Interlude: Courage to Face Oneself
A/N: I like both of the winning plans, so I definitely want to write something from them. However, I've been working on this since last week and the timing is perfect, so please expect the rest to come later.
-o-
October 31, 1070 AS.
Kei trudged grudgingly through the snow. There were so many places she would rather be at this moment. She could be in the shared bedroom, watching Tenten sleep as she recovered from her night-time mission. She could be playing with Jūchi Yosamu, who deserved a more attentive master (and Snowflake was forced to limit their play sessions since they had a tendency to consume her entire day, even with the Pangolin Conditioning Technique). More realistically, she could be enjoying a walk with Fujisawa as she briefed her on time-sensitive issues to address during Kei's absence for Operation Murdersnout. At worst, she could be curled up at the office with a mug of honey tea as she processed overdue expenditure reports.
(Kei could not fathom why Hazō so loathed the things. They were composed of
numbers! Numbers did not require coaxing or cajoling into action. They did not overextend themselves in ill-judged efforts to impress you, nor override your judgement in the belief that theirs was superior. They did not take offence at phrasing that should by all rights have been innocuous, nor at perceived references to details of their private lives that no one could possibly have been expected to know except perhaps Ami. They did not waste working hours and disrupt the flow of labour with amorous encounters, or violent ones, or violently amorous ones, which were
highly distracting unacceptable in a professional environment, or amorously violent ones, which landed them before an instant tribunal in an organisation run by two women and one man sensible enough to listen to them.)
Alas, Ami's wisdom was both immaculate and guaranteed to promote Kei's welfare, and as a rational being, that meant Kei could not ignore it. She would face Mari, Mari would fail to sustain whatever element of her behaviour had so earned Ami's trust, and Kei would return home with Tenten unwatched, Jūchi Yosamu unplayed with, Fujisawa unbriefed, and honey tea undrunk.
This time, at least, no daring feats of evading Hazō were required (not that there was any specific need to evade him today, but Kei was in a general state of tension and Hazō was Hazō, and she
was attempting to moderate the frequency of her death threats). Rather, she was able to proceed into the compound with no greater altercation than an exchange of greetings with a harried-looking Noburi as he fled for the hospital, presumably entire minutes late for his meeting with Tsunade. You could not pay Kei to take his place.
(She supposed this was technically untrue. Insofar as Uplift was accomplished less by good intentions and more by intelligent investment, there was presumably some sum that would be of more benefit to the world than Kei's continued survival. Unfortunately, that was as far as she could proceed, as an entire cadre of trustworthy people assured her that her ability to estimate the value of her own life was woefully lacking.)
Aside from Noburi and the attendant visions of her own demise, which she had thus far evaded by leaving all necessary contact with Tsunade to her fellow coordinators (ungrateful wretch though this made her, given that Tsunade had once saved her life), Kei arrived at her destination without incident.
"Kei?" Mari, in an armchair in the pitifully-undecorated cuboid space that one might generously call an interim atrium, looked up from a philosophical tome on the spiritual significance of the elements (which she had been browsing with a peculiar aura of reluctance, like a student forcing herself to do homework). "Are you here about Akane, or did..."
"Regrettably, she did," Kei confirmed. "Shall we proceed somewhere more private so that you may say your piece?"
Somewhere more private was, in the event, Mari's new bedroom. Still a mess, despite the unique opportunity to start afresh with a decent minimum of organisation. Still of dubious impact on her long-term health, not that it was Kei's problem in the least. Kei did not even wish to be in this space, but alas her own room was still under construction (not that she would wish to invite Mari into it in any case, so at least she was spared the dilemma).
Mari sat on the edge of a gargantuan, ridiculously overwrought four-poster bed, an object Kei could only imagine the room had been constructed
around, for Namikaze Minato himself would have struggled to transport the monstrosity through a door or window. Haraguro the Harem Lord's Palace of a Thousand Pleasures was an ascetic's mountain cabin by comparison. That said, in this one instance Kei was not inclined to judge Mari too harshly—considering everything Kei now understood about the typical clanless shinobi's furniture budget, and considering that Mari had in any case spent most of her life in other people's beds, this monument to decadence was probably the luxury of a lifetime in her mind.
Mari beckoned for Kei to join her. Kei, naturally, settled on a chair.
"Before we proceed further, it is technically the anniversary of your birth. While I do not intend to participate in the festivities scheduled this evening, I also do not intend to violate the bounds of propriety by visiting you without some token acknowledgement of the event."
She presented Mari with her gift: an oversized pillow stuffed with chakra ostrich down. Given Kei's budget, it would have been inappropriate to select something substandard, and chakra ostrich feathers were well-known for their calming, even soporific properties. (Weaker-willed shinobi were said to faint outright, unable to endure the very sight of the birds.)
"Thank you, Kei," Mari said, placing the pillow beside her. "That's very thoughtful of you."
"As you are apparently aware," Kei said, "I am here on Ami's instructions. She informs me that the two of you have achieved some measure of reconciliation—an act that only reminds me more of her brilliance, since I do not believe I could ever earn forgiveness for a threat to the clan's existence were I in her place—and that in the process, you were somehow able to convince her of the sincerity of your feelings towards me. While I personally fail to see why this should have any relevance to me in the absence of a relationship between us, Ami has observed that any Mori who refuses to review a past judgement when new relevant evidence comes to light can hardly be called a Mori at all, and indeed even some of the more enlightened Kani have been known to clear that bar of rationality.
"That said, while I am obviously here, I believe I have already modelled every potential branch of a hypothetical conversation between the two of us on the subject, and I doubt you will be able to surprise me."
Was Kei being, as so often, overly harsh in her self-expression? She suspected so. Yet considering that the alternative was to abandon her defences and allow Mari to take control in that subtle, affectionately playful way of hers?
"I am here and listening," Kei said in an infinitesimally warmer tone. "Please proceed."
Mari did not proceed at once. Kei was forced to remind herself that Ami could not be fooled. Whatever blandishment was incoming would be delivered in the sincere spirit of persuasion.
"Kei, I'm a coward."
Kei blinked. "I beg your pardon?"
"I'm a coward," Mari repeated. "You were right all along. I
know what it's like to lose everything you have to an adult's selfishness. I know what it's like to have your innocence exploited by the person who's supposed to protect you, and what it feels like when you suddenly understand. I know how deep the damage goes, and how much help it takes to get off the path it sets you on. And yet, after that initial burst of effort, I've never once talked to you about those feelings. I've never once taken responsibility for the consequences. I've never once apologised, even after you knew.
"I am still that person, Kei. I feel like if I turn around and look, honestly look at everything I've done and what it
meant, the mountain of my sins will crush me. You're right in front of me, and I don't dare ask how much of your pain comes from what I've done to you, because I don't want to know the answer.
"I remember how you found out what you'd done with the Pangolins—not even deliberately, just because you didn't understand their culture—and how your only thought was to make it stop, until you finally snapped and tried to sacrifice your family bonds to make it happen. I remember that all I thought at the time was about how stupid it was as a decision, and how I needed to stop it for the sake of my objectives.
"I'm starting to feel differently now. You were a child. You had no past experience of hurting others for your own profit, and you were well behind the conventional start line in terms of knowing how to manage your feelings."
Kei nodded. Mari's sins did not expiate her own.
"It made no sense to expect a perfect response under those conditions, and it wasn't the part that was important. What I didn't see, and what I'm starting to see now, is the
impulse behind it. You decided you were responsible for the suffering that you'd caused—I'd even say you went overboard—and you were prepared to make sacrifices in order to live up to that responsibility. That's a start line that I'm nowhere near.
"I'm a coward, Kei. It would destroy me to try to do what you did, on a fraction of the scale. In a way, it already has. The most I'm brave enough to do right now is stop running, and admit that me feeling better about myself doesn't mean the past never happened. I can start taking the mountain apart, pebble by pebble.
"You're not a pebble. You were the first person I loved after I started loving people again, and admitting the full scale of what I did to you, admitting what it must have meant to you, might be the most terrifying thing I've ever done. Frankly, I'm not ready. But after everything my cowardice has already cost both of us, I can't turn down this chance.
"The truth is that I robbed you of everything you held dear. I nearly let you die because you'd be a useful tool where I was going, but not useful enough to personally protect. Then I changed my mind and patched some of the damage, and saved you from the Swamp because you happened to be in the right place at the right time. I told myself that my actions had redeemed me, and refused to ever, ever look back.
"I'm sorry, Kei. For all of it. For kidnapping you. For bringing you to the Swamp of Death. For hurting you more by running from the reality of what I'd done.
"I know that I'm not you, and my trauma isn't the same as your trauma, and I can guess how you might feel, but I can't know. If you want to share any of your pain, I will accept it and I will take responsibility for it."
Kei sat perfectly still, dumbstruck. She had not modelled any of this conversation. It had been plausible even in Isan that Mari would admit fault—as manipulation, without ever understanding it—but what Mari was saying to her now was
right. It was a perfect summary of how Kei felt about her actions (except the part about Kei herself, which somehow presented her as noble rather than desperate and foolish). It was something Kei did not believe Mari could say without
actually perceiving the problem, any more than Hazō could ask whether his latest plan was treasonous without acknowledging that treason was a frequent by-product of his ideas. Or if Mari could, then her powers of deception functioned on levels Kei was not even aware existed, and then she could only trust in Ami's guarantees.
Now, Kei was at a loss. Though grotesquely overdue, it was the apology she had desired. It was an acknowledgement and validation of her feelings, and an acceptance of responsibility for the crime that had created them. It was what she needed to hear. But how was she to respond?
Genuine repentance deserved forgiveness. That was simple and fair. It was not in the nature of the world to be simple or fair, and in real life, repentance was usually impotent, or dashed against the rocks of consequence. Yet the promise of Uplift was to remake the world into what it should be, as far as her hands would reach. Kei believed in Uplift as much as she dared, as the beam of sunlight into which she would one day step without melting.
How, then, did one forgive the Swamp of Death? How did she forgive an event that had severed her life into before and after, with a brief "during" that was simply a blot of darkness in her mind? An event that had amplified the constant dull tone of her dysfunction into a scream, and opened her to new possibilities only by forcibly tearing away everything else?
(She had allowed a stranger to take Ami's place as the central pillar supporting her existence, and then fallen in romantic love with that Ami substitute. If anyone ever made the connections, she would be forced to hire the Tsuchimikado Team to ensure that the earth swallowed her up without delay.)
Would "I forgive you" be sufficient to facilitate that process, the alchemy by which the apology and the past intermixed and cancelled each other out? Would it heal the parts of Kei that still lay in tiny pieces, like her ability to trust those with power over her? Would it free her from her conviction that her world was unstable and could end at any moment? Or was there some more sophisticated means of achieving closure, doubtless obvious to those with more emotional intelligence than a sea cucumber?
Where was Snowflake when Kei required a creative solution to a problem she could not begin to tackle with her familiar tools?
"Thank you, Mari," Kei said, aware that she was keeping Mari waiting, and that were the roles reversed, she would presently be inwardly quailing in terror as she awaited the hammer of judgement. Perhaps some brilliant insight on how to handle this situation would occur to her before she exhausted her supply of words. She suspected she had at least until February.
"It is beyond me to speculate what your acknowledgement of your past crimes means for the future. Nor do I possess clarity on how to respond to it in the present. As to the past..." A thought began to fall into place. There was a sense that another one might follow. "As to the past, I find that the justice I once believed indispensable, or the vengeance, should one wish to so frame it, feels somehow hollow as a goal. You do not require further admonition, at least until next you err, and I do not believe I would find satisfaction in returning harm for harm. Nor is it clear what I might demand as compensation. It is in direct causal connection with my kidnapping that I have received countless boons which would have been unavailable in Mist, including but not limited to family, power, and true love. Certainly, you did not intend to compensate me for harm caused, and generally the benefits that involved your agency have also served your self-interest. Yet I find I can hardly ask for more than I have received, nor is there much remaining in your power to grant me that I cannot obtain myself. Your sincere and heartfelt apology was the only item you unquestionably and unambiguously owed me, and that has now been delivered to my satisfaction."
"Do you mean that?" Mari asked. Somewhere, somehow, in a way only recognisable to one who had once spent endless hours drinking in every detail of Mari's presence, and resistant to description even for her, there was the faint beginning of a radiant glow.
"My struggles with ambiguity in communication are such that I would not deliberately inflict it on another," Kei said sardonically.
Mari smiled. "Thank you, Kei."
"What of the others?" Kei asked. "Presumptuous as it is, being the voice of the voiceless appears to be one of the useful functions I serve now, and I believe we can all agree that I am immersed in the highest blessings of the Deva Path compared to your other victims."
Mari's smile faded. "Please, Kei, not yet. I still can't open that door without being crushed by the weight behind it. Even accepting what I did to you is a risk I took because I love you and want you back, not because I'm strong enough to handle the Heartbreaker's legacy."
"You... love me and want me back?" Kei asked uncertainly.
"That should go without saying," Mari said, the smile returning. "Although I guess the theme of the day is that things shouldn't. Of course I love you, you silly girl."
"Nevertheless," Kei said shakily, "I do not believe we have dealt with all matters outstanding. The Orochimaru Incident is not undone because you have outgrown your failure to acknowledge the more distant past."
"I know," Mari said. "Tell me, Kei, do you understand why I did what I did?"
Kei nodded. "Hazō's peril was immediate, while I was in another room and my location could be temporarily obscured. Furthermore, assuming political resources could be brought to bear, it would have been preferable for me to be Orochimaru's prisoner, as my capital is superior and success would have been more likely.
"I am aware that your decision was rational, insofar as it offered a much higher rate of survival for both of us, taken as a unit, than for Hazō otherwise. I also believe that you have vastly oversold its merits in the name of earning approval from all parties. Had Orochimaru been slightly more impatient, or perhaps slightly less, there were countless ways he could have captured both of us that night with a high degree of certainty. Additionally, had he captured me, that night or subsequently, with Hazō or alone, there is no reason he could not have surrendered to his curiosity and vivisected me at once, or merely followed some preparatory procedure that destroyed me as an intelligent being, whereafter my allies' superior ability to effect my rescue would have been academic. As neither of us have the data to estimate the odds of such an act, you have no right to casually dismiss it from consideration in favour of touting only the virtues of your decision.
"As an addendum which I must surely have mentioned at the time, it is likely that I will always surpass Hazō in political capital, especially as Ami's world domination plans continue to succeed. Thus, I will always serve as a convenient tool where durable sacrifices are required."
Mari sighed. "I think you've had the wrong impression all along, Kei. I'm not pretending what I came up with is the best possible solution. I've done my best to get everyone to accept it and move on, because dwelling on what happened would only make things worse… but if you want the honest truth, I hate it. I hate that in a moment of crisis, when my family was counting on me, I couldn't come up with anything better than spreading the danger around to more of my loved ones. It's something I remember sometimes, whenever I start to feel good about my mastery as a manipulator. When it counted, when my skills would make the difference between life and death for the people I loved, the best I could do was point a monster at you and then throw myself at him as a distraction.
"But Kei, I swear to you, that
was the best I could do. If I'd come up with a better option, I'd have taken it without a second thought. I'm sure you can sit here now and think of a dozen better things I could've done, because you have a brain the size of a planet and it chews up data and spits out optimal solutions, but there and then, when the only brain was mine, no better solution existed."
"You say you swear to me..." Kei said quietly. "Can you swear to me that it was not because of us? It was not because it was a choice between Hazō, the visionary who will save the world, and the girl who had already rejected you and might continue to do so in perpetuity?"
Mari hesitated, just for a moment, and Kei's blood froze.
"No, it wasn't," Mari said. "Yes, I was angry, but I never stopped caring about you. Kei, is that what this is about? Do you think I chose his life over yours?"
It hurt. For some reason, the words stabbed her, like blades through the heart. Kei wanted to place her hands over her ears.
"I do not know," Kei whispered. "I have presented my arguments, and they are wholly rational, and it is not as if I am unaware that his life is objectively more valuable than mine. And yet..."
"Kei, I love you both," Mari said with a sudden ferocity. "You are both precious to me, and I will never sacrifice one of you because you're less important to me. Even if the worst happens, because we
are ninja and you've seen enough of the world to know what that can mean, I will never act as if I love one of my children less than another.
"I won't make you pay the price for my lack of power again, either," she added. "I may have got flat-footed once, but next time, I will be strong enough to protect all of you, even if I have to figure out how to kill an immortal with just my mind and my bare hands."
Kei did not hear a word.
"Your... children?"
Mari's eyes widened slightly.
"Mari... I was under the impression that you used the term in jest, or to avoid overheating the brains of primitives incapable of comprehending unconventional family structures. Have I been labouring under a fundamental misunderstanding?"
"No!" Mari exclaimed. "That would be ridiculous. Someone like me could never be an actual mother, you know that. I just... I misspoke."
There were many virtues to having a heart that had frozen over. Some kinds of pain were dulled. Others, one was simply numb to. Most importantly, a heart of ice knew better than to beat in response to impossibilities.
They had spent the last year in conflict. For all her pain, and presumably Mari's pain, it was not something Kei could regret if its secondary effect had been to bring Mari to this crucial point of realisation. Still, the conflict had been real. The pain that had driven her to sever ties was real. Mari's denial, or the essential core part of it, was only freshly cured, and Kei's own lack of self-understanding went without saying.
"My birth parents abandoned me," she reminded Mari. "My memory of my mother's love is vague and tarnished, and my lasting impression of them is as people who considered me surplus to requirements."
"I know."
Kei had severed ties with Mari for a reason, even if she suddenly found herself questioning what exactly that reason was. Mari's promises now were only promises, her claims no more than statements of intent.
"My would-be guardian pledged his parental devotion and promised a new family upon his return, then left me forever."
"I know."
Besides, there came a point when a relationship was too complicated, too multi-layered, to engage in without the security of distance. Just as innocence, once lost, could never be regained, nor could simplicity.
"Furthermore, I am an adult woman pursuing an independent lifestyle with my husband and 1d4 girlfriends."
"I know."
It was foolish to reach for the impossible. Worse, hubristic. Those who refused to accept their failures would not learn the lessons needed, and would be crushed when the next blow came.
Kei looked Mari in the eye.
"Mari, do you understand my implication?"
Mari looked away. "I told you, Kei, I misspoke. I didn't mean anything by it."
The problem with a heart of ice was that it took only a tiny beam of light at exactly the wrong angle to completely illuminate it.
"The implication," Kei said slowly, taking care not to stumble over the words, "is that the position is currently vacant."
Mari's gaze snapped back onto her, bewildered.
"Kei," she said, "I am a woman no more than half again your age, give or take, who's done her best to avoid the parts of growing up she didn't like. My own experiences with my parents were so bad they turned me into a sociopathic manipulator who made Icha Icha's most villainous seductress look like a saint, and my way of processing those issues has been to lock them in a box and throw away the key."
"Are you referring to Fūka the grave-robber from
The Twelve Guardian Ninja, Lady Duckweed from
The Story of Tamamo, or the eponymous Woman with the Peony Lantern?" Kei clarified.
"Lady Duckweed."
Kei winced.
The Story of Tamamo read like a book written immediately after Jiraiya was brutally jilted by a lover.
"Which part of this," Mari demanded, "sounds like I could possibly be qualified to be your mother?"
"My parents were more than qualified," Kei said. "They possessed access to the child-rearing wisdom of Mist's most brilliant clan, and at the time of my birth they were already successfully raising the greatest child in Mist's history. Were this not so, were they mediocre parents with inferior standards, perhaps I might have been able to satisfy them. Mari, it is not qualifications that I require."
"Kei," Mari persisted, "I just got done telling you how I'm a coward who spent years refusing to care about your feelings in order to protect my own. You just got done telling me I made you think I loved you less than your brother."
"My memory remains satisfactory."
"Then how could you ever trust someone like that to be your parent?"
"We both know how easily a parent can betray a trust they take for granted. I would much prefer one who recognises it as a privilege to be earned, or perhaps re-earned."
"But you said it yourself," Mari attempted. "You're an independent adult woman with a husband and 1d4 girlfriends. What could you possibly need a mother like me for?"
"How can I possibly answer that?" Kei replied. "How can I conceptualise the ideal of an adult parental relationship when I have a viable sample size of zero? Shikamaru, Tenten, and Fujisawa are orphans, as are Ino and Naruto. You have never so much as spoken of your mother. Noburi does not claim to be estranged, yet conspicuously never avails himself of opportunities to communicate with the Wakahisa. Kagome rarely alludes to his past at all, and then in such ambiguous terms that I begin to wonder if he even remembers it after a decade of intellectual decay in the woods. Hazō and his mother may possess some semblance of healthy parental relationship, but after the events of her sojourn in Leaf, you will forgive me if I do not seek a Hana of my own. That leaves only Akane, and I will not be able to connect to others as Akane does if I live to be a thousand."
"But what about Ami?" Mari pleaded.
"What of her?" Kei asked. "It was never just, nor reasonable, to thrust the role of primary caregiver upon an Academy student. That Ami performed flawlessly beneath the burden does not mean it was her place in the world. She is my sister, and that blessing is more than sufficient without demanding others."
Mari was teetering on the edge. Even Kei could see it.
But then the echoes of her own words reached her. How many times must Kei fall before she learned her own lessons? She had been warned; none could deny that. Her parents had made her fate crystal clear from the beginning. Ami alone possessed the superhuman determination and resilience to defy it, and even that ultimately proved insufficient—Kei had nearly lost her forever, and even now, after a chain of miracles had restored them to each other, their relationship was reduced to irregular visits where Kei could only share with Mori Ami what had not already been exclusively claimed by the Gōketsu and the Nara.
No one else was Ami. Takahashi-sensei had been a momentary mentor, and as soon as they reconnected, she was permanently banished from his home. She accepted Jiraiya's offer of affectionate, perhaps someday loving guardianship, and he perished within a day. Lord Shikaku, the imminent father-in-law who had made a similar commitment in his understated way, accompanied him, and Lady Yoshino soon followed after.
Even Mari, whose mentorship had passed, was not immune. Her denial of her past had been an explosive tag smouldering for years, but what was the probability that an incident would naturally occur where sacrificing Kei was not merely a grim possibility but an optimal solution? Once again, it was only Ami's intervention that had foiled the inescapable.
(For completeness's sake, Kei's original team leader, a Mist jōnin, was almost certainly dead, as were Sumie-sensei, Shikigami-sensei, Kanna-sensei, Captain Minami, Kei's original Mizukage, and
three of her Hokage. Even Aoba Minori, whose guardianship of Kei amounted to several days of ninjutsu training during their first visit to Leaf, was longer among the living.)
Yes, Kei was an independent adult. Nothing else was permissible. Nothing else was tolerated.
And besides, who was she to long for a parent's warmth when, as mentioned, nearly everyone around her was coping perfectly fine without?
"I-I... Forgive me, Mari," Kei stuttered. "I cannot imagine what I was thinking. You do not require such a burden, nor is it appropriate for me to request it of you. I have lived my life without a mother for long enough, and you are already in a perfectly satisfying family arrangement, especially now that we have begun to rebuild the bond between us and thereby return to a mutually-acceptable status quo. Please banish my ill-considered words from your memory and focus on the positive side of today's interaction."
It was time to leave, before Kei's folly undid any gains that had been made and sowed the seeds of new disaster.
"No."
Kei froze in the act of rising from her seat.
"Excuse me?"
"For someone smart enough to call me out on my bullshit, Kei," Mari said, "sometimes you really miss the obvious."
"Wh-What do you mean?"
"I know what I did to you was pure selfishness," Mari said. "I undid a fraction of what I had personally done to you, and called it an act of virtue that redeemed me. You have every right to hate me for that. But even if my reasons were selfish, the fact that you were special to me from the beginning was real.
"You were always my Kei. Mine to look after. Mine to teach. Mine to protect. Mine to love, and however selfish my love may be, it's still the only kind I know. When I told you that I wasn't the kind of person who should have children, so long ago, it was because I knew I didn't have enough to give you. I couldn't remember how loving parents were supposed to behave. I couldn't be a good influence on an innocent child. I had a thousand flaws, and selfishness and immaturity stood out even among those. I couldn't hope to replace what I'd taken from any of you.
"That never meant I didn't want to. If I thought for a moment I was capable and worthy of serving as your mother, and if I thought for a moment that you'd accept me as one, and if I wasn't such a coward..."
"Impossible," Kei said in a daze. "The others aside, I am... I am
me. I am accepted as part of a package deal—with your redemption, with my siblings, or with my Mori powers."
"You're you," Mari agreed. "I've been ever so proud of you, since the beginning."
Was the room spinning, or was it just Kei?
"I know how much damage I did to you, Kei," Mari said, "when you were already fragile to begin with. I know what kind of trajectories you could have followed, and most of them were far darker than falling for your jōnin instructor. You kept loving. You kept making bonds. You took responsibility for yourself and worked hard to contribute and support those around you, and only did the stupid things a sensitive teenager who didn't know how to manage her emotions would do. You made
my teenage self look like an animal.
"Look at you now. Look at everything you've had thrown at you. Life as a suspicious foreigner in an alien culture. Having to deal one-on-one with
another alien culture which had shown its willingness to murder you up front and has
fantastically abused your trust. A sexuality you had no idea how to handle. Marrying into another clan and being separated from your loved ones. A ton of responsibilities you never asked for thanks to Ami's plotting and Shikamaru's unreadiness."
"Shikamaru is a skilled and capable clan head," Kei objected, "and I choose to support him of my own free will."
"Exactly," Mari said. "All of that, and your response is to do your best to be good and fair to the people around you. Any reasonable person would do all they could to maximise the power and minimise the responsibility, and you keep treating them as the same thing.
"I am so ridiculously proud of you that I
wish you were my daughter and I could boast about how incredible you'd turned out in spite of my terrible parenting."
Kei's mind was blank. She was at a complete loss for words, and it was not even November.
"I have no idea how to be a parent, Kei. I have no idea how not to screw it up, and I have no idea what I can do for someone who's already outgrown me in so many ways. But if you're prepared to let me be your mother, then it would be my honour to find out what that means together."
To add injury to insult, Kei's eyes were watering, and she had no desire to burst into tears in front of Mari like a...
…like a child.
Kei burst into tears.
She wished she could throw herself into Mari's arms like a normal child would, but of course that option was denied her.
Fortunately, Mari was a social genius.
Kei caught the chakra ostrich pillow in mid-air and proceeded to hug it so tight she would end up having to purchase a replacement.
