Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. Beta'd by UmbreonGurl, drowsyivy, and aflowerydeath.


"Family is supposed to be our safe haven. Very often, it's the place we find the deepest heartache."

— Iyanla Vanzant


Dad ends up joining Saku-nii and me in our adventure to make dumplings. He stands there in the kitchen, chopping up the pound and a quarter of pork I bought earlier as I knead dough, and Saku-nii fires up the stove and hefts two pots of water onto it.

"So Goose made genin!" Dad is in a jovial mood, showing off his knife skills as he flips one into the air and catches it loosely by the handle. "What's Finch been up to?"

"We took another out of village mission." Saku-nii frowns. "It was...slightly derailed." He turns to Dad, who is casually whistling as he continues chopping meat. "Were you in Grass by any chance?"

Dad laughs. "Why would I have been in Grass?" That doesn't confirm or deny either way, but I'm going to bet my left kunai pouch that Dad was in Grass and Saku-nii's guessed it.

"You know you shouldn't ask him, Nii-san." I frown as I continue kneading dough. "It's above our clearance level."

Many things are above our clearance level.

Where Dad had been for the past two months? Above my clearance level.

What Mom does in her lab? Above my clearance level.

Saku-nii's last mission? Still above my clearance level.

"So? I can still ask and hope he slips up." Saku-nii shrugs.

It bothers him less I suppose.

Official information is closely guarded, and even if I'd like to know what Dad was doing in Grass, or wherever else he'd gone in these two months, he wouldn't be able to tell me, and I shouldn't ask.

"It's Dad." I cast him a look. "He's not going to slip up. Dad doesn't do slipping up."

In my previous life, I'd come from a family with so few secrets between us. If I'd wanted to know something, I need only to ask, and it would be explained as best as others were able.

I'd known so much, family stories bandied about the kitchen table. I'd known where I came from, where my parents came from, how they'd met, so many little details about their pasts.

The flour feels the same between my fingers — it sticks the same way in this life as it did in the last — but I don't really know so much about Dad.

I know that he is Hatake Hayashi, Konoha's White Wolf, a swordsman, that he likes his dumplings with vinegar just as I like mine, but the rest?

The rest I'd have to trust him on, because he's not at liberty to tell me.

Whatever family secrets are boarded up beneath the floor, whatever corpses have rotted between the walls, whatever there is in the basement or in the attic?

I'd have to take a blind leap of faith for that.

"Now now, Goose." Dad tugs on a lock of my hair. "There's no need to hiss. Wherever I've been, I'm at home now, neh?"

I turn my head away, frowning. He will be called away again eventually.

Konoha needs him and will always need him as long as he is willing to give, and he is a man who does not refuse the giving.

I ought to appreciate that he's home with enough energy to spend time with us like this. I ought to be happy about it.

But somehow, somehow I still teeter back and forth between conflict.

From the hallway, there's the sound of footsteps. Mom turns the corner into the kitchen, staring straight ahead. Mechanically, she measures out the instant coffee and puts a cup of water into the microwave.

"Welcome home," Dad leans forward to kiss her cheek, but she turns her face to look more directly at the countdown on the microwave, and he just kind of… misses. "Darling."

"I suppose you find yourself very clever." She still doesn't turn to look at him, or us really.

Saku-nii and I have faded into the background now, our earlier disagreements forgotten.

"I don't understand." Dad leans back against the table, hands at his sides. "You'll have to be more clear, I'm afraid, Darling. I just got home, so I doubt I'm up to speed."

"You know exactly what you've done." From the profile view, I see Mom clench her jaw. For one brief moment, she turns to look at us. "Tsutako, Sakumo, clean up and go to the dojo. Your father will be along shortly."

Very quietly, we do so.

"We were having a good time before you came home." I hear Dad say, before the door closes behind us, and their terse conversation muffles into sounds too indistinct to hear properly.

Saku-nii tugs at my sleeve.

Still I pause.

He tugs more insistently. "Goose." He drags me down the hallway, down towards the dojo. "You know better than this," he reprimands me after we close the door behind us.

"They never get along." I huff, collapsing to sit on the floor.

A limp strand of white hair rises, carried by my breath before tumbling back down again.

"Why are they still married if they don't get along?"

I rarely see them happy with each other. Dad is too lackadaisical and rarely stays at home. Mom is too driven by her work in the labs and often sleeps there instead, especially if she knows Dad's going to be home beforehand. It's actually rather unusual for her to come home that evening if Dad just got home that same afternoon.

For all intents and purposes, they don't live together already.

"Tsutako." When I look up, Saku-nii is staring at me with horrified eyes. "What else would they be if they aren't married?"

"Amicably separated." The society in Konoha is just — still rather traditional.

One has few options in regards to one's married life choices: single, married, widowed.

And my parents are very much married.

"I don't think that's possible." Saku-nii comes to sit next to me, and as casually as a pre-teen boy is able, pulls me into his arms for a hug. "I didn't mean to say you were wrong earlier," he says. "I know Dad will never say if he was there or not, even if I saw."

Did you see? I don't know what would be going on in Grass that would need Dad there either. "And I didn't really mean to get snippy with you." I don't like hugs, but I can spare a hug for him. I grab him around the middle and squeeze as tightly as I am able.

"Oh, I know." He squeezes me back, once tightly. "I know."


Dad comes down the hall a little while later, stands outside the door for a moment. We hear him whistle for Kyogi. There's silence for a moment, but no further response.

Then, he slides the door open. "Well, we've been relieved from dumpling duty." He's still trying to spin it kindly, spin it in a way that doesn't make anyone into a villain, doesn't make our familial relationships cracked around the edges. It either makes him — or us — naive, but we pretend it's so anyway. "Mom says she's going to cook tonight."

Well, it'll taste good then.

Mom is a wonderful cook.

I just wish it wasn't her way of apologizing or antagonizing, turning food into a weapon in a way dinner time isn't supposed to be.

"Well then," Saku-nii pushes himself up off the floor. "I have a mission report to write."

Dad steps aside to let him through, but there's a downturn to his lips. Something about the terse way Saku-nii had reacted...bothered him.

If I were a more sociable child, I'd have said something to lighten the mood, cracked some joke that would have us both in stitches, picking ourselves up off the floor with laughter.

A life ago, perhaps, I would've.

In this moment, I say nothing at all.

The burden's on him to break the silence. It always is.

"I'm sorry, Goose." For a moment, he's exceptionally serious.

"What for?" It's not like he can change this exactly. I suppose, if I really want to admit to myself, he could take a different route. But I don't know what binds him and Mom together, having no idea how they met or married to begin with.

"I missed your graduation." His seriousness passes like a summer storm, there and then suddenly gone. "Do you want to know a secret?" The smile he shares with me is more conspiratory than normal. He doesn't wait for me to nod or shake my head. Yes has already been determined. "I got you a present."

"A present?" I am not a child to be distracted by presents...but at the same time I am.

I've never been out of Konoha's gates, and while I'm allowed free reign to wander about the city, that really doesn't mean I've been anywhere important.

So whatever present Dad's so excited to show me, it's from somewhere outside the gates. He hasn't been back long enough to pick up a present for me.

What had he picked up on his travels that would warrant his excitement? I crane my neck, trying to see if he's holding something in his hands that he's kept clasped behind his back.

He laughs, holding up his empty hands. "I'm not giving you some trinket from another country, Goose."

Instead, he strides across the room to the metal chest that's been locked for as long as I can remember. He turns back to me, with the smile of a boy. "Well, come over. Your graduation present is in here."

I am curious, despite myself. "What is it?"

"A surprise." He fishes a key out of his pocket and opens the chest with a metallic creak. "I had it commissioned in the Land of Iron about eight and a half years ago." He sighs, but it's a soft, content thing. "And I've been waiting ever since."

The object he pulls from the chest is wrapped in a red cloth, but instantly recognizable.

It's a hand and a half sword, the hilt peeking out from behind the red.

He turns the hilt towards me. "It's yours now, Tsuta-chan."

My own blade.

I reach out for it with a hand, grasped the hilt tightly, and unsheathe it. The sound of metal singing against wood is a sound familiar from another life.

It's a bit long for my child arms, a fair bit heavier than what I'm used to, but I turn with it anyway, swinging out with it, gray metal gleaming under the electric lights. Its momentum is faster than what I'm used to, a soft woosh as it cuts through the air.

It is so well made, so well sharpened, so balanced.

A shinobi-forged blade for a shinobi.

"Dad…" I look up at him through a film of tears. "Thank you."

He laughs, suddenly awkward, boyish in his delight over a gratitude that he does not feel that he has earned. "I had a feeling you'd like it." He tugs a lock of my hair. "My sword wielding goose girl."

He strides to the center of the floor, unsheathes his own blade, and beckons for me to join him.

And I forgive him.


Mom's already gone by the time I rise the next morning to water my garden, just a note pinned to the refrigerator as any indication she'd been there at all. I pull it off and read the words tersely written in her tiny, cramped handwriting."At Lab 17. Leftovers on bottom shelf. Back tomorrow."

It's no more particularly out of the ordinary than say, the neatly stacked dishes on the dry rack that always appears more clean somehow after Mom's been home. I pin the note back onto the refrigerator with a magnet for everyone else.

A glance to the left is all I need to locate the pad of sticky notes and the cup of pens. I add a note of my own.

"Gone to water garden. Missions. Back later tonight."

Utatane-sensei wants to see us at training ground twenty-seven at 6:30 am. I do not know when I'll be back.

The plants need care.

I pass Dad asleep on the couch, loosely holding one corner of the blanket he'd bothered to take with him, the rest of it pooling on the floor.

He's going to have a crick in his neck.

I pull the covers back over him. I can't do much about the neck pain, or probably the emotional pain he feels, but at least I can prevent him from catching a cold.

Why do you stay?

Why do either of you stay?

He must've been tired, because he only shifts in his sleep and sighs without waking up. In the quiet of his family home, he doesn't have to fear death, so at least there's that, one source of tension eased. I stare at him for a moment longer while trying to resist the urge to pity him. I am uncertain, but I doubt I succeeded.

By former standards, he'd be middle aged, but hardly past his prime.

By the standards of the lives we lead, he's already inching towards being a relic of a former era.

Shinobi, by average standards, do not typically celebrate their 41st birthday with their children, ages 11 and 7.

Most shinobi, those who care for children at least, tend to have them far younger than thirty.

At least, this is what I am dimly aware of, having exactly zero close friends to compare families with.

I'm still thinking about it while I stake and trellis my few cucumber plants. They are the first batch of the season, barely longer than a foot and a half or so.

Soon, soon my cucumber feast will be ready. I spare a wretched look at my zucchini plants and resist the urge to make a face at them. For one, I am not childish no matter what anyone else says about the matter, and for another, I am practicing being the bigger person.

I lean my hammer against the post by the garden gate.

If I'm making it to training ground twenty-seven on time, I'm going to need to run.


Koharu-sensei appears at the edge of training ground twenty-seven at exactly 6:30 am. She looks us up and down once — me sitting on a log, Shinku leaning against a tree, and Dan prodding at an ant hill some distance away and almost sighs.

"This won't do at all."

We stare at her silently.

"I thought you wanted to be a team." Her eyes narrow as she continues to observe us. "Teammates don't have the distance you three do."

It's true.

Beyond the initial greeting this morning, we haven't done much.

Still, closeness isn't something forced. We hadn't the chance to become close, and I really didn't care to share anything that would bring us closer.

I'd lost everyone with a change of worlds once — the girl I'd sworn sisterhood with over a box of peeps, a boy I called brother, a nickname, a life that I'd never been given the chance to grow into.

My ambitions had all been laid to waste once.

I'm not eager to try that again.

We look at each other. No one makes a move to do anything. What were we to do?

"Twenty laps."

The tension climbs.

"Thirty." Utatane-sensei crosses her arms over her chest. I'm waiting.

I start running.

Behind me, I hear the boys falling in line.


A.N. So this might be joining the ranks of the regularly scheduled fanfiction soon, if only because checks hand the regularly scheduled fanfiction is not updating as quickly as I would like. My writing speed has slowed considerably in this past year especially because I am now working part time as well as being a full time student.

However, I'm extremely blessed to have readers who follow me from one mad idea to another because my brain bounces like one of those pinball arcade games, going "OOOO shiny" at the most esoteric of things.

To all readers, new and old, thank you so much for your constant support. It truly means the world to me.

~Tavina