October took her by surprise.
Even though the leaves were falling off of barren branches Sabella was still wrapping her head around the fact that this was still the northern hemisphere. Even Japan didn't always register to her as existing on the same side of the equator as where she had come from. Some american-centric thinking was hard to shake off, no matter that she had been there for almost a year now.
It was October, a time for monsters and mayhem and stupid cartoon specials.
Except it wasn't, because Konoha didn't have a halloween, which was utter bull. There were no jack o'lanterns, there was no kids running around in spider man costumes three weeks too early, no massive bags of candy on the walls.
It was a dark time. Not just because the days were getting shorter, but because everyone seems to have fallen into a melancholy. Folks wore black, pictures of dead folks popped up on walls and in windows. It was… unpleasant.
Sabella practically glued herself to Naruto's side.
With her arm in his, hip to hip, Sabella took him back to her house.
"You should stay here on your birthday," she told him once she had sat him down at the kitchen table. With him in a chair she went about searching for something to feed the boy. He was way too little. She was gonna have to fight a grocery store owner one of these days. Too bad she didn't know any scary genjutsu…
"I, don't think that's a good idea," he said slowly. He wasn't looking at her. Sabella's shoulders drew tight together.
"Why not?" she played at naivety. Prayed for his safety. "It's your birthday. You're supposed to spend those with friends. We all went to the part for Lee's birthday."
"People don't like that day," he tried to shrug it off. "Beside's, we hang out all the time. You can treat me to ramen the day after!" he laughed and smiled at her.
Sabella set aside her hunt to turn to Naruto. The kitchen was small enough it only took her two steps to cross over and grab his hands in her, holding them in between them. His cheeks turned pink and he looked at her, startled. He should have been used to her being all touchy feely by now.
"Naruto. Tell me the truth. Has anyone ever attacked you, or tried to hurt you on your birthday?" She held his eyes. For once she let herself sound a solemn as she felt.
Naruto shook his head. "No one's ever hurt me."
"Has anyone ever tried?"
He looked down. Sabella's heart broke. She leaned her forehead on his shoulder and let go of his hands so she could hug him to her.
"Stay here this year," she said softly. He nodded against her before he finally hugged back. He was shaking. Sabella wanted to smack every godforsaken person in this world. Instead she squeezed her precious friend tight to her.
Nothing gonna hurt you, darling. Not while I'm around. Demon's will charm you with a smile, for a while. But in time…
She pulled back at last, she could feed him. She popped some leftovers in the microwave and put them in front of him once they were warm. Sabella sat across the table, stealing bites from his plate every now again. After a few minutes he noticed her staring at him.
"What?" he drew back, looking nervous.
Sabella smiled at him. "Nothing. I just think, that I love you Naruto."
Inoichi had become a familiar sight to Sabella over the last few months. She was much more comfortable in Ino's house than in her, with the parents who loved her far too much. She had seen him every few days since she had arrived.
She had never seen him in a school room before. She had certainly never seen his normally warm blue eyes so dark and far away.
"Babe," she poked Ino's arm, "What's your dad doing here?"
Ino frowned at the front of the room, where Inoichi stood solemnly next to a rather uncomfortable looking Iruka. The teacher wasn't making eye contact with anyone of them, student of parents alike. Something was up.
"I don't know," Ino shrugged. Couldn't she feel the tension in the air? Sabella felt the hair on her arms stand on end. Her instincts were telling her that something was about to occur. Something she wouldn't like.
Iruka stood up and cleared his throat, quieting the people around them. Naruto was nowhere to be seen. Good, Sabella didn't want him around for whatever this was.
"Today," Iruka began, "We'll be learning about upholding under torture. Here as a guest speaker is Yamanaka Inoichi. Please, give him your attention and respect."
Under the table, Sabella reached for Ino's hand while the girls father began the lecture. He detailed, in more information than Sabella had ever wanted in her life, the process of gathering information. He told them how to cause pain, how to extract the deepest secrets of their enemies. He told them how to take oneself away from the situation.
Sabella had never had anyone tell her that she should dissociate before. It was surreal.
All around her, children were growing pale. She would have expected scoffs, dismissals, childhood arrogance. Instead, there was only a grim, sickening silence.
Ino's fingers gripped her hand so tightly her bones cracked under the skin. She let out a breath, squeezed her hand back weakly, and filed the information away for later.
It was weird to think that, if she were ever in a situation where someone was digging her nails out and asking for village secrets, she could literally leave her body behind. Even weirder would be for the people interrogating her. Would they see her soul leave her body? Or just watch the light leave her eyes when she inexplicably died mid questioning.
Sabella mentally shook herself to end that line of thought. What a depressing day.
Then the slide show started. Burns, cuts. Flaying.
It was underwhelming. Sabella couldn't tell if Inoichi was leaving the kids gloves on because they were a bunch of kids sitting around her, or if years of marathoning gory tv had really desensitized her that much.
Is this what Mom meant when she told me Criminal Minds would mess with my head?
She had seen worse episodes of TWD than what Inoichi was putting up in front of them.
The sudden, horrible realization that she would never know who killed Negan hit her like a brick.
The lecture didn't last very long. Only an hour or so. Sabella was left with an aching hand and much less impact than she thought she would have. Her main concern wasn't the fear of this happening to her, or having to do that to someone else. It wasn't even that the man who'd pretended to take her nose last week had done everything he had described.
Her biggest concern was the fact that it was getting ready to rain outside and she didn't want to walk all the way home.
"Well," she said to Ino, "I think I'm almost messed up enough for this job."
Ino promptly pushed her out of her chair, the tension broken by a near hysterical laugh. She was awarded a toothy grin from Sakura, who grabbed her hand with the one that didn't hurt and pulled her to the front of the room.
Iruka stood with Inoichi, watching kids file out the door. They all thanked their guest speaker, as they were supposed to, but most of them were still green around the gills. No one smiled at the blond man.
No one except for Sabella, who grabbed his hand in her smaller one and bared her teeth in a challenge to fear itself.
"You'll walk me home right?" she said cheerfully.
Inoichi did a much better job as hiding his surprise than Iruka did. He drew back for just long enough for Sabella, who had been watching for it, to see before he took her hand gently in his own and nodded.
"Yes. We can get an umbrella from our house first."
He looked to Iruka, who was watching Sakura with an intensity that made her skin itch. Maybe she should have acted like a traumatized tween after all? But then, that might hurt Inoichi. And he was kind to her.
She gripped his hand tighter, making herself a link between him and Ino, and dragged the both of them out of the school. Ino stumbled a couple of steps before she regained her balance and fell in beside Sakura. Her little face was all scrunched up. Sabella wanted to pinch it and tell her she looked cute, but she was fresh out of hands.
Too bad she couldn't just grow new ones. That would be cool. The Nico Robin of Konoha.
"Huh," she looked up at the sky when the first few drops of rain hit her face. "I wish I could eat a magic fruit and turn into a flower person."
Inoichi smothered a laugh. Ino stared at her blankly.
"When did you get so weird?" Ino demanded at last. Sabella shrugged, smiling amiably.
"Who's to say? Maybe I've always been this way and you were too busy trying to pull my hair out in front of Sasuke to notice," she shoved Ino playfully. Ino responded by hip checking her right into Inoichi's leg. Sabella let her laughter ring into the rain.
Ino only lived around the corner from the school. They got to her house right as the sky opened up and let out it's first sheet of rain. The drops smashed into the ground, slapping dirt darker and sending people screaming into cover. Sabella hugged Ino briefly before she pulled back. Inoichi had already grabbed an umbrella and was waiting for her by the door.
She jogged over and grabbed his hand, pulling him out into the rain. He held the umbrella so neither of them was in the downpour, though her shoes still got wet. She needed some that didn't have open toes.
Too bad she hated how combat boots looked. Maybe some of the thigh high ones? Or, flats with thick tights? No, pretty but not functional.
She wanted Sketchers, in all honesty, but those didn't exist here. She would have killed a man for a pair of GOwalk 4's.
Inoichi cleared his throat at last. Sabella looked up at him. He stared straight ahead.
"What did you think of today's lesson?"
Oh. He was still worried about that? Sabella hummed while she put her thoughts into words.
"I think… it made me sad," she said. "It made me sad that we live in a world where you have to do that to people. You're a good person. I wish one day we could make it so you don't have hurt anyone again. So Ino doesn't ever have to."
"Oh."
They walked in silence until they reached the Haruno household. Sabella finally let go of his hand.
Inoichi got down on one knee in front of her so he could pull the little girl into a hug. She was surprised, for a minute, before she hugged him back tight.
"I'm glad," he said, "That Ino had such a kind friend."
Sabella squeezed him gently, smiling. "I'm glad I get to be her friend. Thank you for bringing me back."
Inoichi let her go and with one last smile he vanished into the rain.
Sabella stared at the boy in front of her, lips pursed.
Towa, a boy a year or so older than she was, looked utterly sure of himself.
"You want to date me," she said slowly. Sakura Haruno was only eleven. Much too young to go out with anyone. Sabella Hesper was going on twenty. Much to old to date a pre-teen. "We've spoken like, twice. Why?"
"Because I've seen you talk to that kid, Naruto. And you're not afraid to get into fights like the rest of the girls and you don't dress stupid. You aren't like other girls!" he said quickly.
Oh. My god. That was a thing in this world to?
Sabella narrowed her eyes at him.
"What's wrong with other girls?" she demanded, crossing her arms over her chest. For that matter, what the hell made him think she wasn't like them? Yeah, she didn't pull her punches during fighting lessons, and she knew almost all the answers to their lessons, but she was very much girly! She had pink hair for christs sake!
"Well- well they're lame! They just talk about boys and they're so dramatic! I don't want to date any of them," he made a face. Sabella rolled her eyes so far she could see her brain.
"You are so…. Okay!" she clapped her hands together. She would not yell at a child! She wouldn't! It wasn't his fault sexism existed. He had to learn about it. And, who better to teach him than her?
"Okay, you'll go out with me?" his face lit up.
"Nope!" Sabella waved her hand flippantly. " 'Okay', I'll tell you a secret!" Sabella leaned, prompting Towa to do the same. "What you just said, is sexist."
"What? No it's not! I'm complimenting you, are you stupid?" his whole face turned red. Sabella's smile only grew.
"Yep, it is. You're insulting every girl except for me, just because they as girls have traits you don't like. By saying I'm different from them, and better than them, you're pitting me against every other girl there is, and turning our very existence into a competition that I did not agree to be a part of. So, sexist."
"I'm trying to be nice!"
"Mmmm, well you're not doing very good at it. Listen. If you want to compliment a girl, or get her to like you, you can't just insult the girls you don't like to put her on a higher pedestal. Take a look at things she likes, things she's good at. If she's happy when she masters a technique tell her she did well at it even if it came easy to you. Compliment her on things she's passionate about. Things like that. Don't just tell her other girls are stupid."
She pulled back, arms crossed over her chest. "And, on that same note, I like to dress up. I love it. And I'm seriously the most dramatic person on the face of the planet. So… bye bye," she waved at him and bounced away, to where Ino and Hinata had been watching the whole thing.
She held out her hands and each of her friends took one, falling in on either side of her.
"That was intense. I thought he was going to fight you," Ino looked at Towa, who was still bright red, over their shoulders. Sabella had a brief fear that she might have done that wrong. She hoped calling him on sexism wouldn't result in her being murdered. That would suck.
Sabella squared her shoulders. No. She was a fighter, she would be fine.
"He didn't know he was being rude. He can't be a better person if someone doesn't tell him," she reasoned.
"That's true… I never thought of some of the stuff you said. But you know, he wasn't totally wrong. You aren't like other girls," Ino told her.
Sabella's footsteps faltered. Ino couldn't have figured out the truth about her, right? She couldn't know that she wasn't really Sakura. She couldn't know that she wasn't really a-
"No one else has a forehead as big as yours!"
"Pig!" Sabella screeched. She shoved Ino over, knocking her right into Hinata, who yelped in surprise and pushed her back. They dissolved into a wrestling match that was half insults half hysterical giggling.
When Ino bit her hand, Sabella had the stray thought that maybe things would be okay.
Maybe, things aren't so bad. Maybe they're even…. Good.