Author's Note
September 2024. Swamped with school now. Still trying to come up with a good writing schedule.
Chapter 63
Katiya (one month later, approximate time: 7-something in the morning)
"Miss Katiya, thank you for meeting with me on such short notice," Lord Senior Ebizo told her from where he was sitting at his office desk. Katiya, seated across from him and Gaara standing behind. Gaara, accompanying her as he did on most days.
"Erusa not here?" Katiya asked in a dry monotone, noticing the aforementioned's absence immediately. The meeting today wasn't like her usual monthly check-ins with the councilor or her associates.
"No, I'm afraid not," Senior Ebizo told her. "She unfortunately has other matters to attend to today."
Gaara crossed his arms and Katiya leaned back in her seat, eyebrow raised. They both figured Ebizo would tell them why they were called into the office suddenly and without Erusa's awareness.
Ebizo cleared his throat. "The scouts we had sent out have arrived back, Miss Katiya," Senior Ebizo informed her. "With that, we've completed the investigations into the information you've given us. Specifically, the ones regarding the bases of Orochimaru's within the Land of Wind."
"Does this mean… ?"
Senior Ebizo was already shaking his head. "Unfortunately, the release of your chakra suppression bands and removal of your chakra collar requires approval from the head of the foreign intelligence division who has yet to be informed of our meeting today."
That was, Senior Erusa had yet to be informed of their meeting today. Neither Katiya nor Gaara spoke as they processed the potential implications.
"However, I've called you both here to discuss a request from Konohagakure for a joint mission," Senior Ebizo continued. "Per our alliance, we had sent Konoha copies of the information you supplied us on Otogakure and they sent back their own information on Lord Orochimaru and his operations. They're now specifically requesting your presence, Miss Katiya. As such, I intend to allow you to assemble a team of your choosing to accompany you."
Katiya narrowed her eyes, trying to mentally parse out why she wouldn't be just sent with an ANBU following. "ANBU?" she asked in a single word.
"Would not be sent out with you in order to not strain diplomatic relations. After all, we don't want the active Suna ANBU members to be seen as a threat to the Konoha-nin they intend to send on the joint mission," Ebizo said tactfully.
"Is it a combat mission?" Katiya asked.
Ebizo pursed his lips. "Konoha seems to have the understanding you were one of our active shinobi before defecting to Oto when we were allied, now rejoining back with us. Therefore, they likely will not be forcing you back to Konoha for their own interrogation given that doing so to an active Suna-nin under the alliance terms is unlawful. Instead, I believe they will be true to their word in that the mission will be a standard joint mission, perhaps a B-rank as Konoha wants aid in ridding an area of Oto-nin."
Katiya's eyebrow shot off her forehead. It was standard operating procedure to kill rogues above jonin rank and imprison rogues of chunin rank or lower, her being one of Suna's rogue-nin, a convenient lie by omission explaining her status in house arrest. Katiya didn't bother to ask why the choice not to clarify her status as nothing more than an Oto-nin now defecting to Suna.
"What about my contracts." One of them stated she couldn't leave Suna under penalty of death and it was a very convenient way to legally kill her had she forgotten about them.
"Already taken care of," Ebizo told her, taking out a newly written contract that annulled the past offending one. She now couldn't leave Suna unless on a Suna-supervised mission. Not even a Suna jonin-supervised mission.
Stretching his authority, Katiya mentally noted at the display.
"Consider this a probationary mission," Senior Ebizo said kindly. "And as it is a combat mission, you would be allowed to use whatever force you deem necessary as with your mission teammates, whoever you may choose."
"My siblings," Gaara volunteered instantly, knowing Katiya knew few other Suna-nin.
Katiya blinked, shaking her head. She was a liability on a combat mission with her chakra suppression bands and with that damned collar still on. She said as much to Gaara, "Gaara, wait. I can't. I can't use chakra. If I join you on a mission, I'd only get in the way and drag the whole team down."
She turned back to Senior Ebizo. "You can't expect me to go on a combat mission without being able to use chakra. Paid or not, it's a—" She cut herself off. A suicide mission for her, she would have said. Katiya put a hand over her mouth before letting out a slow exhale. "Never mind," she decided. "I'll take the mission."
Gaara spared her a worried glance but Ebizo nodded sagely at her assent. "I have the tentative details from Konoha for you here. It'll just take a few days to get word back to them and formalize the mission assignment," Senior Ebizo told the pair.
Gaara (approximate time: 7:20 AM)
Suicide mission, Gaara knew Katiya was going to say. They walked side by side back to Yashamaru's house, past the distant wing of the Kazekage compound he stayed in for much of his genin career after the former died. He didn't know if Katiya had acquiesced because it was, in her eyes, a suicide mission or in spite of it being a suicide mission.
Gaara flicked his eyes to Katiya as they silently walked. He'd have to keep an eye on her. Remind her that he was there for her.
Katiya (approximate time: 7-something AM)
Katiya walked back to her room in… what was Yashamaru's house. She closed the door as she entered.
A joint mission with Konoha. Itachi had warned her not to go to Konoha lest she be tracked for her eyes, the visual product of the Uchiha's genetic kekkei genkai. But she had gone there. The one time after her battle with Gaara to return that Rock Lee character to his home for medical treatment. And nothing had really happened, even if the invisible chakra barrier wall Konoha reportedly had logged her chakra as a new entry.
With the fact that she couldn't even activate her Sharingan with the chakra collar or risk paralyzation, maybe if she were to waltz into Konoha and even proclaim herself to be an Uchiha, people would think she was a lying nut job instead of believing her. Perhaps that was the reason why Itachi had been so willing to let her exist as a lone Shiratori with the miraculous Sharingan. She couldn't even activate the full thing.
Itachi, Katiya thought to herself on that same train of thought. She wanted to wonder what happened to him but at the same time didn't. Another one of those people she tried to help only to abandon. His brother was likely in Oto now, as if by having traded places with her.
Katiya entertained that thought before attempting to resume her gear consolidation. Except looking at her scrolls of gear, she remembered she had sealed all of the medical information she had gathered on Itachi into scrolls, attempting to treat him, but had since burnt the scroll the information was sealed into. She let out a groan, rubbing her face. Why couldn't her mind just let her rest? Any damage to a Storage Scroll, rendered its contents irretrievable. Burn damage until ash, definitely damage. There wasn't anything Katiya could have done to try and regain her lost notes—so why—?
Katiya laid back on the floor she was sitting on and covered her face. Itachi was always concerned about his brother and she remembered the questions he asked the last time they saw each other. Whether or not his brother, Sasuke Uchiha, would die of the same disease he was dying from.
With L—Orochimaru's—curse mark on, definitely not. Built out of Fuma DNA, the DNA of the Uchiha's Sharingan-less sister clan, it was specifically formulated to bond and enact changes to Uchiha DNA and chakra network to support a chakra transplant. And like a lysogenic virus, it only became lytic or activated to external stimuli like chakra interaction, otherwise remaining hidden in the genome. There, ironically countering Itachi's brother's potentially diseased Uchiha DNA, unlike a typical lysogenic virus infecting typically healthy DNA.
But if once removed like Itachi had wanted for his brother… ?
Katiya mentally wrote out what she remembered of her experiments on Fuma DNA. The curse mark itself, which held Orochimaru's chakra transplant, was distinct from the curse mark formula that would have been circulated throughout a body via the bloodstream. So if curse mark removal entailed only the removal of Orochimaru's chakra, which was centered on the injection site as the visible mark, the changes the physical formula made to the DNA would remain. And there was no way Katiya could possibly think of to extract the jutsu formula or its changes made to the DNA.
She interlaced her fingers at the back of her head. It meant Sasuke would be illness free. With or without the curse mark. Guilt-ridden curiosity absolved. A normal lysogenic virus' changes to the genetic code would rarely be passed to the gametes, the sex cells, but the curse mark formula's genetic changes could hypothetically diverge from a lysogenic virus in that regard. She never had the chance to study that though anyways, though. Katiya got up from the floor. Curiosity absolved, Katiya repeated to herself. There was always the chance the Uchiha brat was only a carrier and that mating with someone healthy would just produce healthy offspring anyways.
Gaara (approximate time: 8:00 AM)
"Can you take laundry down to the Kazekage compound? Our water bill is too high," Katiya told him, carrying the week's unwashed laundry and several familiar armor bits. Gaara's lone income was more than enough to pay the bills but that was besides the point in her mind. Her income couldn't.
Luckily, the Kazekage compound had their own washing machines, and while the machines themselves were paid for out of pocket by the Kazekage or his family, the water used to run them was paid for as part of the utilities cost of the building management. Gaara's mind flicked back to the washing machine and dryer set that had been moved into his deserted wing of the compound when he was similarly moved there. He imagined Temari and Kankuro got a new washing machine and dryer set after he had moved in, himself getting their old one. A sticky note of instructions that looked like they had been written by a young Temari, posted in the corner.
Gaara narrowed his eyes at the armor Katiya was carrying and hadn't handed over. A black flak vest, grey forearm and shin guards, black knee pads, and a splotched neck guard to cover where the flak vest's panel didn't. At least he couldn't see her balaclava bundled in her arms.
"This is the old gear I got from Oto," she told him at his glance. "It's still in pretty good condition so I think I'll wear it on the mission."
Gaara found himself suppressing a growl that was not of Shukaku's origin. "I can order you better armor from the catalogs," he said steadily.
"It'll probably take too long to arrive," Katiya countered. "Besides, the gear being from Oto might help with the reconnaissance."
Gaara frowned and then moved to exit the building, laundry in tow.
…
He shook the laundry into the washing machine and set it to run. Lots of long sleeves and trousers, the civilian attire Katiya had taken to wearing over the course of her house arrest. A few dark red bodysuits of his own from when he stayed in Yashamaru's abode. The washing machine running, he left to go find his brother.
…
"Do you have any spare genin flak vests," Gaara asked after Kankuro opened up the door. "Adult size, medium?"
"Uhh. I might, yeah. Why?"
"Katiya currently intends to wear her Oto gear on an upcoming mission," Gaara said flatly.
Kankuro allowed for confusion to flick past his face. He only remembered Katiya being in house arrest.
"We were called to Lord Ebizo's office," Gaara explained. "They aren't lifting the chakra suppression bands or collar, but Konoha has requested a joint mission. Specifically calling for her."
"Huh. I might?" Kankuro replied, taking in the information and then referring to the possibility of him having a spare flak vest.
Kankuro (approximate time: 9:00 AM)
Kankuro drowned one of his flak vests in a bucket of blue-green dye, pushing it in and out until the color seeped into the tightly woven fabric. Somewhat difficult, given the padding of the vest. But the maneuver worked. And the dye worked on the flak vests' treated material. He had checked.
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see a faraway look of reminiscence in Gaara's eyes as he took the vest out to hang to dry between his puppets, recently coated with a specialized oil-based resin for reinforcement. A plastic drop cloth on the floor under where his puppets hung.
"So why blue-green?" Kankuro asked when he was done, admiring his work.
"Katiya used to have a vest that color… I remember it from the first day we met. She had told me she kept it since she lived in the Land of Waves with her family. It was… a somewhat common color there, I think. And a memento. I want to remind her of that. Especially after so long living under Orochimaru," Gaara told Kankuro.
Kankuro smiled to himself. The sentiment was a far cry from the demonic Gaara he used to know.
Katiya (approximate time 1:00 PM)
Gaara trimmed his hair himself, in front of the bathroom mirror of Yashamaru's old house, another hand-mirror held up with his sand so he could see his back. Just as he used to do it when he was younger, we could note. Only then he had Yashamaru holding the mirror, unable to touch him in his later years. Yashamaru, having been the one to teach him how to cut his hair himself and Katiya, since then having taught him the control to grasp the mirror firmly without shattering it. Short tufts of his red hair fell to the floor.
Missions outside the village could take some time and so she had surmised he didn't feel it was prudent to wait until after for the haircut.
"Do you want help with the back?" her quiet voice asked him from the bathroom door's threshold. He had left the door open in case she had needed the room.
Gaara's sand put down the hand-mirror it was holding as he turned to the door and the arm that was holding the scissors found itself lowered. Gaara nodded nearly imperceptibly. While he could cut it himself, he didn't feel it right to tell Katiya off when it was perhaps the first time she was verbally offering to do something just for him since she had come back after serving Orochimaru.
She entered the bathroom, gently taking the scissors from him.
"... How short do you want it?" Katiya asked, taking a comb from Gaara's other hand.
"The same length as I have it around my ears."
"Mm," Katiya hummed in reply. She slowly brought the comb to Gaara's hair, exhaling as she realized his sand was not objecting to her proximity.
She proceeded to softly comb his hair downwards. "I remember when I was younger, the hair tickling the top of my ear on my shorter side would always annoy me," she said, referring to her lopsided bob of hair.
Gaara flicked his eyes to Katiya's in the mirror but Katiya was too concentrated to notice. He knew the significance of her hair—how it was stuck at its length in perpetuity after her mother's performance of an experimental Life Extension Jutsu on her—that jutsu reverting her body and hair back to how it was when it was performed as she slept, so long as the damage was not overwhelming. She had told him that much, after the genjutsu attack on her.
"I used to cut my hair every day," she said now as she began to carefully trim Gaara's hair, the sand seeming to allow that as well. "One day, I even shaved myself bald on that side out of annoyance."
She combed out the loose hair she cut, letting it flutter to the floor and cutting again. "After a while, I gave up on it and then got used to it," she said, still referring to her hair. She had gotten used to Oto and the number of people she had cut down. Her hand holding the scissor started to shake. A thin layer of sand seemed to have dusted over the bare stretch of neck under Gaara's hair but then she blinked her thoughts away and the sand disappeared. Her hand steadied somewhat to cut again. "You seem to like your hair a bit longer though," she remarked.
If Gaara noticed Katiya's hand shaking as it cut his hair, he did not say. "As I got older, Yashamaru noticed the sand wouldn't allow him near so haircuts became more infrequent," he explained. "I also had grown used to the length."
Katiya carefully set the scissors down on the vanity. They both knew the reason why Yashamaru wasn't allowed around Gaara in his later years. "I'm done," she told Gaara.
He ruffled his hair with a hand, his sand rising up from the gourd he brought into the bathroom and sweeping off the hair from his shoulders. He turned around to face Katiya, whose hands were still shaking, clasped at her front.
(It will be alright), she felt Gaara wordlessly telling her. She briefly closed her eyes and then opened them to meet Gaara's.
It will be alright, she told herself.
Katiya (one week later, approximate time: 7:35 in the morning)
Katiya left her room, her familiar white knapsack crammed with Storage Scrolls over one shoulder, dressed almost entirely in Oto gear except for a pouched belt she had to tie around her hips. She had opted not to leave anything personal of hers in the house while she was away. Everything Gaara had already unsealed, she left, and everything else she planned to carry. While Storage Scroll contents were irreparable if damaged, she wasn't keen on letting the ANBU rifle through her things while on a mission. And, it was hardly her first battle carrying everything she owned.
Gaara stood from his seat in the dining room, rereading the annotated mission briefing Katiya intended to relay to his siblings en route to the rendezvous point with Konoha.
"Ready to go?" Katiya asked.
"In one moment," Gaara told her before retreating to his room.
Whereas Katiya intended to bring along the contents of an entire house and half a laboratory in her pack, Gaara carried only what was in his pockets and hip pouch and the giant sand gourd he habitually carried on his back.
Katiya wondered what else he intended to bring until he came out, carrying a blue-green bundle in his arms. Gaara held it aloft, arm outstretched in front of Katiya. A vest, the make and model of a readily available genin flak vest. Custom dyed, the uneven dye pattern suggested.
"Kankuro and I washed it twice to stop the dye from leaching," Gaara said, confirming the custom dye job.
Katiya's eyes widened. Mom, her mind recalled without her bidding. Just like Mom's old…
Gaara saw as thoughts flashed by on her unmasked face.
This isn't how a friendship should be—all I do is leech off people, she thought.
Katiya saw Gaara's brow crinkle in dismay at her hesitation.
… Then I'll have to live my life so that I may repay him, she countered.
"Thank you. Gaara," she said haltingly.
"When a monster doesn't kill you, you thank it," she remembered mentally telling him before.
Katiya closed her eyes momentarily.
She pulled her knapsack off to rest on the floor and began unbuckling her current flak vest. She shrugged it off and took the new vest from Gaara. The vest was thick, but less baggy than her black Oto flak vest, thanks to more quality construction. Pocketless, but Oto's singular navel pocket was never of any use to her anyways. She zipped the new vest up, all the way. The vest's neck panel surprisingly covered the entirety of her neck. She pulled off the splotched neck guard she had worn under her Oto flak vest. She re-tied her pouched belt so that it sat on top of the vest rather than under like her previous one.
It was fairly good armor even if it lacked shoulder pads like the standard chunin flak vests from Suna.
How do I look? Katiya mentally asked when she finally met his eyes after donning the new attire.
The barest hint of a smile on Gaara's usually stoic face was Gaara's reply.
He isn't a monster. And neither am I, she told herself. Neither am I.
Katiya tried to smile back.
