Riayu: I AM SOOOOO SORRY! I honestly didn't mean for it to take this long to update. I dunno why, but I really haven't felt like writing lately. I feel terrible now.
Psy: Jeez, have a cow why don't you. It's just a couple of weeks.
Riayu: EXACTLY! WEEKS! I USUALLY UPDATE EVERY COUPLE OF DAYS!
Sharin: Way to add fuel to the fire, Psy.
Psy: I don't think I've ever seen her spaz this much.
Riayu: Having a panic attack PLEASE FORGIVE ME!
Sharin: This is definitely a first.
Disclaimer: She very obviously does not own Naruto.
Riayu:Also, sorry it's so short.
"Mommy! Hey Mommy, wake up!" Sharin rolled over and opened her eyes, smiling down at her son. "Mommy! It's time to get up!"
"What time is it, Kuro?" She asked, sitting up and rubbing her eyes. When Kuro didn't answer she glanced at the clock. Seven thirty. No problem, it was Sunday…but the clock said Monday. She jumped out of bed, shrieking loudly as she ran to the bathroom to brush her teeth and pull her hair back into a ponytail. She threw on the first shirt and pair of jeans she found, slid on a pair of socks, and slipped on her shoes. She grabbed an apple from the bowl of fruit that sat in the middle of the dining room table and stored it in the pocket of the hoody shoo took from the rack beside the door.
"Psy, are you ready for school?" She called over her shoulder, sitting on the ground as she hurriedly tied her shoes.
"I've been waiting for you to get your butt out here. Did you over-sleep or something?" Psy asked, stepping into Sharin's view. "Nice shirt."
"Huh? Oh, I forgot about this shirt," Sharin looked down at the black shirt she was wearing and smiled fondly. "I had this weird affinity to black when Mom first found me. This was the first shirt she got me." It had a grey spider-web pattern that formed a rather demonic looking skull. "I stopped wearing it a while after she got me 'cause it scared Kuro." She stood up and opened the door, letting in the early morning sunlight. The two of them stepped outside and walked along the sidewalk, ignoring the cars that whizzed by.
"How far away do you live from the campus?" Psy asked, looking around at the little neighborhood they were walking through.
"About ten minutes. We'll be there soon. Are you sure you want to go to school today? You're still limping."
"I'm sure, don't worry. And I'm not limping that badly," Psy said, glaring a little as she put an effort into making her gait steady, though the pain was clear in her eyes.
"He did a number on you, didn't he?" Sharin asked, looking sympathetic.
"If you don't stop that, I'll hit you," Psy threatened, finally sliding back into her limping gait with a less pained look. "I don't want your sympathy."
"I let you live in my house, feed you, and nurse you back to health, and this is the thanks I get?" Sharin asked, holding her hand to a chest in a wounded gesture.
"I'm talking to you, isn't that enough?" Psy asked, arching an eyebrow. "Did you want me to stop hating you or something? Or do you want me to completely ignore you and try to beat you up again?"
"No, that's okay. I like it better this way. Here we are," Sharin smiled and turned onto the path that led through the sakura trees. "I love coming to school through here. It's really peaceful, especially in the morning. Don't you think?"
"Yeah, really peaceful. You know we've passed about five couples making out, right?" Psy arched an eyebrow. "Or do you consider that peaceful?"
"I usually just ignore them. The smell here is soothing, and the wind in the blossoms is comforting."
"To bad they're all withering. Plants tend to do that in the fall, don't they?"
"You're a very negative person," Sharin observed, glancing in Psy's direction.
"If you were raped as many times as I've been raped you'd be negative too."
"At least you have your memory," Sharin said blissfully.
"Sasori thinks that's how your son came to be. You were raped and you came to lose your memory because of it," Psy said, apparently unaffected by the solemn thought.
"I don't think so," Sharin said, seemingly not bothered by the topic. "I love Kuro very much, and I think subconsciously I would reject him if I didn't love his father."
"But you don't know for sure," Psy pointed out, smiling a little when Sharin opened the door to the building that hosted their biology class for her. "You're such a gentleman."
"Well, I do have to set an example for Kuro, don't I?"
"You're going to make him think that the girl should hold the door for others," Psy said with a chuckle.
"Never thought of it that way. Then again, Kuro might grow up thinking that he'll some day turn into a woman. Just about everyone in his life is a woman, why shouldn't he be one?"
"What about Sasori and Naruto and the rest of them, they're guys," Psy said, sitting down in her seat in the biology room.
"True, but…I don't know. Why are we even arguing about this?" Sharin asked, taking the seat behind Psy so that they could continue talking.
"Because it's amusing? I dunno. Hey, that drawing that you had the other day, the one of me…Where'd that come from?"
"Hmm? Oh, the one with all of those metal things? I dunno, it just kinda showed up on the paper when I wasn't paying attention. I've done lots of drawings before. My mom says that they're probably memories that I can't bring up on a conscious level."
"Do you have any more of them with you?" Psy asked, turning around in her seat to face Sharin, who was fumbling around in her bag for a notebook.
"Yeah, I have tons," Sharin paused, staring at the notebook in her hands. "Some of them are pretty graphic, though…I'm not sure if you really want to look at them…" Psy ignored her and took the picture from Sharin, opening it up to the first page. To Psy's surprise, the picture was in color, though it seemed only to be a mass of reds and oranges at first. After a moment of staring, Psy began to notice the charred shapes surrounded by the violent flames. The longer she stared, the more Psy saw beyond the fire. There were people scrambling around, trying to climb out of windows or crawling along the floor trying to escape the black smoke roiling through the air. In the middle of the picture there was a woman with dark hair lying on the ground, curled in a little ball so that all that could be seen were arms and legs and some of her back. Flames were closing in around her, but she didn't seem to see them, and none of the people in the picture seemed to care about her. It took Psy another moment to notice that there was another red in the picture that didn't belong to the fire. There was blood around the woman, a little pool beneath her head like a flattened crimson pillow.
After staring for a moment longer Psy flipped the page. The next picture was also colored, and a young woman was hunched over in an alley, her clothes burnt and her face blackened with soot and smoke. She was sitting down with one arm resting on her knees and her head resting on her arm as her other arm wrapped, almost protectively, around her midriff. Psy noticed that the woman's face was hidden by her long, blonde-streaked hair. Picture after picture showed the same woman, her belly slowly growing as her hair turned from mostly brown to completely blonde. Then there was a woman in the hospital with a baby in her arms who looked almost nothing like her.
"You used to have brown hair?" Psy asked, turning in her seat again, ignoring the teacher that had walked into the room and started writing on the board.
"If the pictures are right, then yes, I did," Sharin said, looking fondly at the picture. "I can remember that one, but the ones before it," she shook her head. "It's like all my memories are stored in that little body of his." She smiled and looked up at Psy, her smile widening after a moment. "You should probably turn around; the teacher looks like she's ready to kill you."
Psy: D'ohshit.
Sharin: Someone's about to get in trouble.
Sye: CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER, YAY!
Psy: You are insufferable.
Sye: Likewise. Anyway, I just wanted to let all you readers know, I was partially responsible for this delay as well. Being Riayu's only beta reader means I'm pretty damn important to the writing process, and me messing up my grades and getting my computer locked down isn't gonna help that.
Sharin: You're rambling again.
Sye: Indignantly The readers have a right to know.
Psy: Just close off the chapter already.
Sye: Yeah, yeah, yeah, don't get your g-string in a knot. Anyways, REVIEW REVIEW REVIEW REVIEW! I CANNOT stress this point enough! Passes out treat bags to reviewers