Chapter Text
Claire pulled her door shut behind her and stood in the corridor for a moment, doing nothing in particular.
That was the strange part. Doing nothing in particular. She had somewhere to be eventually but not yet, and the gap between now and eventually was unfamiliar enough that her body did not quite know what to do with it. She stood and listened to the building settle around her and tried to remember the last time she had woken up without a shift to move towards.
She could not remember. Not once since she had arrived in Suna.
The night before, Himari had caught her at the end of her shift, appearing at her elbow in the way Himari appeared, quietly and with purpose. "Yui-chan," she had said, and then steered Claire gently but firmly toward the back corridor, away from the ward, which meant she wanted to talk properly.
Claire had gone.
"Takashi-san is sick," Himari had said. "Properly sick, before you ask, I have already told him he is not coming in tomorrow and he has already argued with me and lost." She had the expression she sometimes wore when she was carrying several things at once and had organised them by priority. "He was going to come with me to the Friday gathering.”
She took a deep breath and continued, “I need someone with me who will actually listen, and help me explain what changed afterward. " She had looked at Claire in the direct way she had that somehow never felt like pressure. "I would like it to be you. I think you should be going to these anyway. You live here now and you work here and you should know what is happening in this village."
Claire had said yes before Himari had finished the sentence. Himari had smiled then, not the warm professional smile she wore at work but the easier one that showed up when it was just the two of them.
"Good. I will be at your door at half six. Try to sleep."
Claire had tried.
She heard Himari's footsteps on the stairs now, even and unhurried, and then Himari came around the corner with her bag already over her shoulder and her hair pinned and the look of someone who had been ready for a while.
"Good," Himari said, and then immediately held out a folded scarf. "Take this. The wind near the square is horrible and you will spend the whole gathering being miserable about it otherwise."
Claire took it. It was soft and orange and she wound it around her neck loosely and followed Himari down the stairs and out into the morning.
The air outside was still cool, the sun not yet fully over the town, and the streets were moving in a way she had not seen before. Not the loose scatter of people going to their own separate places. Something more collective. People walking in the same direction with the same quality of quiet around them, children held close, older residents moving carefully with family members nearby. She watched them and adjusted her pace to match Himari's.
"Is it always like this?" she asked.
"Every Friday," Himari said. "People want to be there early. They want to be near people they trust when the news comes. And the news..." She adjusted the strap of her bag. "It has not been good for a long time."
They turned onto the wider street and the crowd thickened. Claire navigated by instinct, finding the gaps, losing them, finding new ones. She shifted twice to keep a clear sightline ahead of her and both times the gap closed before she got there.
Himari moved half a step to the right and the space opened.
"You didn’t have to do that," Claire said.
"I know," Himari said pleasantly.
The square was already dense when they arrived and still filling, people pressing in from every entry point. Claire had not understood until this moment how many people remained in the lower district.
The war had taken so many, the deployments, the families who had already gone, and still the square was full. Children pressed against their parents' sides. Old people sat in chairs that relatives had carried out for them and positioned near the edges. A woman near the front stood with both hands folded in front of her and her eyes fixed on the platform with the concentration of someone deciding in advance to hold themselves together.
Himari found them a place without hesitation, far enough from the front to avoid being trapped, but close enough to see the platform clearly. Claire stood beside her and looked at the platform.
A shinobi stood at its centre holding a scroll, two others flanking him. The flanking ones were not watching the speaker. They were watching the crowd, their eyes moving in slow unhurried arcs across the faces in front of them.
The noise in the square was low and contained. People talking in voices that did not carry, hands held, children answered in murmurs. Behind Claire a woman was saying to someone, "He went to the market yesterday, third week now, third week they have told him end of month for the grain, and the children think it is funny that dinner is different but they are getting thinner and I don’t know how much longer I can keep it light for them." The person beside her said nothing that helped. The woman went quiet.
The shinobi at the platform cleared his throat once.
The square went silent so completely that Claire heard the wind moving through the gaps in the surrounding walls. A child somewhere asked something in a whisper and was immediately shushed and then went quiet in the way children went quiet when they felt the shape of the room change around them.
Himari nudged Claire with her arm and tilted her head towards the scarf. Claire scrambled to pull it over her nose, just as the winds turned and a small haze of dust and sand built up.
The shinobi unrolled the scroll.
"Effective immediately," he said, and his voice was practiced and clear and gave nothing, "the eastern supply route and the northern trade corridor are suspended until further notice, pending reassessment of border security conditions. Civilian and commercial traffic on both routes is prohibited."
A sound moved through the crowd at hearing the routes, it was like a resigned breath before the crowd started muttering. Claire watched as a woman near the front grabbed the arm of the person beside her.
Himari's hand found the strap of her bag and stayed there.
"That is the eastern quarter route," she said, barely audible. "We rely on it for the compounding base for Takashi-san's tinctures." She stopped. Her jaw moved once. "Right."
The shinobi continued.
"Regarding water allocation in the lower district. Beginning next week, household allocation will be reduced. Each household will receive two thirds of their current weekly amount. The new schedule for communal water points will be posted at each street entrance by tomorrow morning. This measure is necessary given current conditions and will remain in place until further notice. We ask for your cooperation and understanding."
The woman behind Claire said, tight and quiet, "Two thirds. I am already doing two thirds."
Her companion said something.
"I know what it is," the woman said. "I am saying I am already doing it."
The shinobi paused. Claire watched him look down at the scroll and then back up, and she had been in enough rooms where people delivered information they did not want to deliver to recognise the particular stillness that preceded it.
"It is with deep regret," he said, and his voice shifted, not much, just enough, something coming into it that had not been there before, "that the Kazekage's office confirms the loss of Battalion Twenty-Three, stationed in the northern corridor region. All personnel are unaccounted for." He stopped for a moment. His throat moved. "The Kazekage's office extends its sincere condolences to the families of Battalion Twenty-Three. Official confirmation of individual casualties will be delivered to households through the appropriate channels as information becomes available. We ask that families wait for official communication before."
He did not finish the sentence.
The silence lasted perhaps two seconds.
Then the crowd came apart at its seams, quietly and completely. Not screaming, but something lower and more total. It felt like wailing. The sounds spread over the crowd, fast and heavy.
A woman three people ahead put both hands over her mouth and her shoulders pulled inward and she stayed that way. A man to Claire's right made a sound he immediately tried to stop and managed to reduce to something small and private but could not make it disappear entirely. Near the edge of the crowd the older woman who had been sitting in her chair looked down at her lap and did not look up again.
A child said, too clearly, "Mama, why are people crying?" and the parent pulled the child in close and said something very low against the top of their head and the child didn’t speak up again.
Himari stood beside Claire and did not move and did not speak and her eyes were very bright and her face was doing something precise and careful with itself.
Claire looked at the platform. The shinobi stood with his scroll at his side and waited.
When the sound in the square had pulled itself back to something low and continuous he continued.
"Regarding the northern access roads. Ground instability has been reported across multiple points along the northern roads leading from Suna's outer gates toward the corridor region. Several locations have developed significant sinkholes, some without warning. Until the affected areas have been assessed and cleared, all northern roads are closed to civilian traffic. Shinobi will be stationed at the outer checkpoints. Any civilian attempting to use the northern roads will be turned back." He rolled the scroll. "That concludes today's announcements. The platform will be open for questions for fifteen minutes."
Three people began speaking at once.
One of them, a man toward the front, was louder than the others. "My wife's brother came through the northern pass eight days ago," he said, pushing forward slightly, his voice carrying. "He travels that road twice a season. He said there was a post there when he went up. Said there were twelve men at it. On the way back he said it was gone." He looked at the shinobi on the platform. "He said one man in his group stepped onto what looked like solid ground and it gave way under him. They managed to pull him out. He said there were four of them when they left that morning."
He stopped there.
The shinobi on the platform said that civilian reports from the region were being documented and assessed.
Himari touched Claire's arm and they moved, finding the thinner space near the square's low outer wall, away from the press around the platform where questions were still being lobbed and answered and not answered. The grief in the crowd had not gone, it had just dispersed through the crowd like heat, sitting in faces and held hands.
Claire stood with her back to the wall.
At the far end of the square there was a communal water point near the eastern entrance. A woman was filling a clay vessel there, tipping it under the spout and waiting. The morning light was full now and direct and when the woman lifted the vessel and walked away the wet patch on the ground where she had been standing dried before Claire had fully turned her attention elsewhere. Gone. The ground looked as though no water had touched it.
She looked at that for a moment.
Then she looked at the northern end of the square, and her mind went somewhere more practical and somehow worse. A forward post that had not been damaged or attacked. Just gone. And now the routes that fed half the market stalls were closed too. She thought of Watanabe-san's shelves, and how fast prices climbed once people smelled scarcity. Of the woman that had been behind her, talking of grain.
Would Mamoru's greenhouse be able to cover and shoulder the high demand? There were other greenhouses for sure, but none had been as successful in growing crops that weren’t desert specific. Others grew prickly pears, squash and zucchinis. But Mamoru was the only one growing rice, wheat and coffee. His apples and other fruit trees were diverse but their quantity was low.
Always one step forward and three steps back.
"Himari-san."
A woman was making her way toward them through the thinning crowd with the look of someone who had been looking for Himari specifically. She was a few years older than Himari, with the kind of face that suggested she had been worrying steadily for a long time and had gotten efficient at it.
"Riko-san," Himari said, and opened toward her, her whole posture shifting to make room.
Riko reached them and looked at Claire once, briefly, then at Himari. "I wanted to tell you myself," she said. "Before you heard it from someone else. We’re leaving" She said it the way a person said something they had been practicing. "Jiro and I and the children. His aunt is in a small town two days west, and I want to be somewhere that no one important wants." She stopped. Her voice was steady but her hands were not entirely. "I have been going back and forth on it for months and after today I am done going back and forth."
Himari looked at her for a long moment. Not with argument in her face, just with attention. "When?"
"End of the month. Maybe sooner if." Riko did not finish that. "I wanted you to know. You and the clinic looked after us when Yuki was small and I." She stopped again and pressed her mouth together briefly. "I wanted to say it to your face."
"I am glad you did," Himari said. She put her hand on Riko's arm and held it there. "The children's records. Come to the clinic before you go and I will have everything written up for wherever you end up taking them. So the healer there has everything they need."
Riko looked at her and the efficiency she had been wearing cracked open a little and then she pulled it back together. "Thank you," she said. "I am going to miss you very much."
"Thursday," Himari said, quietly. "Come Thursday and I will have it ready."
Riko nodded and looked at Claire again, and then she turned and moved back through the crowd.
Himari watched her go. She stood very straight and her hands were clasped in front of her and she did not say anything for a moment.
"She is the third this month," she said eventually. "That I know of."
"She is right," Claire said, but it felt more like a question. "About going."
"Yes." Himari unclasped her hands and straightened her bag strap. "And the people who stay are not wrong either. That’s it." She looked at the platform, nearly empty now, the shinobi gone, a few people still clustered at its base talking to each other. "There is no right answer. There are only different costs."
They walked back.
The lower district on the way home had a held quality to it, people moving back to their own places with the morning's weight distributed across their shoulders. Claire walked and turned the ground over in her mind and pushed it down again and walked.
"The things you cannot source anymore," Claire spoke up, as the clinic came into view. "Through the eastern route. Were any of them ever made here, before importing became easier?"
Himari glanced at her. "Some. My teacher used to use different materials before the eastern supply became consistent. There should be notes. I haven’t looked at them in years." She pushed the clinic door open. "I didn’t think I would need to ever again."
"It might be worth looking," Claire said quietly.
"It might," Himari agreed.
Inside, Daichi was at the intake desk with his pen moving and his shoulders doing their automatic drop the moment he was seated. Zen was at the compounding table, his wooden arm along the table's edge, his good hand working the pestle slowly. Both of them looked up when the door opened.
"How bad?" Daichi asked. His voice was resigned, as though he was ready to listen to more bad news. The stark difference from how he normally would have asked that question felt like a stab in Claire’s heart. Where had that happy tone gone?
Himari set her bag down. "Come to the back. I would rather say it once."
Takashi appeared in the doorway from the corridor, blanket around his shoulders, looking thoroughly unwell and entirely present. Claire's first thought, unhelpfully, was that he looked sort of adorable like this, all flushed cheeks and bright glassy eyes, like something that wanted fussing over.
Not the time, Claire. She felt her face heat and looked very deliberately at the floor instead.
Himari looked at him and opened her mouth ready to argue. He looked back at her steadily. She closed her mouth and waited for him to come in.
When they were all gathered she told them everything in order without softening any of it.
Daichi's pen was already down. He had put it down at the eastern route and not picked it up again. When Himari said the battalion, his shoulders went rigid, like he was bracing for his sister's name to follow it. It didn't come. He let out a breath he probably didn't know he was holding, then looked ashamed of the relief, like he'd stolen something from a man whose family hadn't been so lucky. He stared at the wall behind Himari's head for a moment, then made himself look back down at the records in front of him.
Zen had stopped working the pestle. He stood with both hands flat on the table and listened with his face doing the small careful adjustments Claire had learned meant he was taking something seriously.
Takashi said, "The antiseptic base. How long will the supplies last?"
"Three weeks at current use," Himari said. "Four if we are careful. But…"
"We will be careful," he said carefully in a reassuring voice, and coughed once, hard, into his sleeve. "Full inventory today. Everything from the eastern route, everything, and then a list of what Mamoru-san can supplement and what we will need to find another solution for." He looked at Claire. "You know the supply cabinet better than anyone right now. Help Himari."
"Okay," Claire replied quietly.
They started immediately. Himari pulled the records and Claire went through the cabinets shelf by shelf, reading out quantities and sources while Himari marked them against the ledger. Daichi spread a second set of records on the floor and worked out projected usage rates against the new numbers, his pen moving fast, his head down. Zen went to the storage shelves and pulled out the box of his old teacher's notes that Himari had found at the bottom of the cabinet, the ones from before the eastern route made importing simpler, and began working through them with the careful attention of someone who knew enough to evaluate what they were reading.
It was good, useful work. The kind of work that had a clear shape and a clear end. Claire moved through it and let it occupy her hands and tried to let it occupy the rest of her.
It did not.
The ground kept coming back. The post that had not been damaged but had simply not been there anymore. The wet patch in the square that had dried before she had fully turned away from it.
She stacked a row of compress bandages and found herself thinking about systems anyway, about what happened when the thing holding a structure up from underneath was removed.
She didn’t know geography, but she did know how the mechanics of some things would work. She would like to think she could figure something like sand out.
You pull the support from under a load and the load comes down.
It did not matter what the load was made of or how long it had been standing. The mechanism was the same.
Sand supported one another due to its granularity and the widespread amount of it.
She thought about what kind of force could remove a support from underneath desert terrain quickly enough that the surface above was already responding. What kind of force moved through ground rather than across it?
"The sinkholes," she said. She had not meant to say it at all, not out loud, not in the middle of the clinic with people around her. It came out before she had decided to let it.
Zen looked up from the notes.
She was still looking at the shelf. "Sinkholes happen when water's doing something underneath it shouldn't be," she said, mostly to herself. "Moving, or going somewhere it wasn't before. It’s possible something is taking the water. From underneath. Quickly."
A faint stir of air touched her face before she registered the footsteps, and then Zen was simply there in front of her, close enough that she had not seen him cross the room at all.
Himari glanced up from the ledger and opened her mouth like she meant to ask what was wrong. Zen shook his head at her once, small, and Himari closed her mouth and went back to the numbers, though her eyes stayed on Claire a moment longer.
He took Claire by the shoulder, not hard, just firmly, and walked her to the small side room without a word. She went because his grip left her very little room to do otherwise. He pulled the door shut behind them.
She turned to look at him, the compress bandage still in her hand
His face was doing something she had not seen on it before.
Zen who had held her injured hand over his wooden one and promised to fix it. Zen who delivered bad news in measured sentences and waited through grief in a square full of people without flinching. That Zen had always had a cool look on his face.
His face was not like that at that very moment.
His face was very still and the stillness had a quiver underneath it and his eyes were wide in a way she could not look away from.
"Stop," he said, in a voice barely above nothing. "Whatever you are working out in your head. Stop working it out and stop saying it out loud." He looked at the closed door and back at her, his chest rising and falling a little faster than usual. "If anyone hears you pulling at that thread, Yui-chan, we will all be gone. Not in trouble. Not spoken to. Gone."
She stared at him. "I was just talking out loud about sinkholes."
"You were not," he said. He breathed out through his nose, slow and deliberate, a man pulling himself back from something, little quivers audible in the exhale. "You were not and we both know you were not."
She opened her mouth.
He leaned in slightly, his light blue hair making him look ghastly at that moment and said it so quietly she almost did not catch it. "Bijuu."
The word landed in her chest like something dropped from a height.
She knew it.
She had heard Zen say it once, weeks ago. She had thought it was a tank and it seemed so small of a thing to think more on. But she should have. There was something in the word that felt more than just what she had thought it was in the past.
It was a heavy word. She needed to think of it more. And she dug. She dug her head because it felt slightly familiar. There was a shape she could recognize in her head as something she should know of. But the more she dug, the more it felt odd, like a feather floating away.
Maybe a Bijuu was a weapon, a project used in the war?
It could be.
She did not know what it truly was. Nor did she know if she was on the right track. But the word water kept circling back through her head, the dry patch in the square, the sinkholes, the wells.
If something is pulling water out from underneath, fast enough to leave the ground hollow behind it, then maybe it isn't taking the water by accident. Maybe that's what it does. Maybe that's what it is.
Something that moved through water or used it.
In a desert, where water was already so scarce, the water was being drained from beneath the sands, pulling from civilian pools. She knew what it would do to the ground above the water it had taken. She had already seen it. She stood in the small side room of the clinic with Zen's hand still on her shoulder and she could not move.
Zen watched her face and did not speak.
Her eyes caught his and she swallowed.
"I understand."
"Good," he said. His hand dropped from her shoulder. His face was still doing the thing it had been doing, the quiver underneath the stillness, and he looked at the door again and then back at her with eyes that were asking her a question without saying it.
"I won’t say it again," she said once again, softer so he could see she understood the gravity of the situation.
He held her gaze for another moment. Then he nodded, opened the door, and went back to the table and picked up the notes and found his page.
Claire stood in the doorway of the side room for a moment before she walked back to the shelves. Daichi was still on the floor with his records. Himari was at the ledger. Takashi had found a chair and was sitting in it with his blanket and his pen, working despite everything.
She picked up the next stack of compress bandages and put them where they needed to go.
She did not say it again.
But the word was there now, underneath everything else, underneath the inventory and the rationing calculations and the notes from Himari's old teacher. It was underneath all the ordinary work of a clinic trying to hold itself together against a war that was getting closer.
She worked until the clinic closed. Then she walked home in the dark, lay on the floor, and looked at the ceiling.
Somewhere in the village, people were rationing grain and arguing over two thirds of a water allotment, and none of them knew there was a word for what was happening underneath their feet. She barely what it was. She could not say it. She lay there a long time with the word sitting in her chest like a stone she'd swallowed, and the ceiling gave her nothing back.
She did not sleep for a long time.