The Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous
A/N: So, happy Christmas, uh, Eve! Yes. That's a thing. You can thank Shana for the chapter, as usual, since I was unsure about it.
Important note: I will respond to the reviews after this arc, arranged by chapter at the end of the first chapter after it is over, because I feel that the walls of text at the end may somewhat ruin the mood. But I do appreciate your reviews and I will answer them all!
Don't own, won't profit.
This wasn't over.
Ryuu knew he shouldn't be there. He knew that the hospital was now the province of the Hokage, but he also knew that something wasn't right and after half the night spent brooding about it, he wasn't willing to waste another second on it.
He silently leapt from the telephone wire to the top of the wall that surrounded the pediatric ward playground, landing lightly in the darkness. The moon had already set as it wasn't exactly a decent hour, and the night was a merciful coolness compared to the stark heat of the day. Perfect, in other words, when combined with the gentle wind that had started that morning, bringing much needed moisture to the dry heat. Ryuu took a moment to feel it with his eyes closed, letting the breeze brush along his skin and take his mind along the edge of the building with it, feeling the traps on windows and walls that protected the patients inside. It was no chakra sense; his wasn't as good as Hatori's and he knew that. But whatever it was, it was his and it worked, so it would do for now.
Ryuu jumped and let himself dissolve into the wind with a light exhale, collecting himself moments before the air connected with the building and landing on a spot free of traps. Security was tight right now, since they had recently undergone a massive invasion. This used to be much easier, he thought irritably, stepping up the wall with what Daisukenojo would have described as ballerina-like grace and probably some effeminate wiggling. That jackass-
Not the time.
This time was limited, and not meant for thinking of revenge for things Daisukenojo hadn't done yet. Ryuu reached the right floor but not the right side of the building; crouching and sliding the window open with care so that he could creep inside the darkened private room, thankfully empty of occupants. He paused with one foot pressed against the tiling, poised to flee if one of the medics approached. The air was still inside the hospital, largely, so he was forced to depend on his chakra rather than his more native he felt no response to his presence he trod noiselessly through the room, keeping the window open for a quick escape on a cross-breeze if he needed it.
He slipped out into the slightly dimmed hallway and assumed a posture of nonchalance, hands stuck in his pockets. He'd worn white deliberately, though he'd had to rummage for a good long while to find anything that wasn't in his three favorite colors and the two he'd picked to make his favorites less obvious. He'd look like an insomniac patient at a first glance and he'd be long gone before a second, with any luck. This was a hospital, after all, not a shinobi building. He should be fine.
Raiku's room was across the entire floor and in the opposite ward, but the night shift had a skeleton staff that just kept order on this floor, unlike the more intense wards, so Ryuu was able to drift in silence from the ward he had entered through to the next without interception. He kept a sense tied to the breeze he had let in through the window to make sure it stayed constant, using it to determine which hallways near his entrance remained clear and which he couldn't use again, all the while considering other things.
Like how stupid this was, he berated himself. There was no need for this. It wasn't as though Raiku hadn't been in hospital before and, honestly, she would be again. Her ability may have been powerful (maybe, he added grudgingly), but she was so bad at using it that she inevitably hurt herself. There was nothing to suggest that this time was any different-
No. Ryuu refused to lie to himself in that way. There were a few things, things that had made him suspicious from the start, and it was only natural that he would want to investigate them further. Ryuu hated lies, he hated doubts and refused to bear them when he could avoid it, and he would not lose any more sleep over some high-energy clown that he'd been saddled with some year or more ago.
He felt a familiar, low-key anger rise in him and felt comforted by its presence, using it to fuel to his determination to get to the bottom of this. He liked being angry. It was so much better than being bored, and he was so often bored. Maybe that was why he was here.
He didn't like the thought, but liked denial even less, so he allowed himself to consider it fairly.
And maybe it was better to be focused on and so frustrated by Raiku's constant elusiveness and her secrets, her half-truths, than bored by staring at his ceiling in the night and feeling the breaths of the people who he had always believed were his only family. Better than how he struggled to marry the idea of the parents he loved and the family he didn't know and how he couldn't stand it, couldn't bear the thought of being like Sasuke, and she was the only one who knew that. The only person who thought he was anyway and god, how Ryuu hated her when she looked at him like she knew something about him that he didn't. His hands curled into fists by his side at the thought and the surge of deep, abiding anger made his focus sharp and his mind work faster, dragging him to a conclusion he found unpleasant, but forced himself to look at anyway.
Maybe he liked being angry at Raiku more than he-
Not the time.
This was the time to be present, to concentrate on what he was doing. He almost shuddered but let the idea pass over him without rejecting it, settling unfinished somewhere in his mind where he could examine it more dispassionately later, along with so many things that he hated but that he knew could be true.
That done, he could focus again.
Still. This was stupid. Maybe Daisukenojo's belief that they should wait had been right-
Ryuu cut off the thought savagely and with no small amount of horror. Intolerable. Absolutely not. No way. There was no way he would ever eventhink that.
He reached the right door and quietly pushed it open; checking to make sure it was clear before entering the hallway Raiku's room was connected to.
'Hey, you!'
Ryuu deliberately didn't slow and rounded a corner at the sound of a high female voice calling after him, quickly jamming a window open and disintegrating into the wind that brushed through and back the way he'd came. It gave him a chance to see who had been pursuing him, though his awareness wasn't up to par in this state. A dark-haired woman quickly made it to where he had been - he'd made it just in time. She looked around warily and stopped at the window to stick her head out, giving him ample time to ride the breeze away and to coalesce back into himself out of sight.
Well. That had been close. Ryuu shook off the physical confusion that apparently always accompanied the use of that very recently discovered technique and kept going, knowing that now someone had been roused, his chances of getting caught were greater.
Ah, and now another problem. Ryuu stopped in front of Raiku's door for a moment, facing his greatest challenge of the night.
What the hell was he supposed to say to her that wouldn't make it seem like he'd been worried?
Ryuu's lip curled at the thought of another deep and meaningful, of all things, with Raiku, of all people, but fate quickly made the choice for him when another nurse's chakra presence threatened to move into his visual range. He darted inside Raiku's room and shut the door as quietly as he could, his heart rate up despite his best efforts to remain unruffled. When the faintly visible lump on the bed didn't move, he took a moment to settle and compose himself.
Unaffected to his satisfaction, he crossed and hovered for a moment like he would never have done where someone else could see him, unsure of whether to sit down on the bed before he woke her up. No, too personal, he decided eventually, stretching out a hand to shake her shoulder lightly. 'Toaster,' he muttered, his voice sounding too loud in the otherwise quiet room, accompanied only by the sound of the wind outside. The unattached and dormant monitor in the corner flickered a little with life, but he paid it little mind. Electronics always behaved strangely around Raiku.
Though, Raiku herself was behaving strangely, not stirring at all.
Ryuu frowned and shook her a little more, until she made an unhappy, sleepy sound.
Stranger still. Usually, any presence near a sleeping Raiku would make her jerk awake at the slightest provocation, with a loud 'Aha!' for some reason. He'd never been clear on that, or on most of the things she did, even as her most closely held secrets were pulled from her tight, careful grasp and so help him he would leave that grip empty-
Not the time.
This time was growing short, and he had something to do. 'Toaster,' he repeated, feeling as though he must have done it a million times before, and that he was probably doomed to keep doing so forever. 'Wake up.'
She grumbled a little and he thought, for a moment, that he'd succeeded when she rolled over and fixed him with a hazy glowing gaze, something in him releasing a tension he had been unaware of. Only to regain it far stronger when she mumbled something, very much like his name, and moved to go back to sleep. Irritated now, he pulled her onto her back to make her look at him and glowered.
Usually this had the gratifyingly immediate effect of her utter terror, but this time she tried to reach for him - for his shoulder, or maybe his hand, but he couldn't tell because she didn't make contact, didn't even come close before she let her hand fall back to her chest.
Ryuu paused, something cold filtering in through his frustration. He gave a cautious shake again and Raiku's eyes drifted open to look somewhere in his direction, unfocused and glowing so brilliantly he could barely stand to look at them, far closer to white than her usual bright blue.
'Raiku?' he asked more quietly, trying to scan her face but unable to see it properly with her eyes creating such a stark contrast between their light and the dark of the rest of the room. She made an indistinct sound and Ryuu watched, blood running cold in his veins as her eyes flickered, like a broken television or a dying light bulb.
'R'yuu?' she mumbled, pressing the heel of one hand to her eye and rubbing it blearily.
Ryuu didn't feel relieved at her lucidity. He didn't.
'Yeah, it's me,' he said, and he found that his irritated tone did not translate to such a quiet voice, but decided to press on anyway. He may as well. 'Do you have any idea-,'
Ryuu broke off when she fixed her eyes on him for just a second and focused hard, her struggle to do so obvious, and so obviously one she was failing at.
But then 'Ryuu,' she said with a sudden, startling clarity, looking through him and he wanted to shake her for whatever she thought she was seeing in him, instead of the him that was really there but then there was a flicker. And then the room went dark, the light flickering briefly overhead and the monitor giving a worrying flash, accompanied by the faint smell of burnt plastic.
Ryuu stifled the urge to pry her eyelids open manually and shook her again while his own eyes took a moment to adjust to the sudden darkness. She didn't respond to him at all this time. For a long while he was forced to wait, until finally he could see again.
He paused, tightening his grip on her shoulder. And it was nothing. It wasn't important, it would be the blanket between them and his own weariness, but he couldn't feel the faint thrum that always made his fingers itch and his bones ache slightly whenever he touched Raiku. Whenever he came into contact with her, no matter how many layers there were between them and he knew that this- this was something.
'Raiku?' he asked very quietly, hand on her still shoulder.
Raiku watched him blankly, evident from the faint glimmer of light reflecting in her eyes from under the door. But that was it. That was the only sign, the only indication he had that she was awake and seeing him; there was no light to blind him from her eyes, no stammered words to assure him that she was aware of his presence.
Ryuu tried to understand and tried to think of an explanation, but Raiku closed her darkened, human eyes and turned over without another word and he couldn't. He didn't understand. He couldn't explain.
He removed his hand and stepped back, unsure of what to do. Unsure of what he could do, but certain he had to do something, because who else knew? Their team, her family- nobody else, certainly not the Hokage, if he was any judge. Which he absolutely was. So he would have to talk to Yamada- no, perhaps not, he considered, following a logical process so that his conc- irritation wouldn't cloud his judgment. Yamada could be ordered to tell the Hokage what he knew if she thought he was involved, and he absolutely would do as she asked. Or even if he wouldn't, the risk of it was unacceptable. Who, then? Her family was secretive but harmless. Their assistance couldn't be counted on to be valuable, not really. They were mostly civilians, for god's sake.
That left him with very, very few options. He may have to… compromise.
Ryuu curled his lip with disgust and frustration, but he had to go. It was getting early rather than late, at this stage of the morning, and he had his best chance of escaping in the dark. He crossed and opened the window, refusing to look back at his teammate because he had work to do and she was causing so much goddamn trouble.
Again.
For him.
Again.
'You're the worst,' he grumbled before he put a foot on the sill and propelled himself out.
'What do you mean, "normal"?' Daisukenojo asked, stabbing his dumpling with a chopstick gracelessly.
'Oh, I meant that she was fully recovered and we'd see her this afternoon- idiot, I meant what I said!' Ryuu snarled. 'And what I said was that her eyes weren't glowing anymore,' he finished curtly, gathering up a bite of noodles with considerably more grace. Yamada watched the exchange with his arms folded across his chest, and secretly glowed with pride. The little bastard had gotten in! To the hospital, while the Hokage was on shift! Not that he'd known that, or been willing to say how (for now), but still!
"You're sure-," he began, only for the insubordinate little wretch to interrupt him. Like he was a person. All his goodwill evaporated. He'd let this slide for too long. Something had to be done. Oh shit, he realised, the kid was answering.
'-ask me "am I sure"? Yes. Am I sure her eyes were open? Yes. Was it actually Raiku- of course I'm sure, I know what I saw!' he snapped.
Yamada briefly considered hurling him off the top of Hokage Mountain. That'd teach him a lesson. Knowing his luck, though, the surly teen would sprout wings or gliding membranes like a flying squirrel and then terrorize them all from above.
Well, damn, now he really wanted to try it.
'I actually wasn't going to tell you,' Ryuu added, shooting Yamada a baleful, yellow glare. 'And then Hatori had to open his damn mouth-,'
'Hey!' Daisukenojo protested with a mouth full of dough, but Yamada overrode him.
"Oh, you weren't, were you!?" he demanded, pushing back from the table and almost upending the people seated behind him in the narrow restaurant. Ryuu didn't falter - he really had been too easy on them - and only stood himself, bristling.
'I wasn't! What happens if the Hokage asks you about it!?' the much younger male glared. 'Would you say no!?'
God damn but he was right. But Yamada couldn't let him realise that, because then there would be anarchy. He glared and waited for Ryuu to look away first. Damn kids. They were like rabid wolves; every instance of eye contact was a challenge to his dominance. He had to be on constant alert for threats to his authority. Mostly from Ryuu, but Hatori was catching up.
Yamada settled back down when Ryuu broke his gaze and thought, letting the two of them keep eating as he considered their path of action.
He was right. Yamada couldn't defy the Hokage if she asked him about Raiku. He was lucky she hadn't already. She gave the Gairano too much credit when she assumed that they would have been able to keep that secret from her team; she was treating them like a clan, when everyone knew that the Gairano family really just stuck together out of some weirdo solidarity and their shared desire to mind their own business. But he could tell where the Hokage's mind had gone when they'd tried to keep Raiku's secret from her, and he didn't like what that meant. And now this, Ryuu's report that Raiku was being damaged, somehow, but her family standing by and not interfering…
It occurred to Yamada, as it had many times, based on his knowledge of her family and his interactions with her pleasant, but forgettable, father, that it would be a lot better for the Gairano if Raiku wasn't the way she was. Yamada was large, and he knew that that made a lot of people underestimate his intelligence, but he was more than smart enough to see the blindingly obvious - this was going to go badly if something wasn't done. Raiku was going to get caught in between her family's desire to hide and Tsunade's determination to dig them all up and it would all have been so stupidly avoidable if the Gairano could express themselves better or if Tsunade had stuck around for the last decade and seen that their family wasn't important, they didn't want or change things. She should have been dedicating her time to the more powerful clans, rather than the ones that didn't cooperate immediately. The bigger ones were too smart for that, but Yamada of all people understood the urge to swat the fly in front of you.
Damnit, though, she was his fly.
Not for the first time, Yamada wished he could bring Suzuki into this. She could make it all very simple, just with a thought, but no. He'd promised her there'd be no more, and he had to stand by it.
So, their options. They had the three of them. And her father, he supposed, but Gairano was… he didn't want to say dangerous, because he didn't think any Gairano particularly was. Yamada was dangerous, Hatake was dangerous, and the Gairano Head was nothing on them. But that one Gairano was… unpredictable, inscrutable, impossible to understand. Yamada didn't want to involve him unless it was absolutely necessary. Who else? Who else knew? There was Konishi, but it wasn't worth dragging a Genin over the border. If he'd been a Chuunin or more, that would have been different, but it wasn't feasible.
Reluctantly, so reluctantly, Yamada turned his thoughts closer to home. The Hyuuga. He knew, but on the other hand, he very conspicuously didn't like Raiku, and his family could very well catch wind of it and use it to their advantage. The last thing they wanted was for the Gairano to get dragged further into the clan-Hokage war that happened every time they changed leaders. But the Byakugan… there was a real advantage, there.
He waited for Daisukenojo to take another bite before he spoke again. "Hatori!" he barked and yes, he'd timed it perfectly. Daisukenojo choked and Yamada grinned. Even little victories were still victories. He quickly schooled his expression into something more fierce as the runt coughed, glaring at him with a face almost purple when he could finally breathe again. "Go get the Hyuuga and bring him back here, get me?"
'Why?' the Genin rasped, reaching for the water.
Yamada's face darkened. "Because I said so!"
Aaand there he went. It was good to be king, sometimes, Yamada thought smugly, watching the little guy go. He wasn't as good at being terrified as Raiku was, but it'd do in a pinch.
Daisukenojo's departure left him with the reptilian gaze of his last Genin.
'Why would Neji ever want to help Raiku?' Ryuu asked with deep suspicion. 'He hates her. He always has.'
"Because he's a stubborn jackass who hates his important family and we're about to make some important people real unhappy, get me?"
After a moment of watching him carefully, Yamada saw Ryuu figure it out.
The yellow-eyed boy smiled, showing his oddly sharp teeth in what Yamada knew now to be a threat rather than happiness.
'Ah.'
Now all that remained was to use what they had to figure out what the Hokage's and Gairano's next move would be. Then they could make their plan and sort of what they would need to make it happen.
Starting with what the hell the doc thought was going on with little Speedy.
'Absence seizures.'
Tsunade nodded, keeping her eyes firmly on the Gairano clan head seated in front of her in the Hokage office. For a man who was dealing with the idea that his daughter may be having inexplicable and intense seizures, he seemed very calm. She eased the heat with the paper fan she'd stolen from a lazy medic after she'd put the fear of Tsunade into him, pulling her pigtails to one side to keep her neck cool. The day was unseasonably hot and for all the promise of rain the forecast offered, there was no relief on the horizon.
Her meetings with other clan heads usually involved her deliberately seeming unflappable and poised so that the haughty bastards wouldn't sense weakness and try and intimidate the new Hokage while she was still settling into the position, but this Gairano was an odd one. For a clan head, he wasn't imposing at all. She'd put him at average height and weight, and his military record was … average, though there were a few missions that had made for interesting reading, if nothing else. Everything about him was average, though he wasn't bad looking, she supposed, scanning him with a critical eye. He had brown hair and a slight tan; he didn't have any of the strange alterations to his uniform that Jounin usually adopted. Nothing about him stood out from the other Gairano, who were also universally unremarkable, though in their family she'd met a few frankly excellent nurses.
In addition, from what she could tell, the previous Hokage had been content to let them do their own odd, harmless, thing, but their bland external appearance had made something in Tsunade deeply suspicious from the outset. He couldn't be what he seemed to be, and he seemed to be just… a man, somewhere in his thirties, who happened to have a large family.
Tsunade waited for his response to her theory, sure that couldn't be the extent of it. He didn't seem to be in shock, his slightly heavy-lidded eyes looking somewhere past her left shoulder, but he hadn't responded in any way she recognized as appropriate, even for a shinobi.
That was the other thing. She hated it when people didn't look at her in a conversation. What, did she not warrant the man's full attention? The skin of her knuckles itched slightly with the urge to smack him and ensure his focus didn't waver, but she had learned a long time ago that provoking things she didn't understand was unwise. The Hokage was supposed to be wise and she would be damned if she'd lose face in front of this middle-streamer.
'What made you think of epilepsy?' he asked eventually. His voice was a little more distinctive, a smooth tenor that she would ordinarily have found pleasing to listen to, but that now just grated on her nerves for its evenness in the face of unpleasant news.
Tsunade pulled his daughter's file free of the paperwork she had otherwise been diligently neglecting, flipping it open to slide across to him. 'Your daughter has been dissociating during conversations, usually preceded by anxious hyperventilation. She's unresponsive until the episode ends,' she described, letting her words flow out on auto-pilot so that she could give the matter some more thought. From the page, Gairano Raiku's wide-eyed, innocent face stared out at them. The girl had just drifted off mid-conversation, or her eyes had gone glassy in silence when she wasn't watched. Tsunade didn't like it and she'd seen it before, just like she'd seen shinobi-clan fathers with shinobi-weak children take bad news with this same blankness.
Tsunade drummed her fingers on the table and kept describing her theory of his daughter's state, even as her theory of their shared emotional one grew less positive through each second he failed to react.
I've told you that your daughter may die, she thought. Feel something.
But here came the trick, here came the test. 'I believe,' Tsunade told him, pulling the file back towards her without moving her gaze from the Gairano's face. 'That your daughter's condition is being caused, or exacerbated, by the lightning techniques taught to her by your family.'
At last, at last his distant grey gaze snapped to hers. It would have stunned a lesser being, the sudden and true sharpness in his eyes and it was a surprise to even Tsunade's hardened system. But Tsunade was far stronger than this man, than his whole family, and didn't allow herself to flinch, even as he stared through her.
'Why?' he asked, and for all his appearance, his voice remained as smooth, as innocently curious as ever.
Tsunade felt something like victory at her recognition of holding the upper hand. 'Your family techniques seem to involve making and storing electricity inside the body,' she said, pulling out another, thicker file with feigned carelessness, the rather old Gairano file that didn't really have anything in it, other than the universal acknowledgement that they were all rather weird, but ultimately harmless. Recently it had notes about so-called 'family techniques', though nothing solid. The old Hokage had been indulgent, but he hadn't been an idiot. 'I think that electricity is playing havoc with her body. She hadn't shown any signs before she started to use them?' she asked as absently as possible, pretending to go over the file when she was really watching his reaction.
He didn't have one, really. Not a real one. He raised his eyebrows in surprise that seemed genuine but that she just knew was not. 'What? No, of course not, I would have taken her to the hospital.' He even sounded offended.
Tsunade supposed there was a chance that she was being uncharitable, that maybe his reaction was sincere and he was just emotionally stunted. She could have been wrong.
On the other hand, she absolutely was not.
'Then it's logical to assume, since she's been using them more,' she said pleasantly, closing the file to steeple her fingers. 'Your daughter will stop using the techniques and we'll go from there.'
'She already has,' he said and did he ever blink? His eyes were narrowed and suspicious. Oh, finally, a response, Tsunade thought unkindly. She didn't like this. She didn't like him. She had no particular attachment to his daughter - she thought the girl was too nervous, too easily spooked to be a good kunoichi unless she had a split personality no one had picked up on. It wouldn't have been the first time. But Tsunade had lived in Konoha almost all of her life and she was sick to death of clans and the way they behaved. There were no exceptions to the law, no autonomous justice in Konoha. The clans would answer to the Hokage. The Hyuuga had already expressed discontentment with it, naturally, but if she was completely honest, she'd expected the Gairano and the Aburame to give her the least trouble.
They'd never been trouble. Hell, until a few days ago she could have said that the Gairano couldn't have made trouble if they'd been given an instruction guide and two Uchiha to help!
And then the top Gairano's daughter had come to hospital having seizures and dissociating and instead of keeping with their trend of cheerful harmlessness, their whole family had inexplicably locked down tight.
She hadn't thought anything of it. Protectiveness was a common family trait in Konoha. Then the techniques had been mentioned and his daughter had been so flighty after the massive explosions between Sand and Konoha when she had finally gotten back to the Hokage's office and it would not have been uncharacteristic, in times of unrest, for clans to put their own children in danger to gain power. It would not have been uncharacteristic for unimportant, unremarkable clans to experiment with forces that they didn't understand and then to lie about it, no matter who got hurt, and this reeked of power grabbing.
She wouldn't allow it. Not here, not now and not in her hospital.
Tsunade smiled at him and knew it wouldn't reach her eyes. 'That's not all.'
The Gairano regarded her shrewdly and said nothing.
'I've been watching her carefully, and there's another step we'll need to take.' It was time to see if her suspicions were correct. 'We'll need to drain your daughter's system of the excess power she's been storing-'
'No-' he broke the word off quickly, but not quickly enough to hide it.
There.
Tsunade did not like being interrupted and from the way Gairano looked away from her face, back to the air over her shoulder, he knew that he'd given himself away. It hadn't seemed conscious, judging from the cut-off syllable; it felt like a knee-jerk reaction he hadn't been able to restrain in time.
Which meant she was on the right track.
'Something wrong?'
Gairano shook his head. 'That would damage her.'
'Really?' Tsunade settled back in her chair and tasted victory, fanning herself again. 'Explain.'
He hesitated.
He hesitated, and Tsunade knew that whatever he said next would be a lie.
'Using the techniques over an extended period makes the body dependent on the extra power,' he said after a moment.
'Then we'll have to be very careful, won't we?' she asked, crossing one leg over the other. She'd cracked him. His defense was splintering as she watched. He'd have to tell her the truth about the techniques or kill his daughter, and it didn't look like he was willing to sacrifice his only child-
'Yes,' he said, interrupting her train of thought, sitting back slightly in his own chair. Tsunade stared, refusing to show her disbelief.
He wouldn't.
'I suppose we will,' he agreed, meeting her eyes again with a look of grim stubbornness that she wouldn't have expected from such a mild-mannered man. 'Thank you, Hokage,' he added with a bow as he stood. 'I appreciate the care you've taken with my daughter.'
The repetitive sound of the ceiling fan above them was the only thing that broke the silence as Tsunade stared at him and refused to betray her feelings on the matter.
'Of course, Gairano,' she replied eventually, unable to think of a way out of this that wouldn't kill a child, but equally unable to forfeit her position of authority so early on and against such an unimportant opponent in the fight against clan hegemony. 'I'll keep you informed.'
The heartless bastard smiled at her. Close-lipped and small, but he fucking smiled at her.
'Thank you.' He glanced out the window, the bright light reflecting off his bleached grey eyes. 'Keep an eye on the weather,' he added casually towards the blue sky, the wisps from the day before growing into more respectable clouds in the distance. 'It looks like it might turn.'
Tsunade nodded and fanned herself again. 'I'll keep that in mind.'
She had erred, and misjudged a man, and now she had a procedure to prepare for.
