| [Dec. 31st, 2016|10:28 pm] |
Family reunions made Ryouma uncomfortable at the best of times, and standing un-armored on a dead-end street in a village full of mass murderers wasn't helping much. His spine itched. There was probably a two-pronged Kiri kunai aiming for it, right now.
"Can we move this reunion inside?" he demanded, edging forward. "We've got a tight schedule."
Fukuda didn't even look back at him. She tucked the knife into her belt and stroked her sister's hair, helplessly gentle. She said, "We're getting you out."
Kimiko lifted her head from her sister's shoulder. Her eyes were wide, blue and salt-blurred as the sea. "They said you were dead, Nee-san. I— I thought you—"
"I've been overseas," Fukuda said. She dropped her arm to Kimiko's shoulders, and hugged tight. "Let's get inside. I'll tell you while you pack."
They squeezed inside. Kakashi shut the door and stood in its lee; Raidou framed the other side. Ryouma and Genma crowded together in the scant space between a lidded diaper pail and a tiny coal stove on raised legs. The raised floor of the living area was only a couple of ancient tatami mats wide. A swaddled infant lay on its back on a rumpled quilt, crying fitfully.
The dull yellow glow of a paper-shaded light bulb revealed Kimiko as a painfully thin young woman around Genma's age, missing two fingers at the first joint of her left hand, with exhaustion-bruised eyes and milk-swollen breasts. She wore a faded sleeping yukata, and her hair hung loose and tangled around her shoulders. She stepped back to lift her child up from the bed, and turned again.
Her breath caught. "Nee-san, your arm."
For the first time, she seemed to notice the four men standing near the door. Her eyes fled from Raidou's muscled shoulders to Kakashi's mask, and her arms wrapped convulsively tight around her baby. She started to shake.
Fukuda said, "Listen to me, Kimiko. They're from the mainland, and they're prepared to get us out of here. The rest— doesn't matter. We have an hour, no more. What do you need to take?"
Kimiko took a shaky breath, and another, as if her white-knuckled grip on her swaddled child could translate into a new grip on herself. The baby's fretful cries had begun to take on a new pitch of distress. She shifted the child up to her shoulder and patted its back, swallowing hard. "I need shoes. Clothes. I— Sango has a toy monkey. She won't sleep without it." Her eyes fell to the floor, scanning past Genma's feet.
Genma looked down, too, then stooped. He felt behind the diaper pail and came up with a bedraggled, yellow stuffed monkey. It was only a little longer than his hand, and its limbs and tail had been thoroughly gummed. He held it out, dangling across his flattened palm. "Is this it?"
Kimiko stared at him. Ryouma had seen that same glassy-eyed look on animals caught in a snare: too frightened to fight, too exhausted to run. She nodded, finally, but she didn't move to take it.
Raidou said, gently, "Why don't you sit and talk to your sister? We can get your things."
Fukuda looked at him, sharply, then reached out to wrap her arm around Kimiko's shoulders again. She drew her sister down to sit on the edge of the tatami floor, murmuring softly. Kimiko didn't relax, but after a moment her head tipped towards Fukuda's, brown against blonde.
"All right," Ryouma said, a little hoarsely. "We got the monkey. What next?" |
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