DFS Chapter 12
Shimura Danzo has been dead for eight years, and that is supposed to mean something, but Tsuru's not sure why.
Yagura doesn't tell her everything.
Sometimes it bothers her, not knowing who the other key players in events are.
She watches Kurosuki's mouth purse, as he carries her tucked under his arm. Her bag hanging loosely in his hand. "What is with the serious face, little bird?"
"Do you ever wonder how the war is going to end?"
"Yagura-dono says it will soon."
"Yuichi, and Sachihiro are in the hospital again."
"Are they going to die?"
"No."
"That's unfortunate. I would of enjoyed accompanying you to another funeral. What you said last time was beautiful."
0o0o0
Staring out into the world, and the beauty beyond the hidden village makes her ache.
The yearning, such a physical thing.
The person she had been still remembers the headlines about the sixty-seven year old woman, who had walked the appalachian trail, and had completed it more than once. The things Grandma Gatewood had said to the cameramen, and news people in plain, weather worn clothes but mostly, what she said she had been told by her father.
"Pick up your feet," the man had been reported to say, which was innocuous by itself. A simple reminder to keep the carpets from rolling up, but the woman had made it something more.
Something powerful, as she worked her way through the wilderness, and more, densely populated areas.
It had been enough to inspire her.
Addy had even followed in the elderly womans footsteps decades later, wearing down dozens of hiking boots. Accepting what change, had brought.
The discovery of all those moldering sports illustrated in her uncles, one of the greatest blessing Adelaide had ever received.
All the other records, in the library she had worked the near second.
And only her grandparents had seemed to understand when Addy disappeared every chance she got. The rest of her kin mumbling, and wringing their hands as they went about their normal, orderly lives. Expecting her to call at every stop.
Here, Tsuru thinks a lot more people understand.
But, the cost is also higher. A lot higher.
She meets Sachihiro's squirrelly eyes, so reminiscent of the ones Adelaide had seen, when she looked in the mirror then.
The ones, Tsuru imagines most of the missing-nin wear in private.
"Do you think, they will mind if we ask the fishman if they need a couple of extra hands?"