I still kind of feel like this should have just been the second half of the last chapter but… well, it's done now.

Thank you for reviewing chapter twenty-three: KakashiHatabae, SuperKitty4789 (and thanks for reviewing chapter 12 as well!) And also Well-Intentioned Anti-Villain for reviewing chapter three! You guys were all spread out this time, but I loved seeing all of them!

Chapter Twenty-Four

Where was all this luck coming from? Once again, I was left feeling like a golden opportunity had just fallen into my lap. The cynic in me warned me to question it, or at least be wary of incoming Karmic retaliations, but I had to push that train of thought onto a different track for now. I knew immediately upon reentering the apartment that I had more pressing concerns.

I really should have been expecting Naruto to be listening at the other side of the door. Even Sasuke, it seemed, had succumbed to his curiosity and gotten up from the table. But Sasuke had also moved to hide his eavesdropping once it became clear our conversation had come to an end. He now stood awkwardly between the table and the door, apparently having stopped upon realizing Naruto was not following his lead.

Naruto was frozen just inside the doorway, a look of shocked horror on his face. I suspected it may have been this expression that really put a halt to Sasuke's getaway. He remained watching attentively, ready to retreat at a second's notice. I ignored him for now, kneeling down to be at eye level with Naruto.

"Naruto," I said quietly, trying to bring him back to us. It seemed to take quite some time for him to break free of his thoughts and focus on me.

"Is that boy really dead?" he whispered, his voice pinched and equally quiet.

"Yes," I answered. He whirled around and ran to his room before I could say anything else. The door slammed behind him, leaving Sasuke and myself in very apparent silence.

I straightened back up with a sigh. Sasuke and I remained in that silence for a good minute. I decided to leave Naruto alone for now, finally moving back to the table to wrap up his dinner for later. Sasuke followed me back, reclaiming his seat and resuming his own meal. All of his movements were slow, and at last he asked, "Did Naruto know the boy who died?"

"Not very well," I told him honestly. "But they didn't part on the best terms, and Naruto never apologized. And now he'll never get to."

Which I was sure was on his mind front and center right now. Sasuke didn't ask any more questions, and I had to wonder what he took away from this. Naruto was such an open book. Figuring out what exactly was going on behind Sasuke's controlled expressions was going to take some getting used to. After what he'd been through, would such a small-scale tragedy like this one bounce right off of him?

I remained at the table long after Sasuke had stolen away to his own room. As awful as this was for Kei, I wasn't terribly sad for Tanjiro himself. He hadn't had much of a life to live, with his diagnosis constantly hanging over his head. Maybe he would be reincarnated properly and make good use of his second life.

But it wasn't as if I could use this rationale to cheer Naruto up. And as he still had yet to reemerge from his room, I figured it was about time for me to go in after him. There was no answer when I knocked, and when I opened the door all the lights were off. Naruto lay on his stomach, face turned to the opposite wall, perhaps hoping anyone who looked in on him would think he was already asleep. But I knew him too well for a trick like that.

I didn't turn the lights on, but I did close the door softly behind me before crossing the room and sitting beside him on the bed, placing one hand on his back. He accepted then that the jig was up and rolled over to face me. The tear tracks were still evident on his face, but they weren't something either of us needed to acknowledge.

"It's not fair," he said at last, his voice hoarse.

"Yeah," I agreed simply. "I know."

We sat like that in silence for a while. I wasn't sure what else to say, if there was anything I could say. I'd been similarly lost the one time he'd met Tanjiro and been confronted with the cold reality of his future. Impossibilities were something I'd done my best to keep out of our home. Because I may not have known exactly what I was doing when it came to raising a kid, but I did at least have an outline of who he should be. I was doing my best to make him as optimistic and determined as the fictional version of him I'd grown up with, but that first part at least didn't come naturally to me. Often, I couldn't help feeling that many of his greatest strengths were inborn already, with no help from me.

Indeed, he didn't appear to be seeking reassurances now. In his own way, Naruto already had managed to come to terms with this. And though I saw sadness, there was no trace of defeat in his eyes. He finally rolled back over and ended this conversation with a staunch, "Well, when I become Hokage, I'm gonna make the doctors better so no more kids have to die."

I had to smile and just managed to suppress a laugh. In certain ways, his words were so childish, but I was relieved he felt this way. Naruto's first response to any injustice, no matter how extreme, was to see what he could do about it. I didn't fully believe that this was something I had instilled in him, but I was glad he had it.

"Good," I told him, squeezing his shoulder lightly before standing up. "Get some sleep. We'll talk some more in the morning."

I left him then. Though the outcome was positive, I didn't feel like I'd really played much of a role in it. Not the role I was supposed to play. And perhaps it was that knowledge that pushed me to knock on Sasuke's door as well.

There was a short pause and then a curious, "Yes?"

Sasuke's room had practically become a separate part of the house since he'd moved in. I'd wanted him to have his own private space, as I hadn't anticipated a smooth transition. Around us, Sasuke was quiet and contained as could be. Even so, I was surprised at how meticulously tidy he kept his room. There was a small cot pressed up against the wall where he sat now. There wasn't exactly room for much else, most of his personal belongings in boxes under the bed. He, too, was sitting almost with his back to me, twisted towards an overturned box on the bed. I spotted a marked up piece of paper on his makeshift desk. Academy homework, it must be.

"You know, you can do that at the table. You don't have to sit all hunched over in here." Once again, I felt a twinge of guilt at his living conditions. And yet, Sasuke had made no indication that he was fed up and ready to walk out at any moment, so he must have been getting something out of this arrangement. Perhaps even our imperfect company was enough.

His expression was impossible to read. "It's fine. I'm just looking it over."

"Well, it won't be for much longer. I haven't told Naruto yet, but Kei asked me to take over her shop after Tanjiro's funeral… and I'm going to do it. There's a bigger apartment attached, so you won't have to deal with this for much longer."

"Okay," he replied simply.

I very nearly rolled my eyes at the stiffness between us. Sometime after our talk out on the steps that night, I'd stopped worrying about driving him away with every minor argument.

"Okay," I said, closing the door behind me and sitting on the edge of his bed. "Well, there's something else. We haven't really talked about your family. I know the village put together a memorial, but was there anything you wanted to do?"

His expression remained carefully blank. "It's not like anything can help them now."

"It's not about them," I told him. "It's about you. Part of it is respect for the deceased, sure, but mostly, people set up shrines or decorate graves to make themselves feel better. Either because they couldn't save someone or they just miss them."

"So I shouldn't worry about not following family traditions or something if I can think of something that would make me feel better?" he suggested, flashing me the closest thing I'd ever seen to a cheeky smile on his face. How was it that this kid was so much better at reading me than I was at reading him?

I knew my smile made me look like just as much of a smartass. But that was okay. Sasuke and I were starting to settle into our own pattern of communication. "That is the idea, yes."

There was not a single crack to be found in his wall. "Well, the Uchiha clan doesn't make a big thing of lingering over death."

I leaned in a little closer, almost without meaning to. "Good for them. I want to know what Sasuke wants to do."

Like last time, I got him to look away first. "Nothing. Their graves are fine the way they are."

"Okay. Let me know if that changes."

"Do you believe in an afterlife?" he asked very suddenly, just as I was about to leave him be for the night. I turned back but didn't answer for a long minute.

"I just think about my parents sometimes," he went on, "and wonder whether they care about what's being done with their graves. If they still can."

I was starting to feel like interacting with Sasuke wasn't so complicated after all. It was just that I had to prove I cared with each and every conversation. That I was worth the time it took for him to open up. I still hadn't answered, and he was watching me very carefully.

"Yes…" I replied at last, very slowly and sounding as if I didn't totally believe it myself. Sasuke raised an eyebrow. I sighed and sat back down on the bed. This would not be a quick exchange.

"I believe… in reincarnation," I said at last. How could I not? But despite all my interactions with Angie and death and whatever else was out there, it was that 'whatever else' that I was still a little undecided on.

Sasuke's eyebrows had furrowed, as if this was the least likely option he'd been expecting. "Really?"

"Yes. But as far as ghosts and having a consciousness in some sort of heaven or hell… I don't think so. At most, I'd believe in a sort of… purgatory. A place souls go when they're waiting to be reincarnated but not a place where souls just stay, looking down on us."

"Is that why you don't do anything for Naruto's parents?" he asked without any sort of softening transition.

"Jesus…" I muttered, a little impressed and, admittedly, intimidated. The kid was sharp. And I was starting to realize he didn't let anything go. "You don't pull any punches, huh?"

His eyebrows had pulled together in confusion again, and it took me a moment to understand what had tripped him up. I had tried—and failed for the most part—to wipe all the foreign sayings and expressions from my vocabulary when Naruto started talking. The problem was identifying what counted as 'foreign,' and as I wasn't exactly the most social of creatures… Well, I heard my own habits bleed into Naruto's speech every now and then.

"I've visited the memorial they put up for all of the Nine Tailed Fox's victims a few times, but Naruto's grieving process is a little different than yours. He was too young to remember then when they died. I want him to know who his parents were, but I don't want their deaths to hang over his head any more than they have to."

"Grieving," Sasuke muttered with a bitterness that wasn't as familiar as I'd expected it to be by now. "What does Naruto need to grieve for? He never knew them."

I was careful not to respond in kind. Perhaps maturity didn't require being the bigger person all the time, just knowing when it was absolutely necessary to be. "Believe me, I'd love to think I'm giving him everything he could ever want or need, but you think he doesn't see all those other kids with real parents—and not just an older sister doing her best impression—and feel like there's something missing from his life? It's not always necessary to have had something to feel its loss."

He didn't try to fight me any harder on that—for now, anyway—so that's where I left him for tonight. I could only hope I'd given his mind a second track to rest on.

…

The day of Tanjiro's funeral, there wasn't a single cloud in the sky. It was one of those cool late September days that's just starting to remind people that autumn is setting in. The service was fairly well-attended. Kei had been well-liked and well-known by the other shopkeepers in town. I had Naruto on one side and Sasuke on the other, the latter I suspected was only here to sate his curiosity.

Sasuke was curious about Naruto, I was sure even he would admit to that. This was an opportunity to see him out of his element. And though it felt a little exploitative—this was a funeral, after all—it was hard for me to discourage anything that kept his mind open.

Likewise, I was sure Naruto would be willing to get to know Sasuke better if he could just get over his own stubborn pride. Not that any of this would be on his mind at the moment. Naruto was uncharacteristically solemn at my side. I had told him about moving the night before, and he didn't seem to have it in him to be the least bit sad about leaving the only home he'd ever known. It was hard to believe he was still a few weeks shy of turning eight.

But there was something to be said for his newfound maturity. He didn't shed a single tear throughout the entire service. Only when the personal eulogies—mostly aimed at Kei—began did he bring up a hand to twine his fingers through mine. We didn't stand out amongst the guests, nor did I try to fight the crowd to get to her. She knew we were there, and I would be seeing Kei again soon. But I did pause, ever so briefly, to say my own silent goodbyes to Tanjiro.

Review please!

I don't own Naruto.

I wanted Kani's connection to Tanjiro to be a little stronger than it ended up being… But, eh. I'm ready to put this part of the story to rest. Mostly, I think I included Kei and Tanjiro to really cement in for Connie that she'd left her old life behind. To look at this kid whose story was so much like hers and realize that she wasn't that kid anymore. Anyway, thank you for reading this far!