Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. Beta'd by UmbreonGurl, Petrames, animemoms, aflowerydeath, and Fishebake.
"is the
blood on your hands
dry? Is it slowly
disappearing? Mine isn't."
—Ashley Mares, "Psalm of Scattered Ashes"
He should not have expected the integration of the Inuzuka to be easy. In hindsight, he probably should have told Anija that such a thing would be a lost cause, that they were too different to properly fit in, and could probably be left to their own devices atop a mountain that was rumored to be an ancient site of disaster with allies who mostly took to guarding merchant caravans across the length and breadth of Fire Country and who rarely ventured abroad. They weren't valuable enough to justify the expenditure, he should've argued.
He should've done a lot.
He probably should've told Anija that, but the one time he'd thought to maybe do so, he'd gotten to the bottom of the tower before he realized that Anija was not alone in the office.
What he and Uchiha Madara were doing three stories above him was not his business.
He'd stood there, a muscle clenching painfully in his jaw, for approximately half a minute before choosing to just go back to his lab. It would spare him the questions that swirled around in his mind for at least the next few hours to focus on a complex sealing array instead of —
It cheapens the idea that his brother had sold him long ago when they were children is all.
A place where children don't have to die! A place where we can all stop fighting!
But now that the village is here, well, the narrative had changed as it was wont to do. And now somehow he is left to pick up the shattered pieces.
The narrative had changed and possibly left him more jaded than it had in the beginning, which brings him now to the present day instead of events now nearly a year prior — Inuzuka Komari grinning at Hyuga Heijiro from across the council table.
"Really," she drawls, black eyes amused, a crooked smile with a hint of fang affixed to her face though her chakra bubbles angrily under the surface. "We've got a word for your type of man where I come from. Yowamushi." Coward.
This causes the Hyuga to bristle, Byakugan flaring before suddenly sitting back down, Byakugan hidden once more. She hadn't done anything at all besides sit there, slowly drumming her fingers on the table, but he had felt the difference, had felt her chakra escape her near certainly on purpose for just the barest of moments, brighter and sharper than flame.
"Nevertheless, it's your clan member who attacked my nephew and I will not stand for such insults from a pack of curs."
"Yuzu punched your nephew because he was looking down her shirt." There's a soft edge to her words, deceptive like a river current before a flood. "Was she supposed to do nothing?"
"He did nothing of the sort."
She shrugs, idly. "Well you're too much of a coward to step outside and settle this with me the proper way." Casually, she props her head up at the table with her left hand and stares dramatically at the nails on her right. "I fail to see how we can properly resolve the issue, Heijiro-kun."
She's maddening, unlike any other woman he's ever met before, she seems to have that wild bold swagger so often taken up by men.
He wishes he could say that he disapproves of it. It would make things so much simpler among them, but he doesn't. He finds the thought of staring down a person's shirt distasteful. He is rather glad that the person involved found the anger to punch Hyuga Heijiro's nephew for doing it. He is startlingly and shockingly more appreciative of the bold way Inuzuka Komari chooses to manage her family affairs than he'd ever thought he would be.
He says nothing.
Instead, all that happens is that a vein pops on Hyuga Heijiro's temple, and Inuzuka Komari stares at her fingernails with great interest.
The other clan heads say nothing.
In the silence, Uchiha Madara barks a laugh. "What, Hyuga, don't have the balls to go outside?" The words ring out sharply, driving the wedges sharper, deeper, into this frail new peace.
Hyuga Heijiro stands abruptly, and leaves the room. Then, what's happening makes him want to leave the room too, so it's not as if the Hyuga is acting unreasonably.
In the emptiness, Uchiha Madara starts laughing, the sound seemingly echoing over the walls. "You were right, woman. He's a coward through and through."
His brother's… Lover his mind supplies rather casually — is callous and seething, his chakra a raging bonfire always smouldering just under the surface. It'd been so since even before Izuna had died.
He'd played his own part in that, it was only the truth.
But it had been battle. It'd been business.
Inuzuka Komari glances in the general direction of the laughing man, who has now been laughing for so long that Tobirama almost wishes he would stop, but says nothing.
It's been a long time since he's heard Uchiha Madara laugh, and this is nothing like even the crazed laughter of the battlefield. It's the laughter of a man who's delighting in the blaze of something only he can see. Coupled with the seething mass of rage and grief that presses from that side of the room, it sets Tobirama on edge.
There's no shame in killing for business, especially when one tip of his own hand, one act of mercy would've caused his own life to end.
His hands are bloody, but he's never regretted any death he's dealt.
"I believe," he says in Anija's absence. Anija being off on other, pressing business. "that the Hatake were slated to arrive next month?"
"Mmm, Kota-kun had said so, yes," Komari sighs. "I wouldn't hold him to it though, the Hatake travel at the pace of their clients."
It is the familiar way she talks about the Hatake Vanguard, Hatake Kotaro, who'd responded to Anija's hand extended in peace with a grudging 'if the Inuzuka agree to peace, my family will follow,' that gives him pause.
But then he remembers that Inuzuka Hokime-chan has a Hatake father who she has not seen for some time now, and slowly the understanding that they were likely tied by marriage and blood reasserts itself.
Perfectly normal. Perfectly normal even though the Hatake did not seem to organize into a central clan structure at all and much preferred to go their separate ways for all except two weeks of the year.
It's entirely possible she knows exactly who replied when he wrote.
The Hatake arrive quietly. He doesn't see it happen except in trickles, in the appearance of one or two people, here and there.
There is no grander greeting for them, no clan heads turned out in welcome, for they do not come as one group but as fifty to seventy-five disparate family groups.
The only reminder he slates on his calendar is that he should probably ask them to give more detailed census records so that they may be properly accounted for.
Number of active shinobi.
Number of elderly in need of care.
Number of children.
How many people in trade.
How many civilian connections.
The strength of the village grows, but only if all come together like one clan, or at least set aside the natural instinct to look after one's own more than any other.
Heaven knows that he has not managed it. Heaven knows he hasn't the skill to make others feel at ease, to comfort and to cajole, to smooth things over. That had always been Anija's world, to walk through life with the comfort of knowing that others would find him genuine and to take him at his word.
He substitutes with careful planning, with rehearsing his words before he says them, with preparation, again and again and again, and yet life still threatens to upend whatever he has planned.
Like right now for example, having been "ambushed" of a sort, by a tiny wolf child who had waited for him to step out of his tower office for lunch.
He ignores the idea that he could've taken the back stairs as Anija and the Uchiha had done and avoided her.
Inuzuka Hokime-chan tugs him through the new marketplace, chattering bubbly about this and that, pointing at things she has not seen before, asking him for names and explanations.
It is all he can do to not lose her in the crowd.
She has a tendency to dash off. It is the only reason he keeps her small hand firmly clasped in his own.
The only one, he tells himself. There is no other reason.
"Oh and what's that one, Tobira-jiji? The red ones on that stick over there!" She points excitedly, laughing. "They smell sweet!"
"Candied hawthorne."
"What's that?"
He glances down at her small, beaming face, and almost smiles. "You've never tried it before?" It's called mountain hawthorne for a reason and he'd spied the fruits on his trip up Mount Hoyoken briefly.
She is a clan head's daughter who wore a patched jacket, an old ruff of fur, and worn cloth shoes.
For a moment, for whatever reason, he feels something, something brief and transitory, a hollow thing in his chest moving. He had not ever considered himself wealthy, not in terms of familial connections or peace of mind — he does not recall the last day he had spent free of worry and responsibility — but monetarily at least, he has spent a far more idyllic childhood.
She swings their clasped hands back and forth. "Nope!"
He reaches into his pouch, tosses a few coins onto the vendor's table. "One stick please."
She might've been a child of peace, but she has not had tanghulu.
It'd been Itama's favorite food.
Chichi-ue had spoiled him with it on the way back from missions, carefully selecting the biggest one for his baby brother. It had hurt to look at after Itama was gone, a reminder of childhood and innocence and days when things were not necessarily happier but lighter in some way he has not felt in some time.
His feelings had calcified when Chichi had also gone, returned to the clay.
From dust we come and to dust we return.
He crouches down, offers the stick to Hokime-chan, and holds it until he is sure that she has her small hand firmly around the bottom end. "Would you like to try?"
Her eyes go wide. "For me?" She glances up at his face, and then quickly looks away again.
It's such a little thing, and yet he can feel her elation spreading across her chakra signature like a drop of ink into still water, effusive, radiant, genuine enough that it makes his heart catch in his throat.
When was the last time—
"Ah," he hums. "For you." If he'd originally planned to somehow leave her behind and escape unscathed, there's no escape now. There is nothing about him unscathed anymore.
"Thank you so much Tobira-jiji!" She holds the skewer up to him. "You first!"
Is this another one of those traditions that makes sense to other people, but not to him? Is this something other clans offer each other?
Or is it just the generosity of Inuzuka Hokime's spirit?
It's on the tip of his tongue to say something, anything, say I don't particularly like tanghulu, to put his pain in the past, to conjure it up again like a hungry ghost, but he does not.
He does not.
Instead he opens his mouth, and carefully pulls the first tanghulu off of the skewer with his teeth, an explosion of sweetness bursts on his tongue, followed sharply by the tang of the sour nature of the mountain hawthorne.
It is memory. It is gritty. It is both clay and life.
She laughs, the sound light and airy, childish glee. "You made a funny face Tobira-jiji." A small finger prods at the sticky patch of caramelized sugar on his cheek. "Was it good?"
"Ah." He is no cold hearted man. He knows this. Knows it very well. All men seem to wear a cold face next to Anija, and his is a face less expressive than most.
He's rather aware that most choose to read his lack of expression as disinterest, as heartless character. And he learned early that arguing matters only made them worse, so he has let it lie.
"It's sour." There's a little bit of surprise in her voice. "Tobira-jiji, why didn't you say so?"
She's tugging at the edge of his sleeve, a slight hint of betrayal in her tone, big honey colored eyes staring up at him serious enough as though it were really the end of the world she was talking about instead of her current fixation having a sour center despite being wrapped in sweetness.
A noise escapes him.
It takes him a moment to recognize that he is laughing — he has not laughed in some time — but at the same time he is hard pressed to explain why that is.
"I thought you would know." He reins in his amusement, reminds himself that it is not kind to laugh at the misfortune of others. "But I am sorry I did not warn you ahead of time."
She pulls another one off of the skewer, chews it slowly. "I like it though, Tobira-jiji." A small hand pats the edge of his armor. "Don't be sad."
"Mmm." He wasn't sad exactly, more dwelling on things he should not be thinking of than sad, but memory is a fickle thing, persistent in all the wrong times.
"Haha didn't let me hug you when you visited." Hokime bounces down the path, hand still firmly tucked in his. "She said if I tried she was going to make Takamaru sit on me." A thunderous frown crosses her face. "One day I will grow really really really big! And then I will make my partner sit on her, and she'll have to listen to me!"
When he visited.
This jumble of sentences makes very little sense when he attempts to parse the meaning from the words.
"Why would you want to hug me?"
"Because you're sad!" There's something stormy in her eyes, an obstinate frown upon her face. "How're you going to be happy if you don't get hugs?"
Setting aside the implications that hugs make people happy and that he certainly had never felt so — which is probably why Anija had stopped trying some years ago — "How am I sad?" He has certainly never considered himself as such. There was no great tragedy in his life, no point upon which all the faultlines break that someone could point to and say 'this is what has made Senju Tobirama sad' but she seems convinced enough that he probably ought to disabuse the notion.
"Could hear you walking." She's still frowning, but now she's looked away, her grip on his hand ever tightening. "You didn't sleep at all, Tobira-jiji. People only do that, only do that when they're sad."
He half suspects people is just another word for some very specific person that she cares about enough to have picked up all of their whims and moods.
"You could hear me walking." Her chakra signature had been across the house, much further down the hall than were he had stayed as a guest in a room that had once belonged to someone else.
"Uh-huh."
"What else can you hear?" If she could hear him walking across the house did she also hear—
Did Anija embarrass himself further, did everyone else know the next morning, did—
She blinks at him. "What normal people hear. Why?"
He breathes out.
She's a child. A rather precocious and perceptive child. Still a child.
"Hearing other people walking when they are across the house is not what normal people hear, Hokime-chan." He knew about the movement of people through his space because of their chakra signature, could read whether they were happy or sad by the feel of their chakra, a sixth sense that was tactile in every sense of the word.
"But everyone does!" She counts the people on her fingers. "Haha does, and Koza-ji does, and so does Kota-ji and Taiki-san and Haruko-baasan and Asari-neesan and Miho-chan and Jin-kun and, and—" She begins to run out of fingers. "And everyone does."
Inuzuka Kozashi had heard a two word whisper some seven yards up ahead.
He'd thought at the time that while it might not have been special to the man who had greeted them, which reminds him that he really ought to at least try to understand the Inuzuka clan structure, that it had been something that was active.
That Inuzuka Kozashi had been perhaps, more alert than normal or trying to listen in.
That it was passive. That threw him further.
"I don't."
He could sense the intensity of chakra, could sometimes sense particularly strongly held emotions, could pinpoint a rough location, provided the target was in range, get a sense of the direction of movement and its relative speed, but he cannot hear it.
Very carefully, she pulls him down and seemingly spends a long time staring at his ears. "They don't look any different, Tobira-jiji."
"It might be a clan trait, Hokime-chan." He half sighs. "Most people do not hear like your family does."
She tries bending his ear so she can also stare at the back of it. Rather absently, he takes her hand and pulls it away. Nothing of him has been left unscathed today, but he rather wishes that his ears weren't so thoroughly stared at either. "But if my chichi is a Hatake and your chichi is also a Hatake then—"
"My chichi-ue was a Senju."
Senju Butsuma would be rolling in his grave upon hearing this, Tobirama rather supposes, if not for the small fact that his father did not, in fact, have a grave.
Men who died in rivers and then were probably hacked apart into pieces out of hatred did not tend to have graves.
"But how would that work?" She pats his face worriedly. "If you are a Senju, and your haha was a Senju and your chichi was also a Senju, where did you—" she breaks off midway through her sentence, shakes herself carefully as if reminding herself that saying whatever she wanted to continue to say was rude and then continues upon a different tact. "You don't look very much like your ani, Tobira-jiji."
"We don't share the same mother." It goes unmentioned these days, enough that he suspects most have forgotten about it. Toka certainly calls him cousin easily enough, even though by blood she is Anija's cousin.
"But—"
Truly nothing of him will escape unscathed today. Not his person, not his purse, not his feelings, not his pride, not his existence, truly not anything.
"The Senju inherit patrilineally."
He sees her open her mouth to ask, and he almost curses himself for forgetting that the Inuzuka probably have never heard of that word.
"It means I inherit the name of my father." And the temper of my father, and the callous heart of my father, and the lack of expression, and —
Very carefully, two small arms loop around his neck, and she presses her cheek to his. "Don't be sad, Tobira-jiji. You're too nice to be sad."
He could almost laugh at this, but it would be a sound too cutting for children's ears.
He swallows it instead.
A week or so after that tiring day when he did not end up eating lunch, two white haired men make their way into the gathering of clans, one older and seemingly frailer, walking with a slight limp, and the other much younger, with broad shoulders that only youth could provide.
Something in the back of his mind slowly begins to creep towards the forefront. Beside him, Anija vibrates in his seat, willing to let Komari take the first greeting if only because the Inuzuka arrival in Konoha had been what brought the Hatake into the fold, but he knows it will not be a long wait before Anija bursts back into the conversation.
Anija always does.
Komari rises, bows to the older man, and in all the time he'd known her he had not seen her so much as bend. "Gifu-san." Father-in-law.
Then was the young man her—
The younger man catches her by the elbow. "Aneja! Too formal by far." No.
Some other man then.
"Kota-kun," she drawls, voice a soft shade of fond. "Did you forget to respect your elders?"
So Hatake Kotaro was her brother-in-law.
The nagging feeling that he had forgotten something slowly started to worsen. These people were...familiar.
And yet he is certain he had not met them before.
The older man covers his smile with a hand, but could not cover the gentle amusement threading through his chakra the same way. "Leave the young to their irreverence, Mari-chan. I seem to recall a girl who was much the same."
Somehow, the gentle barb sets her eyes alight. "Really, Gifu-san, I do not appear to have ever met this girl you speak of." She turns to the wider audience. "My father-in-law, Hatake Eishun-san, and his second son, Hatake Kotaro."
For a brief moment, he meets Kotaro's eyes from across the room.
They are the color of honey, awashed with light so that they look like the sun.
He feels the hot flash of fury in the other man's chakra, sees the sudden tension in narrowed eyes, livid seething rage, before it is gone as quickly as it had come. This was more than hatred because he was Senju.
It had such a personal air to it, such a promise that Hatake Kotaro wanted nothing more than to leap across the room and kill him.
The something in the back of his mind slams into the forefront.
There'd been the morning sunlight. Dew on the ground.
He'd taken a job out to western Fire Country. A shock of white hair. Eyes the color of honey.
Blood on the ground between them.
It had been business, he thinks and wishes that his hands were clean.
"War is a slippery slope.
What would you do?
Becomes
What will you do?
Becomes
My god, what have you done?"
— You Meant So Well (19.2.17)
A.N. In which, Tobirama gains a child, thinks about uncomfortable things, and has an unfortunate realization about the nature of death and killing. I wish I could say that no one saw this coming, but c'mon we all read chapter 2 so, everyone saw this coming eventually.
In other news, I've started my fourth semester at college, and I assume I will update in the near future. Unclear what exactly I'll be updating since I have a few different chapters of various fics close to completion, but I am still writing (as I always am) so it will be something.
Thank you so much to everyone who's reviewed, favorited and followed. Truly, y'all make my day.
~Tavina