Previously: Jiraiya speaks on the fate of Kanta Kai; the Retrieval Team returns to Konoha; Suzu learns something about Minato's actions in the past six months.
"We didn't know you'd be back today but Hideaki and Isana just happened to be returning from their mission while you guys were held up with the gate guards," Tsubasa chattered. "They stopped by before they had to go to their debriefing so I decided to go looking for you to welcome you back. But man, Suzu, I know I'm not a formally trained tracker, but do you cloak even while you're unconscious or something? I saw you with literal unaugmented eyes before I ever actually heard you with auditory sense."
"Apparently it's my nervous habit," I shrugged in reply. "Did you know that I accidently almost killed myself once because I was anxiety cloaking so hard?"
"Ninjas really are all nutcases," was the musing response. It would have been mildly insulting if he hadn't included himself in the sweeping gesture he made to accompany this statement. As it was, I could only agree.
"Yeah," I said. I thought of Kanta. It's my family, and yours, this is justice … Everyone was mad in some way, with grief or otherwise. "We really are."
"So how'd you get hurt?" Tsubasa queried curiously. I regarded him thoughtfully before deciding that he was probably close enough to my big secrets to be considered in my confidence. I shrugged again, prefunctorily told him not to spread it around, and began recounting the Tsunade Retrieval mission. The mission content would probably be released for public consumption at some point anyway. It would be pretty hard to keep Tsunade's return under wraps.
"Hey, you know…" Tsubasa said after a short pause. "It's probably okay now."
I blinked at him. "What do you mean?"
"You know, your friend Rin. Maybe from now on she'll have to recover for a long time, and she'll be a jinchuuriki, but… you were willing to die to make things right. You did nearly die to get Tsunade back. So I think it's okay, and you probably can…" he paused again.
"I can what?"
"Play it safer?" he suggested after a moment of thought. "You know, be a bit more conservative. I won't say take it easy, but maybe you can play the game to keep all your pieces, not just to win. Get your cake and eat it, too." There was another short pause. "After all, is it really worth it if you die? I mean, if it came down to it it might be, but when you're dead that's really it. If you have stuff you want to do, or places you want to go, or people to see… you won't get to. You know?"
I put a hand on my chest and stared at him, touched. Tsubasa scratched his nose and gave me a small, crooked smile.
"I think I'd be pretty sad to see you go," he admitted. "I don't really have friends outside of my team and you're the only other Earth person my age. I put a lot of effort into living," he added lightheartedly, "so you should, too."
Ah, there was certainly a story behind that line. I wondered if Tsubasa ever had a time when he wanted to die. Then again, he was a ninja—it would hardly be strange. I wasn't any different.
"I never went into that fight looking to die," I assured him, feeling incredibly cheered by his words. "It all just kind of happened. I hope in the future I'll be strong enough to not let things turn out that way again."
Instead of turning left at the second corner when we arrived at the road that led to the Tsukimori Estate, we passed it by and turned at the third one instead. We found ourselves consumed in a sudden bamboo forest, but after a minute or so of walking a familiar white wall emerged, which we followed until we found ourselves at a back gate. It was much smaller and friendlier-looking than the grand one around the front.
"He-ey," Tsubasa half-sang, half-yelled as he pounded the knocker on the door. "Souhei, I found Suzu!"
A beat passed. Then the gate creaked open and my uncle poked his head out. "Suzu. Hideaki said you were back," he greeted.
"Hey, ojisan," I returned.
"Souhei, apparently she got poisoned! You should check her out," Tsubasa interjected helpfully.
"What?" Uncle's eyebrows flew up. A moment later I was inside and lying down on a picnic blanket with my uncle examining my upper abdomen with medical jutsu. Then he frowned, turned me over, and began prodding at my kidneys instead. I rolled with it, at this point in my life well used to being handled by iryou-nin.
"Are you sick, Suzu-san?" Kyouya queried.
"A missing-nin poisoned me," I explained in reply. "Apparently I'll have impaired motor function until next week, though that's the extent of it. Tsunade-sama said the poison metabolizes weirdly."
"She's fine," Uncle agreed after a moment's more examination. "But that is an awfully specific set of components… I'm looking forward to hearing just what exactly happened on this mission."
While I sat up, accepted tea from Kyouya, and began recounting my time away to my uncle, Tsubasa ran over to his sugar maple and leapt straight up into its boughs, upon which the platform of the tree house had already been put into place. There was a ladder propped up against the trunk, but he bypassed it completely. I figured the only person who would actually use it would be Kyouya and possibly Nana.
Some ten minutes later two black-cloaked figures appeared beside me out of nowhere. The sight of painted white masks in my periphery made me jerk around violently. That ambush of absurd numbers flashed through my mind, and for a moment I remembered the sight of Mist ANBU springing out from all sides, but then my brain caught up and the chakra in my hand fizzled out.
Hideaki tilted his head, intrigued, but Isana quickly pushed her black-and-green painted mask back to reveal that she was a friendly face.
"You scared me," I breathed out and put a hand on my chest.
"Sorry," she apologized immediately. "I didn't think you'd have that sort of reaction."
Hideaki inspected me for a moment longer before he plopped down on the blanket beside me and pried his own mask off. It was a rabbit mask with cheerful yellow circles at each corner of the upturned eye slits. Combined with the red whiskers on its cheeks, the effect was quite cute. I wondered what his enemies might feel to have such a visage coming at them to kill. Maybe Hideaki got a kick out of that sort of thing. He seemed like the type to appreciate irony.
"Hideaki!" Tsubasa's face lit up as it appeared above the edge of the treehouse platform, and then a second later he was swan diving down towards the picnic blanket. Hideaki lazily stuck his arms out and caught the teen before he could splatter his brains across the ground. Then he casually set him down on the blanket beside me and lay back.
"Are you gonna help build the treehouse, or are you gonna take a nap?" Tsubasa demanded as Hideaki sighed a bit and flipped his hood over his eyes.
"Maybe you should let them rest, Tsubasa," I said, doubtful, as Isana selected a spot beside Nana, flung herself down, and promptly fell into dead sleep. I didn't know what it was that could put an ANBU out like that anywhere but her own home, but it must have been some mission.
"Nah… I'm good," Hideaki muttered after a few seconds' silence in which he had almost certainly been unconscious. With a bit of a grunt, he heaved himself back up into a sitting position and caught Tsubasa in a headlock before giving him a spirited noogie. Tsubasa squawked and punched Hideaki's shoulder, though without any real force. I caught the glimpse of a wide grin on his face.
"You sure?" I asked anyway. Even with all the sleep I had gotten I still felt exhausted after five days on the road, and I doubted there had been any Kushina Uzumakis on his team giving out piggyback naps. Hideaki regarded me with a small smile.
"Yeah, I'm sure. I promised this little monster I'd make up for it this time." He stood, hauling Tsubasa up with him. "You want to help, too?"
He must have been exhausted, but he didn't slack. Within the next hour railings had gone up and though at that point I was positively shaking with exertion after helping to haul wood beams around, I felt so happy I could hardly speak. In that moment I felt immeasurably grateful to be alive. I was glad I hadn't given up. In those dark days after Yoshiya had died, the team had gone to pieces, and I'd been set adrift, it had seemed like nothing would ever get better. But now I was living in the proof that all things passed, the good and the bad.
Tsubasa and I were sprawling on our stomachs on the treehouse floor as the others tossed cushions up at us—Uncle Souhei's and Hideaki's throws all sailed beautifully over the railings, but Kyouya's and Nana's either fell short or flew wide—when suddenly, in all of a moment, the merrymaking stopped. Kyouya froze, no doubt hearing the sealing array, and the rest of us—all sensors—swiveled our heads around to look at the path from the front of the estate. Several minutes passed before we could see them with our eyes, but soon enough they were there: Hayato-sensei, walking slowly, with Daisuke Sarutobi leaning on his arm.
"That's Daisuke," Uncle said unnecessarily as they made their way down the path.
"Didn't you tell me he had come looking for me?" I asked Tsubasa abruptly as I remembered the secret origami message enclosed in the letter.
"Yeah, but that was like two weeks ago," Tsubasa replied with wide eyes. "I didn't think he'd be back so soon."
We watched as the two slowly made their way towards us. As they approached, brows began to furrow and glances were exchanged because Daisuke, as he grew closer, also began to appear worse in our eyes. His coloring was quite off and his step was unsteady—not at all like the hard, angry stride I'd seen him use before. He was even using a cane. Uncle Souhei, looking the most concerned of all, stepped forward.
"Daisuke," he said once they'd come within range of conversation. "What happened? You look terrible."
"Well, thank you." Daisuke lifted an eyebrow and replied sardonically. "Thanks, Hayato. I'm fine," he added as he removed his hand from Hayato's arm and shifted his weight to his cane instead. It was surprisingly well-mannered of him.
"Are you sure?" Hayato-sensei asked. He did not look convinced. Frankly, I wasn't either. Daisuke looked awful.
"It's just that new medicine the family physician is insisting I take," Daisuke grumbled and waved a faintly trembling hand. "He's an astounding idiot. Why make a dying man suffer more?"
There was a moment of silence. Then Tsubasa and I leaped down from the tree.
"What?" Daisuke groused at the group's wide-eyed looks. "Did you think I would live forever? I'm nearly eighty years old, you know. Most people around here die at least fifty years earlier."
"That doesn't make a difference," Kyouya replied. Shock made his voice soft. "Daisuke-san… what's—?"
"What do you think?" Daisuke rolled his eyes theatrically. "Why do you think I started showing up here after years of staying at home?"
"Daisuke, stop it," Uncle Souhei cut in with his no-bullshit voice. I flinched reflexively. That was always the tone he used when we were in trouble.
"Fine." Daisuke sobered. "If you must know, it's cancer. Lymphoma. I don't know what kind." He suddenly let out a cynical laugh. "After going through all the shit of moving to a universe like this one, in the end it's cancer that does me in. Can you believe it?"
"There's nothing they can do?" Nana asked, brow creasing heavily. "Lymphoma… my aunt from before, she had it when I was young, but I remember that she lived well into my adulthood after treatment."
"There is no treatment here," Daisuke snorted again. "We're in the equivalent of feudal Japan. Maybe the medics could try dealing with it surgically, but I say no. I'm too old to deal with that nonsense. I'm not going to take any of this stupid medicine again, either, whatever the hell it is."
There was a marked fission of dissatisfaction in response to this. Uncle Souhei, Hayato-sensei, Hideaki, and Isana gave no visible reaction, but Kyouya and the rest—even Tsubasa, to my surprise—were already opening their mouths to protest. As for me, I had no idea what to think. I knew next to nothing about this man. What I did was not terribly endearing. He'd insulted me, called me names, and spoken to me with marked unkindness as a first thing. For all that I did pity him for whatever hardships he'd experienced over his life, I did not like him much at all, either.
He looked me in the face as I thought this and, somehow, seemed to know what I was thinking in my mind. He spoke.
"If it isn't Souhei's niece," he said. "Missed you last month, girl."
There was a long pause in which I frowned at him, but ultimately decided not to be rude back. "How may I help you, Sarutobi-san?" I finally replied.
"I never asked, so tell me," he said, "you and the Hokage, you were close, and now because of your foreknowledge you are not. You will never go back to the way things were. So. Do you regret what you've done?" He eyed me carefully.
I considered that for a short moment. It was true, after all; if I'd kept my silence and pretended not to know, Minato and I probably never would have arrived at the point where we were now. Even if it turned out he wasn't as angry as I thought he'd been, it was a fact that our relationship would never be the same as it had been when I'd been small.
But was that a bad thing?
"No, not at all," I answered. "After all, in another time, he'd be dead by now anyway. Better this than a world where he's gone and buried."
The corners of Daisuke's eyes seemed to pucker a bit with tightly controlled emotion. "So it doesn't matter what he thinks of you now?"
"Of course it matters," I replied after a moment. "But—things weren't perfect before, either. Even if we were close. Even if neither of us wanted to acknowledge it at the time." And that much was also fact. It had been a relationship built up on deception from both sides.
"If it hadn't been foreknowledge, it would have been something else," I concluded. "Pretending not to know wouldn't have changed that. It just would have been tragic. I don't regret it."
Daisuke looked at me long and hard. I saw him examine my face and the set of my shoulders, searching for even a trace of a lie. Then he let out a heavy sigh and turned his gaze away. "I see," he said. Without saying anything else, he addressed my uncle, "Souhei, I want to talk to you. You might as well come along, too, Kyouya," he added, glancing at the master of the estate.
"Certainly, if you'd like me," Kyouya replied worriedly. Uncle Souhei just stepped forward and continued to look concerned. Hayato-sensei had apparently already been invited along and simply offered his arm to Daisuke again.
"Wait! Is that all you have to say to her?" Tsubasa demanded as Daisuke turned and began hobbling back towards the house. Daisuke shot him a withering look over his shoulder.
"Does it look like I'm saying anything else to her?" he bit out. "You're just as stupid as you look."
Tsubasa began to sputter, apoplectic, and possibly might've drawn his sword had Hideaki not appeared at his back and put a casual arm over his shoulder. Daisuke just harrumphed.
"Besides," he said as his gaze slid back to my face, "It's cancer, but I'm not in my grave yet. I'm sure we'll speak again before I die."
After that it was impossible for any of us to enjoy ourselves. We kept working on the treehouse, but it was a cheerless task, and continuing to haul wood about in my state of exhaustion probably was not the wisest course of action—I nearly crushed my own toes when the beam I was lifting slipped right from my fingers. At that point dusk was falling, so I decided I ought to just head back to the House; Kushina would probably be looking for me by now anyway. I'd just have to leave without Uncle since he was still inside talking.
"Let me walk you home." Hideaki stood when I voiced my intentions. Nana told me goodbye while Tsubasa waved glumly at me, and Isana—actually, Isana had gone back down and was flat on her stomach, sleeping like a corpse for the second time.
"I'm fine," Hideaki assured me as he spared her an amused glance. "Isana's a ninjutsu specialist, so it's natural that she's more tired than I am. I'll survive a walk to the Namikaze compound and back."
He insisted—I suspected he saw how uncontrollably shaking my knees were and was concerned—so I gave in and allowed him to escort me. Auntie looked positively spooked when I showed up at the door with a man in ANBU armor, but it was when I told her Uncle was probably going to be home late that her face carefully blanked. I considered the implications of that and then wondered if a deliberate misunderstanding had been cultivated by my uncle and the Earthlings. Hideaki couldn't be ignorant of what his appearance implied here—maybe he'd had more than one purpose in accompanying me. Like covering for Uncle Souhei, perhaps.
But the thought was chased from my mind when Kushina appeared behind Auntie and promptly began grilling me for details about my "date with Tsubasa-kun."
"Did you hold hands? Did he carry you in his arms like a princess after all?" she demanded excitedly. She was so occupied in her ship that Hideaki was able to quietly decline dinner, ruffle my hair, and depart without drawing hardly any notice. He melted into the dusky shadows almost as soon as he stepped off the porch.
If only that had been enough to fool the watcher who'd been standing on the street.