She knows she’s dreaming. She has to be, because the light filtering through the slats in the shutters of her window dimly illuminates a room that had burnt along with the rest of the Okiya.
Miyu stays lying on her futon, breathing in the familiar scent of home, watching intently as dust motes hover sparingly in the early rays of sun.
“Miyu-chan, are you up?” Kikyo’s voice sounds on the other side of her door.
Throat tight and aching, Miyu blinks through the sudden stinging at her eyes.
“Yes,” she manages to get out, pushing herself upright. The door opens, and her breath leaves her in a whoosh.
Kikyo smiles at her, bright and carefree.
Her light brown hair is loose, hanging down to her elbows. It makes her youthful face appear even younger. Big, round eyes crinkle with mirth at the edges. She’s still in her sleep yukata. It’s a pale pink, with tiny dancing strawberries printed all over it. Nanami teases her for every now and then.
“Masa’s almost done preparing breakfast. I thought we could go to Rin’s today, I wanted to talk with Saeko-chan.”
“Sure,” she says, wanting to say more as Kikyo turns away and heads downstairs. Wanting to call out, to ask her to stay, to tell her she misses her –
Instead she gets up. Steps out of her futon, and doesn’t bother remaking it. Makes for the stairs, and stands there for a moment, listening to the sound of laughter drifting up to her. Slowly, she takes a step down.
The faint scent of tobacco from Mother’s pipe reaches her.
Another few steps, and the entranceway to the Okiya comes into her line of sight.
“-stop from laughing, so I opened my fan as fast as I could, but I’m sure he heard me-”
“Of course he heard you, Nana-chan,” comes Kikyo’s giggle, “you’ve never been able to laugh quietly-”
“Liar!” Nanami hisses, only to Kikyo’s further amusement.
Miyu pauses a few steps from the bottom, listening. Gods, if she could go back. For just one more day, to see them just one more time.
“Stop your growling, the girl’s right,” Mother interrupts, “she’s being much too polite. We all know you snort when you find something really funny anyway-”
“Mother!”
Laughter, and Miyu’s chest is warm and hurting and she doesn’t want this moment to end.
One more step, now.
She sets her foot down on the ground, and –
Miyu wakes up slowly. Like stepping out of an onsen, the warmth of the dream slips away, and she opens her eyes.
She’s in her living room, blinking up at the ceiling. The fairy lights that Sasuke had brought her last week cast odd shadows onto it. She can hear movement in the kitchen, alongside quiet murmuring.
Another blink, and she realises her eyes are wet.
Oh.
Her blurry gaze drops to the floor of her living room, where Naruto and Shisui are bent over what she can recognise as seals now. Sakura and Itachi kneel opposite each other, the medic with her hands hovering over his closed eyes as they glow green.
Someone… someone is playing with her hair.
She tilts her head back, and catches a glimpse of a hand clad in fingerless gloves.
Not trusting herself to speak just yet, Miyu raises her hand to her face and swipes at her eyes. It definitely won’t fool anyone in this room, but she’d rather not lose her composure with an audience. For a few moments she continues lying there, letting the presence of the people around her settle her.
That had been home, once. But this – this is home now, and the thought fills her with warmth again.
When she doesn’t feel so much like crying, she reaches up and settles her hand over Kakashi’s. He pauses in his motions, and when she cranes her head back a little more he’s still absorbed in flipping through his notebook.
She yawns as she pushes herself up, wincing at her sore arms – she hadn’t even thought of the bruising grips of the guards until now, definitely not in time to bring it up to the medic that had attended her.
Still blinking away the memories of another warm place in another, calmer time, she leans sleepily against Kakashi’s side and reads the page he’s on.
There was a noise – the rustling of leaves her only warning – before a small contingent of Shinobi appeared around them. She tensed, wary and ready for a fight, when she heard something she’d never heard before.
A laugh.
And it was coming from Hitachi.
“If that’s you trying to sneak up on me, Takashi, you failed. Even the civilian noticed.” Hitachi remarked, before the first of the strange Shinobi stepped closer into the light of their campfire.
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“I’d never sneak up on such a lovely young lady – it’s not becoming.” The ninja she now knew to be called Takashi replied, voice light and jovial, but with a raspy edge to it.
It was far more attractive than she’d like to admit.
The firelight danced across his sharp features, and it was more than the flames that drew heat into her face. With windswept hair and piercing eyes, Takashi was unmistakably handsome.
What the hell did they feed these Shinobi, and could she get some of it?
She laughs then, softly, and thinks Kikyo would have loved to read this.
“Does my work so amuse you?” Kakashi slants her a look, but doesn’t make to lower the book or close it.
“It’s good,” she admits, as Sasuke calls them over citing that dinner is ready. She hesitates a moment before deciding to continue. “I just – I… back at the Okiya, our maiko-”
Her throat closes briefly, and she takes a moment to swallow down her hurt.
“Kikyo. She… I think you would have had a fan in her, Kakashi.”
“Hm,” he doesn’t pry for more information, just listens in a way she’s not used to from ninja. They’ve been trained to gather intel, after all.
“Get up,” Sasuke calls again, impatient now, “the food is going to get cold.”
With a stretch, Miyu gets to her feet.
“Evening, all-”
An instant later she’s swept off her feet, barely repressing a yelp.
“Miyu-chan,” Shisui whines, “it should have been me! I would have become Sugawara Shisui for you-”
“Put her down,” Sasuke throws a knife and Miyu is suddenly on her feet, Shisui half a metre away as he holds the utensil.
“Don’t be such a wet blanket, little cousin!”
“Did you just throw a knife at Miyu?” Sakura’s tone steadily creeps higher.
“Sasuke did what?” Itachi’s low voice sends a shiver down her spine, and she’s not even the intended target.
“At Shisui,” Sasuke corrects, though she can see his face paling considerably, “I threw a knife at Shisui!”
Deciding to intervene on his behalf because he really had been trying to help her, Miyu walks over to the island and steps up beside Sasuke, assessing the spread before them critically.
“Thank you for cooking dinner,” she looks to Yamato, too, “anything I can help you with?”
He shakes his head at her with a small smile.
“Itachi-nii, Sasuke definitely threw a knife at Miyu,” Naruto has broken out of his obsessive study of the seals to dob on his teammate.
“It wasn’t a big one,” she speaks up in his defence, “and he was only trying to help. I’m fine, anyway.”
Itachi is standing, eyes open and sharingan activated in a second.
Sasuke dives behind her, hands grasping at her shoulders, and she smiles politely at Itachi.
“Enough of that,” she pats at Sasuke’s hands, “the food is almost ready. No fighting today, please.”
Naruto stands with a yawn, Sakura forces Itachi down for a final two minutes of treatment, and Miyu helps Sasuke and Yamato set the table. Shisui has grabbed four more knives from her drawer, and is proceeding to juggle them. Miyu gives him a wide berth as she makes her way to her seat.
They’re almost settled around the dining table when she speaks up.
“You’ve all been in the village a lot lately.”
No one reacts externally to this, but she had expected that. It’s suspicious, how frequently they’ve all been in the one place at the one time. With a sinking feeling in her stomach, she realises it’s likely related to the kidnapping attempt.
The Hokage has not made his intentions public, yet. Miyu knows it would be a weakness on Konoha’s part not to act, and she’s sure the clans are insisting on swift retribution.
She takes her seat beside Sasuke, opposite Naruto, and waits for someone to say it.
“Congratulations, future Hatake-sama,” it’s Shisui that breaks the silence, of course it is, and Miyu very narrowly resists the urge to face palm.
Sakura sighs, and Naruto picks a fight with Sasuke about not plating him enough rice, while Kakashi, having brought his notebook to the table, continues to write.
Itachi has launched a chopstick at Shisui with such force that it’s lodged in the wall behind where his cousin had been sitting. Yamato is fretting over it, muttering about property damage.
Miyu rubs her eyes and finds her gaze settling on Naruto’s face as his argument with Sasuke gets more and more heated.
His blonde hair, silhouetted by the light from the kitchen behind him, is spiky and bright. His blue eyes, narrowed now in anger, are –
The room seems to still.
Naruto, sharp, obvious Naruto. Her chaperone, bright and warm and so clever. How much time has she spent, wondering who he was? Marvelling at his easy mastering of social interactions, his balanced, careful recount of information.
“Oh, gods.”
She can’t unsee it now. The resemblance is uncanny.
“Eh? Miyu-chan are you alright? You’re lookin’ at me all weird.”
Miyu very carefully reconstructs her expression into something less mind blown. All this time, she’s been buddying up to the son of the Hokage.
“Yep. All good,” she picks up her tea and burns her tongue. As she cringes from it, the cup slips through her fingers.
Sasuke’s hand shoots out, catching it mere centimetres from her grasp. Not a drop of tea spills.
“Are you sure?” Naruto leans forward, narrowing his eyes suspiciously, “Your face is still kinda weird.”
“Very sure,” she nods in thanks to Sasuke and takes the cup back, “just… remembered something, is all.”
Sasuke is looking at her oddly now, too.
Gods, she thought she was observant. But she missed Itachi and Kakashi, and she missed this. Is she losing her touch?
Sure that her expression is not as stoic as she would like it to be, she clears her throat.
Time for a subject change.
“My apologies. Today has been… eventful, to say the least.” Many significant looks are shared around the table. Miyu resolutely ignores them. “So, Kakashi, when’s the book release?”
“Are we seriously not going to talk about the fact that sensei and Miyu are now engaged?” Sakura deadpans, blunt and unapologetic.
“Next Tuesday,” Kakashi says, completely ignoring his student, “be sure to dress to impress. There’s going to be a photographer there and everything – my publisher is going all out!”
“Of course you’re going to use the engagement as a publicity stunt,” Yamato sighs, returning to his seat, “what did I expect, honestly?”
“Kakashi, you should probably address the clans,” Itachi says, in between hand signs that Miyu resolutely pretends not to see. Shisui is signing back, which she assumes is their way of wordless arguing. “If you’re going to be the clan head you shouldn’t shirk your duties.”
“Oh, I don’t plan on it,” Kakashi says absently, still scribbling in his book, “my dear fiancé will be handling all clan correspondence and responsibilities, as I am still very busy with active duty as one of Konoha’s most prominent jounin.”
“Honestly, I’m kinda looking forward to this,” Yamato pipes up, “we won’t have to do any more Izumi damage control, and I’d pay to see Miyu talk circles around the councils.”
“I second that,” Sakura grins, half-feral.
“Take some responsibility, Kaka-sensei!” Naruto cries, “Don’t – Don’t throw Miyu to the wolves-”
He dissolves into laughter at that, and Miyu tries very hard not to laugh herself.
“Kakashi, you can be a real bastard,” Sasuke says, but there’s a tiny smile creeping onto his face.
“Me?” gasps Kakashi, “Never!”
“Gods,” Miyu mutters, fighting the twitching of her lips as she pinches at the bridge of her nose, “a no-name, clanless civilian managing the re-establishment of a noble clan of Konoha. Sasuke, Itachi, I fear your mother will be out for my blood after this.”
“Not much she can do,” Sasuke shrugs.
Miyu quirks a brow, “She’s the matriarch of one of Konoha’s oldest, most powerful clans.”
Itachi catches her gaze across the table, corner of his mouth twitching up in a half-smile, “And?” he takes a sip of tea, “So are you.”
