| Never and Always [Tsume] | [Jan. 17th, 2011|11:54 am] |
[[Takes place one and a half weeks after Up in Flames, one week after Ryouma goes missing, and one and a half weeks before Off the Reservation.]]
It was easy to get lost in the push-pull of the saw, to let the buzz of blade against wood drown out everything else. It was hard to wrap her mind around the clan loss; so many homes gone, so many Inuzuka injured. Too many dead. Her pack, her family, and too many she hadn't been able to save.
It was as if the world had been wreathed in fog, and it hadn't cleared away yet. There were moments when she felt bright and aware, but for the most part she worked through the day to rebuild the compound, then went to the ANBU headquarters at night and fell into her bed, trying not to think about what had happened. Trying not to run through the names of those who wouldn't be coming back, or to feel like a coward for fleeing the scent of fire that still lingered a week and a half later. They needed the room for the refugees; it made sense for her to stay in her apartment at HQ.
When someone called her name, Tsume straightened up with a wince, freeing her hand from the handle of saw. A child stood in the middle of the blackened field, framed by the skeletons of houses that had, not so long ago, been homes. All but a few of them, those the farthest out, had been torn down. The cub standing in the midst of them pointed, and Tsume looked up.
A hawk soared above, drifting in circles as it peered down at them. With the trees burned away, it didn't have to swoop through the forest. Instead it dove low, dropping a scroll before beating up into a climb and vanishing over treetops toward the heart of Konoha.
The scroll fell through the air unimpeded, the blood-red seal glinting dully as it spun. It landed with the sharp slap of paper on flesh. Tsume slid a broken nail under the wax and opened it, skimming down the instructions.
There wasn't much. Report to ANBU headquarters immediately for a classified assignment.
"Tsume?"
She glanced at Kanaye, meeting eyes as coolly blue as her own, and tucked the summons in the waistband of her pants. "Mission."
He nodded once and turned back to the ninja laying gas pipes.
Tsume scanned the field again, warring with having to leave. Shattered, charred trees stabbed toward the slate gray sky. The choking odor of smoke and skin lingered yet, and to sensitive Inuzuka noses would do so for a long time. Even after the new houses were built, people would wait to occupy them until several rains had passed.
And some would never occupy them again.
This was her clan, but she wasn't the clan's Alpha. She'd given up that position, and putting the Pack back together was no longer her job. She turned and headed toward the new place where her loyalties lie: the pack she was forging among Konoha's elite.
**
"--should have been his route," the intel agent, Yori, said, tracing a path with a blunt-edged finger. He bit his nails. Cuticles, too. Ragged edges lined his fingertips, tiny scabs under bits of skin. "This is where we know he was last seen. Masashi's briefed you on the politics in the area?"
Tsume nodded silently. Mission focus wrapped around her like gauze, whipped up as soon as they'd told her who she was going after. "My name's Tousaki Ryouma," he'd said to her, wet, naked, and grinning on the floor of the men's shower.
All she had to do was focus on what she had to do. If anyone could find him, she could.
"Tsume-san?"
Her gaze flicked to the agent. A middle-aged man, balding, with eyes that were probably pretty once and were now just sad and wary. "Are you sure you can do this? I could talk to Arakaki. I know your relationship with him, and I'm not sure this is a good idea--"
Tsume cocked one eyebrow and interupted. "If Arakaki thought my relationship would get in the way, he wouldn't have summoned me. I think you should trust Arakaki's judgment."
He colored. "You'll be sent with a medic. She'll join you a days' journey out. Any questions?"
Tsume just shook her head, already mentally reviewing what she'd need. He was part of her new pack, and she'd bring him home.
"Tsume-san. This is classified. You can't tell anyone."
"I know what classified means," she growled. "If you have doubts, take them up with Arakaki. I have a mission."
"When we get back to Konoha, why not give me a chance?" Hope and hurt warring equally, only to be ground out by pain and terror and a mission gone so wrong-- She took the maps, rolling them with tightly controlled motions of her hands. The maps slid into the darkness of their container, and the whole thing vanished into a scroll.
**
Tsume woke silently and violently, heart pounding against her ribcage, images fading from her mind. Slamming through the door, already too late. Knowing Kuromaru was dying, feeling her own flesh rot. Seeing Ryouma tied to a chair, bloody and tortured, begging in the ruins of a voice as he saw her. "I'll show you. Don't hurt her."
She should have told someone. Maybe then, he'd have been yanked from the ANBU roster. Maybe he'd be alive.
Maybe he'd have thrown himself on the broken rocks below the Monument, everything he cared about stripped from him.
Maybe he was still alive.
"We going?" The voice was inhuman and human all at once; a growl so deep and rough no man could ever make it, but as familiar as hot cocoa around the compound bonfire. Kuromaru.
"Don't think I'll be sleeping anymore." Tsume rolled out of her blankets. It was still dark, stars cold and unforgiving overhead. The moon stared down like a single blind eye. "Wake the medic."
By the time they'd broken the meagre camp and were moving, the sun had risen. Light across the snow looked like blood, and still she heard his voice. "I'll show you. Don't hurt her."
**
Claws and legs splayed as the ledge threatened to crumble under her. It was stupid, to scale the avalanche and look for signs. If he'd been buried, he was dead and they'd never find him.
It was stupid, and she did it anyway. They hadn't found him anywhere else. No sign, no track, no scent, no spoor.
The snow stabilized, and carefully she moved forward again. Her feet, four paws because it was safer than two legs, burned from the cold. Wind whipped around the side of the mountains, shearing along the face and sweeping off the insulation of her coat. Mostly sweeping off; she kept her tail tucked to hide her underbelly and shivered convulsively.
Up, up over a rock ledge and down the other side, into the dubious shelter of a hollow. She rested there for a moment, pausing to lick the ice out from between her toes.
Hands wrapped around a coffee mug, late at night, in Ryouma's quarters because neither of them could sleep. Telling truths that would never have been said in the daylight. "If you had two people in all the world," he'd said, "and both of 'em betrayed you. One of 'em left, and the other--didn't leave as early as he should've. And you grow up wanting people, they way you saw in the movies and in the parks, and knowing at the same time you can't have 'em. 'Cause they'll die, or you'll die, and either way somebody'll be alone again... Who do you fall back on then?"
She'd hesitated, smiled wryly. "I suppose the cliched response is friends. But I don't know if the world really works like that."
The Inuzuka fell back on Pack. He'd fallen back on her, and then Kakashi. She'd leaned on him, until she could lean on Kuromaru. They'd made a pack, even if he'd never understood that.
Wind howled, carrying sheets of ice as thin as needles. Pack didn't give up.
There was no sign of him. Two days, and a hundred mile radius covered from the last scent she'd caught. She'd sent clones back to the chakra flare before that, wondering if she'd missed something. If the faint scent had been only her imagination; if she'd gone in the wrong direction. Kuromaru had gone east; another hundred miles covered, coursing over the ground back and forth so as not to miss any sign.
There were no signs.
Daylight was waning. Tsume hauled herself up out of the hollow, blinking away moisture as the wind whipped it up. Carefully, slowly, she hunkered as close to the ground as she could get and continued sideways along the mountain, ears flat against her head to keep them from freezing. Ice gathered on her whiskers and stubby wolfen eyelashes. She kept going.
**
"Tsume-san?"
Funny, how they'd sent a medic she didn't know. A medic who wouldn't break her focus by offering comfort. Arakaki knew his agents.
Tsume sat on the bedroll, the heat from their fire warming her skin. She couldn't see the sky, now. It was blocked by the canvas sides of a tent. She stared into the flames, not caring if it ruined her nightsight. There was no one for miles around.
No one. Not a trace of anyone, and hadn't been for three days.
Blood slid slowly down her arm, one drip from a double dozen shallow cuts. Blood jutsu. Tracking jutsu. In human form and wolf form. With clones and without clones, both of herself and Kuromaru. All over the mountains, the plains between them, the forest Ryouma had last camped in. The trails that were open and, four-footed, the ones that were closed with snow.
The medic hadn't been happy to patch her up when she'd scaled that avalanche path, but four-footed was as safely as she could have done it.
Another drop of blood joined the first, and then both were wiped out when a clean, white bandage settled over her arm.
"Tsume-san."
She closed her eyes and let the medic work quietly.
"It's been three days."
Since the last sign of him, was the unfinished part of that sentence. Not three days since she'd left. Not three days since they'd met up. Three days since the last hint of his whereabouts. He could be anywhere.
He was probably dead.
The words came back to her in his ragged voice, as if from a dream. "I thought I killed one of my teammates." He hadn't. If he was still alive, she was about to kill one of hers. She could search for years, but Konoha wouldn't expect that. Konoha would expect far less than she'd done. Konoha would expect her to come home.
Tsume took a long, ragged breath and opened her eyes. "You've been very patient, Nashi," she said woodenly. Another layer of gauze covered her arm as the first bled through.
Neither of them said what they knew Tsume meant.
"I'll write up the mission report," Nashi said quietly.
The fire snapped and popped. Outside, Kuromaru howled, a single mournful note that echoed off the mountains. Not even that had returned an answering response.
**
The intel agent filed the report to one side, mouth tight. "As you know, we won't stop searching for him."
Behind the ANBU mask, she nodded once. They wouldn't stop searching for him -- but she was the best. They wouldn't find him, unless they recovered a body meant to be found by captors or nature.
"We are aware of your personal ties to the missing, as well as personal ties to others in ANBU. Please remember that this mission, and your involvement in it, is classified." He looked at her, his sad and wary eyes sliding off the armor she wore. "Konoha thanks you for your dedication."
Smells and noises were muffled behind the mask. Tsume inclined her head and left, Kuromaru walking silently beside her.
"What now?" the great beast asked, his single ear hanging listlessly sideways.
Tsume kept walking. "He's not the first teammate we've lost," she said. "He won't be the last."
She tried not to hear it when Kuromaru murmured softly. "But he was my alpha."
"You gonna be okay, now?" he'd asked, as Kuromaru ran off to get a gift for his new alpha. "I mean, if Kuromaru's happy, will you be? Or is this just an extra tangle that's gonna make everything worse for you?"
Her packs were being stripped away, one by one. Everything was worse.
**
She melted out of the shadows and waited, perfectly still. Twenty feet away a small band of children haggled and hassled, unaware of the bone and black monster that had appeared in their midst. Then one saw her. He stared, eyes widening, and she knew that the ANBU armor had done its job. Another saw her, reached out and snagged the sleeve of a third. And then they all saw her, standing as if she'd been made out of stone, shadows lapping at her legs.
One stepped forward, and she dragged a name from memory: Hanato. He couldn't have been thirteen yet, skinny and dirty with hard eyes.
"Who are they?" she'd asked, as the small group of ragamuffins wandered off. "Me," he'd said. "Twelve years ago." And, "Just nobody else wants 'em."
The mask gave an odd whisper to her words, muffling them when she spoke. "Those of you who take the entrance exams for the Academy will have a fund set aside for you. It'll pay the fees, and it'll pay your food and board while you're there."
"Ryouma's going to help us with that," Hanato said, eyes flashing defiantly. "He's teaching us, too."
Behind the mask, her eyes burned dryly. The smell of old urine and rotting vegetables crept slowly into her lungs. Tsume inclined her head. Two of the children took a step back, one ducking behind an older girl. "Let me down, old man!" Tsume looked away from her. "As I said. Ryouma's ensured the money will be there." Even if he hadn't meant to. He'd shared his pack with her, and she'd see they were taken care of -- as much as she could. As much as they'd let her. "But he may not be back to train with you." Not without a miracle, and Tsume didn't believe in them.
There was a moment of unrest, young minds working to puzzle through what she hadn't explained. Tsume bowed deeply and stepped back toward the shadows.
"What happened?" Saki asked loudly, leaving the boy behind her to run forward. "Did he go back to Lightning Country? Is he--"
Tsume twisted, leaping for the brick wall and scaling it with chakra. She vanished over the top, and was gone before they could ask anything else.
**
Kuromaru found her. It wasn't really surprising; he was her familiar. The man who'd known her best since she was a pup of twelve.
"You weren't supposed to tell those kids, I bet," he growled, sitting down beside her.
She remained standing, staring out over the forest from the top of a bluff. "We tell pack. Families get to know."
"Typically after the ninja's been declared dead."
Tsume flinched at the word. "Yeah. I'm hoping they'll think he's back in Lightning." He'd threatened it often enough. Thinking of him there was easier than thinking of him... gone.
Animal noise filled the silence around them. Small creatures ran through the forest in bursts of speed, rattling leaves. Birds screeched at each other.
"Hana's going to be sad that he can't make it to her birthday party, either."
Either. One of her friends had died in the blast. The world swam. Tsume sat down, hard, wrapping her arms around Kuromaru's shoulders and burying her face in his fur. She wouldn't cry. She wouldn't let anyone know what had happened. She'd wait, and listen, and break as his friends realized what she already knew: he wasn't coming back. As her Pack tried to put itself back together. As reports came in that he wasn't returning, that he'd been declared dead, as they cleaned out his apartment and houses stood empty on Inuzuka lands.
So many dead or gone, and this was one more.
The sun fell under the trees. The wind’s frigid teeth bit through her clothes.
Eventually, the hard knot in her chest eased. She leaned against her familiar and they stared out over the forest together, looking at a darkness so complete a man could be lost and never found.
**
Tsume watched as one wall of the house went up and Inuzuka rushed in to secure it before they let the ropes go. She felt, more than saw, Tori step up beside her. "You've done a lot in a short amount of time," she said, not looking over.
Tori rubbed the small of her back, heavily pregnant. "Hm. Not enough." There was a moment of silence as someone cursed and the wall wobbled. "How'd your mission go?"
She wasn't supposed to tell anyone Ryouma was gone. Just watch as they panicked and grieved. Grieve herself without seeming it. Carry the darkness that she'd lost him. After everything, she'd lost him and he wasn't coming back.
If there was anyone in the world who would keep that secret for her, who would give her support and let her talk without ever breathing a word of it anywhere, it was Tori.
Tsume shrugged. "It was a mission. It went as they do."
"Still a ninja. Always. They can't take that from me." |
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