Chapter Text
[numbers are the age]
*
. 10 .
*
Inoichi hears someone read aloud, “ There is enough treachery, hatred, violence, absurdity in the average human being to supply any given army on any given day ”, and turns from trimming a rose petal. As the doorbell dings closed, Nara Shikaku lowers the journal that belonged to his son so he could arch an impressed eyebrow.
It was a journal Masaki had fretted about loosing yesterday. Panic-stricken. The book responsible for his son turning their lovely house upside down and inside out. A book his son was incessantly private about - poems and stories that have sent Inoichi’s emotions into a turmoil when he had once or twice glanced.
One of them being this poem.
“Genius of the Crowd,” Shikaku snaps the journal shut and places it on the counter. “Masaki-kun’s poems gave me nightmares.”
“You shouldn’t read a kid’s journal, Shikaku,” Inoichi takes the leather-bound book and tucks it beneath the counter.
Gaze severe, Shikaku says the one thing that has bothered Inoichi since the day he broke his son’s trust and read a journal.
One of many.
One of so many .
“There are a lot of poems like this.”
‘Like this’ , Inoichi thinks humorlessly. Does Shikaku mean how his son’s poems tackle the cruelty of governments, the multitude of lives lost because of them, or the constant death and murder shinobi face for reasons they no longer know?
Or how his son seems to write poems to comfort himself in the world not meant for children?
How these poems have made Inoichi loose sleep and faith.
“I know,” Inoichi sighs, flicking a chakra string to twist the ‘open’ sign to ‘closed’. Without anything needing to be said, they both traverse to the back door and into an office. “Tea?”
“Please.”
*
. 5 .
*
“Excuse me,” calls a soft voice. Kakashi peers over his shoulder, eye drooping down to the three foot Yamanaka heir. Stubby arm extending him a pink rose.
Kakashi peers around the florist shop before pointing at himself.
The blonde kid nods. Baby-fat cheeks pressing tense. “Yes. You’ve got an infestation of wrackspurts near your ears. Here,” he waves the pink rose under Kakashi’s nose, “this will help you think happy thoughts.”
Kakashi has heard rumors about the Yamanaka heir being peculiar. Known for their disillusioned beliefs of monsters, conspiracy theories and eerie insights into people’s emotions. Some believed him to be chakra sensitive.
The kid was also known for handing out flowers without his parent’s permission.
Inoichi was worried he was going to go bankrupt.
“Ah,” Kakashi takes the rose anyway. “Thank you, Yamanaka-kun.”
“I can make you an accessory to help with the nargles,” Masaki stares somewhere over his shoulder, Kakashi’s neck begins to itch. “Lotus root I find, is a helpful repellant,” in gesture the child points to where they’ve braided slices of the vegetable into their hair. “I haven’t lost a sandal in two weeks.”
“Ah…” he says, “That’s very kind of you.”
“Ano…” the child’s eyes narrow.
“Kid, where are your parents?”
“I opened the shop myself,” mutters the child. Oh man. “Your nasty thoughts aren’t going away.”
“Oh, aren’t they?” Kakashi swipes around his head, “There. All gone. See?”
“Still there.”
“Ah…” he is taken to a bouquet of display flowers.
“You’ll have to pay for these.”
The Yamanaka is a little swindler in the making.
“Ne~ how much?”
*
. 5 .
*
“Masaki,” Inoichi pauses in the bedroom doorway, worriedly examining the state of his son’s room. “Is this kaa-san’s vegetable plantation?”
“No,” Masaki says. Casual as a child in a sand pit, he tips a bucket of earth on middle of his room. Patting the flowers he was subduing. Masaki meets his look with one of stern concentration. “This is kaa-san’s flower garden. My cupboard has the vegetables.”
“I see. That’s very creative of you, Masaki,” Inoichi smiles, not letting it show how much his heart was shattering all over again. He tip-toes over the patches of grass that looked to have been roughly dug out by his child’s hands, and kneels where his dirty son was organizing this morning’s finding. Blond braids pulls back into a messy bun. It was an unorthodox hairstyle, and so very much like Masaki.
After a second’s breath, controlling his trembling hands and tear-prinkling eyes, he rubs his hands over Masaki’s hair. Fingers tickling the back of his ears and delighting at the surprised giggle he gets.
“The nargles snuck in last night and stole my shoes,” Masaki tells him after giving Inoichi a searching look. Those pastel eyes trail around him in a motion Inoichi is familiar with. His son was tracking hallucinations. Ones that have been with him since childbirth.
Inoichi wonders what God he offended for them to curse his son.
“Why are you sad? Wrackspurts are bothering you again.”
“I’m sad, am I?” Inoichi doesn’t allow his smile to lessen. His child doesn’t deserve his sadness, no matter how much he seemed to sense it. No. He will be the positive light in Masaki’s life. The safe haven from judgment he will soon get. “Do you remember the cousin we saw yesterday?”
Masaki’s nose wrinkles cutely. “Gulping Plimpy’s kept on making him sneeze.”
“Yes,” Inoichi swallows whatever sound he was about to make. Get it together man, he shouts at himself. Your son needs you! “He…he’s diagnosed you with schizophrenia, little one.”
“...Funny man,” Masaki turns back to his pile of earth and displaced flowers. Inoichi knows Masaki doesn’t understand. Despite his mature speech and impeccable chakra control, Masaki was still a child.
A child with a mental illness that makes him unqualified to inherit the Yamanaka Clan, neither capable of becoming a shinobi. His child will suffer ridicule for the rest of his life, called ‘broken’ and ‘useless’ by the Yamanaka elders. Already without the knowledge that his son had schizophrenia, they disliked his whimsical attitude and the hatred of taking a life.
His son’s purity wasn’t made for this hateful world.
“I’m sorry,” Inoichi bows his head and doesn’t block the head flick.
“Here,” Masaki grips the roses tucked under earth and shoves them in Inoichi’s pockets. “Wrackspurts are flying towards you. It’s annoying.”
This time Inoichi can’t muffle his choked laugh.
*
. 5 .
*
Luna Lovegood knew people.
Yamanaka Masaki knew shinobi.
“Take it back!” Sasuke, the little Uchiha boy who had just punched Masaki’s nose crooked, shrieks as loud as his voice would allow. “You’re just a weird loser, what would you know of Onii-san! He’s the best shinobi ever! He would never hurt -!”
“Don’t - don’t hurt Masaki-kun,” Chouji waddles between the two children as parents swirl into the misbehaving fight.
Masaki lies flat on his back, looking up at the lantern lit sky. Festival music and crowds circle them, chattering and gossiping - and Masaki can’t remember the last time he broke his nose. Was it during the war?
Vividly, he recalls the scenes of children fighting for their lives and dying too early. Presence screaming before getting swallowed by the earth. Recalling the life of a girl who knew too much and couldn’t find words like she couldn’t find shoes.
“Masaki!” his new father helps him up and kneels before him. Fretful. Masaki see’s, for a split moment, his old father in the blonde hair and worried grin. “Goodness, Sasuke-kun got you good.”
“Onii-chan! He was rude!” Sasuke shrieks. Held up by the older brother. Masaki’s eyes fly past the Wrackspurts lingering on his father’s shoulders, whispering agonizing words in his ears, to the long haired boy and his stern-faced parents.
“He doesn’t want to be a shinobi,” Masaki tells his father. The man picks him up. Eyebrows pinched, lilac eyes gazing into him as though he should be an open book. Not snapped shut and bolted. “There’s a bluebird in his heart that wants to get out.”
“A bluebird?”
“Metaphor,” Masaki flicks a Wrackspurt away from his own head. Glowering at it.
*
. 6 .
*
“Ne, shinobi-san.”
Kakashi feels a tug on his sleeve and looks down to meet lilac-coloured eyes.
He blinks.
“What the - !” Genma chokes at his side and wraps himself up in his towel. Were Genma a lesser man, he would have swallowed his senbon in shock. Unfortunately the man was made of sturdier shit. “How did a kid get down here?!”
“Yamanaka-chan,” Kakashi greets. Silent and distressed at the child’s ability to single him out in his ANBU gear. “You can’t be here, this is the ANBU locker-room.”
“I followed the Plimpsy’s,” Masaki explains, pointing to the end of the room where Hayate stood. Tense as though the child were about to start spitting fireballs. Odd man. The kid wasn’t an Uchiha. “They’re hurting him.”
Kakashi hums, head cocked and realizing rumours of the child’s recent mental diagnosis must be true.
“Is Inoichi-sama here?”
Masaki grins. Face soft and peaceful, “Otou-san is fine.”
“I see,” Kakashi smirks to himself. Filing away the kid’s audacity for future reference. “I’ll escort you back to his office.”
“Just a moment,” Masaki turns and approaches Hayate. Kakashi’s eyebrows arch, seeing none of his comrades attempt to stop the little troublemaker.
Cowards.
Hayate’s only sign of discomfort were the tensing in his shoulders, clearly fighting fitful coughs.
“Here.”
ANBU openly stare at the offering of beetroot. Plucked out from the child’s haori sleeve.
Hayate takes the beetroot’s stalk between two fingers, raising it to eye-level inspection.
“Thank you,” Hayate wheezes.
Masaki’s grin is startling. Innocent and otherworldly in the ANBU locker room.
*
. 8 .
*
Konoha’s weather, Masaki found, was lovely. Scotland is cold, bitingly so. He leans against a tree bordering the Nara forest and glances up from his journal to the blue sky. Green leaves glow under the sun.
Avada green.
“Hey, what do you write in there?” Shikamaru peeks under his arm, roused, sprawled at Masaki’s feet.
“Muggle poems,” says Masaki, peaceful as he writes, rewrites and transcribes verses echoing in his mind.
Luna remembers feeling her father’s magic disappear like the color in her eyes. Ears ringing at the cascade of screams dying under curses. The halls she had skipped down to classes and new friends, now filled with children’s bodies.
Hogwarts on fire.
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear;
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
Here, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star
“It’s beautiful,” Shikamaru turns on his side, facing Masaki.
“Oh, did I say it aloud?” Luna, Masaki - they blur. Lilac eyes meeting a comforting doe brown.
“Yeah,” Shikamaru lies back, covering his face from the sun. “I wish you would share what you write more often.”
“Otou-san reads them. He thinks I don’t know but I can feel the guilt.”
“You feel a lot, don’t you?”
Masaki hums.
“...How’s Ino-chan?”
Masaki’s pencil stops, old guilt sparking a new light. “She’s going to die.”
“Eh?” Shikamaru’s head snaps. Expression and thoughts a tidal wave, crashing against Masaki’s mental shields and threatening to flood them. “You can feel that? Of course you do - We, we’ve got to warn them -”
“They won’t believe us,” Masaki knows, understanding the anguish of Shikamaru’s sudden realization. Mouth twisting, young face creasing in exhaustion. “They never do.”
“But…your onee-chan…”
“I’ll see her again,” Masaki says, conviction unsettling his friend.
*
. 14 .
*
Masaki is able to ignore the man until he can’t.
“Sasuke-kun tells me you’re a seer,” Orochimaru, a tragic incarnation of a Dark Lord who trampled the earth and terrorized Luna’s life - tips his head up to meet those putrid yellow eyes. Masaki wants to bite the finger holding his chin.
He tries.
And gets slapped by his underling for the effort.
“Oi,” Sasuke growls, catching the arm of the gray-haired shinobi Masaki used to run into on days he got hospitalized.
Days where mental shields weren’t enough to stop the voices of traumatized shinobi slip through like spilt ink.
“He’s defenceless,” Sasuke says. Pitying.
His friends always pitied him.
“Seer,” Masaki wonders, cheek stinging. His braids had come loose during the scuffle. They dripped over his eyes, hiding the confusion. “What makes you say…”
“You knew Itachi was going to kill my family.”
“Did he now?” Orochimaru’s voice slithers in. “I’ve heard of Yamanaka elders being able to sense what’s on the forefront of people’s minds, yet never has it been proven. Tell me Masaki-kun, can you sense what I’m thinking?”
Masaki shivers.