| [Nov. 2nd, 2013|03:46 am] |
She’d been waiting for something like this ever since they’d left the lieutenant’s bedside—or, truthfully, ever since guard duty on the wall, when Raidou had said the name Orochimaru and Katsuko’s vision had splintered at the edges. Her control had slipped more times these past couple weeks than it had during the first six months Team 18 served together.
Katsuko took a bit longer than usual to finish chewing. Raidou didn’t say anything. Swiping the crumbs at the corners of her mouth away with her thumb bought her another second of delay. But once she’d swallowed her roll, she did them both the service of getting straight to the point. “Is it affecting my performance on missions?”
Raidou’s long silence meant she was braced for it when he finally said, "Yes."
Nothing she hadn’t expected. It still made all the muscles in her body lock up in brief terror. “Did I slow the team down? Was there something else I should have done? If I could have prevented some of our injuries, is there any way I could—”
He held his hands up, palms open and fingers spread. "Whoa, back up. You think I'd've let it run if things were that bad? You've just been a step off your game. I thought it was time to have a conversation about why."
“Oh,” Katsuko said, and lapsed into embarrassed silence. Her face burned.
Ceramic scraped as Raidou pushed his plate away. "What is it?" he asked, quietly.
Katsuko had perfected the art of deflecting unwanted curiosity with a smile and layers of skillfully woven bullshit. Right now, though, she didn’t have any rambling stories or nonsense to derail the conversation with. Scrabbling for an explanation Raidou would accept gave her nothing but blank silence in her own head. She leaned back in her chair and let the air rush out of her lungs in a long sigh.
Raidou was still waiting.
“Part of it’s the new team,” she said at last. “I don’t have any complaints, but I’m still getting used to it.”
“And the other part?”
“Things just… escalate. One after another. First the scare with Orochimaru, then the mission, then—” she made a frustrated gesture and ran her hand through her hair. “Everything. Nothing like this happened last year, but now it’s like—” Like all the horrors from her past were rearing their ugly heads, clawing their way out of the deep graves she’d buried them in. Orochimaru, the girls underneath the tatami, nightmares that refused to leave when daylight came. “—I don’t know. I can’t explain it.” |
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