Sweet pickles

It comes back to him at times when he is by Shino's crib. Watching the delicate rise and fall of his son's chest. Sometimes it would falter and Shibi's mind would wonder. Building up long staircases with dark bottoms and a small casket.

But then Shino would breath again. Scrunching up his nose and flop his arms around before settling.

Shibi found it was easier to work when he could see Shino. Easier when his boy wasn't aware of anything but what was in front of him. To Shino, he was only a father.

Instead of a drunk man believing that being neutral was the same as being good.

He had been functional, even drunk, competent enough in battle no one cared to ask afterward. Not like he would have listened to warnings. His brother had tried, and now the man was in the ground.

Shibi had tried his best to make the grave stone like his brother wanted. Rounded age, buried deep enough one might mistake it for a stone.

The ache comes back again at the thought. A mix matching of anger pointed towards his brother and the twenty fresh graves that lay with the man.

The feeling curled always forcing Shibi’s own mind to wonder towards another topic.

It would take him more than a few mere months to save himself.

Years, decades more he thinks. He would never go back to who he had once had been. He makes to grab his pen again when Shino settles.

The scrolls across the small desk were tucked tightly against one another. Four already signed and closed to his right. Ten more left unattended.

He used to be a drunkard, he starts again in his head as he opens up a new scroll.

He will remind himself twenty more times tonight.

Even more in the morning until his mind could settle without wanting to move on from it.

He reads over the scroll carefully, The Kamizuru battle, Nearly all of the opposing clan wiped out, save for the young children and elders that were no doubt left behind.

A report was needed, an accurate account of events. One they could store in clan history. One that would last against prying eyes.

There had been only one survivor who could recount details.

Shibi sets the scroll down. Keeping it open with weights before he writes. He remembers being there, he may not ever forget. His own actions were easy to hold.

Who else who had been there was a diffrent story. His own had died and yet he would need to reread the list of the dead to remember exactly who.

How disgusting of him, Shibi thinks. He had been drinking then too.

Coming home after a mission gone awary. He had been fine.

Somehow he was always fine. His teammates bore more injuries than he could amount in three missions.

He hadn’t meant to stray, he had been clean for two months. Keeping away from alcohol, remaining present.

That’s what he had wanted to keep doing. The shop had been new. Just on the way towards the Aburame compound.

A quant little place that had done nothing wrong except exist. When Shibi’s own resolve was turning as shaky as his hands.

One moment he had been walking inside, opening a bottle the next..the next he was staring down at his brother's cooling body.

The area was much the same. Bodies of people he didn't recognize cooling. Wounds gooey and fresh with guts spilled across dirt.

Fear he finds was harder to grasp, anger was easier. The blood on his hands meant little in the face of hatred. Harder to know if it was for himself or the bodies that littered the ground.

Sympathy was felt more for the ruined moss then the dead.

His mind occupied on more important things, instead of the blood on on his gourd.

[] and shino, were here somewhere in the decrepit mess of the forest.

He had searched carefully. Starting from where he was and sending his bugs onward. Bending to flip over bodies, touching stiffening skin and seeing marbled eyes.

Still tipsy even as he did it. Mixing with a rush of adrenaline as time stretched on. He had found them on accident.

His beetles had circled three times. Distressed, their own buzzing heating their bodies when they came back empty handed.

Then he had heard it, Shino’s fussing echoing between the trees.

An indeguent noise that sounded fed up. Leading to a tucked away river on a hidden path.

[] had been fond of the spot. The upkeep had been entirely her own work. Putting dirt along the rode. Planting flowers just where the path opened towards a river.

His bugs had never been fond of the place.

Nepeta Cataria, small little flowers some mistook for daisies. Poison for some beetles, and it seemed some bees too. Their bodies littered around the flower stalks.

"[]"

"No"

[] had stopped him from coming into the river where she had settled. The water had been up to her waist even as she sat.

She held Shino just above the stream. He had seemed more annoyed by the plants than the water just below him.

The water for once wasn't clear, mixing with the hazel of [] bloodied side. Taking it beyond the village.

Maybe that was why the Nepta were leaning. The weight of iron in []’s blood dripping onto their petals.

"We have to go" he had tried, eyeing the blood seeping onto the ground.

Trying to ignore a sudden bought of nausea.

She was wearing her prayer clothes. A yellow dress that hung loose, she would've never worn it if she had known what going to happen. Her jewelry hardly hardly ever seeing outside walls.

If he ignored the smell of the forest enough, he could almost pretend she was a siren. One simply at rest, hair covering her eyes as she watched the stream.

She hadnt answerd at first, stretching just enough for him to grab Shino. Except then he had reached out pulling them both from the water. Hands careful, holding underneath her ornaments.

Hard, trying to avoid the water too but he had managed. Her hand wrapped around his forearm as he tried to make his brain clear. The sounds of kunai getting close enough to make his ears twitch.

"What"

[] pressed cold fingers into his arm as she spoke. As if trying to decide to cling or push away.

"What did you do?"

Withdrawal, he had told himself was a particular beast.

One he could pretend [] was referring too and not the blood drenched stench on his skin.

Though he knew the truth, in the way one knows there is no stopping a storm. She knew too even after he showed her the bottle instead. She had stared at him, mouth turning down as her head no doubt started to swim.

What a picture they must've made. Her eyes bare and full of questions. While his were hidden beneath the tint of his sunglasses.

While his own He had seen the realization set in her eyes. Quick enough he his kunai was already in hand before she moved.

Her blade clattered to the ground, sound unheard as Shibi lifted her without warning. Waiting long enough her hold on Shino tightened more than the need to try again.

“No! No Shibi!”

The blood on his hands soaked the blue of her dress. He had felt like shame itself, ruining her clothes. The stitching turning damp and heavy as it bled towards her wound.

Now he writes another sentence, filling in spaces of what he doesn't wish to say. He could lie to himself again. Maybe say he had been too drunk to know the choices he made.

But he had, as soon as he had seen his brother he had known the choice that had been made. He had thought of every step he took to end up reunited with them. He can not say he regrets what he had done.

Plants, he found even the most browned ones could be nursed back to health. With time, care, and a snip of body part. Maybe the same sickness in the clan needed the same treatment.

He wrote until it was just this to summarize if one onky took glances. "On Monday, Aug 12th, the Kamizuru clan attempted to stage an attack on the leaf. Intercepted by the now deceased Ano Aburame, my grandfather. The attack lasted roughly 12 hours, ending in a retreat of the remaining Kamizuru ninja. "

He gets up setting the scroll outside the nursery door. Its warm, the sun at its highest peak.

-------------------

Not a spot of a rain cloud in the sky. His cousins, uncles and aunts and then some fill the new addition to the compounds graveyard.

Funeral garments perfectly clean with no creases. He dose the motions leads a prayer, adjusts the veins to connect the dead together through the afterlife. There is little less than nothing in his heart. a crude thought. For what rate could he mourn? For whom, for limp bodies attached to memory.

For those while in life gave him less respect than he gave them now. He had made a graveyard for them. Followed their last wishes written on parchment.

Yet still even know they ran across his mind, forcing him towards grief in their mockery of him. Why had he done so much.

To honor them? None of them were much honorable or righteous when casting him aside when they could not gain from him. He knows why,as he knows the taste of his own shame, what did his feelings matter in the face of tradition.

He was useful and had no choice but to continue to be. When it is over he goes away from the shade, where his wife’s grave sits alone.

The voices of the rest of the clan like distant wisp's. There are no lights or gifts, or flower petals for her. There is simply a grave with a name inched into stone. One that no matter how heard he tries he cant seem to read. '[]'.

She had been right it seemed, about trust. If they had never met, if he hadn’t agreed to guard her. If. If. If.

He should be mourning what had been lost and what might never be regained. Instead he is only filled with self-pity.

His own mind couldnt even make sence of her name anymore.

"You; are late"

He waits for chastisement, the sharp correction his mother would give used to distract his mind. Instead there is nothing.

Even though he can feel her standing just behind him. Its another few seconds before she speaks, "I will be earlier next time"

She takes a few steps to stand next to him looking down at the grave.

They say nothing letting the wind carry what might have been said away in the breeze.

"Come;" She bends placing a daisy over the top ov the grave "Shino has woken up, I have distracted him with picture making for the moment."

Yes, Shibi thinks walking along the stoned path back towards home. He used to be a drunkard, Shino would need more from him. The lies he told may be better a cushion for Shino to live in than the burden of the truth. There were more things to organize, Belongings, death dreads and home properties.

"Ah!"

Shibi opens the nursery, Shino waved his arms around. It seemed his son had given up on crayons in favor of Shbis ink.

Scrunching his eyebrows as he smooshed more ink onto a scroll.

Shibi’s only has one hope for his son, as he picks the boy up.

Smiling just a bit when the ink from Shino’s hands stains his coat.