Chapter 13: The Weight of a Civilian's Tears
In which Hana deals with separation.
Hana sat back, letting her head drift below the water, wishing the heat of the onsen could let her forget her worries and drown away her thoughts. Time in this resort town had done her well, but her mind was still occupied by Tenzo.
She wished he could have joined them. She kept picturing his tired eyes. She didn't like how overworked he was. Even though he'd been in town the week after the wedding, his duties kept him extremely busy. They managed to have dinner together with her Obaa-san, a precious moment among chaos, but any other time together was minimal, and in all of those instances he seemed subdued. Now, he was back to who knows where, doing who knows what.
She thought about bringing her concerns up with Kakashi when she got back to Konoha. Not that the Hokage needed her input on how to do his job, but she wasn't sure whether Tenzo would actually request time off unless Kakashi offered it first. Kakashi might even need to persuade him, before Tenzo would willingly accept taking time away from his duty as a shinobi.
This was an aspect of dating a shinobi that Hana had not been prepared for. Duty for him was primary, first and foremost. She thought she understood, but then she realized what it actually meant. She would forever be competing with the village for Tenzo's time, attention, and care. He had warned her about this, hadn't he? But it still left an ache in her heart. Would she forever be secondary to Konoha?
"What are you thinking about, Hana-chan? You look distressed."
Her grandmother walked into the area of the hotspring, stepping into the warm water. Her hair was perfectly coiffed to protect it from the water, appearing like a gray crown of glory atop her head. The day was slow, with few people at the inn, and right now they were the only two enjoying the onsen.
"I'm thinking about relationships…and priorities…"
"You're thinking about Yamato. You've been thinking about him all week. I may be old, but I'm not blind."
"I know you have thoughts, Obaa-san. Tell me what you think about him."
Kame eased herself onto a stone bench below the water. "I think he's unsure."
Hana let out a groan and slipped under the water again, letting out her breath in a series of bubbles.
"I knew it," she said when she came up, wiping the spring water from her eyes.
Her grandmother chuckled. "He's not unsure about you, child. He's unsure of himself. The man hasn't thought about romance seriously for about half a dozen years. I think he actively avoided it, until he met you."
Hana frowned. "How do you know?"
"Because he told me."
"At the wedding?"
"No. He came by during the week while you were at work, and we had a long chat together."
Hana stared at her grandmother. "When were you going to tell me that?!" she exclaimed.
Her grandmother ignored her outburst. "You found a good man, Hana."
"Obaa-san! What did he tell you?!"
"Many things, but most of all his complicated history. He's not sure he's worthy of a partner, because he doesn't want to burden someone else with his curse."
"I don't care about his genetics. I've told him that before."
"No, but he does." Kame shook her head. "And I'm not sure he knew how much until he met you, little rose."
"So what do I do?"
"Be patient with him."
Hana was good with patience, but on this matter she wasn't entirely thrilled with the prospect of waiting. "...But what if he walks away?"
"Is that what you're afraid of?"
Hana merely nodded, drifting down below the surface of the water again.
Kame sighed, watching her granddaughter try to hide herself from her own worrisome thoughts. "He sees you as I do," she said softly, knowing that Hana would not hear her. "A brilliant rose worth cultivating and caring for. But I fear he'll have to lose you before he can allow himself to keep you."
Hundreds of kilometers away, Tenzo felt his body growing stiff. He'd been holding the same position for hours, watching the entrance to an old abandoned house, when he saw the door creak open. Orochimaru appeared.
Tenzo's senses went on high alert, and he radio signaled to his squadmates that the Sannin was on the move. Orochimaru was carrying a day pack, the sign that he was leaving his laboratory for at least a few hours on one of the many short trips he took to replenish supplies.
His trips could last hours or days…they would not know until they followed him…but regardless, it would be enough time for Tenzo to explore the new passageway in the underground compound Orochimaru was building.
Kakashi had been correct in that regard - Orochimaru was visiting and revisiting all of his old hideouts, presumably collecting bits and pieces from old experiments, equipment that had already served him well. Whenever he returned from these visits, the rugged location around the abandoned house expanded, as if Orochimaru had plans to build more structures and settle here. Another member of Tenzo's team had a hunch that Orochimaru was planning to reestablish Otogakure, starting with this laboratory.
Today, Tenzo would be exploring said laboratory. Just as the outside of the house expanded, so did the network of tunnels beneath the structure. For the past months, Tenzo had been mapping out this underground structure to determine just what the legendary Sannin was up to with his newly found freedom.
Tenzo waited another hour, and when there was no sign that Orochimaru was coming back, he made his way into the structure. The main floor and upper floor were drab, and only for appearance. Deep below the structure was where Tenzo intended to go. He found the trap door and entered quietly down a set of stairs, descending into a cold darkness lit by subtle green flames.
The corridor he entered reminded him of the first mission he went on with Team Seven…the fiasco of the Tenchi Bridge Mission. He shook his head. The mission served its purpose, even if it was ultimately a failure. He didn't like dwelling on his failures, but they seemed to be ever present these days.
The new corridor stretched east of the main one. Tenzo pulled out a notebook and added this new passageway to his growing map. It was freshly dug, and he followed it to a large chamber and entered the room at the end. What he found there nearly made him recoil.
The room was a fully furnished operating room, and a white Zetsu lay exposed on a large table in the center. The body was in the beginning stages of dissection. Surgical blades, gauze, and jars with cell samples littered the rest of the table, as if Orochimaru had just been in the midst of the procedure when he decided to leave again.
Around the room, shelves of medicinal herbs and other specimens lined the walls. When and how Orochimaru managed to get furniture down here, Tenzo had no idea. The man must have been collecting more with summoning scrolls than they first imagined.
Tenzo got over his initial displeasure at seeing the white Zetsu and measured out the room. He made the necessary marks on his map before turning his attention to the other doors in the room. There were two in addition to the one he entered through. The first held a closet, full of animal specimens, but the second was locked. Tenzo extended a plug of wood from his finger and fit it to the keyhole, melding his body to the locking mechanism and entering with ease. On the other side, he found an office, or, perhaps a personal library was a better way to describe it. There was a desk in the center of the room, but bookshelves surrounded all four walls.
An open notebook lay on the desk, and Tenzo noticed details about current experiments. Orochimaru was studying the cells of the white Zetsu, trying to understand their regenerative power. Even now, without life in the body, the cells were not quite dead.
With another glance at the bookshelves, Tenzo realized that all of the books…every single one…were lab notebooks with details of Orochimaru's lifetime of experience. No wonder the Sannin was visiting all of his old laboratories and hideouts. He was collecting his life's work and compiling it here.
The collection of experiments was vast, and it almost turned Tenzo's stomach, knowing that many of these were experiments on humans. A twist of adrenaline sped through his system, making his heart race. This room was exactly what he'd been searching for since Kakashi put him on this mission. His own history might be contained in one of these many records. Months had gone by, but he'd been patient enough to let Orochimaru collect all of this information in a single space.
Now that the moment was here, he hesitated. Dare he flip open a page into his unknown past? Would there be information that shed light on his family, his parents, his original clan, and his identity? The person he was before he became Kinoe…before he chose Tenzo…before he was assigned Yamato. Would that missing person be held somewhere in all these pages? He did not know what kind of long dormant emotion these notes would rip open.
But then, he thought of Hana. Like a beacon, he pictured her face in his mind. He closed his eyes, feeling a tugging sensation stir in his chest at the thought of her.
'I'll tell you what we do,' she had said. 'We try.'
The week after Naruto's wedding, he had checked in with Sakura to see if there were results from the tests she'd performed on his cells.
"It's not promising," Sakura had told him. She confirmed that the mutation was present in his germline cells, meaning that whatever his cells contained could be passed on to his offspring, if he could even successfully have them. That had taken him back to square one in his worry over the future.
The only bright spot was that Tsunade was also there that day, and she grew intrigued by Tenzo's request, too. She had him provide another set of cell samples, but Tenzo did not know what types of tests she intended to run.
I'm afraid, he admitted to himself.
Long ago, he'd convinced himself that he could protect the people he cared about. During the war, however, he'd failed when he was abducted, and while his friends ultimately rescued him, he felt as lost as he had been in his days with Root. He didn't know if he could protect Hana, and that loss of his confidence, that lack of self-assurance, it terrified him.
"I have to try," he whispered into the stillness.
Tenzo reached for a notebook and pulled it from the shelf, finding the pages meticulously dated. He searched until he found one that spanned the timeframe between his birth and his rebirth into Root. The cover was dusty, as if it had not been touched in decades. He hesitated, feeling like he was about to take a plunge into icy water. It was now or never.
He took a deep breath, opened to the first page, and began to read.
"Yamato-taicho, Orochimaru is making his way back to the hideout."
Tenzo heard the voice crackle over his radio, but he was lost in thought. He was sitting cross legged on the floor, a series of notebooks spread out around him. Each detailed a year of his life that he did not remember.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, Tenzo wasn't sure which, the details of who his family was and what clan he came from were still missing. In this regard Orochimaru's lab notes were lacking. If those records existed, they did not exist here. Tenzo did learn that Danzo, of all people, had helped Orochimaru collect infants for his experiments. Sixty. A sample set considered larger than Orochimaru had originally hoped for, according to his own handwriting.
Tenzo could narrow down what experiment number he was, given that he was the only one that survived. He also knew definitively who Yukimi's brother was…the boy from the Iburi clan whose name he adopted as his own.
"Yamato-taicho?" the voice crackled again.
"Message received," he replied. "I'm on my way out."
He gathered up the notebooks to place them back on the shelf, but then he paused. Would Orochimaru really miss these?
Tenzo replaced most of the notebooks but kept one, simply creating a wooden replica to fill its space on the shelf. Then, he left the lair.
Back at camp, he pulled the notebook out and continued reading. In the coming days, he would devour the contents of this notebook. He would go back into the laboratory to pull other notebooks containing relevant experiments and tangential research. He would learn about the planning and forethought that Orochimaru had put into his experiments. Tenzo had always pictured him as a cruel scientist, slapping together human cells, curse marks, and DNA simply to see what kind of self-serving knowledge he could gain. In the majority of cases, he was. His early work, however, was framed by deep thought, thorough testing of hypotheses, and sample experiments in animal and summoning animal models.
These animal models had been no less severe than the tests Orochimaru would later do with human bodies, but they were met with more success, and they'd given Orochimaru every indication that the procedure would work on humans. The younger, the higher the rate of success. Clearly, the hypothesis had been wrong. A 1.7% success rate in humans was not quite the 64% he'd seen in animals.
Interestingly, Orochimaru had also bred these animals after introducing the mutation, but the genetics of it all and the notes and experiments that came after just confused Tenzo. There was still no guarantee that anything found in these animals was true of humans, but Tenzo gathered all he could, copying records and designating particular DNA markers that Orochimaru had found. He didn't know much about biology, but he could take this information to Sakura and Tsunade and see what they thought. And then? Then he might have the confidence to approach Hana.
It gave him hope.
"Send me a letter as soon as you get home."
"Obaa-san, I'll be fine. The roads have been much safer recently, and shinobi patrol these paths often."
Kame smiled kindly at her granddaughter. Something about her had changed since she started dating that man, Yamato. Whether it was a new found confidence, a lack of fear, or a deeper trust of others, Kame found it suited Hana. The fear and anxiety the girl carried was starting to vanish. "Just don't let this old woman worry."
"I won't, Obaa-san. The weather is perfect today, and I'm sure I'll make it in good time."
Indeed, the morning sun was shining brilliantly, and a cool breeze drifted down the path leading back to Konoha. Hana was thankful for her time with her grandmother, but she was also looking forward to going home.
The route back to Konoha was straightforward, but a long day's walk. Hana, despite her confidence in front of her grandmother and her trust in the patrols, still felt apprehensive, having never gone this far on her own since before the war. She fingered the necklace Tenzo had given her, trusting in his promise, and found herself enjoying a moment's quiet solitude in nature.
Her morning walk was rather enjoyable. There were many spring flowers blooming along the roadside, and she passed a number of travelers going to her grandmother's town for a day's soak in the hot springs. All of them were civilians, and Hana's initial unease began to drift away.
Around noon, her stomach growled, and she soon found a large stone by the side of the road that would make for a perfect bench. Dropping her backpack to the ground, she pulled out a bento box her grandmother prepared for her and began to enjoy lunch.
A few bites in, she paused and took a deep breath, feeling the solitude settle around her. It felt unusually quiet, and she realized she hadn't passed any people for the last couple of hours, despite the early morning traffic.
On the trip from Konoha, Hana and her grandmother had also seen at least three shinobi patrols along the route, but today there had been no presence of guards. She looked up; sometimes the leaves in the trees betrayed a false wind that signaled the presence of shinobi, but even that was oddly calm.
A gnawing in the pit of her stomach gave way to anxiety as she realized, too late, that the quiet was not natural. Not even the birds were chirping. It was like the eerie calm before a storm. She sent down her bento box and reached for her necklace, wondering if she should keep moving forward or go back to her grandmother.
She took the necklace off, contemplating swallowing the seed. But what if her panic was a false alarm? She closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths to calm her rising fear. No need to be afraid, she thought, and her grip on the necklace relaxed.
"It seems she's become aware of our presence."
Hana yelped and jumped up, fumbling with the locket. It flew from her hands and landed at the feet of a massive man that she had not noticed before. His face was covered with a mask, concealing all but his eyes, and his forehead protector had the symbol of a village she was not familiar with. She couldn't understand how he had moved with such stealth. She had not heard him at all.
"That's her," another voice came. Hana turned around, finding three more shinobi behind her. The first man clasped his hand around her mouth tightly, just as she tried to scream, and muffled her voice.
"She's not a fighter," the voice said again. Hana's frightened eyes searched for the sound of the voice. They fell upon a man she vaguely recognized. "Knock her out."
In the briefest of moments, the hand lifted from her mouth, but before she could do anything, the same hand hit her across the top of her head and everything went black.
"Do you think we've covered a wide enough area?"
"The entire village of Konoha is in a downpour right now. I'd say we've covered a wide enough area."
"Konoha is known for tracking though."
"Not even ninja hounds could work in this weather. Shizuku honed his technique in Ame. This rain will have washed away any scents, but we should keep moving all the same."
The first thing Hana felt was discomfort. Her head was pounding, and she was lying on a hard, cold surface. She was also freezing.
"You think they'll come after her?"
"They'll give an initial attempt, but I'm certain it won't last long. She's not that important to the village."
"No friends?"
"All civilians."
"I thought you said she is close with the wood-style user?"
"Yes, but he just left the village for a long-term mission. You disposed of her things?"
"Yes."
Hana became vaguely aware of the voices around her. Some sort of roughspun fabric covered her eyes, and she was gagged. She groaned.
"Looks like she's awake."
Hana felt herself being pulled up. She let out another groan as the pain in her head doubled, like someone was smashing her temples with a rock. She felt nauseous and heaved.
"Take the gag out before she chokes to death."
The bounds around her head were cut, and she choked, dry heaving until some of the pain in her head subsided and her stomach calmed. Her hands were shaking, but they were not tied. She slowly pulled the fabric from her eyes. Soft firelight helped her vision adjust, and she realized they were in a cave somewhere. The sound of pouring rain echoed around them, punctuated by dripping from cracks in the stone. Her breath turned to fog in the air.
There were at least five men in the cave with her, all shinobi, and the leader of the group, the one who she thought she recognized, was seated by the fire.
"Welcome, Ruike Hana," he said with a grin that made a shiver move up her spine. He frowned. "What, you don't recognize me?"
The condescending voice, the steely eyes…Hana knew him, but with the pounding in her head it was hard to know from where. Where else would she have met a shinobi like this?
"I'm disappointed," he said, "we've worked together for so long…but maybe this will help." He pulled off his forehead protector and mussed his hair, and then he put on a more business-like tone. "Yes, Hokage-sama. The price of steel is increasing, so you must understand that these cloud scratchers, as she calls them, are too demanding to build."
The realization hit her like a ton of bricks. Kaede. "You're…a shinobi?!" she asked, panic rising once more.
"And so she notices."
"W-why…?" Hana didn't even know what to ask, she was so confused by the whole turn of events. Kaede…the traveling architect… Why would he kidnap her? What did he want?
"Why?" he repeated, ignoring her confusion. "Because I need your mind. I have a special project that requires your cooperation."
"Y-you could have just asked…" she said in a small voice.
He burst into laughter at that, and the rest of the shinobi joined in. "You're so naive, Hana-chan. If you recall, you're the one who refused my generous offers for your blueprints. This was the only way."
"T-then w-what makes you think I'd h-help you after you kidnap me?"
Kaede leaned forward, his eyes glittering. "What makes you think I'd give you a choice? One way or another, Hana, what's in your brain will be mine. It's up to you whether we do it the hard way, or the easy way."
He put his hands together, forming a series of three quick seals, and before she knew what was happening, vertigo struck and everything went black again.
Kakashi stood in his office, watching the downpour through the window. April showers indeed, but something felt off to him about the way in which the rain fell. It wasn't a sudden thunderstorm, or a typical light spring rain. It was overpowering, torrential, and had not let up for hours. It made him uneasy enough that he had not left his office for bed, and the late hour was only growing later.
A young ANBU appeared in his office, his mask in the shape of an egret.
"You were right, Hokage-sama. Signs of an ambush on the southern road. One set of patrols were taken out. The second patrol found them, seemingly unharmed. They are recovering at the hospital, but they don't remember anything."
Kakashi frowned. Perhaps his hunch was correct…whoever was causing this downpour had considerable chakra and skill. He wondered if they'd chosen this time to attack, given Naruto's absence in light of his honeymoon. There were still a handful of groups operating covertly, despite the shinobi alliance.
"We found this discarded by the roadside. It was buried, but the rain washed it up again."
The ANBU with an egret's mask set an item on Kakashi's desk.
Kakashi turned and found himself staring at a wooden container. "A bento box?" It looked handmade, and the contents were only half eaten, now mixed with mud and water.
"And a necklace." Egret held out his hand, letting a locket of some sort dangle.
Kakashi reached out and inspected it. This item was still caked with mud, but he could still see its detail. It was also made of wood, expertly designed and crafted into the shape of a rose. It was quite the piece. He fiddled with the locket. It opened to reveal a small compartment, where a single seed remained intact. He recognized it as one of Tenzo's tracking seeds, and his stomach dropped as he realized whose it was.
"Shikamaru!" he called loudly. There was no time to spare. The young man popped his head into the office, looking as sleep-deprived as Kakashi felt. "I need at least three patrols, with a tracker or sensory ninja on each team."
Kakashi dismissed the ANBU, and then he bit his thumb and summoned his ninken, giving them a quick brief.
"Kakashi…" Pakkun said, staring out the window. "We'll never track anything in this weather."
"It's chakra rain," he replied calmly. "I doubt the user is far away. This technique is exhausting."
Bisuke turned in a circle and whimpered. "How much time has passed."
"Twelve hours since the rain started. Maybe more."
"Twelve hours, Kakashi?!" Pakkun exclaimed. "Even sniffing out chakra will be difficult if everything is drenched by this."
"Track the source of the rain," he told them. "It can't last forever. And..." Kakashi held out the locket for each of them to sniff. "If you find this scent, follow it."
The dogs left through his window.
Minutes later, Shikamaru walked into the office, followed by three sets of four-man squads. Kakashi was pleased to see Inuzuka Kiba and Akamaru, Yamashiro Aoba, and Hyuga Tokuma. Shikamaru had chosen well.
"A civilian from Konoha has been abducted," he told them. "Her name is Ruike Hana."
"The architect?" Aoba asked.
"You know her?"
"She's friend's with Raido's little sister."
Kakashi nodded. "Go to the point where she was taken and split up. South, east, and west. If you don't find her, bring back any trace of her."
The teams, too, promptly left his office.
Shikamaru lingered, eyeing the locket on the desk.
"What?" Kakashi asked, knowing that the Nara boy's mind for strategy was working as hard as his own.
"That's one of Yamato's seeds."
"Yes."
"Did he give it to her?"
"Yes."
"Hmm."
Shikamaru was thinking the same thing Kakashi was. Yamato only used his tracking seeds under important circumstances, given that each was a clone.
"Do you want me to summon him?" Shikamaru asked.
Kakashi had already asked himself that question. Practically speaking, without the seed, and given how long it would take Yamato to return to the village, his tracking skills would be of no help to them. But Kakashi also knew the girl was close to Yamato's heart, and that made this decision all the more challenging. "No," he said. Not yet. Not until he had answers.
"What about Naruto?"
"Naruto is on his honeymoon. We're not calling him back."
"But if it's urgent, he'd be able to–"
"He'd be able to sense her, I know. But we can't rely on Naruto for everything."
Shikamaru let out a grunt.
"You disagree?" Kakashi asked.
"No," Shikamaru said. "I just don't envy you." He paused. "I'll have messages and hawks ready when you want them."
Kakashi nodded. When Shikamaru left the office, he sat in his chair and put his head in hands. He knew how impossible it would be to track the girl in this weather, but if they moved fast enough, they just might find her.
The timing of all of this was too convenient…the village's strongest ninja were out on missions in the days after Naruto's wedding, and Naruto and Hinata were both somewhere for their extended honeymoon that he wasn't even privy to. He glanced at the drawer in his desk, an envelope marked 'in case of emergency' stashed away in between two books. Hinata had given it to him, just in case he needed to know where they were.
Three raps came at his window, and Seika entered his office, drenched from the downpour.
"Did you find anything?" he asked.
"No. I can't sense anything…the chakra in this rain is overwhelming. Whoever is behind it is a powerful shinobi. It's reminiscent of the constant rains in Amegakure." She walked towards him and picked up the locket on the desk.
"Ruike Hana. The architect," he said, answering the question she didn't ask.
Seika frowned, her mind working quickly. "Why would someone want to abduct her?" she wondered, voicing with curiosity the question on Kakashi's mind. She followed with, "Are you going to summon Yamato?"
"No."
Seika stared at him, surprised. "Kakashi…he should know."
Her quiet reprimand set him on edge. "Not yet. Not until I can give him answers."
She remained quiet, until she reminded him softly, "You came after me."
"That was different."
She looked at him sharply. "Why, because you're the Hokage?"
This question cut him, and he bristled, but he didn't respond to her because he knew she was right. He took liberties and risks that he did not want others to take, not if he had the power to find another way.
"I see what you're doing," she said, looking into his heart in the uncanny way she did, "but matters of the heart defy reason. At least, they did for us."
"I won't call him home without answers," Kakashi repeated firmly.
She sighed, moving back towards the window. "Then you better start finding them. He's going to run out of patience for you one of these days." In the next moment she was gone, disappearing back into the downpour and the darkness and leaving him alone with his thoughts.
"Not Tenzo," Kakashi said to himself quietly. But Seika was right about one thing…he needed to find answers quickly.
In the morning, Namiashi Yuna and Ichiraku Ayame were summoned to the Hokage's office.
"Kakashi-sama…why are we here?"
He turned towards them. "You're both close with Ruike Hana."
Ayame and Yuna glanced at one another, and nodded.
"It seems she's been abducted."
Both women stared at him, unsure if the words he'd just said were real. "...What?" Ayame asked in a small voice.
"There were signs of an ambush on the southern road to Konoha…we found this." He held out his hand. In his palm was a small locket made of wood. The girls recognized it immediately.
"When?!" Yuna exclaimed, reaching out her uninjured hand for the locket.
"We're not sure. The patrols found it late in the night, but the tracks have been washed out by the rain. It's hard to know."
"She was supposed to come back yesterday…" Ayame stated, blinking back tears. "We just assumed she decided to stay with her grandmother for a few more days because of the rain."
"I have three teams out looking for signs of the party who took her."
"But…" Yuna looked out the window. Spring showers had turned to downpours. If Hana was taken yesterday, her trail would be long gone.
"Can you think of any reason why Hana would be the target of a kidnapping? We're trying to determine if this was a targeted abduction or a random one."
Yuna and Ayame looked at one another, shaking their heads. "No."
"What can we do, Kakashi-sama?" Yuna asked, fighting back her own tears.
"Be patient. When we learn more, I'll call on you both. You know her best."
"Can we…?" Ayame began, pointing at the locket, wondering if they could take it.
"Yes. My ninken already know her scent. If there is a trail, they will find it."
Ayame sat in the restaurant, but she couldn't bring herself to open the doors, and none of the prep work she'd managed to do had been done properly. The war was over, so why, oh why did it feel like they were still in the middle of one? She knew not to take her friends for granted, but she never considered that Hana would be taken from her. Not in peacetime. She leaned against the stove and slowly slid to the ground. Hana was gone. Even Kakashi said there was no trail. And what could Ayame do about it? Nothing. What could ramen do to save a friend? Nothing. She could do absolutely nothing. She held the wooden locket that Kakashi had given her tightly to her chest, and silent tears dripped down her face as she let herself feel the weight of yet another loss.
"Damn it!" Yuna cried, kicking a box of kunai in the stockroom of her family's shop. The box spilled onto the floor, the clinking of metal against metal doing nothing to quell her emotions. In her grief over the news about Hana, she had wanted to go to the forge and stoke the fire, to let the heat fuel her anger and her frustration, but her father was there making weapons with her cousin. And even if she could work, what then? Her arm was still healing. She was useless. Her father was right. Her clan was right. She was useless without chakra. Yuna stood in the corner, wishing she could destroy everything in sight. Instead, she started to cry fat, ugly tears. She'd never felt more defeated and more alone.
Half a world away, Hana sat tied to a tree. A piece of bread had been shoved into her bound hands, but it went uneaten. Across the diminishing firelight, a shinobi kept watch over her, his black eyes glittering. She felt a drop of water from the sky, knowing that another downpour was coming. It had not stopped raining since she was taken. She could smell the moisture in the air, the wet wood and earth. She looked up as the water came down, the raindrops hiding the tears that escaped her eyes. The weather would cover their tracks. She hadn't even taken the precaution to swallow the seed, the small lifeline inside the locket Tenzo had given her, and now it, too, was gone. Everything and everyone felt so far away from her right now. She did not know why, or where, they were taking her, but wherever it was, she would be hard to find. She had a sinking feeling inside, because, just like her captors had said, she knew she wasn't special enough for Konoha to keep looking for long.
A/N: We've hit a low point in the story. Oooh but when you're at a low point there's so much room for upward movement, and we won't stay here for long. Thanks for sticking with me.
