Jack managed to convince Janet into letting Sayuri stay with them.

Time passed and Janet's bitterness toward the little girl lessened. But it still couldn't save her and Jack's falling relationship.

Two years after Sayuri had started living with them, they had a son who they named Timothy but even his presence in their lives didn't cause any change. The arguments between them got worse and little Tim was often neglected.

At that time, Sayuri did her best to look after her younger brother and formed a strong connection with him. She wasn't much older herself but she took care of him in every possible way she could.

Timothy's first steps were taken with Sayuri holding his hand in hers and from an early age, the boy was multilingual as his sister taught him Japanese. She had been enrolled in school and could now speak English fluently and while both Jack's children grew up, his life got more entangled in the conflicts with his wife.

There were some days that Janet would be fine but on most days she was in a bad mood. Sayuri had learned to avoid her the best she could because she knew the woman didn't want her around so the least interaction there was between the two, the better it would be for her.

That fear of becoming the reason for Jack and Janet's crumbling relationship ended up in intentionally distancing herself from her father too. The only person she spent most of her time with was Tim because the child had no one else for company and she too loved to stay with him and look after him.

Right then she was telling Tim a bedtime story when there was a knock on the bedroom door. She closed the book and went to open it, surprised to see Jack standing outside.

"Dad!" Tim giggled, his hands reaching out toward him. 

Jack was exhausted but he came in and lifted five year old Tim in his arms, sitting down on the bed after ruffling Sayuri's head lightly. She climbed up beside him, noting the tired look on his face.

"Is everything okay, Dad?"

"Yes, I'm fine," he replied but his expression didn't match the sentence. 

Sayuri did not say anything further, waiting for him to tell her why he had come to their room. Tim was held in his arms still, playing with his messy brown hair while Sayuri was sitting beside him silently.

"I love both of you very much, you know that, right?" He spoke up, making Tim sit down as well. Twelve year old Sayuri knew something bad had happened between him and Janet. 

"We know," she replied with a soft smile, "we love you too, Dad."

"I missed so much of your lives," he mumbled, recalling all the times he had to be away from them due to his business and the sheer fact that staying at home would end up in another argument with Janet, "I have not been a good father."

"Don't say that. You're busy," she tried to reassure him, "I understand. I have made Tim understand too. We like to spend time with you but if you are busy then we can manage on our own too. Everything's great here, Dad, you don't have to worry."

Jack nodded, stroking her head gently. Try as he might he couldn't blame his daughter for the worsening arguments between him and Janet. He knew Sayuri was a kind and caring girl although he had not been able to spend much time with her.

But the way she treated Tim and was comforting him right now showed that his daughter was the best thing that could have happened to him. The only bad thing about it was the timing.

Sayuri had come into his life at a time when everything was falling apart. And even though years had passed since then, things weren't getting any better.

He feared at that rate things might never turn for the better and they would have to keep on living in that mess. So he had to take a very troubling decision that Janet had been forcing him to for months now.

He did not want things to come to that point but there seemed no other way out. He would have to divorce Janet and file for custody of his son.

He knew Janet seldom paid Tim any attention and so far Sayuri had been the one taking care of her brother instead. If they were to divorce and Tim had to go with Janet, Jack didn't know whether his son would be treated right or not.

He was looking ahead of him to defamation, bankruptcy and court trials. But staying in that crumbling marriage wasn't healthy nor was it working out either.

After Tim had fallen asleep and Jack was about to leave, Sayuri asked, "can I know why you're worried?"

He sighed wearily, "I don't want to worry you, sweetheart."

"But I want to know. Maybe I can help." 

He patted her head gently but then told her, "Janet and I are getting a divorce and chances are that Tim might have to go with her."

***

A boy was mixing some herbs in a pot, following the instructions his mother had written for him as he made the medicine. His nimble fingers sorted out each leaf that he ground to a thin powder before mixing it with a thick paste that he had kept aside. 

That medicine was to be used as an ointment on wounds and right then he was making it for the clan that had just returned from the battlefield. He was not yet allowed to go with them but he knew how ruthless their enemies were, judging by the fatality of the cuts he had to treat because his mother couldn't.

"Ishikawa!" A man called out and the boy looked up, "we will need more ointment."

"Here," he handed the paste that he scraped into a jar, "I will bring more. How many people are injured?"

The man took the jar as he replied, "the whole squad. Those assassins were ruthless."

"And did any of us die or get taken captive?"

"Thankfully none."

"Right," he mumbled, bringing out the ingredients to make more of the ointment.

His mother was a Healer but she had caught a strange disease for which even she didn't know the cure. She had fallen ill so Ryuu had her tell him all her concoctions that he had noted down carefully. 

Ever since then, he made the medicines himself and though he was just thirteen, he was nothing short of a Healer himself.

The clan relied on his skill and he made sure not to make any mistakes as life and death lay upon those abilities to heal that he had inherited from his mother. The Ishikawa family had become the backbone of the Sasuke clan in those times as his father Sota was appointed chief until the true leader would come back.

And he had been hearing that it was only a matter of time before she would be brought back to them from her father where she had currently been staying. She was supposed to learn how to fight and get trained extensively because she would be following her ancestors' legacy by becoming the next leader of their warrior clan.

He remembered the girl briefly because it had been years since they had last seen each other. He could distantly recall that they were friends, that she liked peanuts and that she left without bidding him farewell.

But years had passed since then. He knew she would not be the same person he recalled from his childhood.

He did not even know whether she would want to come back or not.

With the warrior clan, life was full of trouble and peril. There was no knowing how long they had left to live and there was certainly no knowing of when they would get attacked.

He felt that if she was safe and comfortable living with her father, perhaps she might never come back.

And his family would have to go on bearing the responsibility of leading the Sasuke clan in her absence.

He scraped out the rest of the medicine, putting it in another jar. Cleansing the bowl he had mixed the ingredients in, he stood up to go out and see for himself how much damage their warriors had sustained.

He wanted all that fighting to end, he wished that their people would not get hurt anymore but it had been years yet there had been no cease to the attacks. He knew his people were in pain but there was nothing they could do to ease it except survive and fight back.

***