Dear Boss Tensho,

I'm Uzumaki Naruto, seventh Hokage of Konoha.

A representative from your clan and a few of your other men visited my village about a month ago about your daughter Kiine, as I'm sure you know.

Things didn't really end off on the right foot, I'm afraid. At least, from my perspective. There was a lot of miscommunication and misunderstanding and a whole lot of other bad things and I really do want to apologize if any of it's my fault.

I do want to make clear, though, that my time with your daughter was nothing but a good memory, that she was a model guest, and an excellent sort-of ninja besides, since she was able to convince me she was someone else entirely for almost a full month. That's pretty impressive no matter how you slice it, I think.

And I do want to assure you that I took only the best care of her while she was here, like any other citizen. I'm sure she'd tell you the same but you don't have to ask if you don't want to. Though if she disagrees I guess that's my fault for being a bad host.

I do want to try and make it up to you for all of this trouble, though. I can't imagine how much of an inconvenience this whole deal must have been for you, and how worried it must have made you.

Starting in early September my village is hosting the international chuunin exam finals. It's a tournament for young ninjas to prove themselves and a lot of people from all over the world come to watch. And not just ninjas, we get a lot of daimyo visitors and celebrities and such, too.

I would like to invite you and your family to come and see! Of course I'll have lodging and good seats and food provided for you all, I would really just like for you to have a good time. I would also like to see Kiine again and personally apologize to you and her both, and anyone else with grievances, but hospitality first. I'd love to meet the rest of your family, regardless, I'm sure they're all super charming.

If at all possible, too, I'd like to discuss the issue of the debts your men have left with us, at least in hiring many of our staff to search for Kiine.

Get back to me however you can. I really would like making amends in this way, since it's probably a lot more fun than just plain meeting somewhere and negotiating things, but I understand if you don't want to talk to me right away. I can wait, but I think we have to meet eventually.

Yours most respectfully,

Uzumaki Naruto
Seventh Hokage of Konoha

- Dated August 3rd, 27 AU

ACT 5

UNINVITED

Chapter 30 - Same Cloth

On the day that the Hakaza clan was to visit the Taki compound, a Saturday, Yuki didn't show up for breakfast. This was rather unlike him; even though he, understandably, wanted to distance himself from Kiine, he still sat behind her at all meals, with his knife in his sleeve, and ate quietly on his own, ready to protect her at any instance.

(She hadn't spoken a word to him since coming home. She hadn't said much to anyone, really, except her father and her mother. Understandably.)

Nobuhiro had to wait until after Tensho had finished his own breakfast and left the dining room; he had expected to wait longer had Tensho not said to him, in the hallway, "I noticed that Yuki-kun wasn't in his usual place. Where is he?"

"I dunno," Nobuhiro said. But he had an idea.

Tensho stopped, and Nobuhiro had to stop with him. He looked up at Nobuhiro. Tensho was not a short man; rather, Nobuhiro was just very tall. "You should go look for him."

Nobuhiro tried to conceal a grimace. "Boss, it's fine-"

Tensho smiled at him. "Don't worry about it. He's your little brother. Go find him, I can handle myself for a while." He pushed Nobuhiro forward. "Go on!"

Nobuhiro bowed, after a moment, smiling very slightly. "Thanks, Boss!"

And Tensho laughed, there, at the formality. But it was a requirement. Even though they were best friends, he was still the Boss.

(But the fact that Nobuhiro could hardly do a thing without Tensho's say-so had always been the case, ever since they were kids.)

It was a few maids, who were rushing about earnestly and cleaning everything, who told Nobuhiro that Yuki hadn't left his room since the night before, now excuse them, pardon them, coming through. That was as good a lead as Nobuhiro needed, so he went on to his brother's room, his head swirling with worry.

But when Nobuhiro noticed that the air in the hallway was beginning to feel cold, his worry increased, dropping into his stomach. Oh, no. He moved quicker.

He was shivering by the time he was in front of Yuki's door. His teeth rattled in his jaw. "Yuki!"

There was no response.

He said it, louder, "Yuki! Are you in there?"

"Go away."

He touched the door, and even the wood felt cold. "Yuki, what are you doing in there?"

"Go away, brother."

"Why weren't you at breakfast?"

"I wasn't hungry."

It was a lie and Nobuhiro knew it. He took his hand off the door to rub his arms with both hands again, trying to put some more warmth into them. "Yuki, I know that you're upset, but you need to come out of there."

"I'm not upset." The air got colder. Nobuhiro heard a strange crackling sound, coming from somewhere.

"The Hakaza clan is visiting today, Yuki."

"I know."

"Y'need to be there for Lady Kiine."

Yuki didn't say anything, after that. Nobuhiro put his hand on the door again. The wood was incredibly cold.

"Yuki, I'm coming in."

No response.

Nobuhiro tried to open the door, but he found resistance in sliding it sideways. Once more, his stomach dropped. Oh, this was bad.

But Nobuhiro was a strong man, and he wrenched the door open. There was a horrible crackling noise as it slid, and the rough crunch of wood against frost.

Yuki was sitting in the middle of his room, his knees drawn up to his chest. He was dressed, already, his hair brushed and smooth. He'd folded his futon into the corner of the room.

And almost everything around him was coated in some manner of frost, climbing up the walls in glittering spikes. Nobuhiro had never seen such an enormous display, however, especially near the door. Shattered bits of ice were all over the floor from where Nobuhiro had forced the door open, cracking the seal of ice that Yuki had made over it.

(This was not the first time that this had happened.)

"Oh, Yuki…" Nobuhiro said, and walked across the room to him. The tatami mats creaked from the uncharacteristic stiffness. "C'mon."

"I don't want to leave," Yuki said, quietly. He shifted his eyes sideways. "Just leave me alone."

Nobuhiro drew his mouth tightly across his face. He could feel the cold on his exposed teeth. He crouched down, to his knees, and kept his limbs close to each other, trying not to shiver. "Yuki, you can't do this. Not today. The Hakaza clan's gonna be here tonight. We're gonna need you."

"I'm not needed. Just find someone else."

"Yes, you are." Nobuhiro tried to smile, but couldn't, not entirely. Yuki wasn't even looking at him. "Lady Kiine needs her bodyguard."

"She doesn't need me." And Yuki closed his eyes, there, his voice very, very soft. "Not after what I did…"

Nobuhiro put his hand on his little brother's back, and even his clothes felt cold to the touch. "What you did was the right thing to do, little bro," he said. "We'd pro'bly still be looking for Lady Kiine if it hadn't been for you."

Yuki just tried to curl up further into himself, closing his eyes tightly. "Leave me alone," he said again. His voice squeaked with incoming tears.

"No."

Yuki's hands on his knees tightened. Nobuhiro could see every tendon tense up under his pale, pale skin. "Leave me alone," he said again.

"I'm not gonna leave you alone, Yuki. C'mon, we only have a few hours. We can't have you doing this."

"Doing what." Yuki's voice was muffled. He was speaking to his legs, his eyes pressed on his knees.

"Y'know what I'm talking about."

"No."

Nobuhiro sighed. He noticed, suddenly, that he could see his breath; the air, however, didn't feel as cold, probably from the anger and impatience he could feel growing in his stomach. "Look, Yuki, I know you're upset, but y'can't let that get in the way of your duties."

"I'm not. My duty is to protect Master Kiine," Yuki replied, to his legs.

Nobuhiro could feel his worry shifting, moving upward and into his chest. "Y'can't go protecting Lady Kiine from here, little bro."

"She won't need my protection if she doesn't go," Yuki mumbled. "So why am I needed? She doesn't wanna go. I know she doesn't."

"Yuki, what are you-" But then it hit him, and Nobuhiro grimaced from the realization. "Oh, so that's what this is about…" Nobuhiro shifted his position, and put his big hand on Yuki's chin, turning his brother's face toward his.

Yuki didn't say anything. His eyes slipped downwards. There were tears on his cheeks, and they were frozen.

"I know you're worried about Lady Kiine's happiness, Yuki. But… this is what's gotta happen," Nobuhiro said. His hot annoyance softened into a warm sympathy. "You can't do nothin' but protect her."

"She doesn't even want to do it…" Yuki sniffled.

Yuki was a very small creature, and he almost disappeared into Nobuhiro's arms when his brother pulled him into an awkward, necessary hug. "Yuki, it's gonna be okay. Okay? Lady Kiine's gonna be just fine. She's a tough kid, an' so are you."

Yuki said something that sounded like a disagreement, but it was too covered up in tears and Nobuhiro's sleeves to be words.

They had to take care of the ice, afterwards, when Yuki stopped crying and pulled out of Nobuhiro's embrace.

(This was not the first time that this had happened.)

These things just happened, from time to time. Ever since Yuki was very small, strange things occurred around him. Whenever he got excited or especially upset, the air would get cold; frost would start to gather on the windows. Drinks would freeze in their cups. And one day, during a family trip to the beaches of the eastern coast, he was found entertaining Kiine in the privacy of a small cave by hovering globes of water around in the air. Nobuhiro remembered how beautiful it had looked, like spheres of blown glass floating about, before they fell apart in the shock of Yuki being discovered.

(He also remembered how bright Yuki's eyes had been, on that day, bright with pride and an enormous happiness.)

Yuki was not keen on letting others know about those strange abilities of his. And, really, only a handful of people knew about them; Nobuhiro knew, of course, as did Kiine and, naturally, Tensho. But the extent of Kiine's knowledge was probably limited to the things that Yuki did to amuse her, and Tensho likewise—though Tensho had shown an interest in seeing how Yuki could possibly twist the talent into a use for the clan. Yuki was reluctant to actively train the gift, however, preferring to tend to his blade. And Tensho didn't push the matter, which suited everyone involved.

Nobuhiro, as it happened, did not have anything within him resembling Yuki's gift. He could manipulate men and women alike, and he could twist many situations into his favor when things got sticky, but he could not use water and ice the way that Yuki did.

There were others in the clan that had similar gifts; one of the chief accountants, for instance, a fellow with hair the color of an apple peel from the Land of Water named Ringo. Ringo could spit acid that burned through walls and floors, if he wanted, and he was pretty well-known for it.

"Why the heck d'you wanna be in accounting, with a thing like that?" Nobuhiro had once asked him, years before, during a shared meal. "I mean, think about how much damage you could do with that!"

"Hey, s'not like I wanna use it," Ringo had replied. He had very, very small eyes, and they shifted this way and that when he talked, as if he were looking for eavesdroppers. "Where I came from, you could get killed for sommin like that. S'why I left."

And Nobuhiro had just nodded, half-understanding, half-confused.

"Besides," Ringo had added, "ya gotta play your cards right. I'm small potatoes compared t'guys like you an' Boss Tensho. But accountants?" He gave a very dry hack of a laugh. "They're small potatoes compared to me. An' I'm smart enough to make it in with them, so."

Nobuhiro supposed that Ringo had a point there. And nobody got books written and turned in to Tensho faster than Ringo's boys. And that was why Tensho liked him.

There were others like Ringo, in the clan, although Ringo was the only acid-spitter. There had also been a man, come all the way from the Land of Earth, who had taken up employment as the head guard of the Taki compound when Nobuhiro was still a boy, running with Tensho and the child-gangs. His name was Benkei, and he had growths all over his face that looked like scales, or barnacles, and hands that looked like they had been made of glue and boulders. And those hands hit hard. Nobuhiro knew from personal experience, as did Tensho—but Tensho's bruises were far fewer, because he was faster and he had Nobuhiro to cover for him.

Tensho had decided to keep the man in his employment when he became Boss, but Benkei had since grown old, and now his son was the head guard, mothered by the maid that had brought Benkei his meals, eventually staying in the guard house with him for longer and longer periods of time. He had his father's hands and his mother's eyes, but none of their private gentleness.

And then there had been the woman who could bend her limbs like rubber in almost any direction, a gift from the Hanamachi clan after the resolution of a particularly nasty dispute. Tensho refused to use her as a concubine (though he didn't tell the Hanamachi clan head, a proud and smoky-eyed madam, this—that was why she had been given to him, after all, and he didn't want to stir up another row for no reason by outright rejecting a gift), but he kept her around because of how good a masseuse she was, and because Mikan was not a jealous woman. Nobuhiro didn't see her much, though the way that she looked at him when they were in the same room together rather gave him the creeps. He didn't think eyes could ever look that empty.

It was individuals like that that gave the clan power, and the origins of their talents were never questioned. Even Ringo, who had an uncanny way of advising the traffickers in the Land of Water on how to avoid the ninja there, when making their shipments.

But sometimes, Nobuhiro couldn't help but think about where Yuki's gifts had come from. Certainly not from his clan, the Inaba clan—Nobuhiro didn't even have a last name, before coming into the service of the Boss Kuni.

But more importantly, it was because Yuki had been given to him.

He would never forget the day. December; the morning had been crisp, the snow piled around the Taki complex a glassy white, the sky an eviscerating blue. The world looked like a painting.

Children were, on occasion, left at the Taki compound's gates, though it wasn't exactly common. Anonymous things, left for a variety of reasons. And they were usually taken care of in one way or another.

Yuki, however, had come with a note, and a name. And it had mentioned Nobuhiro specifically.

Even now, years and years after the fact, Nobuhiro could remember the words and the delicate, feminine handwriting on that piece of paper, without even having to dig it out and read it himself.

Nobuhiro-san,

This child's name is Yuki. He needs a home, and I know that you can give him a good one.

I doubt he'll ever be able to replace your sister, and I apologize for that. But, please, care for him with as much love as you had for her.

I will be watching.

It was left unsigned, but Nobuhiro had no doubts as to whom the author was.

Tensho had to listen to his worries and his nervous rants for the longest time, after that morning.

(Ever since they were very small, Nobuhiro could hardly do anything without Tensho's say-so, and both of them knew it.)

Nobuhiro refused to turn the child away, but the baby's origins had him worried. Worried and scared and everything that a proper Inaba bodyguard couldn't be.

(But he was only twenty, for fuck's sake, but he had gone through a lot, but he was tough, but he didn't know if he could handle this.)

"Just calm down, Nobu," Tensho had said. They were alone, and Mikan was minding the child for them, because she thought he was adorable and she wasn't going to allow such a precious thing to go unloved, no sir.

(And, of all the people Tensho could never say "No" to, his wife was the most persuasive.)

"He sent this!" said Nobuhiro.

"Nobu you can't…" And Tensho's face puckered, there, his lips tightening. "Y'can't be sure of that."

"Who else knew about what happened to Yukiko, Tensho?" Nobuhiro replied, in an explosion of a phrase. "Who else would apologize? It's him, it's that fuckin' snake, he's behind this!"

"Calm down, Nobu!" Tensho had a tone of voice that could not be denied.

And Nobuhiro calmed down. A little.

"I just don't know if I can… do this, in good conscience," he continued, his voice softer. He started to look for his knife. "I mean, c'mon, who else would…"

Tensho breathed, deeply, and there were painful memories in his breath, and his ambitions and the origins of his drive. "Nobu, I know how much he hurt you. He hurt me, too." He added, lowly, "You can… never trust a ninja."

"No, no, never." Nobuhiro had found his knife. Slide, click. "Never."

"But he was left for you, Nobu," Tensho said. He watched Nobuhiro pace with a vaguely angry expression. "Fuckin'… twisted 'apology' though it may be, it's still an apology."

Click. "An apology?"

Tensho shrugged grumpily. "Maybe that's what it is. I mean, he said it himself in that letter…"

And Nobuhiro had to think on this for a while, his mind shaking with memories. He held the lacquer case of his knife very, very tightly. "Why would he… but you know what he did…"

"Look, Nobu." And suddenly Tensho was using his Business Voice, and Nobuhiro could do nothing but listen. "What happened to you an' to Yukiko was wrong. But you can't look a gift horse in the mouth. Besides…" And his voice got very thoughtful, losing its edge. He lowered his eyes. "If it were possible I'd have 'em find the guy that left the kid here, but the guard guys're tellin' me that he just disappeared after setting the baby there. Fucker just melted into the ground or something. Couldn't track him even if we wanted…"

"…s'not like I wanna… chase after the guy," Nobuhiro said, haltingly, after a while. "But seriously! Why would he give me a baby…"

"Why are you askin' me?" Tensho said. Strangely, he laughed, but it was a hard and a humorless laugh. "I don't know how the fuck ninja operate. Maybe they use babies as collateral all the time. Y'know, like how it is in the folk tales? 'I'll take your firstborn son...'"

Nobuhiro had to smile a little there, though bitterly, his scar stretching with his mouth. He'd had it for several years, then, but it was always something of an uncomfortable sensation. He took comfort in the intimidation it lent to his face, however.

"All I'm sayin', Nobu, is that, yeah, it's fucked-up. But maybe this kid isn't a bad thing for you. I'd take care of it. B'sides," he added, "didn't he say that he'd be watching?"

"You sayin' we should let some ninja asshole boss us around?" Nobuhiro said. He had his knife unsheathed, and his smile was real, but dangerous.

"He-ell no, Nobu." Tensho laughed, again, and he put on a dangerous smile of his own. "We're gonna fuck up his expectations an' raise a hell of a kid is what we're gonna do."

Nobuhiro laughed. A little.

"C'mon, Nobu. You gotta be the bigger guy in this situation. Be tough. Fuck the past," Tensho was saying. And he started to say other things and Nobuhiro was hearing them but not really processing them at all. An overwhelming sense of helplessness and weakness and sadness began to fall over him like a blanket.

He started thinking of Yukiko, the beautiful and the dark-haired and the kind, who had once been his world, who had once been the reason for every stupid risk, for every broken nose, for the scar on his lip. It had all been for her.

Was the baby, this "Yuki," really to apologize for what had happened to her?

He couldn't imagine that the snake-faced ninja bastard had an ounce of remorse in his body.

But there was that baby, and Tensho telling him to take care of it.

And there were Nobuhiro's unspoken thoughts, his suspicions that Tensho's unusually soft stance on the matter had to do with Mikan. She wouldn't even be alive if it hadn't been for…

But there were some boundaries that even Nobuhiro wouldn't cross, and that would be one of them.

(But those thoughts would stay with Nobuhiro for years and years.)

And so it was with a well-concealed reluctance that Nobuhiro came to be Yuki's older brother. "What, you're not gonna say he's your kid?" Tensho had said. "I mean, hell, you're almost as old as I was when Mikan brought Kiine home."

(Mikan was almost six years older than Tensho. But that wasn't much of an issue to either of them.)

"Nope. He's my brother," Nobuhiro had said, defiantly, holding the child with big, protective arms.

"Whatever you wanna say, man," Tensho had replied, laughing. "You're old enough to be his dad, though."

"Am not."

And he really wasn't. Nobuhiro had been terrified, since he was very small, of becoming a father at a young age, always intending to wait until he was living in comfort and had everything else provided for before having kids, so he took great care with the sorts of women he associated himself with, and always took the proper precautions when things got, ahem, serious.

Calling Yuki his brother softened the blow, in a way.

(Yuki also put something of a damper on his nights off, when he was younger, but Nobuhiro found himself not minding this, terribly. Even all those years later.)

(Even though Nobuhiro hadn't kept a girlfriend, much less been with a woman in any… meaningful way in years. He minded this, but he didn't show it.)

(He wasn't alone. That was what mattered most.)

But it was also because, while Yuki could never replace Yukiko, his sister, his lost one, he still took her place, in a way.

Though now it was Nobuhiro who was the elder, and not the other way around.

And he took care of that boy as well as he could.

Though, in the early days, Mikan was almost as much a part of Yuki's life as Nobuhiro was. She was a soft woman, even back then, cooing over him and overseeing his care whenever Nobuhiro was off taking care of business with her husband. Feeding him, changing his diapers, letting Kiine hold him. But he always slept in Nobuhiro's room at night, and once he was old enough to walk and talk and not require constant attention, he would never be too far from Nobuhiro's sight, following him around like a duckling or a kitten. He was Nobuhiro's brother, not her son, and she knew that.

(And Yuki, truthfully, had no memories of these early years with Mikan, with Kiine. But the familiarity with them, especially with Kiine, certainly helped with matters when he got older, when Kiine claimed him as her best friend. They held an innate sort of comfort for him that he could never really put into words.)

Nobuhiro thought it only a little strange—after all, didn't she have a daughter of her own to cuddle and love? But Mikan just loved children, it seemed, so he just accepted it, never really needing to have to draw the line anywhere.

He appreciated her help, anyways; Nobuhiro was hopelessly awkward when it came to the business of baby care. That was Yukiko's job, that was Mikan's job. He learned out of necessity, but he always did his duties clumsily, unlike them.

And then Yuki got older and Nobuhiro found strange and worrying thoughts arising.

Nobuhiro didn't know that a child—a boy, no less!—could ever possess such delicate features. Careful, beautiful hands; a mouth like a doll's; gentle eyes. They were features better suited on a toy, or a girl, at least.

But Yuki had them.

And as much as Nobuhiro tried to keep such thoughts away from his mind, he couldn't help but think that the boy looked like Yukiko.

The letter had told him that Yuki couldn't replace his sister— I doubt he'll ever be able to replace your sister, the exact words—and Nobuhiro found himself wondering why in the world it had been phrased that way.

I doubt he'll ever be able to replace your sister.

If he was Yukiko's…

But when his gift began to manifest, those thoughts began to disappear. A little. Nobuhiro could not do the things that Yuki did, and even with the snow in her name, Yukiko couldn't, either.

But then Nobuhiro began to imagine that perhaps there had been a man with ice in his blood and cold hands like Yuki's and that he and his sister had…

And he'd have to stop thinking because he'd find himself growing far too angry to think straight, and Nobuhiro had other things to do.

Even now, watching Yuki reluctantly stand and brush the frost off of his pants, Nobuhiro found himself seeing her in him—and he'd have to remind himself that he was just projecting, just seeing things.

(The thoughts were going away, but they weren't completely gone. Not yet.)

"C'mon, Yuki. Make this all go away, we can't have anyone see," he reminded the boy, his only brother (his maybe-nephew). It wouldn't take long, Yuki could just make all the ice disappear, like he always did.

He had a gift, but few people knew of it. Yuki did not like to use it, often. Nobuhiro didn't discourage it, but he didn't encourage it, either.

Because people still talked. And Nobuhiro still had fears about where Yuki had come from.

(Because something that was known but never spoken was that these blood-gifts, Ringo's acid and Benkei's body and the rubber-woman, always came from ninja-lands.)

(And you could never trust ninja. Never, ever.)

(But if you left that world for the Taki family, then you were welcomed with open arms. As Tensho had told Nobuhiro, once before, many times before, "Fuck the past." If they hated the ninja world enough to leave it, then they were fine allies as far as Tensho was concerned.)

(Nobuhiro doubted that he'd ever be able to consider Yuki's father an ally, if his theories were correct.)

There was a defeated expression on Yuki's face as he held out his hands and, slowly, removed the ice from everything with a wave of his wrists, leaving nothing behind to indicate that it had even existed. All of the moisture was pulled out of the tatami, the paper walls, leaving them as dry as they had been before his depression had set in.

"…I'm sorry," he said, quietly, after it was all over. He lowered his head, his hair falling over his shoulders.

"Don't apologize, little bro. It's nothing," Nobuhiro assured him. The air was finally warm, again, and he wasn't shivering any more. He put an arm around his brother. "C'mon, we feeling better?"

Yuki took a long while to answer, but Nobuhiro gave him the time. He couldn't really blame the poor kid, and he could only imagine how bad it had been for a while.

He was a snitch, after all. An accidental one, but a snitch nonetheless.

(A maid found a lock of Kiine's hair in his room while cleaning it, and he had to explain himself. He hadn't gotten rid of it all.)

(He could have honestly come up with a better story, but everything ended up coming out, and he was on his way to Konoha with Nobuhiro by that afternoon.)

And those types weren't exactly looked kindly-upon by folks like Nobuhiro, like Tensho. And even with all of their comforts, their words of thanks, he still was what he was.

"…I'm feeling fine," Yuki finally said.

Nobuhiro knew he wasn't. But life was tough, and the day was too important to be soft.

"Good, good. Now c'mon with me, we got a lot of preparin' to do." He began heading out of Yuki's room, his hand around his brother's back. "I'll… keep you away from Lady Kiine until you really gotta be there, okay?" he added, awkwardly, once the door was closed behind them.

"…thanks, brother," Yuki replied.

"…hey, don't mention it," Nobuhiro said, tossing a casual air in his voice to disguise his other feelings.

He also meant it literally.