There had always been a routine of sorts. Ever since she’d started forming memories, there had always been a routine.
First, it had been Isshin, who always had his lessons at the academy, and either anmaa or suu would take her with them when his lessons were over for the day.
He’d always come running, keeping a foot’s distance at first, but he’d hugged her and suu once when he’d aced a test he’d practised hard for. After that, he’d always hug them when they waited for him at the academy.
Isshin would then make funny faces at her, pulling his cheeks and stretching his tongue out to blow raspberries at her to make her laugh.
They’d then, and this depended on the day, either go out to eat or home, where suu had taken off his duties to make food for them.
Then came Shikibu. He was shyer than Isshin. More nervous and wished to do well. He didn’t really have anything he wished to study, but after some gentle prodding from suu- ‘because, Shikibu, this is an opportunity for you to be social, to do something that you don’t have to do, but do simply because you wish to’- he had chosen Chemistry.
He’d tried to offer a reason, more so an excuse now that she thought about it, for why he’d like to choose that, but they didn’t have to do that for him. Shikibu had always looked so mean, but that exterior hid someone who desperately wanted to do well.
Anmaa had been the one to take her with her, then to get him after classes. Then they’d stop at the market for skewers of fried squid. Shikibu had always looked so surprised then. Surprised that they came to get him after his classes. Surprised that they went and got skewers of fried squid afterward.
Duh.
He was niinii now. He was her niinii, now.
Of course they’d be there.
Masanori had already finished his studies, both to graduate from the academy and more on top of that. He hadn’t been as nervous as Shikibu, but there had been some nervousness there. (More of a nervousness to prove rather than Shikibu’s to do well.) After his sixteenth birthday, he’d decided to go into the navy and had been away for ten weeks.
(She always looked out of the window after dinner during those weeks, hoping to see him on one of the ships that drifted into port.)
“Amami.”
“Huh?” She turned from the window; aji stood at the entrance of the living room.
“Come,” she said, “we’re going to see Masanori.”
Aji had placed her on her shoulders so she could see all the ships drift into port. “Can you see him, mi-chan?”
“No,” her eyes squinted, “I can’t-,” her sentence ended in a gasp.
Masanori stood in front of the line of newly minted recruits on the ‘Tide wave’ as she drifted into port, saluting everyone while fireworks were set off to celebrate that they’d passed the ten weeks of training and were now officially in the navy.
“Masanori! I’m here dattebane!! Go niinii!” She cheered and waved with her arms. With him standing in front, she could see him holding back his grin, struggling to hold his composure as she continued to cheer.
Masanori had run down the docking ramp as soon as his sergeant had dismissed him from his post. He had picked her up from aji’s shoulders and spun her around before taking off his new hat.
“Look! See? This is my new hat.“ He offered it to her. “Wanna hold it?”
(She was still as easily distracted as she’d been then, because she held onto his hat for the entirety of the dinner aji had paid for, quietly taking in every nook and cranny of Masanori’s new hat.)
Then it had been her own turn to have someone come and pick her up after the academy finished. (Well, it had been her and Saya, since they enrolled at the same time, but their classes ended during different times of the day. Saya’s ended first, while hers ended later. They only ended at the same time on Wednesdays because of philosophy class with Sister Disha.)
“Neenee!” Himiko flew toward her, arms hugging around her waist. She grinned up at her, wisps of white and red hair stubbornly standing out in different directions. “What did you do today?”
“Today I learned about topography.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s like hills, mountains and valleys dattebane.” She answered. “All the things that describe one place, I even got to make a map, too! Wanna see?”
(The map she’d drawn had been so accurate and been one of the major pushes for suu to reluctantly allow her early graduation.)
Kanna was still too young for the academy. Fumihiro was seventeen and had graduated years ago, only recently beginning training with the hawk men, but they were just as annoying whenever they followed Saya into her room because she wanted her to braid her hair. Something they did every single morning.
(Yes, Fumihiro, too. It was like clockwork. Having her braid his hair was one thing he insisted on before he left for training.)
After she’d braid their hair, they’d go eat breakfast where suu went about in the kitchen, sometimes narrating his actions while singing, while Shikibu and Masanori practised with their spears in the backyard and Isshin helped anmaa to the table despite her insistence that she was fine.
“Aigo ne, my little guppies! You’re out of your little grottos! Will you help me set the table?”
She could hear the sounds of the waves from the window suu always opened as they talked. Saya complained about an assignment she had to do, while Kanna complained over the fact she was complaining over something she had to do.
“No! You shouldn’t complain Saya!” she exclaimed. “You have homework from the academy and I don’t, so you can’t complain.”
“Neenee, say something. You already did that assignment.”
“No, Himiko, I wanna do this myself.” Saya huffed in her answer, “Mi-chan has helped me with so much, so I wanna do this myself.”
(If asked about a memory she wished to relive without consequences, it would be one of the mornings after Saya, Kanna, and Fumihiro started barging into her rooms in the mornings.)
She lost something in her the moment Hiruzen’s student played dirty and snuck up on her and stole her away from the children she was supposed to guard. (Why was she so small?-)
Something in her broke when he used a futon jutsu to blow Himiko and Yohito away from the boat, saying “we only need you.”
The sheer rage at the audacity to kick something precious to her away. The aching chasm she felt in the depths of her soul.
No.
This is mine.
I won’t let you have it.
I won’t give you anything.
Kushina didn’t remember much else outside of a seething hatred that ignited something in her, a feeling that had her own skin feeling hot to the touch.
Kushina didn’t sleep.
She simply couldn’t.
How could she live with herself if she slept and missed something important?
No one barged into her room when morning came, yet she could still hear them barging into her room.
(“Mi-chan! Braid my hair, will you?” “No Saya! It’s my turn first now! You and Kanna have gone first twice now!” “But we’re girls, Hiro-chan! Our hair is longer than yours!”)
There was no one in the kitchen, but she could still hear Masanori and Shikibu practise in the backyard and smell suu’s food.
She could still hear Isshin helping anmaa and her protests of ‘I’m fine, Isshin.’
Kushina didn’t eat breakfast.
She didn’t braid anyone’s hair that morning.
She didn’t remember the incident Amane spoke of where she’d completely severed Sarutobi’s arm when he tried to talk to her.
She didn’t remember much of her first month in Konoha until the end of that month when she got a letter from those who survived.
Fumiko.Ryoma. They’d promised that they’d live, too. Since they were all going to marry each other one day; Kushina had threatened that she’d kill herself just to go look for them in the afterlife if they dared to die during the fall.
The pain of the aching chasm in her soul didn’t lessen when she heard Himiko was okay. That she was alive. Scared, but alive.
(It worsened.)
Kushina never wanted anyone of Uzushio descent to step foot in Konoha soil again unless they could bring the wrath of Ryujin with them, but Fumiko and Ryoma had both fought her on that matter. They both subsequently won that fight, with kisses and hugs and promises of boundless of salted, gently fried sticky rice with the freshest sashimi every week, and they were coming.
“I love you too much to ever think of letting you experience the pain they’d subject you to simply because they think they’re allowed to do so, since no one told them it’s wrong.” Fumiko cried into her shoulder. “I survived. We both did, and we will both be there for you.”
Kushina could never say their true names out loud in Konoha. She could never outright tell anyone in Konoha that these two were the people she loved the most.
If they cared about her, maybe they’d figure out why she was so attached to these two people.
If they didn’t, then that’s too bad for them; Most people here didn’t care about people born outside of their village walls, anyway.
Now, Kushina remembered surviving three lynching attempts from walking into the wrong parts of the village. All those attempts happened after her third month in Konoha.
The current incident she was trying to piece together from what fragments she remembered had happened during the first day of her second month in Konoha. When she woke up close to the cliffs of the Naka river with a swollen eye, bloodied and broken bones.
(Damn the horrible timing down to Ryujin’s depths. Fumiko and Ryoma hadn’t arrived at the village yet. Her insistent need to be alone sometimes brought about bad luck when she really didn’t need something like that.)
Did they throw her off the cliff?
Susanoo whispered in her ears, his voice louder than the roaring waves she always heard when parted from the sea. (Or a water source, for that matter.)
‘Hime-sama? Hime-sama, are you awake? There was a small gasp. ‘My heart is happy to see that you’re awake.’ He sounded so relieved.
(Even if people nicknamed her Susanoo’s little wife, Kushina still wasn’t used to a literal god talking to her. One of many things she needed to get used to if she wished to complete the training to become a priestess.)
“What happened? I can’t remember.” She pulled herself up and crawled to the river, seeing her expression on the river's surface.
The pure eyes were impervious to damage, so this… Kushina dipped a hand in the water and gently rubbed off some of the dried blood, showing a cut that spanned the entirety of her right eyelid.
There was glass.
Someone got her in the face with glass.
A glass bottle, maybe?
There had been a sharp pain to the side of her face- what else was there?
Someone had screamed.
Then, there had been pain.
‘You jumped, hime-sama.’ His voice was grave.
Kushina stilled completely.
That.
She had-
She wasn’t thrown from the cliff?
‘You survived their relentless and unjust onslaught, but in their blindness, children had gotten sucked into their mob and died. There was one child… one who shared names with the sibling my brother has blessed.’
Himiko.
She wasn’t here.
Kushina had made sure she would not so much as be in the vicinity of the soil of the land of fire.
Himiko wasn’t here. They hadn’t found her.
‘That child with the same name didn’t… live.’
(“Hey, can you hear me? You’re going to be fine.”)
‘You then walked into the forest until you reached the cliffs, said that you’d test the rumours of Dearest Akano’s suicide attempts with this jump, and you said you’d divorce me if you died, but expressed contentment at the possibility of seeing you family again and that then, you wouldn’t feel the pain in your soul anymore.’
Kushina didn’t remember that.
She didn’t remember ever remotely saying something along those lines.
She stumbled away when she heard someone coming toward the river.
They couldn’t- she couldn’t tell Amane or Mito-sama yet. Not when she didn’t know for certain what happened.
Kushina often frequented Ichika’s apartments. Be it either for help or for one safe place to doze off.
Not to sleep.
Doze off.
(She had once woken up, having fallen asleep near a field she’d thought far away enough so people wouldn’t come, to someone trying to burn the hachiji off her hands in an attempt to ‘save her.’)
Ichika was watching tv when she came rolling through an open window. The yelp she heard told her the window entrance was an absolute banger.
“So, um, let me say it first,” she held her hand out to stop Ichika from whatever she was about to yell at her, “I think- I think I maybe, like maybe, just survived a lynching attempt?”
“What do you mean ‘you think’ y’know?!”
Ichika had been the house healer back home. Aji. Whatever injury or broken bone happened, she was always there.
(Kushina wasn’t blind to the gentleness she’d treated anmaa with. Their chakras were all glowy and warm, reminiscent of a calm lake. She had always left them alone then. Suu as well, with a small wave over his shoulder and an odd little smile.)
“Because, I don’t- I don’t actually remember anything.” She answered, “only very small fragments.”
Ichika’s brows furrowed as she healed her broken bones, but kept quiet for her to continue despite the clear questions she saw she had.
“I woke up close to the cliffs by the Naka river, I thought someone had thrown me off the cliffs at first,” Kushina continued, “Susanoo said I survived ‘the relentless and unjust onslaught’ and I made my way into the forest and jumped.” She turned her head slightly so she could look into her eyes.
“I don’t remember anything he said to have happened.” It sounded completely foreign to her. She struggled to picture herself in that situation when she didn’t remember it happening. (Just like what happened to the students of the Kashima dojo. She knew, and she was told, but she had to recollection of it happening outside of her hand, maybe, going through someone’s stomach.)
“What do you remember, then?” She worked to heal the cut across her eyelid. Frowning a little, she murmured. “Close your eyes. There are glass fragments in the cut.”
Kushina closed her eyes. “I remember anger.” Had it been a comment? Someone said something, she’s sure of that. Though… maybe they had done something instead? Thrown something? “Then more anger.” Where had it amplified? She couldn’t remember. “Someone got me in the side of my face. A glass bottle, I think, and then someone screamed and then I felt pain.” She said, “Susanoo said there had been children caught in the mob and one of them had the same name as…” she trailed off.
Thinking the name was much different from actually saying it. She held an aversion to the name now.
“Oh…”
“Yeah, that name.” Her name. Himiko.
“I will take care of this, alright? You can stay here. Don’t worry.”
There had been a lynching attempt. In those individuals’ attempt to cleanse their ‘clean village’ of impurities, to remove all the ‘savage outsiders who only polluted’, three children had been killed; choked and pulled apart by the mob’s frenzy to ‘clean’ what they considered dirty.
Despite knowing the answer, Kushina knew Ichika knew the answer because to even be up for recommendation for the medic exams she needed to have the credentials of Hiroko’s ‘learning the art of speaking’ class, the question of why she didn’t fight back eventually came.
She could’ve. She definitely could’ve with her chains or freezing the water inside their bodies, or maybe flooded the entire district she found herself in, dragging housing and innocents down with her.
(Kushina used the term ‘innocent’ in this context to mean that they were not a part of the mob, other than that she didn’t really care for them.)
But she could not have spoken or tried to dissuade them simply by talking. Nothing dissuaded a mob mentality when it first was there. The one rule then was to run away to safety, even the argumentation and debates classes the nuns and monks held mentioned that.
“Aji, I know you know this, but if I’d fought back,” she had, but not enough to kill, just to get space and get away, “I would’ve proven them right.” She said, “that their attempt to cleanse their village of savage pollution held merit because look at all the bodies left behind. Look at what suffering any outsider might bring into their village.”
For as credited as the man was, Kushina hated the fact that she was sounding like Hiroko-shinshii at the moment. She really didn’t like using people she held in important regard for something like this. (This topic would narrow down to preaching and how to hold a captivating speech, if she had to be specific.)
“And what would the consequences be for the fact I defended myself? When I am watched like cattle as it is, something I hate dattebane, if that hasn’t become common knowledge yet.” One guard was left of Hiruzen’s first line of original guards. One, and he was on thin ice at the moment.
(If he as so much as neared another Gogowa cat after his colleague killed one, she would hang him up in front of his relative’s house.)
“They’ll add more guards. They’ll restrict my movement and try to control everything I do, spirits! Maybe they’ll remove me from the upper world all together!” Stagnation begets rot. (That-that wasn’t how the quote went, but that was Tsuru-shinshii’s revised quote during sociology classes and- she really shouldn’t be quoting important people on matters like this.)
For Hiruzen to be so naïve to have someone like Danzo at his side was pure self sabotage at this point. (And to believe she thought him to be someone like Bishamonten in human form when suu first talked about him-)
If he let his ‘trusted’ friend ‘take’ her, then Kushina would kill him, cull seventy-five percent of his generation and throw a coup herself.
“Maybe they’ll attempt to kill me since I’m too unpredictable for them to control, but one thing I know is they won’t that they won’t bother trying to prevent other lynchings because it’s simply not important to them.” There was always the possibility that they wouldn’t do anything at all to her.
Kushina wasn’t aware she’d worked herself up to tears until Ichika had bent down to hug her.
“Oh, Mi-chan, I’m sorry.” This felt oddly a lot like how anmaa used to hug her. “I’m just angry you’re getting treated the way you are when you deserve so, so much more. We will help. Just trust us.”
Kushina only attended the academy when Amane became one of her senseis.
There was no routine then.
She’d moved from her bed to the floor sometime during the night. She laid there, waiting for her bedroom door to barge open with Saya, leading the charge and asking her to braid her hair.
“But you do it so much better than me, y’see? Your braids are the best, and they last the entire day!”
Kushina laid there for an additional five minutes, just to be sure.
She still heard Isshin help anmaa and her protests that she was fine when she walked to the living room.
She could still hear Shikibu and Masanori practise in the backyard and suu’s singing in the kitchen as he prepared the breakfast.
Kushina sat at the empty table until she had to leave for the academy.
Back home, it was so normalised to have spirits take care of you. It was normal to hear them, often see them as well, and for you to know that they were there. That you weren’t alone. The one downside currently was that she couldn’t tell if what she was hearing was auditory hallucinations or not, from her lack of sleep.
Anmaa and suu were dead.
Her siblings weren’t.
As low as the possibility was, maybe they snuck in and did this to mess with her.
She kept hearing conversations, old and new ones, like Masanori, who was walking with her to the academy while carrying Himiko, talking about introducing the first years to the warships.
Something that had been planned had Uzushio not been attacked. On this date, currently. He would have been walking beside her if things had gone as intended.
Kushina glanced to her right. Neither Masanori nor Himiko were there. She glanced to her left and even looked over her shoulder, still hearing his footsteps and voice.
“Look.”
“Another outsider.”
“What red hair….” It was the exact same shade as the warm beaches the adults would bring them to. They’d teach them the bases of the kagura dances there; sand and uncoordinated toddler feet proved to be quite the entertainment for the adults there.
“Is that even natural?” She’d inherited suu’s blood-like shade of hair, so yes, it was natural. He would’ve terrified them.
‘I also have black hair, too.’ She thought. ‘It is a sign that I am spirit blessed back home. What would you say if I let go of my henge that hid it?’
Suu used to sit and let her braid his hair when she was little, then he’d braid her hair, adorn it with beads and bell carefully picked out so they fit the black parts of her hair, and then he’d carry her to a mirror and gush about how pretty they both were.
She didn’t look when someone snickered.
There were more comments. About her hair, her face, even down to the colour of her eyes. (The child who’d made that comment had a distinct green eye colour that was associated with kiri, but anyway-,)
At least she had her hair. She was spirit blessed by the ocean and had Susanoo at her beck and call.
She had her hajichi, even if it wasn’t safe to show them. The circles, lines and spirals on her hands that aji had tattooed because anmaa couldn’t stop trembling from the medicine she’d just taken.
The blessings her aji’s and asa’s had drawn on her face with their chakra to protect her were still there.
“Bye bye, Neenee!”
“Bye Amami! We’ll see you later!”
Kanemaru, of all people-
As Shosuke went on about something after miss- explaining a term, which drove him further away from what the subject actually meant- Kanemaru nudged her elbow, and a worn, crinkled piece of paper touched her thigh.
The stamped and approved paper that accepted his fostering under Uzumaki Ryujin and Uzumaki Hideko, signed by both Oniwa Gyoubu and Oniwa Shume.
Brother.
Niinii.
He was her elder brother now, technically, if she pretended her parents were still alive. Because he was under the pretense that they were alive.
(Was it that easy for him to masquerade as a ten-year-old when he was actually twelve?)
“I was there. I saw,” he wrote on the edge of her paper. “You didn’t think I’d let you be alone, did you?”
It took every ounce of her to not break down in the middle of Shosuke’s misleading lecture.
(If Amane’s directed look of mixed amusement and annoyance at him told Kushina anything, she was well aware that he was not teaching the subject correctly.)
“Neenee!” She heard Himiko’s steps and reached out her arms to catch her, stopping quickly when she realised that no one was there.
No one waited for her outside of the academy.
“Neenee, what did you do today?”
She was supposed to have a major exam in chemistry today, if things went as intended back home.
‘Today I had to listen to someone not explain properly how to identify explosive seals and watch said person draw the wrong seal for their example.’
(She had been completely taken out of zoning through the class when she saw him draw the wrong seal to use, for his example. Nothing so far in her life had taken her out of zoning through something.
“Shosuke, are you sure that seal is correct?”
To get her frustration out, Kushina wrote out a detailed explanation, including visual examples, of how to correctly identify explosive seals, dissected the standard explosive seal itself and explained the meaning behind each part of what made an explosive seal an explosive seal before passing it to Kanemaru and her Hyūga seatmate.)
“He’s stupid then, people die that way,” she heard, “Neenee, why is he teaching when he doesn’t know what he is supposed to teach?”
That- that wasn’t supposed- she wasn’t supposed to respond to her, and she hadn’t audibly replied.
You’re not here.
You’re not supposed to reply to me.
I didn’t even answer it out loud, so you couldn’t have heard me.
Kushina looked to her right and left, turning around to see if Himiko was behind her. She wasn’t.
“Hey,” a hand touched between her shoulder blades. She glanced up. Kanemaru stood there, smiling softly like he used to do whenever he visited her back home. “Wanna get ramen or something? It’s not the same, but I found this stand and it’s really good.”
Himiko kept talking about the ships Masanori showed the class of children. (Something he didn’t do- at least, not in the way she was saying- it was something he was supposed to do, but hadn’t yet.)
“I-yeah, then you can explain how you got here.”
She was supposed to suffer the fate of the ‘last Uzumaki’ in Konoha after the fall. Alone. So that all those who survived wouldn’t be lured to the village with promises of safety and greatness and then stolen away from her again. As the eldest biological child of her parents, this was what she could do to keep her people safe. (Masanori always said he’d be the one to crown her when her suu passed, and Isshin and Shikibu said they’d be her loyal spears-,)
Kanemaru was not Uzumaki.
He was of the Ashina.
Born of the Oniwa clan, known for their absolute loyalty and bravery, nephew to Gyoubu the demon. She should’ve seen him coming here before her.
She definitely should have.
(Ichika eventually told Amane of the first lynching attempt when they got together, of the time she ended up close to the cliffs of the Naka river. The one Kushina didn’t remember.
“That was you?!” Her outburst took them both off guard. Kushina blinked. “What are you talking about?”
“I had taken Mikoto with me for training to the Naka river and I thought I’d heard gravel crunching, but thought I was just hearing things. There was blood in the river, there was blood on some rocks near the base of the cliff along with an incredibly vague outline of a body, if you studied the ground close enough.” She said. “Mikoto got so concerned and we ended up reporting it to the Police in fear that someone had attempted suicide and survived and were wandering around the area.”
Ichika gave Kushina a look then, and Amane’s expression changed when she noticed it. “Did you actually jump to die?”
“If it helps at all, I don’t actually remember jumping.” She answered. “I only remember small fragments and feelings and that I woke up there injured.” She struggled not to squirm under their gaze. “I thought I’d been thrown off the cliff at first, but it was Susanoo who recounted the events to me and told me that I had jumped.”
Amane sighed harshly through her nose.
“Was it also him who made it so that you didn’t die upon impact?”
“Yeah, I apparently mentioned the account of Priestess Akano’s suicide attempts-,”
“-who is that?”
“- a priestess favoured by Susanoo, who lived five hundred years ago and didn’t die regardless of what heights she jumped from or any other efforts to end her life.” Ichika answered her.
“And that I would test the rumours of those accounts with this jump, and divorce him if I died.” A sudden thought came to her. “I technically fit the description of a Miko now, just not in the ‘traditional’ sense, huh…”
The Miko-sama’s of Ashina didn’t die. They didn’t die. They couldn’t even bleed without the black or red mortal blades; without them, cuts and bruises, always healed instantly.
Kushina bled, she bruised. She just couldn’t die because a god wished her to live a fruitful life and not pass too soon. (Priestess Akano had written that in her diary, exact words. Susanoo would not let her.)
Amane looked at her with a slight pinch in her brow. “This is serious, Kushina.”
“Yeah, I know dattebane.”
Ichika flung a couch pillow at her. “Then would you stop zoning out, y’know?”)