered an AU, many things in the timeline remain the same. So, read at your own risk (though that warning applies to most of my work…) Tayuya's mouth and all subsequent obscenities and breaches of political correctness attributed to her.
Summary: They got Sasuke back (yay), Itachi died at his hands (more yay) and Konoha emerged triumphant after having been to hell and back in a handbasket (innumerable amounts of yay.) But sometimes peacetime is just as harrowing as war when old enemies and not so old friends convene at this year's Chuunin exams. (AU futurefic starring the Sand Sibs, various Otonin and the Konoha ensemble. All at once. Fear.)
oOo
"You're not dead," Tayuya said stupidly and she had known it was a dumb thing to say even as the words had stumbled off of her tongue, but seriously they were supposed to be dead. Yet here they were, right as rain, sitting in a tower in the middle of Sand's Hidden Village like two particularly strange princesses awaiting rescue.
It was strange seeing them nine years on from that fateful day in the forests of Fire country because they'd gotten taller, developed muscle and breadth of shoulder. And they weren't wearing lipstick. (Prisoners probably didn't get much in the way of primping material.) Hell, they weren't even wearing clothes she recognised, just some sort of strange civilian garb that looked odd on bodies that were familiar, yet weren't.
"Clearly, you haven't gotten smarter with age," Sakon said sarcastically, but there was a sort of wonder in his voice (deeper now, but still with that musical edge) and his eyes kept darting between her face and Kidoumaru's.
"And you've just gotten uglier, faggot," she retorted automatically and then looked surprised when he smiled.
"You haven't changed, Tayuya," Ukon said, standing up now and, yes, definitely taller than he used to be.
'And definitely taller than me. Damn.'
"You'd be surprised," Kidoumaru said dryly, and then he was helping her towards a free chair so that he could clasp both of their forearms with a feverish sort of intensity that belied his easy smile. "You have no idea how good it is to see that you two morons are alive."
"Alive and kicking," Ukon drawled. He slapped Kidoumaru on the shoulder in that macho way guys did, the one that Tayuya rolled her eyes at, particularly when they forgot and did it to her and she had to hurt them back.
Though, right now, she kind of wanted to be slapped on the back and felt fairly left out from this little reunion, stuck as she was on the chair with her broken ribs and the drugs still exiting her system. "Hey," she said loudly, distracting the three of them from their little pow-wow (all three of them grinning was freakier than she wanted to admit) so that they looked in her direction. "Am I the only one who wants to know why the fuck you guys are living in Suna?"
"I'm fairly curious as well," Kidoumaru added swiftly, sending Temari and Sasuke a hard glance that eloquently laid out just how pissed off he was over this having been kept a secret for so long.
Temari, at least, had the shame to look slightly abashed (though not overly so.) Sasuke just looked bored.
"Kankurou brought them in," Temari said.
"Alive, but not kicking all that much," Ukon commented and his morbid humour convinced Tayuya that these were the real deal, not just some extremely well-done henge.
"Indeed. We handed them over to the medical research department because of their unique traits my brother and Inuzuka Kiba had reported."
Kidoumaru's expression turned icy cold. "So you experimented on them."
"…yes."
"Oi, don't look like one of your spiders died," Sakon butted in. "It was kind of fun."
Tayuya looked at the pair of them critically. "…you two are fucking creepy, you know that right?"
"Says the girl who summons zombies." A beat. "You do still summon zombies, right?"
Nine years suddenly didn't seem all that long a time as Tayuya threw a pillow at Ukon. It may as well have been yesterday that they were sitting in the common room reserved for the higher-level soldiers in one of their better bases, bickering about who had the remote and fighting over food. Then she caught Temari and Sasuke watching and coloured up with irritation, pissed off at having been caught showing some sign of (violent) affection.
"What did they do to you?" she demanded, more to shift attention from her to them than from a need to know.
Frankly, she wasn't sure if she wanted to know.
Sakon shrugged. "Nothing too bad. Once they'd worked out that we could pretty much regenerate anything they did to us so long as we merged, the harsh stuff petered out."
"They knew they were onto something useful and didn't want to damage it," Ukon chimed in helpfully.
"Yeah. Apparently, their scientists had been messing around with stem cells, trying to cure cancer and all that." Sakon looked smug. "Our cells are better."
"And nothing rejects them." Ukon picked up the thread of the recount and Tayuya shook her head in wonder – they still talked in exactly the same way, finishing off each other's anecdotes with a fluidity that would have done actors on stage proud. "They use us for transplants mostly, since our organs just grow back so long as we can merge for long enough." He smirked, but the smile had a bite to it. "And now that we've proved co-operative, we even get anaesthetic."
"And nice quarters with only two guards at the door, and they give us walks in the sunshine sometimes." Sakon still sounded irritatingly mocking.
Kidoumaru still didn't look happy. "You're still prisoners though."
Sakon's shoulders rose and fell again, and he looked remarkably indifferent. "Once we heard Orochimaru-sama was dead, we kind of stopped caring about anything else. They feed us, they house us…what are a few operations every year?"
"Hell, we're even allowed to wander around on our own now so long as we wear these." Each of the twins held up their dominant hand (right for Sakon, left for Ukon) and Tayuya saw the metal cuff fitted on each wrist. The metallic surface seemed to shift with seals. "For our chakra."
While Kidoumaru, ever the gadget-freak, examined Ukon's cuff, Tayuya just absorbed all of this new information as best as she could.
Sakon and Ukon were alive.
Sakon and Ukon were living in Suna.
Sakon and Ukon were living in Suna and almost seemed…happy.
This brought up an uncomfortable revelation in Tayuya. While her mind balked at the idea of the captivity the twins had lived in for the past nine years, she also had to admit that it wasn't all that different to when they'd been shinobi under Orochimaru-sama's rule. Except, back then, their shackles had been moulded out of fear instead of metal – they'd been loyal out of desperation and because they'd never known anything else, rather than any real suitability in their leader. They'd been violent, angry creatures who amused him and he hadn't been above setting them against each other. They'd been violated at his hands, physically and mentally, had been so broken in body and spirit that only the desire to serve had allowed them to cling onto life.
He'd sent them on a mission as expendable pawns so that he could get his hands on fucking Uchiha Sasuke.
And their existence in Oto's many bases hadn't been a pleasant one, locked as they often were in their rooms as children so that they didn't get in the way, fed only when there was enough food to go around, particularly in the early days when the nation was a new one.
With a sick sort of realisation, Tayuya had to wonder whether what Sakon and Ukon had dealt with at the hands of their Suna captors had been any worse than what Orochimaru had dealt them.
The thought felt like a betrayal and, even though she knew he was dead and gone, Tayuya almost feared his wrath at such a disloyal thought. Her flinch made her hate herself for such foolishness, but it did little to dispel it.
Tayuya had been a child when Orochimaru had died. Nine years down the line and he still haunted her – in a perverse way, one that counsellors around the world would have a field day with, she still longed for her Orochimaru-sama's approval while simultaneously wishing that she'd never met him, that she could go back to that day when he'd picked her up off the streets of Suna and stabbed him in his sadistic serpent's heart.
"—and it's not as if we need our chakra all that much anyway – Ukon and I can still meld while wearing them, so it doesn't hamper us at all." Sakon's voice brought her back to the present situation and if any of them noticed her looking pale and slightly wild around the eyes, no one commented.
"Interesting…" Kidoumaru mumbled, still examining the chakra constraint. "Fascinating design."
Ukon caught Tayuya watching his brother and Kidoumaru discuss the mechanics of the thing and wandered over, standing with his hands in his pockets as he looked down at her thoughtfully. She stared back, defiant and just as curious.
"Huh," he said finally, a smile chasing the words out. "You grew up."
His look was definitely appraising and Tayuya, out of instinct, retreated behind both her fringe and her nose. "What the fuck's that supposed to mean?" she asked irritably,
"You're not a girl anymore. Not that you were much of a girl back then anyway, but you look…older now."
Tayuya wasn't sure she liked the way this conversation was turning out. "No shit, fairy. It's only been, what, nearly a decade?" She snorted disdainfully and was then surprised when Ukon laughed, surprised enough to let it show on her face. The Sakon and Ukon she remembered had been touchy little buggers and the best ones to pick fights with since they were so easily provoked. Usually by the 'fairy' thing.
Ukon didn't look offended at all – instead, he just looked amused. "You'd be surprised how much you miss someone you thought you hated once they're taken away from you."
Tayuya eyed him suspiciously. "…if that was supposed to be flattering, it really wasn't."
"Who said it was supposed to be flattering?"
Tayuya caught Temari watching them and her default scowl immediately shuttered back up. "What?" she demanded. "Were you expecting weepy reunions and hugs all around? I'm not that much of a fucking pussy. You'd be better off expecting it from these two faggots."
("Charming," Ukon murmured to Sakon and Kidoumaru.)
Frankly, Tayuya didn't know how she felt about finding these two alive and well, if certainly different. What she did know was that she wasn't comfortable with the Sand-bitch and Uchiha-fucking-Sasuke watching. She drew herself up to her full (and not very impressive) height, then winced when her broken ribs protested.
"Geez," Kidoumaru said, eying her with something that was close enough to worry that she wanted to punch him for it (damn her short arms…) "We should really get you to a medic."
"I'm fine," she snapped, defensive once more. Weakness in front of enemies was a bad thing; weakness in front of teammates, even if you hadn't seen them in nine years, was worse.
"What happened?" Sakon looked to Kidoumaru for an explanation, but it was Temari who gave one.
"Tayuya-san and I had something of a disagreement." While being mild and completely smooth, her tone also brooked no arguments.
"Oh. That kind of trouble," Ukon said in amusement. "Nice to know that you haven't completely reformed, Tayu."
The shortening of her name was what caught her. Way back when, Sakon and Ukon had been known to, when the Sound Four were getting on at least passably, call her that.
Now Kidoumaru was the only one.
The throwback to the past made the walls seem to close in on her as the day's occurrences crowded her, eager for attention. Sakon and Ukon, supposedly killed by Suna shinobi nine years ago, standing alive and well before her.
Killed.
Dead.
Seiichi.
Something flashed through her mind, a lightning strike that illuminated all that had previously slipped into darkness with an eerie glow. 'Can't forget about me,' the jolt of memory wheedled. 'Can't make me go away.'
"Tayuya?" someone said, and the voice seemed to come from a long way away. She blinked and Kidoumaru's familiar rough-hewn features came into focus. He looked concerned and, in a direct response to that, she scowled.
"Get out of my face," she griped, trying to sound as if she didn't desperately need something to prop herself up on right about now. But she'd hang herself before that something was Kidoumaru again. She was done with being coddled today.
…she was just done with today.
"We should probably be going," she heard Kidoumaru say when another of those blank moments passed her by, the ones where she suspected her ribs were hurting more than she could actually feel them.
A medic-nin would have told her that she was in shock. Not that she'd have believed them.
"Will we be graced with your presence again?" Sakon was as sardonic as ever, dry as a bone in a desert, but he couldn't disguise the very real hope that lurked beneath the surface of his indifference.
Kidoumaru smiled and, for once, Tayuya couldn't find any trace of insincerity in the expression, no matter how hard she searched. "Next time, we'll bring our son."
It'd been a while since she'd seen Sakon and Ukon. It had been longer still since she'd seen them speechless.
Outside of the room ('the cell,' she reminded herself with an effort) everything turned that much more hazy, that much more distant. Her hold on her body was tremulous, as if she were a kite and only a thin string tied her to the ground (and she'd never really liked her body all that much anyway so the sense of detachment was a welcome one) but she was still aware of Kidoumaru fixing Temari and Sasuke with an angry, icy look.
"We returned whatever captives we'd taken," he said. He was mad, she realised blearily, madder than he'd been in a while and it was a long while since nothing really seemed to piss Kidoumaru off. Ever. "It was insisted upon. One would have assumed that the same courtesy would have been extended towards us." The chilliness of his voice made her want to laugh, dizzily, because the fools had made him angry and that was never a smart thing to do. Kidoumaru got vicious when he was angry – he was just smarter about it than her. More calculated.
The bastards were gonna burn.
"We're going to the hospital now, but don't think that this is over." His words echoed in the corridors of her ears and then she was moving again and the world was whirling in a funny direction as the cracked cage of her ribs made it hard to breathe.
"…we just saw Sakon and Ukon," she said after a while, and it sounded foolish, even to her. She just couldn't conjure up the energy or the air to give two shits.
"Yeah."
Tayuya looked thoughtful even as she stumbled and Kidoumaru had to catch her again. She batted him away irritably ("I can walk without a fucking crutch!") but the dazed, contemplative look remained. "Knew they were too annoying to die."
Even with her funny view from below of his jaw she could still see his smile and she had to note, as a growing pressure mounted behind her temples, that he'd stopped smiling like that a while ago.
And why knowing that Sakon and Ukon were alive had brought it back.
oOo
Jiroubou looked stunned when they told him.
"Alive?" he echoed.
Tayuya managed to land a kick on his meaty kneecap even though was flat on her back. "That's what we said, shithead," she snapped, then looked irritably down to where one of the medics had his hands on her ribs. "Can't you hurry this up?"
"Not if you want them to heal right, Tayuya-san," the weedy guy said mildly. She huffed a few curses under her break, but flopped down and was at least somewhat pliant while the man did his job.
"Patience is a virtue," Kidoumaru said guilelessly as he bounced Hisoka up and down on his hip. He was a quiet child normally, but the stressful atmosphere of being in a strange, foreign place made him fret almost as much as the heat did and he clung to anything familiar.
Luckily, Kidoumaru had six arms to cling back with.
Wordlessly (and keeping her torso as still as she could) Tayuya gave him the finger. Kidoumaru just laughed and rested his chin on top of his son's very red head.
He'd never wanted to be a father. Like many raised in the shinobi lifestyle, he hadn't considered them an option. Besides, his people were too many countries away to count and who else would want to breed with a man with three times as many arms as them? His lack of a desire for children stemmed more from practicality than self-pity. What would he do with a child when he was on a mission, while Oto was at war?
Besides. Children were loud and, quite often, sticky. He could manage without.
Then the war had happened and so many had died (too many) that Oto was on the verge of dissolution. The breeding edict hadn't been of his own conception, but he had enforced it and when it had applied to Tayuya…well, he'd made himself useful.
It had all been out of duty initially, but what had shocked Kidoumaru (and he didn't shock easily) was how much he'd come to enjoy the feeling the warm little body supported in his arms and the knowledge that the little guy was his.
Much of what Kidoumaru had ever had in his life had been taken away from him.
No one could remove the ties of blood.
"Alive and healthy," he said, giving Jiroubou the civil answer that the larger man hadn't been able to get out of Tayuya. "All limbs present and accounted for."
"And it's definitely them?"
Kidoumaru allowed himself a small smile – he didn't blame Jiroubou for being sceptical. In their line of business people you thought were dead didn't just waltz out of the woodwork – suicide was preferable to being a hostage. "Their chakra hasn't changed."
"And it's not as if someone who didn't come from Oto would know how to make themselves reek of the fucking seal." Tayuya winced and the healer made a remonstrating noise. "You try staying still when it hurts like a son of a bitch," she snapped back, tetchy.
Kidoumaru made a point of meeting Jiroubou's gaze and holding it. "It was them," he said quietly. "No doubt about it."
Jiroubou must have been holding his breath unconsciously because he let it go with that promise and some of the tension went out of his broad shoulders. "Nine years…" he murmured, more than a little amazement lining his deep voice.
Kidoumaru felt a smile come forwards unannounced. "I know."
"There," the healer pronounced, giving Tayuya's ribs one last thoughtful press. "Nothing too active for a couple of weeks though, and you might find moving from standing to sitting or vice versa uncomfortable."
Tayuya rolled her eyes though the movement was half-hidden by red hair that was stiffened into hard spikes with dried blood. "I'll keep it in mind," she said, words heavily laced with a sarcasm that the medic seemed to ignore as he bowed to the three of them and left.
"Careful," Jiroubou warned when Tayuya started sitting up, which only provoked her to do it faster (and even if she winced at the end, Kidoumaru knew she'd rather piss Jiroubou off than maintain her own health any day.)
"Here." Hisoka had been making vague squirmy motions to be put down so Kidoumaru placed him on the ground, patting his shock of red hair with a free hand. "Why don't you show your mother what Naoko-san showed you how to use today?"
The little boy padded over to where Tayuya was sitting and, solemn as ever, presented her with a shuriken. Tiny it may have been, but Tayuya accepted it gravely and, while her pat on his head was gruff and lacking in overt affection, it made her son smile all the same.
"Nice to know someone got something useful out of today," she muttered, sounding pissed-off. But when the child clambered up onto the bed beside her and nestled against her side, she didn't push him away.
oOo
"Yo."
Temari had only taken three steps away from the Kazekage's tower when a shadow separated itself from the rest of the darkness cloaking the building and coalesced into the form of a man.
"…hey." Saying anything else required more energy than she had left.
She felt rather than saw Shikamaru fall into step with her. "Rough day?" he offered, words laced with an irony that made her curl her lip in a façade of a smile.
"The normal," she replied, equally insincere.
The sun had set hours ago, while she was still briefing her brothers and Baki on the events that had occurred out in the wastelands and now the glassy stars blinked down at her. The evening's chill wormed its way through the gaps in her clothing, made her flesh tense if not shiver.
Then Shikamaru's hand was on her shoulder and the dry warmth of his palm seeped down through the layers of cloth between them. She stopped and looked at him, half surprised, half irritated with his sudden decision to actually be forward for once.
"Are you okay?" His tone was carefully neutral.
Temari wanted to say yes, to brush him off so that she could go home and sleep, but Shikamaru was so damn…unassuming that she couldn't get offended over his asking.
"She didn't kill me," came the weary reply.
"From what Sasuke says, she tried awfully hard."
"I can't blame her." Then the furrows in Temari's brow deepened, became canyons against the plain of her skin. "Actually, yes, yes I fucking can. She's a fool and she's wrong." The lines smoothed out again suddenly and her sigh was once again tired. "But she's a fool in a way that I'd probably be if I'd walked in her shoes." Temari smiled at that, but the expression was sour and self-mocking. "I'm too goddamn understanding sometimes."
Shikamaru snorted and she shot him an annoyed look to which he paid no heed at all. "Clearly. Because you're secretly so soft at heart."
Irritation prompted her to take a swipe at his spiky head and self-preservation made him duck away languidly, but it was enough to rouse her from the flatness she'd sunk into once the fight's adrenalin had leeched itself from her veins. "I hate you sometimes."
He caught her hand on the arc back to her, caught it and pressed his fingers against her palm and looked meaningfully down at her.
Her expression softened and, for a brief moment, she squeezed back. Then it was business as normal when she pulled her hand away. "Come on." The pace she set in the direction of her home was fast enough that Shikamaru was in danger of being left behind.
He'd get there though. Eventually. That was something she could count upon not to change.
oOo
"You're quiet tonight."
"You're bothersome tonight."
Sakon grinned at his brother's absent-minded shootdown. "Just tonight?"
Ukon's pale hair reflected the lamplight when it swung forwards, shading his face as he leant over his book. "Duly corrected: always."
Sakon watched him read for a while longer then propped his chin on one elegant hand. "You didn't answer me."
"You didn't ask a question," was the swift response.
Unworried by the relative curtness of Ukon's words, Sakon just continued to stare at him benignly. He knew how to push his older brother's buttons.
It was a gift inherent to all the younger siblings that were ever born.
Ukon pointedly ignored him for a few long minutes (he even went as far as to turn his first page in the last quarter of an hour) but the tick that developed over his left eye was indicative of the success of Sakon's technique. Finally, with an annoyed exhalation, he shut his book and glared at his younger brother. "I wasn't ready to see them," he snapped. "Happy now?"
"Quite." Sakon's look of sympathy clashed with his narrow features and angular eyes. "We knew they were out there."
"And how likely did you think it was that Suna was just going to let it slip that we were still around?" His acerbic tongue lashed like a whip. "It's not as if we expected to ever see them again."
The younger brother raised an eyebrow at Ukon's unusual slip into anything resembling self-pity or overt disquiet. "Shouldn't we be happy about this?" Ukon didn't answer and Sakon rolled his eyes. "You've just got your knickers in a twist because Tayuya's squirted out a sproglet."
It was amusing to watch expressions war for dominance on Ukon's face, disgust shouldering embarrassment and aggravation out of the way, only to be ambushed by the emotions it thought it had ousted. "As if."
"Kidoumaru must have had a fun time with that – putting your dick in Tayuya's reach seems too much like courting death to me."
"You're so crude."
"It's been said."
Ever the tactile pair, Sakon saw nothing wrong with moving to stand behind his brother so that he could loop a comforting arm around his slender neck. "They'll come back. Temari wouldn't have let on that they had us if she was just going to bar them from seeing us again."
Ukon automatically leant back against the familiar warmth of his brother's body – he didn't push to merge, but the action was enough to let Sakon know that he was feeling uneasy. Vulnerable. He heard his older brother sigh and then, quieter, "What if they don't like us anymore?"
"They didn't like us in the first place."
"You know what I mean." Ukon sounded exasperated. "They've built a life without us, survived without us. They've got a life, they've got a village – they've even got a kid! What place is there for us with them?"
Sakon's response was to hold his brother more tightly. "They'll still want us," he said and resisted the urge to say it again to increase the chances of it being true.
oOo
"You done eating?" Tayuya asked her son.
"Nearly." Hisoka nodded soberly at her, chopsticks delving into the last of his rice.
"Finish up quickly," Kidoumaru interjected, his eyes on Tayuya. "I think your mother needs to go to bed."
"Fuck off, spider-freak. I'm fine."
Kidoumaru smirked – her claims of wellness would have been more convincing if they hadn't been broken up by a decided wince when her newly healed ribs complained about her movement. "Sure you are, honey."
The obvious taunt made her toss a plate at his head. Kidoumaru calmly caught it with one of his hands and placed it next to a smiling Hisoka. "Guess mommy's cranky, huh?" One of the redheads in the room giggled; the other scowled. It wouldn't have been difficult to predict which one would have which response.
"I'll fucking show you cranky, asswipe."
Kidoumaru's excellent hearing picked up her muttered words and he leered at her in jest. "That a promise?" The look she sent him in response was disgusted and held a promise of certain damage for his body.
And Kidoumaru liked his body.
He quickly turned to Hisoka who was demonstrating his usual unshakeable sobriety in the face of his mother's foul mouth. "Hey, small stuff, wanna go get washed up?"
"'kay."
As it usually did when Hisoka's sentences consisted of only one or two words, Kidoumaru wasted a few seconds wondering just how Tayuya (who had a propensity for being crude and volatile) and himself (who talked far too much) had produced such a sweet, quiet child.
Or how the little boy seemed immune to picking up the more colourful parts of his mother's vocabulary.
Hisoka's small (and slightly sticky) hand was firmly in one of his when Kidoumaru opened the door, but the tearful face that greeted him on the other side of the threshold made him stop.
"Uh, Tayu?"
"What?"
"Someone to see you."
"Fucking hell. What does a person need to do to get a few hours of-" Her tirade faltered when she saw the tears rolling down Kaede's cheeks. "-peace…Kaede, what the hell?"
The genin's face quivered and then crumpled, deep feeling making it fold in on itself. "Tayuya-sensei…"
Then Tayuya had herself an armful of sobbing girl-child and all Kidoumaru could do was return her confused look. Turning to him for help with a sobbing genin who was both young and female was pointless.
There was a reason he didn't have a genin team. Or a girlfriend.
"…Oi, brat, what's wrong?"
Kidoumaru's mouth twitched a little in wry bitterness. What hadn't been wrong with today? His mind involuntarily flickered to the memory of Seiichi's pale frame lying on the shiny, black marble slab in the morgue where they'd found him after having seen Sakon and Ukon. The boy hadn't been his own student but, perhaps more than with Tayuya and Jiroubou, Kidoumaru had found that the bond of Otonin to Otonin was enough for him to deem a person important. So the man would have mourned Seiichi's death even if he hadn't been fond of the genin for his own merits, however exhausting they had often proven to be.
Right now, his grief had been placed in cold storage within the confines of his mind. He couldn't afford the dulling affect mourning would place on him and he forced the sombre image out of his immediate consciousness.
Not that the sight of Tayuya scowling down at the inconsolable Kaede was any easier to cope with, particularly because the scowl wasn't so much angry as lost. Helpless. His fiery teammate was faced with a misery that she felt as well, but couldn't understand, and she certainly didn't know how to make her student's tears go away.
"Come on, lad," he said quietly to Hisoka. "Your mother and Kaede-chan need some time to talk."
The look Tayuya flashed him was almost scared and it screamed 'don't leave me to face this on my own' but he ignored it.
This was something that she needed to dive in the deep end with and it was sink or swim.
oOo
The bathing facilities in Suna were fairly Spartan, but this could be forgiven given their arid environment. This meant that bathing time went quickly and once both Kidoumaru and Hisoka were appropriately well-scrubbed, less than fifteen minutes had elapsed since they'd left Tayuya and her blonde student alone together.
Standing outside the door to Tayuya's suite, Kidoumaru hesitated about going in and disturbing the student-teacher pair, but Hisoka had let out three hefty yawns in the past five minutes and looked ready to fall asleep on his feet if he didn't find himself in a bed soon. The Otonin took a breath and pushed the door open.
He'd never seen Tayuya look so relieved before. He also saw the open bottle of what looked suspiciously like scotch on the low table near where the two females were sitting and immediately raised an eloquent eyebrow at her.
"It was for me, not her," Tayuya snapped, interpreting his look. "Geez, how fucking irresponsible do you think I am?"
If laughing hadn't been completely inappropriate, Kidoumaru would have done so. Hysterically. 'Tayuya' and 'responsible' were rarely found together in the same paragraph, let alone sentence.
Her shirt displayed obvious tearstains and more of the same disappeared into Kaede's collar. The girl wasn't holding onto Tayuya anymore though her pre-adolescent frame leant towards the older woman like a flower towards the sun.
"Is it Seiichi?" he asked Tayuya in a low undertone. He'd pitched his voice quietly enough that Kaede probably wouldn't have heard it even if she hadn't still been crying quietly in the exhausted, hiccupping manner of someone who'd been doing so for far too long.
"I don't know and she won't fucking tell me. Every time I ask she just starts crying again!"
Kidoumaru wanted to wince. At his side, Hisoka's balance wavered and he absently hoisted his son up onto one hip.
"Kaede-chan?" She looked up at him through her blunt fringe and tear-bedecked eyelashes. "This may help. Trust me on this one, okay?"
He didn't wait for an answer before he touched two fingers to her forehead and concentrated on matching her chakra rhythms to his own.
"What did you do?" Tayuya asked him suspiciously once he took his fingers away from where Kaede's supposed third eye would have been and her mind's chakra centre actually was.
"Blocked a few neurotransmitters from being released in her synapses. She should be calmer – not by much, probably, because it's a shaky technique and she'd a pretty emotional girl most of the time so the dampening effect is lessened, but you might actually be able to get her to talk now."
Tayuya didn't look as if she approved, but she did hunker down in front of the girl, put her grim face on a level with Kaede's tearstained one. "Brat. Talk to me."
Kaede looked as if she had difficult focusing on her for a few seconds, then her vision cleared. Her full lower lip trembled and a round drop of salt water glistened at the corner of her left eye, stubbornly refusing to go the way of so many of its brethren and fall. "Seiichi-kun's dead, Tayuya-sensei," she said in a broken little voice.
Tayuya's face, if possible, turned even grimmer. "I know." With the shadows darkening her face and lines that he hadn't known existed springing into existence around her eyes and mouth Kidoumaru suddenly knew what she'd look like when she was ninety. Not that either of them would reach that old an age.
"He's dead." Now that stubborn tear finally fell and more followed, streaming down the girl's round cheeks. "And it all happened so fast – the water, the lightning…he…when the…I didn't know that anyone could do that."
Tayuya's face still looked too bleakly old for her age. She said nothing.
"He didn't even stand a chance, Tayuya-sensei. There was nothing he could have done!" Kaede struggled with her own words, emotion warring with coherency. It took her a few moments to find calm (or some semblance of it) enough to speak again. "And I'm so sad that he's gone—Dai's heartbroken—and his parents, what are we going to say to them? But…" Here, her breath caught in her throat and her face crumpled again, tears coming in a hot, silent flood. "But I'm an awful person because I should be sad that he's d-d-dead, but all I can think about is how scared I am about my match tomorrow." Kidoumaru could see his jutsu losing ground to her emotions with every second that passed, could see the hysteria rising within her tomorrow as a painful sob fought its way out of her tiny ribcage. "I don't want to die, Tayuya-sensei, I don't. And I knew that it was a risk when we entered the exams, but me and Dai-kun and S-Seiichi-kun, I thought it couldn't happen to us and…and…"
Kidoumaru's heart, the one he'd thought of as jaded and bitter and far too attuned to death and all the grief it bought with it, twisted in his breast when she broke down again. He made to reach out towards her, suddenly needing to shut the receptors on the girl's post-synaptic membranes down again, but then Tayuya was in his way and he pulled back, startled.
Tayuya looked down at the girl with her hands on her hips and a harsh expression in her eyes.
"Idiot," she said and Kidoumaru's head snapped around towards her, startled as he was by her seeming lack of empathy. It was his turn to be ignored. "You make it sound as if you're the first person to ever be scared before."
"Tayuya…" She didn't even look at him while her hand gestured for him to shut the fuck up.
"Hayasaki Kaede, it's normal to not want to die. Fucking normal. And all that means is that you have to take that fear and use it so that you fight all the harder. When you're pissed off or scared shitless, those are the times when you should be fighting at your best because you want something. You should want not to die more than anything else and that means that nothing else should matter. Nothing else should hold you back. Seiichi…" It was only now that Tayuya seemed to take a breath. "Seiichi was unlucky. Chance fucked him over and it can do the same to you. But the point is to know that, when you do die, you fought like a son of a bitch to prevent it."
…Kidoumaru must have been more worn out from today than he'd realised because she was actually making sense. Twisted, awful, painful sense, but things concerning Tayuya were never pretty or nice. They were gritty and harsh, but their truth often struck you to your core, however bad they then made you feel. And he wasn't alone because Kaede had stopped crying, whether from shock or understanding.
Tayuya tossed her hair back over her shoulder and it shone like fresh blood in the light. In that one moment, she seemed unbreakable and untouchable. Kidoumaru felt the irrational urge to hold his breath. Then the moment passed and she was herself again, scruffy and irritable and imperfect again.
"Weak people are pussies because they let fear order them around. People are only strong when they take fear and make it fucking work for them.' She smacked Kaede around the head, just enough to startle a yelp out of the girl. "So no more of this weepy shit."
"And that is how your honoured mother deals with children," Kidoumaru murmured to the sleepy Hisoka in his arms with a resigned sigh. "You are going to need so much therapy when you're older."
oOo
"Was she alright when you left her?"
"Out like a light as soon as her head touched the bloody pillow." Tayuya scraped her hair out of her face irritably – the sun in Suna seemed to have promoted a frenetic burst of growth in the follicles and it was now long enough loose to get on her nerves. "Hisoka?"
"The same. I put him in your bed." She bristled at the presumption and he smiled down at her. "I thought you'd want the company tonight."
She snorted – both at the concept of needing company and the assumption that she wanted to sleep. "You're so full of shit sometimes."
She half-recognised the sadness in his eyes, but she was in not mental state to even attempt analysing it so it ended up ignored. It was more difficult to do the same when he touched her shoulder. Even the light weight of his hand was uncomfortable – in the mood she was in her skin prickled and rebelled against contact. "It's been a long day. You should sleep."
She could see it in his face, that odd need of his to offer some sort of verbal assurance that everything would be okay. She didn't want him to tell her that everything would be okay. So she retreated into hostility, the only escape she knew.
"Don't treat me like a kid," she snapped at him. "It's been years since you had any say in what I do, so don't fucking regress now."
She'd hurt him. It was written in his stance, in the way the complicated structure of his shoulders stiffened. And part of her despised the fact that she had the capacity to hurt him because he'd let her get in too deep.
Tayuya felt invisible bars closing in on her and claustrophobia wanted to beat them back. Too many people expected far too much of her.
She couldn't stay inside any longer.
"I'm going out." She jerked her chin towards the shadowy room where Hisoka was sleeping. "Watch him."
She didn't give him time to protest as she drew energy in on herself, thought of a wide, open space and jumped.
oOo
Walls trapped heat so the sudden chill of the desert at night compared to the relative warmth of inside made Tayuya shiver. Her sleeping attire, consisting of thin, loose pants, a ratty top and a light robe offered little protection against the cold and she wrapped her arms around her torso to warm herself up.
The air around her occupied a large volume, her arms an exponentially smaller one – I'll allow you to come to your own conclusions about the success of this attempt.
She looked out over the village hidden in the sand without really seeing it, her eyes blank and empty.
Cold air moved. It smelled of dust and thirst, and moved her hair where it fell around her shoulders. She'd picked the highest point in Suna to teleport to so it wasn't surprising that there was nothing to obstruct the chilling winds, but the press of an empty sky above her was comforting in a numbing sort of way.
Tayuya was alone in a way that she hadn't been for a very long time and the solitude calmed the feral part of her that wanted to dive into a wilderness without other people in it and never come out again.
Solitude, however, could never last.
At first, it had just been her on this high, lonely rooftop.
Then, between one breath and the next, it was her, a Konoha shinobi and the pale, quicksilver wraith that was his dog in the moonlight.
oOo
Author's Comments:
Monster chapter – just over seven thousand words – but I'm happy with the way it went. My chapters seem to fall into two categories: action chapters and exploration chapters. This is definitely one of the latter kind. Though things seem to have gone from nothing happening to everything happening at once. Whew.
Not much to say, really. I hope the chapter speaks for itself. Feel free to leave any comments, queries or critiques in a review (particularly the latter since I often get so caught up in the contents of one chapter that I forget about tiny, important details such as continuity.)
Note: I'm rather amused that I'm typing this while soaring over the Atlantic Ocean. Everyone else is sleeping and I'm the only fool awake. But God bless laptops and nine-hour flights in which a lazy lass can catch up with her writing.
My thanks to TaintedMoonlight, rax99, claymade (who really made me think), Monoshiri (whose work 'Warmongers' you should definitely check out for some chibi Sound Four fun!) Sycogerl64 (I'm so glad one of my favourite reviewers has resurfaced!) and Muria for their kind, kind reviews and never once nagging me for being slow to write.
Edit: ff dot net seems to be refusing to allow me to underline anything, even editing it in the docs section. How irritating...
In Next Week's Episode:
"I didn't want company." By now, she knew the presence of his chakra and didn't need to look behind her to confirm his identity.
"'Fraid you don't have a choice," Kiba replied, voice gruff. "It's a twenty-four seven job escorting you."