INTERLUDE

BIG RED

Kiine had a lot of explaining to do.

She sat outside her father's meeting room, shoved into a kimono, gold combs forced into what was left of her hair, eyes shut tight in frustration. She sucked in her breath, trying to gather the words in her mind, for when he would inevitably call her in.

It had been her idea. All her idea. It really was, in… most senses of the word.

Well, okay, so Yuki had helped. A lot. But she didn't want to think about him right now.

It was all her father's fault, at the end of the day, anyways. It was his fault entirely.

Everything went wrong on the day he had called her to him with that smile on his face. She had almost expected good news.

Well he certainly thought it was good news.

"I've decided to give your hand in marriage to the son of Boss Shin of the Hakaza clan as a gesture of unity and goodwill between our families."

She didn't remember him saying much else, but she did remember her own lack of a smile as she nodded, gracefully, and thanked him for telling her the news.

Inside, she was screaming.

She was being married off? As a… as a gesture of unity? And goodwill? What the hell was she, some sort of peace offering?

It was wrong for so, so many reasons.

She was only sixteen! Well, okay, almost seventeen, but still! That was way too young to get married. Way too young!

(She'd known people who'd been betrothed at far younger, though. It wasn't unusual. …but that didn't make it right! And she never thought that it would happen to her.)

And who was she getting married to, anyways? Did she not even have a say in the guy she had to spend the rest of her life with? She had nobody in mind now, 'course, but what if somebody came along that just… knocked her off her feet or something? That wouldn't be exactly fair, would it?

(Hadn't her mother had a choice, anyways? That was the only reason why she was married to her father, was because she'd had a choice.)

Her fiancé, apparently, was some kid named Kou. Son of Shin, the Boss of the Hakaza clan. He was the same age as her. Kiine had met his father before, several times, here and there, but she had never met Kou.

It was a political marriage.

See, the Taki clan controlled almost the entirety of the eastern coast's grey and black and all-shades-in-between market, and the visible sign of this control was the prevalence of what were called Curiosity Shops. You couldn't throw a rock in the eastern lands without hitting a Taki Curiosity Shop. They were as prevalent as the gambling dens of the Saigoro clan, as common as the brothels of Hanamachi clan.

Anyone going in and requesting the services of a Curiosity Shop knew exactly what was being sold in there.

Beautiful smoking pipes from the Land of Water.

(You could buy the herbs to use it with in the room downstairs, if you asked nicely and knew when to give a tip.)

The silk that gave the Land of Silk its name.

(The Taki clan was proud of its silk. Monopolies took generations to create, didn't you know.)

Swords from the Land of Iron. Custom-made.

(Most of them stolen from dunderheaded samurai. The swords used by the clan themselves were made on commission, never stolen.)

You could find anything you wanted in a Taki Curiosity Shop, if you had enough money.

Well, almost everything.

This was where the Hakaza clan came in.

The Hakaza had their fingers thoroughly entrenched in the western mountains, with their own chain of Curiosity Shops dotted across the range and the northern lands.

They sold a great many different things.

Modern art; paintings and sculpture from the Land of Rock.

(Many of them forgeries. Most of them real. All of them stolen in one way or another.)

Rare books and bootlegs of banned films from the Land of Lightning.

(You certainly weren't going to find that raunchy unofficial adaptation of Icha Icha Tactics in the Land of Fire.)

Questionable and dangerous looking medical(?) instruments from the Land of Rice.

(If it had more than three blades on it then you got treated to tea while discussing price with the shop owner.)

Yes, you could find anything you wanted at a Hakaza Curiosity Shop, if you had enough money.

Well, almost anything.

That was where the marriage came in.

Now, Kiine knew most of those things already because she liked to sit in on the meetings her father had with his underlings, his accountants, the guys that ran the shops themselves. Her father had been letting her do it since before she could remember, never turning her away when she began asking to join in instead of wandering in all haphazardly, like she had done as a toddler.

She used to sit on his lap in those accidental days, while he discussed who to off and who to cut, where to spend and what to steal. Now, whenever she showed up, with a shy, practiced, downward glance, she sat behind him and listened intently, taking it all in and actually paying attention, but never speaking. She wasn't expected to speak, not at her age, not in her position.

Eventually she tried making suggestions, after the meetings were over - because they always laughed at or ignored her when she first spoke up, during meetings. Her father would laugh at her, too - but warmly, not mockingly - and say "Lemme think about it, honey." He'd then kiss her on the forehead and send her on her way. She always glowed with satisfaction whenever a suggestion of hers made it into the next day's discussions, which began to happen with more and more frequency. She learned how to be careful with her words, and timing.

So there had been talks, for a long while, of a union or some other sort of arrangement between the Hakaza and the Taki clans, so that there would be a greater amount of goods offered over a much wider area. And Kiine thought it was a very smart idea, overall, both economically and socially.

Alone, both of the clans were highly influential. But together? Well, the very thought of such a thing sent a shiver up Kiine's spine, a little smile taking root across her face. And she thought about how such a union would be made. Through peace treaties? Exchanges of men and sake, surely?

No, her father had decided to marry her off, instead. As a gesture of goodwill. And she thought he knew better.

After all, what was it he used to say, whenever people complained and asked why he allowed her to be in the room with them when he was doing business?

"Oh, come on, she's not hurtin' anyone. B'sides, she needs to learn how things are run around here," he'd say, with a warm, doting smile. "For when she's grown up."

She used to think that he meant that she'd be Boss one day, maybe. If she kept up the good work.

After all, what was it he used to say when she used to hug him and squeal that she was gonna be a Boss when she grew up, just like him?

"Whatever you want, Kiine," he said.

Now she knew that he meant.

"When she's grown up." That just meant "when she's married and supporting her own husband in the business."

"Whatever you want." In hindsight, his old, familiar comfort seemed like a vague dismissal.

Was that really the only reason he'd allowed all of that? Any of that? Because he didn't take her seriously?

It wasn't like Kiine had ever expected to become Boss of her family someday. She never, ever expected it. Families like hers, like the Hakaza, like the Saigoro and Hanamachi and every other clan were made up of men linked not by blood but by brotherhood, and merit. It was rare that the title of Boss was passed down from father to son, much less father to daughter.

Though, her grandfather had been the previous Boss, that was true. But he had named her father his successor, a red-haired, unaffiliated youth, full of ambition and new ideas. The fact that he had married Kiine's mother, a Boss's daughter, had absolutely nothing to do with it. Children of Bosses were very, very seldom made Boss themselves, and their spouses had even less of a chance. They lived comfortably and were cared for by the clan after their parents stepped down, but that was where it ended.

(Well, unless the previous Boss was an asshole, then they and their family would be tossed right out by the new Boss. But that didn't happen much.)

Kiine's father had been chosen for his skill alone. And her parents had married out of love. And it was real love, too. Kiine thought that was cool.

Along with that, there hadn't been much of a precedent for female Bosses, either. Though the ones that had been in place? Holy crap. Kiine's role model was Boss Kanna, who, over a hundred years ago, chased away some big shot ninja clan leader that was bothering her with nothing but her katana in one hand and a frying pan in her other.

"So a sword isn't a woman's weapon, huh?" she was said to have shouted after him. "You know what is a woman's weapon? Fans are for women! So don't try to come back and fight me with one until you grow a pair of tits, you fire-breathing little bitch!"

Boss Kanna was awesome.

So no, Kiine didn't expect to be named Boss someday, because of her blood, because of her sex. But that didn't deter her. That just meant that she had to work harder to reach her goal.

She was going to be effective, whip-smart, intimidating, worthy of respect and power. Just like her father.

No, better than her father.

Because she would never marry off her daughter to some clan for the sake of symbolism. It wasn't even about politics any more. There was nothing to even gain by them marrying. It wasn't like they were truly "heirs" to their respective clans. It was a useless gesture. It was symbolic.

It was unfair.

Kiine would never do that. She was too smart for that.

But if she was somebody's wife, she doubted she'd ever even have the slip of a chance she knew she had now. She'd be stuck, glued there, forever.

And there was nothing she could do.

And that was about where she broke down into sobbing tears, unable to come up with any more words.

All of this had been directed at Yuki, who sat on the floor of her bedroom and listened, patiently, as she paced and yelled and screamed and eventually sat down in exhaustion. He ran his cool hand over her back as her tears collected in her palms.

"It's okay, sir… It'll be okay…"

He stayed with her until she stopped crying, and once she was certain that her eyes weren't red any more, she sent him away so she could get ready for bed. She refused to have anyone help her.

She thought over the situation further while curled up under the futon.

Like hell she could go to her father and say she didn't want to do it. She could certainly try, but he'd probably just laugh at her, at best, and scold her, at worst, depending on his mood. Going to Hakaza Shin wouldn't be much better, she supposed, either. She was sure he was as stubborn as her father - from what she knew about him, he definitely was, despite his relaxed and elegant way of speaking. And hadn't he come up with this plan with her father?

And putting her head down and just letting this happen to her was surrender. She couldn't do it.

She tried to tell herself that maybe it wouldn't be so bad. That maybe, even with this happening, she still had a chance of being a Boss.

She couldn't kid herself. Her dream was dead.

She was stuck. But she had to do something.

Might as well do something drastic.

Her only option was to run.

"But why would you want to do that, sir?" Yuki said, when she told him her intentions. They were in her room and he was brushing her hair, the day already over, her mood significantly calmer. She'd been ranting at him for a good hour or two already.

Yuki loved her hair, falling over her back in a curtain of red that went to her waist, so she let him take care of it, most of the time. She herself could really not care less about it, though. At least someone liked it.

"You already said yourself that it probably wouldn't be so bad if you went along with it," he continued. "And I'm sure that Kou-san isn't all that bad a person."

"No, see, Yuki, it's the principle of the thing, yeah?" Kiine explained. She looked at him sitting behind her in the mirror. "I mean, I'm sure he's a totally nice guy. As nice as guys can be with dads like his and mine, anyway…" Which meant that he was a garden-variety smug asshole, at best. She frowned.

"Don't say things like that, sir. I think that you are certainly very nice," Yuki told her.

She only barely smiled back. "I just can't help but feel that I'm nothing more than a bargaining chip or something in this whole deal, yeah?" she continued. "I mean, seriously, I think the Hakaza clan is great. Papa gets along with their head like freakin' nothing else. I want our clans to be united. So how come they gotta do this? I'm sure there's other ways, yeah?"

"I… don't know, sir," Yuki said. He pulled the brush down her hair again.

"So that's why I gotta run away," Kiine said, seeing nothing else to say. "I gotta escape from this stupid stuff before it's too late, yeah? Since I'm totally screwed over already."

"Well, I suppose that's a fair enough reason, sir," Yuki said. "But…"

She looked over her shoulder at him. "But what?"

He put the brush down. "But where will you go?" he said. "And, more importantly, how are you going to live and not expect to be caught, sir? This isn't like one of our usual… adventures. Running away is very long-term…"

And Kiine thought about that for a while.

"Yeah? And so's marriage," she said. "I'll figure it out." Her father had told her that she wasn't going to meet Kou for a while yet, and that the actual marriage wouldn't be for at least a year, if not longer. But just because it was so far away didn't mean that it wasn't going to happen eventually.

And she thought about it for a good long while. Days went by.

It was only after hearing her father commiserating with the owner of a Curiosity Shop whose shipping lines were plagued by ninja interference that she got an idea.

Ninjas. Of course.

The closest ninja village in the Land of Silk was Kuwabaragakure, the Village Hidden in the Mulberry Field. But that was too close-by, and besides, the city if you could even call it a city - was too small, and her father knew the guys in charge there well enough (and they feared him enough to listen to him and generally do what he said) that she wouldn't stand a chance if she went and ran away there.

The better option was, of course, Konohagakure. It was a bit out of the way, and an enormous city, at that. The largest in the Land of Fire. Kuwabara was nothing in comparison to its size.

They'd never find her there.

And there was just something supremely exciting about the prospect of maybe becoming a ninja in the process, or at least learning a few new tricks.

Kiine was already a pretty fantastic fighter. She had Yuki to thank for that.

Technically, she wasn't supposed to know how to fight. She was expected to know how to defend herself, yes, but largely with words, instead of fists.

And, technically, Kiine was amazing at that, too. She could bargain and barter and intimidate as well as any other hoodlum, and have the strength to back it up. She knew this. She snuck out of the house with Yuki on weeknights to practice in the nearby village, which of course boasted a Curiosity Shop and a number of other, smaller, dirtier establishments.

She began this practice when she was maybe nine or ten years old, making a point at getting in good with the local child gangs and delinquents - where her father and Nobuhiro both had gotten their starts - and taking even greater care to mask her connection to her family.

"I don't want no suck-ups," she told Yuki. "If someone's gonna respect me, it's gonna be for me, yeah?"

She and Yuki came to be known as Big Red and Little Blue, in time, and cleaner folks began to grow wary around tomboys with red hair and freckles on the backs of their necks, especially if they had dark-haired prettyboys with them.

(That was how she had gotten the scar on her left shoulder, when she got into a fight with a gang leader at least twice her age. Like her victory, she wore it like a badge of honor.)

(Her father never took permanent action for any of this once he caught word, however. "Let her have her fun, playing gangster," he would say, chuckling. "She's got Yuki-kun to protect her, anyways.")

(Her mother, meanwhile, was the one who quietly left pots of healing ointment and fresh bandages just inside the door of Kiine's bedroom, winking at her at breakfast.)

The only reason she even knew what the heck about fighting was because, when Yuki began his training, when he began that process of becoming a true Inaba bodyguard, she had insisted that he teach her everything he learned after the fact, clearing the space in her bedroom every evening after dinner so they could spar.

"I mean, what if we're separated and you're not there to protect me, yeah?" she explained. "I gotta be able to defend myself."

How could Yuki argue with that?

Besides, he was very new to the whole being-a-bodyguard thing at the time. There were still a lot of things he was trying to get right. He had a bad habit of misinterpretation, of being observant in all the wrong areas.

Like, when he was a child, still discovering etiquette through observation, he learned quickly by watching his brother to call everyone either Sir or Master. So when he met with Kiine for dinner that evening, after learning this, when he was four and she was six, he told her he was "Very pleased to see you, Master Kiine, sir."

Everyone laughed at him, but Kiine laughed the hardest.

(Yuki always thought it was so strange, the way she laughed. She didn't cover her mouth, like other girls did. That was the second thing he had noticed about her, after her hair. But it was the first thing he had really liked.)

She told his brother - he was only twenty-four, at the time - that it was okay, that Yuki shouldn't be corrected, and the names stuck. They were really best friends ever since. Nobody was surprised at all when, a year later, her father suggested to Nobuhiro that Yuki become her personal bodyguard. He was going to become a bodyguard anyways, given who his brother was, but his closeness with Kiine would be a true advantage to him.

Yuki also needed someone to practice with. So he taught her.

Even at the age of seven, Kiine was very persuasive when she wanted to be. And she knew exactly what she wanted to be when she grew up.

Oh did the servants ever throw a fit the first time they found Kiine wrestling with Yuki on the floor, her hands on his shoulders, hair falling in his face.

"I started it," Yuki explained, after she got off of him. "I think I learned my lesson. Ow."

They were much sneakier from there on out, Kiine remaining always one step behind him in skill. At least, with fighting. Because no matter how much she tried, however long she practiced, Kiine could never, ever match or even come close to his skill with a blade.

But she could punch like a bulldog when he couldn't, so it all evened out in the end, really.

So, yes, Kiine could fight. And so could ninjas. And ninjas, Kiine knew, were badass. Really great fighters. Really.

…that was about all she knew about ninjas, really.

That, and the fact that her father hated them. Hated them. And Nobuhiro, too. Everything else that Kiine knew about ninjas, especially ninjas from Konoha, came from their rants.

Like the fact that they were so damn obsessed with bloodlines and clans. Ninja clans were all about that blood purity stuff, knowing whose son was whose, passing down power to only their children. At least, that's what she had heard from her father, and Nobuhiro, and all the rest.

Really, she wondered what the big deal was most of the time, both with the hatred and the bloodline thing. An opinion they had (and one that Kiine shared, in a way) was that it didn't matter who was descended from whom, so long as the family was kept together. Hell, there was a reason why the Taki clan had survived for as long as it had, for generations and generations, with maybe only a handful of Bosses related by blood in between. That was because they picked the strongest guys to lead them. That was how they had stayed together.

Kiine couldn't think for too much longer on the matter, it was just getting her mad.

She didn't need to know much about ninjas, anyways. She'd learn. Cultural immersion, wasn't it? Yeah.

And besides, she felt almost a sick satisfaction, imagining running away to a ninja village, especially one her father hated so much, to live among the blood-obsessed freaks without any sense of honor.

There was only really one other thing that she knew about ninjas: Only the guys were got to do the cool stuff. All of the ninja she'd ever heard of that were worth anything, the guys that made the news and the history books, were men. All of the ninja that her father dealt with from Kuwabara were male, too.

And, well, Kiine needed a disguise, didn't she? She was used to sneaking out and hiding her hair underneath a hat - for practical reasons; beyond being a disguise, long hair was a serious weakness in a fight - but this plan would require something a little more… permanent.

Yuki looked like he was going to burst into tears, when she told him about all of this. "But sir," he pleaded. "You don't have to do that, honestly."

"Hey, it'll help, yeah?" Kiine said. She ran her fingers through a section of hair, lazily, wondering how it'd feel to cut it all off. "Even if they did track me all the way to Konoha, they wouldn't be looking for a boy. They'd be looking for a girl."

Yuki paused, thinking, pursing his lips. "…even if you did cut off all of your hair, do you think you'd be able to live as a boy for very long?"

"Pff. Are you kidding? I'm more of a boy than you are, Yuki," Kiine said.

Yuki's face turned bright red. He didn't say anything.

"Besides, it's not like I have any boobs I need to hide, yeah?" she added, patting her meager bust with spicy laugh. "I think it'll be easy. I mean, I know how guys work yeah?"

"If you say so, sir," Yuki said.

(He'd silently agreed to help her the moment he knew she was really going to go through with this whole business of running away, and she knew it.)

They started working on a plan.

They decided early on for Kiine to go alone, even though Yuki felt uneasy about not being there to protect her and make sure that things went along smoothly. He was her bodyguard, after all, even if she didn't really need his physical protection.

"Look, if I just leave and you cover for me, I have a better chance," she said. "If both you and me go, things are gonna look suspicious. They won't think I'm really running away if you're with me. They won't take it seriously. Besides, you gotta cover for me, Yuki. It's your job, yeah?"

Yes, it was his job.

They developed a cover story, created a name, an identity for her. "I'll say I got a brother named Hiroyuki. C'mon, it's sorta true," she added, writing it down in a notebook in katakana one afternoon. "Nobuhiro, Yuki, Hiroyuki. Both of you guys. You're like brothers to me, yeah? It'll be easier to remember if anyone asks."

And Yuki had already gotten very flustered over her choice of an alias.

"Like I said, it's easy to remember. I gotta get used to it, yeah?" she added. She smiled. "You're easy to remember, Yuki."

He didn't have anything to say to that.

Her mood improved the more they worked. No doubt her father thought it was because she was warming up to the idea of the marriage.

Hell no.

On the night that Kiine was to leave, route planned, fake letter written, food and clothing and money packed in a rucksack stolen from a storage room, Yuki took out the knife he always kept on his person, concealed in his sleeve, and cut off all of that beautiful red hair he loved so much.

"Man. That looks good," Kiine said, looking in the mirror and shaking her head, feeling the newfound lightness around her ears. "Real manly."

Yuki just held the red bunches of hair in his hands, his face slightly sad. He hid them under a tatami mat, later, so he could get rid of them when nobody was around.

They had already set the plan into motion, as he had left dinner early that night, saying he felt drowsy. He waited in his room until 1 AM, and then went to go get Kiine ready.

They both knew about the hidden exits in the garden of the family's mansion, they knew where the guards were posted and where their patrols led, and they both knew how to move without being heard. It came with practice, which both of them had had plenty of.

She gave him a hug, when she said goodbye. His forehead against her cheek felt cold, like his skin always did, even in the evening heat. She paused when she noticed that he was shaking a little. "Hey, hey, it's not like we're never gonna see each other again, yeah?" she said. "Yuki, don't cry… I'll be back, I promise. After all of this dies down."

The plan was for her to be gone long enough for negotiations with the Hakaza clan to break down, at least enough for the marriage to be called off. If she could avoid capture for at least a year, she figured she'd be okay. And then she'd come back, rocking some new ninja moves, and she'd be back on the road to becoming Boss. After getting back in her father's good graces, but she supposed that she would figure that out when the time came.

That was the hope.

Both of them tried not to believe that they would never see each other again.

Worst case scenario, they'd find her out, and she'd spend the rest of her life on the run.

Second-worst case scenario, she'd never be caught, but she'd never be able to return, not knowing if the marriage had been called off yet. Or if she'd been disowned.

(But Yuki was used to sacrificing his happiness for Kiine's sake. That was what she wanted, and he knew she'd never be happy again if she didn't do this, if she didn't take this chance. He had hope, and so did she.)

He hugged her back. "Good luck, sir."

And then she was gone.

The plan was, when he woke up in the morning, late, for him to conclude with panicked breaths that she must have drugged his tea at dinner, so that he wouldn't interfere when she slipped out in the middle of the night. His room was, after all, right next to hers. He'd have heard if she had gotten up, normally.

Kiine had no idea if the plan would work, but she trusted him to get the job done.

(They believed him, even though, that day, only his tears and his worry were real.)

She reached Konoha on the fourth day of travel. It hadn't been a terribly difficult journey. In fact, it was actually pretty fun; camping out, cooking over a fire. She had enough money for a few months in a city, on her own, so she didn't waste it by eating out in the villages on the way there. She knew she had to make it last.

Konoha was a lot bigger than she had thought it would be. And its ninjas were even less like she had expected.

Especially the Hokage.

Even now, kneeling and miserably thinking all of it over, Kiine couldn't quite believe that any of the things that she'd experienced in Konoha had actually, really happened. Accepting her so easily as Hanamura Yukio, and through chance and circumstance becoming the personal guest, the friend - could she still really call herself a friend of his? - of the Hokage. The Hokage! That was the closest thing to a Boss that ninjas had. Heck, they were even chosen like Bosses were chosen, appointed on skill, and not decided by blood.

Which just made Kiine wonder more about why her father ranted and complained so much about the way that ninjas went about things. Where was that blood-obsession she had heard so much about? Where was that heartless cruelty?

Naruto, the freakin' Hokage, was probably the least ninja-ish ninja Kiine had ever met, if she went by what she'd grown up hearing. And she had been introduced to a lot of ninja during her stay. He was just… so friendly, so funny. She felt comfortable around him, not fearful. She couldn't imagine him killing anyone, much less fighting anyone. He was just too nice.

And, well, Kiine's father was nice enough, in private. He was a very loving man. Even now, angry as she was at him, she couldn't bring herself to hate him. He stupid, he was misguided, and he was making a huge mistake by trying to marry her off, but he was her father, and she still loved him.

But Kiine was still very, very aware of what her father did for his work.

(And Kiine's hands weren't necessarily very clean, either.)

But Naruto? He was like that all the time, that smiley goof, both in the office where he did his work, and at home. He was the Hokage, a ninja Boss. How did that even figure out? He didn't even ask her to pay him back for the innumerable times he took her out to dinner, either in money or favors. That's what her father would have done. If he were leading her family's clan, Naruto wouldn't have lasted for a moment.

Somehow, though? He was running a village. A ninja village, and a rather large one, at that. And had been doing so for ten years, and still held in high esteem by the many, many people who lived there. Weren't ninja supposed to be, she didn't know… even more intimidating, to stay in charge for so long?

The disconnect was even more intense, given that the most ninja-like ninja that Kiine had met was probably Benio-sensei, and that was only because she kicked ridiculous amounts of ass and commanded a lot of respect, even though she wasn't even that mean. And she was a woman! This absolutely amazed Kiine. But weren't the only good ninjas guy ninjas? She had asked Benio-sensei this, after a few lessons, and Benio had just laughed at her.

"No, of course not," she replied. "What gave you that impression? Gender has nothing to do with being a good ninja, Yukio-kun."

Kiine couldn't really find an answer. And, after a while, she just started accepting things, because she was just being proven wrong in every other sense.

Benio, she had found, was ridiculously and strangely supportive of her role as a boy, telling her how strong she was and such. Which was strange and, at the same time, kind of comforting, though it did sort of make her wonder why she was that way in the first place.

Why in the world did her father and Nobuhiro hate ninjas so much? The ones she had met were nice guys, for the most part.

Man, especially Naruto. And he was the Hokage.

…she really missed him.

And goodness, did she ever feel bad for him for… getting him involved with her family like that. He didn't deserve that. He had been nothing but good to her.

And there'd probably be nothing but trouble for him, and Benio-sensei, and just everyone else in Konoha from there on out. Her father would probably just… harass them and everything, since he was a Konoha-nin and he hated Konoha-nin and… and…

Damn it, why did she have to get caught?

It was… it was Yuki's fault. Undeniably. He was the only one that knew where she had gone, the one who was supposed to cover for her.

She didn't feel like talking to him. At all.

She knew it was his fault. What difference did it make, what he had to say to her? He'd just apologize to her, anyways, and… and…

Kiine told herself not to cry. She couldn't cry. She had kept herself from crying for this long, and she could hold it in there, too. She had a lot to explain to her father, she couldn't get upset now and ruin her composure. If she wanted him to take her seriously, she couldn't be upset.

She had kept herself composed when they'd caught her at the gates and held her in that little guard station, even though she was absolutely furious at herself. She thought she'd have been able to run, she had to run - what else was she supposed to do when she saw that note on the fridge in the morning? "Meeting with Taki," with the exact same kanji of her family's name? So she hadn't been seeing things and she just had to leave Konoha.

She'd have been able to explain to Naruto, she was certain. Somehow. He'd believe her, he was just so nice, and…

But Honda had been there. She knew him, an underling of Nobuhiro's with a hot temper and a hell of a left hook. He had recognized her immediately - red hair, freckles on the back of her neck, but no dark-haired Yuki at her side this time - but she thought that maybe she'd be able to keep him from saying anything, that Naruto would take her away before he could do anything, and…

But then Nobuhiro showed up and, well.

That happened.

The journey home took four days, and on the fourth day she was pulled into her mother's vast silk arms and kept there for a very, very long time.

And now she was here.

Shoved back into her daughter's role, spikes of guilt and worry and regret and anger forced into her heart, she sat in front of her father's meeting room and let her breath hiss out from between her teeth.

She had a lot of explaining to do.

But she would not tell her father hardly any of this.