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1. Wakana’s second daughter came into the world howling, and it seemed like she’d never stop. Yoko was nothing like her siblings. She refused to be held, refused to be touched, refused to nurse. For the first two months of Yoko’s life, she lived in the neonatal ward of the hospital, born too early with underdeveloped lungs. Wakana wonders if that is why her daughter is so alien to her, if something about those two months damaged something in her child.
Yoko only ceases screaming when asleep. Wakana can’t take it. Yoko’s siblings can’t take it. Wakana’s husband can barely take it, and he is out on missions six days out of seven. It’s hard to love a child like Yoko. Some days Wakana can barely manage to tolerate Yoko, and it makes her feel sick with guilt.
If she were a better mother, if she had taken her pregnancy leave earlier, if just one of a thousand things were different, maybe Wakana’s daughter would be different. But they’re not, and she’s not, and Yoko is as alien to Wakana as the far side of the moon.
***
2. “This is the fifth time this week,” Hana chides as she disinfects Yoko’s sliced-up hands. The academy student shrugs.
“Daisuke is ruining my kunei because he’s mad I outscored him on the mid-semester review,” she says. “He’ll get bored in another week or two.”
Hana sighed. She’d had this conversation with Yoko before. “You should tell your teacher, Yoko-chan.”
Yoko winced, the first sign of pain Hana had seen from her. Eight years old and already as stoic as hardened shinobi. Hana didn’t know how the Uchiha produce these children.
“I don’t have proof, Hana-sensei. It hardly matters, anyway.” Yoko looks up at her, black eyes fathomless. “He’ll learn, or he won’t. Same as me. I don’t care to indulge a bully with attention. Can I go?”
“Of course, Yoko-chan.” The girl nods solemnly, and slides off the infirmary cot.
Hana watches as the strangest child she’s ever met walks away, and shakes her head. That girl is going to get in over her head, sooner or later.
***
3. Yoko, Tsuyoshi decides, is weird. Really, really weird.
“Do you really need all those medical supplies? It’s only a week’s mission!” Tsuyoshi said, eying the extensive and tightly packed kit his teammate was fitting into her bag.
The eleven year old smiled, but it was a forced, awkward expression. “Anything can happen. I’d rather be prepared.”
“I’m beginning to think you don’t trust me, Yoko-chan,” Tanaka-sensei said. Yoko looked at him unreadably.
“I’m a ninja, Sensei. I don’t trust anybody,” she said after a long moment. “And I’m an Uchiha, so nobody trusts me.” She wiggles her fingers in the sign for ‘fox’, smiling a little when everyone winces.
Yoko uses her own clan’s bad reputation as a weapon, and Tsuyoshi doesn’t get how she can bear it. That’s Yoko, though, icily precise, and stranger than the sun rising in the west.
“Let’s just get going, shall we?” Tanaka-sensei sighs, and Tsuyoshi is only too glad to put aside the subject of his teammate.
***
4. The older Uchiha – Yoko, gender non-specific if you please, genin and nuknin of Konoha, eleven years old – seems perfectly content to wait in the holding cells forever. They can also, apparently, sleep through anything. As he’d seen when an uninformed department member had accidentally interrogated a prisoner in the room across from theirs. The toddler? Up and wailing, inconsolable. The genin, meanwhile, slept like the happy baby their brother wasn’t.
“It’s been a while since I’ve been safe,” Yoko says, when asked. Which makes him wonder if the Uchiha were secretly sacrificing children to some dark god, if this is their definition of safety.
It doesn’t matter, he supposes. Iwa has two Uchiha, and for that, the elder’s quirks can be overlooked. Even if those quirks are a bit creepy.
Besides, all the creepiness aside, it’s hard not to like the kid. They’ve got a purity of purpose a shinobi can’t help but admire, and well –
“Hello, Yamada-san,” Yoko greets, looking up from the book they’re pouring over. Their hair flops in their eyes, and their nails are currently a strange shade of lime green.
“Afternoon, Yoko. Ready for today’s debrief?” he asks.
They shrug and set their book aside. “Not sure what else I know that’s useful, but sure.”
– They’re pretty adorable.
***
5. Minoru loves Niinee-san, but he doesn’t understand them. They’re just – they’re Niinee-san. Alternately solemn and laughing, always with a story, a joke, a bit of advice that no one has ever heard before. They have nightmares about things they won’t talk about, and sometimes stay up all night watching the stars. The sharigan in their left eye is different from their right. Torture doesn’t faze them, but crows make them weep sometimes.
They left Konoha when they were eleven, carrying Minoru on their back, and sometimes Minoru dreams of that time. When Yoko wore the Konoha forehead protector they keep in the back of their closet. They cried every night, and Minoru doesn’t know if it’s memory or imagining that those tears were blood.
They are his Niinee-san, and his clan head. He would die for them. But he will never understand them, and he thinks maybe nobody ever will.
***
1. “Yoko, you little brat!” Shisui shouts, chasing after their laughing, ink-covered cousin. “Itachi, get over here and help me!”
“I think I’ll stay here, actually. I’m watching something funny, you see,” Itachi says, looking up from his book. Yoko darts under Shisui’s arm a third time, and dashes up to the porch to give Itachi an inky kiss on the cheek.
“Now I’ve got you, you little monster,” Shisui growls. The affect is spoiled by his helpless grin.
“Oops. Gotta go! Thanks, ‘Tachi-nii,” Yoko shouts over their shoulder, before substituting themselves with a nearby log. Shisui curses and starts running again.
Itachi smiles. “Anytime, Yoko.”
Yoko giggles from behind him. “Hundred ryou says he doesn’t figure it out for another ten minutes.”
“Have some faith in your brother. Eight minutes.”