.

Of all the things you choose in life, you don't get to choose what

your nightmares are. You don't pick them; they pick you.

"I can't."

"I figured."

Inohara frowned, her fingers tracing the rim of her teacup. "I would if I could, you know that," she murmured. "I just—I don't have any time right now. I've got two more weeks left in my off-duty period and they're both booked rock-solid."

"And as soon as you're back on the active roster, they're sending you out?" Maen guessed.

She nodded. "They always do, you know, so I don't see why this time now would be any different. The border posts are always short on medics," she said. "They need me more than the clinic needs me."

Maen leant back into the couch cushion, disappointed but unsurprised—that was the outcome he expected. Field trained medics were always in demand, that much hadn't changed, even with the war long since ended. When he thought of it, the fact that Inohara had even been home when he dropped by was something of a miracle.

He'd just have to figure something else out.

"I get it," he answered. "Don't worry about it."

Her brows furrowed together and her lips twisted down, making it clear to Maen that she was already doing the exact opposite. "You're sure she won't talk to anybody else?"

"I'm not even sure she would have talked to you."

"That bad, huh?"

"She's getting better," Maen answered. Those three words described Kasumi in a nutshell. Steady improvement was happening. But he wanted to wasn't going to half-ass this—if there was something he could do to help, he was going to do it. "She's mostly fine with me, Shikaku, Yoshino, and Shikamaru now, but anybody else is lucky to get more than a few words out of her."

"So she doesn't like strangers," Inohara said.

"Pretty much."

Inohara thought on that for a moment. "Honestly? I don't know what you can do."

"That makes two of us," he grumbled.

It was, again, the answer he had been dreading to hear, but the one he had expected to receive.

"The best advice I can give you is to just wait and see. Take things one step at a time," she advised.

When Maen's expression shifted, she gave a shake of her head. "I know you're worried—that's fine—but for all you know she could completely forget all of this in a couple of years," she said. "Pushing now could only cause further emotional damage, especially if she's going to be as unreceptive to a foreign presence as I think she is. She's still young. Just give her some time."

"Time," he echoed.

"Time. That's all you can do. Professional help is good, but sometimes, it's better to just let things naturally take their course. I'll keep in touch and offer you advice. See how she's doing in a few months. Half a year, even. But for right now, I think having you around is all the help she's going to need."

"Nap or snack?"

I cracked an eye open and tilted my chin to the side of Maen's shoulder to meet his gaze.

Four-year-old bodies required significant amounts of sleep, as it turned out, and were tired by even the simplest of tasks—in this case, shopping. Groceries were the main goal of the outing, but we had made pitstops to get me more clothes, as only a minimal amount was purchased a month prior, and to get Maen more 'ninja stuff', whatever that entailed. We were gone for a few short hours, but it was enough to make my eyelids heavy.

That being said, nine times out of ten, when given the choice to sleep or eat, the latter won out on the instinctual food chain.

"Snack," I mumbled.

He adjusted my position on his back and shifted the bags hanging off his arm. "Pick someplace."

I blinked both my eyes open. A yawn fought to rip clear of me but I suppressed it with my hand and let my gaze trace over the various stalls, taking in all of the options.

Truth be told, I didn't know what half—if even that—the stalls were selling. Food in Konoha differed greatly from the cuisine offered in Kiso. Food in Kiso relied more on fish due to how close in proximity the village was to the ocean, as well as both the Land of Rivers and the Land of Waves. Konoha, however, leant far more towards rice and red meat dishes, coated with a generous layer of spicy sauces.

As we passed a stall that was selling things that looked and smelt fish-related I pointed a finger at that, and Maen wound his way through the throng of people towards it.

A man stood behind the counter, preparing a wide variety of fish products, some raw and some grilled on skewers, some spiced and some served on top of rice. A few of them held a vague level of familiarity; the majority of what Kiso served were bastardizations of River and Wave dishes, and everything that the man was selling appeared to be attempting to do the same, though of a lesser quality.

The man looked up as we approached. "Well, hello there!" he greeted, a wide grin on his face. It took on a forced air to it when his eyes hit Maen's headband. "What can I get for you two?"

If Maen noticed the shift, he didn't react to it. "You can get whatever you want," he said to me. "Just try not to spoil your dinner."

"There's so many to pick from."

I could make a guess at what most of it was, but through the sauces and the spices and the various other garnishes, it was hard to be certain.

The man perked up at my voice. "Why, is that a Wave accent I hear?"

I fought off a flinch. The muscles in Maen's shoulders tightened a fraction beneath my chin.

Many of Kiso's residents were immigrants from Wave, with a few stragglers making their way in from River, and over time, the majority of the people living in the village developed something of a rough twang to their voice that resembled a Wave Country accent. I hadn't noticed it was there until I had already been in Konoha for a few weeks.

"Why do you care?" Maen asked him.

The grin on the man's face faltered, taken aback by the blunt words. He yanked it back into place in record time and let out an uneasy chuckle, though neither gesture was the least bit convincing.

"Ah—my apologies," the man said. "It was just a question from a nosy old man, no harm meant by it."

Maen let out a light scoff and proceeded to ignore the man. He leaned his head back to look at me. "See anything you want?"

I pointed a finger at what looked like a skewer of deep-fried prawns, covered a glistening red sauce and vaguely familiar. I thought I might like it, but I didn't care much anymore; I didn't want to linger any longer.

There was an exchange of money and the stick was placed in my pudgy fist.

Maen made his way back through the crowd of people, heading in the direction of the Nara compound.

"Thanks."

"Thank me by not getting any of that on my shirt," Maen answered. "You're gonna be the one to wash it if you do."

"Meanie," I huffed. "Might do it now, just 'cause."

"Have fun trying to get it out—you can't even reach the sink."

I poked my knee into his ribs. He snorted, pressing a finger into the back of my knee in return. A squeak escaped me and I jolted, jamming my other knee inwards as well. Not that I felt bad about doing so.

"So mean."

"Whatever."

I took a nibble of the prawns. I expected something spicy, from the look of the sauce, but that wasn't the kind of flavour that danced along my taste buds. "Oh. It's sweet."

"Don't like it?"

"Nah, I do. It's kinda like something mama used to make."

"Yeah?"

I hummed. "She didn't use sweet prawns, though, and the sauce was a bit sour."

He didn't respond.

A few days later, though, when dinnertime rolled around, something akin to what I had described was waiting for me on the table. He had gotten close, but a few of the little details had been off—regardless, I hadn't been able to wipe the smile off of my face for the rest of that night.

I shot upright in my bed.

The remnants of a scream still echoed in my ears. Blood-curdling, high pitched, so sudden, we were walking along the path together, the three of us, it wasn't a happy occasion but everything was fine before that—I raised a hand to my mouth and dug my fingers into the covers around me.

Tears pricked in my eyes. Every nerve in my body was alight. My limbs were stiff.

Breathe.

I forced out a single, harsh breath.

The whole room was shrouded in darkness, barely broken by the light of the moon through the window. It created a spotted pattern of white that stained the floor of the room as it was filtered through the top part of the forest's canopy.

Focus on the light.

It's fine. You're fine.

For a few moments, I sat there and stared straight down at the floor while I waited for my heart rate to drop. Once I thought they would hold my weight, I threw my legs over the side of the bed, tossed aside the covers, and padded across the room to slide into my slippers. The plush fabric was a welcome alternative to the chilled hardwood.

I pulled down on the doorknob for my room and stepped out into the hallway, taking care to close the door without making any noise.

The nightmare were getting better. They'd decreased in frequency in the month and a half since coming to Konoha, from a nightly occurrence to once or twice a week. They hadn't decreased in severity, though; each nightmare was enough to send my heart into a fluttering panic and keep me from sleeping for the rest of the night. Some nights I would sit up and doodle on my sketch pads in the moonlight. On others, I would stare at the wall until the sun came up, counting the minutes as they dragged by.

I tended to avoid venturing out of my room in an effort to limit the chance that I'd wake Maen—that didn't seem to help much, him being a ninja and all, but it minimized the guilt I felt over keeping him up. That night, though, my throat was dry, and I was hoping that a cup of tea might have been enough to lull me back to sleep.

I flicked on half of the kitchen lights and the bulb buzzed as electricity surged through it.

The electric kettle was sitting on the far counter—the counter that I wasn't tall enough to reach yet. Most of the time it would sit on the lower shelves after Maen was done with it, which I could get to without issue. On the odd occasion that he forgot to put it away after using it, however, it would remain up where it was, right in front of the outlet and out of my grasp.

A form drifted past me on its way into the kitchen. I jumped, rearing back a step.

Maen walked over to the counter and pointed at the kettle, a non-verbal question, his hair down around his shoulders and his eyes glazed with sleep. He wasn't even awake enough to remember to make noise as he entered the kitchen.

A flush worked its way up my neck, both from having woken him up and that I was so easily startled by him. I nodded in response and shuffled over to the table.

He filled up the kettle in the sink with enough water for a single cup. He turned the tap off, paused, and turned it back on again. A second cup's worth of water dribbled in. While he did that, it dawned on me: even if I had managed to get the kettle down, I wouldn't have been able to fill it up because I couldn't reach the sink.

Let it never be said that lack of sleep aided in the concocting of plans.

Maen placed the kettle on the stand and set it to boil.

I stared up at the ceiling; the sound of wood scraping against tile alerted me that he sat down in the chair opposite of mine.

"M'sorry," I mumbled, hating how small my voice sounded.

"For what?"

I let my chin fall back down.

The look on his face as he watched me was unnerving. It managed to be a little of everything and nothing at the same time, annoyed without being annoyed, unhappy without being unhappy. He was impossible to read. There were a few expressions I'd figured out, easy ones with clear tells, but most of the time, Maen was a mystery unless he allowed his expression to open up.

"Sorry for waking you up," I said.

"What, did you do it on purpose?"

"I'm… well… no?"

"Then why are you apologizing?"

I rolled my eyes and let out a puff of air—it was something between a sigh, a huff, and a snort, a gesture that expressed a general sense of exasperation.

The sound of water bubbling signalled that the kettle was finished. Maen stood and rummaged for a minute, and returned with two cups of tea. One was chamomile and the other lavender, both with a drop of honey. The chamomile went in front of me, the lavender for Maen.

He sat back down in his seat and placed a scroll, produced out of thin air, beside his cup. I didn't question where it came from—he never did anything but laugh when I tried.

Maen read his scroll and drank his tea in silence. His eyes flit back up to me every few minutes, but the bulk of his attention was on the scroll.

I saw no reason to break the quiet. I held my cup in my hands and stared off out the kitchen window. There was nothing for me to see out there. The window faced away from the moon, and all it showed at this hour was a blank sheet of black, the window placed too low for the stars to shine through it.

I wasn't sure how long passed by the time that both of our cups were empty. It was long enough that my gaze went unfocused and I was lost in my thoughts, my mind adrift. A tap on my head reigned me in from my reverie.

Maen stood beside my chair with his hand rested on the back of it, staring down at me. "You ready?"

"Yeah," I said. "Yeah, I think so."

"Come on, then."

He moved out of the kitchen and I followed down the hall, all the way to my room.

I stood in front of the door and tried to will my uncooperative hand to reach up, to grasp the doorknob, to turn it, to open the door, but it was to no avail. It felt like somebody was holding my arms in place.

"Kid?"

"Can… can I come and sleep with you?"

The words slipped out before I could stop them and the second they left my mouth, I wanted to take them back. The request sounded stupid and childish and needy when voiced aloud.

"Yeah, sure. Go grab your own pillow, though, 'cause I'm not sharing mine."

I turned to look at him, surprised, but he was already back in his room.

When I raised my hand this time it didn't resist. I ran in, grabbed my pillow, and rushed over to Maen's room.

.

.

She was out like a light as soon as her head hit the pillow.

She had her knees pulled up and inwards, curled in on herself, what he knew to be a protective gesture. One of her arms held tight against her stomach while the other reached out to take a fistful of his shirt.

When he agreed to this, he thought she would be sleeping on her own side of the bed. Yet, when she crawled under the covers and positioned herself right up against him, he saw no other appropriate response except to let her do it.

He found he didn't mind.

Maen couldn't recall the last time he shared a bed with somebody. The sensation of having the warm lump of another person in such close proximity while he slept was foreign to him, but not uncomfortable. What mattered to him was that she fell asleep again. A far as he was aware, that hadn't happened the other times she woke with nightmares. If a bit of company was what she needed to keep the nightmares at bay, he supposed that he could get used to it.

He pulled the covers up so that they sat on her shoulders and his midriff. One of his arms went behind his head while the other was draped over her, rested against her back. He felt Kasumi shift closer to him in her sleep.

He laughed, soft and short.

When he left the village two months prior expecting a quick and easy C-rank escort mission, he never could have imagined that it would change his life in the way that it did. He had left an eternal bachelor and returned with a real thing, a living creature, who he was now responsible for. She relied on him. She needed him to be present and functioning every day of the week. His life wasn't just his own any longer.

It was surreal when he thought of it like that.

He stared down at the little head peeking above the blankets and watched the soft rise and fall of her chest.

Maen knew without question that, unexpected or not, drastic or not, the changes to his future were for the better.

"Lord Hokage."

"Ah, Maen. Thank you for coming so quickly."

"Of course." Maen glanced around the room—he was the last one to arrive. He raised a hand in greeting, a two-fingered wave. "Hey."

Aside from Hiruzen, there were two other ninja standing in the office that were decked out in chunin vests and a third with a jonin vest. Maen recognized all of them but couldn't summon up names to match to their faces. The chunin were young, late teens at the most. The jonin—or, more likely, special jonin—was a bit closer to Maen's age, maybe in his early twenties.

"As I am sure you have guessed, I have a mission for you four," Hiruzen said, the pipe in the corner of his mouth letting out a puff of smoke. His gaze turned to Maen. "Maen, you'll be leading the team."

A scroll was tossed Maen's way and he reached up to snatch it out of the air. His eyes scanned over the words, making note of the important details.

B-rank.

Item retrieval. Requirement of infiltration and potential seduction.

Located in the southern part of the Land of Tea.

He bit back a sigh.

He had been back on the active roster for a month. During that time, he'd been fed a multitude of light duty work, courier missions through Fire Country and outpost check-ups, along with the odd bounty run with his ANBU squad. None of that took more than a day to complete, nothing that would keep him away for any extended period of time; he suspected there had been a bit of meddling on both Shikaku and Hiruzen's part to keep him close to the village while the kid was still settling.

There was a limit to how long they could keep him around for. Maen was an infiltration specialist. The majority of the work he did was long and drawn out, a significant portion of his missions long-term. He couldn't avoid them forever.

Maen turned to look out the window.

It was still early in the morning. He would have rather waited until the next day to leave but with how long of a trip it was to southern Land of Tea, a four-day trip if they used proper pacing and minimal rest breaks, they couldn't afford to waste the day of sunlight.

More to himself than anybody else, Maen murmured, "This'll probably take a couple of weeks, give or take a few days."

"You think it'll be that long?" the special jonin asked. "It's only four days to get to the mission location, then another four days on the way back. I hardly think we'll need six days to get in there and grab the artifact."

"If you wanna just barge in and jack the thing, obviously it could be done in a day," Maen answered. "That's not an option, though. The scroll specifies that we need to be discreet. We'll need time to gather information on the court population, get a proper layout of the manor, and then scout out the ninja guards who're probably hiding in among the civilians. Doing this right will take time."

"Indeed," Hiruzen said. "Though, I believe this conversation would be better suited in another room."

Maen nodded. They would have a lot to talk about. Missions like these were better discussed and planned prior to leaving the village when their minds weren't clouded by the stress of being in the field. When the need arose, adjustments could and would be made.

"Are there any debriefing rooms open right now?" Maen asked.

"There should be a couple down the hall—rooms D5 and D6, I believe."

"Alright." He turned to the rest of the ninja gathered. "Come on. We'll do a quick briefing right now. When we're done, we can break for a couple of hours to give you time to pack."

.

.

I laid on the grass, my limbs spread akimbo, and basked in the warmth of the of the day.

I wanted to enjoy the weather while it was still bearable—summer was just around the corner and once the season turned, the feeling of the sun beating down on me would go from pleasant to stifling.

"What's this?"

My head rolled against the ground, turning to the side to look at Shikamaru. He had my sketch pad in his hand and was pointing at one of the pictures.

"Flowers."

"Really?"

"Yep."

"Doesn't look like it."

"That's cause it's an abstract drawing."

Doe eyes blinked in confusion. "Huh?"

"Nothing."

He shrugged and went back to flipping through the pages as if our exchange had never happened.

Kids were easy in that respect; most of them had the attention span of a goldfish. I could say whatever I wanted and with a word or two, the topic would change and it would be as if I hadn't ever said anything. They didn't dwell on those things.

Adults weren't the same. Adults could think of things, could scrutinize what I was doing with a critical lens. It was intimidating, to say the least, especially in an environment like Konoha where there was an abundance of overly analytical, trigger-happy killers wandering around that wouldn't hesitate to take out anybody they pegged as a spy—or, at least, ship them off to Torture and Interrogation.

I didn't know which option sounded worse.

Something warm and heavy landed atop my stomach. I lifted my head and a fluffy black ponytail occupied my line of sight. Shikamaru apparently decided that I was suitable as a pillow.

"I don't think you're supposed to do that without asking first," I pointed out.

"Would you have said no?"

I opened my mouth and then shut it again—damn it.

He rolled over so that he was looking at me, that stupid Nara smirk on his face.

"Don't you have anything better to do?" I asked him.

"If I go back, I gotta do chores." He shuddered. "Mom wants me to clean my room."

"Well, is it messy?"

"Probably."

"Probably?"

"It looks okay to me, but mom says it's a dis—disa…"

"Disaster?"

"Yeah, that."

I let out a sigh. "Fine, whatever—just shut up and go to sleep, I wanna take a nap too."

"Actually, Shikamaru, you can't go to sleep yet," a new voice said. "I need you to go talk to your mom for me."

I looked over and saw Maen stroll across the grassy clearing, his hands shoved in his pockets and a frown on his face.

Shikamaru didn't move. "Don't wanna."

"Tough. Tell her that Kasumi needs to stay with you guys for a couple of weeks." Maen displaced Shikamaru from on top of me with his foot. With a nudge, Shikamaru was sent tumbling away, whining. Maen said, "Go on, brat."

Shikamaru grumbled about it but complied with the request. He picked himself up off of the ground and slouched away in the direction of his house.

Something cold and uncertain settled in my gut. "A couple of weeks?" I asked.

I knew that there would come a point when Maen had to take a longer mission. It was inevitable. Still, the idea of having him gone for that long, that he could leave for that long and not come back, made my heart clench.

"Yeah, most likely," he said. "C'mon—we need to go pack your stuff."

I reached up to pull his hand free from his pocket as soon as I was close enough. My fingers wrapped around his calloused palm, too small to make it all the way around. He let me do it, and his own fingers curled up to give mine a brief squeeze.

I awoke in a cold sweat, surrounded by an unfamiliar room.

I could all but smell the blood, hear the screams, feel the rain pounding against my skin.

I'm not there.

I'm okay. It's okay.

I'm safe.

For a brief second, I didn't know where I was. A harsh bolt of panic struck me. And then it clicked and I tried to make myself relax, but it was difficult.

There was no window in the room for me to gaze out at and no light dancing upon the floor for me to focus on. A pad of paper sat in my bag on the other side of the room but at that moment, I didn't want to draw, not with the afterimage flashing over my mind's eye.

What I wanted in that moment was human contact. Something real, solid, warm.

I wanted Maen.

He wasn't there, though.

Instead, I found myself slipping through the door of the room beside me, pillow in hand.

Shikamaru didn't even open his eyes as I lifted his covers and settled beside him in his bed. He muttered something, the words jumbled by sleep, but he didn't hesitate to slide over some and turn to face me. A single hand reached out and pulled at my shirt—I wasn't sure if he even realized it was me, or if he was just grabbing at the new heat source on instinct. I didn't care, either.

In seconds Shikamaru drifted back to sleep as if nothing ever happened.

It took me a few minutes of deep, calming breaths, but eventually, I followed him into a peaceful slumber.

.

.

Yoshino was surprised when she opened the door to the guest room that morning and found the bed to be vacant. She was told that Kasumi was a late sleeper, that she should expect to drag Kasumi kicking and screaming if she tried to get her out of bed before ten in the morning.

Aside from that, Yoshino hadn't heard anybody moving around the house yet. It was just her and the children, as Shikaku had gotten called out on a mission at the start of the week.

On instinct, she went into Shikamaru's room. That was where she found the two of them.

They were tangled up together with the covers hanging off the bed, exposing their legs to the morning air. Kasumi was snuggled up into Shikamaru's stomach and his limbs were haphazardly tossed over her. Yoshino didn't think it was a comfortable position for Kasumi, with one of her son's arms over her face and his knee on top of her ribs, but the sight was downright precious regardless.

She almost felt bad about disturbing it.

Almost.

She yanked off what parts of the covers still covered the children and cried, "Rise and shine!"

It was a shame that she didn't have her video camera out to get the reaction—she was certain Maen would have enjoyed seeing it.