Chapter Text
The scratch of a pen on paper drowned out the insistent and obnoxious beeping from the machine beside her. A blot of ink flooded the thin sheet, a cheaply made pen perfect for the cheaply made legal pad. The hospital-loaned material was more a testament of Konoha’s medical funding than any possible stinginess from the nurses.
Umeko sighed, ripping the page off and balling it up. It joined the other misshapen lumps of abandoned ideas in the trash can. She started from scratch again, this time beginning with the easiest part:
Weaknesses:
- Small chakra pool
- Bad at taijutsu
- Rudimentary knowledge of first aid
- Bad at genjutsu
- Limited jutsu arsenal
- Bad at close-range fighting
- Predictable
- Weak
- Weak
- Weak
- Low stamina
The callused pads of her fingers scraped across her skin when she dragged her hand down her face. Writing down where she needed to improve was meant to give her clarity, direction. Umeko just felt hopeless. She dashed a line across the paper, separating it in half, and continued scratching underneath it.
Strengths:
Ink bled into the paper, spreading like a rot from where she rested the fountain pen. Umeko tried to think of something to write down, if only to stop the flooding of ink, but her mind stayed blank.
“Control of the battlefield.”
Umeko startled, the pen slipping out of her hand and clattering onto the overbed table. Sasuke’s chest rose up and down, and the machine didn’t stop its rhythmic beeping. He stared down at the pad of paper, reading her sloppy scrawl.
“Sasuke, you’re awake.” A little embarrassed, Umeko flipped the legal pad over and rushed to her feet. Her legs had gone a little numb from sitting for so long, and she bumped into the bed when she tried to get around it. “Let me get you some water.”
Sasuke didn’t say anything, just traced her path across the room to a jug of water with his eyes. She fumbled with a cup before twisting the knob, filling the thin paper cup. Sasuke accepted it without a word when she returned to his side.
“How are you feeling?” Umeko asked awkwardly, mostly because that seemed like the thing to ask people in the hospital.
“Fine.” He didn’t elaborate, and Umeko didn’t know how to ask. “Where’s Naruto and Kakashi?”
Umeko knew how to respond to that question, and she sat back in the chair with a tentative smile. “Naruto got kicked out for being too rowdy. Kakashi-sensei is still on bed rest a few doors down.”
Sasuke didn’t reply, just settled back against the pillows. His eyes strayed to the notepad she left on the table, and Umeko laughed uncomfortably. “Just thought I should find ways to improve.” Sasuke hummed into his cup of water.
Umeko fidgeted, hands twisting in her shirt and on her lap as she tried to find words. She never had to make conversation with Sasuke before. Naruto led most of their conversations, starting many of them when no one else felt particularly talkative. Her inadequacy lingered in the silence, a block in her throat that stopped every sentence before she could speak it.
The door haunted her as an escape route, but she didn’t want to leave Sasuke alone. Iruka had dragged Naruto from under his armpits to get ramen when the nurses demanded that Naruto leave. Another jounin, the taijutsu master that Umeko’s grandfather always ridiculed, barged into Kakashi’s room earlier, and Umeko stopped visiting him every hour after that. The man’s voice had a way of filling up the room, like water in a balloon, except the only thing that threatened to burst was her eardrums.
“What happened after I—?” The end of Sasuke’s question hung unfinished, Umeko’s mind automatically supplying the words he left out: passed out.
Maybe it’s her imagination, but the tops of his cheeks seem a little pink. Embarrassed he went comatose? No matter. Umeko brushed away the shyness and awkwardness, focusing on catching Sasuke up to speed. She informed him that he’s been asleep for five days now, and that Naruto got kicked out of the hospital after Sasuke had been in his bed for two hours. She told him about the two days they dawdled in Nami no Kuni, helping Tazuna with the bridge as a doctor stabilized his condition.
“You know what they named the bridge?” Umeko scoffed, leaning back into her chair and twiddling her fingers in her shirt, “Great Nanahan Bridge. What a dumb name.”
Sasuke’s face contorted into several different expressions before settling on its usual cool indifference. Umeko’s conclusion: he found it equally weird. In some roundabout way, it possesses some sense to name the bridge after them, since it wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for them. It itches at her skin, though, to know something monumental has her bearing, has her mark on it, and that the villagers there are telling stories about them. Almost an annoyance, an irritation, as if their hardship had been reduced to a tale to regale.
On the other hand, not even her grandfather had something named after him, and her spine shivers like a cool breeze caressed her back on a hot day when she thinks about it.
“You think we could do it again?” Umeko asks with a hum, and Sasuke quirks an eyebrow at her. The conversation feels lopsided, with her throat hurting from all this talking. “Get something named after us, I mean. Don’t you think it’d be funny?”
The corner of Sasuke’s lip twitches, and Umeko seizes the minor encouragement with both hands. Straightening up, Umeko adapts the persona of a tourist, “Oh, look over there, it’s the Nanahan Palace. Let’s cross the Great Nanahan Bridge to go see it, and after that we'll visit the Nanahan onsen.”
Her stoic teammate doesn’t laugh at her lame joke, but his nose slightly scrunches like he wanted to. Like a punch to the gut, Umeko is stricken with the memory of a photo album, pushed into the corner of her room like a shameful vice. The sharp slant of Sasuke’s cheeks, even with the slight roundness of boyhood, the severe pull of his mouth, the nearly permanent wrinkle between his brows — none of it lines up with the younger boy in the photo, soft and joyful and grinning. Still, Umeko sees the similarities, and it’s shocking and frightening and sobering: the scrunch of his nose, the relaxed edges of his eyes, the twitch of his lips. The boy suffocated and stifled underneath, buried under the bodies his elder brother lay on his chest.
Hot shame burns in her stomach, and Umeko stands up so quickly she rattles the frame of the hospital bed. “I have to go! My mother is waiting for me!”
Umeko hovers, unsure and out of place, before throwing up a hand and stuttering out, “Later!”
Confused and a little startled, Sasuke mimics her gesture, and it’s almost endearing. “Later?”
The gossip mill works against Umeko, and the next day, she has the displeasure of running into old classmates.
Tired and a little cranky, Umeko opens the door to Sasuke’s hospital room after dropping off a meal for Kakashi, and meets the long-suffering stare of her teammate. Ino and Sakura stand off against each other, each on a side of the bed and Sasuke proverbially and physically in the middle. Umeko slides the door shut behind her, startling the two girls, who turn to glare at the newcomer.
“Oh, it’s you,” Ino mutters, hands on her hips, and long hair swishing behind her. Sakura doesn’t say anything, but her jaw sets, and her head tilts down.
“Yeah,” Umeko says, holding her bento box and glaring at the two intruders, “it’s me. If you two plan on arguing the entire time, take it outside. It’s obnoxious, and Sasuke needs his rest.”
Umeko strides to the bed, pulling out her chair that she had been sitting in for the past four days, and sets the bento box on the overbed table. The room smells like antiseptic and warm food, a clash of the senses that gives Umeko a headache. Maybe she should burn incense or spray perfume.
“It’s karaage, like I promised,” Umeko tells Sasuke when he eyes the box suspiciously. She spent another sleepless night cooking, trying to get it perfect based on a recipe unearthed in a recipe book she bought.
He opens it without a word, cracking his chopsticks and starting to eat. Umeko’s mind flashes through several potential conversation topics — the weather? training? — but her train of thought is interrupted by a metal scraping sound. Sakura and Ino both drag chairs to the bed, sitting on the opposite side of Umeko, like they banded together against a common enemy.
Umeko finds it ironic and very annoying.
Sasuke must find it annoying, too, since he doesn’t say anything and eats mechanically. His jaw is clenched, and his dark eyes are staring at the far wall. Umeko deduces that any conversation would be moot right now, his hackles raised by the presence of Sakura and Ino. Umeko sighs through her nose, leaning back in her chair.
The air is thick and awkward, silent except for the clank of chopsticks on lacquered wood and teeth biting into chicken. Ino opens her mouth to say something, and there’s a sharp swell of something in Umeko’s chest — protectiveness, maybe.
“Sakura,” Umeko says, interrupting Ino before she could even get started. Sakura jolts in her chair, attention snapping to Umeko. Another breath escapes Umeko’s mouth as she casts around for something to say. In the end, she settles on, “I heard your team failed the genin test.”
Sakura glares at her, and Umeko cringes. She hadn’t meant it as a criticism, but her words always fail her when she needs them most. Umeko clears her throat, trying to salvage the situation, “What do you plan on doing now? Trying again or…?”
Sakura hesitates, her glistening lips opening and closing for a moment. She’s wearing chapstick, and her lips look smooth and soft-looking. Umeko’s tongue darts across her own lips, the ridges of chapped skin unpleasant to the touch. If she asked Sakura about her lip balm, would she tell her?
“I’m apprenticing,” Sakura answers carefully, shifting in her seat, “Promotions will be harder, and I won’t be able to enter the chūnin exams until I find another team, but it’s better than returning to the Academy for a year.”
Umeko hums, not disagreeing. If her team had failed the genin exam, Umeko would’ve done the same.
“Who’s your master?” Ino asks, curious despite the heated rivalry between the two girls.
“Uzuki Yūgao, she’s a master in kenjutsu,” Sakura says, and the name is familiar to Umeko. A woman in the Anbu who had earned her grandfather's ire more than a handful of times. Anyone who pissed off her grandfather, Umeko considered impressive, so she let out an appreciative whistle. Sakura blushed, smiling and seeming pleased.
Sasuke closes the lid of the bento box, leaning back in his bed and staring at the ceiling. He makes no move to join the conversation, and Umeko doesn’t try to include him. Instead, she runs interference, asking Sakura when the girl’s eyes shift to Sasuke, “What kind of lip balm are you wearing? It looks smooth.”
An hour continues like that — Umeko keeping Sakura and Ino busy while Sasuke rests. She finds that she doesn’t hate the conversation, despite the circumstances. Ino is much more tolerable when Umeko isn’t playing the part of a blind follower, and Sakura is way more interesting when her focus isn’t on Sasuke.
They leave, eventually, and Sasuke is asleep by then. She’s seen him asleep a dozen times by now, but it never stops fascinating her the way his face transforms. Umeko doesn’t linger, grabbing her bento box and preparing to leave to give him rest.
She’s about to walk out the door when she sees it — the pad of paper she had left yesterday. A bright red flush hangs on her cheeks, and she picks it up with the intention of disposing of the evidence. The first page is filled with a scrawl that isn’t hers, though. A careful penmanship of kanji that Umeko recognizes as Sasuke’s hand, writing out a full page of Umeko’s strengths.
Umeko smiles softly at it, at Sasuke having sat there and carefully laid out everything she was good at. It was considerate and kind and wholly unlike him.
Her smile drops when she flips the next three pages, all filled with her weaknesses and flaws. Umeko leaves the pad, stomping out of the room with a pout.
“Why do I hafta come!”
Naruto has gotten whinier, Umeko noticed. Before, he would’ve jumped at the chance to be dragged along the streets by Umeko’s whims. He would’ve lied and pretended to love shopping if it meant Umeko indulged his affections. Now, he’s planting his heels into the dirt of the road and pouting at Umeko’s demands.
Some would consider it backsliding; Umeko calls it progress.
She doesn’t want a sycophantic follower, even if Naruto’s stubborn whines were starting to irritate her. Naruto isn’t a boy meant to be caged and controlled by the expectations of a wretched girl like her. He’s meant for bigger and better things.
“Stop being stubborn!” Umeko snaps, hands tight around his wrist as she fights his unyielding body. “I’ll buy you three bowls of ramen if you just behave!”
Umeko doesn’t want a sycophant, but she’s also not above bribing.
“Eight!” Naruto returns, his free arm curling around a wooden post lining the street. Umeko grunts, planting a foot against the post and pulling with all her weight.
“Eight? Are you insane?” Umeko grits her teeth, her foot on the ground sliding as she leans backwards for leverage. People are starting to stare, and it itches at Umeko’s skin — do any of them work for her grandfather? Will they report back to him? “Five! Five bowls! And dessert!”
“Fine! I want taiyaki!” Naruto unhooked his arm from the post, sending Umeko flying backwards, and he landed on top of her stomach in a heap. “And you have to convince the nurses to let me see Sasuke and Kakashi-sensei.”
“Okay, okay, I will, so get off me, you’re heavy.” Naruto relents.
The clothing store is just around the corner, and they arrive within minutes now that Naruto cooperates. It’s one of the higher-end stores that clan heirs and heiresses tend to shop at. Umeko bought every article of clothing here since Ino brought her in the early years at the academy. The shop never had a wide selection and was dominated more by bolts of fabric than racks of clothes. It was a status thing.
Brass chimes rang in a deep soothing timbre as the tubes clanged together above the shop door, and the interior smelled of jasmine and cypress. The shopkeeper sat behind a desk, a long purple fabric in front of him as he embroidered delicate cream flowers on the hem. He glanced up at the sound of the chimes, sunlight from the window glinting off the spectacles perched on his nose.
A nose that wrinkled at the sight of Naruto, obnoxiously orange and dirtied behind Umeko.
“Afternoon, Maruboshi-san,” Umeko said with a tight politeness, her arm settling around Naruto’s shoulders, “how is your brother?”
The old man huffed, waving his hand in their direction and returning to his stitching. His snub of Naruto was the best Umeko could hope for, so she didn’t press her luck. Naruto didn’t see it that way, and it took a pinch of his ear to steer him toward the back of the store.
“Hm, they don’t have my favorite color in stock, but maybe I should change things up,” Umeko said to Naruto, thumbing through the racks of clothes. There was purple, and there was red, but there wasn’t the purplish red that Umeko liked. “Do you think I’d look good in blue?”
Umeko glanced up when Naruto said nothing to see him leaning over a display table filled with braided cords of varying combinations of colors. Umeko placed the blue shorts she had been looking at back on the shelf and came to stand behind Naruto.
“What would you need a kumihimo for?” Umeko asked curiously, bending to stare at the yellow and cream one he had his fingers on.
“What?” Naruto startled, turning wide eyes on her before realizing he had been distracted. He scratched at the back of his neck, chuckling to himself with a dusting of pink on his cheeks. “Oh, so that’s what those are called! Um, what did you say again?”
Umeko’s hand closed around a kumihimo cord herself, staring at the mulberry and taupe threads under her fingers. The craftsmanship was fine, the material strong and silky, and a purchase of such would be absolutely unnecessary. Umeko wondered why Naruto had been drawn to them. Maybe he was like a magpie, vision tunneling on soft and beautiful things.
“I said they don’t have my color, so we can go,” Umeko lied, dropping the kumihimo cord. Her palm found the flat of Naruto’s back, and she pushed him forward. “I have something to ask Maruboshi-san, so wait outside for me.”
Umeko had only a scant few bills left in her wallet when she stepped out of the store, a bag in her hand. She threw a kumihimo cord at Naruto’s face and ignored him when he cheered and cooed over his unnecessary gift.
Sasuke stared at the kumihimo cord like it would grow sentience and strangle him — or, maybe, like Umeko would strangle him. The meter of her patience rapidly decreased with every second that passed, so it was entirely possible.
“If you don’t want it, then throw it away,” Umeko scowled, crossing her arms over her chest.
Sasuke picked up the cord with a gentle touch, his thumb running along the smoky indigo and muted charcoal thread. The braid remained strong under his touch, not fraying or pulling in the slightest, and the expensive dye evenly coated each thread. For a moment, Umeko watched, wondering where he was going to wear it.
From across the room, sitting cross-legged on an empty bed, Umeko can see the light ochre and soft cream kumihimo cord looped around his wrist several times. He secured it with cut shinobi wire tied around the ends.
Hunched over by the window, his body slumped against the wall with his crutches propped next to him, the moss green and faded slate braid was haloed by sunlight where it had been clipped to the band of his back pouch. The location is more discreet, but the edges are visible to Umeko’s warm eyes.
Sasuke twisted the cord in his hands, watching the sunlight from the window dance across the braid. His wrist, then, Umeko decided. He would wear it around his wrist like Naruto.
Sasuke tossed it, the kumihimo braid making a thudding sound as it thunked into the trash can.
The room went quiet, Naruto no longer babbling to a semi-listening Kakashi, and then—
“You bastard!”
Naruto scrambled onto the bed, grabbing at Sasuke’s shirt collar to shake him. Umeko couldn’t form words, something tightening in her chest, so she turned in her seat and humphed.
“Now, now, kids,” Kakashi started, but Umeko had already decided this was the path she would commit to.
A peaceful and content hospital room burst into noise as Sasuke and Naruto argued, Kakashi tried to tame them, and Umeko loudly made her displeasure known by tapping her foot with her nose turned the other way. Until he tied that stupid cord around his stupid arm, Umeko had no words to spare for him — of that she was sure.
The hospital room door slid open, the quiet click of it hitting the frame, and it took a moment for the inhabitants to notice the new presence. Umeko opened her eyes, meeting a familiar brown gaze.
“G-Grandfather,” Umeko stuttered out, standing to her feet and bowing at the waist, “you’re back from the capital, already.”
“Hm, I am,” her grandfather replied, and he didn’t tell her to stand up straight, so Umeko didn’t.
She couldn’t hear Sasuke and Naruto arguing anymore, couldn’t hear Kakashi’s pacifying words anymore, and her eyes burned in humiliation. This was on purpose, Umeko knew — to show her team the control he has over her, to show them she was just a little girl playing at shinobi.
An agonizing beat passed until Danzō clacked his cane against the linoleum floor, and Umeko flinched. “Stand up, Umeko.”
Umeko did, though her eyes remained on the ground.
“Don’t be rude, and introduce me to your friends,” her grandfather wraps an arm around her shoulder, pulling her around to face her team.
A ritual in humiliation, and a reminder of her place.
Before she can speak, Kakashi steps forward, hands in his pockets. When she glances up through thick curly strands of hair, he’s smiling politely at Danzō.
“We’ve met, Danzō-sama,” Kakashi says with that levity Umeko usually hates — she doesn’t hate it now that it’s turned on her grandfather. “This is Uzumaki Naruto, and Uchiha Sasuke — Ume-hime’s teammates, as you know.”
“Hm,” her grandfather grunts, and Umeko ducks her head, knowing he’s displeased with Kakashi’s edged friendliness. His attention pivots, body turning to the boy on the bed, and Umeko’s head straightens up with wide eyes. “That’s a beautiful kumihimo, Naruto-kun. The wire does it a disservice. I have the perfect thing to hold it together.”
Umeko’s hands clench at her sides, staring at Naruto with her lips pressed together. An item from Danzō isn’t a gift, isn’t a kindness — it’s ownership. It’s a collar around Naruto’s neck that could be used as a noose, a poisoned offering riddled with seals, traps, and tricks. And it’s a fire-hot brand, one that Umeko feels every day.
Danzō did, after all, gift her with his blood — blood passed down from daughter to daughter, poisoned with the power Danzō desired more than anything. If Umeko died, would he harvest her body — try to force her kekkei tōta into his genes, taking back the gift Umeko never wanted?
“Umeko, you could give it to him the next ti—” Danzō is cut off, for the first time in a long time. Or, alternatively, the first time ever.
“I don’t want it.” Naruto crossed his arms, eyes pinched as he glared at her grandfather, and he looked like a displeased fox in that moment. Like a trickster plotting the fall of her grandfather. If only.
“Naruto-kun, don’t be so rude,” Kakashi places a hand on Naruto’s head, and it’s protective in the way it curls into his hair. “Don’t mind my student, Danzō-sama, I promised him something of my own, and it seems like he’s set his mind on it.”
His hand tightened on Umeko’s shoulder, curling into her shoulder until she bruised like a fruit. The message had been delivered, wrapped in faux politeness and a rejection that greatly displeased her grandfather. This didn’t bode well.
“Naruto really looks up to Kakashi-sensei,” Umeko cut in before Naruto could open his mouth. She sent him a warning glare, even as her cheeks flushed with a cold dread and her throat dried up.
“I see,” her grandfather said, which spoke to the lengths of what he sees, “well, Umeko and I have plans to attend, so we’ll be going now.”
Naruto almost leapt to his feet, and Umeko furrowed her brow. Her grandfather tends to give off that odious feeling, though, that makes one’s skin crawl and heart beat double time. Naruto’s unease is palpable, but understandable, in the face of an apex predator like her grandfather.
“We have training early in the morning, Ume-hime, so make sure not to overdo it tonight,” Kakashi says lightly, hand pulling at Naruto’s hair and keeping him seated. As he says it, though, his eyes are on Danzo and not on her.
“Of course, Kakashi-sensei,” Umeko mutters, and lets her grandfather steer her out of the room.
Sasuke meets her eyes through his bangs, and it’s intense. It’s a familiar stare, the one he possessed when they introduced themselves to Kakashi. The one where he spoke of killing his brother.
Her grandfather didn't use his cane to discipline her that night. Umeko stood on the engawa with her arms extended in front of her as one of his lackeys placed rock after rock in the buckets, balancing on the top of her palms. He called it strength training, but she knew what it was.
“You’ve become weak,” Danzō says, puffing his pipe and nodding his head to the ROOT shinobi next to her. Another rock is placed in the bucket, and her arm trembles with it. “I expect better, Umeko.”
Two more rocks, clattering into the buckets, and Umeko’s arms almost buckle.
“Report on your latest mission.” His one visible eye is cool, the edge dragged down and lined heavily. Her grandfather possesses no laugh lines on his cheeks, something she notices on the Hokage’s face every time she sees him.
“We ran into Zabuza, Demon of Kirigakure,” her voice comes out in a pant, her chest feeling tight like she can’t suck in enough air. “We were disadvantaged in the fight. I…convinced him to spare the bridge builder in exchange for metal, to supply his rebellion.”
Danzō puffed on his pipe again, blowing out a smoke ring at her face. It hit her in the eyes and nose, and it stung unbearably. He didn’t tell the ROOT member to add another rock. “And why would you do that?”
“It’s important that a trade route is established to Nami no Kuni, reconnecting to our original suppliers before Gatō had driven up the prices. Supplying our troops with reigane from Kaze no Kuni is too expensive with the marked-up prices, and too long for travel distance.” Danzō said nothing, so Umeko quickly tacked on, “We’re the closest to Nami no Kuni, which means we can monopolize their exports.”
“And what benefits us by arming that insurgent?”
Umeko wants to shout at him, yell that it kept her alive — that it kept her teammates alive. The desire wells so suddenly in her chest that she thinks for a moment she might say it, might confess that it’s a tiny bit easier to look at herself in the mirror. That maybe, possibly, she could be something more than he wants her to be. Someone good like Naruto, someone righteous like Sasuke, someone protective like Kakashi.
The words burn on her tongue, and scald her throat when she swallows them down.
“If his second attempt fails, then Kirigakure will be destabilized. If it succeeds,” Umeko grunts as another set of rocks thunk into the wooden buckets, “we will have leverage over the new Mizukage.”
The hardened brown stone of his eye drifts away, overlooking the severe stone garden at the center of his estate. He meditates sometimes, staring at the rock gardens in pursuit of spiritual enlightenment. When he does, Umeko’s forbidden from the engawa.
That hadn’t always been a rule.
When Umeko had been younger, her grandfather dragged her out by her ear and made her join him. If her chakra control hadn’t been perfect that day, if her technique had been sloppy, he would force her to sit there for hours. After, he’d send her to bed without food, telling her that fasting would teach her discipline, starving would teach her obedience.
Around the time she was eight, when Umeko’s father refused to let her home, she interrupted Danzō’s meditation. The bandages over his eye had been undone, sagging around his neck, and she caught the slightest glint of something red before he closed it. Danzō forbade her from joining him on the engawa, then, unless he explicitly invited her.
He invited her tonight to teach her discipline, to teach her obedience.
His silence cuts at her now, and he lifts a finger from his pipe in a small gesture. The ROOT member dumps the rest of the rocks he had into the buckets, one heavier than the other. Umeko grunts, her eyes scrunching up and her arms shaking with exhaustion.
Umeko just wants it to stop, just wants to go inside and curl up in a ball. He knows this information anyway — he’s testing her, seeing if she’ll betray her teammate to him.
“Sasuke unlocked the sharingan,” Umeko can barely get the words out, sweat pouring down her temple and her curls clinging to her cheek.
Danzō hums in acknowledgement, and she knows it was information he already knew. Information that the Hokage had already imparted to him. “Anything else?”
Yes. The word is on her trembling lips, in her arching lungs, echoing in her exhausted brain. If she told him about Naruto, if he knew, if she proved her loyalty to him — maybe this would stop. Maybe he’d let her put the buckets down. Maybe he wouldn’t ever hit her again.
“No, that’s it.” The lie comes easier than she expects, but maybe it’s driven by fear. Fear of betraying Naruto and having to look at herself in the mirror. Of seeing eyes just as stone-hard as her grandfather’s, as her father’s.
Umeko doesn’t want to be stone. She wants to be wind, she wants to be water.
“The chūnin exams will commence in a month. I expect great results from you then.” Danzō stands on steady legs, his cane nowhere to be seen. Always pretending, always scheming. “You may stop once the sun dips below the horizon.”
The door closes behind him, and his puppet, and Umeko chokes down a cry. Sunset isn’t for a few hours, and the rocks in her hands and on her shoulders are too much to bear.