061. ‘Winter.’

Snow was falling inside the courtyard, over the black koi pond glazed with ice, as Kumiko padded into the temple, strapping her coiled nin-wire to her belt with fumbling fingers, the winter cold slowing her reflexes.

Glaciers gleamed pale-white like stars at the tops of the black crags in the distance, their radiance muted by the gray, flat sky. Ravens crouched on the branches of the dead tree, coveting the fish in the pond.

She bowed to the caretakers as they left, feeling their veiled gazes slide over her, suspicious. Thank God for the ANBU mask: it saved her having to conceal her smile at the idea of her plan for Yugito.

She rapped on the door to Yugito’s room, stepping back as the thick metal slab swung outwards, Yugito blinking owlishly up at her.

“Hey there.”

“Hello,” Yugito said, before turning and sliding into her worn black jacket and stomping her feet into patched boots. ‘Black doesn’t suit her at all.’ With her pale coloring, she should have been wearing light blues or greens, not dulled black that sucked what little color she had out of her and made her look like some washed-out drawing, devoid of life.

But then it did make her appear intimidating, did teach conformity, and Kumiko wouldn’t put it past the Raikage to have planned her wardrobe to do exactly that.

She didn’t know how many people were really involved in planning the growth of Kumo’s weapon of war, but she had the sick feeling that it was rather a lot.

Kumiko propped the door open with her foot as Yugito left the windowless room before letting it swing shut, turning on her heel to follow Yugito past empty rooms full of the dust of ages, past broken crockery and rusted swords, past the lives that had once been lived here.

“Yesterday,” Yugito said slowly as the outer gates closed behind them, “you said… you had an idea?”

“Yeah!” Kumiko said, stuffing her gloved hands in her pockets as snowflakes drifted around them, “I do. I have a little brother named Kensuke.”

Yugito twisted to stare up at her, brow furrowed. “He’s in my class at school.” The last word practically dripped hatred. But then Yugito’s disdain for the Academy was very well-documented in all of the reports that had been made since she started her education. “He’s good with seals,” she added, sniffling, her nose cherry-red in the cold.

“He’d better be,” Kumiko muttered, her face kept warm by her mask, “considering all the times he made me read him that stupid book about them.”

They went over the first hill, past the pastures of Kumo’s warhorses, the spindly branches of leafless trees casting patterns of lacy shadows on the hardpacked road. “Anyway,” Kumiko went on, “he’s been having trouble with his kunai, and I told him to ask you about them, since you’re so good.”

It was annoying, having to be so careful about how she worded this: if she said that she’d basically ordered Kensuke to talk to her, then Yugito would get offended. But then again, adding praise into it made Yugito much more tractable.

It was terrible how far she was willing to go for praise, for acknowledgement.

Terrible and sad and a little bit frightening, all at once.

She knew that that, too, had been planned.

And she hated herself for using it.

“I’ll help him, then,” Yugito said, glancing up at the walls of Kumo above, her key to the gate glittering pewter around her thin wrist.

“Great! I’m sure he’ll appreciate it.”

“I hope so,” her charge muttered, opening the gate to the Academy yard.

“Trust me. He will.” She reached out and ruffled Yugito’s hair with a gloved hand before springing up into the treetops, leaving the little girl she loved to face another day like all the rest.

But hopefully today would be the beginning of something new.

Hopefully today Yugito would find a way to be more than a girl as unfeeling as winter, more than a weapon made to save them all at the expense of everything good.

Hopefully.