A very tall ANBU fell into step next to me as I made my way, very slowly, up the hill to the nicest part of town, great clan mansions with spectacular views. Clans that were dwindling, but still disgustingly wealthy. I looked up and saw a mask with stylized horns, and a nose ring like an oni.
"Ox," I greeted, leaving off the -sensei just this once, since we were out in public. "Hatake Kakashi's house, where is it?"
"That's classified," the ANBU answered smoothly.
"It's in the ANBU district, isn't it? It wasn't hit," I went on.
"...It wasn't," said Ox, his broad shoulders slumping the very tiniest bit.
"Hey, stick around a second," I said, bending to crack open my gramophone case and extract the paperwork. "If you have a minute, run this back to the hospital for me?"
"ANBU only accepts missions directly from the Hokage," said Ox, patiently, but he took the sheaf of paper anyway. I smiled, and it felt tired.
"Don't worry, I'll backdate everything when I get the hat," I said. "I'll see you tonight?" Phrased as a question, since the final plan hadn't actually made it back to me yet.
"You are expected at the Uchiha compound," said Ox, and then he was gone. I let my posture relax.
Sensei back in ANBU. Two new tomoe in Fuyu's eyes.
Well, nothing for it. One foot in front of the other. No way back, better go forward.
The gates of the Kurama estate loomed in front of me. I took a moment to stand in front of it, gathering my anger around me like a cloak. The armor of the righteous man, what.
One of my cousins, a tall broad lad with almost-ginger hair, stopped me as I went to open the gates, scowling. I interrupted him before he could speak.
"Himitsu Haruka," I said. "My mother, Himitsu Moriko, is staying here. I believe grandfather is expecting me, too." And that was apparently all true, as my cousin's forehead unfurrowed, and he let me in with a nod.
"Moriko-san is in a guest cottage," he told me, leading me back through the grounds. Very beautiful, well-landscaped; as expected for a clan centered on genjutsu and the arts. "Instructions are to take you before grandfather first and foremost."
"Absolutely not," I said, and stopped walking. My cousin stopped too, less gracefully, and turned back to look at me, his eyes wide. Apparently, he hadn't expected me to go off-script.
"I'm going to visit my mother, first," I told him. "If you don't want me to just start opening doors and having a look around, you'll take me to her."
"You can't," said my cousin, floundering.
Grandfather's house was a great big one, situated fatly in the middle of the compound, a traditional-style mansion. A woman, dark-haired, was watching from an upper level- no, she was pulling away the small child who had been watching out the window. Another little cousin I'd never met.
So they knew I was here, then. That was fine.
"I'm visiting my mother first," I said, adamant. "While I remain unacknowledged, she's the only family I have here. So it's not actually a snub. It's just respectful."
It was absolutely a snub. My cousin didn't look convinced, either. I continued to scan the compound, trying to guess which cottage they'd installed my mother in. Being ignored seemed to do the trick, finally- my cousin sighed, his shoulders slumping. Got 'im.
"I'll be in trouble if we're seen," he said as a last effort, frowning at me. I stared at him as blandly as I could manage.
"Are you a genjutsu type?" I asked, very mild. He turned a bit red, and flashed through a series of hand signs. Cloaking us, I assume, because he then turned towards one of the smaller, traditional houses. One with a garden around it. I smiled, a bit wanly.
My mother was in the front room, sitting seiza very properly at the low table, which was absolutely covered in paperwork. The floor around it was likewise strewn, and Himitsu Moriko wore the same sort of look she had when tax season rolled around at home. She looked up with a frown when the door opened, and then when my cousin dropped the genjutsu her expression cleared immediately.
"Haruka," she said, getting to her feet to pull me into a hug. I returned it tightly. She held me out with her hands on my upper arms, to look at me. "You look terrible."
"Thanks," I said, smiling lopsidedly. "Hospital food, hospital beds. You know. They wanted me to go see granddad first, you know. Granddad can go jump."
"So you blackmailed Tenki-san to bring you here first instead?" she said, her smile very knowing. Tenki- I guess that was my cousin's name, I hadn't asked- looked suitably embarrassed.
"I've never blackmailed anybody in my entire life," I said, drawing myself up with a huff. "I convinced him, that's all."
"Of course, Haruka," said my mother, still smiling that fond little smile. "Tenki-san, will you go make tea? I want to talk to my daughter."
"In your- ? I mean, yes ma'am," said Tenki, who slid through a paper door still looking uncomfortable and bamboozled.
"You look like you're managing," I told my mother. She snorted, and we sat down at the low table together, her in seiza and me crosslegged. "Are they putting you to work, or did you request this?" I waved at the landscape, ankle-deep in scrolls.
"A little of both," said my mother. "Some of this is our accounts, actually. Insurance. Compensations. I wanted to have it all settled before you got out of the hospital, but I suppose there's not really so much rush. With all the chaos, nothing's going to get done quickly in this village for a while, I think."
"It looks rough out there," I said, my hands tucked under my thighs for warmth, a genuinely very unladylike position. "I haven't seen much of the village yet, but- it's rough."
"We're doing our part, Haruka," said my mother, and I looked up at her gratefully. Mostly she picked on me, but sometimes she did use her powers for good. Moriko looked down a moment. "The Kurama took extensive losses in the war, right up until the end. There hasn't been time or personnel to go over all the clan paperwork, so that's what I'm doing."
"I still think it's shameless," I said, softly.
"Ninja clans don't have shame," she said with a sniff, just in time for Tenki to come back in with a tea tray. He looked helplessly at the table, with nowhere to set it down. I would have just let him dither, but my mom combined several stacks of paper with swift efficiency to clear a place. "No, dear, sit with us," she said, when he tried to stand up again.
"You're part of the conspiracy now," I told him with a grin. "Whether or not you wanted to be."
"Be nice, Haruka," my mother admonished, in the tone that said she didn't actually care.
"They're planning on messing with me, in the big house," I said, cocking an eyebrow at him as I lifted my teacup. "Absolutely no other reason to insist on me seeing granddad first."
"Not the only reason," said my mother, humming. "He likes things just so, my father-in-law. He wants his clan to be strong. If these two things are incompatible, he becomes upset, useless as it might be. He has his sights set on rebuilding, and a vision of how it should go."
"So to make me line up with the plan, they're going to mess with me," I said. My mother sighed, but didn't contradict me again. "...They couldn't possibly have my hospital records…?" Containing the information that if I so much as attempted kai to break out of a genjutsu (nevermind that the best Kurama genjutsu were supposed to be both stronger and more involved than the sort that could be countered simply by cycling chakra) I would die. That would call any bluff I cared to make before I even got off the ground.
"No!" said Tenki, his eyebrows high. "If you were clan already, maybe, but…" he looked sideways at my mother. "I mean, that's what you're here to work out."
"Hm. Well, he can try to get her to change her name," said Moriko, mildly. "But Haruka is a Himitsu to the bones. She doesn't even look like a Kurama. Her instructors all through the academy kept trying to test her for the kekkei genkai- she doesn't have it. I could have told them that, but they lived in hope." She cocked an eyebrow at Tenki, who was frowning curiously.
"The Himitsu weren't always a civilian family," I said, for his benefit. "Just mostly civilian, progressively more so since the founding of Konoha. I'm the only ninja to come out of us for a few generations."
"Your great-aunt was the last, before you decided to be one," said my mother. "It's too bad you didn't get to know her. I know you met her when you were very little. She lived to be a hundred and eight, but she died before you even entered the Academy."
"I didn't know that," said Tenki. "The way Uncle talks- I thought you really were a civilian clan."
"He's the sort of person who thinks it makes a difference," said my mother, serenely. "Of course he would like to diminish my clan's achievements, it doesn't fit his narrative." I watched that one land, fascinated. Tenki actually flinched.
"Well," I said, looking down at the dregs in my teacup, swirling it counterclockwise to see if I could make pictures. "I feel better, now. Mom?"
"Don't worry about me," she said, with a small tight smile. "You're staying with Uchiha Kuro first, right?" Her smile widened, at my expression. "She sent me a message as soon as your team worked things out. Just come visit me as much as you can, and I'll be fine." Slide that guilt trip right in there with the rest of it, thanks.
"As much as I can," I agreed, and looked to Tenki as I got to my feet. He looked down at his cup, and then scrambled to get up in my wake, setting it down on the counter. Looked then to my mom, for a cue.
God, she'd be running the whole clan within a week, if this was how all the junior members responded to her. Well, time to see what kind of snake pit I was getting into.
Tenki ran through another series of handseals as we went out the door, and I followed him through a side path, a garden path to the big house. I felt genjutsu pass over my skin, whatever he was doing- I hadn't before, but then again I really wasn't much of a sensor. I always got better at sensing a single person's chakra the more I was exposed to it, though. I maybe didn't like the idea of getting used to my cousin's chakra.
I was led into the house, and on to the formal receiving parlor, where my grandfather was sitting seiza at the back of the room, flanked by who I guessed were my uncles, like we were the goddamned Yakuza. A few other cousins stood around, and my mother was amongst them, her hands folded up in her kimono sleeves and her expression serene, with just the barest hint of smug.
Ah. So that's how we're doing this.
I felt the cloak of my anger settle about my shoulders again, felt a spark in my chest and grasped it, twisting it down and inward where I could use it. Hopefully, in that half-second I'd been caught left-footed, killing intent hadn't been spilling out the top of my head like a fountain.
The genjutsu was very good, possibly even perfect, though I'm no expert. Kurenai probably would have had something to critique about it, but to my eyes… if I hadn't just left Himitsu Moriko, sitting peacefully with a cup of tea, pouring over these assholes' accounts, I might have even been fooled.
Behind me, before he slid the paper door closed, I heard my cousin swallow. It was the loudest sound in the room. Maybe I had leaked a little killing intent. Whoops.
I looked perfunctorily over the rest of the gathered family, and went to greet the simulacra of my mother first. If they thought that just because she wasn't real I wouldn't use her to continue to snub my relatives, they were stupid.
Don't give me props if you don't want me to use them.
"Hi mom," I said, as we hugged. She was warm, and if I hadn't known- well, since I did know, it was easy to pick up the strange offness of it. I wondered how many of the other people in the room were fake, too. "Holding up? How're they treating you?"
"I'm fine, sweetheart," she said, with a little rub to my shoulder as we pulled apart. "Don't worry about me. Go and greet your grandfather." Which was incredibly respectful, for my mother. Swing and a miss, guys.
"Oh, but-" I looked half over my shoulder, and gave a pained, sheepish smile. "We've never actually been introduced."
"Himitsu Haruka," said my grandfather, not taking his eyes off me, as I watched my mother's image cover her mouth with a hand, like she was scandalized. "It is not lightly that we extend this hand of kinship to you, and to your mother, but it is in the greater interest of the clan and the village that we protect even the very least of us. You are family, whatever differences of opinion your father might have held. This is important, to me."
I stared at him, trying very hard not to leak hostile intent while surrounded by itchy shinobi. I turned to face my grandfather fully.
"Not important enough to reconcile while dad was still alive, though," I said. "...Of course, dad didn't want to reconcile. Nothing's changed here, why should he?"
"Iwashi was a stubborn fool," said my uncle. I gave him the coldest look I could make, which was very cold indeed.
"Must run in the family," I said, before returning my attention to my grandfather.
"Come back to us, Haruka," said my grandfather, who had absolutely no right to use my name without honorific. "Live with your mother here; take the Kurama name. I will open every door that has been closed to you."
And that phrasing triggered a memory, from the miasma of my past lives, bright and encompassing. A sunset, bright and red and orange- no, must be a sunrise, because the light only got bigger, and more golden. But it wasn't the beginning of the day, wasn't the beginning of anything. I was watching the world end, in a blaze of light, and I was strangely calm to see it. There was nowhere to run- nothing to be done. Not externally.
I closed my eyes in the dream, the feeling much like meditating- like the first layer of a lucid dream. There were doors there, in the back of my head, ever so many doors. I only had to find the right one, and this time instead of merely opening it, step through.
The only doors I need opened are the ones inside my head.
My vision cleared, and I was relieved to find that I had not moved in real life, hadn't even closed my eyes.
"No," I said. "No, I will not be your good granddaughter, and no, I will not take the name Kurama. I think, perhaps, you are under several misapprehensions about me, first and foremost being the idea that I need help. No," I went on, over the rising protest of both of my uncles. "No, you should be worried that I'm going to start closing doors on you."
"Haruka," said my grandfather, sternly, and in that moment I knew exactly how my father had felt when he left. "See reason."
The golden light of the end of the world was infringing on the edges of my vision. The genjutsu of my mother, out of the corner of my eye, was fading into it, like everything else unreal in the room.
I turned on my heel without bowing, intent to see myself out, and found the door missing. Ah.
I turned back around slowly, and found the room empty of everyone but my grandfather and two uncles. The edges of the room were darkening, but in the back of my head the end of the world was still shining, the last golden moment of an entire universe.
"I don't have the kekkei genkai," I said, the words feeling strange for how long it had been since I'd had to say them. "Genjutsu is not even my specialty." All the same, the rosy gold of a dying world was starting to creep in at the edges of the room, chasing away the miasma. "But consider: no kunoichi has ever needed a genjutsu to kill a man in real life."
"For such disrespect, while you are under my power, I should stop your heart," said my grandfather, quietly. "It would be an illusion, but your body would think it was real."
"I mean, have you ever tested that on someone who's already been dead?" I said, in a slightly manic burst of inspiration. "Perhaps it's like an inoculation. I've tasted the real thing, granddad. My heart's going to know when it's fake."
I turned around again, and marched straight towards that empty wall where the door ought to be. When I put my foot forward, where it ought to have punched through a paper wall, I felt something stretch and then snap, like a rubber band, and then everything went dark.
I opened my eyes to a view of the sky over the courtyard, my cousin the gate-guard leaning over me, looking like he'd seen a ghost. I stared back, and then shot out a fist in a rabbit punch to his solar plexus. He whuffed, and rolled to one side, leaving me enough room to sit up, disoriented and mad as a wet cat.
"There was no chakra behind that whatsoever," I told my cousin.
"There's no- hff- conditioning- haaa- the solar plexus," he wheezed. Against my will, the corner of my mouth turned up.
"What happened?" I asked. "Last I remember, I was under genjutsu, having a friendly discussion with grandfather."
"You walked out of the meeting room straight through the paper," said Tenki, still watching me like a wild animal that might have distemper. "I followed you out here, and then you just kind of collapsed. Your eyes were still open when you fell over."
I scratched the back of my neck, frowning. "...Neat," I said. Tenki was still staring at me like he worried I might be mad.
"What did you do?" he asked, as I climbed to my feet with effort, finding it thankfully no more difficult than usual.
"Either broke out of the genjutsu solely with yin chakra, or broke out of the genjutsu by dying," I said, still frowning. "Couldn't tell you which from here."
"That doesn't explain anything," said Tenki, looking uneasily over his shoulder, at the big house, even as I reached over to take my carpetbag and gramophone case back from him. He let me have them, unyielding.
"I'll see you around the Tower," I told him, and made a line for the gate.
Not my problem anymore. Not my problem ever again, unless they tried to stop me seeing my mother, and honestly I'd like to see them try.
I ended up wandering a bit, once I was out on the streets again, letting myself have a bit of a fugue. My head was distracted, and I found myself wandering the demolished part of town, already a hive of reconstruction activity. Civilian engineers and ninja superpowers, everyone doing their own part. The streets were clearer than they had been, but they would all need repaving, between the initial destruction and all the heavy equipment running over them afterwards.
The stretch of road that ran by my house had needed repaving for about six years, actually. It was good that it would finally get done.
My house was… the sight of it was like a physical blow, the ghost of the punch to the solar plexus I'd delivered not half an hour ago. The upper floor was entirely knocked down, the rubble fallen into the lower floor, from an impact that looked like a bomb had been dropped on it. One window frame was intact; the one laced up with climbing ivy. Ivy still clung to the siding where the house had fallen in, like it was trying to hold the ruin together, spiderwebbed marks in the larger chunks of rubble where runners had been ripped away. Mother's roses were gone, buried under concrete. The bougainvillea still stood against the south fence, defiantly hot pink and supporting a chunk of large masonry that had not come from our house. There was a criss-cross of red tape over the half-fallen doorway, just to hammer the point home, I guess.
I sat down on an untouched portion of our front garden wall, out of the way of the reconstruction crews, and tried not to look at the light from the end of some other world shining just behind the ruin of my house. It was still there, though, when I closed my eyes.
Gods help me, I needed to get that fixed.
...I would like to be able to say that I buckled down then, and started to meditate, to experience and catalogue and file away my past lives, find out what they contained so that they would no longer catch me unawares. I would very much like to say that I did that.
(A still more glorious dawn awaits)
Instead I just sat there, lost in myself, ruminating on the end of the world. I had past-life memories of beating it- not just once, as the trickle of information refused to slow or organize itself. But this one man, the edition of myself born into a reality that had collapsed in on itself, had found a way past it. It was a wild cluster of memories, from that lifetime- passing through the gate between worlds had given that incarnation of me past-life memories as well, and trying to pick at memories from that lifetime was a dizzying example of true recursion. Everything you've ever thought has more thoughts attached to it, memories and sensations and rabbit trails. This was that, but with layers.
But I remained fixed on him all the same. A lonely man, ragged and at the end of his rope, already dying (that pinch in my lower left lung when I breathed) but clinging on to hope (it springs eternal, don't you know?) had taken nothing but a working knowledge of a handful of familiar concepts - astral projection, chaos theory, the Akashic record- and spun them all together to make a way out.
Not a way out of the death in his lungs, but a way out of the death of his universe.
It seemed so… within reach.
If a chronically ill civilian with a handful of library books on metaphysical concepts and a couple of koans (if you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe) could crack interdimensional doorways, what excuse did I have?
...Not that I wanted to leave Konoha. This was my home, and if this world was ending I would be fighting. But the practical applications- the practical applications were the stuff of bloodlimits. The sort of thing the very maddest of Uzumaki seal-masters would seek to replicate in fuinjutsu.
Tomorrow I'd go to the shinobi library and check out the entire collection on higher meditation techniques. Today…
Today, the real sun was setting behind my house, and the light of the end of the world was fading, the fugue of that golden epiphany fading with it. I was stiff, and my tailbone ached. A faint chill was seeping into the air with the veil of twilight. I still didn't… find it in myself to move.
"Haruka."
My name echoed in the dark, bouncing off the empty street. Construction crews had gone home with the sunset. A flickering sodium streetlamp painted Uchiha Fuyu in a chiaroscuro of orange and black. I blinked at him foggily for a moment, before giving a chagrined little gasp.
"Oh, gods, I've been here hours," I said, clapping my hands to my cheeks. Fuyu gave a tiny little snort, and stepped out of the streetlight to hold out a hand to me. I needed it, to stand up again after that long. Not being able to cycle chakra to keep from getting stiff was absolute balls.
"Auntie expected you for dinner," said Fuyu, graciously offering his arm for me to latch on to as we walked, carrying my carpetbag in his other hand. I winced.
"I shall grovel," I said. "...How did you find me?"
"Natsuki-chan said you'd either be here, or at the memorial stone," he said. My cheeks tingled. Of course, Natsuki-chan. "I got lucky, I came here first."
"Thank you," I said, a bit short, because I was genuinely embarrassed. And grateful. Very. "I'm glad at least you two can still be trusted." Since clearly, I couldn't be.
Fuyu actually laughed, at that, a sputtering little chuckle, and gave me a genuine smirk. "I've already heard all about your altercation with the Kurama," he said, and I felt myself grimace. "It's the talk of the Tower. How you're immune to their signature genjutsu."
"...He didn't actually use it," I said, irritably. "I was just bullshitting." Bluffing people far bigger than me, recreationally. You know, for fun.
"If it didn't work, how would you know?" said Fuyu, still with that smirk. "He wouldn't admit to trying it, not if it didn't."
"I think I'd know," I said, looking slowly up at the sky, starry between the trees. "Ah. Oh. Can we take a detour?" I tugged on his arm to change directions without waiting for an answer.
"You're keeping Auntie waiting," said Fuyu, but did not resist the course correction. Instead, he put his thumb to his teeth and drew enough blood to call a summons, which popped out of the ground with a puff of smoke. A stub-tailed calico cat with one green eye and one orange blinked up at us, unimpressed.
I stared, not at the cat, but at Fuyu. He shifted and turned ever so slightly pink, but addressed the cat before speaking to me.
"Tell Auntie I found her," he told the cat. "...We're still going to be a bit later." The cat blinked at him, giving no sign she had understood, and disappeared again in a puff of smoke.
"Since when have you been on the cat contract?" I asked him, and Fuyu gave an embarrassed little huff.
"About two days," he said. "Auntie said… now that my eyes have come in all the way, there was no point in waiting."
I nodded, taking that in. Privately, we'd been convinced Uchiha Kuro wouldn't ever consider Fuyu up to her standards enough to sign the contract. It felt like a sea change, that she had.
The moon was rising as we reached the memorial stone. A lone figure still stood in front of it. Fuyu stopped when he recognized who it was, stubbornly refusing my insistent tug.
"Haruka," he whispered. "I'm not supposed to talk to him. I'm- you're probably not supposed to talk to him, if you're spending the night at my house."
"Do you hear yourself?" I whispered back. "You sound like a Hyuuga." I didn't see him turn red, but I could tell it was happening from the way he puffed. For all the proud Uchiha insistence that there was no rivalry between them and the Hyuuga, there was no faster way to get one twisted than making the comparison.
Especially Fuyu, and especially considering our sensei. Low blow? Almost definitely. Hi, I'm a ninja, how are you?
"Hey," I said, slipping into place next to Hatake. He made not a twitch. "Hey. You've been out here all day."
No response. I slapped my hands to my face haphazardly, dragging them down it.
"...I should have come by here sooner," I said, peeking up at the stone between my fingers. "I had this feeling you'd just spend the rest of your day standing here dissociating. ...But then I couldn't come find you any earlier, because I've spent most of the day dissociating in front of my old house." I had to laugh, but kept it quick. "...Neither of us should have been out of the hospital yet, not really, but here we are. Please go home, Hatake. Will you go home on your own, or do I call ANBU?"
"Haruka," said Fuyu, his arms folded, still standing two yards from us like a disapproving chaperone, but I ignored him, because I had Hatake's attention. He was looking at me like he wasn't sure what I was or where I'd come from, but that was still improvement.
"...Ah, it's late, isn't it?" said Kakashi, looking up at the moon overhead.
"We missed dinner," I said. His eye slid down to find me, and held for a long moment. And then, in the fraction of a second that it took for me to tense in preparation for saying something else, he was gone. Shunshinned away in a swirl of leaves.
I let the squareness run out of my shoulders, and let out a breath. Fuyu drew up level with me again.
"People like that…" he said, giving the drifting puff of leaves a hairy look.
"If you finish that sentence, we aren't friends anymore," I told him, enunciating each word very clearly. He sighed, instead of protesting, and we started the now slightly longer walk to the Uchiha compound.
"...I'd like to be able to say you've been acting strange, since the 10th," he said, eventually. "But you haven't, not really. You've been acting more yourself than ever."
"...I am more myself than ever," I said. It was about the truest thing I'd ever said, in a twisted-up way.
"It might not be a good thing," said Fuyu. I nodded. I kind of agreed, actually.
But I could only work with what I had- and what I had right now was an awful lot of myself.
have I really been changing the format of the author's note every chapter? just inadvertently? lmao christ
I've rewritten the bits with Haruka's mother and the Kurama about three times and I'm still not completely happy with it but neither does revising it seem to make me any happier, so up it goes! hope I've hit the right balance of awkward and hostile that characterizes that particular relationship. I don't think Haruka's granddad is also Yakumo's granddad, the Naruto timeline is made of filler and lies so my grasp of it is even looser than my grasp of time in real life, but I -think- he'd be Yakumo's great-uncle? 13ish years is plenty of time for significant rearrangement of clan leadership, one way or another. Haruka and Yakumo are cousins of -some- degree, anyway.