Naruto Oneshots

C O M F O R T (Kakashi Hatake)

It was one of those nights again. The kind of night where the past creeps into your head and it leaves you questioning if you had done something different than maybe the outcome would have been different. No matter how hard she tried, death has never been something Chiyoko could quite get used to. Ever since the massacre of her clan she wanted more for her siblings.

If she could take away the pain they harbored because of the massacre then she would do so in a heartbeat. She frowned as she remembered their distraught faces so clearly. They witnessed it all firsthand as Hidan maniacally killed off each member one by one. At such young ages they had nothing to do but to hide up in the treehouse and hope to god he didn't get them.

If Chiyoko could have lived out the situation for them, she would do so in a heartbeat.
But because she couldn't, she vowed to protect and take care of them for as long as they needed. No matter what she did, they always came first.

With a light sigh, she opened the door leading to Benjiro and Akemi's room. Her emerald greens softened as she gazed down at their sleeping faces. It had taken a long time for them to become genuinely happy, but they made it. Chiyoko meant to go for a midnight walk in the hills of Kohana but at times like this she struggled with leaving them alone.

"Give them their space, let them be kids!" she remembered her friend Tsume scold her. And so she closed the door, leaving them be. There was no denying that ever since they settled in the leaf, she knew they had a safe space to sleep.

Moonlight illuminated her long snowy locks and a quiet wind tossed them separate ways. As she trudged up the rolling hills of Kohana, her father's face came to mind. She would often find herself doing things that reminded her of her family. Even though it was overwhelmingly bittersweet, she felt she had to do so in order to keep the good memories of them alive.

"Only the forgotten are truly dead." she would tell Akemi and Benjiro. When they first settled in their home, they often got into fights with Chiyoko because she would decorate the house with things that reminded them of their family or continue to speak good memories of them. But she had learned many things from her family and she couldn't allow herself to just forget them because they were gone now. She felt by doing the things they taught her it honored their life.

She understood how intrusive the simple thought of their family could be to them, after what they had experienced, so she never pushed the issue. But the older Akemi and Benjiro became, the more they grew to understand what she was trying to tell them. In a sense, forgetting their family would be letting Hidan win and they wouldn't have that.

At times like this, Chiyoko wished her friend Itachi could be here to talk to. He was the kind of person that could listen and understand her thoughts more easily than she could sometimes. Like right now for instance, she had no clue why she decided to climb the largest hill in Kohana alone when she hated being alone.

He would always tell her that if he couldn't find her this was his first place he'd look. For someone younger than her, he was always right too. So why did he have to leave the village the way he did?

She knew he had his reasons for doing so, in fact she could clearly remember the day he warned her about the event. She just didn't understand the reason why the life of a ninja was so complex and full of peril. But she believed wholeheartedly, that Itachi's reasons for doing what he did was for the common good.

And so she continued on with her study of Medical Ninjutsu for the common good as well. It was the Abe Clan's legacy to do so and they were named the Clan of Peace for a reason. For they had a special Kekkei Genkai that allowed them to bring back 7 people from the dead. But nothing comes without a price and using this Kekkei Genkai takes off 5 years of the user's life.

The remarkable thing about the Abe clan was that they are known for their long lives. Some have been known to live up to 115 years old. So Chiyoko figured that for as many lives that were taken in battle, she would do her very best to save.