Little Things
He woke up right on time and began to get up, but his eyes caught the small body beside him. That’s when he looked around, noticed the different room, and slowly, things began to settle.
He was dead. Their 'father' was dead. He didn’t have to wake up this early. He didn’t have to do anything he didn’t want to, but then looked down at the girl by his side and knew he would do absolutely everything for her.
Masaki leaned down, pulled the blanket over her, and kissed her hair.
He pushed off and moved to the door, but strangely enough, the door seemed somewhat stuck. He frowned and jiggled the door a bit; it moved, and he slipped through the small gap he managed to make. He blinked at the boy sleeping at the door.
He didn’t want his sister to wake up yet, so he poked the boy a bit. When he managed to open his eyes, Masaki put his finger on his lip to motion for him to stay quiet and follow him. He was still annoyed with the boy, how stupidly judgy he had been, and how stupid he was to just grab another person like this. But he could also understand. He was actually a child; he wouldn’t know, and besides, he probably didn’t even hear him.
The boy lumbered behind him; that’s how loud his footsteps seemed to be. He really wasn't; it was just compared to the silence of the house previously; his steps were damn loud. He directed the boy toward the front door or attempted to do so but then noticed the old woman was busy in the kitchen, so he took the boy to the courtyard.
He looked at the combination of the boy and old woman a little quizzically.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt her or anything," the boy blurted when they reached the courtyard.
“You didn't hurt her.”
“Then… then why did she react like that?”
“Why were you so wary when you saw us first?” Masaki didn’t feel like answering yet. He was still a curious being and wanted to know things. But he didn’t stay to sit. He walked to the current challenge, took up the position of Katas, and began.
The boy frowned and tilted his head. Masaki focused on his breathing and balance on the platform. It was terribly difficult to maintain the balance, but he did his absolute best, knowing that now there was no one to hit him when he made a mistake.
“Everyone said you killed your father,” he said after watching him.
“That’s true. But, to me… I killed a man who was about to kill my sister. She reacted that way to you because we don’t know a touch that isn’t nice. We’re used to getting hurt with any and all touches," Masaki didn't look at him after saying that. He didn't want to see the pity. He didn't care for it either way. Besides, pity got him nowhere.
Masaki said that and began another movement series. Every time he knew he had done something wrong, his body unconsciously flinched, something in his body tightening, but no hit landed. And each hit that didn’t land somehow did the opposite, making him breathe harder and harder as he kept moving. Knowing he was doing the wrong things, he felt that he was about to fall and moved away from the grass, directing his fall to the stone path.
And now, he somehow even felt worse that no damn hit landed on him. He curled in on himself and breathed hard for a solid few minutes before turning, punching the stone, getting up, stepping on that stupid platform again, and beginning again.
He had seen his sister watching from the kitchen window, and he couldn’t be this useless. He needed to become something more than an older brother. He needed to be capable of defending her. He needed to be more than someone who killed their ‘father’.
It was a deed he would have to learn to live with until the end of his time, and no, he didn’t regret any of it. Masaki continued to move relentlessly and only stopped when the old woman called them inside. His breath was hard. He sat at the table like old times, forcing his breath to calm, and stupidly, he waited for the order to be allowed.
“Masaki, you are the head of the house. It is you who will start the meal,” the old woman said, and Masaki suddenly recalled that he was dead.
He was dead! Why can’t that sink in!? He gritted his teeth for a bit, put his hands together, thanked for the meal, then picked up his chopsticks and began eating.
The old woman came to share the news when the meal was over and cleared away.
“Today is your father's funeral. Do you have funeral clothes?”
“Funeral clothes?”
“You don’t know. Alright, can I look over your closets to see if I can find something fitting?”
“Okay,” he nodded.
“All right, in the meantime, you two should bathe, especially with that kind of exercise.”
“Okay,” he said quietly and tugged his sister along. The two bathed together for the first time, and she pointed at his boy parts and wondered why she didn’t have them. So, even as they climbed into the bath, he explained. It was a long and difficult explanation, but in the end, she concluded what Masaki had thought before.
“That’s why he didn’t like me.” It was more of a sad statement than anything else.
“Yes,” he agreed. There was no point in lying to her, even when she was just a two-year-old. “It is not your fault the way he was. Boys aren’t any more special than girls. And you know I’ve told you stories of Bushy. She is a very headstrong girl and will not like it if boys are given better treatment than girls.”
“Then, I will be like Bushy and be better than any other boy,” she declared quietly, and Masaki smiled.
“That you will,” he said to her but thought, ‘I’ll make sure you have all the options open for you.’ “Let’s get out. I think we are clean enough,” Masaki said, wondering why neither of their house guests had come looking for them.
If he really thought about it, then his sister was very smart and intelligent for a two-year-old. Two-year-olds can’t usually understand most concepts, but both of them have lived complicated lives up to now. They just had to adjust and figure things out as they went, and right now was probably the easiest time the two had ever had.
He didn’t even want to think he hadn’t had an actual bath since he was taken from his mother. Cleaning his body was mostly done outside with a small bowl full of water, even during the winter. Sitting in a warm bath was nice, even when he had to share it with his sister and explain everything to a two-year-old. It was still nice.
Masaki wrapped himself in a towel and then wrapped her in a huge towel roll. Then, he pulled out another towel and began to dry her hair. When he finished, she looked a little funny, but he made her sit and began to treat her hair. It was something he had to do on his own since his hair grew long enough, and it looked like her hair hadn’t been cut since birth, either.
After he finished up her hair, he began to do it for himself.
“She… she said my name…”
He turned to her, even as his fingers were tangled in his hair. “She said your name is Mirai.”
“Mirai, but why do you call me Kitty?”
“Because I didn’t know your name, and you look like a cat.”
“A cat? What is a cat?” she questioned.
“I’ll show you when I see one, okay?”
“Okay,” she said quietly. He wanted her to speak out more and be more like a child her age should be, but that wouldn’t happen too fast. She was younger and could get over this and forget all about it at some point. She is still very young, and he couldn’t really even remember his own life when he was that young. So, he rather hoped that she would forget everything about it as soon as possible and be a kid, even when he could never be.
He was never a kid here, so it doesn’t matter to him. He knew that he was different here from when he was a wizard. It was the fault of his ‘father’ who made him like this.
“Are you kids done yet?” the old woman knocked on the door and asked.
“Yes,” he said and pulled open the door.
“Oh, how nice. You know how to do your hair. I thought that maybe your mother had done that for you.”
“No, we did everything ourselves. Mother cooked and kept to the kitchen.”
“Alright then, your closet didn’t hold anything useful, so I sent Obito to get you something. He just arrived back. Let’s try to get you dressed. The funeral service is being held midday. You just have to do as told and stay quiet.”
He nodded and had no interest in talking about it. The service was held, and both of them did as they were told. He didn’t even want to pay his respects to the horrible human being people kept whispering was his ‘father’, and he had killed the man.
He hated the whispers, but then they would notice the bruises on their hands and his sisters' bandaged leg. They had to rebandage it after the bath, but even then, the bruising on their bodies was showing. He did guess that if the healers could fix a broken bone in a jiffy, the bruising would not be a problem, but they probably thought it wasn’t a dangerous infliction.
Still, he was four, and his sister was two. How much did the people of their Clan expect of their children? Is killing children allowed? Or something normal? Or even beating children? Or their damn wife? Was that normal? Was it normal behaviour in the Clan? Even as he looked around the Clan people. No one held bruises like he or his sister had.
Yes, he noticed bandaged people, but that didn’t look like something they went through. But then he began to pick up something else… The Uchiha were the Police Force of their village; how had they not noticed their own member being violent toward children? Or that the house had more than one child. So many questions and rumours were being lobbed around that Masaki got a little dizzy from all of it.
But then he began to notice again. Some of the Clan members looked guilty, and most of the ones lobbing those rumours around weren’t even clan members.
Something weird was going on, and he had been at the centre of bizarre rumours all his goddamn life, so he could see when things felt a little wrong and artificial. Or was he simply seeing a conspiracy where there really wasn’t anything…
He kept his ears open the rest of the time, even when his sister began to dose off. He slightly nudged her to keep her awake. He knew they couldn’t sleep here, even as they were tiny and small children. It would be seen as some form of disrespect, but even his presence at this event was disrespectful or something. He was glad that the man was dead, and he would never acknowledge him as anything other than a fucking sperm donor.
Only he couldn’t show any form of laziness or disrespect toward the people who came to see their sperm donor. The event itself was pretty straightforward, and a lot of people came by, but none of them showed any sort of honest regret that he was dead. There were even a couple who disrespected him on purpose, yet they looked down on the two of them and didn’t do a thing.
No one offered to help them in their time of difficulty or offer any sort of condolence. They didn’t want any of it anyway, but seeing how disliked the man was in the Clan was a little strange.
Only they were the ones to suffer everything the man had done to them, and they somehow had to get over the hurdle of getting past such a horrible trauma. Yet, none of the Clan members offered them anything.
In the evening, in their home where he murdered the man and now lived. He took off his clothes, put them to the side, and entered a room he really didn’t want to go to, but he needed to get some of his anger off his chest.
The Clan didn’t seem to care for them. The Clan seemed prominent, but he didn’t know what that meant. He only knew that he would only get the absolute minimum of help from them. He pulled one of the practice swords from the wall and began, going as long as he dropped and finally crawled to Mirai, who was napping by the door.
He shook her awake, and they made their way to the room where they had slept the previous night.