Her Mask (Shikamaru x Oc)

Chapter Forty-Eight

Ibiki stared at the stairs as the three of them watched her disappear up them and they heard the light creak of her bed as she presumably sat on it.

Ibiki was concerned she’d never done something like that before, and something was definitely wrong.

Anko looked away from the stairs before the two men did. 

“Memories are a painful thing.” She muttered, getting Genma and Ibiki to look at her.

“What do you mean, Anko?” Genma asked trying to remember a time his partner in crime looked so… detached. 

But he couldn’t.

“...” Ibiki knew exactly what she’d meant.

He walked up the stairs silently and opened the girl’s door.

Her blood dripping onto the floor he walked in front of her, grabbing her wrists making her let of the blade causing it to clatter onto the hardwood floor. Her blood was on the bottom of his shoes.

He kneeled down in front of her causing her to look at him.

“What happened?”

He gently held her bloody hands so she couldn’t turn away from him and continue to leave him in the dark. But even with him kneeling in front of her she still didn’t answer him.

“Please tell me, there must be something I can do to help.”

“...I need to tell you something.”

“Anything.”

She pulled her right hand out of his grip and knocked her mask off her face showing her sad eyes.

“... I haven’t been completely truthful to you.” She stood up pulling her other hand out of his before walking over to the loose floorboard opening it up only after she wiped the blood off her hands.

She pulled out the pile of pictures scattering them onto her bed in front of Ibiki.

He lifted one of a younger Shingami and a slightly older boy.

“...I have a brother.”

Ibiki didn’t want to admit that he already knew, so he didn’t. “...This was the person you never wanted to talk about.”

“Yes.”

“Do you have any contact with him now?”

“No.”

“What happened between you and him?”

She stopped talking for a moment. “He left. Never told me where he’d gone.”

Ibiki realized that he’d unconsciously interrogated one of the only people that he would trust even if she had put a blade to his throat. He put the picture down on her bed not saying anything and held her hands again but the girl did not look at him.

“It’s alright, Shingami.”

The silence was something he’d became accustomed to but right at that moment it made his skin crawl for the first time in his life.

“Look at me.”

She did after a few moments and as she did Ibiki reached into his kunai pouch and pulled out a folded piece of paper.

____________

The man stood there holding nothing but an old wrinkled picture in his hand.

One corner was ripped along the top so only two of the four faces that were there could be seen.

Two women, one around the age of four and the other in her late twenties.  Both had the same long silver hair and gem-like magenta eyes that matched his own.

His mother and his little sister.

Both smiled the same: reserved and kind.

They both were wearing a white dress but the little girl had a white bow tied into her hair and the older woman had a white ribbon keeping her hair all in one place.

In his eyes, they looked like angels. Angels that could do no wrong in his life, for as long as he lived.

But the other two people in the image...

They were completely different from the two angels.

They were the two people he couldn’t stand most in his life.

The first one to the complete end of the picture was his father, a man that would always hurt his mother and his sister, a man that hurt him.

And the other person in the picture… was himself.

The man stood up after placing the picture on a dresser where it had always been the only clean space he’d ever leave everywhere else had things lying around.

He grabbed a bottle of alcohol and took a big swig enjoying the burning sensation in his throat and frowning at the warm feeling that came after in his chest.

He smashed the bottle on the floor walking over the glass not caring about the dull pain in his throbbing, cut-up, bloody feet.

He threw on his jacket and opened the door of his small house that was in the middle of the woods far away from the village.

This was his home, this was his mother’s home, this was his sister’s home.

He’d be damned if he would let anyone take it from him.

This was the place his sister was born, he remembered it like yesterday; her tiny fingers wrapped around his pointer finger, he was six years old that day and it was one of the most precious memories he had of his sister. It was the first time he’d ever saw her.

And his asshole father hadn’t even spared her a glance once he realized he had a daughter.

He was glad that the asshole was dead. He stopped walking.

Four years.

Four. Fucking. Years.

He hadn’t seen his sister in four years.

He pressed his back against a tree and slid to the ground.

He couldn’t help but wonder… Did she still like roses? Did she still like sweets? Did she still like the color white? Did she still remember him?

He pressed his palms against his eyes to try to stop the tears from streaming down his face.

Did she still know he loved her more than anything in the world? Did she know that there was nothing he wouldn’t do for her? Even if she hated him for the rest of her life?

“I love you so so much Shingami, and don’t you ever doubt that.”