Ghostly Garden - Part 2
Sasuke soon learns that everyone has ghosts--Most people don’t have half a clan’s worth the way that he does, but some definitely have more than others.
Nearly every ninja has at least one, sometimes he can recognize them as Konoha-nin by their headbands, but other times they are distinctly not Konoha-nin. The ones with more foreign nin are usually older jounin, ones with bingo book pages he remembers from class. He pointedly does not make eye contact with those particular ghosts, it’s better they don’t realize what he can see.
His own ghosts know, the members of the clan who linger in his glorified graveyard of a clan district. It’s a hodgepodge of who’s left, with seemingly no rhyme or reason to who stayed and who moved on. Sasuke’s parents moved on, according to Uzume-ba, and Sasuke hates it but maybe he understands a little bit. If he could leave a world where Itachi-nii could do something so awful, maybe he would too.
Moving on is supposed to be nice, or at least some of the ghosts think so, Uzume says it’s overrated and that the ones fishing for it just can’t handle the reality they’ve been saddled with. She doesn’t say it in a mean way, but in the stern way that she sometimes talked in when Sasuke asked her for help with training. Uzume didn’t spend all of her time around Sasuke, she mostly just showed up at night to check on him before he went to sleep. Sasuke didn’t pry, that she came at all was a small blessing he wasn’t going to risk losing.
Mami-ba is the one with him most often, even if she splits her time between him and some of the younger ghosts--she didn’t really let him spend much time around them yet. Tenjin didn’t actually understand he was dead, just that father was gone and so were the majority of the children from his parent’s orphanage.
Mami-ba was trying to acclimate him slowly, but once he was calmer she assured Sasuke he could come and visit. He still wasn’t sure if he wanted to, he’d seen Youko-nee once, wandering around the district and screaming for Noa-nee and Kukuri-nee until she’d broken down crying. Sasuke had trudged over and set a hand on her shoulder, he knew what that grief felt like.
He could touch the ghosts but it didn’t feel like touching a person, it felt almost like pushing against a balloon. Not quite solid but still there, kind of like how he felt most of the time.
Lots of other children at the academy have a ghost, including those in his class, and learning that makes him sit a little easier. Even if no one else can see their’s everyone in Konoha is haunted, it helps him believe they’re actually real. Because maybe he could make up the Uchiha but making up ghosts for his classmates? He doesn’t think he’s creative enough for that.
Naruto’s ghost is especially lively, they have the same face in a way that Sasuke is inclined to believe the ghost much be a family member. Even glowing softly in the ethereal way that all ghosts seem to do, she’s somehow vibrant instead of desaturated like so many Uchiha ghosts. Sasuke wonders if she died on her own terms, to be so content to follow after a scampering brat like Naruto with such a smile on her face.
Ino’s ghost is a surprise, especially because Sasuke has met Ino’s mom before but the way this woman watches Ino, gently brushes hair out of her face during tests and gently nudges her towards greener patches of flowers during recess she must be a mother. They look similar enough, in the clan way, but he can’t be certain beyond his gut feeling.
Hinata’s ghost is absolutely her mother, and Sasuke knows this because he went to her funeral, along with the rest of the Uchiha head family. She looks just as fragile in unlife as she did in death, but the sickly pallor that had taken to her skin was evened out in the ethereal light. She rarely touched Hinata, perhaps a holdover from life when he had heard of the Hyuuga Matriarch was kept in quarantine and only saw her children from a distance. Still, she dropped flowers on Hinata’s desk when no one was looking, and returned toys lost during recess to other children’s cubbies.
So many ghosts are mothers, there are fathers too, and a smaller number of older children he guesses must be siblings. He tries very hard not to think about those things. His parents are resting, it’s better for them to have moved to wherever ghosts go when they’ve finished in the mortal realm. His brother certainly haunts him, but not in the way these children have and that’s for the best, it has to be.
Nara Shikako has the most bizarre ghost Sasuke has ever seen, and he’s seen practically half a village-worth. It’s a young woman who stands in her shadow, who is her shadow the way she mirrors all of Shikako’s movements. She doesn’t even look that much like Shikako, but all her mannerisms and expressions are identical. It’s a little unnerving but it seems like every day Shikako and her shadow are a little closer, the shadow’s appearance taking on a little more of Shikako’s.
He thinks to himself that it must be a Nara thing, and ignores the fact that Shikamaru’s shadow holds no such ghosts.
