Guardian
Terror is the fear not known till your heart sinks below the line of frost,
Terror is horror unimaginable,
Terror is that feeling you get that creeps through your blood and immoblilizes you at the very mention of its name.
Terror is inescapable,
impossible to fight,
hard to rise above.
Terror is there.
--
The fear of those you cannot protect,
The hate for those who've wounded you,
The calm before the end.
Terror is love.
----Ashen Rose
She grimaced, avoiding putting weight on her left leg, where a shuriken was embedded in the area of the thigh only a few inches above the knee.
It seemed her entire life was lived by inches.
She grit her teeth, yanking the weapon out, praying it wasn't poisoned (there had been a nasty incident awhile back) and not really caring anymore if it was. Pain, beatings, death, didn't terrify her anymore; only a promise failed could rouse her heart to unnatural speed, because then it wasn't about her anymore.
Naruto.
Sighing as she watched him playing on the couch, making airplane noises with Gama and occasionally tossing said plushie into the air, she shook her head.
Taking a few coins, she told him to stay here and lock the door behind her, and she walked off. Heading to a little flower shop, the bell tinkling melodically above her, she walked over to the little girl behind the counter, who was busy arranging flowers somewhat sloppily.
"I'd like a camellia."
The girl looked up, staring at her suspiciously for a moment before hopping off the stool she'd been sitting on and disappearing into the back. Bringing a white flower back after a moment, she refused to hand it to Kaida until she pressed the coins into the little blonde's hands, stepping out into the light mist.
She turned her head up to the sky, feeling like she should cry, but her eyes were dry. Perhaps the air was crying for her, heavy laden with moisture as it was.
The graveyard didn't frighten her. She was quiet as she walked over to a grave and traced the name carved there sadly. Tears pricked her eyes until she blinked them back, face blank but melancholy, like an ANBU mask.
'Hogosha Miyoko...'
A year to the day, today, since they'd found her swinging from the ceiling, beautiful but... dead.
She let herself remember...
She stood, dressed in black, at the edge of the crowd, unable to hear the eulogy. She noticed very few people were even crying—Miyoko had been a somewhat solitary figure—and that saddened her. After all, it was said that you could tell how much a person was loved by how many people cried at someone's funeral.
If that was the case, there were very few people who cared about her mother.
The fact that Miyoko had abandoned her, literally, in the streets—that she had hated Kaida for as long as either could remember—the half-healed scars on the girl's heart...
None of that made any difference to Kaida. With all the tenacity and ferocity of a child's faith, she believed that Miyoko was her mother, and loved her in spite of everything.
"Okaa-san!" she cried, legs buckling, as she sobbed in the sunshine (was even heaven happy that she was gone?) and ignored the glares of the other mourners.
"The nerve of the demon-lover, defiling her mother's funeral. Hogosha-san even disowned her before her death, and the little brat's here?" they muttered amongst themselves.
Running her hand over the photograph that did little justice to Miyoko's haggard, frail beauty, Kaida hiccuped, swallowing her sobs with difficulty.
"I... I may no longer be your daughter, okaa-san, but you will always be my mother."
She had been beaten, again, shortly after and hurled out of the cemetery. She didn't see the pair of eyes watching her thoughtfully, as the owner had disappeared shortly after.
"My mother... okaa-san..."
She stood from where she'd knelt at the grave, brushing off the graveyard soil, and gave her mother one last, sad smile in the rain.
"...this is goodbye. I will not come here again."
In a voice so soft it was nearly a whisper, she said, "...take care."
She never returned to that grave again.
She would let her mother sleep in peace now.
As she returned to the apartment, knocking the code Kaida had taught Naruto, he grinned brightly at her, ignoring her tear-streaked face or the fact that her face was bruised now.
"OKAA-SAN! GUESS WHAT! GUESS WHAT! I SAW A BLUEBIRD TODAY! WE'LL BE HAPPY NOW!" he shouted excitedly, jumping up and down before enveloping her in a crushing hug.
Feeling her heart twist, she grabbed him closer to her, sobbing into his golden hair.
There is power in a dragon's eyes...
... and terror in their heart.
----Book of Dragons, Konoha Ed.
Things were getting desperate.
She had taken Naruto in a year and a half ago; she was nearly ten and he was almost five, and yet things were still getting worse. Being clanless, as it were, they had no protection.
That needed to change.
Sitting on the kitchen floor, chewing on a pencil, she had written down the clans of Konoha.
Aburame. Hmm. They would take them in, she was sure; they knew what it was like to be hated for having a creature (or creatures, as it were) hosted inside of them and were subject to enough ridicule. Still, she disliked making the quiet clan even more hated and/or feared more than it already was, which is what certainly would happen. Aburame Shibi had always been kind to her, in his own way, and she refused to put him in a situation that would compromise the safety of his family.
Inuzuka. Now, here was a clan that would be ideal; with their tight bond with their partners, they would understand that Kyuubi was "under Naruto's skin." Looked on to be a brutal, uncivilized clan, they would take them in just for the hell of it; a chance to irritate Konoha in general.
Nara. ... They'd be too lazy to argue—or to take them it. Ugh. They were a somewhat difficult clan to figure out. How troublesome.
Quirking into a smile, she realized just how many good people there were here; she was so consumed with protecting Naruto from the evil people, that she sometimes forgot there was goodness here, too.
Yamanaka. ... no. Inoshi wouldn't subject his family to that, so that was a no.
Akamichi. Probably, but didn't really feel like running from the powerful clan members (and the beating they'd surely deliver) if she was wrong.
Hyuuga. ... never. So consumed with intra-clan politics, and being so fanatical about purism, they would never take a clan-less girl in, let alone the Kyuubi-boy.
Ears pricking, she left the list on the floor as she shot over to Naruto, grabbing their "run-pack" and half-shoving him out of the window onto the fire escape.
Climbing as quietly, but quickly, as they could, they slunk from alley to alley. Avoiding, for the most part, all of the usual mob, her mind was clicking away. Motioning for Naruto to climb onto her sore back, Kaida stayed in the shadows that she had come to know intimately, acting like a kunoichi if anyone had bothered to notice.
That was what she got for living in a shinobi village.
Seeing the familiar red and white, she breathed a sigh of relief. Carefully scaling the wall surrounding the compound, pack held tightly between her teeth, she dropped quietly to her feet. Swaying slightly from the impact, she soon regained her balance, and quickly ducked under the porch to avoid a shinobi strolling by the two fugitives.
A stinging cut on her forehead made her mentally sigh, cataloging it with the sprained ribs and aching feet and promptly ignoring it.
This was a huge gamble she was making—if it backfired on her, she would probably die tonight.
"Excuse me, Uchiha-dono, but I must speak with you!" she begged desperately, speaking from the kitchen doorway. Starting in surprise, Sharingan instantly on to see if she was a threat, his shoulders remained tense, regarding her warily.
"Hogosha," he nodded slightly, voice terse.
"Uchiha-dono, I come to you asking—no, begging—for help. I am a citizen of Konoha, and as Head of the Police Department, you are required to aid us. I... I plead with you for my child's life. We cannot keep living like this, or else we will die. Please, Uchiha-dono," her desperate eyes, a deep blue in the settling twilight, unnerved him and his family, who had come to see what was wrong.
"Please, help us. Think of the power you would have—the jinchuuriki would be under the Uchiha Clan! It would be a means for you to test the power, the strength, you have and the influence of your clan on the village. And, for us, if the Uchiha Clan were to take us in, we would be safe. No one would dare," her intense gaze fell on the oldest son, "to raise a hand against us."
Uchiha Fujita was not a rash man. Few members of the Uchiha Clan were, but as he was the Clan Head, he was more cautious than most. This was not a new proposal to him; over a year now, Kaida had dropped hints of needing his help, and he guessed that now he was finally being forced into a decision. Obviously, the girl could take no more.
"I have been aware of this for quite some time. So, while your request is somewhat startling, it is not wholly unexpected."
He frowned, shooting a look over to an impassive Itachi.
"Fujita," his wife murmured, black eyes regarding the two beaten children with motherly compassion. She had been urging him to act, in the long nights that stretched more often between the couple, and had foreseen this even before Fujita had.
"I cannot--"
He was cut off by Itachi, who walked over to her and stared into her eyes. Shuddering slightly, he wondered what was running through his son's brilliant, ruthless mind while Sasuke scowled.
"No one," he murmured in her ear, "has ever come to me for protection. Your eyes... I have never seen eyes like those. They call to me. You are under my protection."
Those may have been the words, but the underlying understanding between the two was "you are mine."
Fujita and his beautiful wife shared a long, knowing look; she had also predicted that this would happen. Sasuke looked at Itachi and Kaida, confused.
"I dun' like them," he muttered.
"Very well then. You are now honorary members of the Uchiha Clan, under our protection," he sighed heavily, wondering why he felt like he'd signed someone's death certificate, wincing at the thought of what he'd tell the Elders.
"Sit down and eat," she smiled at Kaida and Naruto.
And, as the story goes, that is where everything really started...
---owari---