I honestly have no idea where this came from, I was just thinking about Takeko today and I know why I love her as a character, and why Yasu loves her, and why DANZO loves her but due to the nature of most of my fics taking place years after her death I don’t get to really show the sides of her that show that. SO HERE HAVE SOME TAKEKO.
Takeko knows, deep down in her bones, that her father loves her--It doesn’t make living with him any easier.
Most people she meets do not like her father, but he’s respected and Takeko respects him but...it’s not the life she wants for herself. She loves her village, she was raised to love and cherish it and as she’s grown she’s found things within worth loving and cherishing. Her love is different from her father’s because her father loves an idea but Takeko loves the people who make the ideals of Konoha worth fighting for.
Takeko loves her father perhaps more than she loves the village some days, but Takeko loves herself too.
So she has to leave because her father is suffocating her, he loves her and believes he knows best. It started when she graduated, so excited to learn to be a ninja with her father as her teacher. She hadn’t realized it then, how isolating it was to be a genin with no teammates, only an apprenticeship that could just barely be claimed to be merit-based and not earned through sheer nepotism.
Her father is strict but mostly fair, up to a point.
Things are easy to ignore when she’s a genin riding on his coattails, when she doesn’t know better. Her father, her clan, and Uncle Hiruzen’s family are really all she’s ever known. It isn’t until Asuma gets his genin team that she truly realizes what she’s missing. Asuma loves his team, and Takeko is left with a slowly growing feeling in her chest as if someone’s been stolen from her.
There’s little to do for it now, she can’t very well go back in time and prevent her father from taking on her apprenticeship but she strives to interact more with others in her limited time outside training. She meets people, reconnects with old classmates from the academy and their genin teams, meets Auntie Biwako’s coworkers at the hospital and makes friends with the medics in training, she even picks up the twins from the academy and meets their friends, Chiyojo with the lion’s share of them being the social butterfly she is.
It’s slow going, but she expands her inner circle until she’s regularly stopped when she’s out in the village to chat and check-in or gossip about the latest news. Takeko is absolutely thrilled, she’d never thought of herself as lonely, she’d had her father, her family, and Asuma--but maybe she had been at least a little lonely. Walking around with a whole open she hadn’t even known she’d needed to fill with friends and conversation.
Things start to worsen shortly after she takes and passes her first chuunin exams, she’d been trained harshly and borderline viciously by her father because he had wanted to ensure she was completely ready. She’d mastered the Shimura summoning contract as well as could have been expected for her age, and she came out swinging with an arsenal of powerful fire jutsu compounded nicely with her own heavy preference for close combat. She didn’t win her tournament but she came in at a close second and more than earned her promotion.
The photo of herself and Father celebrating her promotion is something she cherishes, even as their relationship crumbles around them it’s something that proves he loves her--especially when his actions don’t.
Things are rocky but bearable all the way up until her unexpected promotion to special jounin two years later It’s the independence that comes with being a special jounin she thinks, that has her father scrambling for control. Their shouting matches become just as much a part of their daily routine as their old games of shoji once were. Takeko wants to join a department, wants to get her foot in the door by her own merit and not his but Father won’t hear a word of it. He knows better, he says again and again and again, and he’s willing to railroad her into the life he has planned.
The problem is Takeko is just as, if not more stubborn than her father, so she goes to the only person she knows is equipped to help her and has absolutely no fear of royally pissing off a high-ranking village official.
Takeko loves Asuma and his endless supply of protective spite so much.
It doesn’t matter that Asuma is only fourteen, three years her junior having just made chuunin in the most recent exams, and not even hit his growth spurt yet. He’s with her when she quietly packs and helps her carry everything out of the estate. His presence is the only thing stopping Father from grabbing her and dragging her back because if he does then Asuma is liable to actually start an all-out bare-fisted brawl with her father, because Asuma never does things halfway, and for all that Uncle Hiruzen will side with father over most things, Takeko knows that even he would hesitate at the idea of doing something that could so irreparably damage their relationship.
So Takeko packs, placates cousins who demand to know why she’s abdicating her heir status--she isn’t, she just can’t live with Father and Father won’t have her living on the Shimura estate if it isn’t with him--It will only be for a few months, just until Father calms down and sees that she’s an adult who can make her own decisions.
Asuma is decidedly less optimistic as he helps her carry boxes and sneaks a cigarette in the garden under her window as he plays lookout. She ignores the smoke wafting into her room, even if Auntie Biwako would have her head for not attempting to curb the bad habit Asuma had recently picked up, he’s doing her a major favor and she’ll return a smaller one in kind. Her flight has been strategically planned during a council meeting of which their parents are all in attendance and could easily take hours but it’s still better not to take chances. Takeko’s borderline frantic packing contrasts with Asuma’s cool thin veneer of nonchalance even as his eyes dart between her and the main house entrance every few minutes.
She packs lightly because she still doesn’t really know where she’s going, Takeko can’t take everything, some things she doesn’t particularly want to take. Her formal clothes are all hand-me-downs from her mother and taking the clothes of a deceased woman when she’s fleeing said deceased woman’s husband feels incredibly uncomfortable. Takeko has never felt any real connection to the woman who’d died before she was old enough to even remember but she knows how haunted it left Father.
Instead, she scrawls into her letters, several letters all addressed to different clan members, written carefully because she knows Father will read all of them anyway. She wants Cousin Hangaku to have the formal clothes because they’re of age and Hangaku’s mother had been a dear friend of Takeko’s mother. The clothes Takeko can’t bring that are properly hers are to be distributed between Chiyojo and Chiyome.
They aren’t much but Takeko had saved up her meager genin earnings once upon a time to buy clothes for herself that weren’t Shimura clan standards and she hoped the twins would appreciate the opportunity for that little sliver of independence the same way she had. She takes some linens and things that are technically clan property but leaves a handful of ryo behind so it doesn’t feel quite so much like stealing from her clan.
When everything is finally packed Asuma helps her seal all the boxes into storage scrolls he’d ‘borrowed’ from Uncle Hiruzen. They’re halfway out of the estate when they’re cornered by the twins. Chiyome gives her a long stare before ambling off into the estate, mumbling something about needing to study. Chiyojo’s reaction is more immediately distressed as the young girl bursts into tears and begs to be taken along.
Takeko does her best to comfort her young cousin, assure her that she can still walk the twins home from the academy and that they’re both welcome to visit her wherever she ends up staying, that this will be temporary, don’t cry Yojo-chan, it’s only for a few months.
Asuma is mostly silent and awkward but offers a gentle hair ruffle once Chiyojo is finally calm but when they hear the telltale clack of geta Takeko momentarily freezes before regaining hold of herself and quickly shooing Chiyojo back to her sister just in time for Father to round the corner. Their eyes meet and for a moment she can see the ghost of a smile in the twitch at the corner of his mouth but then his eyes drift to Asuma and his armful of scrolls and dark eyes narrow.
Asuma stands straighter, practically daring her father to say something, anything, and Takeko can’t even begin to find her own voice. With sharp, choppy movements not in the least befitting to the level of grace she possesses Takeko grabs Asuma’s hand and tugs him forwards. She awkwardly attempts to sidestep her father but while Takeko came into her height early for a teen Father still towers over her in sheer presence if not height. There’s not killing intent, her father would never direct that at her but the air is still suffocating in its tenseness as Father’s hand snakes out to catch her arm.
Ducking her head, she steals her heart and concentrates chakra into her feet so she can stay rooted to the ground despite his grip. If he wants to drag her home he’ll have to cause a scene, and she knows her father well enough that such an option is completely loathsome. Beside her, Asuma grips her hand tighter and glares absolute daggers, his lethal intent just barely restrained. Everything about the situation is one she has dearly been hoping to avoid.
“Making an incredibly foolish decision.”
His voice is quiet, gentle, but cutting because Takeko knows the look in his eye, has seen him send it towards a hundred subordinates but never towards her. Like he’s calculating just what he needs to say to completely cut to the bone with words alone because apparently her just wanting to be her own woman is tantamount to potential treason.
“Father. I was just leaving, I’ll be back soon.” It isn’t a lie, not a proper lie because she will be back, once everything blows over she’ll come home and Father will realize how ridiculous he’s been and everything will be fine. She releases Asuma’s hand, just to gently ease her father’s grasp on her arm. His eyes narrow again as the flit over towards Asuma, still cold and calculating but soften minutely as the trail back to her.
His grip tightens one last time, not enough to bruise but firm enough that she’ll feel a sting for at least an hour. Then he does something unexpected, he tugs her forward and Takeko doesn’t even have time to react as her father pulls her into their first hug in nearly a year. For a moment, hope springs in her chest, that they’ve finally met somewhere in the middle in their uneasy balance of control and love. She opens her mouth to speak only to be interrupted by father’s voice, icier than she’s ever heard directed at herself.
“I never thought you would disappoint me, perhaps I was wrong, Takeko. I expect you back soon.”
Asuma’s intent spikes again and his free arm yanks her away. Father says nothing, only staring with tired, angry eyes as Asuma throws his arm around her and begins leading out of the compound. She can barely think, shock fresh and painful because things had been so close to alright.
By the time she hiccups out her first sob, Asuma has huddled her into a tucked away corner table at her favorite Akimichi cafe. It’s as private as they can get without having to shunshin somewhere--which Takeko is in no condition to be doing. Instead, she sits with Asuma and cries into the hot chocolate the owner sent over to their table after he’d caught sight of them. Her friend has one arm still slung over her shoulder and the other idly picking at a tray of Takeko’s favorite cookies she hasn’t touched.
She’s free, but she had never really considered the cost of it.
