[Log] "Anniversaries" [Rin & Asuka]
[Backdated a year and a bit, which is a coincedence since zuul and I started this log a year ago and *totally* forgot it existed until a few days ago!]
Rin could do lots of things. Stitch a button. Complete an S-Rank mission. Dance like he was born to do it. Be a top-flight trauma surgeon. Deal with little children who'd rather rip his eyes out than get their flu shot. Lots of things. But one thing he'd never managed to do was cook food for just one person. It just never happened, he always made way too much food and if it turned out he was having to eat on his own he found out he wasn't hungry and it was all to waste anyway.
Rin couldn't do lots of things too - and one of the things he couldn't do was waste things. So that was a good reason for him being at Asuka's door with a pretty substantial looking parcel of fresh gyouza and a small smile. He'd wanted to check on how she was doing just now, what with being back in ANBU and the fact that certain... anniversaries were setting in.
He knocked twice and rocked back on his heels, wondering if there was anything he could say.
The ninja in question was pretty much prepared for his arrival; he'd said he would come by, after all, and she'd heard him come up the small path - due to the fact that he wasn't trying to be sneaky, and she had the windows open to hear his passage. So when he knocked, she was there only a second to two later, having gotten up off the couch to answer the door before he'd even knocked.
"Evening," Asuka said, smiling slightly, and pulled the door open wider to allow him in. She hadn't been back from her mission for very long - maybe four hours, tops - but it was long enough to get cleaned up and throw her uniform into the washing machine (it was whirring away in the closet by the kitchen right then). Even so she was a bit sloppy even by her own standards, but hell, a baggy shirt and sweatpants was good enough for her after a long mission. It was her home, damnit, she could be dressed comfortably if she wanted. At least her hair was brushed and put back up in its usual ponytail after her shower.
"I've got beer and water," she said as he made his way inside, pushing the door closed behind him, "and some left-over rice if this needs to be stretched out." Though by the looks of what he was carrying, the rice probably wouldn't be needed.
"Hey, Asuka," he said, smile brightening as he saw her in the doorway. All in one piece. No, he wasn't paranoid.
"And ah, water is fine by me," Rin replied, following Asuka further into her home. It had been a very long time since he'd been here last and it looked a bit different to how he remembered.
"Hope you still like gyouza," he said, holding out the parcel for her. "I thought Korean style would be a good idea, I had the spices left over and... yeah," he trailed off slightly, head turning as he tried to remember where the kitchen was.
"How left-over is the left-over rice?" he asked her slightly suspiciously. Rin still was a doctor, and he was very wary of the kinds of bacterium that liked to live in rice if given the chance.
She hefted the package as it was given to her, lifting the lid of the old fashioned steamer a little to peek at the gyouza packed inside. "Ummm... couple days," she replied vaguely during the process. It was what she had been planning on eating when she got home, anyway, and it had smelled and looked fine to her when she'd checked earlier.
There weren't many doors behind which the kitchen could lie, at least; one door to the far left, past the couch and by the television that was never used (unless the kids brought over a movie) obviously led to a bedroom, and the other... well, there wasn't another, actually, just an entrance that displayed the wood floors and counters that indicated a kitchen. Asuka went ahead and led the way, settling the parcel down on the card table tucked away in the tiny space that served as a dining area. It was cramped, but clean, probably a testament to how little she actually used the kitchen.
It was very apparent to Rin that Asuka didn't use her kitchen very much, which he thought was kind of sad. He imagined so many homes all around Konoha with a kitchen that never got to be used. When he was growing up, and as often as he could make it afterwards, the kitchen was the hub of his home life. Food and conversation and friends and family... but a lot of his agemates never really got to experience that, or lost it too painfully to care to be reminded.
He sighed at himself and tried not to think like that too much; with a questioning glance at Asuka he paced to the fridge and pulled out the suspect rice she mentioned.
He peered at it, poked it with a chopstick he picked up off the counter, and then quickly sealed the box off before the rice could poke back.
"You probably shouldn't eat this, Asuka," he said, looking up at her with a mild look of alarm at the state of the rice. "In fact... I'm just going to make you some more."
He fished around for some pots and pans, as well as the uncooked rice he could see sitting in a bag on her shelf, and called from the cupboards: "So, how have you been doing, Asuka?"
She rolled her eyes as Rin all but declared her rice a health hazard and dove into her cabinets, at home as though it were his own kitchen, but couldn't help the smile that creeped up anyway. There weren't many words that described him better than 'cute,' but she would save his male pride and keep it to herself. He probably heard it enough anyway.
"Been okay since I last saw you," she replied, leaving the kitchen to retrieve the cigarette she'd left smoldering in an ashtray on the coffee table, lifting her voice slightly as she moved about the apartment. "Two missions so far, but mostly it's been training the rookies to make sure they're up to speed. I think they've relaxed the standards slightly to get more recruits, so me and some of the longer lived ANBU are beating them up to make up for it."
Returning to the kitchen, half-smoked cigarette dangling from her lips, she set the glass ashtray on the card table and pulled out a folding chair from where it was leaning against the wall in the corner. "Besides getting sick again, what about you?"
He had to shake his head a little and smile when Asuka mentioned what she was up to in ANBU. It sounded more or less exactly like what he'd have assumed would happen. Oh well, he'd gotten the hell beat out of him by the recruitment supervisor when he joined ANBU... but then, he had rather done something to deserve it. He was about to ask if any of Asuka's rookie victims students had done anything to deserve what she was doubtless putting them through (for curiosity's sake, honestly) when she asked what he'd been up to.
All the rice-cooking paraphenalia spread out in front of him, Rin glanced up at Asuka's question and gave her a slightly charinged look. "Uhm... well, after that whole passing-out-on-duty thing Yakushi-sensei said if I went back into the hospital again this week she'd put me in the morgue. And... not as an attendant, so I've been out of a job."
He turned on the stove-top and started preparing the rice, then leaned against the counter next to the stove and rubbed his arm as he tried to work out what else he'd done lately.
"Uhm, was out on a work night-out thing as well the other night. That's been about it, I'm afraid. Oh, get started on the gyouza while they're hot if you want."
Asuka pulled out two of the four chairs she had on hand - purchased, frankly, only because she needed someplace for her whole team to sit when they came over - before moving further into the kitchen. "Yakushi-sensei knows best," she replied, perhaps with a kind of mild acceptance, or perhaps more with a dry kind of sarcasm. The jounin had encountered the older woman enough times that she was avoided at all costs. Rin was a much better medic to have on hand, that was for sure.
Pulling a glass down out of one of the other head cabinets, she filled it with water and left it by the stove, near at hand for her volunteer cook, and then retrieved a beer for herself from the sadly sparse refridgerator. "It's good that you're getting out, though. And hopefully sleeping, for a change?" Talk about a workaholic. It was probably a good thing he'd never get a genin team. Imagine all the bad habits he'd pass along...
Rin nodded, kind of embarassed, at what Asuka said. She was right, it was just very weird for him to find other people concerning over him - even though it's what had been happening for months ever since he got back.
"Yeah... the sleeping thing is getting easier," he murmurred as an answer, because it was lately - now that he was back on those heavy sedatives.
He sighed and carefully stirred the rice up, eyeing it to make sure it couldn't burn before giving Asuka a sheepish look.
"But hey, at least if I'm stuck in the village just now you're not gonna have to come looking for me, when I get myself caught by god only knows who, ne?"
That particular statement made her pause in the midst of twisting off the bottle cap, glancing up to him with a slightly startled look. Talking about getting caught and her having to look for him seemed like an awfully touchy subject to her. A little too close to facts, maybe, or maybe she was just reading too deep into things. Or maybe it was a sign that things were getting better.
Or maybe.. she should just stop thinking. That was always a good idea, too.
Asuka quickly hid the expression and covered it with a wry smile, cracking open the beer and tossing the cap into the sink. "The worst that'll happen is you getting lost, I think. And Konoha isn't so big that you won't find your way back home eventually."
"True," Rin admitted, "All I'd have to do is look for the Hokage Monument and I'd know exactly where I am."
He took a sip of the water Asuka had brought out for him and then just pressed the cool glass to his forehead, letting it chase away the start of one of his too-frequent headaches. A slightly rueful look passed over his face.
"I have to admit though, when I first got out the hospital I spent about twenty minutes just staring at the monument. Didn't look like I remembered it, uhm... obviously."
It wasn't just the addition of Tsurude's face to the massive stone cliff, there had been cracks - particularly on the Sandaime's face. Rin had asked Kakami how that happened, and she'd told the story of the Suna invasion three years ago and...
...oh. It had been exactly three years since they lost Sandaime-sama. Though to Rin it felt like only a few months, because he hadn't known. It still felt so recent. Rin's eyes fell to his toes, wondering how Asuka must feel.
She didn't notice his change in expression, having already turned away to return to the card table. It was easy enough to imagine him coming home after five years and having everything so different, most especially the largest landmark of Konoha. Everything had moved on without him. Something like that was going to cause a little bit of staring.
"No one's going to mind you staring like a tourist," she said, seating herself at the table and tucking her feet under the chair. The beer she sat next to the steamer, patiently waiting for Rin to finish before she started in on the gyouza. "We have enough people coming here to stare that you'll fit right in. You could even ask for directions like a tourist, too, and no one would be the wiser."
"Technically I'm supposed to have my pride about that kind of thing," Rin answered lightly, forcing himself not to dwell on that which Asuka did not feel like mentioning. Of course, knowing Asuka, she never would mention any of this... but Rin knew he had a way of making things come up - awkwardly or not. Like a human catalyst for the generation of unlikely conversations.
He checked the rice one last time, then set it up to steam gently for a while before padding over to sit down across from Asuka. The small card table put them close to each other, and Rin (with his longish legs) had to be careful not to kick her under the table or something.
"Tell you one thing I do tend to stare at though, the tourists themselves... honestly. I'm never going to get over the fact that people can just... walk in, nowadays."
He popped open the steamer and gave Asuka a questioning look to ask 'ready for food?'. They had at least ten minutes before the rice would be ready, may as well snack now.
"Well, it's not really walking in, per se," she replied, taking one last drag off her cigarette before smashing it out in the ashtray. "They still have to have papers and permits and register their presence in Konoha and register again when they leave and stuff. But it is a lot easier than it used to be." A lot easier. Easy enough that Uchiha Itae and her blue cohort could waltz in without anyone being the wiser; although, to be fair, even if Konoha had more strict entrance guidelines, they still probably could have waltzed in without anyone being the wiser.
And then, obliging her chef, she snuck a gyouza out of the steamer, ignoring the undoubtably proper use of chopsticks and using her fingers instead. It wasn't like she'd pulled out any chopsticks yet, anyway, and Rin hadn't brought any either, so finger food all the way sounded cool to her, right?
And it was good. Very good. Asuka leaned back in her chair and sighed happily - there was nothing quite like good food, Chouko was right about that.
"I wish I could cook," she said just to generate idle conversation, inspecting the tiny half of gyouza she still had in hand. "Then I could make this stuff myself rather than mooching off you and Kureno and fast food joints. 'Course, I probably still couldn't make it as good as you even if I could cook."
Rin bit into his own dumpling and gave Asuka a smile. He didn't know what it was with him, but all the kunoichi he knew couldn't cook and were very glad he could.
"Awh, cooking's just one of these things... that looks scarier than it is. And is scarier than it looks," he frowned, puzzled for a second. "Wait, that came out wrong. Anyway, it's just something you have to learn. I remember my mother taught me before she--" he cut himself off and tried to change track. What was wrong with him and saying the wrong thing?
"Uhm, she taught me when I was very small. I'm glad I never forgot."
One thing Rin had been able to hold onto was a crystal clear memory... and it did him more harm than good even if it gave him the memory he needed to save people's lives. It was a source of great strength to him, that at least he could remember his family and the things they taught him as well as he could remember the long years he'd spent losing them.
"I could... if you want, teach you?" he offered a little shyly. "I keep offering to teach Kakami but she's extremely averse to the entire idea and it'd be... good to pass on one or two traditions."
She popped the last little bit into her mouth and contemplated the offer. There was a hitch to his words, the sudden scramble to rephrase; she wondered what that was about. Perhaps he'd lost his mother, and talking about her was painful. Seemed most likely, considering the war her and his generation had gone through.
Well, she could certainly understood where that might be coming from. Asuka smiled slightly, wryly, to herself; at least Rin had gotten that much out of her before... whatever had happened, happened.
"I dunno," she replied. The bangle on her wrist clacked against the plastic table top as she rested her arm on its surface. "I have this talent for ruining things even when I follow the instructions exactly. Besides - " and here she shrugged a little - "can't really teach an old dog new tricks."
"Totally untrue," Rin answered with a cock of his head. "If I could teach my sensei to cook something other than instant ramen - which I totally did, I told her 'you can't be Hokage and not know how to feed yourself' and I was right - then I can teach anybody," he declared with solid (if not grammatical) conviction, snacking on another gyouza and blinking over at the clock on the wall to check the time for the rice.
He glanced back and raised an eyebrow at Asuka a little skeptically, "Anyway, nobody is gonna refer to you as an 'old dog', Asuka," he said. "It's uhm... dangerous, if nothing else."
She laughed slightly at that, grining slightly down at the table top. No one had referred to her as an old dog before, no, but Inosuke had on at least one occasion said something along the lines of, 'you're pretty hot for an old lady,' which was close enough...
Okay, so maybe it was dangerous. She was pretty sure she had hit him for that comment.
It would have been interesting to see Rin's reaction if she told him about that. But instead, she said, a bit more lightly than she felt, "Sandaime-sama couldn't cook," and reached for another gyouza.
"She couldn't?" Rin could hardly believe that, Sandaime-sama had been able to do everything anyone every asked of her. But...
He shook his head a little. Nobody could do everything. But some people came very, very close. Rin bit his lip for a second, and then just kept talking.
"I couldn't believe she was gone when I got back," he confessed with a sigh. "And I never really got the chance to say that I'm sorry you lost her, Asuka," he said, looking suddenly sadly at her.
Her hand paused on its trip back from the steamer, gyouza stuck between two fingers. Asuka hadn't really expected any direct reference to the Sandaime, hadn't really expected anyone to say anything to her. Didn't really want anyone to say anything to her. But Rin was Rin, and, well, even when he said something offensive he managed to say it in such a way that no one could take offense to it.
So when he said I'm sorry you lost her she knew he didn't mean the Sandaime Hokage whom everyone had lost, but rather Sandaime her mother, who really only a select few had lost. And Asuka didn't know what to say to that. Didn't really know what to do with that reoccurring stab of regret that got her in the gut whenever she did more than casually think back on all the things she'd done wrong.
"It's okay," she said quietly, bringing the dumpling back to her and studying it in the flourescant kitchen light. "I wasn't the only one who lost her."
Rin gave her a quiet look, his eyes quite heavy.
"Okay," he said back, taking that as said and done. He usually wouldn't have been so very... well, aware right then, but he got the feeling that how Asuka felt on the issue might be a lot closer to how he felt thinking about his father than he wanted to go near. After a moment he offered her a weak smile, though she was quite intently studying her food. "Well, that makes it no Hokages to our knowledge who knew how to cook," (he was positive that Tsurude only viewed a frying pan as a means of whacking Jimaiya-sensei for going near the hotsprings) and with that he got up and went to check the rice steamer. "At least, before they took office. I guess I shouldn't have told my sensei it was so very important after all."
He gave the rice in the cooker a prod and nodded to himself. "Rice is ready," he called, looking around curiously. "Any plates or bowls?"
He gave in to that statement pretty fast... something for which Asuka was actually very grateful for. People didn't seem to understand, sometimes, that the Sandaime had been her Hokage first and her mother last (not even the Sandaime understood that, though she might have at the end) - if she were to say 'I wasn't the only one who lost her,' they would immediately respond, 'Yes, but she wasn't their mother.'
Sometimes it hadn't felt like the Sandaime had been her mother, either. But that was her own fault, and nothing she could change now.
So he changed the subject, and she let him, popping the whole gyouza in her mouth and pushing herself to her feet. "Bouf," she replied (somewhat incoherantly), and re-entered the more kitchen-y area to pull open a cabinet door that contained both the items in question. "Which you wan'?"
"Bowls," he replied, turning off the appliances and cooker and reaching round to take them as Asuka lifted them from the cabinet. He doled out two good portions of rice and gave the rest a flip in the steamer to knock it from the sides before leaving it to cool. Once it had he'd rehome it and put it in Asuka's fridge (along with a warning label that told her not to eat it after a day) but that wouldn't be for a little while. He filled up his glass of water and the two of them snagged some chopsticks and returned to their seats, though this time Rin turned his chair so his legs rested at right angles to the table, given that there really wasn't enough room for him to stretch out properly otherwise. Which he did they tucked in to their dinner, hungry and letting it show.
After a minute or so of amiable quiet filled with the whirr of something clunky in the washing machine (a uniform, a certain kind of uniform) Rin realized he'd meant to ask Asuka something. Had been meaning to ask for a while, ever since he got out the hospital the first time, really. He just kept forgetting, or pushing the question aside... but Asuka was the one most likely to know.
"Ne, Asuka... I wanted to ask you, uhm," he glanced down at his bowl and then back up to her. "How long did Kakami stay in ANBU after I was gone?"
There was something about having someone else cook for you that made food taste so much better. That and being really really hungry, which she hadn't been but that wasn't the point. The point was that Rin made the food and it was good and she was nearly half-done when he finally started the conversation back up again.
Asuka glanced back up at him with the chopsticks still touching her lips, a touch of curiousity on her face before the question sank in. Oh. Yes, that. She tapped her utensils on the side of her bowl before she replied.
"She didn't," she said, a little awkwardly and maybe with a touch of apology in her tone as well. "She left not long after."
Brown eyes that had been quietly studying her, waiting for an answer, suddenly widened and then flitted away. To the window, he guessed, though he obviously wasn't seeing it.
He smiled a little. Genuinely, and past the hot little twist he'd just felt in his chest. "Good," he murmurred, finally looking back to Asuka with small shrug. "I didn't know and..."
It was not a place she had needed to be. It wasn't anywhere Rin had belonged, tried though he had; and though he knew in his heart that Kakami was so very suited to that work he had found himself hoping just for her own sake - for her safety and for a chance at building herself a real life - that she wouldn't make it her career. And she hadn't.
Rin felt like rolling his eyes at himself, of course it didn't matter now - she'd obviously made it - but it was something he had wanted to know. He'd missed so much of the lives of people he had known, so much of her life, as well as of his own; it reassured him to hear a little about it.
"...just relieved," he said very quietly, going back to his food. "Thanks, Asuka."
The kunoichi wasn't entirely sure what she was being thanked for, but she lowered her eyes and nodded all the same. So many things about Rin were awkward these days - not knowing what to say, how to avoid bringing up touchy subjects, never knowing if you might inadvertantly say something and not recognize the implications behind it - but she supposed it was something that she and everyone else would have to get over. One couldn't live in the past forever, right?
But sometimes you just had to say something even if you weren't sure it would come out the way you wanted it to...
"We've taken good care of her," Asuka said after a moment of silence, lifting her eyes back to him. "We can keep doing it for a while. You just worry about yourself now."
Rin looked over at Asuka, and managed a nod.
"I know you did," he said softly, a small sigh and another nod. "And I knew you would." He reached for his water and took another sip, carefully replacing the glass on the table, distracting himself from the realization that had only been getting clearer since he got home: that Asuka and Kureno and the others had done a better job taking care of Kakami than he ever had. After all, she was so much more... herself, now. Happier too.
Asuka was right though, he had to try and focus on himself. He gave her a small smile, thinking that she was more like her mother than she really knew. How many times had Sandaime-sama taken him aside and said the same thing to him? When he'd pleaded with her to be let back into ANBU she'd looked at him much like Asuka was looking at him now. When he had reported back to her from long-range missions the first thing she'd do was silently let him know that Kakami was alright. She had tried to protect him from himself, same as the last Hokage, and he'd never admitted how much he needed it. Rin missed her, but it wasn't so bad when Asuka was still around.
He smiled, chasing a dumpling around his bowl for a moment before looking up at Asuka again. "I had another question too... I was gonna ask how long it took the sculptors to get Tsurude's face right on the monument." A slight mischevious grin. "To his satisfaction, anyway."
And with that question, the awkward tension of wondering whether she should have just kept her mouth shut was banished. After all, making fun of Tsurude was a pleasurable past time. The smile that crept up on her face was one to match his, marred only by the fact that she didn't have a cigarette to complete that signature grin.
"Too long," was the cheerful reply, "not that I hung around to hear him bitch about it much. But the rumors that flew around the village, let me tell you what..."
And so the rest of the afternoon passed, until far later than either realized - just good food, good memories, and - perhaps - better friends after this than they had been before he'd been gone.
Rin could do lots of things. Stitch a button. Complete an S-Rank mission. Dance like he was born to do it. Be a top-flight trauma surgeon. Deal with little children who'd rather rip his eyes out than get their flu shot. Lots of things. But one thing he'd never managed to do was cook food for just one person. It just never happened, he always made way too much food and if it turned out he was having to eat on his own he found out he wasn't hungry and it was all to waste anyway.
Rin couldn't do lots of things too - and one of the things he couldn't do was waste things. So that was a good reason for him being at Asuka's door with a pretty substantial looking parcel of fresh gyouza and a small smile. He'd wanted to check on how she was doing just now, what with being back in ANBU and the fact that certain... anniversaries were setting in.
He knocked twice and rocked back on his heels, wondering if there was anything he could say.
The ninja in question was pretty much prepared for his arrival; he'd said he would come by, after all, and she'd heard him come up the small path - due to the fact that he wasn't trying to be sneaky, and she had the windows open to hear his passage. So when he knocked, she was there only a second to two later, having gotten up off the couch to answer the door before he'd even knocked.
"Evening," Asuka said, smiling slightly, and pulled the door open wider to allow him in. She hadn't been back from her mission for very long - maybe four hours, tops - but it was long enough to get cleaned up and throw her uniform into the washing machine (it was whirring away in the closet by the kitchen right then). Even so she was a bit sloppy even by her own standards, but hell, a baggy shirt and sweatpants was good enough for her after a long mission. It was her home, damnit, she could be dressed comfortably if she wanted. At least her hair was brushed and put back up in its usual ponytail after her shower.
"I've got beer and water," she said as he made his way inside, pushing the door closed behind him, "and some left-over rice if this needs to be stretched out." Though by the looks of what he was carrying, the rice probably wouldn't be needed.
"Hey, Asuka," he said, smile brightening as he saw her in the doorway. All in one piece. No, he wasn't paranoid.
"And ah, water is fine by me," Rin replied, following Asuka further into her home. It had been a very long time since he'd been here last and it looked a bit different to how he remembered.
"Hope you still like gyouza," he said, holding out the parcel for her. "I thought Korean style would be a good idea, I had the spices left over and... yeah," he trailed off slightly, head turning as he tried to remember where the kitchen was.
"How left-over is the left-over rice?" he asked her slightly suspiciously. Rin still was a doctor, and he was very wary of the kinds of bacterium that liked to live in rice if given the chance.
She hefted the package as it was given to her, lifting the lid of the old fashioned steamer a little to peek at the gyouza packed inside. "Ummm... couple days," she replied vaguely during the process. It was what she had been planning on eating when she got home, anyway, and it had smelled and looked fine to her when she'd checked earlier.
There weren't many doors behind which the kitchen could lie, at least; one door to the far left, past the couch and by the television that was never used (unless the kids brought over a movie) obviously led to a bedroom, and the other... well, there wasn't another, actually, just an entrance that displayed the wood floors and counters that indicated a kitchen. Asuka went ahead and led the way, settling the parcel down on the card table tucked away in the tiny space that served as a dining area. It was cramped, but clean, probably a testament to how little she actually used the kitchen.
It was very apparent to Rin that Asuka didn't use her kitchen very much, which he thought was kind of sad. He imagined so many homes all around Konoha with a kitchen that never got to be used. When he was growing up, and as often as he could make it afterwards, the kitchen was the hub of his home life. Food and conversation and friends and family... but a lot of his agemates never really got to experience that, or lost it too painfully to care to be reminded.
He sighed at himself and tried not to think like that too much; with a questioning glance at Asuka he paced to the fridge and pulled out the suspect rice she mentioned.
He peered at it, poked it with a chopstick he picked up off the counter, and then quickly sealed the box off before the rice could poke back.
"You probably shouldn't eat this, Asuka," he said, looking up at her with a mild look of alarm at the state of the rice. "In fact... I'm just going to make you some more."
He fished around for some pots and pans, as well as the uncooked rice he could see sitting in a bag on her shelf, and called from the cupboards: "So, how have you been doing, Asuka?"
She rolled her eyes as Rin all but declared her rice a health hazard and dove into her cabinets, at home as though it were his own kitchen, but couldn't help the smile that creeped up anyway. There weren't many words that described him better than 'cute,' but she would save his male pride and keep it to herself. He probably heard it enough anyway.
"Been okay since I last saw you," she replied, leaving the kitchen to retrieve the cigarette she'd left smoldering in an ashtray on the coffee table, lifting her voice slightly as she moved about the apartment. "Two missions so far, but mostly it's been training the rookies to make sure they're up to speed. I think they've relaxed the standards slightly to get more recruits, so me and some of the longer lived ANBU are beating them up to make up for it."
Returning to the kitchen, half-smoked cigarette dangling from her lips, she set the glass ashtray on the card table and pulled out a folding chair from where it was leaning against the wall in the corner. "Besides getting sick again, what about you?"
He had to shake his head a little and smile when Asuka mentioned what she was up to in ANBU. It sounded more or less exactly like what he'd have assumed would happen. Oh well, he'd gotten the hell beat out of him by the recruitment supervisor when he joined ANBU... but then, he had rather done something to deserve it. He was about to ask if any of Asuka's rookie victims students had done anything to deserve what she was doubtless putting them through (for curiosity's sake, honestly) when she asked what he'd been up to.
All the rice-cooking paraphenalia spread out in front of him, Rin glanced up at Asuka's question and gave her a slightly charinged look. "Uhm... well, after that whole passing-out-on-duty thing Yakushi-sensei said if I went back into the hospital again this week she'd put me in the morgue. And... not as an attendant, so I've been out of a job."
He turned on the stove-top and started preparing the rice, then leaned against the counter next to the stove and rubbed his arm as he tried to work out what else he'd done lately.
"Uhm, was out on a work night-out thing as well the other night. That's been about it, I'm afraid. Oh, get started on the gyouza while they're hot if you want."
Asuka pulled out two of the four chairs she had on hand - purchased, frankly, only because she needed someplace for her whole team to sit when they came over - before moving further into the kitchen. "Yakushi-sensei knows best," she replied, perhaps with a kind of mild acceptance, or perhaps more with a dry kind of sarcasm. The jounin had encountered the older woman enough times that she was avoided at all costs. Rin was a much better medic to have on hand, that was for sure.
Pulling a glass down out of one of the other head cabinets, she filled it with water and left it by the stove, near at hand for her volunteer cook, and then retrieved a beer for herself from the sadly sparse refridgerator. "It's good that you're getting out, though. And hopefully sleeping, for a change?" Talk about a workaholic. It was probably a good thing he'd never get a genin team. Imagine all the bad habits he'd pass along...
Rin nodded, kind of embarassed, at what Asuka said. She was right, it was just very weird for him to find other people concerning over him - even though it's what had been happening for months ever since he got back.
"Yeah... the sleeping thing is getting easier," he murmurred as an answer, because it was lately - now that he was back on those heavy sedatives.
He sighed and carefully stirred the rice up, eyeing it to make sure it couldn't burn before giving Asuka a sheepish look.
"But hey, at least if I'm stuck in the village just now you're not gonna have to come looking for me, when I get myself caught by god only knows who, ne?"
That particular statement made her pause in the midst of twisting off the bottle cap, glancing up to him with a slightly startled look. Talking about getting caught and her having to look for him seemed like an awfully touchy subject to her. A little too close to facts, maybe, or maybe she was just reading too deep into things. Or maybe it was a sign that things were getting better.
Or maybe.. she should just stop thinking. That was always a good idea, too.
Asuka quickly hid the expression and covered it with a wry smile, cracking open the beer and tossing the cap into the sink. "The worst that'll happen is you getting lost, I think. And Konoha isn't so big that you won't find your way back home eventually."
"True," Rin admitted, "All I'd have to do is look for the Hokage Monument and I'd know exactly where I am."
He took a sip of the water Asuka had brought out for him and then just pressed the cool glass to his forehead, letting it chase away the start of one of his too-frequent headaches. A slightly rueful look passed over his face.
"I have to admit though, when I first got out the hospital I spent about twenty minutes just staring at the monument. Didn't look like I remembered it, uhm... obviously."
It wasn't just the addition of Tsurude's face to the massive stone cliff, there had been cracks - particularly on the Sandaime's face. Rin had asked Kakami how that happened, and she'd told the story of the Suna invasion three years ago and...
...oh. It had been exactly three years since they lost Sandaime-sama. Though to Rin it felt like only a few months, because he hadn't known. It still felt so recent. Rin's eyes fell to his toes, wondering how Asuka must feel.
She didn't notice his change in expression, having already turned away to return to the card table. It was easy enough to imagine him coming home after five years and having everything so different, most especially the largest landmark of Konoha. Everything had moved on without him. Something like that was going to cause a little bit of staring.
"No one's going to mind you staring like a tourist," she said, seating herself at the table and tucking her feet under the chair. The beer she sat next to the steamer, patiently waiting for Rin to finish before she started in on the gyouza. "We have enough people coming here to stare that you'll fit right in. You could even ask for directions like a tourist, too, and no one would be the wiser."
"Technically I'm supposed to have my pride about that kind of thing," Rin answered lightly, forcing himself not to dwell on that which Asuka did not feel like mentioning. Of course, knowing Asuka, she never would mention any of this... but Rin knew he had a way of making things come up - awkwardly or not. Like a human catalyst for the generation of unlikely conversations.
He checked the rice one last time, then set it up to steam gently for a while before padding over to sit down across from Asuka. The small card table put them close to each other, and Rin (with his longish legs) had to be careful not to kick her under the table or something.
"Tell you one thing I do tend to stare at though, the tourists themselves... honestly. I'm never going to get over the fact that people can just... walk in, nowadays."
He popped open the steamer and gave Asuka a questioning look to ask 'ready for food?'. They had at least ten minutes before the rice would be ready, may as well snack now.
"Well, it's not really walking in, per se," she replied, taking one last drag off her cigarette before smashing it out in the ashtray. "They still have to have papers and permits and register their presence in Konoha and register again when they leave and stuff. But it is a lot easier than it used to be." A lot easier. Easy enough that Uchiha Itae and her blue cohort could waltz in without anyone being the wiser; although, to be fair, even if Konoha had more strict entrance guidelines, they still probably could have waltzed in without anyone being the wiser.
And then, obliging her chef, she snuck a gyouza out of the steamer, ignoring the undoubtably proper use of chopsticks and using her fingers instead. It wasn't like she'd pulled out any chopsticks yet, anyway, and Rin hadn't brought any either, so finger food all the way sounded cool to her, right?
And it was good. Very good. Asuka leaned back in her chair and sighed happily - there was nothing quite like good food, Chouko was right about that.
"I wish I could cook," she said just to generate idle conversation, inspecting the tiny half of gyouza she still had in hand. "Then I could make this stuff myself rather than mooching off you and Kureno and fast food joints. 'Course, I probably still couldn't make it as good as you even if I could cook."
Rin bit into his own dumpling and gave Asuka a smile. He didn't know what it was with him, but all the kunoichi he knew couldn't cook and were very glad he could.
"Awh, cooking's just one of these things... that looks scarier than it is. And is scarier than it looks," he frowned, puzzled for a second. "Wait, that came out wrong. Anyway, it's just something you have to learn. I remember my mother taught me before she--" he cut himself off and tried to change track. What was wrong with him and saying the wrong thing?
"Uhm, she taught me when I was very small. I'm glad I never forgot."
One thing Rin had been able to hold onto was a crystal clear memory... and it did him more harm than good even if it gave him the memory he needed to save people's lives. It was a source of great strength to him, that at least he could remember his family and the things they taught him as well as he could remember the long years he'd spent losing them.
"I could... if you want, teach you?" he offered a little shyly. "I keep offering to teach Kakami but she's extremely averse to the entire idea and it'd be... good to pass on one or two traditions."
She popped the last little bit into her mouth and contemplated the offer. There was a hitch to his words, the sudden scramble to rephrase; she wondered what that was about. Perhaps he'd lost his mother, and talking about her was painful. Seemed most likely, considering the war her and his generation had gone through.
Well, she could certainly understood where that might be coming from. Asuka smiled slightly, wryly, to herself; at least Rin had gotten that much out of her before... whatever had happened, happened.
"I dunno," she replied. The bangle on her wrist clacked against the plastic table top as she rested her arm on its surface. "I have this talent for ruining things even when I follow the instructions exactly. Besides - " and here she shrugged a little - "can't really teach an old dog new tricks."
"Totally untrue," Rin answered with a cock of his head. "If I could teach my sensei to cook something other than instant ramen - which I totally did, I told her 'you can't be Hokage and not know how to feed yourself' and I was right - then I can teach anybody," he declared with solid (if not grammatical) conviction, snacking on another gyouza and blinking over at the clock on the wall to check the time for the rice.
He glanced back and raised an eyebrow at Asuka a little skeptically, "Anyway, nobody is gonna refer to you as an 'old dog', Asuka," he said. "It's uhm... dangerous, if nothing else."
She laughed slightly at that, grining slightly down at the table top. No one had referred to her as an old dog before, no, but Inosuke had on at least one occasion said something along the lines of, 'you're pretty hot for an old lady,' which was close enough...
Okay, so maybe it was dangerous. She was pretty sure she had hit him for that comment.
It would have been interesting to see Rin's reaction if she told him about that. But instead, she said, a bit more lightly than she felt, "Sandaime-sama couldn't cook," and reached for another gyouza.
"She couldn't?" Rin could hardly believe that, Sandaime-sama had been able to do everything anyone every asked of her. But...
He shook his head a little. Nobody could do everything. But some people came very, very close. Rin bit his lip for a second, and then just kept talking.
"I couldn't believe she was gone when I got back," he confessed with a sigh. "And I never really got the chance to say that I'm sorry you lost her, Asuka," he said, looking suddenly sadly at her.
Her hand paused on its trip back from the steamer, gyouza stuck between two fingers. Asuka hadn't really expected any direct reference to the Sandaime, hadn't really expected anyone to say anything to her. Didn't really want anyone to say anything to her. But Rin was Rin, and, well, even when he said something offensive he managed to say it in such a way that no one could take offense to it.
So when he said I'm sorry you lost her she knew he didn't mean the Sandaime Hokage whom everyone had lost, but rather Sandaime her mother, who really only a select few had lost. And Asuka didn't know what to say to that. Didn't really know what to do with that reoccurring stab of regret that got her in the gut whenever she did more than casually think back on all the things she'd done wrong.
"It's okay," she said quietly, bringing the dumpling back to her and studying it in the flourescant kitchen light. "I wasn't the only one who lost her."
Rin gave her a quiet look, his eyes quite heavy.
"Okay," he said back, taking that as said and done. He usually wouldn't have been so very... well, aware right then, but he got the feeling that how Asuka felt on the issue might be a lot closer to how he felt thinking about his father than he wanted to go near. After a moment he offered her a weak smile, though she was quite intently studying her food. "Well, that makes it no Hokages to our knowledge who knew how to cook," (he was positive that Tsurude only viewed a frying pan as a means of whacking Jimaiya-sensei for going near the hotsprings) and with that he got up and went to check the rice steamer. "At least, before they took office. I guess I shouldn't have told my sensei it was so very important after all."
He gave the rice in the cooker a prod and nodded to himself. "Rice is ready," he called, looking around curiously. "Any plates or bowls?"
He gave in to that statement pretty fast... something for which Asuka was actually very grateful for. People didn't seem to understand, sometimes, that the Sandaime had been her Hokage first and her mother last (not even the Sandaime understood that, though she might have at the end) - if she were to say 'I wasn't the only one who lost her,' they would immediately respond, 'Yes, but she wasn't their mother.'
Sometimes it hadn't felt like the Sandaime had been her mother, either. But that was her own fault, and nothing she could change now.
So he changed the subject, and she let him, popping the whole gyouza in her mouth and pushing herself to her feet. "Bouf," she replied (somewhat incoherantly), and re-entered the more kitchen-y area to pull open a cabinet door that contained both the items in question. "Which you wan'?"
"Bowls," he replied, turning off the appliances and cooker and reaching round to take them as Asuka lifted them from the cabinet. He doled out two good portions of rice and gave the rest a flip in the steamer to knock it from the sides before leaving it to cool. Once it had he'd rehome it and put it in Asuka's fridge (along with a warning label that told her not to eat it after a day) but that wouldn't be for a little while. He filled up his glass of water and the two of them snagged some chopsticks and returned to their seats, though this time Rin turned his chair so his legs rested at right angles to the table, given that there really wasn't enough room for him to stretch out properly otherwise. Which he did they tucked in to their dinner, hungry and letting it show.
After a minute or so of amiable quiet filled with the whirr of something clunky in the washing machine (a uniform, a certain kind of uniform) Rin realized he'd meant to ask Asuka something. Had been meaning to ask for a while, ever since he got out the hospital the first time, really. He just kept forgetting, or pushing the question aside... but Asuka was the one most likely to know.
"Ne, Asuka... I wanted to ask you, uhm," he glanced down at his bowl and then back up to her. "How long did Kakami stay in ANBU after I was gone?"
There was something about having someone else cook for you that made food taste so much better. That and being really really hungry, which she hadn't been but that wasn't the point. The point was that Rin made the food and it was good and she was nearly half-done when he finally started the conversation back up again.
Asuka glanced back up at him with the chopsticks still touching her lips, a touch of curiousity on her face before the question sank in. Oh. Yes, that. She tapped her utensils on the side of her bowl before she replied.
"She didn't," she said, a little awkwardly and maybe with a touch of apology in her tone as well. "She left not long after."
Brown eyes that had been quietly studying her, waiting for an answer, suddenly widened and then flitted away. To the window, he guessed, though he obviously wasn't seeing it.
He smiled a little. Genuinely, and past the hot little twist he'd just felt in his chest. "Good," he murmurred, finally looking back to Asuka with small shrug. "I didn't know and..."
It was not a place she had needed to be. It wasn't anywhere Rin had belonged, tried though he had; and though he knew in his heart that Kakami was so very suited to that work he had found himself hoping just for her own sake - for her safety and for a chance at building herself a real life - that she wouldn't make it her career. And she hadn't.
Rin felt like rolling his eyes at himself, of course it didn't matter now - she'd obviously made it - but it was something he had wanted to know. He'd missed so much of the lives of people he had known, so much of her life, as well as of his own; it reassured him to hear a little about it.
"...just relieved," he said very quietly, going back to his food. "Thanks, Asuka."
The kunoichi wasn't entirely sure what she was being thanked for, but she lowered her eyes and nodded all the same. So many things about Rin were awkward these days - not knowing what to say, how to avoid bringing up touchy subjects, never knowing if you might inadvertantly say something and not recognize the implications behind it - but she supposed it was something that she and everyone else would have to get over. One couldn't live in the past forever, right?
But sometimes you just had to say something even if you weren't sure it would come out the way you wanted it to...
"We've taken good care of her," Asuka said after a moment of silence, lifting her eyes back to him. "We can keep doing it for a while. You just worry about yourself now."
Rin looked over at Asuka, and managed a nod.
"I know you did," he said softly, a small sigh and another nod. "And I knew you would." He reached for his water and took another sip, carefully replacing the glass on the table, distracting himself from the realization that had only been getting clearer since he got home: that Asuka and Kureno and the others had done a better job taking care of Kakami than he ever had. After all, she was so much more... herself, now. Happier too.
Asuka was right though, he had to try and focus on himself. He gave her a small smile, thinking that she was more like her mother than she really knew. How many times had Sandaime-sama taken him aside and said the same thing to him? When he'd pleaded with her to be let back into ANBU she'd looked at him much like Asuka was looking at him now. When he had reported back to her from long-range missions the first thing she'd do was silently let him know that Kakami was alright. She had tried to protect him from himself, same as the last Hokage, and he'd never admitted how much he needed it. Rin missed her, but it wasn't so bad when Asuka was still around.
He smiled, chasing a dumpling around his bowl for a moment before looking up at Asuka again. "I had another question too... I was gonna ask how long it took the sculptors to get Tsurude's face right on the monument." A slight mischevious grin. "To his satisfaction, anyway."
And with that question, the awkward tension of wondering whether she should have just kept her mouth shut was banished. After all, making fun of Tsurude was a pleasurable past time. The smile that crept up on her face was one to match his, marred only by the fact that she didn't have a cigarette to complete that signature grin.
"Too long," was the cheerful reply, "not that I hung around to hear him bitch about it much. But the rumors that flew around the village, let me tell you what..."
And so the rest of the afternoon passed, until far later than either realized - just good food, good memories, and - perhaps - better friends after this than they had been before he'd been gone.