Chapter 139 - Aged Cheese

Takeru did not receive many visitors at the hospital. And in truth, that was how he preferred it.

He only ever saw Ino, really. He didn't talk to her. She stopped trying after a while.

And after he woke up for the first time since the attack, he saw that there was a bouquet of clematis flowers on his bedside table.

Thankfully, the freak never visited in person.

He got letters and flowers from his girlfriends, who found out about him somehow. But they never came to actually see him.

Considering the state he was in, he didn't blame them. Perhaps they'd come to see him while he was still in the coma, and saw what he looked like, and were scared off. He wouldn't be surprised, considering how shallow so many of them were. Then again, that was why he'd involved himself with them in the first place. They were dumb, and they didn't ask questions. They were perfect for their purpose.

His one consistent visitor was the closest thing to a best friend he had, a jounin named Miyaki Gyosei. Takeru trusted him about as much as any other person—which was to say, very little—but the two of them had a wonderful kinship when it came to worldviews, and the superiority of intelligence and good looks.

"Cheer up, old boy." Gyosei said this, during one visit. "Hair grows back, muscles can be re-toned, and girls love playing nurse."

Takeru had tried to smirk in reply. "Yeah?"

"Something about having someone completely dependent on you for their care."

"Doesn't sound like my style." Takeru would have shrugged, if the action weren't so painful for him.

"You say that, but wait until you have them waiting on you hand and foot. It's marvelous."

"You speaking from experience here?"

Gyosei just reclined in his chair, pushing back his half-and-half-colored hair, his brown skin smooth and almost liquid against it, and he smiled. "Of course."

But Gyosei was not a consistent visitor. And he never brought girlfriends along with him.

Again, Takeru didn't want girls to see him like this. But he'd have liked for at least someone to come by instead of just distantly writing empty letters to him, and sending him more flowers that he didn't need.

He also wanted to be able to walk again, but that was a given.

What he wanted most was someone to distract himself with. Someone who could give him oblivion and release, or worship.

(Someone, now, who could take the pain away where his medicines could not.)

But not like this.

Yet despite all this, Takeru greeted his first new visitor in ages with a grumble. "Who the hell are you?"

Then again, the visitor was not what he'd wanted, in any respect.

It was a girl, he could tell, but just barely. She was androgynous, but unflatteringly so, her boyish clothes hanging loosely off her body.

And in addition to that, she greeted him quite rudely.

"Wow, your mom said that you were in the hospital for something, but I had no idea you'd look this gross. Is that a tube in your head?"

Takeru didn't feel like letting this nobody bother him. "And you are?"

"Nara Shikake. Your half-sister, apparently. Strange world, huh?"

Takeru made no reply.

She continued, in that same, awfully light tone. "Oh, were you not aware of this?"

"I was aware." Takeru kept his voice low. "And it's not something I find particularly interesting, thank you very much."

"What, you don't find the fact that you're my dad's lovechild interesting?"

"No, considering how unremarkable your father is. It's an insulting suggestion."

"Well, you got the unremarkable part down." She shrugged. "Still, though, to know the great Uchiha Sasuke was passed over in order to conceive you? That must be weird."

"That's not provable. As far as I'm concerned, it's nothing but gossip."

"Sure it's provable." She held her hands behind her head. "An' beyond that, your mom just came by and told my dad the whole story about you, so."

Takeru didn't reply.

"What, you thought he knew?" There was light laughter in her voice.

"Frankly, I don't care."

"Right, of course you don't. It's only your birthright and social status, here. Last I checked, bastard children aren't exactly smiled-upon by polite society."

Takeru sighed. "Is there a reason you're here?"

Shikake shrugged. "I'm bored and I felt like messing with my brother, more or less."

"I'm not your brother."

"Eh, yeah, you're only half right. My mom's a different blond bitch." She handled her words lightly, casually.

Takeru's eyebrows rose a little. "You've certainly got a mouth on you."

"I'd ask if you had a problem with it, but—let me guess." She gestured with her finger, clicking her tongue. "You don't care."

"I don't."

"Good. I don't really believe in politeness if I don't have to." She grabbed the chair from the table in the room and sat down at his bedside, resting her foot on her knee.

Takeru scowled. "Do you mind."

"Do I mind what?"

"Not sitting there. I'd like to be alone."

"Nah. I wanna talk to you. I mean, s'not every day you find out you've got a bastard half-brother." She put obnoxious emphasis on the word.

Takeru sighed and looked out the window.

"Touch a nerve?"

"I have nothing to add. I probably only know as much about this as you." He looked back at her. "Or are you so crass as to have a personal interest in the sex lives of your parents?"

Shikake shrugged, neutrally. "I s'ppose you have a point. I don't exactly like the mental image of my dad and your mom goin' at it. Or my mom, for that matter."

"Exactly."

"Still, you're not even a little bit curious about what went on? Betrayed, even?"

"No."

"You're a good liar." The way she said it made it seem almost like a compliment. "Though that's not so hard when you're barely saying anything."

Barely saying anything, huh? "I'm truly not interested in anything that went on between two adults that may or may not have to do with my genetics. That enough for you?"

She shrugged. Again. "I guess. Still kinda sucks though, don't it?"

"What sucks is being pestered like this by little shrews with too much free time."

She laughed. "You're a decent liar, but you could stand to be less obvious when you're deflecting."

Takeru sent a withering glance in her direction.

"I'm not going anywhere, just lettin' you know." Shikake settled more comfortably into the chair. "Visiting hours ain't over for a while. I'm fine just sitting here and watching you squirm."

"Well, I'm not above negotiation." Takeru tilted his head as amicably as he could. "You can stay so long as you don't ask me anything about this… affair nonsense."

"That simple, huh?"

"Well, if you're truly not going anywhere…" It was best to neutralize when you couldn't outright defeat something, after all.

"Okay, then. So I heard about what your dad did to your older brother, and I gotta ask—did he do that to you too?"

"Do what."

"Beat you half to death. I mean, lookin' at you now."

Takeru, despite himself, felt his face grow warm. "No. He did not."

"Really? Who did, then?"

"A rogue experiment of Orochimaru's, they tell me. Or something. I don't really remember what happened."

He was lying, of course. There were pieces of what happened to him missing, certainly, but he remembered far too much.

(And from the outright interrogations he'd received from Sakura, Naruto, and other nameless staff, there was no way they'd ever let him forget what he had done to Yakata.)

(Takeru only felt regret for the fact that so much of this could have been avoided if he'd just been more practical and less emotional about the wretched boy.)

"You mean that thing that caused the lockdown a while back? Damn, he really did a number on you. What I read tells me he mostly caused building damage."

"Yes. How unlucky for me."

She smirked. "So why were you singled out, then?"

"I don't know."

"Uh-huh. Y'know, at least your dad beating you up would have made sense. Though I gotta wonder why your mom seems perfectly fine. No bruises on her or nothin'."

Takeru's body felt quite suddenly shaky and weak. "My father abandoned us. He has not come back. He didn't do anything to me or that whore."

She shifted her leg to her other knee. "And you say I have a dirty mouth."

Takeru seethed quietly in return.

"I sense that this is a sore spot for you."

"Get out."

"Hey, you said I could stay so long as I didn't touch the affair stuff."

"You're crossing lines."

"So what are you gonna do about it?"

"I'll call a nurse." Even though the call button was far beyond his easy reach.

"And I'll tell 'em I'm visiting family. Technically I'm not lying."

She smiled at him.

Takeru began to struggle for the call button.

Shikake began laughing at him. "The hell are you trying to do? You having a seizure?"

"Get out." Takeru could barely speak from the effort. "Or I'll call the nurse."

She laughed at him for a while longer, but the further he struggled, the more her face fell, like a reaction to a joke that went too far.

"Shit, you're a cripple, aren't you?"

Takeru's voice was a groan. "Don't call me that." Just a few more inches and he'd be able to touch the call button, but…

But Shikake sighed, deeply. "Ugh, stop struggling like that, it's painful to watch. Here." She reached out and grabbed his hand, holding it still. "Here. Watch me."

Stretching out her other hand, a series of string-thin chakra feelers attached to the bed remote, and lifted it so it rested near Takeru's palm. "You can still use chakra, I assume? Focus it at the very tips of your fingers—use your fingernails as your focus point, if you have to—and then mentally attach them to what you want to move, and pull. Shouldn't be too hard for you."

"What?"

"Wiggling around like some sorta spastic just makes you harder to look at." She stepped away from the bed and crossed her arms. "I hate pathetic people."

The silence that followed, at least on Takeru's end, was confused.

She sighed, and continued. "Look, if you can't fend for yourself, then you aren't even worth my time. If you can't figure out even this technique by the time I come back then you really are pathetic."

"Who says I can't keep you from coming back?" Takeru had the remote firmly in his hand, by that point.

She smiled again, but it seemed she wasn't mocking him. This time. "Don't kid yourself. I'll be back, cripple."

She left before Takeru could press the button.

Takeru stewed for a while, in confusion and anger at the strange encounter. The absolute presumption of that girl. Her arrogance was poisonous.

…and effective. Before long, Takeru's curiosity got the better of him.

He didn't want to be seen as worthless, after all. Even to a shrew like her.

He set the call remote on his lap, as far out of reach as he could manage without pain. He then held out his right hand, concentrating chakra in his palm, then his fingers. All he had to do was send that chakra out and attach it to the things he wanted to move, right?

It didn't work immediately, and it frustrated him. He was used to the quick adoption of techniques—what he had once considered his birthright, his natural genius—and attributed the failure to his body's present state.

What was it she had said? Concentrating on his fingernails?

He gave it a try.

And something was set forth from his hands, but it was not chakra.

The shadow of his hand, soft and blue on his lap, began to stretch and shift, creeping towards the remote.

Takeru immediately jerked his hand away, before the wretched little tentacles could wrap around the target and bring it to him.

He knew that technique.

That was not his father.

The girl couldn't possibly have known that this was going to happen, could she? Why else would she egg him on like that?

Takeru's body ached, and he slept to keep from thinking, pulled along by the gentle breath of summoned pain medicine.

Shikake was back the next day, wearing an identical expression of indifferent amusement, her hands in her pockets. "Well, cripple? How'd it go?"

Takeru, at that moment, was sitting up in bed, half-awake. He had been counting the bricks in the wall across from his window, for lack of anything else to do.

The girl's intrusion was not exactly welcome, but it was better than boredom. "If you're feeling satisfied, you shouldn't be. Your instructions were all wrong."

"My instructions?" She walked further in. "I told you exactly how to do it. You're just a crappy student."

"A student is only as good as his teacher." Takeru's gaze seared sideways. "Show me how to do it again. One demonstration wasn't enough."

She shrugged. "If you say so. Pay attention." Once more, she put her hand out and the shining blue threads of her chakra attached to the corners of the remote, and lifted it into the air. "What didn't you understand about it?"

"I focused my chakra in my fingernails and it—didn't work." Takeru refused to give her the satisfaction of his embarrassment, if she had really meant for the shadows to move instead.

"That's awfully specific." She was playing with the remote, rotating the corners back and forth as she wiggled her fingers. "Y'mind showing me?"

"No. Show me how to do it correctly and then I'll try."

"Sounds like someone needs a diaper change." She paused, and then smirked. "Wait, do you actually have to wear a diaper? I mean, since it's pretty obvious you can't get to the bathroom on your own."

"I have a catheter." And until he regained enough function in his legs to walk, that was how it was going to stay, to Takeru's discomfort.

"Hm. Well at least you don't have to sit in your own shit all day." She returned to fiddling with the call remote. "Still, you're outright pissy today. Calm down."

Takeru kept his eyes down, paired with a scowl. "Surprising as it may sound to you, but I don't exactly like being seen as useless…"

"What makes you think that's surprising? You've kind of got a reputation as a wonder boy, Uchiha genius, yadda yadda." She paused. "Well, had."

Takeru looked up at her, and lifted a hand, concentrating his chakra. If he could get that remote out of her hands…

But he saw his shadow moving across the blanket, and pulled it back in, hoping she hadn't seen.

Apparently, she had. She blinked her sleepy eyes, then shook her head. "Okay, I see what the problem is. You're focusing on the target too much. Not your chakra. F'you focus on the target then you'll just send out whatever the hell you have in you without precision and you won't be able to attach anything."

Takeru sorted through his words. "You could have mentioned that the first time."

"I could have, but… I figured that a great Uchiha genius would be able to figure at least that out." Her chakra-threads retracted at that moment, sending the remote into her palm with a plastic slap. "I mean, come on, it's not like I'm asking you to move a mountain or anything."

"Sure."

She sat down at the edge of his bed, this time, foregoing the chair. "I get the feeling that this thing here is too much of a distraction for you." She wiggled the remote at him, then placed it in her lap. "So… let's try something easier. Something you're not so fixated on, hm?"

Takeru didn't say anything, just tilting his head slightly, watching as she dug through the pockets of her green jacket.

She produced a ballpoint pen. The cap was chewed-on. "This'll do." She put the pen down on Takeru's lap. "Move the pen, but keep the focus on your hands. After all, this pen means as little to you as… I dunno, whatever the hell you don't care about. So it'll be easier to concentrate on what you need to do."

A chuff of air escaped Takeru's lips—did he actually laugh? Shikake didn't react, so he composed himself. "All right. What do I attach to?"

"Don't even think about it. Just focus on your hands, cripple."

The little insult tapped at his gut, so Takeru firmed his face, and focused.

They practiced for the better part of the afternoon, Shikake coaching him with a surprisingly effective mix of sarcasm and advice.

After an hour, Takeru managed to successfully produce a host of chakra-strings, but he fumbled once he reached the pen.

"Okay, when it comes to moving things, that's when you focus on the target." Shikake extended a hand in demonstration. "I told you that the threads are basically an extension of you, right? They can move in any direction. It's your hand that's still moving the pen, so visualize that or whatever."

Two hours in, and he'd managed to lift the pen. And in the third hour, when the sun was much lower in the sky, he was able to take the cap off the pen and place it on the desk by the door.

By then, Takeru's face was shiny with sweat, and his body ached like it did after a session of physical therapy.

But unlike those wretched sessions, where he was maneuvered and handled like an infant, Takeru felt like he'd actually succeeded something, and for the first time in a while, he felt satisfied, maybe even proud.

And Shikake was smiling. "Yeah, that's a pretty good job. Though I expected you to be at this level this morning."

"Shut up." He wet his lips, then smirked. "I didn't even know the basics, then."

"Fair enough." With her own threads, she took the cap of the pen off the desk and returned it to the pen. "Keep practicing. This ain't nothing so far. You're still pretty useless."

"I won't be for long."

He was beginning to tell when her smiles were in kindness or mockery. "Keep at it with the pen or whatever. I'll be back."

She put the pen and the remote by his hand before leaving, and left without another word or gesture.