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Chapter 56: Words in the Twilight
From his rooftop perch, Ragnar listened to the stream of consciousness spilling from the girl below. He'd been about to descend, but her muttered monologue gave him pause.
This guy… face like a frozen river all day. Looks like someone stole his lunch money.
And he's always vanishing! Poof! Gone for days!
Hmph! I should beat him up when he gets back!
…Yeah, right. More like he'd beat me up instead…
A ghost of a smile touched Ragnar's lips. The cold face? That was survival. In a world this sharp, a moment of unguarded softness was an open artery. As for vanishing—he was ANBU. Disappearing was in the job description.
Her frustration, though, was genuine. And underneath it, he sensed the unspoken care that had led her to his door, to checking on his empty hut. It stirred something unfamiliar in his chest—a faint, warm flicker against the perpetual cold.
For a moment, his control over his breathing, honed by a thousand hours of training, slipped. A soft exhalation escaped him.
Below, Kushina froze. Her Uzumaki senses, sharp even untrained, prickled. She spun, eyes scanning the deepening shadows. "Who's there? Show yourself!"
Silence.
"Strange… was I hearing things?" she murmured, her brow furrowed.
Seeing no more reason to hide, Ragnar moved. He dropped from the roof edge, landing silently on the packed earth behind her.
Kushina whirled, a yelp caught in her throat. Her wide, violet eyes locked onto his, filled with surprise that quickly morphed into dawning horror and a flush of deep, mortified scarlet.
He was here. The whole time. He heard everything.
"Evening," Ragnar said, his voice its usual flat, calm tone. He gave a slight nod.
Kushina's brain seemed to short-circuit. The embarrassment ignited into a volatile, defensive fury. With a wordless cry of rage and shame, she launched herself at him, not with technique, but with the flailing, instinctual attack of a cornered kitten.
Ragnar stood his ground. He'd eavesdropped, even if unintentionally. He'd take a few harmless swats. Her fists against his Haki-tempered body would be like raindrops on stone.
But the expected blows never landed.
Instead of striking, the girl who had charged him threw her arms around his waist and buried her face in his chest. Her grip was surprisingly strong. The "attacks" were weak, trembling pats on his back.
"Don't… don't just disappear like that," her voice was muffled against his shirt, small and choked. "And don't… don't keep doing such reckless, stupid things. If you don't care about yourself… at least know that someone… someone is worried about you."
Ragnar went rigid. This was not in any of his calculations. The script of confrontation, of annoyed explanations, had been ripped up. He stood there, arms at his sides, utterly unprepared for the raw, vulnerable weight clinging to him.
Hesitantly, almost mechanically, he raised a hand and placed it on top of her vibrant red hair. The gesture felt alien. "Why are you saying this?" he asked, his voice quieter than he intended. "Did something happen?"
"No! Nothing!" She pulled back abruptly, her eyes skittering away from his, fixing on a point over his shoulder. The denial was too quick, too sharp.
But Ragnar saw it. In the dim twilight, he saw the shadow that had passed behind her eyes. Fear. A deep, fundamental dread that had no place on the face of the loud, brash, endlessly energetic girl he knew. It wasn't fear of him. It was fear of… something else. Something within.
His Observation Haki couldn't read thoughts, but it could sense emotional tremors. And the tremor running through her was one of pure, unadulterated terror.
Her next words, halting and fragile, confirmed the direction of that fear.
"R-Ragnar…" she began, her voice barely a whisper. "If… if I become a monster someday… what would you think of me?"
As she spoke, the slight tremble in her frame became a full-body shudder. The bold "Red Hot-Blooded Habanero" was gone. In her place was just a scared little girl, terrified of her own future.
The pieces slammed together in Ragnar's mind with the force of a sledgehammer. The Nine-Tails. The Jinchuriki. The ultimate fate of the Uzumaki clan—to be living prisons for the world's most destructive forces.
But the timeline was wrong. Uzumaki Mito, the current Jinchuriki, should still be alive. The transfer couldn't have happened so soon after the kidnapping… could it? He focused his senses on Kushina. There was no vast, malignant chakra boiling beneath the surface. No fox-shaped shadow. Not yet.
But the fear was there. The knowledge, perhaps given by her grandmother Mito, of what was to come. The dread of the transformation, of being seen not as a person, but as a "monster." The Kumo-nin kidnapping attempt had made the abstract threat terrifyingly real.
He couldn't change this destiny. Not now. The political and military forces at play were titanic. He was an eight-year-old ANBU probie with secrets of his own. To try and stop the sealing would be to declare war on Konoha itself.
But he could change what it meant to her.
He looked down at her, his expression losing its usual detached calculation. His gaze was direct, unwavering.
"No matter what happens," he said, each word deliberate and clear, cutting through the evening quiet. "No matter what you become, or what power they put inside you… as long as you are still you—still Kushina—then nothing changes for me."
He reached out, his calloused fingers gently brushing a stray strand of crimson hair from her damp cheek. "You will never be a monster in my eyes. You'll just be a girl. A loud, stubborn, annoyingly persistent girl who can't even throw a proper punch."
The words were blunt, almost rude. But they held no pity, no empty comfort. They were a statement of fact, solid as the ground beneath them.
He wasn't just talking about the Nine-Tails. He was talking about the system inside him, the demonic sword at his side, the bloody path he walked. They were all becoming something other than human. But the core remained. The will. The self.
Kushina stared up at him. The terror in her eyes didn't vanish, but it was pushed back, overwhelmed by a wave of something else. Relief so profound it was dizzying. A happiness that seemed to light her up from within, brighter than the last sliver of sun on the Hokage monument.
The fear of being ostracized, of being seen as a thing, melted under the sheer, unshakable certainty in his voice. He saw her. Not a future vessel, not a weapon, not a clan legacy. Just Kushina.
In that moment, a silent, unbreakable pact was forged in the twilight between a boy who had forgotten how to be a child and a girl terrified of ceasing to be one.
A wide, tremulous smile broke across her face, wiping away the last traces of tears. She sniffed, squaring her small shoulders. The fire was returning to her eyes.
"Okay," she said, her voice firming. "Then it's settled."
She didn't say what was settled. She didn't need to.
For the rest of her life, she would never regret this moment.
(End of Chapter)
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