House Calls [Dai and Rin]
[[takes place between four and six months after the kyuubi is sealed.]]
It wasn't as late as it felt but Rin was starting to get used to how everything felt so out of synch. There was still some pale winter daylight eeking through the half-shuttered windows of his house, though it was nowhere near as bright or warm as the fire roaring encouragingly on the hearth in the living room and the oven in the kitchen. Say one thing for Konohagakure: everybody might be on rations barely fit for two meals a day, and electricity and iron could sit at a premium, but there was always enough wood around to keep a fire burning.
A few months after Kyuubi's attack in the dying summer and winter had hit a stricken Konoha hard and fast. They'd barely gotten enough buildings up to shelter everybody from the weather and things just... everybody was running on empty. Especially the ninjas. They'd keep running too, long as it took to get the village through to spring and growing back the parts that had been crushed and burned and killed.
The parts you could grow back, anyway.
Rin's hand paused as he set out the bowls for dinner. Two; one for him and one for Kakami. It was such a tiny number. It wasn't four (hadn't been for coming on two years) and felt like less than half of three. Still, he'd saved up his rations and scratched up some ramen and Sensei would've liked...
And... he had to stop, couldn't be grieving when she got home. Which would be within the next two hours, because it had been a caravan job and those were predictable so long as they weren't attacked.
Kakami's would be fine. His had been fine when he got home at noon, hers would be fine when she got home around six. It just would.
He was telling himself that as he cleaned up the house, made it look and feel more like a home, and was almost set in believing it when there was a knock on the door. Kakami didn't knock. She walked in. And nobody visited.
Rin practially sprinted to the door, tore it open and felt every piece of him freeze when he saw who was standing on the other side.
The ninja who stared at him from a face already old and wrapped with bandages was impassive; her sole eye did not blink at the expression he surely must have made and quickly hid when he realized who was on his doorstep.
"Kiyoyama," she said, her voice as grey and impassive as her face, the bandages that concealed it, the dark robes that swathed her body. It had been some time since she'd last seen the boy, and he looked no better and no worse than any of the ninja in Konoha right now: exhausted, hungry, cold, and at the end of their limits. Had she any care for this? No. A leader of the village could not afford to spend too much time on the individual pieces. It was the big picture that mattered, as the Sandaime would no doubt see now that her pathetically poor choice in replacements had proven itself flawed.
She blinked, finally, just once, waiting an appropriately polite amount of time for a response. When none came, her eye flickered briefly to the room behind him, and then back. "We must speak, Kiyoyama. This may take some time."
Brown eyes locked on the one visible one looking down at him, Rin felt suddenly even more frightened than he had at the thought of who else might be at the door. The last time he'd looked Dai-sama in the eyes had been at the trial, and he quickly tore his own away when he realized, looking down for a moment before forcing himself to look back up.
He wasn't a coward, and she couldn't hurt him and even if she could...
Deferrence forced him to step aside, allowing her entrance to the house as she spoke. She was his senior a thousand times over and he was a soldier, he wouldn't leave her to stand in the cold. But his expression didn't remain still as she used his father and mother's name.
"Come in, Dai-sama," he said quietly, closing the door on the cold. "And please don't call me by that name."
He knew that she knew now as she had known those months ago, it wasn't his anymore.
"As you wish," she replied smoothly, and stepped inside.
The house wasn't much warmer than the air outside, but the fire did something to make things a bit more pleasant. At the very least, the walls cut the wind. Dai's eye naturally swept across the room available to her, storing the layout and the items at hand as any good ninja would, before returning her eye to her... host, as it were. If she felt anything about the bareness of the house, the meager availability of the food, the significance of the placements at the table, it was not displayed on her lined features.
"To the point then," she said, as he closed the door and faced her, a growing tenseness filling the air of the house. "The council has naturally been thrown in a disarray, and there has been... conversation... concerning the favor you received from the Yondaime. I'm certain you understand what I'm referring to?"
Rin's breath seemed to catch thick in his throat. Disbelief and sudden vulnerability clashed in his lungs. He hadn't thought, not for one tiny moment... everything that had happened and all he had thought about was Sensei and the village and the injured and his father and Kakami and he hadn't thought about what losing his sensei had meant in terms other than love and grief.
He hadn't thought that when she died she took the protections she'd put in place for him with her. So many hours he had spent terrified, waiting in corridors and watching the faces of the council and elders and wondering what would happen to him because he'd done what Obiko asked him to do.
Well he may have been terrified then, but he'd been unrepentant too - and that had not changed. Rin looked up at Councilwoman Dai and tried not to flinch.
"She wasn't doing me a favour," he answered back. "Yondaime-sama was making clear what she deemed to be right."
Defiant, then and always, it appeared. Dai was not certain, entirely, if she approved of his spine or if she was annoyed by his (and his predecesor's) insistance upon right and wrong as opposed to what served their village best. She supposed approving of his spine was better than approving of nothing at all.
"The Hokage of Konoha is not supposed to rule on right and wrong," she observed, voice milder than it possibly should have been. "The Hokage is supposed to uphold the laws and enforce them where they apply, rather than decided to exclude one case just because she felt it was 'right.' You broke multiple laws, shinobi. Had it been anyone other than you, anyone that was not on her team, do you think they would have escaped punishment? These are the words being spoken in the council. They are the ones that believe she chose to ignore the laws and spare you when you should not have been. Perhaps you should begin considering your argument for when the council convenes and decides whether to try you again."
"I didn't escape punishment!" Rin snapped out, voice far less level than the old woman stating these facts to him. He didn't mean to, he didn't, but the way she talked about it - kept dragging it into his mind over and over. Ashamed as he was of himself for it, Rin wanted to forget if only for a little while, what he'd done and this had finally been the start of doing that...
"My best friend died."
...a false start, it seemed now. He'd never be able to put this behind him: it defined who he was now. A healer who could and did make terrible things happen to people he loved.
He took a breath, trying to steady himself. He didn't have any safety net now, nobody to pick him up and take him someplace safe, nobody to make people stop coming after him. He looked away from Dai to the fireplace, and realized that not even in his own home did he have a safe place.
"Doesn't the council have anything better to do with its time?" he asked tightly.
She chose not to respond to his display of anger. He'd lost a friend? How quaint. Welcome to the life of a ninja. Take a number and stand in line, for there were many more shinobi who'd come and gone and far more that would come in the future who had the same complaint. Pathetic, really; her approval of his spine was dampened by his emotion. Surely he would have had this stripped by now, had he been raised correctly...
"Of course." Her eye tracked his every move, intensely focused despite the slack emotionless face that housed it. "Judging criminals comes after designating funds to repair the village. As the council currently cannot make any further decisions until we receive word back from our allies, they have turned their eyes to other concerns. Namely you."
Her chin tipped up slightly, as though to look down upon the younger ninja. "They will be convening within the week."
It was with that superior look cast down at him that Rin belatedly realized what was happening. A hot sick feeling flooded in his chest but he didn't look away. He knew his eyes always gave away what he was feeling and he didn't care, he didn't care he wanted her to see what was on his mind.
He wasn't fool enough to tell her to take a straight walk off the Palace's round roof. But she could feel free to infer it.
"What's going to happen to me if they do what you want?" he asked quietly, hands fisting at his sides. Terrified of the answer and trying so hard not to let it show.
She could have responded to his insinuation that she was engineering this whole mess, but gracefully let it slide by her. His accusations were not important here.
"I do not know," the older woman said in reply. "The council makes its decisions through a democratic vote and comes to a consensus after the judgement has been made. Likely you will have your status revoked. They may possibly take your license to practice away. Imprisonment is not unlikely."
Dai lowered her chin then, thoughtfully, her dark eye finally disengaging from his to glance over the table. Two sets of dishes put out, waiting only for the second person to arrive - someone who was most definitely not her. "Considering the requests made during the original trial, there may also be terms applied to Hatake. They may choose to take the eye." Her gaze flicked back up to his once more. "It is not my decision, but the council's as a whole. I'm certain you know how the whole process works."
Rin's fourteen-year-old heart was sinking with every possibility Dai gave voice to. Lose his rank. Lose his licence to practice medicine, to heal. Lose his freedom... no, no he'd lose his ability to be here for Kakami. He wouldn't be able to take care of her, to be beside her, to do things like - like make her dinner and have a bed and a fire ready for her and to get through to her when she couldn't be left on her own...
Forget sinking. His heart was starting to flutter like a trapped bird. This couldn't happen, he had responsibilities, he had to, he couldn't and he--
And then she mentioned taking the sharingan eye and Rin knew he was trapped. Completely and for the rest of his life. So long as this woman or her people wanted to they could destroy or use him however they wanted. And he'd let them.
If they took the Sharingan out of Kakami's head she'd probably die. The only two people who knew that were him and the woman who had just threatened to let it happen; because she had seen what he had done through her genjutsu in his head... and she knew enough. Rin had been forbidden by his sensei, by the medical councils, by everybody to ever speak of what he'd done, never mind how he had achieved it. This was his kinjutsu. This was his sin and his secret. Or so they thought.
He bowed his head. Submissive. Beaten.
"Please, Dai-sama, what do I have to do to stop them taking the sharingan?"
Begging, if that was what she wanted.
If she were the sort of person who found satisfaction in having control over others, having their lives in the palm of her hand, she might have smiled. She might have named a price. As he stood right now, it was clear he'd do whatever he could to keep the eye from being taken from the Hatake, even at the cost of, perhaps, his own life. It was clear to everyone in this room that she had the upper hand.
But what Dai had first in her mind, before everything else, despite what others might say, was the overall good of the village.
She blinked and took a breath, looking away from the boy and back around his home again. Taking it in. It was a quaint little place, as one would expect from any of the sort his family had been - peace loving fools. Kiyoyama - Rin - was a peace loving fool as well, but the sort to fight for it as opposed to his father. That, if nothing else, commanded a modicum of respect. If nothing else.
"There is nothing you can do," she said finally, "if they choose to take it from her. Sandaime-sama will surely vote not to, but even she can do nothing if the vote sways against her. Hatake is valuable to the safety of the village at the moment, but even her value can come to an end if she is deemed not worth the risk."
Dai looked back at the boy standing submissive before her. "Is the eye she holds in her head and the knowledge you have to transplant such a thing worth that risk? Even the Hyuuga worry behind their walls about what such a thing could do should you be captured and successfully interrogated. I must keep those risks in mind when I cast my vote as well. Do you understand that in such a time as this, I must keep Konoha's safety in mind above everything and everyone else, even if it requires sacrifice? Especially if it requires sacrifice."
Rin didn't lift his head for a long time. He could academically appreciate what this woman was saying, what she obviously believed; but the feel of every word was poison to him. When they forgot that they were each individually worth fighting for, they no longer had a reason to fight. Rin had believed that all his life, Obiko had believed it to her death, and Sensei had never disabused either of them of that fact. Even Kakami understood it now. It didn't mean they'd refuse to sacrifice; it meant they knew why they were doing it.
Maybe that was why the Councilwoman hated them all enough to do this. Shinobi were meant to be tools. Tools didn't know why they did what they did. Irregardless, Rin knew he didn't have a choice. He just didn't.
He'd already been asked these questions so many times. Did he know what he'd done? Yes he did. He knew exactly what he'd done. So whatever she wanted, she could have. But not for nothing.
"I understand, Dai-sama. But, Kakami is blameless in all of this. Nobody can take that eye intact from her, you saw that. She's not any more dangerous to the sharingan's secrets than any Uchiha," Rin said, eyes down but voice steady. "It's me who's a danger and it's me who's a risk. Just please, leave her be. I know the Uchiha are angry but that's not enough reason." He finally looked up, feeling so small and so frightened that realizing that scared him half to death alone. "Don't let them take it out on her, please."
Contrary to how it may appear, the councilwoman did not get any joy out of making Rin beg. It was, instead, a sad thing, that a ninja would beg; it was a weakness, a sign that he could be easily manipulated. A sign that should anyone else get their claws into him, he would fold far, far too easily.
Konoha was so weak. She would not make it weaker.
"If you are a risk," she said, voice flat and level, not edging into coldness as she wished it to, "then the applications of your risk must be minimized in order to continue your use. If you are a risk, then you should not be in charge of the next generation. Give your word that you will not take custody of any children, including the kyuubi vessel and any potential genin teams, and I will vote for you and for the Hatake in the council meeting. I cannot do any more than that."
Rin was silent. His eyes lowered again, and his resolve to keep up some kind of strength meeting the Councilwoman's gaze evaporated as though it had never been. Instead his line of sight focussed on the floorboards, and didn't shift. He made sure not to look up, because his eyes declared too clearly what was running repeatedly through his mind.
You bitch.
He had gone two days ago to ask about adopting baby Naruko. Put his name down on the records for her. Gotten to sit and hold her, and laugh quietly at the little baby noises she made. They'd said he had to wait til he was eighteen, of course, but that was... by then he figured he could stay at home. Work in the hospital. Be there for dinners and... and bedtimes... and things; and she'd be four years old. Old enough to care. Old enough to know she needed somebody. Rin didn't know if he'd manage it; didn't know if he'd live that long, or if he'd be any kind of a good parent for her... but she was Sensei's baby girl and that made her family. He was going to try.
Kakami didn't know. They hadn't talked about it. Hadn't talked about her. Could barely mention Minako herself without it just being too stressful to bear. But in a few months, in a year, it wouldn't be so impossible and he knew she'd have something to say. Maybe even...
Rin didn't want to admit what he didn't dare to feel too strongly: that he hoped Naruko would give Kakami some kind of hope for the future, if this worked out. She already did that for Rin; even if it hurt at the same time. And this... this atrocious, cruel woman wanted to take that away. Take him away from Naruko too, somebody who'd care about her... what if nobody else would... oh gods.
He felt sick. But all he did was let his eyes trace over and over the whorl of wood on the floorboard. The little whirlpool of woodgrains, pulling him in. It was too late. He was already trapped. Here was his choice: Kakami or Naruko. With Dai's support, there was a better chance Kakami would be safe. Without it... not even Sarutobi-sama could save them if the Hyuuga and the Uchiha weren't checked by the opposition's voice too. Kakami or Naruko.
...you bitch.
He lifted his eyes away from the floor and looked at Dai's crinkled old one. His voice was quiet, and clear, and suddenly cold in his throat.
"I promise."
The time he took to respond to the demand indicated just how heavily he weighed his decision. Good; she would be disappointed if he made a snap decision based on his emotions, rather than cold hard facts. Perhaps he could still grow to be a decent ninja, if not a formidable one. A decent doctor, if there was no better use for him.
"Then I will do as we discussed." Thin, wirey hands emerged from from the sleeves of her robes, long enough to tuck them into the opposite sleeve for further warms. "I will send word when the council has made its decision."
There was no further reason to tarry. Dai turned and took the few steps back necessary to reach his door, glancing back at the young man she'd just ruined the future of, and with no more thought than the flicker of an eyelid. "Enjoy your dinner, Kiyoyama."
And then she let herself outside, and was gone.
It wasn't as late as it felt but Rin was starting to get used to how everything felt so out of synch. There was still some pale winter daylight eeking through the half-shuttered windows of his house, though it was nowhere near as bright or warm as the fire roaring encouragingly on the hearth in the living room and the oven in the kitchen. Say one thing for Konohagakure: everybody might be on rations barely fit for two meals a day, and electricity and iron could sit at a premium, but there was always enough wood around to keep a fire burning.
A few months after Kyuubi's attack in the dying summer and winter had hit a stricken Konoha hard and fast. They'd barely gotten enough buildings up to shelter everybody from the weather and things just... everybody was running on empty. Especially the ninjas. They'd keep running too, long as it took to get the village through to spring and growing back the parts that had been crushed and burned and killed.
The parts you could grow back, anyway.
Rin's hand paused as he set out the bowls for dinner. Two; one for him and one for Kakami. It was such a tiny number. It wasn't four (hadn't been for coming on two years) and felt like less than half of three. Still, he'd saved up his rations and scratched up some ramen and Sensei would've liked...
And... he had to stop, couldn't be grieving when she got home. Which would be within the next two hours, because it had been a caravan job and those were predictable so long as they weren't attacked.
Kakami's would be fine. His had been fine when he got home at noon, hers would be fine when she got home around six. It just would.
He was telling himself that as he cleaned up the house, made it look and feel more like a home, and was almost set in believing it when there was a knock on the door. Kakami didn't knock. She walked in. And nobody visited.
Rin practially sprinted to the door, tore it open and felt every piece of him freeze when he saw who was standing on the other side.
The ninja who stared at him from a face already old and wrapped with bandages was impassive; her sole eye did not blink at the expression he surely must have made and quickly hid when he realized who was on his doorstep.
"Kiyoyama," she said, her voice as grey and impassive as her face, the bandages that concealed it, the dark robes that swathed her body. It had been some time since she'd last seen the boy, and he looked no better and no worse than any of the ninja in Konoha right now: exhausted, hungry, cold, and at the end of their limits. Had she any care for this? No. A leader of the village could not afford to spend too much time on the individual pieces. It was the big picture that mattered, as the Sandaime would no doubt see now that her pathetically poor choice in replacements had proven itself flawed.
She blinked, finally, just once, waiting an appropriately polite amount of time for a response. When none came, her eye flickered briefly to the room behind him, and then back. "We must speak, Kiyoyama. This may take some time."
Brown eyes locked on the one visible one looking down at him, Rin felt suddenly even more frightened than he had at the thought of who else might be at the door. The last time he'd looked Dai-sama in the eyes had been at the trial, and he quickly tore his own away when he realized, looking down for a moment before forcing himself to look back up.
He wasn't a coward, and she couldn't hurt him and even if she could...
Deferrence forced him to step aside, allowing her entrance to the house as she spoke. She was his senior a thousand times over and he was a soldier, he wouldn't leave her to stand in the cold. But his expression didn't remain still as she used his father and mother's name.
"Come in, Dai-sama," he said quietly, closing the door on the cold. "And please don't call me by that name."
He knew that she knew now as she had known those months ago, it wasn't his anymore.
"As you wish," she replied smoothly, and stepped inside.
The house wasn't much warmer than the air outside, but the fire did something to make things a bit more pleasant. At the very least, the walls cut the wind. Dai's eye naturally swept across the room available to her, storing the layout and the items at hand as any good ninja would, before returning her eye to her... host, as it were. If she felt anything about the bareness of the house, the meager availability of the food, the significance of the placements at the table, it was not displayed on her lined features.
"To the point then," she said, as he closed the door and faced her, a growing tenseness filling the air of the house. "The council has naturally been thrown in a disarray, and there has been... conversation... concerning the favor you received from the Yondaime. I'm certain you understand what I'm referring to?"
Rin's breath seemed to catch thick in his throat. Disbelief and sudden vulnerability clashed in his lungs. He hadn't thought, not for one tiny moment... everything that had happened and all he had thought about was Sensei and the village and the injured and his father and Kakami and he hadn't thought about what losing his sensei had meant in terms other than love and grief.
He hadn't thought that when she died she took the protections she'd put in place for him with her. So many hours he had spent terrified, waiting in corridors and watching the faces of the council and elders and wondering what would happen to him because he'd done what Obiko asked him to do.
Well he may have been terrified then, but he'd been unrepentant too - and that had not changed. Rin looked up at Councilwoman Dai and tried not to flinch.
"She wasn't doing me a favour," he answered back. "Yondaime-sama was making clear what she deemed to be right."
Defiant, then and always, it appeared. Dai was not certain, entirely, if she approved of his spine or if she was annoyed by his (and his predecesor's) insistance upon right and wrong as opposed to what served their village best. She supposed approving of his spine was better than approving of nothing at all.
"The Hokage of Konoha is not supposed to rule on right and wrong," she observed, voice milder than it possibly should have been. "The Hokage is supposed to uphold the laws and enforce them where they apply, rather than decided to exclude one case just because she felt it was 'right.' You broke multiple laws, shinobi. Had it been anyone other than you, anyone that was not on her team, do you think they would have escaped punishment? These are the words being spoken in the council. They are the ones that believe she chose to ignore the laws and spare you when you should not have been. Perhaps you should begin considering your argument for when the council convenes and decides whether to try you again."
"I didn't escape punishment!" Rin snapped out, voice far less level than the old woman stating these facts to him. He didn't mean to, he didn't, but the way she talked about it - kept dragging it into his mind over and over. Ashamed as he was of himself for it, Rin wanted to forget if only for a little while, what he'd done and this had finally been the start of doing that...
"My best friend died."
...a false start, it seemed now. He'd never be able to put this behind him: it defined who he was now. A healer who could and did make terrible things happen to people he loved.
He took a breath, trying to steady himself. He didn't have any safety net now, nobody to pick him up and take him someplace safe, nobody to make people stop coming after him. He looked away from Dai to the fireplace, and realized that not even in his own home did he have a safe place.
"Doesn't the council have anything better to do with its time?" he asked tightly.
She chose not to respond to his display of anger. He'd lost a friend? How quaint. Welcome to the life of a ninja. Take a number and stand in line, for there were many more shinobi who'd come and gone and far more that would come in the future who had the same complaint. Pathetic, really; her approval of his spine was dampened by his emotion. Surely he would have had this stripped by now, had he been raised correctly...
"Of course." Her eye tracked his every move, intensely focused despite the slack emotionless face that housed it. "Judging criminals comes after designating funds to repair the village. As the council currently cannot make any further decisions until we receive word back from our allies, they have turned their eyes to other concerns. Namely you."
Her chin tipped up slightly, as though to look down upon the younger ninja. "They will be convening within the week."
It was with that superior look cast down at him that Rin belatedly realized what was happening. A hot sick feeling flooded in his chest but he didn't look away. He knew his eyes always gave away what he was feeling and he didn't care, he didn't care he wanted her to see what was on his mind.
He wasn't fool enough to tell her to take a straight walk off the Palace's round roof. But she could feel free to infer it.
"What's going to happen to me if they do what you want?" he asked quietly, hands fisting at his sides. Terrified of the answer and trying so hard not to let it show.
She could have responded to his insinuation that she was engineering this whole mess, but gracefully let it slide by her. His accusations were not important here.
"I do not know," the older woman said in reply. "The council makes its decisions through a democratic vote and comes to a consensus after the judgement has been made. Likely you will have your status revoked. They may possibly take your license to practice away. Imprisonment is not unlikely."
Dai lowered her chin then, thoughtfully, her dark eye finally disengaging from his to glance over the table. Two sets of dishes put out, waiting only for the second person to arrive - someone who was most definitely not her. "Considering the requests made during the original trial, there may also be terms applied to Hatake. They may choose to take the eye." Her gaze flicked back up to his once more. "It is not my decision, but the council's as a whole. I'm certain you know how the whole process works."
Rin's fourteen-year-old heart was sinking with every possibility Dai gave voice to. Lose his rank. Lose his licence to practice medicine, to heal. Lose his freedom... no, no he'd lose his ability to be here for Kakami. He wouldn't be able to take care of her, to be beside her, to do things like - like make her dinner and have a bed and a fire ready for her and to get through to her when she couldn't be left on her own...
Forget sinking. His heart was starting to flutter like a trapped bird. This couldn't happen, he had responsibilities, he had to, he couldn't and he--
And then she mentioned taking the sharingan eye and Rin knew he was trapped. Completely and for the rest of his life. So long as this woman or her people wanted to they could destroy or use him however they wanted. And he'd let them.
If they took the Sharingan out of Kakami's head she'd probably die. The only two people who knew that were him and the woman who had just threatened to let it happen; because she had seen what he had done through her genjutsu in his head... and she knew enough. Rin had been forbidden by his sensei, by the medical councils, by everybody to ever speak of what he'd done, never mind how he had achieved it. This was his kinjutsu. This was his sin and his secret. Or so they thought.
He bowed his head. Submissive. Beaten.
"Please, Dai-sama, what do I have to do to stop them taking the sharingan?"
Begging, if that was what she wanted.
If she were the sort of person who found satisfaction in having control over others, having their lives in the palm of her hand, she might have smiled. She might have named a price. As he stood right now, it was clear he'd do whatever he could to keep the eye from being taken from the Hatake, even at the cost of, perhaps, his own life. It was clear to everyone in this room that she had the upper hand.
But what Dai had first in her mind, before everything else, despite what others might say, was the overall good of the village.
She blinked and took a breath, looking away from the boy and back around his home again. Taking it in. It was a quaint little place, as one would expect from any of the sort his family had been - peace loving fools. Kiyoyama - Rin - was a peace loving fool as well, but the sort to fight for it as opposed to his father. That, if nothing else, commanded a modicum of respect. If nothing else.
"There is nothing you can do," she said finally, "if they choose to take it from her. Sandaime-sama will surely vote not to, but even she can do nothing if the vote sways against her. Hatake is valuable to the safety of the village at the moment, but even her value can come to an end if she is deemed not worth the risk."
Dai looked back at the boy standing submissive before her. "Is the eye she holds in her head and the knowledge you have to transplant such a thing worth that risk? Even the Hyuuga worry behind their walls about what such a thing could do should you be captured and successfully interrogated. I must keep those risks in mind when I cast my vote as well. Do you understand that in such a time as this, I must keep Konoha's safety in mind above everything and everyone else, even if it requires sacrifice? Especially if it requires sacrifice."
Rin didn't lift his head for a long time. He could academically appreciate what this woman was saying, what she obviously believed; but the feel of every word was poison to him. When they forgot that they were each individually worth fighting for, they no longer had a reason to fight. Rin had believed that all his life, Obiko had believed it to her death, and Sensei had never disabused either of them of that fact. Even Kakami understood it now. It didn't mean they'd refuse to sacrifice; it meant they knew why they were doing it.
Maybe that was why the Councilwoman hated them all enough to do this. Shinobi were meant to be tools. Tools didn't know why they did what they did. Irregardless, Rin knew he didn't have a choice. He just didn't.
He'd already been asked these questions so many times. Did he know what he'd done? Yes he did. He knew exactly what he'd done. So whatever she wanted, she could have. But not for nothing.
"I understand, Dai-sama. But, Kakami is blameless in all of this. Nobody can take that eye intact from her, you saw that. She's not any more dangerous to the sharingan's secrets than any Uchiha," Rin said, eyes down but voice steady. "It's me who's a danger and it's me who's a risk. Just please, leave her be. I know the Uchiha are angry but that's not enough reason." He finally looked up, feeling so small and so frightened that realizing that scared him half to death alone. "Don't let them take it out on her, please."
Contrary to how it may appear, the councilwoman did not get any joy out of making Rin beg. It was, instead, a sad thing, that a ninja would beg; it was a weakness, a sign that he could be easily manipulated. A sign that should anyone else get their claws into him, he would fold far, far too easily.
Konoha was so weak. She would not make it weaker.
"If you are a risk," she said, voice flat and level, not edging into coldness as she wished it to, "then the applications of your risk must be minimized in order to continue your use. If you are a risk, then you should not be in charge of the next generation. Give your word that you will not take custody of any children, including the kyuubi vessel and any potential genin teams, and I will vote for you and for the Hatake in the council meeting. I cannot do any more than that."
Rin was silent. His eyes lowered again, and his resolve to keep up some kind of strength meeting the Councilwoman's gaze evaporated as though it had never been. Instead his line of sight focussed on the floorboards, and didn't shift. He made sure not to look up, because his eyes declared too clearly what was running repeatedly through his mind.
You bitch.
He had gone two days ago to ask about adopting baby Naruko. Put his name down on the records for her. Gotten to sit and hold her, and laugh quietly at the little baby noises she made. They'd said he had to wait til he was eighteen, of course, but that was... by then he figured he could stay at home. Work in the hospital. Be there for dinners and... and bedtimes... and things; and she'd be four years old. Old enough to care. Old enough to know she needed somebody. Rin didn't know if he'd manage it; didn't know if he'd live that long, or if he'd be any kind of a good parent for her... but she was Sensei's baby girl and that made her family. He was going to try.
Kakami didn't know. They hadn't talked about it. Hadn't talked about her. Could barely mention Minako herself without it just being too stressful to bear. But in a few months, in a year, it wouldn't be so impossible and he knew she'd have something to say. Maybe even...
Rin didn't want to admit what he didn't dare to feel too strongly: that he hoped Naruko would give Kakami some kind of hope for the future, if this worked out. She already did that for Rin; even if it hurt at the same time. And this... this atrocious, cruel woman wanted to take that away. Take him away from Naruko too, somebody who'd care about her... what if nobody else would... oh gods.
He felt sick. But all he did was let his eyes trace over and over the whorl of wood on the floorboard. The little whirlpool of woodgrains, pulling him in. It was too late. He was already trapped. Here was his choice: Kakami or Naruko. With Dai's support, there was a better chance Kakami would be safe. Without it... not even Sarutobi-sama could save them if the Hyuuga and the Uchiha weren't checked by the opposition's voice too. Kakami or Naruko.
...you bitch.
He lifted his eyes away from the floor and looked at Dai's crinkled old one. His voice was quiet, and clear, and suddenly cold in his throat.
"I promise."
The time he took to respond to the demand indicated just how heavily he weighed his decision. Good; she would be disappointed if he made a snap decision based on his emotions, rather than cold hard facts. Perhaps he could still grow to be a decent ninja, if not a formidable one. A decent doctor, if there was no better use for him.
"Then I will do as we discussed." Thin, wirey hands emerged from from the sleeves of her robes, long enough to tuck them into the opposite sleeve for further warms. "I will send word when the council has made its decision."
There was no further reason to tarry. Dai turned and took the few steps back necessary to reach his door, glancing back at the young man she'd just ruined the future of, and with no more thought than the flicker of an eyelid. "Enjoy your dinner, Kiyoyama."
And then she let herself outside, and was gone.