"Are you meant to be here?"
Aiko flashed a guileless, pretty smile at the kindly baa-chan manning the desk and lifted her coffeeshop bag to show it off. "Ne, I just wanted to see Sasuke-kun..." She let her voice trail off softly and blinked twice.
That wasn't her primary objective, but it also wasn't a lie. He was highly placed in Konoha, after all. Sasuke would be a good person to worm her way close to. And he'd seemed surprisingly open to her presence last week. She was starting to suspect that he had been serious about his office door being open to her, way back on the day she woke up in Konoha.
She almost regretted pulling the fire alarm when he was the one watching her, in retrospect.
The older lady sighed and rubbed at her jade pendant in what looked suspiciously like a prayer, but didn't stop Aiko from knocking on the door to his little office in the anteroom that led up to Tsunade's. The only response was a grunt. She took it as permission to push the door open and swung the bag of canned chai tea in ahead of her, holding it aloft in offering. Everyone liked chai, right?
Her target was looking down at a frightfully large pile of folders and running his hands through the messy spikes at the back of his neck.
'Aww. Is Sasu-chan having a hard day with sensitive documents I might find interesting?'
"I come bearing refreshments," Aiko announced, and unceremoniously sat on his desk. Sasuke's fingers froze and he looked up at her, dark eyes blearily suspicious. "Not even slightly poisoned refreshments," she wheedled, pulling a drink out of the bag and popping the tab. She took a sip and then held it out to him.
He leveled an unimpressed look at the offering, then up to her face. "Do you have any idea what type of pathogens you could spread to my person like that?"
Wait, what?
"Are you …calling me diseased?" Aiko questioned, tilting her head slightly. She was meant to be charming him, but it was hard to keep the insult off her face. In challenge, she pushed the can slightly further into his personal space and steeled her expression. If he'd turned her down politely she wouldn't have cared. But now? Now he was going to enjoy some delicious tea if she had to shove it down his throat personally.
They exchanged stares for a moment. Sasuke sighed, breaking eye contact. When he did, she took the opportunity to glance at the paper he'd been reading. Oh. Accounts of recidivism rates something-something. Boring, in other words. "No," he admitted testily. "If only because Shizune-senpai would have noticed. That's still a foul habit. Do you share your food with everyone?"
Her lips thinned. "Just you, hime. Does that make you feel special?"
Sasuke rolled his eyes and finally took the can. He paused before taking a sip to furrow his brows and shoot her an uncertain look. "You came directly here, correct? You didn't attempt to reach me at the hospital first?"
Aiko snorted and ignored the grossed-out look that crossed his face at the sound. "Of course I didn't bring try to bring comestibles to your wing of the hospital. I've heard Shizune talk about what goes on there. I'm not going there again without a facemask and gloves."
And a living will. Honestly, some of Shizune's coworkers sounded frightening.
He let both his eyebrows travel up and pinched his mouth into an expression that clearly said, 'not the worst idea I've ever heard'. Then Sasuke finally took a sip. He shrugged and then drained the can, effortlessly crumpling the metal and tossing it across the room into his bin. "Not bad."
Her eyes followed the trajectory of what had been her drink. "You're welcome," Aiko said blandly, stretching her face into what vaguely resembled a smile.
'I love that tea.'
Well, at least she had one more can. She'd intended that one for him, but now-
"Hn." Sasuke looked away. "What are you really doing here?"
She widened her eyes innocently. "Sasuke?"
He raised an eyebrow.
"What, do I have to have an ulterior motive to come visit?" She snaked a little closer on his desk, twisting her body to face him more fully. "I just thought I would spend some time with you."
Wait, was that just a little bit of a blush-
"Oh, shit." Aiko hopped off his desk and to her feet, but didn't manage to escape out the window before Shizune pushed open Sasuke's door and leveled Aiko with a pleasant smile.
"Ready to go, Uzumaki-san?" Shizune asked as though she hadn't found her wayward ward hiding from her psychiatric appointment. She favored Sasuke with a polite nod but didn't take her eyes off of Aiko.
'This should have been the absolute last place she looked for me. How. How did she know?'
Her shoulders slumped. "Yes," Aiko lied glumly, letting go of the windowframe. She gave a transparently miserable sigh and dragged her feet when she crossed the office to follow Shizune out.
Sasuke waved once and opened the other can of tea, because apparently everyone in this town was a monster.
~~~
"You're late today," Yamanaka-sensei observed. His voice gave no indication as to how he felt about that.
Aiko averted her eyes to the smooth blue wall behind his head and wished there was more distance between their oversized chairs.
'Of course I'm late. Shizune found me sooner than anticipated.'
It really was an ugly office. It would look so much nicer if she tossed a smoke bomb into it and ran off.
'If I'd had my way, I'd still be hiding in Hokage tower. I can't believe she thought to look for me there.'
Aiko slouched back a little further into the soft cushion of her chair and didn't even care that she was openly pouting.
"No matter." Knuckles cracked ever so slightly as the older man adjusted, a now-familiar sound that brought her back to the pointed banality of the office setting she was currently trapped in. The small amount of poise she had managed to regain trembled tenuously.
'I need to pull myself together. Sure, he's spectacularly creepy. But he's just one old man. He's got to be like thirty. He's probably tired from hobbling to the office. We'll spend the session talking about Akatsuki. And fuck those guys, really, I don't need to protect them. Under the bus they go.'
Bravado aside, she couldn't bring herself to look at his face. Yamanaka-sensei's hands were scarred and wrinkled, prematurely aged by his profession. He wasn't a desk worker, she was certain of it. And thirty wasn't that old. "I thought that we would try my jutsu again today."
She would have winced if her muscles weren't already wound tight, strings ready to snap with tension.
'That was exactly what I didn't want to do.'
Who would want a near-stranger in their head? She'd heard his spiel about his family jutsu, and the thought of it made her queasy. It was unnatural. If she had possessed even the slightest bit of hope that it would work, she would hiss and try to protect her head with her arms.
That hadn't helped last time. Only the secret ninja art of 'stress vomiting' had saved her when he had first attempted his jutsu to roll around inside the open wounds of her mind.
'I might be able to put him off and distract him if I tell him about the recent dreams, if only because he could consider them worth investigating when he eventually goes into my head.'
Admittedly, the dreams she had been having lately were less tantalizing hints of lost memory than they were increasingly brutal scenarios of how Obito was going to try to kill her for quitting his boyband. No, that wasn't worth it long term. She needed to get it over with and not delay the inevitable. It was just like snipping sutures. She could do this.
The pep talk fell flat.
As much as she didn't want to risk eye contact, she was too high-strung to keep from watching when movement caught her eye across the coffee table.
"Try to relax, Uzumaki-san." He shifted forward, ageless blue eyes contrasting with weather-worn wrinkles on tanned skin.
It was unfair that he was so blasé about this.
She was probably just going to be ill again and all her worrying would have been for nothing.
'I'm aiming for his fancy hair this time,' Aiko thought with dark purpose. She made eye contact before he could order her to, holding onto pathetic shreds of pretense that she was a willing participant.
And then the office slipped away into darkness. Yamanaka-sensei wavered in front of her, a white chalk outline sketched into the unending confines of her mind.
That was about as far as he'd gotten last time, politely expelled by the shock of being dragged into her own consciousness disturbing her stomach. Unfortunately, the jolt was less jarring this time. She still hated the loss of physicality. It was uncannily similar to the confining quietness that Obito's kamui enforced.
Aiko looked down, raising her hands. They were just white lines as well. Feeling ill, she clenched one and slowly turned it, examining the changing visibility in what really appeared to be a two-dimensional version of herself. Her head swam, pinpricks of pain bursting behind her eyes. Everything was so wrong. She couldn't feel the weight of her body moving- there was no gravity.
"Do you need a moment to acclimate?"
The polite tones of Yamanaka-sensei's educated diction were somehow lower here, stretched out to vibrate slowly across what certainly wasn't air. There was no air here. She wasn't breathing. The realization made her inhale hastily, stubbornly reaching for oxygen where she knew there was none. Her lungs should be aching for it, but they were fine. She couldn't reply. She was too busy trying to breathe with no air.
"Please do not be troubled. Your disorientation is normal." There was no sound whatsoever when Yamanaka-sensei took a few steps away to give her space, giving an interested examination of the bleak void that surrounded them. It really didn't merit that. One patch of darkness looked like any other patch.
'Maybe he can see more than I can. This is his jutsu.'
She latched onto the thought, because if he got what he wanted maybe they could just go back to talking about the Akatsuki and the political situation in Fire Country and whatever stupidly banal shit he wanted to ask-
His hands were moving, but she couldn't tell what he was doing. It didn't seem like hand signs. It was difficult to concentrate, troubled as she was by the void pressing in on her.
And then she gasped, bending over to press her face into shaking thighs. Aiko dug her hands into the sides of her chair, relishing the sensation of fabric under the pads of her fingers. There was soft light again, and the poorly muffled conversation of someone out in the hallway.
"I think that's enough for today." His voice was back to normal, an unimpressive, perfectly standard arrangement of auditory stimulation.
What-
The clock on the wall claimed that twenty minutes had passed. Impossible.
That didn't reduce her need to get somewhere far, far away from that man and his awful ninjutsu. Aiko straightened and stood, noting that her feet were numb. Her stomach twisted, as did the room. The ugly tiled floor was moving towards her- only a calloused hand around her arm stopped her from ending up on her knees. Liquid splattered.
Ah. There was the vomit she had been waiting for. Glamorous.
"I'm sorry about that," Yamanaka-sensei said sincerely, pulling her back and settling into her chair again. He gifted a gentle pat to her left hand. Something fouly sour bubbled up in her throat again, but she had the presence of mind to swallow it this time. Her expression must have tipped him off, because he really did look sympathetic. "That jutsu was developed in usage against enemy nin. It isn't as gentle as one would hope. In addition, you appear to have a stronger reaction than most." He backed away, passing the nearby chair he had been in earlier now that there was no need for physical proximity.
That was the one thing she liked about him. He was good at giving her space. That didn't make him any less abhorrent. Aiko drew her knees up to her chest, not even realizing that she was dragging her dirty feet up onto the chair.
"I hope you will be reassured to know that we made significant progress today." She heard air move as the chair on the other side of the office compressed under his weight. "Your memories appear intact. I have attempted to reconnect the links between your conscious and subconscious, but only time will tell how effective this session was. There is a possibility that you will begin noticing the resurgence of information or outright memories connected to certain stimuli. On our next sessions…" he trailed off in thought. He was probably planning to do something like this to her again.
'Sadist. I hope he knows he's lost all chance at my friendship.' The scowl that twisted her face was downright ugly. But he couldn't see it when her nose was pressed between her knees. 'If I could get away with it…'
Aiko drifted off into violent fantasies for a moment, but pulled herself out with a shake. She would never get away with revenging herself on her doctor. Shizune was the most intuitive person she'd ever known. Aiko pictured that quietly disappointed expression with big dark eyes watering in sorrow, and lost her resolve to murder. For the moment.
Pen scratched against paper. The door opened off to her right. Yamanaka-sensei's civil timbre rang out again.
"Ah, Hagomono-san. Would you grant me the kindness of fetching something to clean up that mess?"
There was a murmur, and then retreating footsteps.
There was no chance in hell that Aiko was going to politely offer assistance. She levered her legs over the side of her chair to avoid stepping in still-warm vomit, awkwardly sliding off the chair. Her stomach jolted again, but her teeth remained firmly pressed together and nothing slid up her throat. Aiko pushed out her right hand to rest against the wall and used it as support. She took a step- yes, she was recovered enough to walk.
Her spine prickled. She didn't have to turn to know that Yamanaka-sensei was watching her ungraceful retreat. It was unforgivably impolite to depart without at least bidding him goodbye. No matter how she felt about him, he was her elder and a scholar. She opened her mouth to give him his due and breathed out a stink that could be classified as a gaseous weapon.
Nope. Aiko didn't give him a backwards look, much less verbal regard. By the time she had stumbled out of his office and onto the street, her balance had mostly returned. The morning market was still going strong- it wasn't even nine am yet.
'If I asked, Yamato would probably agree to cancel training today. He is an excruciatingly reasonable person.'
She gave it very serious consideration, pinching her nose closed with her fingers as she walked to avoid sensory overstimulation from hundreds of samples of body odor, mixes of soaps and perfumes, and fresh foods. The seafood's persistent notes turned her stomach regardless.
No. Asking for a day off felt too much like displaying weakness. She couldn't afford that. Even Obito hadn't given her slack in training, and he'd- Aiko shook her head, brushing off that infantile, lingering delusion that he had wanted to coddle her. She didn't want to think about him now.
'At least the jackass let me off early. I have an hour to rest. I should be in fighting condition by the time Yamato shows up.'
It didn't take long for her to regret that decision.
"Again."
Aiko clenched her teeth and exhaled slowly, testing her muscles for a moment by opening and closing her hand. She'd jarred it when flipping over unexpectedly lumpy mokuton in their first spar of the day, scraping her knuckles and breaking a nail down to a painful, ugly little stub. She glanced down- still bleeding a bit. Luckily, there shouldn't be any more acrobatic failures for the day. She wasn't supposed to move her body in their current exercise- just the chain. That was a pity and a blessing.
'These stupid chakra chains… I need to master them. They're the only thing I have a chance of using against Obito.'
He'd taught her everything else she knew, after all. Chakra chains were her only chance of surprising him. Obito would come for her eventually. When he did- well. He would probably kill her for betraying him, moment of weakness aside. But if she had any say about it, she'd take him down with her, or at least give him an ass-kicking to remember her by.
Their next jutsu clash was a moderate success on Aiko's part, but-
"What was that?" Yamato shook his head. "This time, I want you to stop it much earlier."
Luckily, chakra chains were all Yamato ever seemed to want to work with her on, for whatever reason.
She couldn't help but snort at that thought. Whatever reason indeed. 'It's certainly not that I'm pretending not to know any other ninjutsu.'
Feeling decidedly lackluster, she tried to ignore the knotting pain and stiffness in her back and shoulders. Her right shoulder twitched forward when she directed a chain into movement, slicing through Yamato's jutsu and looping to block the wood chip shrapnel that flew her way.
And- missed? She blinked dumbly, lowering the arm that had shot up to protect her face. Most of the shrapnel bounced off to the grass. But there was a small cluster of splinters sticking out of the meaty part of her forearm, bits of wood clinging gently to her shirt and settling disagreeably into her bra.
'I suck so hard.'
She blinked back tears- not from emotion, but from the pressure behind her eyes. Fucking Rinnegan. Even when they weren't activated, they were bothering her. She hadn't used them since she woke up in Konoha. Was that good for her health? Or worse?
'It's so painfully stupid to sit around in the medical capital of the world and not even try to investigate what damage my implants could do to me. If I told them what Obito did to me, they would look into it. Sexy kage does seem to want me to trust her.'
Because that wasn't fucking suspicious at all. Yeah, she was apparently of some small amount of political importance, having been produced with authentic Hokage genetics. That didn't merit this kind of leniency. Unless Konoha really was managed by optimistic, forgiving loons…?
An unnatural light bled through the clearing, illuminating Yamato's strong features in that stupid way she hated. "Pay attention!" He clapped his hands, summoning a little green wisp that turned into a twisting vine within the space of a heartbeat. "You did much better yesterday. Are you sure you don't want to call it a day?" Her training partner frowned, the lines of his face etched into disapproval. "Blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah."
His mouth just kept moving. Aiko tuned out the last part, caught up in guilt for being unable to work past the effects of Yamanaka-baka's jutsu. No matter. It had probably just been more boring scolding.
"Blah blah blah!" Yamato put a hand on his hip, waving the other. "Blah blah, blah blah…"
The only thing was… hell. He was right- she hadn't been focusing, and the world was still lilting disobediently in the way it had been since she'd left Yamanaka-baka.
Wood loomed, growing like a virulent fungus out of a seed she hadn't noticed in the grass. It snapped up, remaining lightweight and flexible in similar dimensions as her chakra chains.
It didn't take long to survey her options. She wasn't ready to block the incoming attack and she wasn't allowed to dodge for the purposes of this exercise. Aiko winced but remained obediently planted, lashing out her single chakra chain. She fully expected it to deflect only the worst of the incoming attack. It wouldn't be the first time that Yamato had whapped her solidly with mokuton. She went home black and blue most days.
But Yamato took pity on her at the last millisecond, slowing his attack trajectory. Her chain managed to turn the vine away, twisting with it into what almost appeared to be a homely plait. He cut his connection to the mokuton and dropped the vine while she was still struggling to unwind her chain and shook his head. "Let's take a break for a few minutes."
Aiko flushed, humiliated that she must seem so pathetic today that he felt like pulling his punches. She didn't like losing.
'I could take him, if I abandoned the pretense of lacking jutsu. He's skilled, but he's a one-trick wonder. Fire, I think, would do well against the Mokuton.'
Of course, that might also have the bummer side effect of burning him alive. Obito had been fond of Katon, but they were the most dangerous jutsu to experiment with in terms of friendly fire. She was almost too petty to care about the very real possibility of what would happen if he failed to dodge.
'On the other hand, he's pretty cute. And he usually pays for lunch.'
Yamato seemed like a genuinely good person when he wasn't mercilessly running her into the ground. It wouldn't be very nice to murder him because she was a sore loser. She assumed. Aiko didn't claim to be a philosopher.
"Ready to go again?" He gave her one of those dopily bland smiles, exposing precisely the right amount of white teeth to thaw her temper.
'Fuck it all. He's adorable. I hate him and he's adorable.'
Aiko heaved a sigh and let him block and deflect her chakra chains with practiced skill. There was no doubt left in her mind that he had trained against her chakra chains before and was familiar with their weaknesses and strengths as weapons. He was an excellent sparring partner for her aim of hasty improvement. No matter her speed, he always seemed to know how to turn and twist at the last instant to dominate their spars.
'Not that he would stand a chance if I used the ninjutsu Obito taught me,' she thought sullenly. But she couldn't. It was too risky. She was in a far too tenuous situation to play up to her inexplicable need to impress him.
Well. Perhaps it wasn't completely inexplicable. He was the only person she'd had an outright flashback of while with Obito. She could still remember the shocking whisper of familiarity when Obito had first used Mokuton on her. That was familiarity that she had probably acquired in spars much like this one. They must have been companions of some sort to spend that much time training together. Maybe even more. Teammates? Lovers?
Clearly, she'd seen something in him at some point.
"Aiko! Pay attention!"
Whatever that mysterious appeal was, it wasn't his bossy-ass nature when working out. She scowled. He was skilled, attractive, and intelligent. But at the moment everything in her being was screaming at her to go kick him in the shins. Fuck the chains for today, she didn't have the focus anyway. She screwed up her muscles and bolted across the clearing, ditching her bloodline ability altogether for pure speed.
Aiko didn't bother to tell him that their match had suddenly become taijutsu. He'd figure it out.
On reflex, Yamato side-stepped when she was only four steps into her ten step sprint and brought his arms up defensively to block the high kick or punch he was expecting her to aim. She didn't. She didn't even slow.
There was the briefest moment in which Yamato's professionalism shuttered over into 'what the actual fuck'. He must have expected her to stop playing around; take a taijutsu stance. She instead dropped a shoulder at the last millisecond and body-slammed him, using momentum and enthusiasm to make up for the body mass she did not have.
Yamato had been in a perfectly stable athletic stance, after all. Kicking him in the shins wouldn't have done much.
Her shoulder dug into Yamato's diaphragm, winding him even as he wheeled backwards for the inevitable crash. Aiko was still registering the mild pain from her intentional collision when surprisingly bony hands gripped her waist and adjusted her momentum so that she was flung over his head instead of landing on him. His ass hit the forest floor- but his arms had flashed through the counter-move without his apparent consent, if his mildly surprised expression was any indication.
She did not have the ANBU-trained reflexes to recover from being thrown head-first parallel to the ground in any graceful way.
'Wow, the ground is close.'
She flung her palms out and attempted to recover with a flip, but couldn't shift the momentum Yamato had so kindly leant her in time. Instead she plowed into the dirt, somewhat protected by her elbows and knees. She rolled immediately and popped to her feet, because Yamato was already right there, ready to sweep her legs out from under her with a low kick. Aiko barely side-stepped it.
In the back of her mind, the thought tried to dawn that perhaps Yamato had been attempting to encourage this kind of aggression from her. He didn't seem like a naturally infuriating person. Aiko pushed it down in favor of grunting with effort to throw the hardest punch she could at the doubtlessly now-sore part of his torso she had already targeted.
Yamato caught the fist instead of deflecting it, which was really just needless showing off his strength. But he did use two hands to do it which left him open, so-
He let her hand go a moment later when she attempted to take advantage of his preoccupation to get in a good groin kick, big brown eyes widening in alarm. He moved enough that she only ended up kneeing his upper thigh and then had to hop back on one leg to avoid the next blow.
She grinned up at him.
'He probably did not expect me to fight like a barroom brawler'.
To be fair, it wasn't her strength or even a good idea against a serious opponent. It was just enjoyable.
That unorthodox tactic had somewhat worked, but lost novelty. Her mind whirred- she needed a new strategy now to counter his advantages and experience. He had superior reach- that could be ameliorated with a weapon, but they were fighting bare hand. He had superior strength- if she had any sense, she would use that against him and not let him get a good grip on her. She was slippery when she put her mind to it. Slippery, what would help with-
Ah. The lake.
She took off instead of moving in to attack again, knowing that her sparring partner would be hot on her heels.
Aiko slunk back to the apartment three hours later, sore and filthy from the taijutsu spar that she may or may not have turned into mud wrestling and then lost at.
"What was I thinking?" She groaned. When she rolled it, her neck crack-crack-cracked, but brought little relief. She padded into the room that had become hers and gingerly tugged down her green houserobe. For just a moment, she stood indecisive. Was it worth the ten seconds that it would take to find a bra, panties, and socks?
No, she decided, and sequestered herself in the bathroom to scrub away the pain. It didn't work, but it didn't not work either.
At least she was clean and nice-smelling when the hot water ran out. Aiko dragged her limp body reluctantly out of the steamy bathroom in search of a way to kill time before dinner. It was only about fifteen minutes after she had gotten settled on the balcony that she heard the front door open and close, indicating that Shizune was home.
"Hard day?"
Shizune settled into seiza on her balcony, cupping hot tea in her palms. She wavered slightly out of visibility behind the steam slowly drifting up into her face. It made her look made her look ethereal and wise when by rights she really should have just looked sweaty and a little sticky.
Aiko felt tension rising in her shoulders, stiffening beyond her control and trying not to breathe in the fragrance of shiroi tea.
Shizune knew damn well that Aiko had had a hard day. She'd probably known that Yamanaka-baka was going to try that jutsu today.
She looked away and pretended to be completely immersed in the very complicated task of shaping her nails. They were almost finished, trimmed and filed short with blunted edges that hopefully didn't look too ridiculous next to the broken nail on her right index finger. Having nice nails wouldn't do anything for her pounding headache or muscle soreness, but it wasn't like she had much else to do.
Wordlessly, Shizune leaned over and nudged the small bucket of her own accessories that Aiko had pilfered from the bathroom. She tapped the top of a light blue polish. Aiko glanced over, noting the slightest bit of glitter twinkling in its depths.
It was rather nice, if more subtle than she tended to aim for.
She took the recommendation, extracting the paint and setting it by her ankles. For the next few moments she waited for a reaction or comment, but Shizune seemed disinclined to comment on her reasoning. After about a minute, the older woman let out a soft sigh that tickled at Aiko's ears.
'I could ask her for help figuring out what's wrong with me. If I actually told a medical professional about my symptoms, I could get better. Shizune is slightly terrifying, but she gets shit done. And she does seem-'
She cut herself off there, before she could sink back into the comforting stupidity of trusting kind words and shows of concern. Obito had seemed just as concerned for Aiko's welfare once.
'And I still don't have any evidence to convince them that Obito is who we're dealing with instead of Madara. The library didn't pan out, but there has to be another source of information that could help. Some resource- just something. Anything.'
"Michiru is coming along nicely." Shizune's voice was mild and inoffensive. "I predict that she'll complete her masterwork project within the year."
"Oh?" Aiko unscrewed the base coat bottle and pulled the cold brush over her nails, not really seeing the glint of fading sunlight on the gloss. She couldn't tune out the sharp smell of the polish, giving three sneezes in quick succession. It burned, re-starting the watering of her tear ducts. Ugh. How was it that even when she was leaking water, her eyes felt dry and hot?
Shizune gave her a sideways glance that betrayed sudden comprehension about Aiko's decision to take her nail care session to the open air. Aiko sneezed again, eyes watering.
"Would you like me to-" The older woman gestured politely at the bottle.
She was tempted to say no. But the watering of her eyes was making it difficult to neatly apply the clear paint, so she handed over the polish. Aiko probably looked feline when she stretched, pushing her palms over the balcony's floor to Shizune, but the slight scrape of soft wood felt interesting on her skin. She would much rather focus on that than the cramps in her shins, because ow.
A tenseness that she hadn't registered in Shizune relaxed at the admittedly small concession. The older woman smiled, bright and sunny. "So, as I was saying. I fully anticipate that our toxicology department will be expanded in the coming years. Goodness, we have some talent in the hospital. Karin-san, for example, has been working on a charming project with neurotoxic venom that consumes living tissue…"
Aiko closed her eyes, letting familiar workplace babble wash over her while Shizune painted her nails with quick, sure swipes. As the base coat dried, Shizune gave a slight tug on Aiko's left ankle. A pedicure? That hadn't been in the plan… But. She let the medic take her foot and shape the nails while her hands dried.
"Aiko-san, I don't believe you've heard a word I just said." Amusement lilted Shizune's voice a pitch higher than usual.
Her lips curled up lazily. "Necrosis," Aiko parroted without opening her eyes to see the exasperation that her technically correct answer should prompt.
Shizune hummed, low and noncommittal. "That was literally the last word I said, yes. Did you hear any of the ones that came before?" She heaved a sigh and poked at Aiko's foot with a finger. "You're exactly as bad as Tsunade-sama. Everything goes in one ear and out the other if you don't want to hear it."
Cheeky, Aiko half-sung, "Aa." She rolled out of the way and popped up to her feet before Shizune could bop her nose in retaliation, leaving the older woman blinking at the air and holding two fingers aloft.
"E-eh?" She scrunched up her nose and blew air out the side of her mouth, sending her silky bangs fluttering. "Aiko-san…"
'Agh, she's adorable.' Aiko interlaced her fingers and stretched her arms out in front of her body, twisting to open her torso towards Shizune cutely. "Ye-es?" She tilted her head to the side, lips slightly parted.
"You can paint your own nails," Shizune said sharply, brushing off the front of her kimono with her free hand. The nail polish bottle hit wood with a clatter, rolling to clink gently against the railing. She gave an imperious head toss, lifting her chin up high as if to show off her elegant neck. Then Shizune sailed into the apartment, away from the heathen who didn't properly appreciate scintillating accounts of biological weapons research.
'Being cute had worked much better against Obito.'
Aiko grinned openly, now that there was no one to see. "Don't you love me?" Aiko called, raising her voice to be heard through the door. She heard the faintest, 'hmmph!' in response, and then the sound of the tea kettle being set on.
Still, there was something she should do. She padded into the apartment, pulling the door shut behind her. "Shizune?"
"Hmm?" The medic didn't look up, absorbed in measuring out some kind of spice.
Aiko leaned her back against the table and pressed her lips together to wait for Shizune's attention. She'd noted before that Shizune wasn't entirely capable of holding conversation when her mind was somewhere else. She'd hear things, but not respond until she'd finished her current task.
After a few moments, Shizune's eyebrows creased slightly. "Oh, I'm sorry Aiko-san. What were you saying?"
"I was wondering when Sexy-Kage wanted me to work on that Konan thing." Aiko shrugged, despite the fact that no one was looking at her. "She mentioned it was important that I be able to give the testimony Konoha needs to get Konan off the charges. Should I be reading the report I originally wrote about my time with the Akatsuki, or…?" She trailed off, not certain about what else she could possibly do to prepare for this trial. How could she possibly fool anyone who had known her before?
She was starting to feel niggling worry that Konoha had decided she wasn't worth the investment after all. That was ridiculous. They wouldn't be training her if they were about to discard her. Would they?
Shizune smiled up at her. The table digging into her back felt just that little bit colder.
"That's a good idea, Aiko-san. Tell you what, I'll see what Tsunade-sama would like for you to start with tomorrow."