| God Save The Foolish Kings | [Mar. 25th, 2015|09:26 pm] |
[Begins May 12th, Yondaime Year 5, the morning after Tell You My Sins (So You Can Sharpen Your Knives), and continues on to May 13th, Yondaime Year 5]
The morning after his breakdown, Raidou woke up half an hour before he should have been on the training field.
He stared up at the living room’s familiar wooden-joist ceiling. It was still dark outside, dawn barely pinking the horizon. Dark blue shadows drifted across the walls. His t-shirt was twisted, hot and sticking to his skin. Curled up against his side, Suki breathed slow and soft, paws twitching with small cat dreams.
Everything ached, except for his stomach. That felt hollow.
He turned over, buried his face in the pillow, and went back to sleep.
—
Ume woke him mid-morning with toast and a cup of steaming coffee. She was still wearing her robe, hair yanked back into a messy bun, pillow creases on her cheek. The sun poured bright and golden through open curtains. Suki had vanished to stalk small, edible, crunchy critters in the garden.
Raidou’s head pounded with a crying-hangover.
“Don’t you have work?” he rasped.
“Shun went. I took the day off,” she said. “My substitute needs the practice. And you need a shower. Then you can get to work on the gutters.”
He blinked at her. “You stayed home to make me do chores?”
“You’re welcome,” she said, and leaned down to kiss him on the forehead. “Drink your coffee before it gets cold.”
He did. The toast was still warm, freshly buttered; he ate that, too, then dragged himself off the sofa and into pursuit of the bathroom. There were two in his parents’ house: the fancy one in the master bedroom that Raidou and Shun had spent a summer remodelling together, and the guest bathroom opposite Raidou’s old bedroom. It had been his bathroom, once upon a time. When he pushed the door open, he found fresh towels already laid out and a candle burning next to his toothbrush.
Light a flame to cleanse new sins.
He swallowed, turned the spray up hot, carefully unwound stained bandages, and stepped into the stall.
The water turned grey around his feet. He sluiced up and soaped down, taking off a week’s worth of accumulated mission filth, and scrubbed the sweat and bunker-stink out of his hair. His hands had been blitzed ruthlessly clean by more than one medic, but he spent a little time to making sure there was no old red still lurking beneath his nails. The thick scabs over his knuckles had cracked, but there was pink granulating tissue beneath, and the wounds were clean. Already half-healed thanks to Genma and the medic at the hospital.
He tried not to think about bone-chips, glistening white in a bloody ruin. Or Aoisuke's face, bludgeoned unrecognizable.
When that didn’t work, he leaned his forehead against the wet tile and just let the water run down over him, willing it to carry the worst away.
He had to step out eventually, before he used the entire hot water supply. He knotted a towel around his waist and shaved in the foggy mirror, rediscovering the sharper lines of his own face beneath a week’s worth of scruff. The mission had burned weight; his cheeks were hollow, and his eyes looked bruised. Though an argument could be made there for lack of sleep, or getting whacked repeatedly in the head.
He expected to look older, somehow, or different. But he just looked like himself, very tired.
“Okay,” he told his reflection. “Up, moving, let’s do something useful. Pants.”
Last night’s jeans were fresh enough for a repeat performance, and his emergency kit had a spare t-shirt and set of underwear. He dressed, scrubbed his hair dry, rolled on some deodorant, and went downstairs to help Ume.
There was a masked ANBU standing in the kitchen.
Raidou’s fingers twitched to the back of his waistband, where he’d stowed a kunai. He didn’t care if the move was insulting. This was his mothers’ house.
The ANBU held empty hands up. “Just a messenger.”
The voice was a low, smooth alto, with just a hint of Wind Country in the vowels. Female, lizard mask, hair buzzed so short it was almost colorless. Behind her, Ume leaned against the kitchen counter, stiff with irritation.
“Apparently ANBU doesn’t knock,” she said.
Raidou sighed. “We’re not known for it. What’s the message, agent?”
A scroll flicked into Lizard’s hand. She turned it, letting him see the T&I insignia, then tossed it to him. “Your presence is expected at 0900 tomorrow. Don’t be late.”
A cold fist clenched around Raidou’s heart, squeezing the beat. He pocketed the scroll without opening it. “Understood,” he said.
Lizard regarded him for a moment, head cocked. Her eyes were dark and expressionless behind her mask. She nodded, shaped a fluid seal, and vanished in a shiver of chakra, barely disturbing the dishtowels.
Ume sniffed. “That just seemed unnecessary.”
Raidou held up a hand and expanded his chakra sense. A translocation couldn’t take someone through solid walls. On the edge of his senses a glimmer of swiftly-worked chakra clung to the kitchen door, and a dull ANBU spark was already vanishing into the distance.
He scowled and snapped out a vicious kai, shattering the already fading genjutsu.The kitchen stayed exactly where it was, except the door was slightly cracked open instead of closed. He didn’t lose time. The house didn’t catch fire. No one appeared punched-dead on the floor.
“Raidou?” Ume said quietly.
He shook his head and dug up a smile for her. “I should get to work on those gutters.”
Ume folded her arms, muscles flexing beneath plump curves. “Baby boy, I changed your diapers and dealt with your snot bubbles, don’t get stoical and manly on me.”
“Snot bubbles,” Raidou repeated blankly.
“You’re damn right.”
“I don’t even know what to do with that.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair, still damp, and settled his weight more firmly onto his heels, solid against the ground. “I’m okay, mom. It’s just a thing I can’t talk about.”
“Another one,” she said.
“I’m an adult,” he reminded her gently. “We’re allowed secrets.”
“Not from your mother,” she said.
“Especially from my mother,” he said, and pushed out of the kitchen door. “Let me know if you need something done after the gutters.”
“Raidou—” she started, but he was already out of the house and climbing up to the roof.
—
The gutters were choked with the residue of winter storms. He spent the rest of the morning hauling out double-handfuls of black sludge and tossing it into the compost heap. When he was done, Ume made good on his request and filled the rest of the day with busy-work chores that she and Shun never quite had the time for.
He patched a weak spot in the roof, took down a mid-sized tree accused of shedding leaves, fixed a few crooked planks in the garden fence, and strung together a trellis for Shun’s climbing pea plants.
Ume brought him a plate of sandwiches and glass of lemonade around mid-afternoon, when the sun was hot and butter-yellow. He wiped sweat out of his eyes and took a break.
“Garden’s doing well,” he said.
“Shun spends an hour in it most evenings,” Ume said. “She wants to plant melons.”
“Melons are good,” Raidou said.
“I’m angling for strawberries,” she said. “Then I can make jam.”
“Also good.” He downed the remainder of the lemonade and handed the glass back, along with the empty plate. “I can make you a planter box.”
The aftermath of the Fox hadn’t been a fun time for anyone, but it had offered the chance to pick up a few extra skill sets. Raidou had learned enough about home-building to acquire a second trade, if he ever needed one.
He put together a pair of planters from two halves of an old water barrel, filled with well-composted dirt, and set them up in a sun-soaked spot at the bottom of the garden. Suki sniffed them with intense curiosity, then bestowed a cat blessing by curling up in the center of one and falling asleep on the warm dirt.
Raidou snorted, and scritched her behind one ear with a dirty thumb.
When Shun came home from work, he’d just finished weeded the raised planting beds and was washing up with the garden hose.
“You’ve been busy,” she said.
Raidou dumped water over his head and shook like a dog, spraying a brief rainbow in the velvet evening light. Shun stepped to one side, avoiding the backsplash.
“Got anything you want to add to the list?” he asked.
She regarded him for a moment, dark eyes level. “Do you need more?”
“Better than sitting idle.”
“Did you get your summons?”
The scroll weighed heavy in his back pocket; he still hadn’t opened it. “0900 tomorrow.”
“Intel?”
“T&I.”
“Ah,” she said softly. “Nervous?”
Raidou held a hand out at waist-level. “Nervous would be here.” He raised it to eye-level. “I’m about here.”
The corner of her mouth tucked up sympathetically. “At least you’re still under the eaves.”
“There is that tiny bright spot,” he said.
“When was the last time you meditated?” she asked.
“Uh,” he said, caught flat-footed. “Probably the night I got made captain.” It was the only way he’d been able to wind down enough to sleep. “So — just over a month.”
Had he really only had Team Six for a month?
Ten days of of training while they waited for Ryouma’s wrist to heal from the attack at Trials, and then two back-to-back missions. That was it.
If T&I bounced him out of ANBU tomorrow, he was going to have to look up the record for shortest living captaincy. There were a few unlucky bastards who’d died on their first trip out, but surviving long enough to get dumped on the curb had to be its own category.
Shun clicked her fingers together. A soft, quick beat of sound that pulled him back to the present.
“I’m going to say hello to your mother,” she said. “Then I’ll be up on the roof, now that you’ve made it safe to sit on. You’re welcome to join me.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Okay.”
—
The roof was cold and Raidou’s shirt was wet. He pulled the hemline uncomfortably away from his skin.
“You can take it off if you prefer,” Shun said, sitting down on apex next to him.
“I’m thinking that would be awkward,” he said.
“Your choice.” She reached down to her left knee, rolling up her pant’s leg enough to bare the metal cuff and leather straps buckled at the joint. A practiced movement unfastened the artificial limb; she slid it free, shoe included, and set it aside, balanced carefully on the shingles. The pant leg hung down loose and empty; she knotted it closed at the knee, and settled into a tailor’s cross-legged seat, managing to sit with more ease one-legged than most people achieved with two.
She placed her hands on her knees and drew a deep, slow breath, letting it out through her nose.
The wind ran chilled fingers down Raidou’s spine. He surrendered and stripped off his shirt, since some people were determined to be legless and unconcerned about it, and he could at least be that comfortable.
Shun drew another slow breath. Raidou looked out blindly across the rooftops. The sun had already dipped below the horizon. Lights flickered on across the village, making a hundred windows glow like prayer-beads strung together.
Meditation was a good habit, like getting enough sleep and eating all your vegetables. Shun called it mental first aid, and practiced it at least once a day. Twice on weekends, more on bad days. Raidou had learned it at her knee as a child, back when she’d still had both of them.
He was having a hard time reaching that center of calm tonight.
“The earth is beneath you,” Shun said softly. “Feel the weight of it anchoring you down.”
A piece of concrete largeness in the infinity of space. Something almost beyond the scope of imagining, but not quite. He could picture the earth.
“Earth is immovable. No matter how much of it you dig up or carve out, there will always be more. Feel its strength, its old patience. It’s the shield of the world. Inhale.”
The breath was automatic. Raidou’s chest filled, ribcage expanding. Oxygen rushed through his lungs.
“Good. Exhale.”
He breathed out.
“Inhale again. Everything that breathes is breathing the same air as you. Slow, settle. Find the connection. Atmosphere blankets the earth, protecting us from space. Feel it on your skin, pressing you down.”
He closed his eyes. Breathing was easier now, slow and steady, deep enough to reach the base of his lungs. It brought the coolness of the evening in, steadied it against his pulse.
“How do you feel?” she asked.
“Planted,” he said, after a moment. There was stone in his spine, steadiness in his legs. A lifeline bolted between him, the dirt, and the darkening spring sky. Someone would have to work hard to kick him off the roof.
“Good,” she said. “Hold those and reach for water next. Find the salt in your blood, the ocean under your skin. Rivers in your veins—”
“A pond in my gallbladder?” he suggested, mouth crooking.
Without opening her eyes, Shun leaned across and flicked him in the temple. “Water is the birthright of all living things. Find yours, feel the shadows in it.”
His smile dropped away.
“You’ve carried those long enough. Let them wash away, back to the ocean. She has deep, deep places built for shadows, and she's big enough to hold more troubles than you could ever think of. Let her take these."
Raidou exhaled, slow and deliberate, and tried. The ocean wasn’t exactly close, but Konoha had a river. That was conduit enough, and he was so very ready to scrape the char off his soul and wash it downstream.
He wasn't wildly successful.
Guilt was sticky; it clung to his ribs, spiraled tightly in his stomach, knotted up behind his breastbone and bedded down to stay. As much as he wanted to lose it, he'd earned it.
It was a lesson. That was wrong.
He could achieve grounding, but the shadows were here to stay. They had a right to.
Shun stirred, clothes rustling against the rooftop. “That didn’t feel like a release.”
“No,” he agreed.
Ume would have pressed him for details. Shun allowed silence to filter in between them, patient and unjudging, and moved on when Raidou didn’t break it.
“Fire is sometimes the hardest to find, even in Fire Country, but it’s everywhere. Deep beneath your feet, in the burning under-layers of the earth. In the light of the sun and stars, and the reflection of the moon. It’s in all of us: our will, our bodies. It’s change and drive, healing and destruction. It’s at the center of your core, and no matter what impurities you think you carry, it’s hot enough to burn them away. Inhale.”
He’d forgotten to breathe. He inhaled sharply, chasing the sharp, hot ache out of his chest. Water and earth were his natural affinities: strength and flexibility, the patience to erode away a mountainside, or the sudden temper of a landslide. He was a work in progress, but usually he had something approaching balance.
Fire, though, had never been too far away. It wasn't his affinity, not in the chakra-sense, but it was his country and his village: the flame hidden in the shadows. It was the driving dynamo of change and passion; the living spark that lit up his bones, put energy in his blood, gave him ferocity on the battlefield and loyalty at home.
Healing, he thought. And destruction.
There'd been plenty of fire at Tsurugahama Port, all the wrong kind, but that didn't mean he couldn't draw on it now.
He could achieve grounding, just not forgiveness. Not letting go, because Tsurugahama Port needed to be remembered, and because if Raidou forgave himself for the red fist-print on Katsuko's chest-plate, or her broken collarbone, or the eight murdered sailors, or the breaking of a shipping town's main livelihood, then he needed to drown himself in Konoha's river. But he could put destruction down, and reach for healing.
Or at least for change.
He let out a shivery breath and opened his eyes. Shun smiled at him, dark-eyed and sad.
“Well done,” she said.
“Thank you,” he said quietly.
“Do you want to talk about tomorrow?”
“Not even a little.”
Shun’s mouth tucked up at the corner. “Do you want to get two mugs of tea and watch the stars come out?”
“Yeah,” Raidou said, relieved. “Let’s do that.”
—
They stayed on the roof until Ume came out and yelled at Raidou to put his shirt on, and Shun to put her leg on, and come inside already, dinner’s getting cold. |
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