[b] Shiō [/b] [i] She could feel the blood chilling on her hands, excess running down her lower arm as it crept into the gap between her wrist and the surgical gloves. She looked at the young man's face, her eyes trained on his sockets at she stared, hoping to find the humanity one so reliably found in the gaze of another; her hope was crushed as only the shredded sockets remained on his soft face, now caked with streaks of a sickly, dark crimson. No matter how fast she moved through his body, sealing the cuts as best she could, blood flood from every part of his body and her vision continued to blur as his life now pooled beneath her feet. Looking down at the liquid, she could see his memories play out in front of her like a movie, his life flashing before her eyes. Looking one last time at the body on the cold, unforgiving steel of the procedure table in front of her, she screamed, the remnants of his body turning to a pool of blood on her table. [/i] --- Shiō threw her covers back, startling Hiyō who was perched on her open window, eliciting a loud screech from the falcon. She said nothing, rolling off the side of her bed and sliding her feet into the slippers she placed there every night. Rubbing her temples, Shiō sat at the edge of the bed for a moment, trying to collect herself. It'd been a month since she'd had that dream, the longest she'd gone without it; scoffing slightly at herself, she pulled her arms around her chest, shivering as the cold sweat met the cool morning air. Her thin, black shirt did nothing to deter the chill that assaulted her body, most of her skin exposed. The bed creaked slightly as she rose, grabbing the robe on the hook next to her dark cherry wood dresser and wrapping it swiftly around her body instantly feeling a sensation of warmth. It was very much like her room before the conflict, but lacked many of the worldly possessions she had lost when they had fled Konoha. Grabbing book on the nightstand, she moved downstairs to start her morning routine. Like almost every morning, Shiō read any medical text she'd managed to find for that week. If she failed at that, she reread one of the hundreds of books that formed her personal library, often with three or four open patient files. She rarely ate in the mornings, only taking a cup or two of an herbal tea, a practice she had adopted from a wandering medic-nin that she had encountered when she was about seventeen. For the three months she was with the woman, they had spent the mornings discussing medicine over the herbal tea. Shiō knew that the books and files were merely a substitute one of the mentors she once had. --- Following her morning ritual, Shiō would triple check the calendar for the day with Yui at work, as well as get the girl started on the various clerical tasks she really didn't need Shiō's help starting. Shiō considered Yui a gift from some deity, as she completely understood the needs of Shiō's practice and the quirks of her employer - that and her natural ability with paper made her an exceptional assistant. Her status as a workaholic was legendary and the fact that she had convinced her family, when they had rebuilt their compound, to build her practice attached to her wing of the compound did nothing but encourage the talk. Shiō didn't mind, honestly taking a somewhat perverse sense of pride in it. Work dictated her mind be in the present, not wandering through her past as it too often enjoyed at night, so when she wasn't schedule to work - Shiō would go out and find some. The Nara compound itself was a rather impressive rebuild. Fortunate to have her family make it through the throes of war, it was easier for her than most to rebuild a semblance of the life they once had - including the physical compound. The outer walls were a split of dark wood at the base and white coated upper walls. All of the doors slid, the interior doors often rice paper embedded into wooden frames, mirroring the outside for the walls on the inside as well. The complex itself took up a relatively impressive amount of land, given it was near the heart of Konohagakure, sprawling outwards around an interior courtyard and a small patch of land to a wooded area in the back. Technically they 'owned' the woods as well, but it was never enforced and many operated under the perception of public ownership, which her family really had no objection. The roof tiling is what had taken the longest. It was a painstaking process. Most of it had been done by a mix of her brother, Kaku, and her grandmother of all people. The two had more time to spend working on details like this, one by one putting on a slate grey-blue tile onto the roof. Under a number of the eaves was the symbol for their clan, carved from a cherrywood and stained a dark, rich stain, and finished with a touch of gold lacquer. It was a bit ostentatious, but it was tradition. The interior was largely open, with only a few truly separate rooms, mostly for sleeping and primarily on the upper levels. Kitchen and living areas ran together and were the areas their family would get together, although each one had separate areas for them to prepare their own food, typically in the mornings should they so choose. Tuesdays it was customary for them to have dinner in the common dining area. Shiō had been reluctant to restart the tradition when they returned to Konoha, but her mother kept pressing the issue until she gave in. Aside from Tuesdays, Shiō didn't often see her family, preferring to stay her own section of the compound. It was a light day for Shiō, only three scheduled appointments, all early morning. She smiled at it, finally breaking the four hour morning silence to speak with Yui, although, words were not needed to be said. "I'll be out back if there is an emergency." Yui, as always, would nod. It was commonplace for Shiō to spend her off-time during the day out back. On the rare instances an emergency surgery would be needed, Shiō could easily be called back in. "I should be done by noon." Shiō typically vocalized her predicted schedule to Yui, although, at this point, the girl had a better idea of how long Shiō's appointments would take than Shiō did herself. As predicted, at noon Shiō had finished her last patient, an 62 year-old, 130 pound, 5'3" female with three children and a history of hypertension. The check-up only confirmed what Shiō had told the woman last time - that she needed to monitor her stress levels. --- The midday sun was uncharacteristically warm. Stripping off her jacket, she folded it neatly on the porch bench. She stretched, raising her arms up and twisting her neck before stepping out from the shade; the heat blasted her, but she relished it, striding towards, with a vigorous step, the practice dummy she had her brother construct months ago. Since returning to Konoha, she hadn't gotten to break it in quite as well as she would have liked. Her last one, something she had constructed from an assortment of materials during the resistance had been burned when she left that life. She had watched it, hoping to burn away many of the memory from that time as well. While she was no taijutsu specialist, her training as a medic-nin dictated a certain necessity to be able to defend oneself at close combat. Kaku, her brother, had designed it to randomly pivot when she struck another portion of it, splitting the dummy into sections similar to the strike angles of another fighter. Various knobs were on the back, which she twisted to alter the settings to avoid letting the muscle memory kick in. She'd gain nothing if she knew all of the responses from her last session. She quickly kicked at it with her right foot, sweeping under a peg jutting out from the lower third of the dummy. It met the would with a solid crack, the top portion of the dummy twisting from her right rapidly. Most instincts would be to block the peg, but she knew to wait the fraction of the moment, predicting the feint correctly, a left peg now incoming to to her head. Shiō thrust her right palm at the core, using her left to strike out at the assaulting peg's base, stopping the twist of the upper section of the dummy. The dummy wasn't solely for practice, but to ensure her mind didn't wander when she had control. Like her work, she had to focus on the present, else get a smart shot to her body from an object with literally zero intelligence - which would be a massive blow to anyone's ego. Not wanting to let her body get bruised twice, she focused hard, continuing her practice with the dummy for an hour before collapsing onto the ground with sweat running down her body. She had the stamina to continue, but she had gotten what she had wanted out of the exorcise. It was routine for Shiō to spend her afternoon's like this, providing she wasn't in surgery, which was rarer and rarer. However the dummy wasn't the only thing she practiced during these afternoons. After a short break, Yui bringing out a cold glass of water for her to drink, she began her real practice. Shiō had always had exceptional control, far surpassing that of her brother, but she had never been able to utilizing Kage Yose, a staple in her clan. She'd developed a work around technique, a sort of variation of the technique from having watched her brother, suiting the needs she had during the resistance. Her goal was still the same; to learn Kage Yose, or at least adapt her technique to her high standards. She had tried for the last three months with little improvement, incensing her. Extending her shadow outwards, she pushed her Kage no Te to the three feet mark, letting her hands glow a soft, pale green. Shosen was difficult enough on its own, but adding in her Kage no Te was rather remarkable - but it wasn't enough. She wanted, needed, Kage no Te to extend past that three foot mark. Her hands still alight, she pushed the shadow out further, her body shaking instantly in response, the glow from her Shosen instantly vanishing as she expelled the contents of her lunch of the soft grass below her - some catching in her hair as it fell in front of her face as she slumped over. Once the nausea passed, she let out a string of profanity under her breath, mostly at herself for her incompetence. Trying again, she was met with similar results. Like always, Yui watching with concern from the window, Hiyō likewise from the roof, she would continue on for the next couple of hours before exhausting herself. Drenched in a mix of sweat, vomit, and pitchers of water, Shiō collapsed on the porch, her back against the shaded, cool wood, hidden from the afternoon sun. This was Shiō's life.