Chapter 125 - Dry Tears
The order was indeed sent out in the afternoon, and the next morning, Kiba, Shino, and Hinata arrived at the Hokage Manor to receive their debriefing before heading up to the village of Tamina.
Kiba and a descendant of Akamaru named Tanshamaru—a particularly large female, despite her name—were given samples of cloth from Yakata's clothes, so they might have a scent marker to follow once they reached Tamina. Even though Hinata added that she'd probably be able to find Yakata's parents by simply asking around the village, Kiba wanted for there to be a sure thing. For whatever reason.
Similarly, they were given a strip of cloth from the bottom of Shingetsu's beloved white cape, which he slept in and as a result barely washed. His father's smell would almost certainly be upon it.
(Karin had only barely explained her son that his father was dead. The most Shingetsu understood was that his daddy had gone away, and was not coming back, and that his mommy got very upset whenever he asked if she was sure, if he wasn't just taking a really long time.)
(Because his daddy always came home, no matter how long it took.)
If Kiba couldn't find him, then Shino most certainly would. Corpses were not long hidden from Aburame.
After this, they were given a map of the area, which Hinata carried, and they were on their way.
"We'll be back very soon," she told Naruto, and he nodded in reply, and gave them a thumb's-up.
The voyage over took hardly any time at all; Kiba and Hinata rode on Tanshamaru together, and Shino bounded along behind them, able to keep up on account of his body's bug-enhanced stamina. An hour or two of journeying brought them to the hill overlooking the village, and they entered together.
But upon being asked of the location of the Honbo family, every villager clammed up, no matter how gently Hinata asked. They had either disappeared or never existed in the first place, though the latter was clearly impossible. Especially since one woman, nursing a hot and sour expression on her face, declared that "It was about time they left us in peace. Them and that demon son of theirs." She spat on the ground, afterwards, so Hinata left her alone.
They turned to the clothing scraps after that, which brought them first to a house near the edge of town, identical to all the others surrounding it, save for one detail: it was completely ruined.
The windows had been smashed, the doors pulled off their tracks, and the floor was littered with paper from broken screen doors. But nothing else had been broken, or smashed—rather, any indication that people had lived in there was completely absent. There wasn't even a pot hanging from the hearth.
Midway through their investigation of this strange space, there was a knock on the front doorframe; an old man with a thin, stringy beard stood there, and cleared his throat.
"I assume you're the shinobi looking for the Honbo family?" he said.
"Yes, do you know where they are?" Hinata asked.
"I'm afraid I can't say. They were chased out of town not a few days ago under some unfortunate circumstances," the old man replied.
"What sorta circumstances?" Kiba had lifted up a broken floorboard, to sniff at whatever had been underneath, and had turned his head mid-sniff. Shino, meanwhile, was inspecting the work of a spider that had begun to spin a web near the ceiling.
"Unfortunate ones," the old man said, his eyes narrowed. "May I ask why you three are looking for them?"
"Their son, Honbo Yakata-kun, is being treated at our hospital, and it would be best if his parents are with him while he's there," Hinata said.
"So he ended up in your village, huh?" the old man said. "Pray to your ancestors, then; that boy is nothing but trouble."
"We'll be very careful," Hinata replied, her voice half-frosted over. "Do you know which direction the Honbo family might have gone?"
"Away from here. That's all I know," the old man said, in a tone that indicated he wanted the shinobi to behave similarly.
"Thank you for your help," Hinata said, and motioned with her hand for them to leave the house.
Outside the village, Kiba got out the cloth scraps again. "C'mon, girl, let's give this all we got," he said, holding the clump of t-shirt between them. They both sniffed at it for several seconds, before Tanshamaru raised her head and barked. "That way?" Kiba said, pointing somewhere. Tanshamaru barked again. "All right, we got a lead, let's get going!"
Tanshamaru, with Kiba translating on occasion, led them into a forest along the hillside of the village. The pace quickened as Tanshamaru and Kiba both seemed to pick up a particularly strong note, which led them to an ivy-covered mass of boulders set into a hill near the river that passed through the area.
"The scent's real strong here," Kiba said, putting his hands on his hips as he sniffed the air further. "But it's a dead end s'far as I know."
Tanshamaru, meanwhile, was batting at the boulder with her paw and whining. Hinata understood, and readied her chakra.
A moment later, her eyes snapped open, the veins on her face bulging from the concentration.
There was a door set into one of the boulders, she could see; beyond that, a stairwell, branching into several hallways and rooms.
And in one of those rooms, two people were huddled together. They felt very weak, but they were alive.
She focused on the door again, to see its inner workings, and where it would open. It didn't take long.
"Step aside, please, Tanshamaru," she said, and with a firm series of taps in a specific place, the outline of a door appeared and swung inward, exposing the stairs.
"I believe they're down here."
"All right, let's go!" Kiba was the first down the stairs, but he paused once he reached the bottom, covering his nose. "Jeez, it reeks down here!"
"I believe that's mildew," Shino said, mildly.
"It's more than that, it smells like—ugh—it smells like there were dead bodies in here or somethin'." Kiba groaned. Tanshamaru whined with him, her head low and her tail between her legs. "The hell kinda place is this."
A small cloud of beetles began floating out of Shino's sleeves. "If there are bodies nearby then I shall certainly find them."
"Yeah, you do that," Kiba replied.
Hinata, however, was already down the right-hand hallway, looking for the people she had sensed. Though she could not sense it as strongly as Kiba, the place smelled faintly of blood and chemicals, as if someone had tried to clean up a horrible mess but only half-succeeded. It put her somewhat on edge, and she kept her Byakugan activated, to ensure that nothing hidden would spring out to hurt or trap her.
She finally reached the door, and breathing in for a moment, she opened it.
"Hello…?"
A man and a woman were there; they both looked skinny and somewhat dried-out, and very, very frightened, clinging to each other. The room was bare, but there were blankets on the floor in one corner of the room, and a pile of what looked like their possessions in the other. It appeared they had literally been run out of town with the clothes on their backs and little more.
"Wh-who are you…?" the man said.
"My name is Hyuuga Hinata, I'm a ninja from Konohagakure," Hinata said, chancing a step or two forward; she was bent slightly shorter than usual, to appear less threatening. "Are you Honbo Gishi?"
"Yes, how… how do you know my name?" Gishi said.
"I was sent to find you so that you could be with your son, Yakata-kun," Hinata said.
"Yakata? Is he all right?" the woman, Satoko, said, jerking a little out of Gishi's arms.
Hinata nodded. "He's being treated in our hospital for some injuries, but otherwise, yes, he's fine."
"Injuries? What happened to him?" Satoko said.
"That, I believe, he can tell you himself when we arrive back in Konohagakure," Hinata said. "I have two friends with me that are ready to take you there whenever you're ready."
Satoko and Gishi exchanged uneasy glances.
"…if I may say, the accommodations in Konoha are probably far more comfortable than where you are now," Hinata said, gently. "How long have you been hiding here?"
"A week. Maybe more," Gishi said; his voice crumbled at the edges. "There's just nowhere else for us to go…"
"I'm certain that we can help with that," Hinata said. She had stepped forward enough times so that she was now quite near to them, and held out a hand. "Please, come with me. I'm sure your son misses you dearly."
But before either of them could accept her offer, there came a scream from down the hallway.
It was Kiba's.
Hinata ran out of the room as fast as her legs would allow; she saw in the vision behind her that Satoko and Gishi rose and followed, a short while later.
"WHAT THE FUCK, MAN!" Kiba's screams had curdled into words, in the meantime.
"GET OFF MY FACE, ASSHOLE!" Somebody was replying, though Hinata could not quite tell whom.
"What's going on?" she asked, upon arriving.
"This—puddle just screamed at me, Hinata!" Kiba reported, waving his arms about. Tanshamaru seemed to be investigating the puddle—not terribly conspicuous, but taking up part of the hallway—on her own, sniffing it. Shino watched all this, looking vaguely interested, from a bit away.
"A puddle… screamed at you?"
"Damn right I did, you were stepping on me!" the disembodied voice said; indeed, it seemed to be coming from the puddle, and Tanshamaru stepped back.
Hinata blinked a few times, and focused her concentration on the puddle. It was glowing with chakra—was it… alive?
"Erm, excuse me, but what—or who?—are you?" she said, bending down, propping her hands on her knees.
The puddle seemed to grow slightly thicker, and shrunk in size as a result. "Call me Hozuki," it replied.
"Do you live here, Hozuki-san?" Hinata said.
"Not by choice. I'm recovering from an ordeal." The puddle Hozuki continued firming up, and the outline of a face, like a child's drawing, seemed to form in the now gelatin-like surface. It did not seem terribly pleased.
"Hozuki-san? These people say they found Yakata." The Honbos had appeared behind Hinata, still holding each other's hands.
"Yakata?" The surface of the puddle seemed to swirl about, as if being stirred. "Where is he?"
"Konohagakure," Hinata replied.
Hozuki seemed to get very agitated at this, ripples colliding all over his surface. "You guys got him? Is he okay? Oh, damn it."
"He's fine, Hozuki-san. Do you… um, know Yakata-kun?" Hinata said.
"He knows all of us," Gishi said.
"Hozuki-san led us here, to this place, after we… had to leave our home. We heard his voice in the woods, and followed it," Satoko added, quietly. "He knew it would be safe for us here."
"How curious. Thank you for helping them, Hozuki-san," Hinata said.
"Yeah, don't mention it," Hozuki replied, shortly. "So what you guys gonna do, you gonna take us back with you to Konoha or what?"
"Satoko-san and Gishi-san, yes," Hinata said. "Do you want to come with us, Hozuki-san?"
"He ought to," Shino said, before anyone else could. "Considering he's the body we were supposed to find."
"What? He's that Suigetsu guy we were supposed to get?" Kiba said.
"Uh, yeah, my name's Suigetsu! You guys were lookin' for me too?" Little fish-like splashes were appearing in the puddle, now.
Hinata smiled very warmly. "Your partner—Karin-san, I believe her name is—wanted very much for you to be found. Though she was under the impression that you had passed away, somehow. We were sent to retrieve your body."
Suigetsu's puddle thinned out considerably, hearing this, returning to a more water-like consistency. "Son of a bitch," he said, quietly. "I need to get home."
"We'll get you home, Suigetsu-san," Hinata said. "I promise."
"Shino, why the hell didn't you say anything?" Kiba continued.
"I assumed you both would realize whom we were talking to, sooner or later," Shino said. Kiba scoffed, in reply.
They made quick work at preparing to leave for Konoha. Satoko and Gishi would ride on Tanshamaru, since they weren't ninjas, and everyone else would go on foot. Hinata coaxed Suigetsu into a water-skin she had brought with her, and carried him on her back.
"I'll be fine if I'm given enough still water to rest in, once we get there," he explained, talking to her on the way there. "Fucking thing about rivers, man, s'that they don't stand still. And I ain't in a state to go swimming right now. I didn't wanna end up in somebody's sink."
"Very understandable, Suigetsu-san," Hinata replied. "I hope you recover quickly."
"Yeah, same."
He didn't talk very much after that; the jostling of Hinata's movement made it very difficult for him to pull words together, it seemed.
They arrived in Konoha after a journey quite a bit longer than the trip going up, but still within the same day. Night had fallen, and the streets were glossed in the orange light of street lamps. Rather than reporting in at the Hokage Manor, as they would with any other mission, they went straight to the hospital, and Sakura was called.
"You must be Yakata-kun's parents," she said, greeting them in the lobby. "I'm so sorry that we had to meet under these circumstances."
"It's quite all right," Satoko said. "Can we see our son, please…?" Her eyes closed as she completed the question, almost wincing in regret at asking this before asking about his health or anything else.
Sakura, however, understood completely, and replied with, "Absolutely. Please, come with me."
"Hey, 'scuze me, what about me?" Suigetsu said.
Sakura's eyes darted here and there as she tried to locate the sound. "Who said that…?"
"Me, in the water-skin. Hinata-san, hold me up." Hinata took the sack off her back and held it with her hands in front of her. "I'm the dead guy you were lookin' for."
"Uh—Suigetsu-san…?" Sakura said. "You're alive?"
"Yeah, hey. Can you get me a tub of water or somethin' to soak in? I'd really appreciate it."
Sakura's face twisted in disbelief and confusion, but she still flagged down a nurse and told her to direct Hinata and Suigetsu to a therapy pool "or something" for Suigetsu. Seeing them sent on their way—Hinata dismissed Kiba and Shino and told them to meet her at the Manor in the morning to finish up their report—Sakura led Satoko and Gishi to Yakata's room in the basement.
(She had tried to move him to the children's ward earlier that day, but he refused, saying he didn't feel comfortable being around that many people yet.)
(Truthfully, he still didn't trust his body at all. Especially when he was asleep, or unconscious.)
(Though he felt safe, even comfortable being near Nadeshiko, because her strength was greater than his, and he knew he could not hurt her.)
It was quite a bit after dark, by this point, and Yakata had been asleep for a while; he was nestled against Nadeshiko's chest on his bed. He had fallen asleep with her beside him, and she hadn't wanted to disturb him by leaving, and so had dozed off as well. Sakura raised the lights only slightly, so that his parents could see him.
"I can get you two a room nearby so you can see him right away, when he wakes up," Sakura whispered.
One of Satoko's hands wandered to Yakata's face, and she brushed some of his hair behind his ear. He began to stir.
"Yakata, sweetheart…?" Satoko murmured.
One of Yakata's eyes opened, and he turned toward her. "Mama…?"
"It's me, darling, I'm here," she said.
Yakata woke more fully, there, and began to sit up. "Mama, you're, you're here…?"
She nodded. "Yes, I'm here." She went and hugged him, after that. Yakata's arms, shaking with mistrust, wandered across her back and held her in return, so, so gently. "Your papa's here too. We're both here."
Nadeshiko had awakened, now, and moved a bit away from Yakata so that he might have an easier time embracing his parents. She rubbed her eyes, intermittently, watching them.
"I'm, I'm so sorry, Mama, I'm, I'm so sorry for what I did." Yakata's voice was muffled by her clothes. "I didn't, I didn't mean to hurt anyone, I, I swear…"
"It's okay, son," Gishi said. "I know you would never hurt anyone on purpose. You're a good boy."
Yakata began crying after that, embraced by both of his parents, and he only stopped when he pulled away from them.
"Your parents will be staying here as long as you are, Yakata-kun," Sakura said, softly, stepping in once she saw that the tears were ending and the hiccups were beginning. "They'll be right here in the hospital with you. Okay?"
Yakata sniffed. "O-Okay…"
"Darling, we were just so worried about you." Satoko was running her hand over Yakata's hair, soothingly, now that Gishi had stepped back. "What happened? Are you all right now?"
"I'm, I'm fine now, I, I, I, I think…" Yakata shrunk further into himself.
"We can explain the whole situation in detail tomorrow morning, I think, after you've settled in, Honbo-san," Sakura said. "Is that all right, Yakata-kun?"
He nodded, sniffing again. "Yeah, that's… that's all right. But, um, but… Mama, Papa, I, I want you to meet someone, first."
"Who, son?" Gishi said.
Yakata swallowed. "This is, this is Nadeshiko-san, she's, she's my friend…!" He motioned back at her there, on the bed, and managed to smile, quaveringly. "Nadeshiko, these are… these are my parents."
Nadeshiko closed her eyes in nodding at them. "It's very nice to meet you."
"I, I, I wrote to you about… about her, once, do you remember…?" Yakata continued. "She… she takes care of me, s-sorta…"
"Ah, yes, I remember," Satoko said, and smiled back. "Thank you for taking such good care of our son."
Nadeshiko didn't say anything, just nodding again, and then yawning. This set off a chain of yawns, to Yakata, and then his mother, then his father.
"I'm sorry for waking you, Yakata-kun, do you want to go back to sleep…?" Sakura said, seeing this, and yawning herself. "Mr. and Mrs. Honbo, I can show you to your room, now, too…"
"Oh, it's… it's okay, I don't… I don't mind, this was a good…" Yakata yawned again. "A good reason to, to, to be woken up, I think…!"
"Would you like for me to go back to my bed, Yakata-kun?" Nadeshiko said. (She had one on the other side of the room, a small cot that Sakura had ordered to be brought in for her.)
"O-only if you wanna…" Yakata said, the weakness in his voice suggesting severely otherwise.
"I'll stay, then," she said, and began settling back into her previous position.
"You get your sleep, honey, I'll be here in the morning, and you can tell me everything then, all right?" Satoko said.
"O-okay, Mama… You, you get your sleep too, okay…?" Yakata replied.
She kissed him on the forehead. "I will, my sweet boy. I love you, Yakata, and I'm so glad you're okay."
"I, I love you too, Mama…"
He sat up in bed for a good while longer, watching them leave with Sakura, who turned the lights back off. He returned to the comforting warmth of Nadeshiko's presence after that, and the steady beating of her heart, and quickly fell asleep again.
(He woke in the middle of the night from a hideous nightmare: where the Riverman was killing Takeru, and he was paralyzed, unable to even scream.)
(But he was screaming when he woke up.)
(Nadeshiko stroked his arm and whispered kindly to him, waking with him, countering his apologies and his insistence that what he had dreamed was real.)
(And, after a time, sleep, once again, came for him, and then for her.)
Sakura was able to get Satoko and Gishi a room a few doors down from Yakata's, so visiting would be easy. A second bed was fetched from an empty room nearby, and she bid them good night, and left them the number to her office in the meantime, in case there were any issues.
Her shift ended at midnight that night, and she went home to find Lee already asleep and snoring slightly. Though once she had gotten in bed, she felt him turn over under the sheets to curl his body against hers, as if on reflex, and she drifted to sleep with a smile on her face.
She realized in the morning, after returning to the hospital, that she had completely forgotten about Suigetsu somehow. It took a nurse asking her why there was a man belligerently taking up residence in one of the therapy pools to remind her.
Sputtering out a quick order to leave the man be, Sakura made a mad dash for Karin's room.
Leaving the news unheard any longer would have been a cruel thing indeed.
Karin was feeding Osato when she came in, a bottle of formula expertly tilted in her hand. There was a warm smile in her eyes.
"Karin! Karin, are you—oh, you're busy, I'm sorry, but-"
"But what?" Karin looked up, blinking. "Do you need me for something?"
"Well, when you're done, there's—something I need you to see. It's really important." Sakura had to put a hand on her chest, as if to lessen her breathing.
"What is it?"
"I can't explain. You… have to see it for yourself." Sakura swallowed. "Please, just… trust me, okay?"
Karin's mouth curled, perplexed. "Well, okay," she said, and once Osato had finished his bottle, she bounced and patted him over her shoulder to settle the gas in his stomach, and put him back in his incubator, kissing him on the forehead before leaving. "Jeez, it must really be important if you're still waiting here, okay," she noted, when they closed the door behind them.
"Trust me, Karin," Sakura said again. "It is."
Sakura tried not to walk too quickly—Karin was moving quite gingerly, though not with the same degree of pain or stiffness as when she was still pregnant. And eventually they came to the physical therapy wing, and Sakura found a nurse and asked him, whispering, where the bath was that they'd found the man.
Given the directions, Sakura's smile grew, and she motioned for Karin to follow her.
"Sakura, what are we doing here?" Karin asked, her eyes narrowing.
"Just a minute, hold on."
And Sakura opened the door to the room where Suigetsu was.
Karin remained unimpressed, eyes wandering to the small pool set in the center of the floor. "A… therapy pool? Uh, okay…?"
But then the water, which had been still otherwise, began to ripple of its own accord. And Suigetsu's head, still translucent, peered over the edge, joined by his hands.
"Karin…? That you?"
Karin's tears were instantaneous.
"You… you asshole…!"
And she rushed forward and joined him in the pool, wrapping her arms around whatever solid form she could find.
"Whoa, hey, what are you-?"
"If you ever scare me like this again I'm going to kill you, okay…!" She pressed her head against his half-water chest. "You insensitive son of a bitch!"
"Hey, it's not my fault, I didn't mean-!"
Suigetsu wasn't able to say much else because Karin was hugging him too hard. What else could he do but hug back?
"I'm so glad you're okay," she managed, when she stopped to wipe the water off of her face and her glasses. "I missed you way too much, damn it."
"Hey, I was worrying about you every day, right back!" he replied. "And—jeez, why are you even in here, you're gonna catch a cold! Ow!"
Karin had whapped the side of his face. "Why do you think I jumped in, idiot? To make sure I'm not dreaming, okay! And I won't catch a cold!"
"Well—get out of here anyways, I don't want you hurting the little one!" Suigetsu began shoving her to the steps leading out of the pool. "I ain't having that on my hands!"
Karin leaned against the metal railing, her hair now plastered to her face, and she laughed. "Suigetsu, he's been born already, okay! Can't you tell?"
"What—when? When did this happen? Is he okay? Are you okay?" Suigetsu's face puffed up in vexation as Karin just continued laughing. "Damn it, woman, you need to tell me these things!"
"I'm sorry-y!" She had to put her glasses on the ground around the pool, her laughter now so strong it was misshaping her words.
"Tch, look who's scaring who now," he said, sourly, sinking back into the water with his arms crossed, so that only the top of his head was peeking over the surface.
"Come on." Karin was wiping her eyes again, though this time to get rid of the tears of laughter. "I'm fine. And he's doing just fine too. Do you want to see him?"
"Maybe when I have legs," Suigetsu replied, sarcastically. His face softened, afterward. "How's he look, though? Is he… normal?"
"Perfectly normal, okay." Karin set herself down on the top few steps of the pool, not quite at the surface, but close, and propped herself up on her knees. "He's got such pretty black eyes, even you're going to melt, okay."
"Great, more loss of bodily control," Suigetsu replied. "That's just what I need."
Karin chuckled again. "You'll see what I mean, okay."
Suigetsu raised his head a bit more, smiling. "Yeah, I can't wait to see him. I bet he's gorgeous, Karin."
"Mm. And Shingetsu and Ooda too, should they come down and see you or do you want to wait until you're less… squishy, okay?"
"Get 'em down here, I ain't never spending this much time apart from my little boy again," Suigetsu said.
"I figured," Karin replied. She looked over her shoulder at Sakura, who was watching all this from the door, a mile-wide grin on her face. "Well, you heard him, didn't you? Can you go get our kids?"
"Sure, Karin. Will you guys be all right by yourself?"
"Yes, yes, now go!" Karin waved her off with her hand, so Sakura went.
(Though she walked slowly away from the door, enough to hear Karin begin speaking again: "Oh, wait until Ooda tells you what he did the other day, you're going to be so proud of him, okay…")
(Hearing this, Sakura got the idea that when Karin referred to "our kids," she wasn't thinking of them as Suigetsu's son and her son, separately.)
She walked across the hospital—the physical therapy wing and Curse Seal ward were both on the same floor, so it didn't take long—and found Ooda and Shingetsu both engaged in a game of cards in their room. Ooda was no longer wrapped in a blanket, his hospital robe leaving most of his white arms exposed.
"Hello, you two," Sakura said.
"Sakura-sensei, hi! You wanna play Go Fish with us?" Shingetsu said.
"Not today, I think," Sakura replied.
"Oh, okay." Shingetsu returned to his cards, studying them intensely.
"Does my mom need something, Sakura-sensei?" Ooda asked, looking over his shoulder.
"Yeah, she wants you to come join her in welcoming Suigetsu-san home."
Shingetsu's cards went flying across the table as he slammed his hands on the surface. "Daddy's home?!"
"He arrived just last night, Shingetsu-kun. And he'd love to see you." Sakura had her hands holding her arms, slightly crooked, like her smirk.
"You mean he's…?" Ooda said.
"He's alive and recovering, Ooda-san," Sakura replied. "We're keeping him in a therapy pool; your mom's with him right now."
"Ooda-niki, we gotta go see Daddy!" Shingetsu had clambered off his chair and was tugging insistently on his clothes. "Right now, okay?!"
"Okay, okay…" Ooda got up himself, and with Shingetsu still attached, went to grab a blanket from off of his bed to wear.
(Sakura noticed this with some small degree of disappointment and worry.)
(Though given his lack of it before, she had to wonder if Ooda was covering himself now more because of his sudden celebrity, and not due to his self-image.)
(After all, there was certainly a lot of talk in the hospital now about the fact that the clone that helped save everyone was staying in a room near the Curse Seal Ward. And a lot of staff was certainly wandering near that ward lately.)
Once he was covered to his satisfaction, Sakura led the both of them back the way she had come, into the therapy wing, and then into Suigetsu's room.
Shingetsu's reaction was about as joyful as Karin's. Though Ooda just removed his blanket from his face upon entering, Shingetsu leaped forward with an ecstatic "DADDY!" and did a full-on belly flop into the pool, merging with the water somewhat on impact, to better hug Suigetsu.
"Hey, squirt! It's good to see you!" Suigetsu rubbed the boy's face against his, a spread smile on his face. "You been good for me?"
"I been so good," Shingetsu replied. "I been takin' care of Ooda-niki an' Asao-touto an' Mommy an' she won't let me hold him yet but I'm gonna take care of Osa-touto too 'soon as I can."
"Yeah, I bet you will," Suigetsu said, hugging him tighter. Shingetsu squealed, kicking his legs and splashing water everywhere. He twisted away from his father a little after that to face Karin. "See, Mommy? I toldja he'd come back. Daddy always comes back."
"Yes, little one, he certainly does," Karin said, from the steps.