.

Blood makes you related, but love makes you a family.

I wheezed, my hands braced on my knees.

The sun beat down on me. It was hot and heavy, enough to make me sweat even if I wasn't already sweating from the laps I'd run around the Nara training grounds.

Maen hadn't been exaggerating with the emphasis he put on laps when outlining my physical training—he had me running an absurd amount of them. In part, I figured it was because he could lounge off under a tree while I did them, but I knew there was a more legitimate reason for me to do them.

I needed to build up my endurance, and I needed to do it fast. Most of the clan kids who would become my peers in one month's time, even Shikamaru, already started their ninja training upwards of a year ago, which put me at a distinct disadvantage. I had no physical prowess to speak of before I started training; I was a bit of a lazy child. I liked to draw and sleep in the sun and, since gaining my chakra sense, observe the world through that lens.

Run around the village and play with other kids? Not my style.

That was why, between Maen and myself, I couldn't decide which of us had been more surprised when I found that I enjoyed the exertion.

I supposed it was the ninja blood that ran through my veins.

After spending half an hour jogging around my lungs burned, my muscles ached, and my entire body was covered with the sheen of perspiration, but there was a smile on my face.

"How… many was that?" I asked, the words coming out between huffed breaths.

"Fifteen," Maen answered. "Two more than last week."

"Wonderful."

I walked the length of the field and let my breathing even out, my muscles relax some. Five minutes passed when I collapsed beside Maen and languished under the shade that the foliage above provided. He let me lean against him, as he always did during the break I was allotted after running.

We were set in a routine with training.

We got to the field at noon every second day. It started with a series of warm-up stretches. That was followed by the basic conditioning he ran me through, push ups, sit ups, crunches, what have you. Then there were the laps, half an hour of jogging around the expansive field that stretched out from beside the Nara training grounds. When all of that was finished, the chakra work began, my practice with chakra control, my chakra sense, and my blood limit. It was the same each time. The whole thing lasted an hour, sometimes a bit more, a length of time that was steadily growing as time passed.

Maen turned to look at me when I pulled myself up off of the ground and stretched my arms above my head.

"Which do you want to do first?" he asked.

I thought on it. "Blood limit," I decided. "I wanna be able to go home if I end up with a headache from working on my sense."

The two of us moved further into the clearing, away from all of the surrounding foliage that could interfere. We settled down across from each other. Both of us took up identical positions with our legs crossed and our hands in our lap.

I let my eyes fall shut and focused on the resonant, rhythmic sound of Maen as he breathed. I felt the spark of chakra on my senses as his shadow shifted forward across the ground and connected with my own. My breath halted for a second then kicked back into gear, matching the beat of Maen's.

"Shadow Possession complete," he murmured, the words an afterthought, a habitual uttering that few Nara ever broke away from. "Ready?"

"Yeah."

"Alright," he said. "Just relax."

"I know."

It had been months of Maen using this technique to help me train my blood limit. Still, I couldn't get used to the sensation as my own chakra, my own shadow, wrapped itself around me like a second skin. It wasn't comfortable but it wasn't uncomfortable. The energy pulsed and writhed, buzzing against my senses without overwhelming them.

Around my feet, up my legs, snaking across my abdomen. It branched off as it hit my chest and swallowed up my arms and head simultaneously.

"I'm going to let go," Maen warned.

"I've got it."

The tagged on 'sort of' went unsaid with that statement.

Maen released the jutsu and my chakra immediately began to recede, curling outwards from the centre of my chest. I tried to hold onto it, maintain it, but it was hard, like grasping onto air or catching water in your fist as it poured from a waterfall. The chakra slipped between my fingers despite my best efforts.

I managed to halt the chakra as it reached my ankles and wrists. At that point, the only things I was capable of keeping under the jutsu—technique—whatever—were my extremities. The chakra hovered over my hands and feet, wavered in my hold.

I let out a deep breath. I yanked at the chakra, fought to move it back up to where it had been. It moved up an inch, held for a half a breath, then the chakra collapsed entirely and fell away.

"Not bad," Maen said.

I opened my eyes. "How long was that?"

"Twenty seconds."

"Same as last time, then."

"Yeah."

I flopped back onto the grass. "Can I have a minute before we go again?"

"Sure, kiddo."

.

.

"How's her training been going?"

Maen turned to Shikaku, whose eyes still rested on the two children cuddled up together under a tree. All Shikamaru and Kasumi ever seemed to do when they were together was sleep. Shikaku's house, his house, around the compound, at the park. They were like two puppies. All Kasumi had to do was see Shikamaru and she started yawning.

"Good," Maen answered. "Her athleticism is improving at a good rate. She's nearly doubled the amount of time she can run for, and how fast she can do it since I started her on this regime."

"Huh. I didn't peg her as the type."

"Neither did I."

"Think her dad might have specialized in taijutsu?"

Maen shrugged. "Hard to say. Maybe? She inherited good chakra control too, as far as I can tell, so it's possible."

Shikaku's face soured. "You think they used augmented chakra taijutsu in combination with their blood limit?"

"It's possible."

"That's a horrifying thought," he said. His expression shifted back to something more thoughtful. "Has she seen any improvement on that front?"

"Her blood limit?" Maen asked, and received a nod in reply. "Not really. She can hold it a bit longer, and she moved her chakra up a bit on her own earlier today, but that's as far as she's gotten."

Shikaku sighed. "The council's been badgering me for updates."

"Tell them to shove it."

"I did. You know how they are."

"Did you glare when you do it?"

Shikaku flapped a hand and leant further back against the trunk of the tree. "Yeah, but they aren't fazed by that anymore."

"I don't believe that—you make jonin shit their pants with that glare."

"Jonin are one thing but Danzo Shimura is in a league all his own, the stubborn bastard."

"What does he care?"

"Hell if I know, but I already told him that if he wants further updates, he can go ask Lord Hokage, 'cause I'm not telling him anything."

"Neither will Lord Hokage."

"Exactly."

Maen sighed and rubbed his hand across his face. "What are they looking for? We're not even lying, we don't have any answers to give them."

"They're still set on prodding her to see if they can figure out what makes her tick."

"Over my dead body."

The dark look that flashed over Shikaku's features suggested he too felt something akin to that.

Maen knew what they'd be doing.

It had been recognized that more than likely, her panic was what triggered her ability to harness the blood limit. Since her pathways were opened, she hadn't been able to use it herself. If he used his shadow to manipulate it and put it over her, she could hold parts of it, but only for a short period of time.

The fact of the matter was, they had essentially no information about her blood limit.

The connection to her shadow was something the sensors stumbled upon when they were brought in to help her learn to control her chakra sense. More than one noted her shadow held an uncharacteristic charge of chakra to it. Everybody had some of their yin chakra stored in their shadow, as it was as much a part of the soul as anything else, but what Kasumi had stored there was not only more copious than it should have been, it was also abnormal in nature.

Maen didn't understand what that meant until his first time using the Shadow Possession jutsu on her. He actually failed on his first attempt which, at the time, took him off guard. He, a jonin of Konoha, one of the top ninja of his clan, struggled to make a proper bond with her shadow on his first go. He couldn't recall the last time that had happened to him, but he was damn sure it hadn't been since he was a genin.

He got it on his second try and was able to fully cover her in the blood limit around his fourth or fifth, but he was still thrown off by the fact that he didn't get it right away.

The chakra that made up her shadow was like smoke. He could feel that it was there but it didn't come off as solid and corporeal in the way most shadows did. Shikaku noted much the same thing but didn't have any issues with getting a proper bond established when he tried. Kasumi herself even described it to be something along those lines when she tried to hold her blood limit in place.

Maen knew from experience that it wasn't unusual for clans with a yin-based blood limit to also develop a specialized form of yin chakra to accompany it. The Nara had special yin chakra, as did the Yamanaka, the Kurama, and the list went on. However, none were quite as volatile and distinct as hers was, if the assessments from the sensors were any indication.

Those were the only blanks they had been able to fill in, something that the council was less than thrilled about. They saw a potential weapon that they wanted to wield when they looked at Kasumi, and he knew the extents to which they would go to if they were dead-set on figuring her blood limit out.

They knew that panic would enable her to use it, and they'd take advantage of that if they tried to forcefully activate it. Having both Shikaku and the Hokage on his side meant that the council's chance of getting at her was a resounding no way in hell, but the situation set Maen on edge all the same.

The sound of feet stomping across the field pulled him from his thoughts.

Yoshino stormed towards them, face set in a determined fury. Maen was reminded that Shikaku wasn't the only person in his family who could make people soil themselves with a single, well-placed look.

"What did you do?"

Shikaku's skin was ashen. "I was supposed to pick up groceries for dinner when I was out in the village earlier."

"Ah. I'll make sure your grave is under a nice tree."

"Appreciated."

As we approached the Academy, I let my sense open to scope out the building. I regretted it some when a barrage of chakra was revealed to me, bright and bursting with energy in the way that only the signature of ninja children seemed to manage.

"See anything interesting?" Maen asked, tugging on my hand to get my full attention.

It dawned on me that I had spaced out and stopped walking. I closed my sense, shook my head to clear it.

"Lots of kids."

"Brilliant observation."

I huffed. "You're always such a meanie."

"I agree," Shikaku said. He and Shikamaru were walking a few feet ahead of us. "You're a meanie, Maen."

Maen let go of my hand and raised his palm to set it against my eyes. I couldn't see it, but I could feel the shift in his signature as he raised his free-hand, middle finger sticking up.

My sense had evolved in the two months since I'd gained them. That was aided by the fact that I spent a significant amount of my free-time meditating and making use of my sense. It increased in range some, but I struggled to give that range any type of numerical value—I just knew it was expanding. My ability to discern detail had skyrocketed, though, especially when my eyes were closed and I had nothing but the chakra displayed to me against the blank canvas of my mind.

Shikaku snorted.

"Why'd you do that?" I asked, unable to resist.

Maen's chakra signature jolted. "What?"

"I felt your hand do something weird—your middle finger went up."

Shikaku's signature jolted as well, but there was a churning in the way his chakra moved around him that I assumed signalled amusement. "Oh, you're dead if Yoshino finds out," he said.

Maen pulled his hand off my eyes and knelt down in front of me, his expression sombre. His hands rested on my shoulders. "If you don't tell Yoshino that I did that, I won't make you help me with the dishes for a week."

"Really?"

"Really."

"Deal."

Maen ruffled my hair. "Good."

"How do you know I won't snitch on you?" Shikaku asked, tugging a half-asleep Shikamaru forward.

"If you do, I'll tell Yoshino who keeps eating her strawberries before she has the chance to pick them."

"You know?"

"I've watched you do it."

"Great," Shikaku grumbled. "Fine, fine. I'll keep my mouth shut."

Maen smirked down at me. "Just remember, kiddo—when in doubt, blackmail is always a good option."

I grinned. "Got it."

"You're awful."

.

.

The opening ceremonies were full of boring speeches and propaganda.

Shikamaru and I had been abandoned from the beginning, left to fend for ourselves while Maen and Shikaku made a break for it. We ended up finding Choji and Ino, both also abandoned by their respective parents, and sat with them throughout the entire thing.

I tuned out for most of it while Shikamaru conked out five minutes in, his head set on my shoulder and his snores in my ears. I napped with him for a few minutes near the end, too, before Ino jostled us awake with an annoyed squawk about "lazy Nara". I wasn't sure if she didn't know that Maen wasn't my birth parent—it wasn't like we looked alike, either—or if she knew and didn't care, but I wasn't going to be the one to correct her.

We were some of the last ones to make it into the classroom.

Ino broke away from us and joined some other girls at a table. Shikamaru, Choji, and I made it to the back of the room before we realized that it was only two people to a desk and that we couldn't all sit together.

At the table to the left of where we ended up sat a familiar blond, entirely on his own, eyes downcast.

Hello, plot.

It's lovely to see you.

Shikamaru and Choji looked between each other, then to me. I waved them off.

"I'll just sit here."

"You don't mind?" Choji asked.

"Nah," I said. "It's fine."

Shikamaru shrugged. "Whatever."

Naruto watched me sit down with a closed off, wary expression, his eyes darting around my face as if waiting for my features to twist into an expression of disgust and his shoulders squared in defiance.

There was no sunny grin on his face or exuberant cheering about his greatness.

That was the face of a five-year-old who had seen things no child should see, heard things no child should hear, hurt in ways no child should hurt. My heart clenched. His eyes, a brilliant blue as bright as the summer sky, weren't shining as he watched me stand there beside the desk table—they were dull.

I didn't bother stopping to worry about the consequences of my actions as I set my bag beside the desk and plopped down into the seat, offering him a small smile. At that moment I didn't care because right in front of me was a child who needed a damn friend more than anything else in the world and I knew that nobody else would be willing to be there for him.

Could it have screwed things up? Maybe.

Could it have zero effect on the future of the world? Also maybe.

There wasn't any way to be certain, so what was the point in agonizing over it—what I knew without a doubt, though, was that nobody else would give him a chance, not for a long time, and that was all Naruto needed.

I'd been given mine already, so didn't he deserve to be given one too?

"Hi," I said. "My name's Kasumi."

"Naruto," he said.

"Cool."

I turned back to the front where Iruka was getting settled at his desk. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a grin break out over Naruto's face; the smile on my face widened.

It was a start.

"My face doesn't look like that."

"Yes, it does."

"Nu-uh!" Naruto protested, cheeks puffed out and arms crossed over his chest. "I'm way more handsome than that."

Shikamaru snorted. "No, you're not."

"This picture is plenty handsome!" I said. "I even got the whiskers right!"

"Those are whiskers?" Choji asked. He leant forward off of the tree to squint at the paper, then fell back against it. "Oh."

"Aw, come on," I said. "I think this one is pretty good!"

"You've done better," Shikamaru answered. "That farm one you did a couple months ago was pretty good."

"Eh? Farm one?" Naruto asked.

He scooted closer and reached for the sketch pad. I pulled it out of his range. "No grabbing."

"Awh, come on Kasumi—I wanna see it!"

"Nope."

"Please?"

His lips jut out and his eyes went wide, hands clasped in front of him.

"That's not fair," I whined. "Don't—don't do that!"

"You're so dramatic," Shikamaru said.

"Those things are a weapon!" I hissed, forcing myself to look away. "You don't know because he never uses them on you."

"Wouldn't matter if he did."

I pulled the pad up and held it in front of me, blocking Naruto out of my view.

The fall breeze swept over us, rustling what few leaves were left on the trees in the park, chilled with a bite that foretold of the coming of winter despite the fact that the sun still shone bright in the sky.

"Just one quick look? Please?"

"It's just a picture, Naruto."

"He only wants to see so bad 'cause you didn't just show it to him in the first place," Shikamaru drawled.

"Thank you, peanut gallery," I said. "Your input is always appreciated."

"Pretty please?"

"I kind of wanna see it too," Choji said.

I sighed. "Fine."

Naruto let out a whoop, sidling up beside me, Choji joining him.

I flipped through some of the pages, my eyes grazing over the images as I went, the images flashing past. None of them were particularly high-quality—pudgy kid hands could only do so much—but they were at least recognizable, and increased in skill the further into the book that I went.

That was especially true for the picture of the farmhouse. Shikamaru was right when he said that it was good—it was probably the best in the entire book, as I had spent weeks sketching it out from memory.

"Whoa," Naruto said.

His face hovered over the page, filling my sight with a shock of blonde hair.

"I've never seen a farm," Choji admitted over a mouthful of chips. He sat back, so as not to get any food on the paper. "Did you base it off of a picture from a book?"

"No," I said. "That's my old home."

"Oh."

"Whoa! You lived on a farm? That's so cool!"

"Yeah," I murmured.

I traced a finger across the image, the movement measured and soft to avoid smudging the lines.

The fact that the picture in front of me was more detailed than any memory I could sum up now made looking at it all the more painful. My memories were fading. I knew they would, I was no stranger to that sort of mental disruption, but that didn't change the fact that with each passing day my parent's faces grew harder to recall, that the images of my old home grew blurrier, and that it fucking burned.

I pencilled out equally detailed portraits of my parents in the book, drew out every single memory from Kiso that I could with painstaking care, but the pictures weren't enough. They couldn't replace the memories.

"So, wait, what are you doing in Konoha—"

Before he could finish, I turned to Shikamaru and asked, "What time were we supposed to be back?"

Shikamaru, who was tuned out of the conversation, blinked. "Huh?"

"When were we supposed to be back?" I asked again.

He shrugged. "Dunno. Probably… five minutes ago."

"Well, then," I said. "We should really get going, then."

Shikamaru turned away from me. "I don't wanna get up," he whined.

"Sucks to suck," I said. "Bye guys!"

I grabbed Shikamaru's wrist with my free hand and hauled him off the ground. He was dead weight in my grip. Rather than drag him, I let go. He flopped onto the ground in a heap but dragged himself back up to slouch after me.

"Goodbye," Choji said.

Naruto looked confused at the abrupt end of the conversation, the smile on his face dimmed and his eyebrows knit together, but he still echoed Choji's words as he waved goodbye to Shikamaru and I.

Maybe one day I would be comfortable getting into that, but that day wasn't today, not yet.

.

.

"Maen!"

Maen turned in time to brace himself when I threw myself at his leg. I held to it, arms around it in a vice grip and my face buried into the fabric of his pants, not caring about anything other than the fact that he was back.

He wheezed out a laugh and moved me from his leg to his hip. "Hey," he murmured, a small smile on his face. "How've you been?"

My hands came down against his cheeks, one palm pressed against each side of his face. He raised an eyebrow but didn't pull away.

I ignored the question. "Meanie," I said. "You said three weeks."

"It wasn't my fault," he answered. The words were muffled due to the fact that I hadn't moved my hands from his face. "It was somebody else."

Shikaku strolled into the room. "It's true," he said. "There was some stupid chunin—"

"Shikaku!" Yoshino cried from the kitchen.

"Stupid's not a bad word!"

"Badmouthing a comrade is poor manners!"

"Idiot deserves it," Shikaku muttered under his breath. He cleared his throat. "There was a chunin on his team who was causing trouble."

The pout on my face disappeared and was replaced by a frown. "You're not hurt, right?"

"I'm fine," Maen said. He pulled my hands from his face—there was scruff on his cheeks, meaning he likely hadn't done more than shower since getting back. "Nothing bad happened, we just got slowed down a little."

"Oh. Okay." My head peeked over his shoulder, my attention drawn to the distant sizzling that drifted from the kitchen, the sound of food cooking on a pan. "Does Yoshino need help with dinner?"

Yoshino poked her head around the corner. "I'm fine, sweetheart. Don't worry about it!"

I wrapped my arms around Maen's neck and nuzzled my face against his shoulder—I wasn't going to complain.

I hadn't seen him in a month, longer than I'd ever gone without him. Just feeling his signature brushing up against my sense was welcome, the familiarity of his chakra like a blanket wrapping over me, warm and comforting. I let that hold my thoughts—Maen wasn't telling me everything and neither was Shikaku. There were few things that could slow a mission down for an entire week, none of which were good.

It was better to focus on the positive, though, instead of letting myself get distracted by the hypothetical negative situations. Maen could have come back injured, or he might not have come back at all. He was a jonin, doing high ranking missions—the fact that he hadn't yet returned from a mission and required immediate hospitalization was something of a miracle. If I let myself worry about what could happen each time he went on a mission, I'd never be able to function while he was gone.

The two men settled down to a game of shogi.

Shikamaru and I both watched; Shikamaru was nestled in the lap of his father while I had situated myself in Maen's.

My grasp on the rules of shogi was shaky at best. I followed as well as I could, with some assistance from both Maen and Shikaku, but I found myself getting lost at some point during the game and giving up on following.

Instead, I listened to the sounds of pieces clanking against the game board, the two men bickering, and dinner being made in the background. My eyelids grew heavy, my shoulders eased. Maen raised a hand to run it through my hair, his eyes not wavering from the board in front of him. It was an unconscious movement, habitual, formed through the sheer volume of time I spent using him as a human pillow.

The thought brought a smile to my face.

It was moments like that where the weight against my chest, put there by the loss of my memories, of my old life in Kiso, didn't feel quite so heavy anymore.