Spear & Shield

Spear and Shield
Chapter 27

A few days later, Yasu found herself strolling along the upper-level of the Village.  Her eyes carefully studied every structure in her sight, noting abnormalities and defects, while fantasizing about development layouts that would never be approved. 

It was a feckless hobby of hers to observe like this, but it was getting too cold for her to sit atop the Monument like she normally did. And despite her upcoming commission, she still needed to make her weekly maintenance reports.

She let her mind meander, just as her feet did, in slow and placid pace. 

Languid and meditative, she drifted in a cloud of small thoughts. 

She was grounded and level, the waves of her thoughts gently kissing the shores of tranquility. She was drifting, wandering but not lost.

Her feet rounded along the path once more, and a new section of the Village came into her view.

Her eyes fell upon the southwest corner of the Village, noting the brand new roof tile and walls that were not quite the right color… Cracked windows, chipped stones, and splintered wood. Buildings older than her with brand new doors. Scratches in the walls that were too large and deep to be normal wear-and-tear.

In the blink of an eye, the tranquility she had lulled herself into shattered. It was thrown off and tilted and twisted until it was unrecognizable.

The sound was deafening. An explosion, a tsunami of sound waves that could be heard for miles and miles around. The blast brought with it a horrible wind, kicking up dirt and dust in a powerful rush. A beast roared above their heads, rearing back to open its maul in a gaping hiss. Its body slithered and swooped, darting forward with intent to destroy. Rocks and brick collapsed with deafening crashes that overlapped in a building storm, layering on top of one another until she could no longer hear the screams. The ground shook beneath her feet, threatening to sink and fracture and swallow her up. The paths she walked everyday became deadends. The walls she once leaned on were crumbled to lines of debris, forming skeletal outlines of the buildings that once stood. 

They had done the best they could with the resources they had at the time. Immediate triage focused on the wall.

The hole gaped at them, mocking them in its largeness. 'How weak,' it said to them, 'How vulnerable.'

She clearly recalled staring over her shoulder as she and others laid brick, paranoid that the giant beast of a snake would come darting through the trees and destroy the same wall once more. Each stone was laid with shaking hands and quiet words and she and the rest of the team salvaged what they could. 

How long had the nightmares lasted? ...Had they stopped? She couldn’t recall having one recently. Then again, her ghosts rarely haunted her with nightmares. 

Instead, they manifested in internal attacks that sent her careening into a seemingly endless dismay. The way her chest would clench, seizing her heart and lungs in a painful vice. The same feeling would shoot painfully up her neck, covering her brain in a net of static that trapped her away from any thought that wasn’t the destruction she witnessed that day. Her own mind became a self-imposed prison where she was her own captor. 

...So many had been lost during that siege. 

But Yasu had lost no one that day. She had lost her Hokage, Sandaime, just as the rest of Konoha collectively had... Really, the only thing she had lost was her sense of security. 

She mourned it all the same.

Looking at it now, one could barely tell. They had done a remarkable job recovering from the damage. But the feeling of violation would not be covered; not by wood and nails or stone and concrete. It persisted and permeated into the edges of her being, a constant shadow in the corner of her eye.

She wasn’t sure if it would ever go away… She wondered if there was a light at the end of the tunnel.

“Good Morning, My Most Esteemed Yasu-chan! What Ails You On This Beautiful Day?”

She had been too wrapped up in her thoughts to have noticed him, even as he made a spectacle of himself.

He grinned up at her, standing on his hands, awkwardly loping along a pace that was far quicker than anyone should rightfully be able to do. His palms made soft ‘thump, thump’ noises as they slapped against the grass and dirt, following the path she had just taken.

“Gai-sensei!” she shook herself from her stupor. “Good morning,” she mumbled, embarrassed to be caught so off-guard. Those thoughts consumed her, as they always did, even muting her shinobi senses. She hadn’t noticed a man marching around on his hands until he called out to her.

He wobbled a little closer before launching into a graceful-- albeit unnecessary-- backflip, landing silently on his feet. 

For a short second, her shoulders tensed in preparation for an attack, a residual side-effect from the anxiety she felt.

Instead, Gai flashed her a blinding smile and a thumbs up, remaining a decent space away. She wondered if he kept the distance because of her discomfort.

Still, she forcefully shoved the thoughts away, tearing her attention from the southwest corner. “Running laps?” she asked him with a small smile, pointedly ignoring his question about her "ails" while hiding shaking hands behind her back.

“Of course!” he responded plainly.

“Bit early for laps, isn’t it?” she shrugged, “You should be enjoying your leave.”

Border rotation was usually followed by a mandatory furlough, lasting anywhere from a few days to a week. Most ninja chose to rest during this time, choosing to decompress and recuperate. 

Maito Gai was not most ninja.

“I grew too restless!” he told her, shameless. “I have far too much youthful energy to stay idle for long!”

She thought back to her previous frustrations while he had been away. The amount of secretive training she had done in his absence, just to diffuse the energy welling up inside of her.  “I wouldn’t say resting is the same as idleness, but… I know the feeling,” she told him with a smile so genuine and warm, it nearly took his breath away. The light it brought to her face chased away the melancholy he had previously seen.

He felt heat rising in his cheeks and panicked, “Perhaps you would like to train as well?” he quipped, words spilling from his lips at great speed. “I-I mean-- with me, that is.”

Yasu paused at the request. Mostly because it had never been a request before. Normally, their training had been either the result of an ambush attack on his end, or a pre-scheduled demand that typically sounded a bit threatening…

Now, he just sounded… nervous?

Regardless of the unusual turn their dynamic had taken, Yasu felt relieved that he had thought to ask first. 

Because the unpleasantness was still too fresh, it held her too tightly. “Ah… Thank you, Gai-sensei, but I’m afraid I’m at a loss for ‘youthful energy’ today.”

So his initial assessment had been correct… When he first saw her after his fifth lap around the Village, he knew she seemed off. At first, he thought she was some sort of genjutsu illusion or perhaps a poorly executed shadow clone. But the second he came in range to feel her chakra, he knew it was her.

Gai took a step closer, slow and careful and not very like himself at all. 

“Is everything alright?” he asked, voice low and serious as she had ever heard it. The way pure concern pulled at his brow, and the puzzlement in his eyes… The way his whole body seemed to say, “Tell me what’s wrong.”

She felt her heart fall open, but her tongue refused to comply, “It’s nothing.” A breeze blew by, and Yasu’s arms came to wrap around herself, hands no longer shaking. 

Her tone was as casual as she could manage, but it felt as though she had just closed a door between them. A door he had opened for her, but she couldn’t go through.

“Yasu-chan…” he sighed, hand coming up to scratch the back of his neck in something akin to embarrassment. 

Yasu had never really mastered the shinobi skill of hiding one's emotions. Annoyance, discomfort, curiosity, determination, these were all things Gai was used to seeing on her face. He could read her like a book; from her posture, her lips, her hands, to the way her eyes shifted. In fact, he frequently used these tells to his advantage during their spars. 

But at that moment, he couldn’t see anything. That frightened him.

Reliving painful memories had stolen her energy. The brokenness needed to settle before she could move past it again. She couldn't bring herself to fight or spar right now, no matter how much she missed it.

But this was Gai. And the loneliness and longing she had felt in his long absence was there as well. Unlike those memories, which came and went with good and bad days, she carried that strange loneliness with her. A loneliness that went away when in Gai’s company. One that only started after they had met.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated, not sure who she was apologizing to. She tucked a strand of windswept hair behind her ear as she lifted her head to meet the storm of concern and worry in his eyes.

For a moment, there was understanding there. Something that said 'It's okay, take your time. I'm here.' 

The darkness that held her insides loosened. The southeast corner blended into the background.

“... Would you like to walk with me instead?”

And the door opened just a crack.

Relief washed over Gai in a way he hadn't been expecting. 

“Excellent!” he grinned, “I can focus on my form instead of my speed!”

Another graceful flip sent him back into a handstand and he hobbled over to her side. 

She stared down at his face seeing only mere traces of worry left, now hidden with his usual cheer. Perhaps she would have seen a bit more if he hadn't been upside-down.

Her lips twitched upwards once again. Her belly twitched as laughter bubbled up from her chest, manifesting in stifled giggles that she hid behind her hand. Her other arm clutched her side in an effort to stop her laughter, but failed miserably. She forcefully turned away from the ridiculous sight, back in the direction she had been walking. 

“What’s so funny?” he whined by her knees.

“Nothing!” she snorted, biting back a grin. “Your hands must be filthy.”

“There’s grass stains under my nails,” he admitted somewhat sheepishly, hopping along on one arm as he inspected his nail beds.

The giggling was back, she picked up her pace. 

“Yasu-chan!” he called, easily catching up to her, “Why are you laughing?”

“It’s nothing! It’s just--” she glanced down once more, trailing off. “I missed you, you know.”

Gai paused, watching her back as she walked ahead of him.

“... I missed you as well.”