Chapter Text
It starts with a funeral. Or rather; it starts with a death.
Two weeks prior to the academy graduation exams, a B class mission goes severely south, resulting in the maiming of Chio Akimichi, and the death of Iori Yamanaka. It’s a tragedy, as all deaths are, and yet by all rights should have been largely meaningless. The members of the squad were disconnected from the main branch of their selective clans, were entirely average in their abilities, and had been nestled comfortably at chunin for the better part of ten years. Iori’s death was a shinobi’s death and it was a part of shinobi life.
“Should have.”
They bury Iori in a downpour.
It is difficult weather, to say the least. As they walk through the cemetery, the ground turns to sludge beneath the mourner's feets, sucking and pulling, as though ready to accept more than its offered dead. Around them the rain falls in sheets, slamming upon the carved headstones, drumming a sound louder than the threat of thunder overhead. Even the act of crying in this weather becomes difficult, for the water stings and burns just as the tears, and the deluge chokes as much as the grief.
The funeral procession that leads to the grave slows to a halt, the line forming into a crowd largely made up of the Nara, Yamanaka and Akimichi clan members. A cynicist would perceive this as a show of alliance strength. Those with understanding know it to be a weak show. The weather around them warns and scares, and Iori did not hold the respect that would ward off such feelings. The number of attendees is far fewer than he truly deserves.
At the back of the crowd Shikaku stands alongside Choza. He watches, he waits, he struggles to decipher the bitter something that sits at the back of his throat. It winds around his windpipe, though not in the way sadness does, and leaves a sour aftertaste when it crawls upwards to brush against his tongue. He looks at Ino, stood in front of her father, pale hair plastered to her scalp, and thinks of his own son back home, probably still asleep. He names this tumour guilt, and tries to think nothing more of it. When he watches Ino’s hands shake as she passes a bouquet over to Iori’s mother, her lip wobbling as she turns into her father’s chest, he stomps down the concept of fright.
“Commander.” A voice greets to his left. A voice that is soft and shaky, and belongs to Shihori Nara, the third member of Chio and Iori’s squad. When he turns to answer, he does not find the girl who left the village a month ago. Only a warped and marked reflection of what had been, and would not be again.
She’s thinner. Gaunt and pale and shadowed, a ghost forced to take physical form. The movements she makes are few and far between, her posture rigid and pulled tight like an overdrawn elastic, and instead of truly moving, she jerks in tiny tremors. A flinch, a twitch, a shake; so different from the girl who lounged and lazed around the clan grounds. And her face? Her eyes? They are obsidian upon marble, lifeless and empty, as though the soul has been leeched out, but the heart left behind. It is the look of Schrodinger's soldier: one who cannot go back, yet has not left.
“Shihori.” Shikaku greets in turn, bowing deeply as he speaks. It sends a fresh wave of spasms through the young woman’s body, fists clenching and fingers grasping as her body rebels at the idea of respect. “My condolences. Iori was a strong shinobi, and a good man. It is a shame to have lost someone so talented.”
She attempts a smile, though it is twisted and tight and held together by tape. “They are not my condolences to accept.” She shrugs, the movement slow and heavy and followed by a deep sigh. Her head twists, eyes glancing over to find a sister, a brother, a mother, and finally Chio, all gathered closest to the headstone. For a moment there is life in her eyes. It’s not the sort of life one wants. “It is his family who are owed them.”
“A squad is its own form of family.” Choza remarks, reaching over to place a hand on Shihori’s shoulder. It sends her knees buckling with the added burden. “You feel the grief just as his blood does.”
“Maybe.” The smile wobbles once, then twists further. There is agony in her eyes, melancholy in her being, but beneath those easy emotions lies something that bites and writhes and refuses to be named. Purposefully she drops her shoulders, as though the weight upon them may fall too. The muscles in her back tighten. “Let’s say instead that I will not accept the comfort then. We’ll take it as deserved retribution.”
“You’d make his death about you.” Shikaku mumbles. It is a blunt honesty that functioned in The Third Shinobi War, when grief was a distraction, and distraction was a death sentence. The glare Choza shoots, and the anger that flares in Shihori serve to remind him that the standards of peace time are far different.
“Call it that then.” Shihori spits out, louder than she means, softer than she’d like. The stragglers at the back of the crowd turn their eyes upon her, but she is blind to them in a way Shikaku does not share. “His death fell on my inability to think. I failed to adapt, my team suffered, and I survived. Say it selfish, I don’t mind.” With each word her syllables sharpen, with each breath her voice rises.
“Fine.” Shikaku whispers, biting back the urge to point out the scene around them and the eyes upon them. It is a weak attempt to quell Shihori’s anger, and it fails spectacularly, but lady luck is on his side, for as Shihori breathes in to rave again, her eyes fall upon Chio’s, and something in her breaks a little more. The eyes that find hers are not laden with anger, or disappointment, or something that should hurt, but grief. Grief, not for the dead and buried, but for the living who must carry on.
A moment.
Another.
Yet one more, but the eyes have turned away, and the ceremony has carried on, and now Shihori shakes on the verge of sobs she refuses to share. Her shoulders heave, up and down in jilted movements, as she bites upon her tongue as though the pain may stop the tears. One step back. Two. A stumble, but she will not meet either Shikaku’s or Choza’s eyes.
“You ought to read the mission report.” She rushes the words out, as though saying them slowly will halt them in their path. “You really, really ought to.” And before Shikaku can even move to open his mouth, she is gone, yanking her feet from the mud that tries to bind her down, stumbling backwards to a home that no longer feels as such.