(Omake) Interlude: Those Left Behind, Redux​

"Uncle Joutarou!" the little boy shrieked in delight as he pelted down the gravel path away from the porch.

"A-haaa! How's my big strong ninja boy!" Joutarou responded, sweeping his nephew up into an overhead arc that was just fast enough to scare him a little bit.

"Eeeeeeek!"

"Jou-jou, be nice to the poor boy. Inoki, go set a place for your uncle," a dainty woman emerging from the house called softly.

"Yes momma!" the small redhead said, scampering off.

"Are you never going to give up on that nickname?" Joutarou groused as he swept his little sister up into a hug not entirely unlike the one he had just held her son in.

"Stop calling the mighty Joutarou the jounin Jou-jou? Never," she replied hugging him fiercely and stepping back. "It's good to see you. We had started to worry you'd gotten called away on short notice and had to cancel without telling us. Again."

"I have gotten called away on short notice, actually, but my route and the missions schedule lined up well enough that I can spare dinner."

"Well, good. I know Katsu has a bottle of sake he's been saving for the next time the two of you got to play shogi."

"Oh, I don't know if I'll be able to stay that long afterwards...."

"He says it's very good sake."

"Ha! I can't very well say no to good sake from your generous husband! You're a shrew of a woman, Mai. How about this, I'll come straight here after this mission -- it's just escorting some civilians -- and then I'll beat Katsu at all the shogi he can handle."

"Good! You need to spend more time here in any case, though. Inoki's been asking for more of your heroic shinobi bedtime stories."

-o-​

"Momma, what's that? Is it a present from Uncle? Is it for me?" Inoki asked excitedly, dancing around Mai's legs after the black-cloaked man had disappeared down the path away from the porch.

Mai stood silently, a long box under one arm, hand over her mouth, holding a piece of paper. She sank to her knees and hugged her boy tightly.

"Momma? Momma why are you crying?"

She handed him the box -- it was his now, after all -- and read for him from the now tear-stained page:

"'My sword is to go to my nephew Inoki. I know you will go on to do great things with it, you brave boy. Take care of your momma for me now that I'm gone.'"

Hamasaki Mai wept for her brother.

Kurosawa Hana awoke with a start. She sat up slowly, the side of of her face sticking to the bar from the dried sake, and looked around blearily. Given how empty Kurohige's bar was, Ken had been kind enough to let her sleep past closing time -- again -- and Suki hadn't come to get her, so it wasn't morning yet. More than anything she wanted to put her head back down and go back to dreaming -- it had been a nice one, about Hazou like all of them were now, all grown up, coming back to Mist with a beautiful, strong woman under one arm and a son of his own under the other, tall and strong and handsome and funny exactly like his Poppa had been.

Feeling herself start crying again, she grabbed the bottle next to her, only to find it empty.

She swatted it across the room, shattering it, as much in frustration towards the lack of liquor as in disgust for herself. She made a sorry sight, and she knew it. Nine months since Hazou's death, and she hadn't made the first stride towards dealing with it. Instead, she'd sunk into a fog of hopelessness and helplessness that kept her from picking up all but the most basic missions and dependent on the bottle for solace. Three months ago she'd had to sell the house -- Shinji's house! -- to cover the bills, and only had a place to live now because her old teammate Suki was entirely too kind a person to have survived being a shinobi as long as she had.

Shame and guilt welled up in her chest, like her heart was being twisted around inside her by a knife, and she collapsed on the bar to add her tears to the dried sake.

-o-​

Twelve hours and a mumbled explanation to Suki later, Hana was back. The lunchtime regulars had just started to come in, and she was able to lose herself in the underlying currents of unease and loss the veterans carried around with them. Nowadays, being around others who were miserable was the only time she didn't feel alone, and she relished the small comfort.

"--with a big group of our traitors who caused a shitstorm in the Hot Springs DMZ. He left this morning."

The words cut through the fog that had been her constant companion for months. Mist defectors, in a large group? What if... no, that was ridiculous, all of the other traitors from the Death Swamp had sworn Hazou's team had died. Preemptive suicide to avoid capture by Zabuza, or going up against chakra monsters too big for them, but everyone who'd been interrogated agreed they hadn't been seen for a week ahead of the joint Water/Fire task force's assault.

But something in her heart insisted she ask. There weren't any other large groups that had split from the Mist power structure in recent memory, so unless all the other solo operatives had managed to coordinate into a big group... and nobody had actually seen a body....

Hana sprang up unsteadily and practically ran over to the older woman who had spoken, stumbling along the way. What was her name? Mari? Maya? No, Mayu, that was it. Worked at the missions office. Baked ginger snaps for all the new chuunin every year. "Mayu. Mayu, who are you talking about?"

"Kami, Hana is that you? You look terrib--"

"Who are you talking about?", Hana insisted, throwing courtesy to the wind.

Gently, Mayu reached out and guided the younger woman to a chair next to her. "Captain Zabuza," she answered calmly. "He was dispatched earlier today. Something about a report of several Mist traitors in Hot Springs, who apparently caused a huge incident."

"How we know they were ours?"

"One of them had a Wakahisa barrel. Supposedly. Yagura of course immediately boiled over and ordered the Captain to investigate."

Hana nodded numbly. There had been a Wakahisa along on Haozu's mission, she was pretty sure. Maybe... just maybe....

"Hana... oh, Hana, I know what you're thinking, dear, but please don't get your hopes up. It probably isn't H-- him, and if it was, he'd probably be better off at peace already than with Zabuza after him. Please, for your own health, Hana, you need to start letting go. Your son wouldn't want this for you, and neither would your husband."

Hana nodded absently and headed back to Suki's.

-o-​

The ANBU officers knocking on her door was the happiest thing that had happened to Hana in nearly a year, an irony which wasn't lost on her. She would have gone with them willingly anyway -- you couldn't exactly say no to the Interrogation department -- but from what little of their body language she could read they seemed almost put off by her enthusiasm.

Back to the dark room with the blinding light in her face, the same tattooed hand scraping and tapping the desk in front of her. The same questions as last time, to which she gave the same answers, immediately, hoping to get through to the part where they might tell her something, anything at all, about her Hazou.

"And when did your son begin to contact you after his defection?" the soft voice that didn't match the craggy, tapping hand was asking.

"Huh, ah, buh?" Hana answered, stumbling in her previously automatic responses. "I'm sorry, could you repeat that?"

"When. Did your son. Contact you?" the interrogator asked as if Hana was a moron, their voice growing less amicable with every word.

"I haven't heard from my son since he left with the Noodle task force," she answered honestly. "I didn't even think he was alive until today!"

"I see. And what makes you think he's alive?" The coldness of the voice cut to Hana's bones. Had this all been some cruel psychological ploy, to judge how she would respond to the news before telling her?

"I... heard Captain Zabuza had been sent after a whole group of traitors. I couldn't think of anyone that could refer to except the group Hazou was with. And then your agents knocked on my door again, after all this time."

A sigh from across the table. Hana winced internally, hoping she hadn't managed to get Mayu in trouble. "The classified information you appear to have obtained" -- the threat there was clear -- "is accurate. We received reports last night of a group whose composition largely matched several members of the Swamp of Death defectors whose deaths were never firmly established."

The sound of a piece of paper being pulled from an envelope. "'Young female ranged weapons figter. Short, stout male Water Whip jutsu user with a barrel on his back. Red-haired genjutsu user, young twenties woman. Girl and boy using chunin-level taijutsu, boy had an Earth affinity.' These match, approximately, Mori Keiko, Wakahisa Noburi, Inoue Mari, an unknown party member... and your son."

Hana was silent, hardly daring to breathe. Chunin level? At thirteen? That was fairly extraordinary, even for an Iron Nerve wielder. To have survived to this point even more so. At some level she couldn't help but to feel vindication about her choice of husband, her skills as a mother, to have brought up a boy like Hazou.

"The group ended up lighting several square kilometers of Fire on fire as a diversionary tactic," the interrogator continued, with a smirk in their voice at the irony, "and escaped. Your son and his teammates have proven remarkably skilled and resourceful, Kurosawa. Their rapid growth speaks volumes about their potential, to say nothing of being wielders of bloodlines from well-respected families, and interrogations of other other members of the traitor force unanimously agree they were essentially forced at kunai-point to defect along with their superior officers. Under the circumstances, I believe the Mizukage is much more likely than average to be forgiving."

The voice in the darkness almost managed to sound concerned and empathetic. Hana didn't believe it for a single fucking second.

"Before we finish up here, I would remind you that it is your duty as a jounin of Mist that if your son ever does make contact with you, you are to do everything in your power to get him and his team to return voluntarily for the best chance of being granted leniency -- a chance that goes down as time goes on -- and to report it to the ANBU office immediately."

Ah, there it was. The cold-blooded threat Hana had been expecting. She nodded silently, and then rose slowly to leave, mind churning like the the rapids by the clan's summer home on the side of Mount Shiori.

-o-​

Suki looked up from making dinner as Hana shut the door behind her. She almost asked what had happened, but seemed to think better of it as Hana walked over to the bottle she had left on the low table earlier that day.

Hana took a kind of fierce pleasure in Suki's shocked expression when she grabbed the half-full bottle, walked over to the sink, and poured it down the drain.

"Save some for me?" Hana asked, grabbing her lightly dust-covered rucksack of gear and nodding to the noodles Suki was frying up. "I'm going to the dojo, I'll be back later." She closed the door on Suki's mute nodding.

As Hana walked down the stairs and took off jogging down the streets, she felt something settle at the base of her spine that she hadn't felt for all those long months, something that made her stand up straighter. Resolve.

If Hazou’s still out there fighting to survive, how can I do anything less? And if he did contact her... well, she was going to be ready.