"Happy birthday, Obito!" Rin presents a cake, painstakingly baked and iced last night. She hands him a card bearing signatures--hers and Minato's and Kushina's and even Kakashi's--and settles back to watch him. "We also got you presents, but you have to read your card first!"
Obito cradles the cake like something precious, stares at it like he’s never seen a baked good before. He can see the intricate detail in it, no sloppiness to be found in the icing, barely an imperfection in it. He can see the work put into the confectionary, and his heart beats an erratic song, panging with a bittersweet feeling he can’t identify. She offers a card, next, and he carefully, carefully places the cake aside, wondering how he’ll bring himself to eat it when it means cutting it and disrupting the hard work put into making it so neat.
He swallows the lump in his throat, the rising warmth in his face and chest warning him of tears, but he thinks it can be forgiven this once. He peers inside, at the looping and scrawling handwriting of his team (his precious people) each with their own little message to him. Even Bakashi left a signature, even if there was no personalized message. He wonders if the Hatake just couldn’t think of one.
The card is decorated with birthday cheer, little balloons and confetti and a cute black cat with a pre-printed “Happy Birthday!” message, and Obito was expecting it, but he still quickly brings his free hand to his face to wipe away the tears as they roll down his cheeks. It’s a little embarrassing, but even that is overwhelmed by the happy, warm feeling in his chest. He thinks that he never wants this moment to end. He thinks there’s no possible way he could ever show his gratitude, express how much just this little card and cake means to him, how much his team means to him.
And they haven’t even gotten to presents yet. He’s already a mess. Maybe that’s okay.
“Thank you- Thank you,” he utters, hugging the card to his chest. He sniffles, tries to regain some dignity about him and the right words to say.
“... Thank you.” It’s all he can manage that makes any modicum of sense and doesn’t end in more sappy tears.
Shisui shares a mischievous grin with Itachi, arm comfortably snug around Itachi’s shoulders. He leans on him a little to peer at his meal, a hum of approval escaping his lips at the sight.
“I’ve been practicing,” he replies cheerfully, because while most Shinobi use the Shunshin in moderation for merely a faster mode of travel, he’s seen its potential. For combat, for stealth, and the obvious: he’s only surprised no one has tried to perfect it before him.
“Mission was fine, pretty average. Just a merchant escort. There were a few bandits, but our team handled it fine.” He tilts his shoulder in a half-shrug, giving Itachi a last little squeeze in the half embrace he’d caught him in before pulling away.
“How’s your mini-me doing?” He means Sasuke, of course. He’s practically attached at the hip to Itachi whenever he gets the opportunity. It's pretty cute, actually.
He’s low on chakra, which is becoming a new theme on almost every difficult mission, no matter how he trains to increase his reserves. His thigh burns with the lack of circulation, or maybe the wound below, but at least it isn’t bleeding so much anymore. Kakashi doesn’t protest when Rin moves to carry him on her back, moving his sluggish limbs to accommodate her and the position.
Then she springs into action, and the motion is almost lulling enough to sway him into unconsciousness-- but this is a mission, and he knows the consequences of falling asleep.
“I guess you’re right,” he murmurs, struggling to keep his eyes open (or the one that isn’t covered, anyway, to preserve what little chakra he has left). She offers him a soldier pill, adjusting him to grab the pouch where it lies. He scoops up a few gratefully, trying to still his shaking, clumsy fingers. He manages to avoid spilling its contents, so he counts it as a victory. He passes Rin one and swallows another without hesitation, hoping the kick comes fast. He knows Rin has to be tiring, too, and Kakashi is only dead weight right now.
“Sorry,” he offers lowly, though he’s sorry for many things, even more than his current uselessness. The fog is clearing now, and he thinks he might be able to carry his own weight in another moment or two, or at the very least, avoid passing out.
Kushina does her best to help Rin with learning to control the Sanbi, even if most of the time their lessons need to end abruptly because Rin gets frustrated about a lack of results. Knowing that Kushina is the only person who can help her, Rin is forced to stick around and tough it. She is also exposed to the absolutely disgusting way people treat jinchūriki for being the way they are even though they genuinely cannot help it. Kushina often sticks up for Rin and gets very annoyed when the council deem Rin yet another weapon for Konoha to use, going so far as to force them to retract that decision so that Rin can live a semi-normal life without someone always poking their nose in.
Feeling anything was beyond her capabilities now. Her mind wasn’t the only thing damaged, her body was mutilated horrifically as well. Kumogakure had tried forcing the secrets of her Uzumaki Chakra out of her, no one had found her for years and so they had taken their time with getting the information out of her. Or trying to, at least.
They’d been unsuccessful with their plan, only further motivating her to keep silent with each consecutive session they put her through. In the end, they had nothing to show for their efforts but Kushina had everything to show for her silence. Wounds that would never heal and years of her life she’d never get back. Whenever people spoke to her- the rare times they did, anyway- their first question was always; What happened to your eye? or Why do you look so depressed all the time?
She’d never known anyone who didn’t break the ice like that, demanding to know why her eye was covered. The Sandaime, her keeper he called himself, would always prompt her to tell them her story. She’d get no pity or sorrow, only laughter or anger. Is this how a kunoichi of Konoha is supposed to act? Like a depressed slob who is no good for anything? They’d say as if she wasn’t there, listening to every cruel word leave their mouth.
Of course, she wasn’t bothered by their words. She did far more than they thought she did and heaven knows that she’d be coming after them next, should they decide to disobey her keeper. This girl- creature- that she’d become was Konoha’s dirty little secret. They didn’t want anyone to know what they put her through in the wake of her coming back from Kumogakure. They wanted information on what Kumogakure wanted from her, they did everything they could to get her to spill what she told their enemy.
She remembers few things from her life before the darkness, only the scent of the sea, the sound of the waves and a boy with bright blonde hair. Maybe she’d see him again one day, maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe he’d moved on with his life and no longer cared for the girl with cursed red hair, maybe he’d gotten himself killed looking for her when no one else cared to. The thought that someone would have cared enough to look for her would have filled her with warmth once upon a time but now, it left her feeling nothing.
H : HEART. is your muse quick or slow to give their heart away?
Muns Response: She sits somewhere between immediately giving it away and giving it away after literal years of a romantic relationship. She needs to know she can 100% trust her partner(s) before she will give her heart away to them. Trust is a big thing for Kushina and if she thinks you’ll just hurt her the first chance she allows herself to be vulnerable around you then she won’t even think about giving her heart away to you.
Kushinas Response: “Giving my heart away makes me vulnerable and I don’t wanna risk someone hurting me again. I’d rather be alone for the rest of my life than be with anyone who would take my heart and break it into shards.”
((Under the cut because long + triggers listed in the tags!))
They are all still in the position they died in when he finds them.
Gran went first, probably had her throat slit as she opened the front door. Had died before she could ever hope to warn the others, bones scattered in a heap with more than a few of them missing. She’d likely been the first one the animals had gone after, too.
Next was his dad, and very shortly followed by his ma. As soon as gran had been killed, it was obvious his dad had jumped to his feet, knife in hand- he’d probably been eating dinner since his bones were where the table used to be, shoddy weapon rusted and grown over with weeds by now. His mother, on the other hand, wasn’t turned towards the door to fight, but in the direction of the rest of the house, her humerus, radius, and ulna stretched farther away than the rest of her. Like she’d been reaching for something. For someone.
Three someones.
He doesn’t want to open their door. Wants to run far, far away from that house and the fresh pain that tears open inside of him over and over again, wants to pretend that they had gotten away and lived happily ever after.
Rai walks into the room anyway.
His sisters had been born together, and they had similarly died together. There was no telling who’s bones belonged to who, not really, but he knew in his soul where and how each of them had died.
Mio had gone first, her remains in front of the others, where she had undoubtedly tried to protect them. Fierce and unbending to her very last breath.
Shizu and Nozomiko had gone together, bones intertwined so closely that it would have been hard to tell there was more than one body had it not been for the two skulls. One was placed in the middle of a few leftover ribs- likely Shizu’s, being comforted by Nozomiko and reassured that everything would be alright even as their death came.
Oddly enough, his eyes were dry. His stomach was empty, the dry heaving having stopped after his grandmother’s bones crunched underfoot, and he wasn’t yelling. After seeing his sisters remains, he didn’t even hurt anymore.
As he slipped down a moldy wall, Rai found that he didn’t feel very much at all save for a yawning, never-ending hollowness deep inside.
He was tired, too. So, so tired.
It wasn’t hard at all for him to close his eyes, to let his body relax until it was limp, ignore the vague ripping of his not-quite healed injuries. There was nowhere else he had to be, nowhere else he wanted to be.
Let the next person who stumbled upon this shattered family find his bones and think he had died with them as well.
It was better than the truth that they had died while he was away.
That he had failed to protect them.
─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───
Her husband is old.
Konohako wasn’t supposed to have looked to the man, was supposed to keep her eyes on the ground until her veil was lifted like some sort of demure, unrecognizable creature, but her eyes strayed anyway. The fabric was sheer enough to let her see a good portion of him, but not enough that her glances would be noticed, so it wasn’t like she was worried about getting in trouble.
It also wasn’t like she had anything left to lose, either.
One of her aunts had told her it could have been so much worse. Her grandfather could have wed her off to some fisherman who would come home drunk and beat her every night, could have simply thrown her to the guards like a new toy to be chewed up, could have left her to rot in a dungeon somewhere. She should be grateful to him, grateful that this politician is a boring man with kind eyes who will not hold her mother’s betrayal or Konohako’s very existence against her.
But she is thirteen and her husband has white hair already, withered hands, and a gaze that was a little too pleased when it rested on her formal kimono.
He is also very good at pretending her hands are not tied behind her back, her mouth isn’t gagged, and there aren’t seals rooting her to the very ground.
A precaution, necessary after she had murdered a guard and heavily injured several others while trying to escape the night before.
She hadn’t even become a woman yet and they were selling her off to the highest bidder like some prized broodmare- as if she had ever been prized a day in her life. It was only natural that she would fight her hardest to run, to be free, to get away away away—
The woman who did her makeup is good at hiding bruises.
“…ess and in health, to love and cherish until death do you part?”
“I do.”
“And do you, Homura Konohako, ta-”
The words a dull drone in the back of her mind, nothing she is focused on even as they seal her fate and threaten to change the rest of her life. Her grandmother had been worried about how she would act during the ceremony, had ordered the gag to prevent screaming and spitting, had used the veil in the case of tears- but there was no sign of any of those things. Instead, Konohako was calm, taking this with uncanny grace. Even as they all pretended she could say her ‘vows’ , could actually say ‘I do’, she did not flinch.
Her veil was lifted, blank face exposed, but she did not shrink away.
The small girl was too busy thinking of the sharpness of her teeth and the bareness of her old, frail husband’s throat.
Blood would be spilled on their wedding night, but it would not be her own.
