Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. This is written in a sort of five+one format, and thus can be alternatively titled, five people Inuzuka Tsume buried, and the two she did not.
"And this too, shall pass"
-Persian Adage
Inuzuka Tsume attends her first funeral on an summer day when she is nine. It is not so much a funeral as it is a memorial, a declaration of open war, as Kaa-san insists upon an open casket.
"I want to show the world what they did to him." She'd said, standing before her four children in a line. "And you will remember why we fight."
"Yes, of course, Kaa-san." Kosshi-neesan responds. There's an anger burning in her eyes that Tsume cannot match. Kegawa-nii and Teiru-nii join in with affirmations of their own, but her 'yes, of course, Kaa-san' is stuck in her throat.
Tsume just finds that the sight of her Otou-san turns her stomach and makes her throat constrict. He'd been Konoha's diplomat in Kumo, and very rarely home. She remembers him only distantly-a large hand ruffling her hair, loud, booming laughter, and dancing golden eyes.
The body-if can be called a body that is-before looks nothing like the Otou-san that she remembers. Pieces. They'd sent him back in pieces. Blood plastered, hair torn, nails ripped from the roots, eyes gouged out-she doesn't want to look, but she can't look away either. What does this even mean?
It's noon. The light is bright and blinding. The sun is burning sweat down her back in her black kimono, but Tsume's cold, and if she's less disciplined, if she isn't the daughter of wolves, then she would shiver. Kuromaru whines and nudges her hand. She pats his head mechanically, hand moving up and down, but she can't feel his fur beneath her fingertips at all.
Kegawa-nii squeezes her other hand, but doesn't say anything. There are no words he can say to her, because Kaa-san would judge their strength and find it wanting. He's made concession enough as it is, to stand beside her.
Kaa-san stands before the casket, her shoulders thrown back, eyes dry and hard. "They think that they can break us with this show of strength." She roars at their gathered clan. "But they do not know us."
"No." The clan echoes back. "They do not know us."
"This is not strength." Kaa-san hisses. "This is war. And we will burn their village down around their ears. We will slaughter."
"This is war." The clan murmurs, layers and layers voices overlapping and bumping into each other like waves on a beach. "We will slaughter."
"And we will feast on their blood." Kaa-san throws her head back, hands gripping the edge of the coffin so hard that they shake, and howls.
The sound will haunt her forever Tsume's sure. She's sure, but she's also howling, salt stinging at her eyes, and all around her, every member of a clan of 300 raises their voices to the noonday sun.
Six years later, Kaa-san falls on a mission, and the clan is again gathered for a funeral. It's Kosshi-neesan who stands straight shouldered, and hard eyed in front of their mother's open coffin. "We have lost a great deal." She says to the crowd, to Kegawa-nii's wife who is not one of them exactly, and Cousin Kouga nods from right beside her.
"But they cannot break us, because we are a pack." Tsume likes Cousin Kouga well enough most days, but she likes him better when he's charming and laughing.
This hard eyed, angry man by Kosshi-neesan's side is nothing like him and the disparity is disconcerting in all the wrong ways.
That morning, the pack howls for their lost mother, and Tsume comes to a decision of her own.
When the pack disperses, she finds herself standing in front of the shrine, her mind racing. Okami-sama. You know love don't you? She lights the incense for the three deities in enshrined in this holy room and struggles to organize her prayer into words.
Their Wolf-God ancestor had left his godhood behind for a time, to live on earth with a mortal woman. He'd defied tradition and the other gods themselves for his love. And his children-Tsume's eyes find the silver haired Yama and his sister, the black wolf Yasuka,-his children were proof of his love.
She finally settles for a simple request. Grant me the ability to love as I please. This life is too short to live without him.
She stands there for a long time, thinking of Iwa no Kaito's contemplative expression as he tries to balance a kunai on the tip of his nose. Thinking of his small smiles, and wide blue gray eyes like the autumn sky. She does not think that she could live without his off key singing and the way he taps his fingers across the edge of every cup as he dries them.
Does not think that her life could be complete without his arm around her waist, his utter dorkiness when he's excited, and the way he'd dance in time with his singing when he thinks that no one else is around to see. The clan would not approve, but she rather thinks that Okami would.
She stands there until the incense burns down, and then she clears the ashes away, her conflicted mind made up at last. I'll marry him before I die, even if the pack does not approve.
And then she leaves, but she forgets that Okami's love had not ended happily, had not been milk and honey, sunshine and roses. She does not want to remember the demons that'd killed his mortal wife, and the way that her soul would never be returned to him. A mortal soul does not dwell in the realm of the gods after all.
Death had separated her ancestor and his love. She does not remember because she does not want to.
It is her Sensei's funeral that she misses, and that she can't forgive herself for missing. She'd been tracking a band of Konoha's missing nin in Kiri for four months before she hears the news that Hatake Sakumo has failed a mission for the first time in living memory.
"That must bother Sensei." Kuromaru remarks. "He had a perfect mission record before this."
Tsume hums absently in agreement. It surely must, but it's not close to her heart. "We've got another eight targets to chase right?" As she moves forwards, the fishline of fresh scrolls hanging from her belt rustles. There are fifteen scrolls on the line, and another ten empty ones in her pouch.
They are black edged, the code for sealed bodies. Her hunt has been going well.
"Yeah." Kuromaru barks. "I've caught scent of another one."
Her answering smile is bloody. "Let's hunt."
It is two more months before she hears that Sa-Sensei had failed because he'd cared too much for the chunin that he'd been leading instead of monitoring the location Kumo's jinchuruki. Blood had been spilled in Fire Country.
She shrugs and keeps forward with her terminating objectives. There are only three more men that she has to hunt through the wet swampland before she can go home. Home to her husband working down in RnD. Home to blond hair and blue eyes and a soft spoken man who liked to sing in the kitchen.
I'll go and visit Sa-Sensei and Kakashi-kun then. If nothing else, Kakashi-kun will be around to understand Sensei's struggle. They're so close.
Eight days before she gets back to Konoha, on the border of Fire Country and the Land of Hot Water, she hears that Hatake Sakumo is dead.
She shakes the news away, because surely it's a lie. A lie and a bad one at that. Sa-Sensei's too good for someone to even land a hit on him, much less kill him.
But she picks up the pace, unease eating at her heart. For there to be rumors that Sensei had died, there has to be something bad happening. To hear such a blatant lie inside Fire Country means that Sensei might even be in the hospital. She doesn't entirely want to know what put him there.
Two days out from Konoha, she hears that Konoha's White Fang had committed suicide to cleanse his sins from the Hatake name.
She nearly collapses right there. I should have just said screw it. I should have just come home as soon as I could.
But beneath her grief is the anger that screams down every vein and artery. What sins did he commit? Trying to protect people that weren't pack? Trying to make sure that everyone made it back alive?
The Hell'd he think he do? What would drive him to this?
Her arrival into Konoha is quiet. It's an hour before dawn. A summer breeze blows trash down the street, and she fights the urge to run to the Tower. Instead, she settles for a brisk walk, because she is seventeen years old, and nearly a special Jonin. And she's too old to run when she's not hunting.
She does not really believe that her Sensei is dead.
She doesn't believe it until Hokage-sama steeples his fingers over the paperwork on his desk as she turns her scrolls in, and shakes his head. "Go down to the cemetery, Tsume-chan." He says gently, and she feels the ground disappear beneath her feet.
But somehow, she doesn't fall through the earth into the black ribbon of space. Somehow, she's still standing, and able to walk down to the cemetery on her own two feet.
She finds Kakashi-kun stubbing his toe repeatedly against a freshly dug grave-All that's left of Sensei is a stone above the ground-, shrieking wordlessly at the sky. The sight is so miserable that she doesn't even really know what to do. He and Sensei had been so close. How do I tell him that it's alright to cry?
"Kakashi-kun?" She tries to set a hand on his shoulder, and he shrugs it away roughly.
"GO away!" His voice cracks in the middle of his exclamation, and she can tell that he's been screaming until his throat gave out. She really can't say that she understands his pain. She'd barely known her own father-He'd been buried with blood on his face, his eyes gouged out, in fourteen different pieces. They were never able to find all of Inuzuka Ryuketsu.
I imagine it's different for you.
"Pain's fine you know?" She's trying to comfort him, but she can't even really comfort herself. It's too unreal. Sensei ought not to be dead.
Sensei isn't dead. This isn't real.
"I'm not in pain." Kakashi hisses. "I hate him. He's stupid."
Tsume reels back. "What did you say?"
"I said." Kakashi begins, with a shocking amount of bitterness. "I hate him. I'm glad he's dead. He was a useless waste of space."
She doesn't realize that she's slapped him, slapped a child-some part of her mind whispers that he was never a child to begin with, he'd always been scarily intelligent-in anger. "GET OUT." Her lips draw back as she bares her teeth at him. "Get out, you ungrateful brat."
He stands there, stupidly in the rising light of morning, and Tsume wants nothing more than to grab him by the back of the neck and shake some sense into him, but she doesn't. Instead, she bites back the angry words she's ready to spit in his direction. It was your callousness that killed Sensei. He wouldn't care about the opinions of a few villagers. It's your opinion that broke him open.
You killed Sensei. She doesn't say. Her teeth grind against her bottom lip in an effort to just keep her mouth shut. Keep the angry words in, they are too hurtful to say.
In the end, she's the one that turns and leaves, and she bites her lip the entire way, enough to taste blood.
She goes home. Home to her house with Kai-baka. He turns to her, eyes questioning, and she grabs him by the front of his shirt and kisses him. It's messy and bruising and nothing like how she'd normally treat him.
He tastes like sweet rice and mint. And she's sure she tastes like blood.
"Tsu-chan?" He asks when she pulls away.
"Sensei's dead." She replies. She doesn't say that she found Kakashi by his father's gravestone. She doesn't say that she slapped a child today and she might never forgive herself for not paying her last respects to Sensei.
She doesn't say that she's ashamed that she wants nothing to do with Hatake Kakashi. Sensei loved his son dearly.
I can't even look at him. I slapped him over Sensei's last resting place.
What sort of human being am I?
Kai-baka cups her face in his hands and kisses her forehead. "I made you food." At that is all the comfort that they'd be able to know. Death is common; death is universal; and the dead do not weep for the living, but the living may spend too much time on the dead.
So they sit down at the table together, their hands brushing as they reach for the ladle in the miso soup at the same time, and break out into laughter.
So they sit together on the couch, curled into each others forms because there's just not enough time, and they speak no more of death.
"How do you feel about children?" She asks him.
His fingers stop tracing patterns over her shoulder blades. "A daughter?" He asks. "One just like you?"
She giggles, the thought dancing across her mind. "Or a son." She counters. "A little boy just like you."
When Kaito dies that cold spring day in April, Tsume does nothing but cry and hold his cooling hand like it held the last light in the universe. She's almost come to expect the deaths of people around her. Death is common. Death is universal. Death will come for everyone. But the morning sun rises, she stands, gathers her daughter, and throws herself into arranging his funeral instead.
He will not want me to keep crying forever. I was always his rock and he was mine. I must be my own guardian now.
So when her sister comes to call, Tsume pushes back her frustration, her resentment, and the years and years of buried grief and broken promises, and becomes unusually accepting. "Hello, Neesan."
Kosshi sits down at her kitchen table for the very first time since Tsume's moved into the house, and the feeling is so surreal it might as well be a painting on the wall. "I hear you're planning to bury him in the local cemetery, Imouto."
A flash of irritation swells beneath her breastbone. "Were you offering me another idea, Neesan? You hate him after all." Tsume is attempting to be accepting, but her basic nature is not to be changed. If Kosshi is here to insult her, then she wouldn't take it lying down.
Kosshi sighs. "I was offering your husband a place in the clan cemetery." Did I hear her wrong?
"He's not clan." And it hurts to say this. It really hurts, because she'd wanted so badly for him to be recognized when he was alive, but now it comes, too little, too late.
"I offered him a clan name at your official wedding." Kosshi folds her hands primly over her knee. "He died Inuzuka Kaito not Iwa no Kaito. He ought to be buried in the clan cemetery. It is his right."
"Then thank you." Tsume says finally. "I'll accept your peace offering. I'll arrange for his burial in the clan cemetery." And oh, this is a dream of spring, but it comes with ashes and burned dreams. He ought not to have died.
He hasn't met our second child. He ought not to have died.
Kosshi rises, grace in every movement, the motion causing the silver chain around her neck to slide forward. A single jasmine flower made of white gold and porcelain glimmers in the light. Kosshi tucks it back beneath her kimono shirt in a casual movement that is anything but casual. "Very well then, Imouto. I have nothing to add."
But Tsume's no energy to think about the necklace her sister never took off. There are more things to worry about. Hana hasn't said a single word since her howling sobs at Kaito's bedside, and that worries her. Her little girl, so mature in some ways is yet so fragile in others. She has never known grief before this, and grief came for her early. Earlier than it came for me.
She watches her sister disappear out the doorway, her thin shoulders level and proud, her spine straighter than a steel rod and closes her eyes to let the burning tears fall. I do not know how I am supposed to go on, Kai-baka, now that I have to look before I leap.
She'd spoken too soon. She'd said too many bitter words.
It comes back to haunt her in the dark, as she sits and digests the fact that her sister is gone. Neesan is gone forever. She thinks, and isn't that hysterical? Isn't it, when Neesan had always seemed more ancient and stronger than the mountains?
And it is Uchiha Fugaku of all people who comes to her with Neesan's-had Neesan always been that small, that frail?-body cradled tenderly in his arms. "Inuzuka-san."
"Call me Tsume." She retorts and nearly bursts out laughing. What is happening? Has the world gone mad? I just told the infamous stone man to call me by my first name.
"Tsume-san." He doesn't seem like he knows what to say. He'd loved Neesan like a sister didn't he? What does this feel like for him?
"Thank you for bringing her back." There's not much else to say. Ashi's in the hospital, Neesan is gone, Gaku is nowhere to be found, and the clan is picking themselves out of the rubble and ready to begin again, but Tsume herself still feels crushed and bruised. And she does not know where her children are.
The fact that Neesan had died, when she was strong and capable does not fill her heart with confidence for Hana and Kiba's fate. She's only five years old. Hana. Hana. Please don't tell me that someone will find your body out there too.
It's only after he lays down the body and leaves that she realizes what's wrong. It's not that Neesan is drenched with blood, not that she's gone dead. Neesan's necklace is gone.
And perhaps that is the most surreal part of this whole experience. Neesan never took off her necklace, and now it is gone.
Tsume picks her sister up and walks the long walk up to the main house.
And then she goes to find her children. Please, I do not ask for much. Just that they are both alive. Have them both be alive, please. Okami-sama, I will never ask for anything so much as I ask for this again.
Please.
"Hana?" She scans the shelter, the third shelter she's checked in so far. "Hana?"
"Kaa-san!" Where is her daughter-ah. There. There she is. And Tsume's so relieved, so so relieved. Thank Kami that no one else was taken from me.
And she could survive Sensei. She could survive Kaito. She could survive even Neesan.
She could not survive the loss of her children. She does not think she can. Not two more gravestones in the endless array. Not two small coffins. Not her children.
"Thank heavens you're safe." She brushes her hands through her daughter's hair. No injuries. Okami-sama. Thank you. She pulls back and then suddenly notices that her daughter is not alone. There are two other children with her, and Tsume feels a surge of pride. Saving others besides you and yours, Little Nose?
"Are their parents here yet?"
Hana shakes her head. "I don't think so."
Well...it's the little Uchiha and I assume another Uchiha. She sets a hand on the kid's shoulder and shakes him as gently as she's capable of managing. He blinks awake, arms still wrapped around the baby in the sling-a little brother perhaps? "Where are they?"
She wakes the other one next. "Well, come along you two. I'll notify the Uchiha Clan where you are, but our house isn't flattened despite some damage and the Uchiha Compound is."
She turns and offers Fugaku's son a hand. The little Uchiha blinks and stares at her hand as though it is a foreign object. Oh damn you, Fugaku. You can't possibly tell me that you've never taught your child how to hold hands. That's just sad.
Still as the saying goes, in for a penny, in for a pound. She takes all three of the little Uchihas home.
She still has a daughter. She still has a son. And as long as she doesn't have to bury her children, she'll survive. And that's all it takes for her to walk out into the sun.
"I do not pay attention to the world ending. It has ended for me, many times and began again in the morning." -Nayyirah Waheed, Salt
A.N. Tsume deserved some serious consideration for her role as daughter, sister, wife, and mother. There are many things missing from this picture, and we don't see a lot of relationships develop as slowly as some of the other ones, but that's largely because this is a study of Tsume's lost people.
To note, the working title of this short was Inuzuka Tsume and Her Many Losses.
Thank you to LittleMissSugarLess, AnimeFreak7177(:P), rickrossed, EverBear01 (The Fugaku chapter regarding flowers is called Ikebana, and it's a WIP.), LadyScatty (I do like the Uchihas a lot.), libraryrockerr (Indeed, Chibi-tachi is really adorable.), MarchionessBlueVelvet (Yes, both Itachi and Sasuke share more similarities with their father than they think, at least in my head. Thus, the many different sorts of parallels.), worldtravellingfly (Thank you!), Kenshin135 (There is a lot of subtext to the Danzo situation that Kaito did not see, thus, we have Danzo behaving in an out of character fashion. Hopefully, the mystery becomes clearer later, but it will get murkier before that.), and Love Stories00 (Yep. That's why Kakashi has a couch now. Not that Hana's really aware of her role in his decision to get one.) for reviewing!
And for everyone who favorited and followed!
~Tavina.