Karui pursed her lips together as she watched the furry creature appear from over the side of the couch and into sight, to poke around and play at Ayaki’s feet. The boy laughed, grabbing at the lemur, and ended up getting climbed upon as the critter swirled up and around his small body to appear hanging off of his shoulder. The animal kept a fair distance from Neji entirely, avoiding people he didn’t know for good reason. “That, Neji, is a baby ring-tailed lemur. It’s the kids’ new pet.” Scuff chittered in response, and she groaned, rubbing her temples. “B brought it, and they’re too close to it now to get rid of it.”
She came behind her husband and shoved him with her free hand towards the door. “You’ll do what I told you. I trust you healing a wound about as much as I trust the baby using the oven. Here.” She came around and handed him Tomoe to hold in his not-as-dirty arm so that she could go and find someone to look over him, and also so that, at the very least, he could see the kids for a moment before he was outright fretted-over.
” … of course.”
As much as it pained him to feel the sentiment, the Hyuuga couldn’t help but feel that trying to go against the nature of what his household had become, against the nature of his wife’s family was was as foolish and fruitless as the Sun refusing to rise and set. He probably didn’t do much in the way of trying to turn their already souring relationship into something positive with the blank, unsettling glare he gave it but that too seemed pointless after a few seconds and he sighed, the tension in his face visibly eroding away as he let out the breath.
Neji couldn’t help but blink at the weight of his infant girl who, four months ago, he’d been hesitant to hold in fear of not being strong enough to support her tiny weight but now …
“You truly are a blessing.”
With the armguards on the floor he used his free hand to graze along her stomach, tickling the fat belly and leaned down to brush his nose against her hairline. After a few (not so quiet) minutes of watching his son try to wrestle the lemur, he left the room completely, deciding any damage it sustained from then on wouldn’t be any worse than what was there now and rounded the corner to find Karui.
“Kumo-nin,” he says, catching her wrist. “Don’t bother, please.”
“You’re damn close to it!” She was nearly shouting now, upset at the constant sarcasm used in response to her blatant rage towards him. Ayaki grinned up to his father and reached up both of his little hands to grab Neji’s bigger one. He chattered excitedly about everything that had happened while he was gone, everything he had missed, adamant to keep his father up to date.
Sucking her teeth at this exchange, Karui turned to look at the state of the living room, and the house in general. Where there weren’t random assessments of toys, there laid plenty of bottles, cups, blankets, and other little trinkets that had been taken out and tossed around for the sake of play. “If you think that this is bad, you should see the nursery. It’s a war zone in there.”, she answered with a shrug. “Between everything happening, cleaning has been one of the things I haven’t been concerned with. You can enjoy that when you rest up.”
“In fact, you should be up to doing that now.” She shooed him out and pointed her hand down towards their bedroom door. “Try not to get blood all over the place in there while I get someone I can trust to look over you, alright?”
“Close, but not quite there yet.”
He was almost certain that anyone else would be shied away by the young woman’s heated words but he knew that the apparent anger was only a cover for something else and knowing that, he wasn’t worried. Ayaki proved an adequate distraction from the matter of the little beast that seemed to leave its mark with an unsettling path of disarray. Although there were still many parts of his boy’s speech that kept him limited from expressing himself completely, for the parts that he could understand, Neji offered his thoughts and feedback, returning the boy’s enthusiasm with quiet encouragement.
Patting him on the cheek, he glances up towards Karui and sighs. “This still doesn’t answer my question on what it is. Or … to be more specific, why is it here?”
He had about two ideas as to where it could’ve come from, and neither of them sat well in his mind. It was probably far past the chance to argue this as, well, he had no leverage on the matter whatsoever, not after an unexcused absence such as his, and one for so long. Sighing, he began the process of undoing his armguards, eye twitching in a subtle wince.
“That won’t be necessary, I’m not one of the children. I think I can handle the task of cleaning myself up on my own,” he says, already moving to leave the room, stepping around a scatter of colored building blocks. “When I return, I’ll sit with them for you.”
There was a squeal at Karui’s side just before Ayaki dispatched himself from his mother’s clutch and charged out of the living room and towards the front door of the large home. In excitement, the lemur chattered and scurried down as well to see about the commotion. Karui rounded the corner and scowled at her formerly missing-in-action husband as a challenging hand lifted to rest on her free hip. “A handle?”, she repeated in an angry, testy tone without a greeting. “If I had any less than a handle, imagine the hell your home would have gone to.”
She finally looked him over, her eyes widening with a degree of worry. “And look at you! Four months, four months and I can’t even ask for you to stop at a fucking hospital before you limp in here like nothing happened!” Ayaki, having been with his mother for so long, didn’t flinch at the harsh words. He was, in fact, used to them. He was snatched up by the back of his shirt before he could jump at his father again to get himself stained with the blood that may or may not have been his father’s.
Karui aimed a swift smack to Neji’s left temple before grabbing up Ayaki again, forgetting about the lemur entirely. “As if I didn’t have enough to deal with, you’re half-dead! God, I’m going to have Tokuma call you the clan medic, and you are going to sit at home and try not to run off again.”
Neji was already crouched, ready to receive his bundle of boy with open arms despite his less than personable appearance by the time Karui effectively prevents the reunion from happening. He was in no position to think that he’d be able to stride in and have things go the way they’re supposed to - at least not with her - but it couldn’t be helped and there was a dull ache in his chest that he hadn’t wished to admit to for the past four months but was very apparent now that his family was a mere few feet away and still untouchable. Straightening to his feet, he presents her a smile that could easily progress to smirk.
“To be correct, I’m not actually limping. My leg is just fine. Dirty, but fine.” His gaze shifted, settling on the little girl who he almost missed the most - Tomoe was still young, and therefore, the time that he’d spent away had outweighed the time that he spent with her and he wanted to make up for that, sorely. His focus doesn’t last on her for long, however, as a skittering something catches his nearly all-seeing eyes and they narrow a fraction, even as the volume of Karui’s voice raises. “And I’m not half-dead either.”
Admittedly, most of his injuries were hidden from her sight but there wasn’t much need to call attention to that now. He’s thwapped in the head, lips pursing in a thin line before he steps forward, mostly to get closer to his family, as well as to get a better look around her to identify what it was that hadn’t been there before. Pressing a quick kiss to her forehead, his hand moves to Ayaki’s head, ruffling the mess of hair and turns his head to peer over her shoulder. “My well-being aside, what the hell is in our living room?”
Done. Karui clicked her pen and looked over the pile of papers before her. If there was one thing she hated about being a Hyuuga now, it was the formalities that came with it, especially in the ways of filling in. With Neji gone, she was charged with finishing up every one of the nitpicky details of her “clan’s” wishes, including everything from negotiation reviewing to the must innate of budget requests. Every little detail had to have been accounted for, down to ensuring that she signed her name exactly as intended as “Miss Neji Hyuuga”, written with a pre-approved quill. She exasperatedly sighed, rolling away from the desk in her chair. As she hit the wall softly, the sound of feet smacking down on the wooden floor down the hallway.
“Momma, Momma!” Ayaki came charging into his father’s study and all but leaped into his mother’s lap in jubilation. She snickered and scooped him up, blowing into his stomach until he gave a light-hearted giggle.
“I’m done! Let’s get Tomo, huh?” Between running a clan she didn’t necessarily like and keeping in touch with her family job of maintaining Kumo, she rarely had time to be with the kids before something came up. When Ayaki reached up a pudgy hand to point into the living room where is baby sister was lying on a blanket, playing delightedly with Scuff’s tail as the little creature circled her and chirped in light annoyance.
Karui smiled and scooped Tomoe up onto her other hip, with Scuff following suit and scurrying up her side, planting his furry self over Ayaki’s fiery head and sending the boy into another laughing fit.
Neji doubts very much that his wife is going to be pleased when she sees him. His left pant leg is sticking to the skin along his calf uncomfortably from blood not belonging to him that has dried and the ends and back of his hair has become matted. There are superficial cuts along his flak jacket, but none save for one that actually manages to go through to the skintight uniform beneath it, as well as a developing hematoma the size of a fist (the same shape as well) along his bare shoulder, just above the tattoo that marked him as one of his village’s masked elite.
Not that any of this bothers him, but it’s something that sits on the forefront of his mind as he steps out the standard-issue sandals, walking the length of the wrap-around porch a ways barefoot before he slides one of the doors open, situating himself at the end of a hallway not far from his study. He’d taken a peek into the compound just a few miles away when he’d been standing on the roof of a building not far from the Hokage’s Tower after submitting his report to ensure his family’s whereabouts. It was a simple question - get cleaned up before trying to make pleasantries or risk a lecture?
“To Hell with it,” was the appropriate response he murmured and makes his way to the living room, sliding the door open a fraction just enough to see them properly before widening it to present himself completely. “You seem to have a handle on things, Kumo-nin. Pretty well at that, I might add.”
