Chapter 75 - Aquamarine Fish

Having his body returned to its old excellence was a huge jumpstart in Suigetsu's mercenary work. He dove in, head-first, taking jobs left and right, fighting whoever came his way and reaping whatever rewards came with them. Eating well, sleeping well. Happy, mostly.

But as busy as these days and these nights were, there were still quiet moments, when he'd remember the loose contract he'd entered into.

Remembered that he'd be getting Mangetsu back, some soon someday.

It was a comfort to him, sleeping alone. Even with the echo of Karin's words.

He'd be an infant. That it'd be Suigetsu taking care of him, now.

…so long as he had Mangetsu back, he'd be fine. Nothing else mattered.

Truly, Karin hadn't asked much of him, monetarily. But Suigetsu didn't much want to return to her clinic if he didn't have to, so he pushed and pushed it away until he could no longer escape from her words.

In at least six months. He was pushing it. And he did not want to find out if she had or hadn't added something else to the seal on his tongue. After all, if she could turn speaking into pain (and yes, he tested it to see if it was still active every week or so) to keep him from talking, who was to say that she'd added something to get him to come back?

He'd be a… good boy and show his face again. Without his sword, he returned to Ryokyo, to visit her.

She had definitely gained weight in the time between meetings. But she didn't look pregnant at all, just thicker and wider. "So you really did decide to come back," she said, with her arms crossed.

"Well yeah, you told me to," Suigetsu said. He was slipping his shoes off with his toes. "I got your payment."

"Oh, you remembered?"

"Come on. Yeah, of course I did." He reached into his back pocket and took out a roll of bills in a plastic baggie. "Here, should this be enough?"

She caught it when he tossed it at her, and she took it out of the baggie and ran her fingers over the bills. "That's fine, okay. Thanks. Come on in, we have lots to talk about."

There was a light pattering of feet that joined them on their way to her kitchen, and a very small boy with white skin ran up to Karin and tugged on the bottom of her shirt. He only came up to her hip or so, and his black hair was fine and cut to just below his ears.

"Oh, Ooda, what is it?" She bent over a little in speaking to him.

The boy, Ooda, didn't say anything back, just looking back at her shyly. This made Karin laugh a little, and she put her hand on his back.

"Ooda, you remember Suigetsu, don't you?"

He shook his head, after glancing at Suigetsu with his yellow snake-eyes and then back.

"Well he and I need to talk in the kitchen. Can you be a good boy and stay in your room until lunchtime? And no going downstairs, the little one's asleep, remember?"

"Okay," Ooda replied. He went down the hallway with a strong, though wobbling, run, and opened a sliding door with both hands before disappearing.

"Who's asleep?" Suigetsu asked, once the quiet returned.

"Oh, the… other one. I had him while you were gone, okay," Karin said, almost uncomfortably. "I'm keeping him in the nursery downstairs."

"Oh." Suigetsu fidgeted. "So you decided to keep it?"

"Well… no, that's actually something I wanted to talk to you about," she said. "We can discuss in the kitchen, okay? Bet you'd like to get something to drink first, though."

"Yeah, kinda," Suigetsu replied. Two of the three water bottles at his waist were woefully empty. "That'd be great, if you could."

"Well I have a sink for a reason, okay," Karin replied. "C'mon, this way."

She elaborated once he'd quenched his thirst to his satisfaction. "The only reason I'm keeping the second one is because travel would be far too hard on him if it happens within his first three months. So I'm nurturing him until then. Figured you'd come back in time, okay."

"So you're serious about me dropping it off somewhere and checking on it for you every now and then?" She nodded. "Well… okay, your choice." He shrugged. "You got any ideas where it should go?"

"I'm going to… have to trust your judgment on this one, because, frankly, I have no idea," Karin replied.

"Really? I can just put it wherever?" Suigetsu said. He had his arms crossed.

"Why the mistrust?" Karin said, over her glasses.

"You're givin' me an awful lot of freedom with this," Suigetsu replied. "I mean, considering you put that thing on my tongue."

"Consider this a trust exercise," Karin replied. She crossed her arms in echo. "You do a good job with this one, and I'll trust you a little more."

"Fair enough," Suigetsu grumbled. "When do you want me to head out?"

"I'll give you a week to find a location. After that, he's gone, okay?"

Suigetsu nodded noncommittally.

He didn't do very much scouting with the week he was given, drinking and sleeping it away and generally trying to avoid Karin. But he returned, out of fear, out of obligation, out of the desire to get her to stop scowling at him and fucking trust him.

The sudden realization that she really, really wanted for him to do well was about as heavy as the child she placed in his arms.

It was a pudgy baby, with a mottled red face and near-perpetually closed eyes. She'd wrapped it up in a dark green blanket. "Hold him in your arms, I don't trust you to strap him to your back, okay?" she said. "And be gentle with him."

"I will be gentle," he said, for the third time. It was late at night, and she'd already put Ooda to bed.

"And I want you to come right back and tell me where you put him, okay?" she said. "I want to know."

"Okay," Suigetsu said, thinking to himself that if she kept asking like this then he wouldn't be able to leave. Come on.

"I will be able to tell if you screwed up, you know," she added.

He paused. This was new. "What do you mean?"

"I put a seal on the back of his neck, so I can track him, check his vitals remotely," she said. "I came up with it while you were away. Ooda has one too."

"…well I guess that makes sense," he admitted, a prickly feeling in his joints telling him that he really couldn't screw this one up. "Listen, if I don't leave now then I won't ever make it to… where I'm going. All right?"

Karin pursed her lips, her eyes downcast for a good long while. "Just one more thing, okay?"

"What."

"Kurunari. Whoever you give him to, tell them his name. His name is Kurunari."

Weird request, but whatever. "Fine, Kurunari. Kurunari, I'll remember that. Can I get going, now?"

"Be careful," was Karin's farewell.

And Suigetsu was careful. As careful as he could be, anyways.

Kurunari started crying shortly after their journey began. And Suigetsu, having very little experience with children, tried to bounce him and rock him a little to calm him down, which reduced him to snotty sniffles but very little else. And after several hours of aimless walking on the surface of the ocean—he figured he'd have a lesser chance of being spotted, regardless of where he eventually ended up—a supremely foul smell and a fresh bout of crying made Suigetsu lose his patience.

He had not been asked to change diapers or anything, he just had to drop the kid somewhere safe, right?

It was late at night, almost the dawn. And Suigetsu saw an island in the distance, visible by the feeble gray light of the sunrise and the miserable light of a lighthouse. A larger island. He'd take his chances.

There was an orphanage on the island, thank goodness. The regulation-paint sign on the front said it was Federal Orphanage No. 90. It would do.

Suigetsu knocked on the door and hoped that the kid wouldn't make much noise.

A tired, annoyed-looking woman with dark hair answered the door in her bathrobe. "What is it," she said.

Suigetsu found himself unusually tongue-tied. "Yeah, uh, I got this kid, it needs a home, I can't keep it," he said.

"Is it yours?" the woman said.

"Is it any of your business?" Suigetsu replied.

The woman sighed. "Look, if you're looking for something temporary then there's a halfway house on the other side of the island."

"I'm not looking for a fucking halfway house, I just need a home for this kid, all right?" Suigetsu said. "It needs to be taken care of."

A robed shrug. "Fine. If you come back to collect, though, there are fines and fees and-"

"I don't intend on coming back," Suigetsu said. He pushed the child towards her. "You gonna take it or what?"

"Gladly," the woman replied, and took the baby from him. The shift of weight was surprisingly noticeable.

"You take care of him. Okay?" Suigetsu said. "His name's, uh. Kurunari, by the way."

"Kurunari?" The robed woman wrinkled her nose. "Strange name."

"Yeah, well, it's the kid's name, so, whatever," Suigetsu said. He began down the steps. "I really won't be back, you know. So stop acting like I will be."

The woman didn't say anything more, just shifting the baby to one arm and shutting the door behind her.

It was only in telling Karin what he'd done that it occurred to him just how badly he had probably screwed the poor kid over.

"A MIST orphanage? Are you kidding me?"

"I didn't know where else to put it!"

"I GAVE YOU A WEEK TO PREPARE!"

"Yeah, well—well I'm sorry, okay? I messed up!"

"You aren't sorry, you didn't even care!"

"I was just doing my job!"

"But you don't care! I can TELL, okay?"

"Well it's somewhere safe!"

"SAFE? He'll be miserable for the rest of his life, at this rate! Oh you idiot, why did I even try…"

Once again, it was very late. He had returned in the wee hours of the morning, to be safe. But her drowsiness had not helped her mood.

"Well—well what do you want me to do, you want me to go back and get him and try again? Because the lady at the house said there'd be fees if I tried to come back and I kind of said I wasn't going to and-"

"It doesn't matter," Karin said, sharply, "we can't go back and get him. The damage has been done."

She was quiet for a long time, her eyes closed. She had her left hand wrapped around her right index finger.

"…at least he's healthy," she said, after a while. "You at least made the journey over well."

"Well, duh," Suigetsu replied. "I'm sure he'll be fine, anyways, I mean I sorta grew up in the foster care system or whatever and I turned out okay, so…"

(Though that was halfway a lie, since the government of his childhood was not the same government of that day, and he had always had Mangetsu to look out for him.)

"Just shut up," Karin said, like she didn't mean it. There was a weakness in her voice that severely unsettled him.

"So, uh, I still get that clone of my—OW OH FOR FUCK'S SAKE YOU DIDN'T PUT A BAN ON THAT WORD TOO, DID YOU?"

Karin waited until he was done writhing before telling him, "Get out of my house, come back in the morning, then we'll talk."

And in the morning, her face smoothed from an obvious calm, she told him that she was willing to give him a second chance. "I'm going to give another try at an Uchiha clone first, though. Then I'll give a try at making a culture with your brother's cells, okay?"

"And if the Uchiha—thing works?" he said, slowly, remembering the pain from the night before.

"I don't think it'll be safe to keep the first one, so you'll be leaving the child in—someone's care. Possibly Sasuke's."

"You want me to leave the kid with Sasuke?" Suigetsu curled his lip in a disbelieving sneer.

"Well it will be an Uchiha. So I figured it might be in good hands with Sasuke, and others with the same bloodline."

Suigetsu shrugged. "Also so I don't fuck up in putting it somewhere, I take it?"

"Yes, that's part of it, I suppose," Karin said, lightly.

He scoffed. "Fine."

"In the meantime, I still want you checking by wherever you left Kurunari. Just enough to make sure he's well cared-for, okay?"

"And how often you want me to do this?" he said, impatiently.

"Once a month is fine. Then you report back to me."

"And what can I do in between that?"

"Whatever you want, I don't care. Just as long as you do your job and keep quiet about it, okay?"

He shrugged. "Fine," he said.

And he did his job.

Once a month—filling the space in between with mercenary work and whatever else he pleased—he made his way over to the miserable little island where he'd left Kurunari and managed to peek into the orphanage, hidden in condensation or whatever other water sources he could find. And he seemed to be doing well, for a baby. The orphanage was clean, anyways, which was more than you could say for a lot of Mist's other government-run facilities.

And each month, he would report back to Karin and inform her that her weird seal-assurance wasn't just a feeling, that he really was okay, that she could stop worrying.

But the curious thing was, with each month that he returned to her, she seemed far more irritated, and far less healthy. There were near-permanent shadows under her eyes, and her glasses only barely hid them.

When he finally asked her what was going on, she snapped. "The Uchiha culture still isn't working, okay! I'm fucking frustrated."

It had been a little over a year since Kurunari's birth. And Ooda, now three, almost four, was far more talkative and less fearful around Suigetsu. He was a polite as hell little kid, Suigetsu found, and very helpful. He followed Karin around like a baby dolphin, darting here and there.

(His face still creeped Suigetsu out, though, but he didn't dare say a thing to Karin about this, lest she do something about it.)

(There was something almost awe-inspiring, in how genuinely and obviously she loved that kid. It impressed even Suigetsu, who, in years past, thought Karin incapable of anything but lust or anger, or some dizzying combination of the two.)

"Not working?"

"None of the embryos are taking. It's wearing me out." Karin's voice was very hard, squeezing through her teeth.

"Oh. Uh." His mouth tangled with the proper thing to say in response. "Well, what have you, uh, tried or whatever?"

"Everything," she said, in a punishing tone.

Further, uncomfortable searching. "Well, uh, no big deal, right? This happened before, right?"

She looked like she could have set fire to him, with her glare. Which was saying something.

"…I mean, you just made Kurunari when it—didn't work last time," he said, avoiding Ooda's name, picking through memories. "Maybe you should try—making someone else?"

"If you're trying to get me to work on a culture of your brother you've got another fucking thing coming, okay?" Karin said.

Suigetsu backed off, and not just physically. "Look, I'm just sayin'. You got a whole ton of… whatever the hell it is you use to make your samples, right? In your labs, right?"

"Yes?" Her response was more of a creak than a word.

"So maybe it's a problem with the ones you're usin', is all. I could, uh. Go out and get you more material if y'want."

"Are you saying you can get your hands on another Uchiha corpse for me?" Karin said.

"Well—no. And it's not like I'm gonna kill someone for you," he continued. "I dunno, it's just a thought. I mean, if you don't wanna work on my brother or anyone else or whatever."

Karin thought for a while, her arms folded into themselves, taking deep breaths. "Maybe I do need to try other bloodlines. I'll need to for your clone, at any rate," she added, almost in a grumble. "Fine, if you want to get me samples, get them for me. I could use some fresh material to experiment on. But don't let this get in the way of checking in on Kurunari, okay?"

"I won't," he said, wondering why his heart was fluttering a little. Was it because she'd actually listened to him or whatever?

Or was it because he knew exactly what sort of samples to get for Karin?

After all, she said she could bring anyone back, if she had the materials or the means or whatever. And she wanted to try out new bloodlines, so…

So Suigetsu made a short trip north, to the Great Naruto Bridge, and he dug up some graves.

Sorry, Zabuza-senpai. Same to you, Haku-senpai. But he couldn't resist.

The graves, he had found, were jumbled up to begin with, all the bones in the wrong places. But the ground above them had been undisturbed for a long time, a rich covering of flowers surrounding both markers.

The war had been over for almost eight years. But some things, even things he had only heard, he couldn't forget.

He took a few small bones from each grave, taking care to keep them separate, and returned to Karin with them after re-filling the graves and bowing deeply to both of them.

She received them with crooked eyebrows. "Momochi Zabuza and Haku?" she said.

"Well yeah. I mean, Haku-senpai had a pretty rare bloodline, the Ice Release, so I thought maybe you'd be interested," he said. "And Zabuza-senpai, well, he was pretty normal, but I figured you could use more normal people."

For some reason, she smirked at that.

(Though, it was true. Orochimaru hadn't bothered to keep samples from many "normal" people.)

"Not bad," she said. "I'll see what I can do with them, since I didn't make much progress with my existing materials while you were away. Since you went through the trouble, okay."

"Okay," Suigetsu said, wondering why he was smiling back.

Fuzan, eventually, resulted. Karin announced him to Suigetsu a few months after his grave-digging expedition. "Nothing I tried with Haku seemed to work, but Zabuza's cells took nicely. I suppose I'll go through with it, keep careful record. It'll be good for my research, okay."

"What… ever you want to do!" Suigetsu said, throwing his hands up. "You gonna keep this one, though?"

"Hell no. You're gonna find a home for it. And I'm gonna give you more time, this time, okay?" Karin said. And, when he was about to open his mouth to speak, "Second chances, remember?"

His lost words became a smirk, laced with surprise. "So you're serious about this?"

"Don't see why not," she replied. "But seriously, you mess up with this one, and I swear."

"I won't."

And he didn't. Suigetsu took great care to spend the months waiting for Fuzan's arrival to scout out a proper home for him. This was harder than expected, because right when he thought he'd found a nice couple, another one would show up a few miles away, so he'd stalk them for a while to see if they were better, and on and on.

(Some part of him wondered why he suddenly cared so much. Was it because this was Zabuza-senpai he was finding a home for? Or…)

(His thoughts were definitely preoccupied with small wonders, thoughts on how, with a better upbringing, Zabuza—no, Fuzan, Karin had already chosen the name—would turn out. He didn't want to fuck up.)

But time crawled on, with visits to Kurunari, with reports to Karin, with the only suggestion of the growing child within her being the increased difficulty with which she began to walk.

And then, one day, Fuzan existed. He was kept in the basement nursery, where Kurunari had once lived.

Suigetsu marveled at him. "Man, he's tiny."

"Well yeah, he's a baby," Karin replied, from beside him, with her hands on her hips.

"And he's." Suigetsu tilted his head. "He's kinda ugly too."

"Well yeah," Karin said again, "he's only a few days old."

"But Kurunari didn't look like that." Kurunari was plump and vaguely adorable. He wasn't this scrawny, wrinkled, brown thing.

"Kurunari was three months old when you first met him. He had some time to get cute, okay?"

"Cute?"

Karin adjusted her glasses, to disguise whatever lapse in professionalism had occurred there. Fuzan, below them, squirmed under his blanket, kicking his sock-covered feet a little, experimentally.

(A far cry from the tall, grand idol of Suigetsu's childhood.)

"He, uh, give you much trouble? Cry a lot?" Suigetsu asked, for lack of better questions.

"He cries. But it's not so bad, I've come to expect it, by now." Karin yawned.

"You tired?"

"Of course I'm tired," Karin said, snappishly. "I just had a baby and I have to take care of him myself, okay? You think I'm not?"

"Well sorry, just…" And Suigetsu just shook his head, instead of letting himself complete the…

Whatever it was.

"So how long are you keeping him?" he continued.

"Three months. Just like Kurunari, okay?"

"Okay. That should give me enough time."

"Enough time for what, exactly?" Karin said. "Don't tell me you haven't found a home for him yet."

"No, I… I have too many options. I gotta narrow 'em down. That's all."

Her smile was very small, but it felt almost warm. "I trust you'll make the right choice."

"Oh, I will."

And, eventually, he did. Since he couldn't narrow it down to one couple, he chose the town with the most couples living nearby that seemed good enough, and left it to them to decide by leaving Fuzan by the town hall and watching, waiting to see who'd take up the task. It was a quaint, middle-of-nowhere town, in the Land of Lightning. A good day or two away from Karin's village.

Fuzan took the journey well. And Suigetsu remembered to bring formula and an extra couple of diapers with him, this time, in a bag slung over his shoulder. Karin taught him how to use both, and he practiced on Fuzan himself. She complimented him by saying that she expected him to have taken longer.

"Then again, the sooner you learn this stuff, the better. For your brother's clone's sake. I am not taking care of it, okay?" she said.

Suigetsu didn't reply, just grumbling and saying he wasn't an idiot, of course he'd figure it out eventually.

(Trying not to imagine having to do Mangetsu's diapers. That would be...)

(…weird.)

He also wrote a note to go with Fuzan, in a gesture that Karin found "cheesy, but strangely effective."

"Your handwriting's a lot like Sensei's, you know that?" she told him, with a laugh.

"Shut up," he replied.

(Though it couldn't be denied: the reason why his handwriting was so—girly was because Orochimaru had taught him how to read and write. It had taken him years, but despite Suigetsu's squirming and understandable sullenness, he remained very, very patient, and most supportive of every minor step forward in literacy.)

(Suigetsu supposed that it evened out. This patient semi-kindness, smoothing over the times in between his needle-and-electrodes experiments, and his wire-smile.)

Overall, he'd done well. And he knew he'd done well when Karin told him, "When I get the chance, I'll see if I can get your brother's cells to cooperate, okay?"

It was the best news he'd heard in years. And he waited, for months, doing his job, doing his other jobs, as Karin did her job and her research on the side.

It was pretty great.

And then Taki Mikan showed up. Well, he hadn't been around to actually meet her, but Karin told him, with a great deal of excitement, about their agreement, and all the funding it would allow them, and all the options it opened up to her. Her excitement was almost humorous, and it made Suigetsu smirk.

And then she apologized. "I'm gonna hold off on research on your brother for a while but I promise, after this is over, I'll get back to work on him, okay?"

"…you really mean it?" he said. "What about that—Uchiha thing?"

"Oh that can wait, I think it might be fun to try and work out another puzzle before tackling a bigger project, okay?" she said, with a wild grin.

Suigetsu couldn't help but smile back. "Well, hey, whatever works!"

He laughed when she ran to scoop up Ooda for the third or the seventh or the twentieth time and twirl him around in the air before clinging to him tightly in a hug.

Ooda, he had noticed, had been at home more frequently, even though he was almost seven, well past school age. And he was growing out his hair, too. His bangs now covered his eyes, and whenever he talked to Suigetsu he kept his face to the floor.

And it wasn't like Suigetsu cared much about the kid, but he asked Karin about it during a rare shared dinner one night, from before Taki Mikan's arrival, after Ooda cleaned his plate and retreated to his now-upstairs room.

"Ooda had a tough time at school. It was very stressful for him, so I opted to educate him at home myself." Her tone was very clipped.

"Why, what was the problem? Was the work too hard for him?"

A neon glare. "No, the schoolwork was nothing. It was the bullying that he couldn't…" And her glare dissolved. She returned to her food. "You understand, Ooda's not… typical in appearance, okay. I thought it would be manageable but… children are cruel."

(And suddenly Suigetsu was so very, very grateful that he really hadn't said anything about Ooda's appearance to Karin.)

(She looked almost as miserable as Ooda sometimes was.)

"…bet that was really hard for him," he found himself saying. "I mean, kids'll tease each other for the smallest stuff, so for him to be smart and…" Come on, what would be least-offensive? "…different? Well, I honestly don't blame either of you, I can't imagine how much it hurt."

Karin looked up, her eyebrows tilted in curious confusion. "It has been hard. But we can get through this, okay?"

"Hey, never said you couldn't," Suigetsu said, shrugging.

The dinner resumed with a thick silence.

(And both sides wondering why in the world Suigetsu suddenly seemed to care so much.)

The miracles continued the following morning. Karin had, like many mornings before, opted to sleep in, and Ooda was making breakfast. And Suigetsu, coming back for a free meal, found himself alone with the boy, after an awkward greeting.

"Hey, uh—kid?"

He never called Ooda by his name—not that he could, anyways. But "kid" had sufficed for years.

"Yes, Suigetsu-san?" Ooda didn't look up from the stove, from the omelet he was making.

"Your, uh. Your mom told me you had some trouble in school."

Ooda's shoulders rose. He shoved his spatula at the pan. "Ah…"

Suigetsu tried to wonder what the hell he was doing, but the words just kept coming. "Look, and I understand if y'don't wanna talk about it, all right? That kinda stuff is tough and sometimes it feels better to just… y'know, shut up and deal with it on your own. I get that, okay?"

"All right…" Ooda said. He lowered his head further, his hair falling over more of his face.

Suigetsu frowned, not at the boy, but at himself.

"Listen, kid, I just want you to know that none if it's… your fault. Okay? Some kids are dicks and that's their problem if they take fault with you. But there's nothin' wrong with you, all right? You're… well, you're a pretty good kid, I gotta say. So don't blame yourself."

Ooda didn't smile. Suigetsu didn't really expect him to, with that half-assed whatever it was.

Though when he returned, the following month, Karin, curiously, seemed occupied with something other than the well-being of Kurunari, of Fuzan.

"Ooda told me what you said to him, when you last visited. What brought that on?" she said, in the foyer, after looking over her shoulder once, twice.

(Ooda, as usual, had followed her to greet Suigetsu, and bobbed off elsewhere with his half-covered face. Though he seemed to have a warmer smile that day.)

"…wait, what are you talking about?" he said, though his confusion was half-feigned.

"The—the pep talk, or whatever it was, okay? It… it really helped, Suigetsu."

A smile managed to slide out of one side of his mouth, though he tried to cover it up. "Hey, it wasn't like I was tryin' to pep him up or whatever, he just looked kinda miserable and I wanted to do somethin' about it. I dunno."

Karin tilted her head girlishly, but kindly, with her smile. "Well thank you, okay? It kind of makes up for the fact that you're so late."

He sighed. Of course. "Look, I have a good reason."

"And what would that be?"

"Kurunari went missing."

Something went out of her eyes. "What do you mean, he went missing…?"

"He was gone from the orphanage when I went to go check. And believe me, I checked. He wasn't anywhere in that place. So I searched around. I looked on the other island. I spent a damn week trying to find him before I figured I could just… see if you knew where he was. 'Cos you have that seal whatever."

Suigetsu still couldn't read her face, but she wrapped her hand tightly, almost desperately around her right index finger, and she closed her eyes tightly.

Suigetsu's heart pounded in his ears while he waited.

Finally, she spoke. "He. Oh, no. His chakra's so weak… I can barely sense him. He's. He's in Kirigakure, oh no. There's something wrong with him, oh, no, no, what have they done to him…?"

Karin leaned against the nearest wall, almost falling against it, pulling her hands closer to her face, as if doing so would help.

And Suigetsu followed her, crouching down, arms half-bent, in case he had to catch her. He struggled for words and found only defense. "Look, I'm—I'm sorry, but this happened while I was away and-"

"I'm not blaming you, okay?" she said, almost sounding like she was being choked. "You couldn't have done anything. We can't intervene. Even if you had, we… Oh, Kurunari, I'm so sorry…"

And Suigetsu found himself putting a hand on her shoulder. And it stayed there for a while as he struggled for further ways to speak, while Karin cradled her hand, visibly trying not to cry, sucking in her breath very carefully.

"I could… try to sneak into the city. Find out where they've taken him. Would that calm you down? I mean, that's my job, isn't it…" he added, too softly to be sarcastic.

She finally looked away from her hand, and at him. For a moment, there was shock, and then anger. "What, are you—crazy? That's suicide, I can't let you do that! If something were to happen to you then what the hell would I do, okay?" And she whapped him across the head with the flat of her hand, and the splash that resulted from his reflex-liquefaction got little droplets of water on her glasses.

"Okay, fine, fine, fine, so I won't go, I was just fucking offering!" he said, far too loudly, getting away from her. "Jeez!"

Karin had taken her glasses off and was wiping them off the hem of her tunic. Even though it was August, she still wore long sleeves. She had for years. "Just think for a moment before saying things like that, okay?" she said. "I don't want you killed, for fuck's sake."

"Yeah, well, me neither."

The silence that resulted was cold and just a little damp.

"…so, uh, did you still wanna hear about Fuzan?" he said, reluctantly, when he couldn't stand it any more.

And her expression softened. "I would love to hear about Fuzan," she said, with more breath than voice. "He doing well?"

"Oh yeah. His parents got him a hobby-horse for his birthday. Y'know, one of those little stick things with the horse head on the end? He loves the hell out of it."

"Oh, I bet. I'm glad he's doing well."

Suigetsu didn't say it, but he was glad as well.