Child of the Leaf
Chapter Thirteen
by ODG
Night had fallen over Konoha quickly, its inky tendrils clawing after the sunlight slipping beneath the horizon. With the darkness came a blanket of cold that was transported on the breeze that rustled through the concourses of leaves.
"Big brother… Shinachiku-niisan… please… please stay in Konoha."
Shinachiku walked slowly so that his younger sister, who was nearly half his size, could keep up with his long strides. He would occasionally look down to his side to sneak a peek at her.
He was unsettled by the consistent, dour look on her bespectacled face, and the armor of silence that she wore, but other than that, he was ecstatic.
A little sister.
He had always, always wanted siblings.
'She's soooooo adorable.'
Unbeknownst to the sand-nin, he was making an odd, yet extremely giddy face. His lips were stretched wide against his teeth and his brows scrunched up over his moist, nearly sparkling eyes…
'Adorable, little glasses. Adorable, little clothes. My adorable… baby sister!'
She wasn't a baby, however, Shinachiku was already utterly in love with his new sister. He loved everything yet knew nothing about her.
Salada, on the other hand, was not impressed. The boy walking beside her was the epitome of all things that annoyed her in life. If it wasn't for the fact that she believed he was the key to helping her mother feel better about herself, she would have told him exactly what she hated about him, as she was accustomed to doing with a certain other blonde boy…
"Great… another Bolt..." She whispered under her breath, alerting Shinachiku, who excitedly turned to her with a wide, charming smile.
He even smiled like the annoying, whiskered idiot…
"Did you say something, Salada-chan?" Shina's voice rises in pitch, every word he said seemed to drip with a sugary sweetness. As soon as Salada heard the 'chan' added to her name, her left eye twitched.
The dark haired girl bites her tongue and smiles crookedly at him.
"No… I'm just so happy to be going home finally."
Shinachiku nods quickly in response, though he wasn't sure where his home was...
They had been in the nearly empty hospital for a couple hours waiting for the assistant to the head medic of the hospital to arrive and release Sakura. To everyone's surprise, once the medic-nin had arrived…
"But, Donburi-sensei… you and I both know that I am fine…"
"Please, I have my orders. We need to run a few more tests on you after you've properly rested up. The Hokage said you have a hard time sleeping, so we have some medicine to help you—"
"Oh, so this is Naruto's doing?"
"Orders are orders, Uchiha-sensei. He wants us to keep you under strict surveillance here. You really frightened him…"
"Honestly… I don't know why he cares so much…"
Shina was then entrusted with taking his young sister home, as it was nearing midnight. He didn't want to leave his mother's side, but, Ino-san said that she would help to look after her until she was able to come home.
So much had happened in such a little time, he realized as the two of them walked the streets in the cold darkness.
In the span of three weeks his adoptive father died, he somehow gathered enough courage to make his childhood crush agree to become his girlfriend (who also attacked the Kazekage and his brother to help him), he abandoned the village where he was raised and traveled to the one in which he was born, found his birth parents, and managed to mess everything up in the process…
'Typical "Shinachikushou"… always screwing things up.'
His thoughts turned to the recent memories of his brother, the other blonde boy with the strange markings on his cheeks nearly identical to their father's.
Bolt was his name.
Before the younger boy left, he gave Shinachiku a look that was so seething with hatred that it burned a painful, throbbing hole into his heart.
"H-how are you not c-cold?"
Shinachiku was jerked out of his thoughts by the small, female voice resounding at his side.
"What do you mean?"
"A-aren't you from Sunagakure? Isn't it s-supposed to be h-hot?"
"It is hot during the day, but at night it's freezing."
He darts his eyes to the side to find his sister shivering as she folded her arms across her midsection.
"You're cold?"
"N-no." She replies shortly, obviously lying.
"If you jump on my back, it's warm."
"I am NOT g-going to j-jump on your b-back!"
"Come on, sis! Do it!"
After rolling her eyes, Salada looks around cautiously to ensure that her embarrassment had no spectators, then she put one foot into Shina's open palm, hoisting herself up into the standard piggy back position.
'He's right… his back is warm.'
Salada wraps her arms firmly over his shoulders and around his neck, her cheek tiredly resting on her older brother's back.
He grins broadly as he leaps high onto the top of the tall buildings and starts to hop from the tiled roofs until they reach the Uchiha penthouse. By the time he opened the sliding door of the balcony, Salada was fast asleep. He didn't know which room was hers in the dimness of the apartment, so he figured that the large couch that sat in the living room was a good enough place to lay the girl down.
Shina took off his half cloak and covered her with it before plopping himself down on the opposite edge of the couch, succumbing to slumber with a peaceful smile on his face as he reclined against the back of the sofa.
"Dad!"
Shinachiku shouted as he saw the cloaked figure of Ryoukan in the distance. He ran as fast as he could, but the figure retreated further and further into the dark distance.
"No, Dad! Don't go!"
"Leave me, son. You have your real family, now." Was his father's sad, echoing reply as he stretched into the strange, empty landscape…
'Dad… I'm not leaving you! YOU left ME! Don't go! Don't go!'
"Ungh!" Shina gasps as he wakes suddenly from his dream.
He held his beating, aching heart as he sat in the cold darkness. Tears threatened to fall from his cloudy eyes as he realized where he was.
He wasn't in his room.
His father wasn't alive.
And he was reminded, once more, that he was in a place which didn't seem to appreciate his very existence…
All those years of yearning to leave Suna, and now, he found himself missing everything about his childhood home.
The smell of incense and burning wood from the shrine next door, the feel of his soft, worn, quilted blanket, a gift from his grandmother when she was alive, and Ryoukan… he missed his adoptive father so much.
He wanted to go home again.
His hands went to the sides of the sofa to lift himself when he suddenly stilled all movement.
There was something warm on his lap… and it was hugging him.
Misty blue eyes looked down to see the outline of Salada, who was sleeping soundly on his seated legs.
"-ttebaro! Are a ninja or not!? Your sister needs you, and you were ready to leave her behind! AGAIN!" His inner self chides him.
"That's RIGHT!" He yells confidently, his fist raised in determination, then he claps his hands over his mouth, stilling his movements once more. His eyes turn downward as he nervously checks to see if he had awoken his sleeping sibling. Luckily, for the young Sand-nin, Salada had always been a heavy sleeper, as evidenced by her continued snoring through his rather loud outburst.
A shaking hand tenderly pats his sister's head.
"I won't run away from you again, Salada-chan. I promise that I will always be there for you." He whispers softly, determination etched in his voice. "Your big brother will always protect you and our mom."
Salada shifts slightly in his lap as he pats her back as if lulling a tiny baby to sleep. He rests his arm over her in a protective hug, his head dipping forward as he fell asleep once more with dreams of singing leaves and warm sun instead of dark, empty landscapes of gloom.
—
A few minutes before…
"Dad… dad…. dad…."
Salada was a heavy sleeper, but no one could ignore the racket that the convulsing teenager sitting next to her was making… she pulled herself tiredly onto her hands to inspect the boy. Her new brother.
"No, Dad… don't…"
She figured he must have been talking about his other father, in Suna…
"I didn't leave you…"
'Is he scared that his Dad will be super pissed that his son has gone to find his real parents? My Dad surely would have been angry, I bet… if he was here…'
She was lucky if her father stuck around long enough to play a game of Shogi with her…
Salada felt a pang of jealousy towards her elder half-brother. He had two dads now, and he probably spent a lot of time with his Dad in Suna, from the way he was talking in his sleep about him. She definitely needed him for project 'Save Mom', but, he was probably a babied, pampered, spoiled, selfish, brat…
"You left… me… don't… go…"
Or, maybe not.
The jealousy that reared within Salada turned instantly into sympathy.
'His father… left him…?'
Squinting her eyes through her glasses, she was able to see his face contorted in pain and anguish as the lights from the street lamps outside cast beams of light to dimly illuminate the Uchiha living room. He was having a nightmare, and it looked and sounded terrible.
"Don't go… don't go… dad…"
The young Uchiha progeny crawled over to Shinachiku and started to shake him gently. No matter how hard she tried to rouse him, his state began to worsen. He started to shake and sob in his sleep so much that it pierced her heart that had so recently been closed to him. She could hear the loneliness echoing in his words, mirroring her own.
She had to do something.
Moved with deep compassion, she flings her arms around his midsection and buries her head in his shirt in attempts to calm her brother (for she had done this many times also with her mother, who suffered from nearly nightly dreams that haunted her).
"Ungh!" She hears him gasp above her, now fully awake.
Salada took the opportunity to showcase her fantastic acting skills by faking slumber with exaggerated snoring noises.
Shinachiku paid no mind, apparently, as his breathing evened, and he tried to stand up, then froze in his seated position beneath her…
'Finally… but, now what. Hopefully, he'll go back to sleep.' The kunoichi in training thinks to herself as the room is held in an awkward silence as she waits for his next move. 'Please, go to sleep so I can lea-'
"You're RIGHT!"
His yell causes her heart to skip a beat. She didn't expect that.
'Who was he talking to? He's so weird. Why'd my only brother have to be such a weirdo?'
Then she felt him pat her head warmly. She guiltily found herself liking the little attention she was getting.
"I won't run away from you again, Salada-chan. I promise that I will always be there for you." "Your big brother will always protect you and our mom."
Salada shifts slightly in his lap as she processes his words, a warm feeling emanating from what she could only guess was her heart.
As he begins to pat her back gently, his rhythmic movements successfully commenced in lulling her to sleep. Her father used to do that when she was younger. How did he know it always…
She was dozing before she could finish her last thought, smiling happily as she slept comfortably on her big brother's lap.
—
Ayaka was running all night.
She had the distinct feeling that Shinachiku needed her help, so she opted out of setting up camp that night to rest in order to reach him faster.
She loved the medic-nin of her team dearly (who was also now her kinda-sort-for-sure boyfriend), but, she knew him better than anyone living, and the kid was always getting into some kind of trouble. He undoubtedly needed her to save him, or so was the idea that she solidified in her mind.
The sun was beginning to rise over the horizon, and its light revealed the cityscape of Konohagakure and its impressive Hokage Mountain the jutted out from underneath it, a magnificent sight that she had only seen in the text books at school.
Ayaka was so excited to see her final destination that she neglected to see a paper seal posted to a tree until it was too late.
"Wha—?!"
The sand kunoichi was caught in a flurry of giant explosions that ripped into the treeline of the forests surrounding the gates of Konoha, a trap that was set with the intention of leaving no survivors in its wake.
-The End of Chapter 13.
—Story by ODG
—
Okay, sorry for the wait on the second part! Things may sound redundant, but, the bond between Shinachiku and Salada is important for upcoming chapters. I may make corrections later, when time permits.
Also, my version of Shinachiku has moments where he doubts himself, and then moments where he is truly brave and noble, like all of us, he is changing, and inconsistent as he is trying to find his place in the world. :)
And, for all you Sasuke fans, don't mind Salada's views on her father. She's just a child, and she is smart, but she holds grudges that warp the truth many times…
Thank you to all who are kind and support me! I love you, truly!
