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Kotetsu almost started at the name. Makoto... no, it wasn't the same guy. Makato was his own age, a chuunin and posted elsewhere. He most certainly didn't still live with his parents. Besides, there was a syllable's difference in names.
Shying away from that train of thought, just meant he had to think about Katsuko's question, which was hardly better.
"Had," he muttered, and yanked his bedroll open. Fortunately, it had been stored in a scroll, which had been in a plastic covering, so it meant his stuff was dry. "She's gone now."
Ah.
Right.
"I see." Katsuko said quietly. Poor guy. The stiff line of his shoulders and his jerky movements told her she'd brought up painful memories. "Sorry about that, Ko."
Stupid, stupid, stupid. Never ask a ninja about family unless you knew them well enough.
"You didn't know," Kotetsu said softly. "Anyway. Still miss her and all. But at least Moriki's still letting me stay sometimes, you know? And Tenten and Tensai are adorable little brats." He grinned weakly, and slithered into his thin bedroll, ignoring the way he could feel the earth still. "It's not like she died in the war or anything."
She closed her mouth on the questions she wanted to ask. Now wasn't the time, and she didn't know Kotetsu well enough at all, mission-bonding aside.
"I'm still sorry," Was all she said of the matter before pulling the bedroll over herself, "And we'd better go to sleep. We're leaving early tomorrow."
There. Quick change of topics, clumsy but enough excuse for the kid not to talk about it anymore than he already had.
"'kay," Kotetsu said, relieved, and curled onto his side, closing his eyes.
***
The strange sounds nudged him from his sleep, and for a moment Kotetsu stared up into the dark canopy, confused as to what had actually woken him.
It took only half a moment before he scrambled upright, almost silent in the forest, to see Katsuko shifting uneasily, the strange sounds issuing from her mouth. Moaning?
Nightmares.
Kotetsu worried at his lower lip for a moment, before going over, and poking her with a long stick he picked up from the ground.
"Katsu?"
She was fifteen and scared again, trying to fight a Cloud chuunin with her fire jutsu in the rain and hail that was Lightning Country in spring. Arata was down, bleeding from a strange jutsu that smelled like rust and electricity, and Nori had a long sword-cut running down his leg.
The wind roared and tore her breath away.
Sensei sensei where was sensei? If she could fight her way to him they could go back-to-back and smash through the enemy to Arata and Nori. Where was--
The chuunin charged her, his lightning-charged ninjato lighting up his triumphant smile.
Dodge dodge can't dodge have to--
A kunai sunk into the chuunin's shoulder, enough of a distraction for her to slip around his guard and sink her kodachi deep into his stomach.
No time to panic where was--
Sensei was there, fighting three jounin in a battle backlit by the lightning storm. One Cloud jounin down, decapitated by Sensei's long knives, but the second and third jounin slid up behind him smooth as butter and--
Something hit her. She snarled and lunged for the enemy's neck, hands closing around something that felt like a dry, brittle...
...
Stick?
"..Kotetsu?" She was back in the forest again, and Kotetsu was staring at her like she'd just sprouted horns.
Kotetsu regarded the stick with wide eyes - thank the gods he'd used a stick, not his hand, because fucking god he didn't want to have a broken arm - and then back at her. "Um. You were making sounds...?" He asked, tentatively, squatting down, hand hovering over her shoulder, but not quite touching her. "You... okay?"
h gods, had she just...She stared at the splintered remains of what had been a foot-long stick and let out a strangled whimper. Attacked...she'd nearly attacked...
Katsuko flinched away from Kotetsu's comforting hand like it burned her, scrambling away from the perplexed chuunin with none of a jounin's usual grace.
"No! Nothing's wrong! S'just...bad dream, s'all. I'll. I'll."
She didn't know what she'd do. She wished Kotetsu would stop looking at her like that.
"Sure?" Kotetsu inched forward again, feeling like he was trying to calm a feral dog. Hopefully she wouldn't break and then promptly start breaking him.
He wasn't quite ready to fend off a jounin.
"I mean. Bad dreams... they help if you talk, you know?" he asked carefully, putting both hands on the ground. There, non-threatening.
Talk? Talking was good. Talking was not thinking about how she'd nearly snapped Kotetsu's arm in two. First, though...Katsuko inched away from him until she felt her back hit a tree trunk, then sat on her hands. There. Safe distance.
"I was on border patrol in Lightning with my chuunin team." Looking blindly out into the dark forest was easier than making eye contact with Kotetsu, and what did that say about her and her personal relationships? "I was fifteen. There was an ambush. My sensei...my sensei was killed." And she'd been captured and used as a lab rat for six months, but she wasn't going to think about that now.
"Just...Nightmares. Gods, Kotetsu, I'm sorry." She did look him in the eyes then, and tried to put as much feeling behind her apology without actually flinging herself at his feet and begging for forgiveness.
Then he'd think she'd really cracked.
"Oh." Well, that sort of explained it. Really bad mission, it always ended up in nightmares.
Kotetsu was lucky that the worst that he had was almost blowing up people. Or actually blowing them up. By accident. Or on purpose because that's what he was ordered to do...
Those didn't make him scream though. Just made him sit up and stare at the ceiling and then look at Green Demon swimming in his tank.
It was a good thing he had Green Demon. The fish didn't care about anything.
"It's okay," he said, softly. "Um. You know... you should get a fish. That'd fix it."
Maybe this was really a bad nightmare or she'd hit her head or something, because Katsuko honestly thought that Kotetsu had just suggested getting a fish was a cure for her nightmares.
She pinched herself, just to be sure. And when Kotetsu continued to sit there, blinking innocently at her, she snorted.
"A fish. Will fix my nightmares." Her mission partner's face held no trace of mockery; he was staring intently at her like a puzzle he was determined to solve. With fish.
The laughter started up as a slow quivering somewhere in her core that, by the time it reached her mouth, was bubbling almost out of control. The terror of the nightmare fled in the face of the sheer ridiculousness of the situation.
"Yeah," Kotetsu nodded, 'You know how they say having pets help? Reduce stress and.. Well, you can't have pets in ANBU, unless you're an Inuzuka, and those don't count as pets, not really." He'd heard there was an Inuzuka in the ANBU. He still hadn't met them yet.
"And I have one. 's a fighting fish, and I feel a whole lot better watching him after I have nightmares."
Sure, it sounded childish. But it was true, and he liked Katsuko - maybe this would help her nightmares too.
Take deep breaths. Breathe in, breathe out. Don't think about fish, or nightmares, or nightmare-fish...Oh, it was a lost cause.
Katsuko giggled and then burst into full-blown gales of laughter. Ow ow ow her stomach hurt from laughing so hard. She keeled over onto her side, still laughing.
"Sure, Ko," Laughing gasp. "I'll." Gasp "Think about it. Getting a nightmare--" A squeaking laugh this time, "Fish, that is.
Kotetsu resisted the urge to pout at her, and waited patiently for her to stop laughing. Squeaking. Which was kinda odd for a jounin to do, but hey, at least she didn't seem so upset now. He leaned forward again to pat her hesitantly on her shoulder. "Good? I know the guy who sells the fish. They come in very pretty colours. Mine's green."
Now she was passing the line from violently amused to mildly hysterical. Katsuko took a deep, shuddering breath and wiped her eyes. "Green's a pretty color," she said slowly. "I like blue better, though."
It was a relief to see that Kotetsu wasn't wary of her anymore. She didn't realized how fond she'd become of the kid until she almost broke his arm. In an impulsive move that startled both of them, she wrapped her arms around Kotetsu in a gentle hug.
"Thanks, Ko," she whispered, and let go of him quickly. "Why don't you go back to bed? I'll keep watch."
She didn't think she'd be able to fall asleep again tonight, anyways.
He patted her back, somewhat awkwardly, because while he liked hugs - they were nice and warm and it was always good to have someone alive hold you - he never quite knew what to do with his hands.
"Yeah. Thanks. There're blue ones too. Some really deep blue ones, like swimming jewels." And because that was just too girly, he grinned at her and scampered back to his bedroll. "Wake me for my watch then?"
Katsuko gave him a weak grin and leaned back against the tree trunk. "Yeah, sure. I'll wake you up."
She spent a long time staring into the dark after Kotetsu went back to sleep. | |
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