| [Aug. 23rd, 2014|03:39 am] |
Time and practice had taught Katsuko how to process the mental onslaught of a bunshin’s lifespan in seconds. By the time she sat up, rubbing the grit from her eyes, she’d already stored away the image of Ryouma’s bare back glistening in the shower. She’d examine it in detail later, when the memory of Ryouma’s venomous exchange with the Kiri-nin wasn’t clanging around inside her skull, demanding precedence.
She disentangled herself from Kakashi, who’d attached himself to her like a sloth in search of the warmest tree branch, and wobbled to her feet, ignoring the paper-dryness of her throat. Kakashi didn’t stir at her careful movements; Katsuko suspected nothing short of a cave-in would wake him at this point. She drew the blankets back up over his shoulders, detached her IV, and went looking for Ryouma.
He hadn’t moved far from the Kiri kunoichi’s cell. Katsuko found him in the spartan kitchen, watching as a fresh pot of tea came to boil. She hesitated in the hallway while she regarded Ryouma’s dark, bent head and the tense line of his back.
“Figured you’d be out soon,” Ryouma said. He didn’t turn around. “Sorry, you’ve probably got a headache now.”
Are you okay? Katsuko didn’t ask. She cut across the room on silent feet, stopping next to Ryouma. When he continued to stare at the pot like it held unfathomable secrets, she nudged his arm. He was tall enough that her good shoulder only came up to his bicep.
“Hey,” she said. “I’m a lot prettier than the tea. And I even talk back.”
He let out a soft huff and gave her a sideways glance. "Sounds like you come pretty highly recommended."
“Boiled leaf water has nothing on me,” Katsuko said in magnanimous acknowledgment.
Ryouma made an expression like he was considering smiling. Katsuko propped herself up on him with a comfortable sigh, resting her good shoulder against his arm. If she leaned a little more weight against him than necessary… well, acting as a standing post was part of his duties as her teammate. And she didn’t want him going anywhere while that restlessness still lurked in the back of his eyes.
Everyone on Team Six hid some sort of darkness—it was impossible not to—but Ryouma was the only one who masked his with flash and flair and determined, brilliant light. The rage he’d shown towards the Kiri nin hadn’t startled Katsuko; he hadn’t made any effort to hide it before. It was the haunted look on his face as he’d retreated to scour his hands raw that made worry curl tight and sharp in Katsuko’s throat.
She knew what it was like, feeling like you’d never be clean again; the horror of learning what you were capable of doing under orders. Obedience was bred into a shinobi’s bones, the legacy of generations of ninja pledging themselves to their Villages as warriors, weapons, soldiers.
Sacrifices.
But a ninja was not wholly a weapon, no matter what the rules liked to preach. The first time Katsuko had killed a civilian in cold blood, she’d scraped her knuckles bloody trying to clean the gore out from the grooves and whorls of her skin. Even with more than a year of ANBU experience to inure her, it was only willpower that kept the memory of Tsuto Tomoko’s terrified eyes locked away in a dark corner of her mind Katsuko refused to acknowledge until the mission was over and she had permission to feel again.
Asking Ryouma to break his silence while keeping her own guilt and grief buried deep was impossible. She wouldn’t be able to free Ryouma from the nightmare place in his head without cracking herself open and spilling out all the ugliness she’d rather keep hidden. The weight of all the death she’d dealt would swallow her whole.
But tonight had been Ryouma’s first mission with a civilian family on the sharp edges of his blade. She would have felt for any rookie in this situation, but this was Ryouma. In the short time she’d had with him, she’d learned she wanted to see him hurting about as much as she wanted to cut her own arm off.
Even if it meant she’d have to dredge up some of the barbed-wire memories that kept her up at night, she wanted that hollow look gone from his eyes.
“You can talk to me,” Katsuko said at last, quiet. “I might be your senpai, but I was still a rookie not even two months ago.” |
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