Chapter 9: Chapter 9: Academy Arc: Three
Disclaimer: I own nothing about Naruto. Hana is a character created by Kishimoto, and I am playing with her fate. Thus is life.
The day of the funeral is like every other day in the world. The sun is shining. The grass is green, and fluffy white clouds roll in the sky like balls of cotton.
Tou-san's buried in the clan cemetery, Aunt Kosshi finally repentant. She's finally his sister-in-law when it's just too late to matter, and too late to care. I do not care. I am too tired to cry, much less to care.
It feels like I've been ripped in two anyway, and hurt worse that being crushed by a car.
I wish the sky is crying, weeping, heavy with a sense of loss, but as the ceremony goes on, the sun burns away the clouds so that nothing remains. There's just dull heat and aching eyes as I hold Kaa-san's hand.
She doesn't cry either, having spent all her tears in the hospital room. When it's over, we leave, stumbling over our own feet back to the empty house where no one will ever cook again.
It hurts too much to think. I crawl into bed and close my eyes, and there I stay, for a week or more with the Triplets snuggled up beside me, all wrapped up in their own grief, until Tokuma and Muta come knocking on my door.
I get up just long enough to say that I'm fine, that I'd rather be alone. Sorry.
And then I crawl back to my room and try to ignore the photographs that I can't bear to look at and the memories that seem more like a swamp.
I had thought we were safe. How wrong I was. How young and stupid and naive.
You little fool.
It doesn't stop them from coming back again and again, dropping off homework, seeing the Triplets, attempting to talk to me. Their eyes are haunted, probably because of the death of someone they'd vaguely knew existed in the line of duty, despite that duty not being fighting heroically on the front lines.
"Are you sure you're okay, Hana-chan?" Tokuma had to be the most atypical Hyuga I knew of, besides the as of yet not born Hinata. He is kind, and had bad posture and hadn't been overtly formal after a few days.
"We want you to know that we're still here." Muta pushes his purple tinted sunglasses back up his nose. "We're friends and future teammates." On the other hand, Muta is almost the stereotype of his clan, calm, polite, inscrutable, and more than a little weird.
I smile weakly. "I'm fine." Neither of them look convinced in the slightest, but they stay for another half hour, just sitting around and then they leave again.
That night I dream of their deaths because I am not enough. Because I had frozen on a mission. I see Tokuma falling with his throat slit eyes truly blank an unseeing for the first time, devoid of all life. I see Muta roasted alive and I hear both the screams of my friend and of his kikaichu. I see the Triplets impaled by swords. I see Kaa-san lying face down, blood blossoming over her back.
It's all your fault. It's all your fault. No one died the last time around, because it was Hana. It wasn't you.
I wake up screaming, chest heaving, heart pounding, but I do not cry.
"Did you want to go to the Academy today, Little Nose?" To Kaa-san's credit she reacts nothing like me. Oh, the pain must be there for her too, my equal if not worse, but she's still standing tall. Eight months pregnant, a widow with a depressed child, and Kaa-san stands with shoulders straight and head thrown back as proud and unbending as a mountain.
For the first time, I wonder if it should have been her example I was supposed to be following in this life.
But to go back to academy is to say that I still wanted to be a ninja. I didn't know what I want. So I shake my head and shove more plain white rice into my mouth. "I want to go visit the memorial stone."
A flicker of concern flashes through Kaa-san's eyes and she holds my hand from across the table. "Hana-chan..." She begins, and it's clear that she doesn't want to complete the sentence. "He won't be on there, you know that."
One last injustice for Tou-san, I think, even in death, they're not done mocking him. "I know." I whisper back. "I just have a friend I want to see there is all, from sometime happier." I really ought not to call Uchiha Obito a friend, but it's better than the nothing that I've been doing for so long.
The Triplets don't come with me this time, and I buy the customary hard candies from Obaa-san without a word, just point and pay. It's horribly rude, a part of my brain whispers. I don't care anymore, another part whispers back.
I sit down and rest my head against the monument this time, and feel my eyes fill with tears as I arrange the handful of candies in a floral pattern. Too abruptly, Tou-san's fond whisper of Blossom had crossed my mind and made it hard to think.
"Uchiha-san." I whisper. "I don't know if I want to be a ninja anymore." The truth is, I don't know if I want to be anything anymore. I had never lost anyone I cared about because they'd died before.
Life as a ninja wasn't just about my own death anymore. There were so many people that I'd meet that I'd never meet again just because statistically they'd die.
"Tou-san's dead." I laugh. "But then, so are you and his name isn't here." I pause and feel the summer breeze ruffle through the clearing. "There was an accident in RnD and Tou-san didn't make it." I sniff, and for the first time in over two months I am crying again. "I don't know what to do."
"You shouldn't be a ninja if death affects you this much." I turn to glare in the direction behind me. Kakashi, of course. "If seeing someone whom you love die makes you incapable of moving on you shouldn't be a shinobi."
"You're one to talk." The words pop out of my mouth before I could stop them. "You're here more often than me, and for what? People you don't want to forget? What's wrong with having doubts?"
"I am guilty for their deaths, I admit to that." Kakashi looks back at me, his face unreadable. "But I have never thought that I shouldn't be a shinobi."
My face flushes. Of course he listens to everything you say when you're here. Why did you even come?
I clench my fists. "It's not your problem." He turns on his heel.
"No, of course it isn't, but at least you're alive right now." He'd been concerned? The thought is so out of left field that I can say absolutely nothing as his slouched form disappears from the clearing.
I'm at the hospital again listening to Kaa-san scream and curse in the next room. Cousin Gaku and Cousin Ashi sit beside me, squishing me between them.
Cousin Gaku has an arm wrapped around my shoulders. "We were here for your birth too, you know." He's speaking in a meandering, monotonous sort of way. "But then, your birth was really easy, all the staff said so. You screamed loud enough for all of us to want to cover our ears, but Kaito-san was too overjoyed to care." The mention of Tou-san hurt a little less than before. My anger at Kakashi's words had covered some of the hurt. "He really loved children, you know. And he tried to be nice to us."
Cousin Ashi sighed. "But then Haha-ue didn't want us to go and see you much afterwards, so we only really saw you again after your baby phase." She runs a hand through her sweat soaked hair. "It won't happen again with another cousin. I won't let it, even if Haha-ue forbids it."
"Heavens know we didn't spend enough time with you, you don't even really know us." Is that really what they think? I look at Cousin Gaku, he's really just a teenager, back when I was born he'd been a child. Of course he'd listened to his mother. And Cousin Ashi, despite how maturely she acted when we'd met the first time, she hadn't been much older than Gaku.
"You don't have to be guilty." I pat his arm. "Just be nicer to Kiba."
He huffs. "I've learned my lesson."
"Hana-chan, your brother and your mother's ready to see you." I slide off the bench and walk through the door with my spine straight. Tou-san would have been happy to greet his son. Just like he was happy to greet me. I lift my chin and step towards the hospital bed and Kaa-san with her arms around a small wrapped form.
"You got your brother after all, Little Nose." Kaa-san looks exhausted, her hair plastered to her face with sweat, and no makeup, but she also looks triumphant. "So what are we naming him?"
I look up at her. "You didn't pick a name?"
Suddenly she's smaller and frailer. "Kai-baka picked your name." Oh. Oh. He did?
Well, I knew what my brother's name is. I'd known it since I first known where I was.
"Kiba." I say and push back the blanket to look at his face. "His name is Kiba." He's quiet, resting now and so much quieter than I knew I'd been when I was a newborn. His hand is clenched in a baby-ish fist and I'm suddenly struck by the thought that I would not see him die.
No. I'll become strong enough to protect him. I have to make sure that he's not hurt. Not now, not ever.
"Kiba huh." Kaa-san leans back on her pillows. "Kiba it is."
"Kaa-san?" I ask, and she turns to look at me. "Can I go back to the academy?"
A.N. And so there we have it. Grief and overcoming grief. Hana style.
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