Naruto: Dreaming of Sunshine

But the conversation shifted onwards, like I knew it was always going to.

Or rather, it ground to a stuttering, teetering halt when Dad brought up the kidnapping. Not even in so many words, just a reference to the fact that Konoha was now in a bit of a tricky political situation.

"What?" Mum asked, confused. "Did something happen?"

Dad raised an eyebrow at me, not quite admonition but not far off, either.

"I didn't want to have to say it twice," I explained, appetite gone but taking a bite of dinner so that I could look nonchalant. "There was an attempted kidnapping near the end of the exam."

The lack of information in the statement probably gave away more than it hid. Why not say the name, if it were anyone else? Why not say 'Hidden Cloud tried to take Hinata'? There was no reason.

"Who was it?" Shikamaru asked, flatly.

"Hidden Grass," I said, even though that wasn't what he was asking and I knew it. I didn't fool myself into thinking he didn't tuck the information away though.

"Shikako."

"They tried to take me," I said, relenting instead of trying to talk around the subject more. "I got away; they didn't get far. But Hidden Grass pretended they were missing ninja and pretty much denied all knowledge of events."

"You got away?" Shikamaru repeated, agitated. "What does that even mean?" He looked at Dad, then back to me, accusing.

"It means I blew his fucking head off, what do you think it means?" I snapped.

There was a brief, startled pause. Wary. That was not a normal Shikako reaction.

I breathed. Calm. Calm was good.

"It's fine, okay?" I said, voice descending back into a normal range, throttling the inexplicable burst of anger. It had come out of nowhere. I hadn't been prepared for that. "I got away. I got myself away. There's no need to get all upset about it."

Shikamaru made a cut off sound. "No need to- Dammit, Shikako! You think this is about me being upset?"

I dimly noted that Kakashi-sensei was gone. There was a clean plate on the table, but absolutely no other evidence that he had ever been here. Fine, whatever. Sasuke looked horribly awkward, like he didn't want to be witnessing this. Me either.

"Shikako," Dad said, cutting into the argument before it could really take off. "Your brother is just worried about you. Shikamaru; Your sister made it home safely. Shouting at each other isn't going to change those facts."

I simmered back down. I didn't want to argue. I hated arguing. And I really, really hated arguing with family. I felt awful now, a different kind of sick twisting adrenaline to that from a normal fight.

"Yeah well," Shikamaru said, mulishly, leaning back in his seat, "if it was so dangerous maybe she shouldn't have gone in the first place."

And that. That was it.

"It's not your choice!" I exploded, standing up and sending my chair skidding backwards. My hand caught on my cup and knocked it clear off the table.

It hit the floor and shattered.

The moment trembled, like a knife balanced on its edge. It could have come back from there, the tension could have unraveled, made us feel foolish and awkward. But it didn't.

"Well maybe if you cared I wouldn't have to!" Shikamaru shot back, standing up himself.

"Life is dangerous!" I screamed at him, voice cracking. It was all gone now, all boiling up, shaping itself into a weapon to be launched at him. To cut. "You can do nothing and still die. I'm trying to keep us alive! What the hell do you want from me?!"

"You're trying?" he shot back, not quite as uncontrolled as me, but just as pointed. Just as sharp. "Do you even really care? You're injured a hell of a lot for someone who's 'trying'."

My face twisted. My skin was white hot from the inside, like I was burning up with rage. I was lightheaded with it, emptied out, filled with light. My muscles were pulled tight, taunt and screaming.

I jerked my plate aside. Threw it to the ground just so it would smash. I wanted to break something. Anything. Just so it would be ruined.

"Stop it!" Mum shouted. "What are you doing? Stop this right now! That's not how you talk to your family."

"Yoshino-" Dad started, but she kept going, talking over him. Talking over us.

The sounds, the noise, it was too much. My teeth ground together; furious, futile anger. It had been cut off, built up then stemmed. Prevented from releasing. I wanted to throw things. To make something smash. To punch Shikamaru in his stupid fucking face. To shout and scream and say something that really made him hurt, that wiggled through all his stupid arguments at hit where it would wound.

I was shaking with it.

And.

And he just left. Glared at me with the same impotent, bottled up frustration and stalked outside. Slammed the door behind him. Was gone.

I muffled my screaming in my throat. Kicked the chair aside with violence only barely restrained and stomped jerkily into the living room.

And then it crashed. I stood there, trembling and my white hot anger burnt out, taking everything with it and leaving behind only the ash of exhaustion. I was hollowed out, destroyed, misery blooming in my chest and filling all the empty spaces.

I collapsed onto the couch.

Voices in the other room peaked and faded. I didn't care. There was the clicking of pottery shards being picked up, sweeping and mopping. The door opened and shut. Dad went outside.

I didn't even care.

Sasuke hovered in my vision. I flatly refused to track him, letting my eyes stayed blurred and unfocused. I wasn't crying. There was nothing there – nothing to cry with or about. Just nothing.

"Shikako?" He said, tentatively, then slightly more worried and panicked. Fingers touched my neck, counted the slow beats of my pulse. "Yoshino-san?!"

I still refused to move. The body was just a body. I was something else. Someone else. Somewhere else.

Mum smoothed my hair back and sighed. "She's just sulking," she said. "Come on, dear. I'm sorry you had to see that. I'll pack you the leftovers to take home, okay?"

Sulking. Like that was all I was doing. Like it was that simple. Like everything hadn't been taken out of the world, all the colour and meaning and reason. Like I had any reason to put forth the effort of pretending to be a person any longer.

I stayed like that, still and listless, as time ran like watercolours around me, gone soft and blurry.

Dad came back. I felt Shikamaru's chakra go upstairs, brushing past me.

"Bed time," he suggested to me, like it mattered where I was.

I didn't react. Didn't care. Couldn't be bothered.

Eventually, when the house was dark and quiet, he picked me up and carried me upstairs, like I was a child again. There had been days like this, back at the beginning, when it had all been too much to be here and a child and alive and I had just… gone quiet for a while.

I didn't sleep, just lay there in that blank state, feeling the sleeping hum of my family's chakra, listening to the wind in the trees.

Shikamaru woke and went downstairs. There was the click, click of lights being turned on. The pipes groaned as the kitchen tap dispensed water. He didn't come back up.

I rolled the idea of going downstairs over in my head. Of talking to him.

Thought about it for a long, long time.

Dad's chakra stirred in the room along the hall. He got up, went downstairs, no footsteps in the hallway to mark his passing.

And, beneath the layers and layers of apathy, was a spark of curiosity. Maybe not even curiosity, maybe suspicion, maybe paranoia.

I fed the smallest, barest trace of chakra into my ears.

There was the click of shogi tiles on the board. Too fast to be playing, so they were only just setting up.

"-dangerous," Dad was saying, voice mild. It was muffled, barely audible to me. "They were taking reasonable precautions. She was feet away from a Jounin."

So they were talking about me. My stomach twisted, sour acid.

"I'm not- I wasn't blaming her," Shikamaru said. "But it happened. And it always seems to happen to her. And she just doesn't care."

There was a click, shogi on wood.

"Do you really think that?" Dad asked, non-judgmental.

"You heard her," Shikamaru said. "'No need to get upset'." He sounded fairly upset for someone who had protested he wasn't.

"You're worried about her," Dad said.

"Of course I am," Shikamaru retorted, immediately.

"And she's worried about you," Dad went on, like it was leading somewhere.

Of course I was, I thought, with a kernel of irritation buried somewhere beneath the blanket of apathy.

"She doesn't care," Shikamaru said, instead. His shogi piece clicked down with force.

"She's worried about you," Dad repeated patiently. "And she doesn't want to worry you more. So she pretends that none of it is important so you don't get worried. But that only makes you more so, because you think she doesn't care. So she tries harder to convince you that it doesn't matter. The two of you are spiraling off of each other and only making the situation worse."

There was a long silence.

I turned his explanation over in my head. I couldn't fix what made Shikamaru upset. But I had been trying not to add to it. And it had just… never worked.

"Has she talked to you?" Shikamaru asked suddenly.

Dad was silent. Considering. "Sometimes when you push, you only make things worse," he said. "You have to let someone decide they need you, first."

"She hasn't," Shikamaru deduced, latching on to the only fact he cared about, bitterly. "She won't listen to me. But she'd have to listen to you. If you told her not to go."

I breathed. Just. In and out. In and out.

"Do you really think so, Shikamaru?" Dad asked, still so, so calm. "That if I gave an order, she would stop?"

"She would have to," Shikamaru argued. "She wouldn't have a choice."

"Yes, she would," Dad said, gently. "And that choice would be listen, or continue on without us. We would stop being support and become obstacles in her way. And that is not a choice that you want to force your sister to make."

"Why?" Shikamaru asked, voice cracking. Maybe he saw it. Maybe he saw the choice that I would be forced to make, in all its terrible glory. "What's so important to her?"

Dad clicked a shogi piece down. "I don't know," he said. "But she's scared, don't you see that?"

Shikamaru coughed, a wet sound, like he was trying not to cry. "I don't want her to be scared," he said. "I just want her to be safe."

I stopped listening, and rolled over to stare at my wall. There were photographs there, a haphazard collage of better days.

It was a long night.

.

.

I didn't actively avoid Shikamaru the next morning. I just… didn't get up until after he'd left.

Okay, I avoided him. Fine.

I deserved one day off, didn't I?

I spent the morning in my room, copying out a certain set of papers that I hadn't had the privacy to touch before and on my registration paperwork.

I took it to the tower, mutely handing it over to Iruka-sensei when I spotted him behind the missions desk. He flicked through it, congratulating me on my promotion, and I summoned up enough grace and manners to murmur polite thanks to him.

"I think we have something for you," he said, slightly distracted. "Just hold on a moment, would you?"

Maybe I didn't get a day off, after all. I waited, watching the sky out the window.

"It's a request from the Sensory Squad," Iruka-sensei said, giving me a scroll.

I blinked slowly at him. My understanding was like molasses, slow and viscous. "The Sensory Squad?"

The name was a little misleading. The Sensory Squad wasn't a squad meaning a ninja team. It wasn't even a division or department. It was more like… a registrar of shinobi with particular extra or super-sensory abilities. It mostly existed to track and train particular abilities so that when a mission put in a request for a sensor or a tracker of some kind, someone knew who to send.

"I think they're doing the testing of the new crop of Chunin," Iruka-sensei explained. "Team Eight has all been requested, and Ino and Sasuke as well." He smiled. "It's a year of talent."

It made sense.

I checked the scroll, which had a meeting time set for later that afternoon. Great.

"Thank you, Iruka-sensei," I said, forcing a smile onto my lips. "Uh, did you need help with anything? I could take messages?"

It was a weak gambit, anyway, and I was mostly relieved when he brushed me off. I couldn't just walk up to Tsunade's office and hand her the folder I'd received from Gaara. As a new Chunin I'd just never get that far. And if I tried to make an appointment, I'd be asked why. Which, classified intelligence; I couldn't say why. I could always give it to Dad at home but I was… reluctant.

I wanted home to be home. I wanted to keep a little bit of separation, where I could. So that I could have somewhere to go, when I wanted to leave things behind.

Still. Unless things drastically changed now that I was a Chunin, I sort of expected I would see her before too long.

I picked up takeaways for lunch and went to Sasuke's house.

He opened the door, face falling into an expression of relief. "Hey," he said, stepping back to let me inside. His mission pack was open, stuff spilled out onto the floor and clearly in the process of being cleaned and organized. I stepped over a pile of laundry and shuffled off my shoes. "You okay?"

"Fine," I said, setting the food down on the table. "Did you get a request from the Sensory Squad for this afternoon?"

He was still watching me, but grabbed two sets of chopsticks out of a kitchen drawer. "Yeah, doesn't sound like it's much." He shrugged. "More training, I guess."

We kicked around until it was time, then headed over to the training fields. Team Eight was already there, with Neji and surprisingly Lee.

Really? I squinted at him, but didn't ask.

Ino arrived shortly after us, shortly before Tsume Inuzuka strolled into the training field with three Chunin at her back. Tsume was the uncontested head of the Sensory Squad, as well as Konoha's Tracking Team, on top of running the Inuzuka Clan, the Inuzuka Clinic and raising two kids by herself. I had no idea how she ever found the time.

"Alright, brats," she said. Then paused and looked at Lee. "Why are you here?"

Lee stepped forward, face eager and eyes bright. "Please allow me to also take your test!" he said, with marked enthusiasm. Neji gave the stoic impression of being completely embarrassed by him.

Tsume stared. "Do you have any notable super-sensory abilities?" she asked.

"No!" Lee said. "I do not!"

There was a series of exchanged looks. "Okay, fine," Tsume said, shaking her head in bemusement. "Test away. Let's see how you do. Now where were we?" She took a clipboard from one of her assistants. "Alright. Brats. You're all – except him – listed as having abilities or blood limits that qualify you for the Sensory Squad. We're going to run you through a battery of testing, covering all bases, to see if we can quantify and qualify what those abilities are."

She broke us up into three rough groups; with Sasuke and the Hyuuga into one; Shino, Ino and I into another; and Kiba and Lee into the third. Sort of ability based, if you thought about it broadly.

Tsume put herself in charge of ours. Then she smirked at me. It was honestly a little intimidating. "Well, let's see if you're half as good as the Hatake brat has been trying to convince me you are."

The testing was alternatively easy and completely fucking impossible.