| [Oct. 18th, 2015|11:35 pm] |
Beside her, Kakashi was silent. Then, carefully, he asked, “When did she die?”
“She’s alive,” Katsuko said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cause any misunderstandings. She’s, ah. She’s a samurai. From Wind Country. Part of the agreement she signed when she immigrated to Konoha was that she put down her swords and live as a civilian. She’s a master calligrapher now.”
It was a good thing Katsuko didn’t blush easily, because otherwise her face would have melted off in mortification at how much she was babbling. She rubbed her mouth to keep any more words from coming out and quickened her pace.
Probably the only thing worse than Kakashi’s judgmental quiet was his thinking quiet. There were distinct differences between the two: the judgmental quiet felt like a concentrated beam of scorn aimed directly between her shoulder blades, while the thoughtful quiet was the slowly percolating mystery of Kakashi coming to Conclusions. Conclusions were yet another weapon in his arsenal, to be remembered and stored for later occasions.
Behind her, Kakashi exhaled. Then he said, “Must be rare for a samurai to willingly give up her swords.”
There was a loose pebble lying on the street. She kicked it away. “There was a really big bounty on Mother’s head in Wind Country,” she admitted. “Konoha offered amnesty. Also I guess she thought Dad was cute or something. Maybe.”
“Since you exist, chances are high,” Kakashi agreed, like that wasn’t a horrifying thing to speculate about someone’s parents. He drew even with Katsuko just in time for her to see him put the pieces together out of the corner of her eye. "Are we talking about Aomine Hisae, who took out the head of the Steel Brotherhood during their own assassination attempt on the Red-Hand Clan, and made an enemy of every crime family on the west coast? Because..." He gave her a pointed look. "That would explain a lot, actually."
“She’s Ueno Hisae now,” Katsuko said. “And I’ll take that as a compliment.”
"That's one option," Kakashi sniped back, but his voice didn’t hold any real bite. A little more quietly, he asked, "What happened to the rest of your family on that side?"
There wasn’t really any reason to tell Kakashi about her family, but there also wasn’t really any reason not to. She’d never known her mother’s parents, so she could talk about them objectively. “Grandfather Aomine was a samurai exiled from the Land of Iron a few decades ago. He met a Suna missing-nin, married her, and raised Mother alone after the missing-nin disappeared. Then he got himself killed when Mother was seventeen.” Katsuko scratched her cheek. “The Aomine clan is still in the Land of Iron, but we’ve never tried to contact them.”
It was a lot of old history to dump on a person. Kakashi mulled it over while Katsuko slowed to a halt. She nudged him, pointed to a building across the street, and said, “There’s the place. Kanashige Forge.” |
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