Hell yes I'm back. This chapter starts a series of events in motion that is very important while reintroducing someone who's always been around but never really there.
I'm also excited because I finally was able to watch Asuma's death for myself, never mind how ridiculously slow the plot through Shippuuden episodes is. Yes, character death is very sad, but I got to experience canon Hidan for myself! Thank you, fansubs!
(Consequently, I can no longer read KakuzuHidan goodness. Their real canon apathy ruins the bloody masochism/sadism yaoi aspects of their fandom relationship I so love...doesn't mean I can't try.)
Dang. I missed Halloween.
Kabuto sighs, shutting the door behind him. Crossing the room without a glance at its occupant, he busies himself with a small notebook, flipping through its pages.
"Oh. It's you." The blond woman scoffs, folding her arms. "Got more questions for me, Yakushi? Gonna interrogate me about my little brother again?"
"I am unable to reach Deidara at this moment," he says mildly. "Be glad that it's not me at the head of this operation."
"Operation. Honestly, listen to yourself. Has all this rank crap gone to your head or something? You don't boss me around!"
The bespectacled man rolls his eyes, not even bothering to hide the undignified action. Voice still mild, he says, "Yamanaka-san, as I recall I'm your senpai. Why don't you treat me as such?"
No amount of injuries could have stopped her from doubling over, laughing, but the sound is wholeheartedly bitter. "You were my senpai, you ass. Now, fuck off. I don't want to see your face right before I'm discharged."
"As old classmates and dear friends," Kabuto says with a tilt of his head, "I'm sure we can come to some degree of understanding."
Ino dearly wants to slap the smirk right off his face. Her frown grows pronounced, though her fists have loosened. More weary than anything else, she answers him. "Go away, Yakushi. My dad's in the ER, and you creeps keep saying my brother's gone psycho. Why should I answer any questions for you?"
"Where were you at the time of the attack?" he says, face bland and impassive.
"You already know that."
"At what time did you enter the master bedroom and find your father?"
She lets loose a breath. "Is there a point to any of this?"
"When will you tell us what the killer looks—"
She slams a fist against the metal railing of her bed, snarling. "Look! I already answered these questions a thousand times! Fuck off, Yakushi."
"So...you don't know what the killer look like."
"I never said that!"
Kabuto's eyes fairly gleam. He smiles, eyes crinkling. "Ah," he says, "then I don't suppose you'll let me interrogate the victim?"
"The victim...?" Ino's already pale skin whitens. "The victim is my dead mother!"
"As the only available family member and a consenting adult, I'm obligated to ask you if I may...talk to Deidara personally." Kabuto's mouth is still in a lilting smile, perfectly disarming. "But I don't suppose it's necessary in this case?"
"Don't you dare. I gave no such permission! Don't you go near my brother...!"
But Kabuto has already strode to the door. Hand pausing at the handle, he tosses a laconic look over his shoulders; Ino trembles in impotent fury. "I'm sorry, Yamanaka-san, but this is only a courtesy call, a polite necessity. I intend to get the answers out of...someone by the end of the day."
His smile drops as he turns his back fully to her. "Do you understand what Deidara exactly is? He is not someone you can casually claim as your brother or an adopted son. He is the product of a monstrous case. He is the result of a tainted tragedy. You may not know this, but the moment your parents becomes indisposed, the boy falls into our custody."
"How," she says, ducking her head and panting, "can you stand there and tell me all of this? Are you heartless? Does this bring you some sick sadistic joy, Yakushi?"
Kabuto shrugs. "Do you want me to apologize? This is the consequence of becoming attached to the product of a failed case. Frankly, I had hopes your family would be able to keep the boy on a tight leash. It didn't work, obviously."
Something snaps in her.
"Deidara," she hisses, nearly flinging herself off the bed and screaming, "is not an object. He's only seventeen! He is my brother! He's normal...a good boy. A good boy! He's not a monster, so stop treating him as a disease, He's not—! He doesn't—he doesn't need..." Her words break off into a sob.
"Tch." Kabuto, unconsciously emulating his mentor, tips back his head and sighs. "Well, in any case, I have to show some work for my efforts. Can't go report empty handed, after all."
Face tear stained and incredulous, Ino stares at his back. "You...you are..." She is gaping, speechless, voice stained with disbelief, "Monster. You're a monster. You—you don't have any compassion! Wh...why are you...?"
"Monster?" he cuts in, amusement clear. "Me?"
She swallows.
He turns just slightly, enough so that his blank-faced profile meets her eyes. Kabuto's appearing smile is incredibly cold. "I don't know what you mean, Yamanaka-san. I'm just a simple policeman trying to deal out simple justice."
He swings open the door completely, but Yamanaka Ino has fallen utterly silent.
--
Shikaku's sigh is incredibly irate. "Did you have to break her in the process, Yakushi?"
They are outside hospital walls, and dusk has fallen. Loitering near the front entrance, the two fall into their usual interaction, though Shikaku is annoyed.
Kabuto meets his eyes calmly. "I told her the truth. She refused to cooperate."
Shikaku runs a heavy hand through his hair, brows pinched and creased with his exhaustion. "Yeah, well, once I finally got the details out of the girl, I had to save my notes from being destroyed by the waterworks. Do you know how hard she was crying after you left? I could barely hear her testimony."
"Yes, I'm aware," Kabuto says, copying his mentor's airy tone perfectly. "I was outside her door, after all."
"Che." Shikaku raises a hand to scratch at his head. "You need to stop being so fucking intense all the time, kid. Lay off about Sasori, won't you? The family doesn't need to hear it."
"Nothing else matters as long as Sasori is dead."
"Still going on about that?" Shikaku says, flicking open the top of a pack. Whatever temper Kabuto has managed to arouse is no longer there; Shikaku looks as detached as ever. Kabuto envies him for it, that easygoing grace.
Or is it arrogance?
So fucking carefree when he knows Shikaku is anything but. So deceptive in manner and tone.
"I can see why the ones high up want me off this case," he says slowly. "I could barely control myself in there. I really couldn't. Are you worried about me, Nara? Do you think I'll become a basket case when this is all over like everyone else believes? Or do you think I'll go bat shit crazy on you all?"
"A hospital," Shikaku says mildly, "is not the right place for this conversation."
"Answer me, Nara. I'm so fucking tired of all the looks they give me!"
The Nara frowns, biting down on his unlit cigarette. It is the first frown he gives this entire time, and the sight of it makes Kabuto feel strange, almost empty. Ashamed. "Yakushi," Shikaku says, letting hands fall into pockets, "do you honestly give a damn about what they think or say? When I asked if you were capable of the job, you answered, unhesitant. Are you now going back on your words? Have you overestimated yourself, Yakushi?"
It isn't the usual frown of annoyance or thinly veiled apathy.
Kabuto's mouth is completely dry. The one thing his mentor can't stand is incompetence—the failure to recognize the weaknesses in oneself, the failure of foolish overconfidence, the failure of...
Yes, he thinks. I am ashamed.
Not wanting to aggravate him any further, Kabuto only grits his teeth and bears the silence.
"Don't worry. The most terrifying way you act is when you smile, nod your head, and give me polite shit in your speech." Shikaku shakes his head, looking weary. "With me, you're honest at least."
"I...don't doubt my resolve. I need to finish this case, to see through it to its end. I need closure, sir," Kabuto says.
"And you'll get it. All these years you've worked furiously for this one moment, haven't you? Do you believe me when I say Sasori may not have shown up at all and it's an alleged partner? Or do you think it's a copycat, like the rest?"
The younger man immediately shakes his head. "I don't know what to believe, sir, I only know that this man must be taken down. Sasori or not...the bastard's still using the same methods. This killer will suffice...for now."
Shikaku raises his brows. "Oh?"
"...Sir, you don't have to give me that look."
"No, no. I'm surprised, that's all. You surprise me, Yakushi."
The answering snort renders all credibility in Shikaku's words null.
"Really," Shikaku stresses, a hand gesturing absently, "I am surprised. Are you telling me you're going to give up this revenge scheme of yours?"
Kabuto's expression is flat. "I'm won't lie, sir. I cannot promise you that if I see Sasori before my eyes, I won't do something incredibly stupid. For now, I'll settle for what I've got."
"Ah," Shikaku says, blinking, "at least you're not stupid enough to try and convince me otherwise. I don't care what anybody else says, you're staying on this case."
"I won't ask why."
"Good. I wouldn't have answered anyway." A slight tilt of the head. "You seem unusually resigned. Talk."
"I'm tired, Nara." Kabuto slumps against the wall, bringing a hand to rub the bridge of his nose. His eyes are closed. "I'm sick of dealing with this fuckcase family already."
Shikaku pivots to lean back against the wall, too. A flame appears in his hand and he lights his cigarette, blatantly ignoring hospital protocols. With every breath he takes, the Nara looks more pensive, more thoughtful. The stick still hangs in the corner of his mouth, and his frown has eased.
He smiles a little as he says the next words. "It's the boy isn't it? That's why you're trudging your feet and being a prissy reluctant bastard."
"I haven't the pleasure of meeting Deidara yet," Kabuto says, brushing aside bangs coolly.
"Of course not," Shikaku says, face suddenly earnest. "Deidara is still locked up all nice and tight. A very delicate person like him can't possibly be questioned at the moment. Oh, no, Yakushi, I'm just a foul, uncouth old man who doesn't have the sensibilities to treat a patient right."
"...Have the nurses turned you away again?"
Shikaku's expression falls back into apathy. "Meh, troublesome. Can't flirt with them. Can't get past them. They only have the utmost pity for the newest victim in their hands. I remember in my day when I was always surrounded by pretty things wanting to feel me up..."
Kabuto's snort says it all.
"But it's fine, I guess. The hospital's pretty strict about keeping the police out of their business. Guess we have to wait like the rest."
"He's not injured. Can't the boy be kept at the station? "
Shikaku shrugs. "It's out of our hands. Visiting hours is long over, but how the hell do you think we were able to get away with getting an audience with the Yamanaka girl? There's only so much I can do in the persuasion department." A pause. "Has it ever occurred to you that I don't like pulling my weight around?"
Flicking ash at the ground, he lets arms move and stretch out wide. The foreign made stick dangles in his mouth. He takes a breath, lacing fingers at the nape of his neck. "I'm lazy, sure. Hell, I get told off about it enough. Used to be this naïve thing, you know? Greenhorn and sincere and rot. Not so much now. Had to relax in order not to make my head blow. When did inclination and habit become such a troublesome thing? I thought I was set. Be lazy. Get them all riled off, piss of the rest. But now? Now, I find I can't even look up at the damn sky anymore..."
"You're rambling."
"I wasn't always like this," Shikaku says, abrupt.
Kabuto slowly turns. He pushes himself off the wall to face the Nara.
Shikaku's smile is vaguely bitter. "This whole Sasori thing. You're not the only one affected. Just as I can't watch clouds these days, this person, this persona, I've forged is starting to crack. I wonder, how can a lazy person catch a monster? To what lengths must I go in order to catch a man like him? But I already know. I'm a genius. I can't afford not to know. I know. What I have to do, what I might have to become..."
"Nara...?"
"Don't worry, Yakushi. I'm tired, too."
--
"Distressed, screaming, hysterical..."
"Shut up."
"With a notable absence of vehemence. Whatever happened to make that harpy voice go?"
Ino wrings her hands, the sheet crumpling in between. "Why are you back here?"
"You already know, don't you?"
Blanching, she looks away. "Know what? What do I know? Why are you here?"
His smile is pitiless against her evasion. "You know what I want. I hear you saw Deidara. I'm wondering if you can tell me why...after all, not even the police are allowed in. I am very interested to know your answer."
She shakes her head, lank tresses swinging.
"Yamanaka-san..."
"Go to hell, Yakushi."
"You're being rather difficult," he sighs. He shifts his glasses, and they glint in the light. "What if I were to tell you that I did finally meet Deidara-kun?"
"Liar." Her already white face pales. "You're lying. Police aren't allowed—"
"You assume I'm acting in the capacity of a police officer. I'm not." Smiling, he leaned forward in his seat. "Please understand the position you're putting me in, Yamanaka-san. You're forcing me to do a very difficult thing."
"Who are you?" she whispers, stricken. "Why are you doing this?"
Kabuto only tilts his head back, and smiles. "I am no one, Yamanaka-san. I am only a humble officer doing his duty."
"If...if I talk, will you go away?" The woman is visibly distressed. She bites down on her bottom lip to control her expression, but her anxious hands give her away. Whether wringing the sheets or fluttering in the air...
Kabuto's eyes are inscrutable. He is not smiling anymore. "Tell me," he breathes, leaning close.
"Deidara...Deidara is not...well." Tension wracks her frame into a stiff form. Her hands open and close slowly, softly, now. "He—my brother...I didn't see her, but I'm told he has."
The mutilated and desecrated woman currently still being excavated down at the morgue. They still haven't extracted all foreign objects from her body, not because of their obstruction to the autopsy but because men and women with both strong and weak constitutions has retched at the sight of the dead mother and wishes to preserve her dignity.
A flicker of the eyes towards Ino's face dispels unsightly memories. Kabuto does not blink—he doesn't want to. He sees the faintest beginnings of a tremble in the woman's thin frame—gaunt, unshapely...has she been losing weight? Fast, rapidly. The nurses says she doesn't eat well...
It is undeniable, however, that this woman is clearly that dead mother's child.
And yet despite her horror she still does not understand. With clinical, terse tones, she's been told of the numerous heinous wounds dealt to her mother's body. Fiercely determined, hysterically angry, she's demanded to be told.
Now look at her. Weak and frail, shivering in her bed. Cowering at the sight of himself questioning her. She hasn't seen the body. She doesn't have the image of a corpse latching itself inside of her head. She doesn't understand the full extent of horror, realize its implications.
That some godless being skulks out there, watching—waiting—for vulnerability.
No. No, Yamanaka Ino has not seen the body at all. Not like her brother has.
Not like Kabuto has.
"...Why are you still here? Why won't you let me go?"
It is taken only a moment to process all of this information; Kabuto's thoughts have not be disrupted by her intruding, plaintive words. He has already dismissed her in his mind. "You'll be discharged."
"Yes, but that doesn't mean anything. Our livelihood is uprooted. We can't even go home. Even if we did, the police would be waiting for us. Even if we moved, they'd still know where we'd be, where we'd live, and they'd feel free to come question us whenever they please."
Kabuto's frown is slight, his tone calm. His brows are coolly raised. "I'm sure you are mistaken. Deidara is to be placed under our jurisdiction."
Her shoulders sag, the first movement in her stiffened form. Like tethered strings cut from above, she sags. Her head is bowed, dropped, and tresses hides her eyes. "...Is that what you're going to do?"
He stands smoothly. "I believe we are finished here."
Description slithers into her words, making her body jerk up and fling up high her head. "What more can you people do to us? What more can we offer you...?!"
"Goodbye, Yamanka-san."
She opens her mouth to—to yell, scream, cry! But there's no point. Her words die on her lips.
"Goodbye," the woman whispers finally.
--
She lays back onto her cushioned bed and rests her eyes. Her head swims, a miasma of hurt all over. But she blocks it out. Just like she always does, she affects nonchalance. She has to. Even with people swarming around her, even with their questions barging barging in she has to be blasé.
She has to. She has to. Reduced to a blithering idiot, who is there to see her shame? No one but herself.
Her poor, pitiful self.
And that detective...
That ridiculous pineapple cut, and those cigarettes! Inside hospital grounds! Disheveled clothes more suited towards a bum or an overworked salaryman or a man just from sex. Yet, what is he? What is that man? The one with such shrewd eyes who asks the most impertinent of questions...!
Nothing like Yakushi. At least with Yakushi, she knows where she stands. She can snip back and be wholeheartedly bitter—she knows what to expect. A smirk, a dark look. Acidic derision underneath a smooth, opaque veneer of politeness. But with that detective...?
Who is he? A Nara. Not just any Nara but Shikaku. A family friend. No longer family, no longer friend.
Are you satisfied? that man has asked earlier that day.
Yakushi has just left—moments, months, days, weeks ago? Who knows. What matters now is that her past keeps grinding in jagged shards into this already horrible day. Yakushi has left, but in comes his superior.
She is already reeling from the reappearance of a cocky, old classmate. What more does this duly noted police visit entails? A bit more of the scrapped past in the flesh.
"Are you satisfied?" that man says again.
She stares blankly at him.
He tips back his head and falls into a comfortable lean against the wall. "Inoichi's kid. Are you satisfied?"
And like that her silence snaps. But not in the screaming spree she has had with Yakushi before—this is how the world ends, not with a bang but with a whimper.
So she whimpers. She clutches her head, bowing it. She mumbles something incoherent. Her eyes are dazed.
That man takes a moment of pause, of heavy, pregnant pause, to stare at her. He cocks his head, curious. As if she were an interesting bird. Flamboyant, in a cage. Golden gilded cage this is, the walls are white and they may as well be padded. She may as well not be resting under the sterile whites of florescent lights or have soft blankets covering her form—she may as well be dead. She maybe as well be forever away from here, reality because surely, surely, this is not true?
Her mother's dead. Papa's in the hospital as well. And little Deidei...?
"No. No, I'm not satisfied," she chokes. Her throat is seized—anguish, hurt, she cannot breathe. She is suddenly gasping for breath, for something that isn't quite there—she cannot breathe.
He is at her side. When has he taken those steps? He is suddenly bringing hands near and resting them on her own. They grasp hers, bringing them slowly away from her aching head—she has been clutching it before, with all her strength, and her temples hurt.
Those eyes, boring into her own. She can't escape from their scrutiny. He frowns.
"The last thing you said to me was that you would crow the day you'd see me fall."
"You haven't fallen yet," she says. She hangs her head and her body sags with the move. A marionette not yet cut from her strings.
That man neatly seats himself in the hardback chair near her. She notices for the first time he has a manila folder in hand. He taps it against the side of a knee of a leg crossed over the other. Still, he does not stop staring. "You're not satisfied. Do you think I'm detached from the case I'm involved in now?"
They speak so candidly to each other. Yet the last time she's seen him, the Nara was a giant in her mind's eye, a haggard, enormous figure from the faulty and deceptive memories of her childhood. He is not so big now. Nor is she so little.
She knows sharp words. "You rejected us, you rejected my father. What justification do you have now to claim you even care? Somewhere inside of you, somehow, you're thinking it's obligatory to meet the family face-to-face, but what else is Yakushi there for?" Although it is an accusation, she says it quite mild. She is tired. She is looking away, lank bangs hanging in front of her eyes.
Yakushi has taken her off guard. Nara Shikaku has beaten her down.
"I have no excuse. You're not an obligation either." The Nara absently flicks open a lighter. She barely notes how he fiddles with it, popping it open and shut, letting fire hiss and die—meaningless, uncharacteristic motions on a self-disciplined man.
Something grows in her. Anger, maybe. Incredulity. "Are you for real? What are you here for? You're about a decade too late. You're not here to make nice. You're here to interrogate me."
His erratic, flicking openings of his lighter's lid suddenly cease. "What makes you so sure?"
"Yakushi."
"Tactless and ignorant of our history."
"Yes. History. Please leave."
And he says something that makes her freeze.
"...What?" she says. A quivering, disbelieving smile stretches across her face, cracked. Her dull turned shell shocked gaze lifts from the bed covers and onto his face—she breathes. "What...did you just say?"
He says nothing. He only closes his eyes, refusing to repeat his words.
"Papa won't...wake up?"
He peers at her. Again, that curious look of detachment. That man claims otherwise. She is not an obligation, he says!
And then she blinks. Her smile widens, but it is a frenzied, outstretched smile of happy disbelief, denial. She is not hearing any of this. No, of course not. This is all a nightmare—just a bad dream, a bad joke. In truth that man is faraway from here, not a horrific carrier of bad news, this joke. In truth she is in her bed, at home, and everything's the same, absolutely the epitome of normalacy and everything a picket white fenced home on the outskirts of the intercity should be.
She is in her bed and she has just awoken from this dream. She pants out a breath—of relief?—none of it is real! It has never even happened, only in the dark, dank corners of her twisted mind! There is no detective, no bad men near, no ancients relics from the past.
That man is an ancient relic from the past. Begone! Vanish!
And still she does not cry. She only smiles, inanely, at some transitive image only she can see on the walls around, the ceiling above. Only she.
Her words come out breathy, the half-gasp voice of childish wonder and girlish excitement. "Oh, but Papa is only sleeping. Yes, he is."
She grins at something only she can see.
She knows it is beyond her tactile capacity, but she swears she can feel him see. What does he see? She is only indulging in a little fantasy.
"Inoichi is in a coma."
Her smile falters. Eyes blink, momentarily confused. Dazed? "Maybe."
"Not maybe."
"Definitely?" she says in her too small, girlish voice of frightened proportions.
Shikaku doesn't say a word. He leans in close and stretches a hand to tilt her chin down gently, too gently, too intimately. He has no right, but she doesn't recognize this. She is only blinking frantically away dusty tears.
There is something in the air. She is not crying.
"Cry, Ino," he says quietly. "It's the one thing you haven't done so far."
No Deidara today. Sorry for my piss poor fic planning skills. The outline in my head is a vague mirage I must make my characters work towards in ridiculously roundabout ways. I hope you're having fun anyways. Always keep me in the know of your thoughts about Shikaku because...he's pivotal. Obviously. And it's no good if nobody likes him, right? He's a real sweetie towards the end, though there are lots of unsaid things.
Update was belated because the last chapter screwed me over, forcing me to second guess my own fic's direction. Not a very pleasant feeling for a fragile, sensitive author, oh no.
So. Ino? Anyone?