.
Healing doesn't mean the
damage never existed, it means that the damage
no longer controls our lives.
I stared at the drenched remnants of our fire, frozen fingers clasped around my knees, and didn't bother to try and protect myself against the bitter breeze that nipped at my skin.
It was the middle of the day and rain poured from the sunless sky—if I didn't know better, I could have mistaken the time for midnight, not noon, from how dark it was around us. Drops of water thundered against the ground, beat, beat, beat into the dirt, spurted bits of mud up into the air. It dripped through the canopy of the tree we sat under, travelled down each broad leaf that adorned the branches of the tree.
Naruto shifted, scooted closer to me and lay his head on my shoulder. A second later Sasuke did the same, moving so that our shoulders were almost touching. I doubted the movement was intentional. The three of us huddled there together to gain the warmth that our wet clothes and bedrolls couldn't provide.
Kakashi slept behind us in the deepest sleep that a ninja of his calibre was capable of. He'd bandaged the wound that ran up his forearm once we set up camp, cleaned the cracked skin and pulled a length of pristine bandage from out of nowhere to wrap around it, doing a better job than Sasuke or I had done. He fell asleep after that, and had remained that way for the last three hours.
"Hey… hey, Kaka…"
"Yeah?"
"Do you think Inari's gonna be okay?" Naruto asked. His voice was hushed, his breath warm on my cheek. "We kinda… just left him there… and ya know…"
I watched bits of smoke sputter up from the pile of soaked wood in front of us with listless eyes. My gut twisted. "I don't know, Naruto."
We reached the start of the Hashirama forest, the gates of the village, the bustling streets of the marketplace, and I didn't feel like I was home.
I was cold in the heat of summer, tired after having a generous amount of time to sleep the night before. I wasn't right.
When I passed by the gates of the Nara compound, I felt a spark of life in my otherwise numb chest. The signatures of Shikamaru, Shikaku, Yoshino brushed up against my senses, spots of glorious familiarity, and I felt a burn. I pushed open the door to the house and the heat simmered.
Shoes dropped on the mat and my pack followed. Feet strode forward, one after the other.
The image of Maen sitting on the worn cotton sofa, a cigarette in his mouth, a stack of papers on his lap, eyes already raised to watch my approach, ignited the fire again.
Home.
I was home.
I couldn't hold myself together anymore. My knees buckled and I went crashing down towards the floor—Maen caught me before I hit the ground. His hands came to cradle my face, one calloused palm pressing against each of my cheeks, and his lips moved to form words that I didn't hear over the buzz in my ears and the sobs that rattled my bones.
Unsatisfied with my lack of response, his hands roved over my arms, my torso, my legs.
"I'm—I'm not hu—hurt," I managed. "I'm—"
He pulled me against his chest and silenced the words. His mouth pressed against the top of my head, arms wound around me, and his whole being swallowed up my body.
Warm.
It was so warm.
I melted into the embrace. The stress, the frustration, and the grief, products of everything that went wrong over the course of the last two and a half weeks, rushed out of me. Two and a half weeks of bottling up as much as I could manage and shoving it away. Two and a half weeks of stress and pressure.
Maen swept me up and carried me bridal-style through the house, right to his room. He set me down on his bed. When he took a step backwards, away from me, my arms reached out towards him like a child asking to be picked up. His hand settled on top of my head, but he didn't move to hold me again.
"I'm just grabbing a shirt for you," he murmured. "Your clothes are ruined."
I couldn't argue with that. The clothes I had on were worn, the hems frayed, the fabric stained and torn from being snagged by tree branches as we travelled.
A shower wouldn't have been out of the question, as there was dirt and grime caked along my skin, and my hair was beyond dirty by this point. Maen handed me an oversized t-shirt and prodded me towards his bathroom, and I decided to do that very thing. I kept it quick—I washed my hair, scrubbed at my skin. I showered for as long as the water swirled down the drain brown.
When I walked out of the bathroom, I saw Maen sitting on his mussed bed, one leg hidden beneath the dark green bedcovers, my tattered pack at the foot of the bed and a steaming cup of tea on the bedside table. Most of my body was still wet. My hair soaked the back of my shirt and my feet left watermarks with each step, but I didn't have it in me to care. I stumbled forward and crashed into Maen. He took the sudden collision without issue, leant back to compensate for the force of my weight and eased me down onto the bed.
I started crying again, the emotion inside of me like a bubble being popped.
The urge was overwhelming to the point where I had no choice but to deal with it. There was no way for me to shut it off and shove it away. I spent the entire mission doing that. Emotions could be buried for so long before they demanded to be felt. An ocean crashes over the shore whether or not the sand is ready to be washed away, the autumn breeze yanks the leaves from their branch regardless of if the leaf is prepared for departure. In the same way, emotions are a force of nature in and of themselves.
I curled up in the fetal position and let myself cry. I lay there and let myself be held.
I let myself remember that no matter what, I wasn't alone.
Maen was mad.
He didn't get that way often—it had been years since he last felt the cold fury that settled like a rock in his gut. It wasn't a sensation he was fond of. He might have attempted to ignore it except for the fact that, given what had happened, the feeling was entirely founded and rational.
He leapt from rooftop to rooftop with a single destination in mind. It was early in the morning, the sun scraping against the horizon. Maen needed to be fast. He needed to catch his target, talk some sense into him, and get back to the house before Kasumi woke up and found him missing, if she hadn't already.
Thankfully, his target was predictable.
Kakashi didn't turn to face Maen as he touched down on the ground, but Maen had no doubt that Kakashi knew he was there.
"I want to ask what the fuck you were thinking, bringing a group of fresh genin on a B-rank mission, but I already know the answer to that question," Maen drawled. He walked forward, hands shoved in his pockets and one eye squinted against the morning sunlight. Kakashi stiffened a fraction. "You weren't."
"Ah."
"That's it? You put three kids into a life-threatening situation, and that's really the only thing you have to say?"
Kakashi scratched the back of his head and turned from the memorial stone. "I did what I had to do."
"What about those kids?"
"What about them?"
Maen stopped and raised a hand to block out the sun. "You're emotionally stunted, not stupid." He felt anger rather than sympathy when Kakashi offered no response but a blank look and a tilted head. "You… you're fucking kidding me, right?"
"I would have had to actually say something to do that."
"Do you even understand the magnitude of what happened?"
Kakashi shrugged, strolled towards Maen. "Two civilians were caught in the crossfire of the mission. It's unfortunate that the boy lost his parents, and I'm sure that the kids are quite upset about it, but—"
"Stop." Maen pinched the bridge of his nose and hissed out a breath. "Those kids deserve better than having you be so blasé about their mental wellbeing. Don't underestimate how severely something like that can weigh on the mind of somebody as young as them."
Kakashi raised his eyebrow. "Oh?"
"My kid is currently lying in bed at home after having spent the entire night crying because you failed to do your damn job right. Zabuza Momochi was her first kill—not to mention the fact that, right after, she had to cremate two bodies and clean up the whole site as per protocol. After something like that you're supposed to, you know, talk to your student. Ensure that they're stable."
Another blank look.
"Naruto and Sasuke, too. What about them? Their mission resulted in a kid being orphaned and neither of them have anybody at home to talk to about this. They're both orphans themselves. Did you talk about any of this with them? At all? Did you consider that it might fuck with them?"
Another blank look.
Maen wanted to be surprised that Kakashi lacked any and all ability to deal with the emotional needs of his students—he wasn't. Maen had seen Kakashi in his early days, graduated at the same time as him, had watched him in the war and intermittently witnessed his years spent in ANBU; he didn't need anybody to tell him that Kakashi Hatake was emotionally incapable, nor did he need them to tell him why.
That didn't stop him from wanting to shove Kakashi's face into the dirt, but Maen could at least acknowledge that the situation wasn't black and white, especially considering he didn't know how much Kakashi was withholding from him.
He didn't know whether or not Kakashi cared. Kakashi wasn't doing much of anything to show that the situation mattered to him, but Kakashi was also the kind of person who wore a literal mask over the majority of his face. To say he kept his emotions hidden would be an understatement.
Maen levelled his gaze with Kakashi. "What are you gonna do if you get these kids killed, huh?"
There.
Maen caught a spark of emotion—anger, guilt, frustration—that was smoothed down into a placid expression and posture. It was like that burst of light which hit your eyes in the split second before you blocked the sun out with your hand. A flash of fierce, harsh emotion, and that was all it took to assure Maen that there was at least something there. It wasn't enough to satisfy him, but Maen knew he wasn't going to get anything more substantial, no matter what he said or did. Pushing further would yield fewer results, not more. He had to pick his battles. He had to quit while he was ahead, insignificant as the ground gained was.
That was all he cared about at the end of the day. He wanted to air out his own emotions on the matter, but there were more constructive ways to do that. All he wanted was to know that what happened on Kasumi's last mission wouldn't happen again and if he saw what he thought he did, then he felt some confidence that Kakashi wouldn't allow for a repeat.
"Mah, I won't," Kakashi answered, waved a hand. "They're in good hands with me."
Maen turned and headed out of the training grounds. "They're not, actually," he said, chin lifted to toss the words over his shoulder. "Change that, and do it sooner rather than later. You don't get to throw these kid's lives away."
.
.
Kakashi watched the figure retreat across the rooftops and found himself being reminded of why most people avoided pissing off a Nara.
He wondered if Maen got what he wanted out of the conversation.
Kakashi turned to look at the memorial stone, stared at the names scrawled across it, his eyes flitting between the three that were most familiar to him. He rolled the conversation over in his head.
He hadn't known the extents which Kasumi went to cover up the scene of the fight—"I cleaned up," was all she had said to him, and he hadn't pressed, but he realized now that he should have—nor did he consider that either of the boys would see lasting mental repercussions. Kakashi had seen worse, he had always seen worse and had borne witness to it at a far younger age. However, Kakashi knew he wasn't the ideal tape-measure for gauging mental health and recognized that he needed to re-evaluate what constituted 'harm' in regards to his students.
There was more work for him to do than he imagined.
Kakashi sighed. He pulled down his mask and lifted a thumb, bit into it and drew blood. His hands clapped together and landed on the dirt in front of him, a bit of chakra, and a puff of smoke erupted from the ground.
Bisuke and Urushi stared at him, awaiting orders.
"I've got a job for you two."
.
.
The only thought Naruto had upon waking up from a fitful, unpleasant sleep and finding a dog on his chest was whether or not dogs could eat instant ramen.
He discovered they could when he made breakfast that morning. In fact, the one who snuck into his house enjoyed it—not as much as Naruto did, but the dog was a close second, if the gusto in which the dog chowed down was any indication.
Naruto decided that he liked dogs, even if the one that found him was kind of ugly.
.
.
Sasuke saw the dog emerge out of the corner of his eye. On instinct, one hand reached for the pouch of training kunai he had strapped to his leg, and his body jerked around to face it as he tossed the kunai.
The dog sidestepped the weapon and squared an affronted look at Sasuke.
Sasuke frowned—he had no idea how a dog, of all things, got into the compound and made it all the way to the training grounds. The dog lifted its muzzle into the air and sniffed, reminding Sasuke a bit of a wolf. It was gruff enough to be one, if not for the odd shirt that was wrapped around the animal's body.
Sasuke stepped forward as the dog did and he got a better look at the symbol that was stitched into the dog's shirt. Henohenomoheji. There was one person the dog could belong to.
"Go back to Kakashi," Sasuke said. "Tell him that I don't need you here."
The dog ignored him and trotted forward to settle down on the grass.
"I meant it. Go."
The dog lay on its belly, having found a perfect splash of morning sunlight, and set its muzzle down on its paws. It stared at Sasuke. It wasn't going anywhere.
Sasuke forced out a breath. "Fine, whatever. Just don't pee on anything."
.
.
I woke up feeling tired.
I sat up in the empty bed and oriented myself through sleep-grit eyes. The room was empty but the door had been left open a crack, and the scent of breakfast being made and a sliver of light slithered through. I could feel Maen there, feel him move as he prepared the food.
Home.
My legs swung over the side of the bed, my joint and limbs stiff from having slept for—my head turned to look at the clock—thirteen hours. There was a pair of dark green slippers waiting there in front of the bed and a fresh set of clothes on the bedside table. I put on the slippers but left the clothes in favor of Maen's t-shirt that I already had on.
The smell of eggs and rice became more distinct the closer I got. I rounded the corner into the kitchen and saw Maen cooking in front of the stove, apron and all, his spatula snuggled beneath an egg that sizzled as he lifted it up off of the pan.
"You have good timing," he said, turning to look at me. He rolled his eyes at the shirt but I could see him smirk all the same.
"Smells good," I mumbled.
He nodded. "Thanks. Sit."
I stumbled into a chair and found a cup of tea placed in front of me. I lifted it to my lips and took a careful sip, enjoying the sight of Maen wandering around the kitchen in a pastel pink, floral embossed apron, long black hair flowing loose behind him as he moved. It was a sight. Maen would make a wonderful trophy wife if he ever decided to get hitched.
The scent of pork cooking hit my nose. I fought off the sudden burst of acid that burned up my throat, clamped a hand over my nose and mouth and squeezed my eyes shut.
I heard the pan get moved off the stove, metal scraping on metal, a second of silence, and the chair beside me was dragged across the floor. Half a minute passed. I didn't move my hand away until I was confident that I'd keep my stomach. I opened my eyes and leaned back in my chair.
A small part of me was terrified that I was going to burst out in tears again, but the itch in my throat didn't come—I'd gotten it out of my system the night before.
My gaze found Maen's but I couldn't get my mouth to form words.
Maen stood, set his hand on my head and went back into the kitchen to finish up, dragging his fingers through my hair on the way, and I realized that I didn't have to.
We ate in silence. I didn't have much of an appetite. I ate what I could but the churning of my stomach never quite halted, and there was still nearly half my breakfast left when I put my fork down and pushed the plate away. Maen didn't comment on it; he wrapped up what was there and put it in the fridge.
I wanted to go back to sleep for another few hours, days, weeks. I didn't feel like I was ready to be awake. Instead, I wandered over to the couch and flopped down onto the cushions and blankets, flipped on the radio and let the music drone on in the background. The couch dipped when Maen joined me, and I crawled over to sit on his lap without a second thought. It was nice for the fifteen minutes that it lasted.
"There's somebody standing outside the window," I said into his shirt. I could feel them hovering there.
"Yeah, I know," he said.
"Are you going to make them wait?"
"For another minute."
"I don't think you're allowed to do that."
"I haven't looked at him yet. He can't prove I'm ignoring him."
"What if he can hear us?"
"He can't."
There was a knock on the glass.
"Are you sure about that?"
"For fuck's sake," Maen muttered. He slid me off his lap and walked over to the slider door, yanked it open. "What?"
"Sir, your help is being requested," an androgynous voice said. "Lord Hokage needs you to report in."
I lifted my face from the blankets and stared at the figure, took in the mask and the uniform, and bit back a frown—it was ANBU. Maen held out his hand and the operative produced a scroll from thin air to place into his palm. His expression remained stoic as he read through it.
"Yeah, alright," Maen said. "Go. I'll be there in five."
The operative disappeared in a flash.
"You're getting called in?" I asked, pushing myself up into a sitting position.
"Briefly," Maen answered. "I'll be back by dinner."
"Oh."
He looked annoyed but not at me. One of his hands swept through his hair. "I'm sorry, kiddo."
I didn't want him to go and leave me alone, wasn't ready to be alone. I wanted him to stay with me. I wanted to be greedy. It wasn't up to me, though, so I said, "It's fine."
Maen disappeared into his bedroom and came out two minutes later in full ANBU attire with a thick-lined owl mask sitting on the side of his head. His time in ANBU was no secret. I saw the tattoo on his bicep more times than I could count, though it was never something I outright asked him about.
He nodded at me on his way out. "I'll be back as soon as I can."
"Bye," I mumbled.
He paused, hesitated, and darted back over to where I was sitting. He dropped a kiss on top of my head and lingered, let out a breath. Then he was gone.
.
.
Some days, Maen hated his job.
She needed him. He couldn't stay with her.
When ANBU called, retired or not, you answered. He didn't have a choice in the matter. The mission fell into his realm of specialty and ANBU was down a captain. It made sense that they were tapping him, he couldn't argue with that, but he still wished they hadn't.
Maen stood on the roof of his building and looked to the Hokage monument. His gaze shifted, drawn to his cousin's house across the compound.
He couldn't decline the mission, but he could make the Hokage wait five more minutes—he had something he needed to do. Hiruzen would understand.
.
.
"Hey."
I jolted, snapped back into reality by the person speaking in front of me. The movement sent the pillow that had been in my lap down to the floor, the blanket strewn over my body sliding down my shoulder.
Shikamaru watched me with an eyebrow raised.
"Hey," I answered.
He threw himself onto the couch beside me and on instinct I repositioned, edged closer so that my shoulder was pressed up into his side. He grunted, adjusted to compensate, and pulled the pillow up from the ground so he could put it under his head.
I waited for him to ask about the mission, to say anything about it, hint towards it, but he didn't. He lay there with his eyes shut and fell asleep after a couple of minutes.
I was grateful for it.
I didn't want to talk about the mission—all I wanted was to not have to be alone. I doubted it was a coincidence, the timing too perfect that Shikamaru should arrive minutes after Maen left.
I was grateful for it.
I pulled my legs into my chest and used Shikamaru as a pillow, along with some of the extra blankets littered around the couch. My eyes closed and within seconds I had fallen asleep, dead to the rest of the world.
.
.
They did nothing for the whole of the day.
A few hours were spent sleeping on the couch, of which Shikamaru was the first to wake from. He watched her fitful slumber for a few minutes, her tossing and turning and letting out the odd, muddled whimper, until he decided that Kasumi was better off woken up. He didn't ask what she saw and she didn't offer it to him. The deadened look to her eyes as she rubbed away unshed tears was enough to tell him that it had been nothing good.
She went quiet after that, staring off at nothing in particular while the music from the radio occupied the air around them.
Shikamaru didn't know what to say to her. He knew he should say something, but he had no idea what that something could be. Asking about the mission would aggravate the issue. Nobody told him what happened, save that it had been bad and resulted in the mission being bumped up to a B-rank, and even he knew better than to ask. Casual chatter about what went on over the last couple of weeks while she was gone didn't feel appropriate, either. He found that he didn't have much of anything to say.
The silence, though, wasn't comfortable. It normally was for them. They could go entire days without a word of conversation and it would be fine, but sitting next to her then was the exact opposite of comfortable. It was the nature of the silence. The finality of the silence. The fact that the silence was caused by something being very, very wrong with his best friend and he knew that it was his job to fix it, that had been his job since they were small, but that he didn't know how to fix it.
When it became too much, Shikamaru grabbed Kasumi by the wrist and led her outside.
He didn't know if that would help but at least having more around them than the radio and an empty living room had to be worth something. Kasumi didn't resist or question his actions. She trailed along behind him like a lost duckling and that did more to unsettle Shikamaru then anything else.
He led her into the forest. Past the sunny grass spots, past the gardens. He had a specific location in mind. Not many people knew but if you walked for long enough in the Nara forest, you could happen upon meadows and clearings, breaks in the trees that were favoured by the deer for grazing. Shikamaru's father had shown him years and years ago on a whim, and Shikamaru had visited it ever since when he wanted to get away. He hadn't shown it to anybody else.
They walked for twenty-five minutes and not once did Kasumi ask him where they were going. Her eyes began to clear, shifting around the area in what he knew was curiosity, but she didn't say a single word the entire trip.
They broke through the treeline. Shikamaru let go of her wrist and it fell limp at her side.
"Oh," she mumbled.
Shikamaru shoved his hands in his pockets. "Yeah."
"This is…" She walked forward, blinked. "Wow."
"Pretty cool," he agreed. "Dad brought me here a few years ago. Said that he and Mom would come here a lot before they had me, whenever they needed some time alone."
"I… didn't know there was anything out this far," she said. "I've never walked this deep into the forest."
Shikamaru shrugged. "Most people don't."
He ambled ahead and flopped down onto his back, hands behind his head, eyes locked on the clouds that drifted through the sky. Kasumi hesitated for a few seconds before she joined him. She sat cross-legged, her head shifting around as she admired the meadow.
"This place is like a little slice of heaven," she said.
"Yeah. I like it."
She dropped one of her elbows onto her knee and her chin into her palm. Her other hand fiddled with a flower that jutted out from the ground around her ankles, her thumb flicking over the soft white petal. She plucked it from the ground and held it in front of her face, sniffed it, and set it back behind her ear.
There was life in her eyes again.
She smiled, lifted her chin her lock eyes with him. "Thank you," she murmured.
Shikamaru rolled his head back to stare up at the sky. "'Course."
.
.
It was eight in the evening when Maen came home.
I heard him enter through the front door, the sound of a crinkling bag and the scent of fried seafood accompanying him. I looked up from my book in time to see him walk into the living room in regular ninja attire rather than his ANBU uniform, a bag of takeout in hand. He looked as tired as I felt, his shoulders sagged lower than usual and his eyes half lidded.
He nodded to me. "Hey, kiddo."
"Hi. How was it?"
"About as much fun as I expected," he answered. "You?"
"Good. Thanks for sending over Shika."
Maen snorted, walking through the living room and into the kitchen. "I can't believe you still call him that."
"I'm going to call him that for the rest of his life." I groped for my bookmark and closed up the novel, stood up, stretched. I tossed away my blankets and moved to join him. "What'd you get?"
"Bunch of stuff from the tempura place by Satoshi's. Prawns, starfish, squid, then those sweet-potato ones with the—"
"Spicy honey sauce," I finished. "My favourite."
He smirked. "Yeah." He reached a hand into the bag and pulled out another container. "There's some udon in there, too."
I grabbed us plates while Maen went to go and change into casual clothes. We sat down at the little table in the kitchen, across from each other, and ate in the dim lighting the bulb above our heads provided.
For the first time in weeks, I was aware of the hunger that gnawed at my stomach. It was a sensation I hadn't realized I missed. I didn't have to force my dinner down. I had an appetite, I wanted to finish what I had served to myself, and that was what I did. The empty plate that stared up at me when the meal was finished left me with a sense of catharsis that I couldn't begin to explain.
Maen seemed satisfied when he cleared away the dishes. I offered to help clean up, but he shooed me away. I landed on the couch first and when my eyes began to droop and I was on the verge of falling asleep, I set my sights on his bed. I may have seemingly regained my appetite, but I had no confidence that I could make it through the night alone in a bed yet. Baby steps.
I swapped out the t-shirt I had on for a fresh one, grabbing it from Maen's closet and ignoring the shirt from my own that still sat on the bedside table. Maen walked into the room and rolled his eyes at the sight.
"Really?"
"They're comfortable."
"I know, that's why I own them."
"Are you going to make me take it off?"
He took one look at me and muttered, "Stupid question."
His mouth lifted in a smirk. He lunged forward, faster than I could blink, and wrapped an arm around my waist and tossed me onto the bed, like he used to when I was little. I laughed, like I used to when I was little.
Maen jumped onto the bed beside me and landed with enough force that I bounced up.
It was eight thirty in the evening, still early, still with bits of the sunset tainting the sky, but both of us settled in.
"Goodnight, Maen."
"Night kiddo."
I fell asleep that night with a smile on my face.
Little by little, I was working my way back to normalcy.