.
It's hard watching people change, but it's
even harder remembering how they used to be.
It takes Hiwa three separate tries to wake up.
The first, she's up long enough to open her eyes, glance around and catch sight of Rei curled into a ball on the floor a few feet away, and go right back to sleep.
The second time, she thinks she gets up and wanders into a kitchen. Which kitchen? She has no idea because the entire place is unfamiliar to her. But she gropes through the cabinets until she finds a glass. She fills it with water, chugs it down, and then refills it and downs it again. Then she stumbles back to the bed and conks out.
It's on the third attempt that when she sits up and rubs the sleep from her eyes, it's with the usual sleep-induced bleariness. Her bones don't feel like they're full of lead, anymore, and that alcove inside her chest doesn't feel scorched and raw.
She can guess immediately what happened: Genma and Kakashi brought her home while she was sleeping off her chakra exhaustion. Which she's grateful for. Disorienting, maybe, but it saves her a day's worth of travel, and she sees no reason to complain about that.
Hiwa forces herself to throw her legs over the bed. The wooden floors are cold against the soles of her feet—iced by air conditioning, by the feel of it.
The second her feet hit the ground, Rei's head pops up. She hops to her feet and wanders over to Hiwa, her tail wagging back and forth so fast that her butt wiggles along with it.
"Hey," Hiwa murmurs.
Rei sets her head in Hiwa's lap and nudges Hiwa in the stomach.
Hiwa drops a hand on her head. "Good to see you, too. Wanna help me up?"
So, using Rei for support, Hiwa hobbles through the house on unsteady legs, and finally realizes where the hell she is.
She's in her apartment.
The place looks different with the furniture in it, and a sense of satisfaction warms her when she sees that whoever Jiraiya tasked with filling her apartment did a pretty good job, all things considered.
Her first stop is the bathroom, to both pee a river and get these dumb prosthetics off her face. It takes her sleep-clumsy hands a few minutes longer than it should to undo the seal, scrawling the deactivation seal with the ink and brush she keeps in her bathroom for removing these types of things for this exact reason, but she gets there eventually. Longer than she'll ever admit, but she gets there, and that's what matters.
Next stop is the main part of the apartment.
As she crosses into the living room, a plush dark grey couch, a matching grey armchair, and a glass table perched on top of a circular black rug is waiting for her. Her books are all set up inside of a massive black bookshelf that takes up most of the far wall—out of order, but that's to be expected—with yawning aralia, in the perfect spot to catch light from the window and glass slider that lead to her porch. The middle shelf has her photographs displayed on it, too, with a little succulent to keep them company.
"Whoever Jiraiya's agent is, she did a good job," Hiwa says. "Wonder if the couch or bookshelf are gonna collapse, though."
Rei bounds over to the couch and launches herself onto it. The couch flies back a few inches from the force of it, but doesn't buckle under Rei's weight.
"Guess not."
She notices a note sitting on the table.
Enjoy your new apartment. Tell Jiraiya to go suck ass.
It's signed: 'From a Fellow Kunoichi Stuck Dealing With Jiraiya'.
Hiwa scoffs and sets it on the bookshelf.
She makes her way into the kitchen and notices that to her neverending fortune, on her counter is a coffee maker. Then she digs through the cabinets and realizes there's no coffee to brew.
Hoping that the kunoichi bought her some basic groceries, Hiwa pulls the fridge open. She finds it empty save for a bag of takeout. The food inside isn't anything special—four rice balls and some tempura. But it's her saving grace as, second to having a cup of coffee, getting some food into her stomach is her top priority.
There's no note on the bag itself and given that it smells fresh Hiwa can tell whoever put it in there did it within the last few hours or so, she doubts it was the kunoichi. Genma, probably. She smiles to herself as she dumps it onto a plate and pops it into the microwave—thankfully, while the apartment didn't come fully furnished, a lot of the basic appliances were left behind, including a microwave and a radio.
Hiwa pulls out her steaming plate of food and takes it into the living room rather than the cute little circular dining table sitting inside the kitchen.
She gets herself a book, flicks on the radio, and grabs a blanket. Rei trails behind her and settles around her feet. She's too big to actually fit on the couch, but she sets her head down beside Hiwa, her nose pushed into Hiwa's thigh.
"Feeling clingy, huh?" Hiwa asks. She runs her hands down Rei's snout. "Yeah. Me too."
She'll worry about everything else later. For right now, she's going to sit on her couch, eat some food, enjoy the presence of her partner, listen to some music—maybe a show, if she's feeling really adventurous—and read a good book.
.
.
Hiwa strolls through the village with Rei at her side, her hands shoved in her pants pockets.
She's a bit stiff and really, she would rather be at home still, but her stomach wouldn't shut up and after a couple hours of it, she dragged herself up and wandered out the door. She's not planning to do a full grocery shop—she's just on the hunt for some kind of takeout.
Fortunately, her new apartment is pretty well in the heart of the village and she doubts she'll have to go far to find something worthwhile.
The sky's dim as she makes her way through the crowds, on its way to dark as the sun crawls beneath the horizon. She can smell the street food and restaurants, a combination of salty deep-fried things, sweet treats, and fish.
And that has Hiwa's attention for a while. So much so that when she walks past a BBQ stand where Genma and Raidou are seated, she almost doesn't notice them. She takes a step past the stand, stops, and then looks over her shoulder at them.
Raidou spots her and waves.
Hiwa turns on her heel and makes her way over to the stand. She rests her elbow on the counter. "Hey," she says, grinning. "Fancy seeing you here."
"Good to see you up," Raidou says. "Heard you were out for a while."
"Yeah. Not really sure how long."
And Genma says, "Three days."
Hiwa's back straightens and Raidou casts him a confused look.
That she was out cold for three days is noteworthy, but what gets her attention more is the tone that Genma says it in. It's not cold. It's not bitter. She can't put her finger on what it is in his voice that gets her. The detached way it's said, maybe.
It has Hiwa feeling like she's on the defensive and she can't for the life of her understand that because there's no fight in front of them.
What makes her feel better is that Raidou picked up on it too, so she's at least not imagining things.
"That so?" Hiwa asks.
"Yep." He smiles at her and a shiver runs down her spine. It's the same kind of smile she remembers him giving Saki. "How you feeling?"
"Fine," she says. "Yeah." She clears her throat. "You?"
He pats his side. "Fine enough."
"Thanks for the takeout, by the way."
And the confused look on his face makes the situation all the more disorienting.
"That… wasn't you?"
"No," Genma says. "Not me."
Hiwa pushes herself up off of the stand and rocks back on her heels.
Raidou narrows his eyes on Genma. "Want to join us, Hiwa? We only got our food a couple minutes ago. Still time for you to order and stuff."
She sticks her hands back in her pockets. Her thumb runs over the outside of her pack, and she pulls it out and tips one into her palm. "Nah," she murmurs. She slides the cigarette into the corner of her mouth.
The cigarette butt flares bright orange after she lights it and takes the first drag.
She smiles at them both. "But thanks for the offer, Raidou."
A ghost of a wince runs through Genma's features and Hiwa feels guilt stab at her.
He looks away, another knife, and Hiwa forces herself to ignore both that and the sinking feeling in her gut this whole conversation is giving her.
Maybe he's just having a bad day?
But that doesn't feel like what's going on here. A bad day is being a bit snappy or quieter than usual. This feels like she's talking to a stranger with Genma's face and voice.
Rei rubs at her thigh and Hiwa curls her hand into the fur along her neck. The warmth comforts her, as does the steady weight at her side. Hiwa pulls the cigarette out of her mouth and blows the smoke away from them.
"I"ve got to grab some things," she says. "Empty kitchen, you know."
"Yeah," Raidou says. "New apartment, right?"
"Few blocks down from here."
"Building Seventy-nine?"
"That's the one," Hiwa says.
He nods.
Genma smiles that smile at her again and Hiwa's flight instincts flare up. "You like how it looks?"
"Yeah, it's nice," she says. She takes a step back. "Gonna head off. Have a good dinner, guys."
She walks off without listening to see if either of them reply.
.
.
"The fuck is wrong with you?" Raidou asks.
Genma rolls his eyes. "Rai—"
"No, Genma. What was that?"
"It's complicated."
"Really? You're going to sit here and tell me that the two of you were—were cuddling and making out beyond just maintaining your cover, and that's what you do once you're back? Treat her like a stranger?"
"How did…" Genma sighs. "Kakashi."
"Damn right he spilled."
"Fuck, Rai, just… just butt out, alright?"
"So you can go and ruin another relationship?"
Genma bites down hard on his senbon. "Enough."
Raidou stares at Genma.
Something passes between them, like waves between two walkie-talkies, and where the flow is usually smooth Genma feels like there's something causing a disruption.
Raidou raises a hand and says, "Actually, I'll take this to go, please."
Genma closes his eyes. "Sorry, alright? But I just—"
"I'm not the one you need to apologize to," he says. "And I think you need some time alone to think about that. Come find me when you're ready to pull your head out of your ass."
He sits back in his seat and watches as Raidou's food is tossed into a styrofoam container and handed back to him.
Raidou hops off his stool. He shakes his head. "Really think about this," he says. "I don't want to watch you fuck this up. I know what you're trying to do, alright? But it's not going to work, not how you want it to. And I don't want to watch you hurt yourself like that."
"I know," Genma murmurs.
But he won't make any promises to Raidou—no need to lay out more promises that he's bound to break. No need to let somebody else he cares about fall.
"Good."
.
.
She takes the first half-decent thing she passes. It ends up being oden. Smells decent, looks decent, and without much care Hiwa orders something and tosses her money onto the counter.
Bounty in hand, she trudges home, making sure to take a different route because she doesn't want to see Genma right now.
That entire encounter has her confused and hurt in equal measure.
Because what even was that?
"I'm not going anywhere," he'd promised her.
And now he's gone and stepped back, out of arms reach from her, so far that he didn't even say 'hi'.
Honestly? Surprise is right up there in the maelstrom churning around her head, right now. Because she hadn't realized she'd pegged him so wrong until now. She doesn't think she was wrong in her initial assessment that Genma was the type to hold people close after having lost so many already. But she's realizing that maybe they're more alike than she thought.
As close as he seems to hold onto some people, like Raidou—like her, she'd started to think—he seems inclined to lock them out at the same time. He holds them close, wrapped up in a blanket to help them weather the blizzard, but she thinks now that all the blanket does is disguise the fact that his skin is as icy as the storm.
Hiwa chews on the inside of her cheek.
Much as she didn't want to, Hiwa sent Rei off to hunt because she knows that having hung around the house together the whole day, she's bound to be as hungry as Hiwa. But she almost wishes she didn't because she's not sure she wants to be in an empty house, right now.
It hurts.
The worst part is that she can't even bring herself to be mad at him after what he's done for her. She should be; she has every right to be, regardless of his previous kindness, of what she knows he's been through. You can't make a promise like that and then walk it back. Past experiences don't excuse current behaviours.
But when she tries to drum up the anger, all she feels is a dull thrum of sadness.
She shakes her head.
He's had days to think the mission over. Maybe he decided that it was just the nature of the mission that got him interested, that he was too invested in playing the part to keep his feelings straight. It's not unusual.
And for some reason, that hurts more than if he just changed his mind, because it meant that Hiwa's the idiot in this situation who caught feelings for real.
She wants to feel his arms around her again. She wants his hand on her cheek, his lips on the top of her head, his arm around her waist. She wants him. But apparently, he doesn't want her.
Hiwa presses the palms of her hands into her eyes and sighs, the takeout bag hanging off her elbow.
Well, if he wants space, he can have it. She won't chase him.
The logical part of her thinks that they need to go and hash this out and she can acknowledge that that's the best, most mature way to deal with this. But Hiwa doesn't feel mature right now. She feels like a teenage girl who just got rejected and rationality can go eat shit, for all she cares. After spending an entire mission being reasonable, she feels like she's earned a bout of pettiness.
So she won't go after him, she won't hunt him down and try to talk to him. If she sees him, she'll say hi. She'll chat.
She won't chase somebody who isn't interested in being chased.
She deserves better than that.
The mission report takes her a solid three days to write.
It's not long—she skimmed details, knowing full well that Jiraiya was going to be reading it, and kept it short-worded. She just couldn't be bothered to do it any quicker. Kakashi definitely hasn't turned his in yet, but she's sure Genma has. Hers won't say much different than his.
Not that that keeps the chunin from knocking on her door after a couple of days, disgruntled as they always are with having to make a house call. As it turns out, Rei works wonders at scaring off desk-chunin. Who would have thought?
But between the Genma Incident and the point at which she goes to hand in her mission report, she only leaves the house once to go and get groceries. The whole other chunk of time is spent sitting on her couch, reading and jotting down a sentence here and there between chapters. She knows she needs to go and train at some point, but that point is not today.
And every day, she glances at her calendar. She watches the days tick down, closer and closer to the Lunar Festival, closer and closer to the 10th of October.
Like with everything else currently going wrong right now, she shoves it all back out of her mind rather than let it take up her brain space.
Today, she's in the mission building, waiting in line with everybody else to hand off her scroll and then put that out of her mind, too. If anything becomes of the mission in regards to Konoha and Kusa relations, she'll hear about it from Jiraiya, in that she trusts. Not because she thinks he'll share that kind of information willy nilly, but because she's sure that she's the first on his list to send back into Grass Country to do more infiltration work. Better to pick the person that's up to date than further spread the information.
Aside from a couple of chunin and a lone jonin right up at the front, mid-argument with the desk chunin over something, most of the people ahead of her are jonin with their genin teams. Unfortunate for her as that doesn't make for a quiet, peaceful wait.
"But I was supposed to be the one to help her!" one of the genin cries. He stomps his foot. "Right?"
"You only wanted to help her because you thought she was cute," his kunoichi teammate says with a sneer.
"No! That's not true!"
The third genin says, "Yeah… it is."
When all of them turn to their jonin, all they get from the woman is a bored shrug.
"This sucked," says a genin from another team. He pulls his shirt away from him and Hiwa hears the way water and mud splatter onto the ground as a result. "Who hires genin to help farm?"
"Who is enough of an idiot to fall into the rice paddy?" his teammate counters. "You're a ninja! You're supposed to be, like, able to balance better, and stuff!"
The other teammate looks forlornly down at her shoes, lifting it up and watching as it leaves an imprint on the floor. "To be fair, the ground was really slippery."
"Still!"
"But if you all had applied yourselves and learned water walking when I tried to teach you, you would have been able to walk on top of the paddies," their jonin says.
"What?" the first boy cries.
Hiwa scoffs to herself and rolls her eyes.
She, Shinji, and Hiro were never quite like this. Neither she nor Hiro were energetic enough to get into bouts like this, more attuned to the quiet, petty sort of method to vent their frustration, and Shinji didn't have the capacity for it. Too nice.
She smiles to herself, small and bitter, and taps her mission report against her leg.
"Well, well, look who it is," a familiar voice drawls from behind her. "Shiranui Hiwa, finally turning in her mission report."
Hiwa bites back a sigh.
Oh, great.
"Had to do it eventually," she says.
She turns to face Nara Shikaku as he meanders towards her, shoulders slouched and hands shoved deep into his pockets.
"Better late than never."
"Bet Kakashi hasn't turned his in, yet."
"You would be correct," Shikaku says. "Though, Genma has."
"I figured."
He stares at her as if waiting for something.
She cocks her head, unsure.
What could he want from her, now? What was there for him to notice in Genma's report?
It takes a few seconds of befuddled silence, and then it hits her like a semi-truck bowling over a traffic cone: Genma saw her use the shadow technique.
She never warned him to keep it quiet. It slipped her mind—not that it would have done her much good, considering Genma probably handed his report in before she woke up.
"Anything interesting?" Hiwa asks, voice monotone.
"Few things," he says. He rolls one of his shoulders in an imitation of a shrug. "Definitely curious to read yours."
If that's what he's looking for in hers he won't find it. She referenced it as her having 'detained the enemy' with no specification as to how she detained Mitsuki.
It shouldn't matter. This whole marriage situation should be settled.
But if you give the Nara an inch, they'll take thirty miles, a fact that she knows intimately.
"Yeah? Well, hope it doesn't disappoint."
Shikaku slants his gaze at her and nods. "I'm sure it won't."
He heads off past her, down the hall towards the jonin lounge, his usual haunt, and Hiwa pinches the bridge of her nose.
The Nara Shadow technique isn't a blood limit. It doesn't fall under that jurisdiction, not as far as she knows, and thus isn't protected by the same laws that protect the Sharingan, the Byuakugan, the Aburame techniques, all of that. It's all in the chakra—anybody born with yin chakra that's compatible can learn it. The Nara just have a natural affinity for it.
That's why it's kept under lock and key, and she had to learn it in secret, based on her own observations and extrapolations. The Nara don't want it getting around. They know it's only particular to them because they hoard the knowledge of how to learn it. If Hiwa had had access to their scrolls, she's sure she could use the technique with as much skill and finesse as any full-blooded Nara.
And if Shikaku knows that she can use it now? All of a sudden, beyond being a possible womb, she now has something of theirs that they don't want being spread around.
"Next," the desk chunin calls.
Hiwa looks, expecting to see the rest of the line, and realizes that it's now her turn.
She goes up and hands off her scroll.
Somehow, things may have just gotten more complicated.
A/N: And here I am again. Updating not on a Saturday because I forgot to update yesterday. Because I worked. And am incapable of remembering to update on Saturdays when I work for some weird reason.
Which is why you're getting this on a Sunday!