Chapter Text
The sounds of Konoha waking up were almost like a gentle lull with the brightening of the sky and the murmur of voices and the scuffs of sandles against the odd mixture of hard packed dirt and well worn cobblestones. A gentle breeze carrying the warning of a hot day and happy fluffy clouds drifting in the sky. If one could ignore the early hour and that the only people about were merchants setting up for the day and wandering shinobi, then perhaps it would be considered worth waking up to the calm quiet before the streets filled with chattering civilians.
Shikamaru did not appreciate the early hour and he would not appreciate the calm because his mother had woken him up , demanding he be less lazy and do chores of all things.
So, with all the smart thinking his still sleepy brain could do as a five year old rudely yanked from his happy sleep and warm bed, he had stated he was following his dad to work.
Which put him where he was now.
Shikaku smirked down at his son as the pair entered the Hokage tower and began the trek up the stairs. Shikamaru ignored his dads expression and sighed heavily, hands shoved in the pockets of his shorts, and slouched down, grumbling at the amount of stairs he had to take just to get away from his mothers endless nagging. He didn't want to do chores around the house and she wouldn't let him tend the deer without an adult stopping him from taking a nap because his thoughts just wouldn't stop and he only knew that naps made them stop. Which she didn't get and he couldn't be bothered with the effort it took to explain something so obviously simple.
His dad steered him towards the Hokage's office doors with a firm hold of his shoulder which made him straighten up from the heavy slouch. He sighed again and resigned himself to boring old people talk that maybe he could sneak a nap into.
The doors opened as the pair stepped in and Shikamaru glanced around the office with half open eyes. The Hokage sat behind his desk as always, the surface littered with scrolls and piles of mission reports, talking to a man with long wild white hair and red lines down his cheeks who stood next to the desk and seemed completely at ease and familiar with the old man. In the left corner by the windows a small girl was seated on the floor surrounded with random pieces of paper as she drew on them with what looked like a brand new crayon. Shoulder length hair a shade of red so dark that the half not lit in the rising sun almost looked black mostly obscured her face. Well-worn clothes that looked like they had seen better days and far too much sun caught his curiosity when he realised that the skin of her hands and forearms were too pale for the clothes to be her own.
"Ah, Shikaku," the Hokage greeted with a smile that didn't meet his eyes and told Shikamaru that something had happened and perfectly explained his dads initial hesitance to let him come along. "Thank you for coming so quickly this early. I'm afraid Jiraiya is on a tight schedule."
"Not a problem Hokage-sama," Shikaku replied. "Jiraiya-sama, I take that this visit wasn't a planned trip."
The man with the white hair rubbed a hand over his face and sighed heavily. Shikamaru glanced over the trio of adults with curious eyes for a moment before his gaze was drawn back to the unknown girl. Wrinkling his nose at the choice between listening in to whatever this meeting was about and sitting in the square of sun by the girl, he decided he didn't want more thoughts bouncing around his mind this early in the morning. With a glance up at his dad, Shikamaru shuffled his way over to that tempting square of sun by a window that would let him watch the happy clouds and plopped himself down next to the girl.
"Two of my contacts were taken out a few days ago," Jiraiya told Shikaku in a heavy voice. "I'm not sure who did it, but I'm pretty sure their identities were the reason for it. Their daughter saw it happen but I haven't been able to get more than a few words out of her."
"She saw?" Shikaku's voice was tightly laced with a mixture of anger and surprise.
Shikamaru blinked and glanced at the girl beside him from the corner of his eye. She didn't show any sign of listening to the conversation, although logically and rather obviously she had probably heard something similar if she had been here the whole time. Which meant she was more than likely the daughter they were talking about.
The girl kept drawing on the paper before her, which was not covered in random childish doodles, but instead by swirling lines and symbols forming odd shapes that had both order and chaos to Shikamaru's curious gaze. He let his eyes flick from paper to paper before he looked back up at her face. This close he was able to see more of her features and took in the pale skin of her face through her hair, noting the blank expression he could make out. She was probably around his age, unless she was just very small for her actual age, and it prompted the memory of his mothers annoying nagging that he should be less lazy and actually introduce himself to kids so he didn't seem arrogant.
Because apparently he had to care about what other kids thought of him. Troublesome .
He turned a little to face the girl and drew in a breath, focusing on trying to make his voice sound equal parts polite and inviting. "Hi! My name's Shikamaru, who are you?" He winced a little as his tone dropped back into his usual one. His mother always snapped at him for sounding like he was halfway into a nap.
The girl paused for a single moment in her drawing before the crayon continued against the paper. She didn't lift her head, or show any other sign that she had heard him and he almost decided that speaking had been far too much effort and he should have just ignored her.
"Yuiko."
Her voice was tiny and quiet and filled with an unsure tone. Shikamaru paused and tilted his head to the side as a hundred thoughts zipped through his mind over why she sounded so strange over saying her own name and that maybe she had never been asked it or maybe even it wasn't her name and she was just playing with him but that couldn't be it when he noticed her tiny shoulders tense up even as her hand kept calmly drawing the lines and symbols and maybe he had sounded like it was too much effort-
Golden eyes darted up to look at him through hair painted red by the sun, briefly flashing before they lowered back down.
He blinked. The rushing thoughts had stopped. That...didn't happen often when his mind started analysing people and his surroundings. It didn't last longer than the few seconds it took for him to acknowledge it having even happened but still. It had happened .
He looked down at the drawings again and leaned forward to peer closer at them. They looked vaguely familiar, like he'd seen something like them but not them. "What are you drawing?"
The girl paused again, a little longer than the last time, before she set the crayon down and tilted her head to the side. Her hair slid away from her cheek, revealing her face a little more as he looked back at her. Golden eyes lifted and met his own brown but they looked empty and almost confused. Had he sounded wrong again? It was hard making himself sound what his mother called 'inviting' when all he wanted to do was flop back and enjoy the warm patch of sun and watch the happy clouds drift along and not have to think of how he sounded or pay attention to another person that he didn't even know .
"Seals."
One word in the same tiny voice that didn't match the empty eyes or the blank expression but somehow sounded more confident than when she said her name.
Wait. Seals?
"Like scrolls? The ones that you store stuff in?" Shikamaru's eyes widened slightly, making him look more awake and aware and not like he was about to fall asleep any second.
The girl nodded before looking over the papers spread before her and grabbing one to her right. She placed it in front of him and tapped a single finger in the middle of the symbols and lines. There was a tiny puff of smoke that quickly dissipated and revealed a single crayon now sitting on the paper. Shikamaru leaned forward and almost gaped. She'd drawn a storage seal on paper with a crayon and it had worked ?
"Jiraiya-sama, the girl knows sealing?" Shikaku's voice caught Shikamaru's attention and he looked up to see all three men watching. His dad looked vaguely impressed, the man with the white hair seemed distressed and the Hokage simply watched with a calm expression.
"Yeah," Jiraiya sighed out. He crossed his arms over his chest and frowned down at the girl. "I'm guessing her parents taught her some stuff. They knew a fair amount."
The girl beside Shikamaru flinched slightly and lowered her head. She picked the crayon back up and pulled a fresh sheet of paper in front of her, quickly beginning to draw again.
"Well, let me know what you figure out to do with her. I'll take this stuff over to Intelligence and let them sort through it," Shikaku sighed and looked at Shikamaru as he gestured to the door. Which meant they were leaving and he had promised to stay with his dad until he was home again. Or he somehow managed to be told to go away.
Shikamaru let out a huff and stood up, looking down at the girl who didn't even seem interested in looking up at him. "This stuff's cool. Bye."
He slouched over to his dad and followed him out of the office, glancing back once and meeting empty golden eyes with his own. He blinked and let out a sigh as the door closed and the pair began to make their way to where he knew his father's office was located. It meant no cloud watching but his mind was already whirling with thoughts about the girl and the few comments from the adults he'd bothered to pick up on.
"Dad."
Shikaku looked down at Shikamaru and raised one eyebrow in question. Shikamaru didn't look up from where his gaze had fallen to the floor as they walked, but he could practically feel his dad's eyes on him. He knew the answer to his question already, because it was obvious to him and the only logical answer but...he was still just a kid and he kind of wanted his dad to tell him he was wrong.
"That girl, Yuiko...she saw her parents die in front of her, didn't she?"
The heavy sigh that met his question had Shikamaru shrinking slightly. It was already an answer and it kind of explained the way the girl's expression had been so blank and her eyes so empty. He couldn't imagine seeing his parents die with his own eyes. His dad was an active jounin, and the Commander of the jounin ranks, so he knew that his dad could be killed out in the field at any time. He'd grown up in a clan full of active shinobi and sometimes they left and just never came back and he had known and understood for a couple of years now what that meant.
But still. His mother .
For all that the woman's nagging grated on his nerves and annoyed him to no end when she wouldn't just let him nap, there were plenty of times where she would gather him up and sit under a tree and tell him stories in a soft voice that never failed to lull him into sleep. He couldn't...he couldn't imagine watching her die.
"Yes son," Shikaku finally said in a softer tone than normal. "Jiraiya-sama was able to conclude that her parents were killed in front of her and that she saw it all. It's not something that any child should have to see."
His dad's voice was hard at the end and Shikamaru looked up to see the heavy look on the man's face. "Is she going to be okay?"
"Jiraiya-sama has decided to leave her in the care of Konoha and we will do all we can to ensure this doesn't damage her permanently. But until she speaks I'm not sure what we can do beyond making her comfortable and finding a Yamanaka she'd be willing to be helped by."
Shikamaru frowned. "She spoke to me. Two words but...that's a sign, right?"
Shikaku met his own gaze and gave him a smile that didn't do much to lift the sad look in his eyes. "It's a very good sign, son."
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Yuiko watched the other...child...leave the room. There was a flicker of wonder running through her thoughts, breaking apart the screams and pleading and laughter and cries and the sound of flesh tearing and bodies falling and-
She blinked, lowering her eyes back to the seals spread around her. The feel of wonder was still there, the memories playing on repeat hadn't managed to drown that out. She desperately held on to the feeling because this was...a new thing. She'd never met another child like herself. Living in the mountains in the cosy cabin with just her...
Her hand shook.
Her eyes darted over the seals before they landed on the storage seal she'd shown the other child, the crayon once sealed inside still sitting on top of the paper. The child had said her seals were cool, they had seemed genuinely interested if the way they had leaned forward, brown eyes wide, was an indication of the fact. That interest had caught her attention because seals had been a part of her life from her earliest memories and she found them soothing and comforting, especially now when she knew that she would never feel the warm squeezing hugs of her fa-
She blinked.
She felt cold. Alone. A small voice in the back of her head cried for the other child to come back, because she hadn't felt as alone and cold and she just wanted to stop. Stop the sounds of crying and screaming and blood hitting the floor and the thump of bodies falling and the cruel laughter that wouldn't stop and she couldn't breathe because they would find her and mother and father had said to be quiet and hide and she had hid and tried to cover her ears and not hear the yelling and begging and-
She blinked.
She stared down at the crayon she'd unsealed for the other child. A moment of curiosity sparked the question of if the other child was a girl like her or a boy. She remembered her...her...her mother...telling her that she was a girl and like her...her father was a man, there were children in the world who were boys. Was the child a boy? She had taken in the child at a quick glance, noting the clean clothes and the odd circle with a line on the sleeve that had been closest to her. But she'd also noticed the child had dark brown hair pulled back and up into a spikey looking ponytail and she thought that maybe that meant they were a girl like her?
They had told her a name as well, in a voice that had sounded almost forced but ended in a near sleepy tone. Shikamaru. Her thoughts whirled for a moment and the memories faded from the front of her mind. She didn't quite know what the name meant but her mind supplied the word 'deer' and she remembered the calm creatures who sometimes wandered by the cabin. She wondered if the child with a name like that would be as calm as the creatures she had loved to watch.
"Yuiko."
She paused her thoughts and glanced up before lowering her eyes again. The old man her parents had sometimes invited into the cabin was crouched before her, dark eyes looking down at her. He had been the one to find her as she sat hidden in the storage cupboard, surrounded by the familiar smell of scrolls and ink, and staring at her mo-
She blinked.
"Yuiko, Hokage-sama is going to find someone for you to stay with." The man spoke in a low voice, his words carefully spoken like he didn't think she would understand, or maybe like she would run away. She did understand. The man had already told her that he couldn't care for her, that he was taking her somewhere else. "You're going to be just fine here Yuiko-chan!"
She twitched at the falsely happy tone and gave a small, tiny nod. She looked again at the crayon and storage seal and felt that spark of wonder slip away as the screaming and crying and thumping and blood splashing and bodies falling-
She blinked.
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Asuma was not a man often surprised. He rolled with the punches and trip falls of life with an easy grin and the assurance that his heart was still beating. Oh sure he'd worked to get to that mindset but once he had it, life was simple. So when his father, Sarutobi Hiruzen, Sandaime Hokage of Konoha, told him with a grim look on his face that he was to house and care for a child, a five year old girl, he kinda felt like he'd been punched in the gut.
"What?"
Hiruzen gave a heavy sigh and leaned back in his chair. "Her name is Uzumaki Yuiko. Her parents were two of Jiraiya's contacts and were recently murdered. We believe that someone had worked out that they were survivors from Uzushio, and Jiraiya even believes that these people knew of the family branch the family belonged to."
"What?"
"Her family was apart of the branch of Uzumaki who specifically excel in combat sealing techniques," Hiruzen continued, not even noticing or realising that Asuma wasn't asking for that kind of information but more what the hell his father was thinking making him the one to care for a kid! "Of course, because of Uzushio's fall and knowing they couldn't use the name Uzumaki in public, they changed their name to, well, Uzu. Not very secretive of them!"
Asuma gave Hiruzen a blank stare. "Hokage-sama, I'm not caring for a kid who cries for mummy and daddy to come get her."
Hiruzen fixed him with a sad look. "I do not believe little Yuiko will do that."
With a scoff, Asuma rolled his eyes. "All kids do."
"Not ones who watched their parents be cut apart in front of them and sat barely a metre away from their mother's decapitated head for two days."
Asuma froze. The kid had watched? Had seen her parents' deaths? That...that meant heavy trauma for a kid of five. Sure if they had been born a shinobi and trained they'd be able to handle it better but he'd still seen the effects of that trauma in some of the other jounins who had fought as children in the last war. He couldn't take care of a traumatised civilian girl!
"She needs a shrink, not me, to care for her!"
"Inoichi is already looking for one of his clansmen to become Yuiko's therapist. This has been considered carefully. It was recommended she be placed with someone who is strong enough to make her feel safe but also calm enough so that she can begin to open up once she processes what has happened."
Asuma groaned and rubbed a hand over his face. "Do you think she's blocked the memory or something?"
Hiruzen slumped in his chair looking every bit his age. "Inoichi believes so. His current theory after visiting Yuiko is that the memories have been buried deep in her psyche. Eventually something may trigger her to remember but for now she may just be a socially awkward child raised in isolation."
Honestly this was sounding more and more complicated by the second and Asuma really really wanted to shake the old man and demand he find someone else. Anyone else.
"So," Asuma sighed, "you want me to take her home and what? Promise I'll keep her safe or some shit?"
"Language," Hiruzen gave a slight smile. "But no. Asuma, you just need to provide her with a home and someone she'll come to see as safe. That's the priority right now. After that we'll need to deal with other issues her heritage may present in the future."
"What does that even mean ?"
"As an Uzumaki, granted her family name has been changed to Uzu, she may eventually wish to find out if she has family somewhere. Jiraiya told me that her parents always taught her where they came from, who the family was, even left it all in a scroll with a blood seal," Hiruzen gestured at the medium sized scroll in front of his hands on the cluttered desk. "Due to the presence of another Uzumaki in the village, we must tread carefully."
Asuma groaned, "the jinchuuriki kid."
"Yes. Uzumaki Naruto may be from a different family branch but they are most likely very distant cousins. I don't want either child to interact but I also don't want her to grow up antagonistic towards Naruto."
"So, give the kid a home, make her feel safe and let the Yamanaka's deal with her inevitable freak out. Easy," Asuma snarked.
He really needed a smoke.
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Yuiko blinked as the door to the small room she'd been put in opened. No one had come in since the blonde man had tried to talk to her. She remembered him asking some rather odd questions that had her mind filled with the sounds she desperately wanted to stop. She'd only ended up ignoring him until he gave a soft sigh and left her alone in the room again.
She had picked up on what he had been searching for however. He wanted to know how much what she had heard had traumatised her. Because she was. Traumatised. She knew because she remembered her parents' words, how sometimes they screamed in their sleep, or how they would stare for hours unseeingly. She'd been far too young to understand then but her mother had sat her down with a new book and answered any questions she had over what that book contained. It explained mental trauma in great detail and how people reacted to tragic events. So she knew that her mind was trying its hardest to deal with what she had seen but she also knew that it was too soon and memories of screaming and the bodies hitting the floor and the sight of her mothers wide open terrified eyes on a face in a head no longer-
She blinked and curled her fingers into the scratchy material of the too big shirt she wore.
She raised her eyes up to look at the person who had opened the door and took in the beard and green vest and dark clothes and...red swirl.
Her eyes widened slightly at the sight of the familiar and yet unfamiliar swirl. She knew that the red swirl was on the covers of several books and scrolls she'd read; all of them to do with her parents homeland, Uzushio, or the overall family of Uzumaki. It wasn't her family's colour though, she knew that theirs was a deep shade of purple. But the sight of it sent a thin tendril of maybe safe through her thoughts.
"Hey kid," the man greeted her, almost seeming uncomfortable, like he had no idea what he was doing and she was some strange...thing. "Name's Asuma. Been told that you'll be living with me. I'm sorry to hear about your parents."
She tilted her head to the side and brushed away the memories that threatened to engulf her thoughts. No one had actually said that. He was sorry? Was that something people said? She'd never met anyone at the cabin except Jiraiya so...she had no idea why this man was apologising to her over something he had nothing to do with.
He pulled a hand out of a pocket on his pants and held it out to her, a grin on his face as he watched her with calm dark eyes. "Come on, let's get you to your new home."
She wondered, as she stood from where she'd been sitting on the small bed and stepped towards him, if maybe he knew where the child she had met the day before was. She hadn't seen the other child since and she missed the feeling of wonder they had briefly given her. Or maybe she missed the way the child's eyes had looked at her simple storage seal like it was some amazing thing. Because, thinking of that instead of the clawing memories, she had never seen someone look at a seal in such a way. Her parents had taught her and knew it all themselves and Jiraiya only ever spoke to her parents.
She raised a hand hesitantly and flicked her gaze up to the man's face. He was still smiling at her, his hand steadily held out and the red swirl still sitting on his upper arm. Her fingers touched his much larger palm, feeling the rough skin, and his own warm fingers curled closed around her much smaller hand.
For a moment a happy memory swam through the screaming ones and she remembered the feel of her fathers hand holding her own.
"Hey there kid, everything is going to be okay," the man said gently as he kneeled before her. His other hand came up and then he was gently brushing away the tears that fell down her cheeks.
Her eyes widened and she stared into the calm ones watching her. She didn't know when the tears had started or why she was crying. But this man was being gentle with them, even as his hand holding her own stayed warm and firm, grounding her in the moment and she didn't feel like she was falling anymore.
"I'm going to pick you up okay? And then I'll take you to my home and you can pick a room you like, is that alright?" His voice was low, a little rough, but it didn't grate on her suddenly sensitive hearing and he sounded so sure and... safe .
She gave a small nod and his free arm shifted around her and suddenly she was up, held securely against his front where his green vest felt rough and she absently noted that it would be hard to cut the material to make the item. She hesitantly laid her head on his shoulder, fingers of her free hand curling against the rough vest and the hand in his tightening her own weak hold.
He was warm and when he told her they were going, his voice rumbled in his chest. He had an odd smell to him, one that had her nose scrunching up but somehow seemed soothing. Her mind offered up the thought that she was associating the smell with him because he carried the red swirl and was therefore safe .
She let out a small sigh and closed her eyes against the bright world as he stepped into the sun. She was tired and afraid and full of memories that screamed and she knew she was broken and traumatised. But that was a problem for later Yuiko. Right now, she just wanted to be held.