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Chapter Text

 The apparent offset of a foreground object against the background when your perspective changes. At a given instant, the Moon appears among different stars for observers at widely separated locations. These subtle changes in position are called its parallax.

Differences in constellations are due to a different perspective in a different location.

These changes, the parallax, can be measured.

The Land of Grass was a misleading name. 

The title presumed that the nation would span far with the lush fertile soil supporting tall prairies of wheat or barley. It implied the presence of cattle or horses, feeding on the tough stalks of flowering meadows. The Land of Grass had not been named for its purpling strands of towering reeds, it had been named for the prehistoric sedge that bloomed tall like lotus flowers with blades as broad as Sasuke’s hand. The flora ignored soil, instead it grew where the water fell and arched its leaves to collect within its core. The air burned wet and humid, cascading sweat down Sasuke’s neck. Mosquitos and other insects droned loudly as Bakashi stomped over the tropical strands of “grass’.

The nation had named itself intentionally this way, although the nation hadn’t provided shinobi of significance in many generations, it’s difficult terrain and disorienting forests operated well within the realm of standard Shinobi.

The birds were louder here, hoarse shrieking things with long tails and feathers made from cobalt silk. Sasuke watched them for hours, sitting astride Bakashi’s thick saddle as a wild bird cried like an infant but resembled creatures Sasuke had seen in cages. 

The ground was permanently wet and boggy, the slick stink of detritus permeated everything just as the nightly rain did. Bakashi had made a horrible cry in the night, shrieking to an unseen predator that left Sasuke on guard. The shinobi trails through nations were always clearly established- the burn of chakra warded off natural wildlife. Civilian pathways were treacherous with broken palm and sleeping vipers, sickness hung heavy in the ambient air. There was no wonder that the Land of Grass remained neutral for so long, it was agonizing to traverse on foot.

Its eastern side nearest the Land of Fire had been spotted with deep ravines and tropical waterfalls. Occasional outcroppings collected water spray and bloomed large colourful flowers. It’s deep churning rivers bred large slippery fish, unlike the whitefish Sasuke knew from the rivers of Konoha. They were slippery with oily flesh, no flash of scales, and dripping mucus. 

Sasuke caught one freakish animal, as long as his leg and dribbling slime-like earthworms. Amaterasu told him, don’t let it drop, and the foreign thing electrocuted him with a barking cough.

Sasuke had seen eel before, the type dredged from the southern coasts. The river monsters were disgusting like the silt they called home and Sasuke near gagged on the texture of its meat. Electric eels? 

Sasuke had passed through several towns. The Eastern territory had been deeply paranoid, demanding to know why he passed through the routes. Sasuke had stopped nearly daily, providing crudely drawn papers he pretended he couldn’t read. Patrols of Grass shinobi hadn’t recognized him, the mule a better disguise than any clothing. They searched his bags, pausing on the preserved meats and grains, and lack of any true suspicious belongings.

Somewhere past the warded paths, where Sasuke had felt the seals buried in the bamboo trees, the shinobi had relaxed and offered him their suggestions. One nin looked at him and asked his age, then gave him mission rations and a pitying look and a scroll of paper that would ‘let him through’ unscathed.

Sasuke blissfully pretended to be illiterate. He rode slowly on Bakashi’s back down the mountainside. Through the scattered civilian villages where he traded money for food and clothing. A bar of homemade soap that he used in the many rivers to try and keep any form of sanitation.

Now, near the western border, Sasuke felt tired and relieved to finally leave the humid swamp of tropical parasites. Traversing the distance would be immeasurably less if he funnelled chakra and travelled like a shinobi- the Land of Grass held multinational prisons of the highest calibre. Sasuke was for all purposes now, wanted by the law. Riding Bakashi through a hellhole on the back of a smelling ridiculous animal, was the easiest way to travel.

The eastern border of the Land of Earth spanned high and far as the rocky spires of its mountain ranges pierced the clouds. The subtropical humidity of Grass’ land fell directly from the mountain’s peaks. Bakashi peered up, flickering his ears back and forth and baring his teeth angrily.

It had been nearly nine months. The phantom pains of unknown knowledge had been replaced with the deep throb of growing bones. Somewhere along the cascading waterfalls deep in Grass country, Sasuke succumbed to hunting Muntjac and small game that tasted like venison and wild boar. The fatty grease made him sick, but growing pains didn’t care about fragile genetics.

 Bakashi walked on worn hooves, snorting angrily at the low hanging branches that dare suspend near his face. Nipping at a branch, the mule bleated an offending sound.

“Stop it,” Sasuke scolded the animal blandly. The mule trudged along, smacking its long ears angrily. The animal’s haunches were round, bouncing with each shift of its pelvis.

Aoda watched from the darkness of the forest. The impenetrable wall of bamboo and creeping vines made a curtain of thorns and stinging ants. Aoda, with his sleek scales and indescribable vision, thrived.

“I like it here,” Aoda told him contently. “It is warm and wet, it feels soft and full of life.”

Sasuke would argue against that. The insects were horrible, Bakashi smelled like sweat and grime, and Sasuke hadn’t known clean clothes in weeks. “Not for humans.”

Aoda sighed teasingly. A large palm from shuddered and collapsed from the corner of Sasuke’s eye. Aoda tended to move near silently, his actions were that of childish delight and enthusiastic destruction. “You humans have such frail skin.”

Sasuke said blandly, “you lost in a fight against a rat the other day.”

“It wasn’t a rat!” Aoda hissed furiously, finally appearing ahead of the path with venomous glowing eyes. “It was a foul thing! Large with teeth!”

Aoda had fought a wild boar, the type native to Grass with spiralling tusks that would pierce their skull and ultimately kill them. The animals were smaller than what Sasuke once hunted- the ones large enough that Shinobi were deployed to cull the animal.

Aoda opened his mouth, revealing the fleshy innards of his mouth and the hundreds of miniature fishing hooks lining his jaw. His fangs were flush to the roof of his mouth, rarely drawn unless attacking. Aoda said grumpily, “you saw it, Lord Sasuke!”

“It wasn’t that big,” Sasuke said, urging Bakashi to brush right past the giant serpent. Aoda wailed a noise of dismay, knocking his large head against a nearby palm tree. 

“You’re a liar!” Aoda wailed angrily, thumping his body along the dirt trail. “How cruel!”

Sasuke clicked his tongue, ignoring the summons. For all that Aoda was powerful and large, he was still childish. Time had matured only the snake’s size, not yet his personality.

Aoda sulked, climbing small tropical plants that crumpled under his weight. His body now stretched as broad as a man’s torso.

On Sasuke’s pilgrimage to the land of Earth, he failed to forget despite how avidly he tried. Bakashi protested loud and angry, every bit as impatient at Naruto. Amaterasu whispered him words of advice and knowledge, explaining concepts calmly with a wistful candour. Aoda, adept at coming to ridiculous conclusions reminded Sasuke every day of the team he left behind. The snake had grown so large, the only way to track his size was compared to that of Kakashi-Sensei’s torso.

  It is not a gentle life, Amaterasu told him quietly. Nostalgia, an understanding shared through nightly dreams and prophecies. Yet, one much better to what it could have been.

Sasuke knew how true the dragon said those words. The alternative was a garish malady of torture and experimentation- of grotesque wings breaking through his ribcage again and again as chakra scalpels cut them free. At night he dreamt of rage so raw and sour, it consumed him until existence meant killing Itachi Uchiha; Sasuke would do anything for power.

“It’s still not good,” Sasuke said flatly, “I’m wanted across the continent.”

That wouldn’t have changed, Amaterasu told him with dark amusement. This time, nobody knows where you are.

“True,” Sasuke said. Aoda had found something of interest, lifting his massive bulk until he towered tall like a young tree. His face peered at the sky, keenly aware of a small green shape along the brush. 

“Hello!” Aoda greeted enthusiastically. He flicked his tongue and urged Sasuke to look as well. “Ah, yes. Lord Sasuke says we travel towards the sunset.”

The green vine shifted, revealing a small camouflage snake. The little animal was no longer than Bakashi and as thin as Kusanagi. It flicked its tongue and Aoda confirmed its silence cheerfully.

“Lord Sasuke, will you not speak?” Aoda asked him, looking down at his summoner curiously. “He has asked you a question.”

Amaterasu thrummed in amusement, and Sasuke felt annoyed he had to explain he didn’t understand snake language usually.

“Ah,” Aoda said, apparently comprehending far sooner than Sasuke anticipated. “My fault- we forged a covenant but not to my kin. Allow me to fix this error on my part!”

Sasuke knew enough about his loyal summons to recognize a bad idea before it happened. Sasuke lifted one arm, barely managing to redirect Aoda’s excited strike. Bakashi screamed, leaping from a standstill in a rare ability all mule’s possessed. An incredibly annoying ability, considering it threw Sasuke onto the jungle floor.

“Aoda!” Sasuke growled, trying to shove the man-eater size serpent off his body. “Stop this!”

“Of course, Lord Sasuke,” Aoda agreed, sinking one of his kunai fangs into Sasuke’s arm. Wrenching his arm free, the wound bled a strange yellow fluid similar to flower nectar.

Aoda looked far too pleased and not at all ashamed of his action. The green tree viper above looked down at the sight with a curious tilt to its triangular head. “Will it not die?”

“Lord Sasuke has formed a covenant with me,” Aoda explained to the snake, “he will not die with my blood and bite!”

The tree viper appeared confused but politely greeted Sasuke with dumb animal intelligence. Sasuke, a tad dumbstruck, reciprocated it’s greeting. The viper settled back on its branch, and Sasuke whistled shrilly for Bakashi to return. The mule wouldn’t, because it was stubborn and ridiculous, but it would run no further.

The edge of Grass loomed closer and the chill of mountain air swirled ominously. In Konoha, it would be snowing. The village would be constructing monuments made of ice, carefully sculpted overnight from civilian crafters, and displayed with lanterns around the village. The cats in the Uchiha District would become plump with their winter coat, eyes luminous and dens furnished under broken porches. The vendors near the marketplace poured tapped sap and syrup from the famous redwoods over blocks of ice. They’d roll them into candy, wrap it around Dango and sell it by a half dozen.

It is alright to miss it, Amaterasu told him. Once Sasuke would have argued with the creature.

Now, Sasuke looked at the looming presence of the first mountain he had to pass and the threatening haze of snow above the clouds. He tugged his mesh shirt tighter to his skin, obscured under a simple traveller’s cloak, and said, “we need to move on.”

Aoda groaned, pouting grumpily. His anger was understandable, the mountain cold was dangerous and no place for the great serpent. He would leave, sleeping in Ryuchi cave until Sasuke passed the slopes to his intended destination.

The Howling Wolf Village- a strange middle stance between a shinobi hidden village and an established city. The village was small, a powerful scattered settlement along the base of the Three Wolf Mountains, on the southern ridge of the Land of Earth. Sasuke had never seen or heard of the land before- but Amaterasu told him everything he needed to know.

“I don’t want to leave you, Lord Sasuke,” Aoda confessed quietly. “Orochimaru has become...upset.”

Bakashi began to walk again, irritated but obliging. Sasuke said apathetically, “of course he would be upset.”

Aoda agreed. “He has lost precious pieces. His arms, his sword. His servant is more...mean. He looks like Manda before she ate my kin.”

Sasuke thought with a quiet noise of contemplation. “Kabuto.”

“Yes,” Aoda confirmed, “he is growing greedy. Angry with his progress.”

He seeks to gain knowledge of the sage, Amaterasu said quietly. Sasuke found the thought concerning- but not one particularly threatening. “Will Orochimaru have Kabuto sign the scroll?”

Aoda made a noise. “It’s odd, how much you know. I do not believe so, Orochimaru is...angry.”

The snake paused and tilted its head, flickering its tongue in deep thought. “Orochimaru should maybe eat the servant.”

“That would solve some problems,” Sasuke agreed flatly.

The last village before the border spanned wide, hiding under the shadow of Earth’s summit. It’s tourist population divided itself evenly with rock climbers and mountaineers, and Earth-travelers curious to see the jungle. Sasuke was not a rare sight. He had finally reached his growth spurt, coaxed along with horrible herb concoctions he bought from sporadic apothecaries. Hopefully, they had helped a bit with his subtle malnutrition. Whitefish and gentle foods suitable for Uchiha were not plentiful in Grass’ jungles.

Sasuke could see over Bakashi’s back when dismounted. He would have towered over his previous horse, Fish-Cake, and run the animal into the mud. Bakashi showed no signs of exhaustion or damage, the animal could kick a tree and suffer no injuries. 

“Don’t get in trouble,” he warned the animal, giving it one firm pat along its neck. A small handprint of dirty sweat clung to Sasuke’s hand, Bakashi snapped his yellowing teeth at him affectionately before becoming engrossed with the water trough. The nearby horse, a large bay animal, looked at Bakashi in alarm and skittered as far sideways as its rope would allow.

The side bags on Bakashi could store a surprising amount. The animal hauled weight well, never balking under the unexpected addition of firewood or an occasional carcass. Bakashi only protested Aoda’s girth, now a potential threat to the animal.

Sasuke withdrew his collection of letters, fastened with fraying hemp rope. The village center drew crowds, lingering on its stone steps and long shadows. Sasuke strode up the steps and pulled his travelling cloak tighter around him, wishing for a warm bath and food he didn’t need to cook himself.

The village city center had a small desk where a secretary worked to exchange letters and information. The spot was a bounty point, suggesting occasional bounty hunters and mercenaries interspersed with the crowds of travellers and merchants. Sasuke drew the eye;’s attention, but only from his pale skin despite having trekked across all of Grass.

“Here,” Sasuke said subdued, depositing the letters on the small wooden desk. The secretary looked up, a large man that may have been a deterrent to most, but Sasuke knew the man had no skill with Chakra. “Letters from down the road.”

The secretary took the small bundle of letters with a suspicious eye. “Someone hire you to run letters?”

“Just on the trail,” Sasuke said blandly, “travelling along the path.”

The secretary grunted, slicing the twine with a very sharp letter opener. He sorted the small stack, taking a  short glance at the crudely written names on the front before dispersing them into piles. “Nothing here is official.”

Sasuke translated that as ‘you’re not from a village.’

“Just along the road,” Sasuke repeated flatly. “I’m travelling to Earth.”

The secretary squinted at him, then at the clearly dirty travelling cloak that Sasuke had wrapped around him tightly. The chill in the air from the looming mountains existed as a present threat. 

“Right,” the man said slowly, “and you’ve been on the road long?”

Nin do not know the speed of oxen and horses, Amaterasu explained. Sasuke nodded towards the window behind, in the rough direction of where Bakashi had been tied. “A few months. Since before the first harvest in Western Fire.”

The secretary nodded, all suspicion slipping away. It felt an impossibly long time to be on the road, but a reasonable one given the locations each of the letters had originated from. Sasuke had lowered himself to playing courier, and now it was finally paying off.

“Understood,” the secretary agreed, sliding a plain scroll out from under the desk with a collection of stamps and different ink sticks. He asked calmly, “do you have any documentation with you?”

Sasuke withdrew a scroll that he had received from a passing escort of Grass nin, offhand permission from an apologetic chuunin. Sasuke had played the part of a tired straggler well. “I was given this.”

It was accepted, returned politely to him as well as a new sheaf of paper embossed with three different stamps, one red and two black. Simply low-level documentation of the village and permission to travel across the border. One stamp from fire, signifying where he originated from. A paper trail that set him apart from the new edition bingo books where Sasuke Uchiha was listed with a significant bounty. Return alive, to Konoha.

“Enjoy your stay in LuYuan,” the secretary said, drawing out another scroll of paper with various dotted symbols along the lines, “this is the city. Here- can you read?”

“No,” Sasuke lied. The man frowned a bit and began to speak slower as if illiteracy equalled incompetence. 

“Take your animal down the third road, here- and there is a hostel here with a barn. This city is safe, there are shinobi travelling back and forth- you know shinobi, right?”

Sasuke bit his tongue and made sure to speak with a slightly wavering voice, “the...ninja?”

“Yes, don’t bother them,” the secretary said slowly. “Take your animal here, and you can stay here. Here are some coins for your courier. This will let you stay the night. Which route will you take into Earth?”

Sasuke accepted the coin, a painfully scarce amount that would last him only a day in the cheapest of beds. He was fortunate to have a wide selection of goods and currency already, sealed inside small scrolls taped to his inner thigh with his brother’s clothing. The traveller’s pants were shapeless and masked the bandages and weapons. “I plan to take the flourishing slope.”

“Not the Ray pass?” the secretary asked, looking clearly skeptic at the thought. “Few travel that way- are you not heading to the hidden city in Earth?”

“No,” Sasuke said quietly, “I’m travelling south.”

The secretary looked at him baffled for a few moments. Very few people would struggle all the way into the Land of Earth only to travel south. It was a long, treacherous way interspersed with wild animals and very few settlements. 

“Alright,” the man said after a few seconds, pointing out a few more locations on the crude city map he displayed, “you are best to equip yourself well and visit the shrine to beg for safe passage.”

‘I don’t need your gods,’ Sasuke wanted to tell him. Amaterasu laughed a high whispering chuckle that left a fire burning along Sasuke’s arms. 

Bakashi had stirred up trouble with the horse next to him. The mule apparently both claimed the entire water trough for itself and managed to scare the poor horse into standing as far away as possible. Sasuke returned and patted the stubborn animal, mounting its saddle and untying it. “Stop being a pest.”

Bakashi flipped its ears around, trotting off with no more than the slightest nudge. The horse shuddered at their pass, giving them a wide side-eye. 

The streets of LuYuan were not paved. They had been built out of doton and steadily trampled under thousands of cloven hooves. Large carts and wagons tottered around, lead by farmers or ranchers each with new objects and cargo to import or export. Once the city had been within the Land of Earth, but maintaining LuYuan had been difficult since the Village-Below-The-Rising-Mountain took clear time and effort to visit. The Land of Grass claimed it, maintaining a steady truce and open borders for nin and merchants.

Sasuke was not an unusual sight. There were hundreds of people looking just like him; dirty and tired, worn from the road with patched clothes and tied hair. Civilians weren’t trained to utilize or feel chakra, they carried sheathed knives and hunting bows- the boldest wore iron swords across their hips and eyed Sasuke warily.

Sasuke was young despite having finally grown. To survive on the road at his age insinuated he had some form of power or wildness about him. A bastard outcast from a clan, maybe with a bloodline ability that forced him to walk without company. 

‘Civilians are stupid,’ Sasuke thought bitterly, guiding Bakashi into the attached stable alongside a hostel. The horses inside the stable looked tired, marked with strips of ribbon that must have signified ownership of some kind.

The hostel owner assigned him a bed marked by colour. A matching blue ribbon tied itself around Bakashi’s stall, his saddlebags untied for once to rest near the bales of straw.

There was nothing to prevent thieves from stealing his goods- worn blankets and cooking pans. His valuables were kept sealed at all times, hidden under his clothing where they would never leave him.

Bakashi hissed over the edge of his stall, spooking one curious-looking workhorse twice his size into pressing against the far wall.

‘That monster would scare any thieves away,’ Sasuke thought with dark amusement. 

Amaterasu burned in agreement, chuckling a hissing noise like burning logs. It is aptly named.

Sasuke hadn’t thought of Kakashi Hatake in a while. Not since he last crossed a powerful waterfall that breathed mist and fog like one of the man’s mastered jutsu. He never heard the crackle of lightning in the loud darkness of Grass’ jungle, he could only see the intermittent flashes.

It is alright to miss him, Amaterasu said quietly. 

Sasuke once would have protested, defended that he cared little. The road of isolation was a lonesome one. 

“He is a good man,” Sasuke said simply, shuffling down the road towards the market district. Amaterasu rumbled wordlessly, a hot weight around his shoulders and down his right arm. He is. 

Sasuke smiled slightly, a lost expression in a sea of a hundred travellers fighting to purchase what they needed. There are shinobi on the rooftops.

Sasuke didn’t look and he dared not flare his chakra to feel. The shinobi would feel any change in their environment, even those untrained.

Sasuke clicked his tongue and held his head low. The storekeeper charged an elaborate price for a travelling cloak made of fur. The boots and legwarmers left Sasuke’s coin-purse a significant amount lighter. He contemplated a subtle genjutsu, only Amaterasu could lull him into ignoring it. 

The shinobi wore forehead protectors with the symbol of Earth. They were laughing, drinking alcohol near the balcony of an inn. Sasuke watched them as subtly as he could, keeping his hair veiling his gaze. 

They aren’t a threat, Amaterasu said. It knew because there were no barriers between them. Yes, they may have information on Itachi.

If he had passed through this village, there was a chance he had been spotted. If so, there would be posters at the bounty outpost. 

After, Amaterasu whispered, after.

The morning was brisk and fresh with a chilling cold of overcast snow. Sasuke could see it along the shadow of sunrise, directly West near the mountains. The public baths were chilling, absent of any visitors. Sasuke washed the grease out the best he could, picking the dirt from below his fingernails. Once he ascended the mountains, he wouldn’t have the comfort of a bath.

‘At least nobody will sense me using chakra,’ he thought viciously. His skin felt sour, the water spilled away grey.

The time the sun had truly risen, Sasuke was clothed in his heavier cloak over the mesh undershirt and ANBU gear. There would be no visitors to scrutinize which corpse he had robbed to get such quality gear. 

The bounties with the highest risk are at the back, Amaterasu guided his hand. Pinned to the wooden board with broken Senbon Sasuke pulled the various missing posters. He looked at them, folding the worn paper to stuff into his pocket for safe-keeping.

“Aren’t you a bit young for bounties?” someone asked him, the low thrum of chakra a secondary alarm. Sasuke looked over, eyes dark and blank.

The stranger came to a stop at the board, perusing the new names and drawn faces. “Then again, I’ve seen how scary some shinobi are. I once met a girl I swore was twelve- it turns out she was over twenty! Knocked me down with a hard doton, that’s for sure.”

He knows, Amaterasu said warily, fire burning hot below Sasuke’s skin. He must be a sensor.

‘Rare,’ Sasuke dreaded. Amaterasu corrected him, unfortunate.

“I’m just passing through,” he said quietly. The man chuckled gruffly, pulling down an A rank bounty with a quick glance. 

“I can tell,” the man said bemused, “you’re desperate to be unnoticed. You’re wearing something with seals on it, that’s what gave you away.”

‘The ANBU armour,’ Sasuke realized quickly. The man looked at him fully, rolling up the bounty with practiced movements.

“What are you doing here, kid?” the man demanded flatly. “Who are you, an undercover nin? A hunter nin? You look a bit young for jounin. Tell me, if I look through these bounties some more, am I going to find your face?”

Sasuke thought frantically. For once Amaterasu seemed just as hesitant to suggest anything.

The man looked at Sasuke from foot to bottom, unable to see any of his gear from below the traveller’s cloak. “I’ll admit, you’re good. I can’t tell anything at first look. Give me a reason not to take you out right now.”

Sasuke closed his eyes and avoided eye contact. “I’m just travelling through.”

“Where?” the man asked sharply.

Sasuke found no reason to lie. “The Howling Wolf Mountains.”

The man jolted slightly, so infinitesimally small Sasuke would have missed it without the hyper-awareness of Amaterasu’s eye on his throat. The man said, seemingly calm, “those mountains have quite a beast around them. And some potent herbs.”

The man stepped forward and towered over Sasuke, despite the small difference in height, “and not the medicinal kind either.”

It wasn’t any new information. The Howling Wolf Mountains grew a variety of rare herbs and flowers, equally deadly and equally beneficial. Those that harvested the flowers turned them into an array of products, and the notorious narcotic.

Saigenzai ,  Amaterasu called it. The shinobi said with a carefully measured voice, “ah, the pill of ascent.”

Sasuke let his body twitch, staging a sideways step in the false reaction. The shinobi breathed a measured breath before sighing loudly. “I should have figured, with pale skin like that…”

Sasuke said nothing. Let the man presume he was a shinobi seduced by simple pleasures, travelling to get a fix. Better an addicted burnout than a missing-nin to be hunted.

“...be careful, kid,” the man warned in a low voice, “there is a beast around the mountains.”

“I already know about it,” Sasuke said.

The shinobi shook his head, “a different beast. A monster disguised in a man. Be careful.”

The rocky climb of the Land of Earth felt different. The air became thin, light and clear like the freshest forests of Konoha. The swamp humidity melted. The broken bedrock grew grey lichens and scraggly pines burst through the mountain.

Sasuke let his mind slip, meditating steadily and focusing on the warmth of the sun although he no longer felt its heat. Sunlight warmth was rare, forgotten above the treeline. Bakashi’s breaths turned to steam, puffing in rhythmic clouds. 

A few days at this rate, Amaterasu told him. The snow drifted above in gentle swirls. The sky would be bright, and the moon near holy to look at.

‘When we get there,’ Sasuke asked quietly, keeping his face low in his collar, ‘what do I look for?’

Amaterasu said with brief flashes of objects and vials and an apothecary that smelled of flowers. Medicine. Kotaro, a medicine made in different forms to treat the most violent of illnesses.

‘How much?’ Sasuke asked.

As much as you can carry, and then more. It is our bargaining chip, and more.

Amaterasu had never said explicitly in words, but somehow, Sasuke knew his brother was sick. Wracked with an illness impossible to know, with symptoms muffled and disguised so severely even Amaterasu had no answers. 

Sasuke dreamt of a battlefield made from villagers, harmless women and children in the Land of Sound that were murdered, slowly, by his hand. He felt the hot splash of blood, the comforting weight of Kusanagi in his hand as he split throats and pinned men to the ground via spilling entrails. His sword met the metal of trained mercenaries hired to stop him, and he cut them down one by one.

When he woke with his arm throbbing of dreamt butchery, Amaterasu provided flashes of colour from far off places. This is the sight of Kami Waterfalls, in the Land of Rivers. This is the Bone Forest, on the border of Fire and Sound where the trees have turned white from minerals. This is the glass oasis, forgotten in the Land of Sand.

Sasuke looked at the dreamscape, where the horizon melted into the sky and stars glittered above and below across the black crystal ground from a hundred lightning strikes. He asked, ‘is Itachi dying?’

Amaterasu told him, we will ensure he doesn’t.

Aoda knew since his hatching that he was destined for great things. He was the first of his clutch, born under the hot sun and stronger than all his kin. He was told as a hatchling by the White Snake Sage, ‘this one will be our messenger.’

Aoda presumed he would be contracted and sworn into binding like that of Manda- the monstrous creature who had lost grips with sanity in wake of poison. Her venom became stronger, her speed fast and her mind lost as her strength grew. The White Snake Sage refused to speak of her, lounging on her throne and gifting prophecies of meaningless words and finding each new clutch unimpressive.

She looked to Aoda and said, ‘you, you will be the messenger of the gods.’

Aoda never thought that he would be tasked with subterfuge against Manda and the summoner. Although, it was exciting, and he had a keen idea the White Snake Sage would agree with him. She was fond of eccentric ideas and chaotic activities.

If Lord Sasuke asked Aoda to deliver a message, then Aoda would ensure he would do so with his dying breath. 

The den of Ryuchi Cave felt smaller than it once was. His oasis and home below the surface burned with the warmth he had not felt in days. He greeted his kin, inquired to their health, and basked in the praise of his new size and glory.

“Aoda, you are so large now!” his sister gasped, a fraction of his size. “You will one day rival that of the sage!”

“Never,” Aoda disagreed with good cheer. Manda, he could live outgrowing.

The forests of redwoods, called Konohagakure he had been told, smelled like home and warmth. Nothing like the humid heat and dampness of the jungle where his simpler kin spoke from the treetops. Aoda moved as stealthily as he could, ascending the trees that had once felt too large to exist. Now, he could wrap his body around its trunk and greet his tail fondly. 

He moved in the direction of Konoha, the city of light that his kin always warned against. Now, his lord asked him to visit its walls with a parcel entrusted near his heart.

‘I will not fail you, my lord,’ Aoda thought determined. He knew the direction to go and knew there would be challenges before him. 

He did not rest for two nights and chose to bask under the noon periodically to recover his strength. He made sure to feast on the tropical not-rat before his departure from his lord. He would not need to eat for many more days.

The third sun of travelling he felt the walls and life buzz above his jaws on the forgotten third eye. He felt the chakra burn and the power of shinobi travelling a perimeter he avoided with no thought.

The deer of this forest looked so strange now, and the ground felt soft below his scales. He had not thought of the deer before, but now they would be a suitable meal. 

‘Human human…’ Aoda mused, trying to determine which one would be the proper target, ‘which of you creatures are worthy of my message?’

Lord Sasuke burned with a chakra bright like magma below the Ryuchi Cave. He basked in the sun and let its power sink through his blood. Aoda saw him in the darkest night, so Aoda planned to find the brightest light in all of Konoha’s forest.

He slithered, enduring. The walls of Konoha were large and impenetrable by human hands, but the dens of wild animals smelling of fox and badger established burrows below its stone. Aoda’s third eye saw the thrum of chakra slide along his body, accept his presence as all animals could.

Inside the walls, the city glittered like Lord Sasuke’s campfires. The air smelt of hot sweaty animals and roasted grease. Aoda found it unsettling, but his lord had been specific with his message.

‘I will go to where the humans with power stay,’ Aoda decided, seeking the closest waterway to carry him. The canals, Lord Sasuke told him, connected all throughout Konoha and fed to all quarters of the city. Aoda was not one born from water, or made to climb; his scales were made to slide along the rock and race across grasses faster than any creature.

Aoda ignored his distaste at being submerged, especially with as much silt and human-filth polluting the route. ‘Anything for Lord Sasuke,’ he reasoned and kept moving.

The training grounds were as his Lord described them, the location comprehensible and the simmering burn of remnant chakra a siren call like that of pheromones. He focused, the third eye all reptiles had on the roof of their skull saw the chakra and sun and Aoda knew he had reached the lake.

Aoda surfaced and slithered through the mud and grime towards the lush grass and tall redwoods. Lord Sasuke told him carefully where the rock was- an important rock although Aoda failed to understand why. ‘Humans are so strange.’

Aoda found a tree with a branch to support his weight. He climbed it, surrounding its trunk and inching upwards at a shrew-pace, and coiled tightly to rest. Now he could let the sun warm his blood, and his scales settle.

The sun began to lower which Aoda knew meant his prey was less likely to arrive. He could be patient, all reptiles were.

Aoda sat through the night when dew deposited across his scales and he startled one sparrow into stumbling from his tail. Aoda watched it amused, flickering his tongue in greeting. The bird looked ready to faint, such a little thing.

Aoda settled into rest, watching the rock for his guest. The sun was warm, but the stilted weight of winter had muted it somewhat.

Aoda bemused himself with smelling for chakra, tracing the remnant smells with creatures he had seen before. There were dogs, lots and lots of dogs.

‘Ah, there you are,’ Aoda thought as he smelled a human walk from the city. He smelled like the wild, the scarce flashes of mountain wind that tasted of Lord Sasuke’s strikes and feral creatures. The fore bringers of dogs and hunting hounds. A unique smell, one that Aoda would not forget easily.

The human settled to look at the rock, unable to sense a wild animal with no apparent chakra about it. ‘Silly humans. Your eyelids make you blind.’

Aoda began to uncoil, his body stiff from his length vigil. The man turned quickly, shifting attentively. Only seconds before he found Aoda on his perch.

A forked tongue tasted the surprise, the shock and carefully controlled panic. Aoda lowered his body, a noose with slit pupils that greeted the human with a distorted practiced voice, “Are you the human I have been sent to find?”

The human jolted, looking alarmed. He took no step backward but crossed his arms in false relaxation. Aoda knew the secret of hiding tension in his body, this man mastered it better than any human Aoda knew.

“Depends,” the man said calmly, “there’s a lot of people Orochimaru would want to talk to.”

Aoda hissed loudly, what a mistake he had made! “I am Aoda, and I am here not for that creature.”

One eyebrow lifted and the human asked, “oh?”

‘Lord Sasuke said he would be a strange human,’ Aoda speculated, ‘and I would know when I met him.’

Aoda’s body touched the grass and he lowered the rest of his length until his tail could drop. He slithered forward, lifting his head upright in a polite posture to greet the man. The human tasted uncomfortable, unnerved by his size. Aoda had promised Lord Sasuke not to eat a human, but this man did not know that.

“I will not eat you,” Aoda tried to soothe the human.

The man said slowly, “...thank you...for that.”

Aoda nodded his head in a jerky movement Lord Sasuke showed him. The man did not seem pleased still.

“So uh…” the man said slowly, “...why is there a giant snake talking to me?”

“I was told to find you,” Aoda said contently, “and I have!”

“You have,” the man agreed. Aoda peered at the human curiously, his eyes were not made for colours or shapes but the male had the strangest face. “So, how can I help you, Aoda?”

‘So polite,’ Aoda nearly swooned. Aoda pressed further, making sure to not entirely surround the human, he had been told it made prey animals uncomfortable.

“What is your name, human?” Aoda asked curiously, “I believe you are the one I came to find.”

“Where are you from?” the human deflected stealthily. “Are you a summon from a shinobi?”

“Yes!” Aoda crooned delightedly, “my Lord said a name but I know not the word in my tongue. Are you the crackle of wood and the hiss of fire?”

The human clearly had no idea what he meant, but it didn’t bother Aoda. The man said, “maybe I am. Is Anko injured?”

Aoda flickered his tongue- remembering to keep his face away from the man lest he scares him. “I do not know Anko.”

“Ah,” the man said calmly, his body tensing poised to strike, “she’s a wonderful person. Has snakes for summons as well.”

Aoda bobbed his head pondering the human, “I have come from Ryuchi Cave with biddings from my Lord.”

The man hummed contemplatively, tapping his chin for a reason Aoda didn’t know. “Ryuchi Cave? What an honour a mystical snake came to visit me. It must be my special day.”

Aoda tilted his head and flicked his tongue curiously, “you are a strange human. Are you-...” 

Aoda opened his mouth, struggling to pronounce the name that Lord Sasuke spoke with lips and tongue. Two crackles of wood and the hiss of fire. “Ccck- Ccck-Hssss?”

The man’s eyebrow lifted. “Ah, I see the problem here.”

Aoda nodded, feeling glum at his failure. “I am to find Ccc-Ccc-Hsss and deliver my message.”

“Well, I may be able to help,” the man said, jamming his hands into his clothing. “I’ll go get the Lord Hokage if that is alright with you?”

“Oh, yes,” Aoda agreed pleasantly. The leader of the village was one Lord Sasuke explained would suffice. “They know Ccck-Ccck-Hss.”

“Wonderful,” the man said, giving a tiny wave before vanishing with leaves and a pulse of chakra. Aoda settled on the grass to patiently wait, humans were so strange.

The village leader appeared and Aoda recognized her from the stories of his kin and Manda’s fits of rage and screaming. The woman was a sage, blessed by the slugs and touched with the chakra of the rain in the sky. Aoda bowed his head in respect, offering a polite (if excited), “Lady of Shikkotsu Forest, It is an honour to meet such as you.”

The woman lifted her eyebrows, the man from before near her side. She said loudly, “what matters does a snake of Ryuchi Cave have in Konohagakure?”

“I am searching for a human,” Aoda said, knowing now his quest could reach completion, “the crackle of wood twice, and the hiss of fire.”

“Ah, they said that before,” the man explained sheepishly. The Hokage looked unimpressed, then over at a tree in thought.

“Two crackles…” she mused, snapping her hand twice before whistling quietly. She tilted her head, looking unimpressed and asked, “were you perchance looking for a nin called Kakashi?”

Aoda smacked the end of his tail against the dirt in delight. “Yes! K-K-Sh!”

“Oh,” the man wilted visibly, “well, uh, hi?”

Aoda slid his head to face the man from before. He tasted the air, content that the Lady of Shikkotsu Forest would not let him draw a weapon. “You are K-...Ka-ka-shhh? Kakashi?”

“Uh, yes,” the man said, clearing his throat slightly, “I wasn’t anticipating a snake from...anyone.”

“I have come for you,” Aoda said. He bowed his head and forced the muscles of his throat to contract. He retched a horrible noise, jaw crackling like little fish bones as the scroll surfaced from near his heart and slid to the ground. It smelled a tad of digesting not-rat, but it was unharmed.

“Well,” the man said blandly, “why does that smell like a boar?”

The Hokage pinched the bridge of her nose and looked very unimpressed. “This is your message for Kakashi Hatake? Do you know what it is?”

“No, I do not know your human language,” Aoda apologized, “I am Aoda, first of the ground clutch, deemed the oracle by the White Snake Sage.”

“Oracle?” the Hokage asked.

Aoda confirmed, “I was destined a messenger by the White Snake Sage. I have formed a covenant bound by blood.”

“That explains why you’re not associated with Orochimaru,” the Hokage mused, “a select blood blond with a summons is rare and difficult. You’d have to specifically be summoned then contract bound, normally this is only in families and clans.”

Aoda knew this, he didn’t understand why she was saying this. The man, Kakashi, stepped forward to pick up the scroll, riding it off its outer cover. He cracked the seal (made from sap Aoda found in the jungle trees) and pulled open the paper. 

He said something Aoda didn’t understand, then nearly dropped it. “This- this is Sasuke’s handwriting.”

“Yes, my Lord,” Aoda agreed happily, “Lord Sasuke tasked me to bring you his message.”

The Hokage looked upset. “That brat is five months late in his report.”

Aoda brightened. “A report, Lady of the Slugs? I have been present with Lord Sasuke for many of your moons, what is it you must know?”

Kakashi looked a tad surprised by that, reading through the paper quickly, “you were with him the entire time?”

“How is he?” the Hokage asked curtly. 

Aoda tilted his head, he was large enough to eat her if he wanted. “He travels slowly.”

“Slow?” Kakashi asked, looking more and more alarmed by the second.

“Yes,” Aoda confirmed determined, “he bleeds from sleep. He Breaks bones and sees visions during the moon. He rides a foul creature, with four legs that I am not allowed to eat.”

The Hokage stilled, looking a bit worried. “He’s wounded? Even now?”

“Every night?” the man asked, looking professional and serious. Aoda understood why his Lord trusted the man so highly. “He has visions every night?”

“Has he been attacked at any point?” the Hokage asked, “Has he been discovered?”

“No, Lord Sasuke is very sly,” Aoda tried to soothe. “We travel slow but steady. He learns much, and sees far beyond my sight.”

“Every night…” the man repeated, sounding sad. “He only wrote about the information we can use. Border skirmishes to look out for. Future problems in Sound, well, more problems in Sound.”

Aoda did not know humans well, but he could tell through the whispers of the air and the taste of the wind that this man was sad. Not the sadness of loss or hardship brought, but the distinct aroma of expectation and failure yet again. The acceptance that lingered after every shed skin, sunken deep in his bones until ever heartbeat gave it lift. 

‘If he is the man that Lord Sasuke sent me to find, then he is important,’ Aoda rationalized. The human was a sad creature, a lonely beat that resembled the lost grazer that lingered after its herd moved on. Manda would have preyed on any of Aoda’s kin that smelled so strongly of misfortune. Humans, Aoda knew, were not as aware of each other.

“If you are K-Kakashi,” Aoda said slowly, determined to name the man correctly, “then you are he that Lord Sasuke calls Kin.”

Kin of Lord Sasuke demanded respect. Not adherence or obedience- Aoda would never extent his loyalties to outsiders. The human smelled lonely and sad, yet endured strong enough that Lord Sasuke spoke praise of the human’s existence and guidance. That alone proved something to Aoda.

He bowed his head, averting his eyes to gaze at the strange legs of the human male. He waited, motionless until the human would react. If Lord Sasuke deemed him Kin, then Aoda would treat him properly.

“Aah,” the man said a tad airily, shifting his feet where he stood on the ground. Aoda watched and knew that the chakra of the ground had not relinquished its indulgence, the man held strongly despite his poor posture and elastic bones. The human said, “no no, none of that. I’m nothing special.”

“You are Kin to Lord Sasuke,” Aoda repeated. He may not have firm bonds to his actual kin and clutch, but the word of his Lord had quickly become his life. The casual dismissal of a human meant nothing to him. “You are Kakashi.”

The man paused subtly before he sighed. Reluctantly, he waved one hand in a feeble expression of submission. “Fine, but there’s no need for bowing. Maa, who knew my cute little student would speak so highly of me.”

The Hokage rumbled a wordless noise. Aoda nearly snapped his jaws at such blatant self-depreciation. It was carefully worded, crafted like a sword to instill such careless effort it nearly lacerated Aoda’s barriers. The man, Kakashi, had truly developed a vicious dangerous disguise. 

There was little to say to such a dangerous creature. Aoda realized with a small festering dread, that Kakashi bore the same scales and marks of the False-Sage and his chakra. Not identical, but the similar markings and cowl of a sheathed cobra; Kakashi was a dangerous human who could destroy mountains with no more than his skin and bone.

“Manda would be wary to eat you,” Aoda said, “you smell of the sky during storms. Of the spark that ignites the forest fires and burns them to ash.”

Kakashi looked at him with spiritual knowledge. He had seen third-degree burns take and return to baby skin, seen cataracts leached and bled from milky eyes. Mending broken legs is considered old easy work that leant permission for Kakashi to snap them.

The snake summons, a creature not entirely of the natural world, saw this and knew it well. The serpent said: “You have exhausted your body so what ails you can be drawn free and broken by the world.”

Kakashi tilted his chin slightly in a nameless symbol that translated across all intelligent life. A whisper made from the creak of his jaw and skull, ‘what about it?’

The spirits and sage had made demons in every shade, every shame and form to better hide across the living. Aoda tasted the air and scrutinized the blinking impression of scents and smells and the acrid taste of calm vengeance. Snakes had always been known for their subtle words and hidden bite, Aoda recognized a pale face and dark eye.

“I have no concern for Lord Sasuke,” Aoda divulged, “you reared him.”

The human said nothing for a long time, and then bowed his head in return and said in equal honour: “Thank you, Aoda.”

It had been so very long since he had seen himself, and he was sure he had changed very much. The Land of Earth crackled ominously with a collection of sounds. Sasuke did not rest often from the following of a sound, but when he did he fastened Bakashi to a tree or rock and searched his skull with his fingers. The skin on his face and scalp were soft and told him his hands were now rough where they once had been nimble. When his clothes constricted and broke from stress Sasuke felt he did not grow bigger, but older and by growing older he felt smaller.

He crossed all of River without chakra. Now his coils burned and singed under the inexorable surges that melted his atrophied pathways and forged them new. Each step landed with a shattering quake that thrummed along the bones of his feet and nestled shy of his ankle. 

The sun draped itself behind an intangible curtain, Amaterasu’s glowing eye failed to pierce the veil and provide its warmth on the mountain ridges. Shivering became a routine movement. Bakashi’s fur thickened like Konoha’s moss.

Amaterasu existed more than a distant guest in Sasuke’s home, it was not a visitor to entertain in the parlour and offer tea for its troubles. The dragon’s fire shed a flicker every step from home. Once, the beast twirled itself a conflagration and told secrets sold by a devouring hunger. Each campfire Sasuke made took a bit from Amaterasu’s armour, each wisp of morning breakfast fuelled by the dragon’s mystic presence.

So far from home, Sasuke walked a groove worn into the bedrock and wondered when the scales became visible. When Amaterasu’s face had first emerged from the blaze and when could Sasuke count the spines of its mane and recognize it’s bladed claws by touch. 

Sasuke held Kusanagi every day and felt the knowledge of Amaterasu’s piercing talons. He looked at Sierra and pondered when they too became familiar.

“We’re different now,” Sasuke said. Bakashi ignored him following obediently with clicking hooves and heavy cargo made from preserved fish and rice. 

Amaterasu rustled, its presence had changed both in mind and feel. The eye on Sasuke’s throat watched, always.

We are, Amaterasu agreed.

“What are we?” Sasuke asked, voice flat and monotonous. Not entirely him but admittedly something he grew into. “You’ve been burning out.”

Amaterasu weighed warmly along Sasuke’s throat, ruminating. Have I?

Sasuke outgrew Itachi’s ANBU uniform, maturing and lengthening. The metal mesh struggled around his broadening shoulders, his ankle bones peered out from the hem of his trousers. Sasuke adapted, slitting the fabric and stitching it with sutures to tide the period until Shisui’s uniform would fit. He felt older and felt much smaller with every night he slept.

“You’re fading,” Sasuke said, “did you think I wouldn’t notice?”

I knew you would, Amaterasu said patiently and bemused. It was not a secret.

Sasuke frowned slightly, his eyebrows scrunching. His hair brushed against his neck, longer than it had ever been. “You didn’t tell me, which is as good as lying.”

If you denote lying to withholding information, then your view on the world is a horrid stance.

“You’re a God,” Sasuke said without heat, “I thought to lie would be dishonourable to something like you.”

That’s not your true fear, Amaterasu said knowingly. You are afraid I will abandon you.

Sasuke considered the groove in the mountain trail. It tilted downward at a worrying descent, raw gravel and broken shale crumbled below his furred boots. He grasped Bakashi’s harness and clicked his tongue twice, the animal walked obediently with heavy steps and downturned ears. Shale crumbled and cracked along the precarious fall, showering dirt across the ravine. Bakashi knickered, lifting its muscular neck in protest but strength became irrelevant with chakra’s unfair privilege.

Amaterasu quieted politely, its eye watching from Sasuke’s neck and the other from the horizon. It said, once both Bakashi and Sasuke settled in the gorge: We are coalescing.

“I see your visions in my dreams,” Sasuke said flatly. “To know those things suggest Sasuke Uchiha in a different life had importance to the Gods. The Gods allowed that life to happen, they allowed my clan to die.”

Amaterasu whispered, say it.

“What is your name?” Sasuke asked with cold-numbed lips. “Fallacious-God?”

A fallacious god? Amaterasu asked, entertained. How you have grown.

Bakashi huffed, jerking his face free to graze on the flora of the valley. Dragon’s head bloomed in shades of purple with cornflower spotting the lichen coated rockslides. The spruce trees were small compared to Konoha, and still, they protruded high towards daylight.

“The floods must be horrible in the spring,” Sasuke mentioned quietly. They had stayed below the snow-line so far, but eventually, they would breach it. Then, Bakashi would test his fluffy coat and Sasuke would nurture the hearth of Uchiha Katon.

A hawk cried from the top of a tree, it’s wings broad and dark as it flapped itself out of the gorge. The animal looked large enough to hunt the mountain sheep or the spy goats that balanced on sheer cliff faces.

Bakashi lifted his head, gnawing on blue flowers in his massive jaw. Prey animal instincts demanded he gazes around, frozen in shoddy camouflage.

Amaterasu too drew heavily, his eye scanned a precursory sweep before settling in discontent caution. There are eyes in the valley.

But they couldn’t determine the source. Bakashi’s ears swerved, flaring and drooping as his nostrils gulped crisp air and exchanged it for steam.

Sasuke reached for Bakashi’s bridle, holding it carefully in a loose grip. He felt the eyes on him, ambiguous and vague.

I can’t determine where, Amaterasu told him, sounding a tad annoyed at the inconvenience. A new skill, something I haven’t seen before.

There was a chance, a ridiculously small chance, that it was his brother. The mountains and gorges of Earth gave rise to countless caves and tunnels. Dwindling across the peaks could last forever or no time at all. The Ninja War between Fire and Earth lasted an eternity within the land of Grass for that very reason. Fire was too powerful to invade, and Earth too impenetrable to pass. 

Sasuke could try to outrun his visitor, but that required him to abandon Bakashi. He could survive easily without the animal, but it would be a tedious cold life that fared worse than mission rations. 

Ah, Amaterasu said, then we’ll welcome them.

Sasuke made a fire from broken spruce limbs assembled in a small circle. The shale rocks splintered under pressure but heated well enough to become a cooking surface. Bakashi tried to bite him, early snagging his tied hair before deciding to feast on mountain sage.

When Sasuke’s guest appeared with caressing alpine air, the teen constructed a small camp. Sasuke offered one slow hand in greeting, not bothering to rise from his seated place or open his eyes in cautious greeting.

The man, presumedly a nin, clinked loudly with rattling plates. He smelled of fire and burning herbs, a corrosive wash of chakra. 

It felt like fire, unlike Amaterasu’s heat. A humid ache and blistering poison that left Sasuke compelled to retch. A horrific overwhelming sensation that left him longing for the blissful cold of the mountains.

“You are far from home,” the man said, “little boy.”

Sasuke trembled, the chakra felt sickening, a boiling pain surpassing nausea. His eyelids stayed closed- red imprints of his capillaries swam in disorienting patterns. He felt his hands shake and sweat pour from the nape of his neck.

What is this? Amaterasu asked. The beast sounded alarmed, frustrated and confused. What is this chakra?

Sasuke inhaled a gulp of hot air and forced his eyes open. Sickening. 

The shinobi in front of him towered taller than any nin Sasuke had seen before. Entirely covered in red armour, the man looked down with a forehead protector of Iwa. His mere presence burned the air, boiling it into discernable mirages.

The nin, taller than a work-horse, reached forward with a black-gloved hand. Sasuke gasped for air, shuddering under the sweltering heat.

‘Uchiha are descendants of dragons,’ Sasuke remembered hazily. He sweated into his eyes, vision distorting, ‘we burn.’

Amaterasu said, let me.

Sasuke gaped for air and couldn’t breathe, his lungs refusing to inflate with furnaced air. Boiling his blood, his tears melted his face and left blisters along his nose.

Let me, Amaterasu said. Sasuke did.

Sasuke Uchiha jerked through a backwards movement, raising with a heavy shudder. He opened his eyes, unblinking through the oppressive heat and met the cause of his condition.

“Shinobi-san,” Sasuke said hoarsely, “stop.”

The Iwa-nin did, if only due to surprise. Sasuke couldn’t see the face of the attacker under the broad hat and scaled armour.

“So you are a missing-nin,” the man said through his mask. “I felt your chakra mountains ago. You moved slowly, and I was curious.”

Sasuke nodded, his body still and controlled despite the red flush of burns on his skin. “You attacked me.”

“A risk,” the shinobi agreed, looking at Bakashi with a blank look. He towered over the teen- barely out of boyhood and tilted his head in blatant curiosity. The campfire crackled slightly with the pungent fumes of pinewood ash. “You travel like a civilian.”

“I am as such,” the other said hoarsely, “and you attacked me without reason or cause.”

“If I search my bounties, will I find you there?”

“No,” the boy claimed with a hoarse wheeze. The mule nearby snorted and whined anxiously, skirting as wide as its rope would allow. 

The shinobi moved and so did his armour. Each scale clapped like the shale plates and layers of the mountainside, rattling in scales and decorative clatter of dragon bones. He settled into a kneeling stance, still well within the ability to draw a sword or knife and slit the boy’s throat with no more than a thought.

“Who are you?” the shinobi declared bluntly.

“A traveller,” the boy claimed just as everything about him suggested. His story had evidence and proof and yet- it felt so horribly wrong and indecent. 

“You’re travelling the wrong way,” the nin said with a near laugh. He said, scathing with cynicism, “Iwa does not take kindly to missing-nin. Harmless, or not.”

The boy looked at him with half lidded eyes, a pallid face no form of sickness but simply that of strange bloodlines. The boy said, calmly and without urgency, “do you know, shinobi-san, that you are being hunted?”

He scoffed, scaled armour rattling like Kuso’s rattlesnakes. “I can sense everything in the valley, child. There is nothing that can hunt me.”

The boy blinked slowly, eyes never truly opening. The burns on his face flushed a warm pink below his eyes where boiling tears had killed the flesh. The child reached out with slow obvious movements to add a stick to his fire and coax the embers to flicker into being. The boy said with a halfhearted disinterested, “I have heard about you from a distant...ally. You are Han, the Roaming Nin of Iwa.”

Han was not surprised that the boy knew him, he was known everywhere either by his armour or by his power. Han grunted low, the mask disguised his expression but it didn’t seem to bother the child in any way. “Who is your distant ally who knows of me?”

Han was sure that any foe he met never survived. Either his fists broke their ribs and organs, or his steam boiled their blood from their mouths.

The boy looked at Han with a strange expression, flat and vacant. A waxy sheen like crop-blight touched his grey eyes and changed them to something new. The boy said, with a certainty that unnerved the nin, “Kin of yours, or a connected bond I’ve never understood.”

Han shivered an impossible cold that never touched his skin with boil-release and his furnace on his back. “The Tsu-.”

“Not you,” the boy said with coal-tar eyes, “Jinchuuriki of the Steam.”

Han boiled the air, snapping the fire and sweltering it with darkened smoke. It struggled, flaring weakly before extinguishing under the oppressive humidity. There were no survivors who knew who he was- not the creature caged and it’s distant melodic cries. He was Han of the boil-release, not a cage or vessel for-.

“I know your name,” the boy said strangely, “Kokuō.”

Kokuō, he said. Han staggered under the heavy sound of it, the quiet lonesome whispers of a name forgotten and remembered for all the wrong reasons. There were seals and scrolls inked across Han’s memories, and with certain words, they rolled open and told him things he had known once and forgotten with age. The feeling of long meadow grass and summer air below his feet. The open welcoming depths of the ocean he had yet to see. The cooling touch of rain on his back under the blistering balm of the hot sun.

Kokuō, the boy said, and the beast shifted minimally and subjected fear and whispered to him it’s quiet broken question.

“How?” Han asked, feeling cold under the mountain air with his blood and steam filling his lungs and throat. “How do you know that name?”

The boy blinked again, unharmed and unremarkable. His face remained flat. His eyelids twitched and faltered along the burned tear ducts, twitching subtly before only the right opened with a venomous swirl of blood.

Han jerked, nearly falling from the change of scenery. The pebbles and river-rock shifted below his armoured sandals, grinding quietly and splashing along the shallow water. He stepped to better ground, splashing warm water and parting tall flowering reeds.

“Who is he?” the boy demanded- suddenly childish and demanding.

Han twisted, focusing chakra which refused to move and boil the teen where he stood on a rock.

“What did you do?” Han demanded sharply, “What is this genjutsu-.”

The other snorted and rolled his eyes, both bright and dark like the mountain clouds. He looked nothing like his state before. “This isn’t a genjutsu.”

Han began to understand that, as the water sloshed about with rippling waves from a hundred droplets of rain. It came on suddenly, with no sound or warning, wetting the air with warm moisture that felt not oppressive. 

“Amaterasu, who is he?” the boy asked. Han presumed it a name, but not one he had ever heard before. 

Han, the Jinchuuriki of the Five-Tails, something whispered through the cracks of thunder. It spoke like the chirping of lightning chakra, the high pitched whistle of electric strikes on mountain summits. 

“The Five-Tails?” the boy asked, eyebrows lifting in an unimpressed look. “Tch, I’m disappointed.”

Han took one step forward, fists curling so tight the treated leather of his gloves creaked ominously. The unknown voice chuckled in nondescript amusement, speaking in a distorted stolen voice of the boy in front of him, his blow can crack the mountains. Do not be so quick to judge.

Han scowled and found a beast of unknown origin crawling through the heavy fog. The steam rolled about, hissing quietly as rain burned under a black fire that boiled the riverbed and the shallow pools. A dragon, a mighty animal Han based his steam armour on and fought tooth and claw to channel it’s legacy. Han faced the animal- missing one eye and the majority of its left leg and clasped one arm quickly across his breastplate.

“Honored-Beast,” Han said in a rumble, not bowing his head but showing respect. 

The dragon rumbled wordlessly then looked beyond to a new focus. Kokuō, the Gobi.

Han turned to look at what piqued the dragon’s interest. 

A beast with a white-crown and wide eyes looked up from its shackles and said, “What are you?”

Han knew that voice from his mind and memory, the quiet respectful commentary on the valleys of mountain fjords. The Gobi, the legendary 5-Tailed Beast had never shown itself, too timid to speak openly.

The dragon said I am Amaterasu. I have a message for you.

The Gobi shifted its head the best it could, its chains and shackled pinned it to the river-rock where the small water doused along its lower jaw. Its cloven hooves sprawled uncomfortably around it, each tail bound with metal coils and ropes that dug deep into the rubbery texture of its skin. “I don’t trust a message from a creature that names itself a god.”

Amaterasu, the dragon, looked taken aback. The boy smirked, trying to hide his laugh behind one hand and a fake cough. Han felt very off guard.

You won't listen to me, because I call myself that name?

“I don’t trust humans,” the creature corrected quietly, nostrils flaring wetly in a quick breath, “I don’t trust you, who claims to know me yet shows no proof.”

The dragon paused, its long claws dragging across the river-stone and breaking pebbles on silver blades. Its lost leg, a mere stump along its upper limb, dragged across the rocks absentminded. The creature settled itself across from the Gobi, it’s body a careful crescent with the child standing in its apex.

That is fair, Amaterasu admitted slowly. I have a warning for you, Kokuō. There are forces hunting for you.

“There are always humans hunting me,” the Gobi said, “I am always hunted.”

“Will you stop whining and actually listen?” the boy said dryly, scowling outright.

Han took one step forward, towering over the child, “and who are you to speak so rudely-.”

“Sasuke Uchiha,” the boy deadpanned with red glowing eyes, the fabled Sharingan Han believed extinct. “Amaterasu thought you were important enough to warn. I don’t care if you don’t listen.”

“I do not like Uchiha,” the Five-Tails complained worriedly, eyes rolling back to Amaterasu nervously. “What are you? You exist within the Cursed-Blood but are not bound like I.”

I am something else, Amaterasu deflected. It’s eye, a unique spiral of multiple layers affixed itself on the Gobi. Will you listen to me?

“Who sent you?” the Gobi asked. “I don’t trust you yet.”

Your kin, said the Dragon.

“Who?” the Five-Tails asked nervously, “my brothers and sisters do not talk so openly, and do not trust. You know my name but that can be learned through other means-.”

Amaterasu said with a calm measured voice stolen from Sasuke Uchiha, y our father, Kokuō.

The Gobi jerked the best it could, mouth opening the smallest bit to show rows of tiny triangular teeth and it’s pale pink tongue. It breathed quickly, eyes round and stunned. It said, with a fluttering tremble to its words, “Oh, I see that you are not a thief for that eye. Did...did he send you to us all? Is he…”

Amaterasu opened its mouth, serrated teeth and empty void that could eat the bedrock and clouds like Iwa stories told. The black skin and scales, it’s void of an eye, Han marvelled at the legendary myth that breathed its voice with chirping crackles. Kaguya approaches.

Kokuō thrashed about, it’s wide eyes turned round in panic as it screamed a noise like the whistling wind. Han clamped his hands over his ears, the boy Uchiha stumbled to one knee. The dragon recoiled as the Gobi screamed a sonic wail that brought stars to Han’s eyes.

“No! No!” the Five-Tails cried in terror, “I am not- that foul chakra, that horrible monster-.”

I am here to prevent it.

“Please, please!” the Five-Tails cried, near trembling at the thought. The polite respectful chakra-beast looked horrified at the unknown name. “Prevent that- that sick…”

There is a group hunting the Tailed Beasts, known as the Akatsuki. Amaterasu explained quickly. They plan to gather them and revive the Juubi.

The Gobi shuddered terrified, Han felt his throat thick with the infectious leach of fear and steam clogging his throat. “Yes, yes I will warn my sisters and brothers. I have not spoken to them in so long-. What do you need, prophet of my father?”

Sasuke Uchiha looked just as baffled as Han felt. The dragon closed its mouth, the flickering fire of its head flared and succeeded as it considered itself. I aim to delay the events of now.

“Until a proper time,” Kokuō understood implicitly. “Then I will aid you, and spread my word to those who can hear me.”

Amaterasu stared silently before it arched its serpentine neck and bowed respectfully to the chained Chakra Beast. Thank you, Kokuō

“Han,” the Gobi said, finally addressing its vessel for the first time with urgency. “You must aid this prophet.”

The Chakra Beast had never asked Han of anything. It refused to speak to him for the first decade of his life, then only sparingly when needed. Han had only seen the beast a handful of times, never as fully as this. 

There was panic in Gobi's eyes, fear and terror that extended beyond that of self-preservation. Whatever the dragon said, the name Kaguya, spanned further than a simple threat. Han found himself helpless to ignore such desperation; he nodded and clasped his hand to his chest, bowing wordlessly to the creature.

“Thank you, Han,” the Gobi said in unfiltered relief.

“I’m a sensor,” Han explained in blunt words. He led the route out of the valley, walking slowly to accommodate Bakashi’s timid footsteps. Sasuke knew that animals tended to avoid Jinchuuriki, something which made finding and capturing a certain feral cat on D-rank missions ridiculously difficult. 

Sasuke grunted a small Hn, watching the behemoth of a human avoid a patch of broken shale. Han explained in the light of the morning dawn, “I can hear and sense all across the valleys, every movement and sound of wild animals.”

“That’s how you found me,” Sasuke summarized. “And why you’re difficult to attack.”

Han scoffed, spewing a roll of steam from his nostrils. “ Nobody can surprise me, even clones provide a shape that I can hear.”

Echolocation, Amaterasu told him. The creature had been quiet since both men left the mindscape the Mangekyo triggered. Amaterasu, exhausted from the strain of using Sasuke as a conduit, receded to rest until necessity demanded otherwise. The great dragon lingered in the hazy outerbanks of consciousness, once soothed with Han’s presence, it would sleep until such a time where Sasuke awoke it. Or when adrenaline and the siren song of bloodlust jolted it to awareness.

“Can you find people?” Sasuke asked. Bakashi tripped over a crumbling bit of shale, Chakra hauled the animal further up the slope until it walked on stable footing. Han looked at the animal, gold eyes crinkling in disgust.

“Of course I can,” Han said, offended. “I presume you’re trying to find this group then?”

“The Akatsuki,” Sasuke clarified, his throat tightening slightly on his next words. “My brother.”

Han’s shoulders lifted in a vague movement with an unknown meaning or interpretation. “An unlucky family then. I thought the Uchiha were dead.”

“They are,” Sasuke agreed quietly, “my brother and I are all that are left.”

“And your brother is a terrorist,” Han said dryly, eyes crinkling into a smile. Sasuke found it ironic that Kakashi’s apparel gave Sasuke the skills to read Jinchuuriki's face. Wearing masks was not common for shinobi, it was irony that led Sasuke to know a masked man’s face. “Unfortunate for your bloodline.”

Sasuke twitched and felt compelled to correct the behemoth shinobi with a slight barb to his words. “My brother is...complex. He isn’t a target of mine.”

“Clandestine,” the Iwa nin said with a careless shrug. “I don’t care for your affairs. I am only helping you because you carry a beast inside you, and my beast demands I help.”

“I’m not a Jinchuuriki,” Sasuke said quietly, muttering the words. Bakashi snorted, struggling over a rocky lip. Sasuke helped the animal, considerate of its abilities. 

“You may not be a Jinchuuriki, but you have something within you,” Han said, watching the shorter man from the corner of his eye. “Do you know the tales of Iwa?”

Sasuke’s hand tightened on the rope of Bakashi’s bridle. The boy looked at him with a careful glance, eyes flashing red. “I know you have waged war against the other nations. Your second Tsuchikage killed Kiri’s Mizukage.”

“They killed each other,” Han corrected without any sign of emotion.

“...Iwa fought Konoha and Suna in the Second Great War,” Sasuke said quietly, “then against Konoha in the Third Great War.”

Han grunted in agreement, using one leg and a chakra-powered kick to shatter a boulder that fell along the path. Bakashi shrieked, settling under Sasuke’s firm hand and a minor genjutsu on the herbivore’s mind. Han swept the debris aside, resuming the path. He spoke in a steady voice, “you know our history, but not our tales.”

Sasuke frowned slightly, guiding Bakashi to a flattened alcove along the mountain path where the ass pressed itself against the rocky wall and scratched itself happily. Sasuke clicked his tongue in annoyance at the sight, surveying Han with half lidded eyes.

Han instead looked over the valley they spent the night in. The cloud cover fell low, spruce trees protruding through like needles on thorny sand lizards. The mountains gleamed a flat grey, speckled with black and coal that fueled Iwa’s furnaces and forge.

“Our history is bloody,” Han said with little inflection, “our people travelled as nomadic clans, ushering goats and herds through the valleys between flood seasons. The winters are cruel, and farming is impractical.”

Sasuke nodded slowly. There was no reason to speak, it was rude to disregard the history and ancestry of any clan, no matter the current societal relationships.

“Our many clans travelled according to the seasons,” Han explained bluntly. “Our ancestors walked these paths with their livestock and living, struggling to survive the brutal winter. We found shelter in the caves, burning sage and worshiping the Imugi- the lesser dragons of the mountains. Children of the dragons, yet to ascend the frozen peaks and wishing to climb higher.”

Han tapped his fingers along his red steam armour, large scales rattling at his touch. “Each nomadic group had a name for their clan Imugi. The Ishimi, Miri, Youngno, Bari, each ornate and scaled like giant serpents competing to survive a thousand years, only then could they climb the mountains towards the heavens.”

Han tapped his armour and explained, “they were good luck to see. They meant the cave would keep my ancestors warm for the night, and provide safe passage for the sheep and goats. If there were no Imugi in the cave, a goat would be slaughtered and left in the dark to keep the spirits away for the night.”

Bakashi scuffed at the ground, nibbling on lichen and lapping his long tongue on the frozen ice that gathered from the frozen springs. Sasuke patted the animal, watching Han with a respectful nod. Han said with a low rumbling voice, “then, the clans found a creature stronger than the Imugi. A monster in the mountains with a temple it protected. So one of the nomads offered all their herd and home and decided to take the monster’s power for itself. They made the city of stone and captured the beast to fuel its furnace. They tore apart the ground for coal to stay warm in winter, and left behind the caves.”

Han sighed quietly, scuffling one foot on the gravel. “The Imugi were upset, but never cruel. With no visitors to their caves in the mountain, they left for warmer grounds and food. They left the valleys, but without their protection, the winter became colder, and Iwa burned hotter and raged. If the Imugi left because we did not offer blood, then we would provide blood from others.”

Han looked like he finished with his story, something that left Sasuke uncomfortable with the ramifications. “So Iwa decided to wage war against others.”

“They did,” Han agreed with a nod, “and the mountains now are named too dangerous to walk, because the dragons have left and no longer warm the caves.”

“The Uchiha are descendants of dragons,” Sasuke said quietly, lowering his chin with as much respect he could offer. He tucked his face into the fur scarf along his coat, nose burning from the cold air. “Our ancestors were dragons, they blessed my clan and gave us our eyes and breath.”

Han nodded, clearly accepting such a preposterous statement. “The true dragons lived at the top of our mountains, above the clouds where the snow lay thicker than cattle. When the Imugi left, the dragons found no reason to stay.”

Sasuke tilted his head at the notion of that. “Do you worship the dragons?”

“Not anymore,” Han scoffed. “If Iwa worshiped the dragons, they would stop the war and fighting. Instead, now, Iwa remembers the dead and fights for revenge. The dragons left our mountains. Not all clans stayed when the village formed, some left for further places where the crops would grow or the goats wouldn’t freeze.”

What Han suggested felt like sacrilege, like an unknown history that the clan elders would dismiss immediately. The Uchiha were an ancient noble clan- to propose that they came from the land of Earth would deny the origins passed down from history. It would reject the teachings the Uchiha had always known- but the stories sounded true.

“They say the closer to the peaks you climb,” Han said, pointing North and skywards, “the further you drift from the ground, the more the earth steals from your skin. They were pale, ghostly to match the snow.”

Sasuke thought that history fascinating. Uchiha were not common characteristics- the pale skin and grey eyes. All of Konoha were tanned with brown hair, more unique now that genetics changed but in ancient warring states- the Uchiha were different.

The Hatake, Amaterasu contributed quietly, the nomads.

Sasuke ran his fingers along the fur of Bakashi’s neck. The Hatake, the wolf clan.

Yet...two synonymous clans never existed within a single village or civilization. The Abarumbe Clan settled to combat the Kamizuru Clan in Iwa. Suna’s poisons were countered by Konoha’s healers. Kumo’s stealth combated Kiri’s shroud tactics.

There was a balanced set, a scale made in warring times for the various nin clans yet- the Hatake was a clan that directly contrasted the Inuzuka clan. The colouration suggested they too came from a mountainous region- the further North, the paler the skin became. The further north, the more lightning struck and the more fire became necessary to survive.

Suddenly, the weight behind Han’s words became significant. 

“It is likely all of the world comes from origins we don’t know,” Han said, “history is written by those who survived the trials of life. It is not explained by those who had suffered.”

Sasuke asked, “why are you telling me this?”

The man tried to kill Sasuke immediately upon meeting him. Even now, the nin was not kind or gentle with his words. He was harsh, aggressive and angry with the world. Han looked at him with a sort of resolute frustration that only came from decades of mistreatment. The world was not kind. The mountains were cold and lonely.

“...The Five-Tails had never spoken to me so clearly, not like she has with you,” Han said flatly. “She does not care for violence.”

‘The Gobi rejects the belief of Iwa,’ Sasuke realized, understanding the significance of both history and worship. Something thought to be a god of chakra, one of nine, yet somehow, not.

“You intend to reach the Three Wolf Mountains?” Han asked, confirming what Sasuke said the earlier night. “The next valley there is a trail to the left. It winds between the slopes and is longer than the mountain passages. Use your animal, there is greenery there and wild deer. Three days in that direction, you will reach the village at the speed of your ass.”

Sasuke knew he could make it in one day if fuelled by chakra, he was unwilling to abandon Bakashi now. “Thank you, for your help.”

Han nodded shortly, hesitating slightly before he added, “there is another Jinchuuriki in these mountains. Rōshi, the Jinchuuriki of the Four-Tails. He is quick to anger but old. I will pass along your message if I sense him.”

Sasuke heard the unspoken warning, and the permission to mention their meeting. “Thank you, Han, Kokuō.”

Han paused before bowing his head slowly. “...She thanks you, Uchiha, Amaterasu.”

Sasuke tightened his grip on Bakashi’s rope, tugging him gently to begin the descent to the next valley. Han watched him from the plateau of the mountain crest, a silent red-figure adorned in scales that glinted subtly like Amaterasu’s neck. Bakashi snorted, lifting his ears and followed obediently as Sasuke guided him along the old nomad decline. Before Sasuke reached the bottom, clouds swallowed the peak of the mountain and left him entirely alone on his walk.

The Three Wolf Mountains rose from the ground in moss-covered ridges like the arching Pires of three claws. Hooked back, they ascended in a manageable climb before piercing straight towards the sky with small serrations. Aptly named, they resembled the talons of a canine, with a small ancient village settled in its open palm.

The Howling Wolf Village did not resemble any form of hidden village Sasuke had seen. Instead of industrialized concrete or wooden boards, the homes were built from the ground itself with refined chunks of rock. Chiselled into place, each home existed half engraved to the ground with ancient thatch and moss-covered roofs barely above Sasuke’s head. The doors were sunken, buried into the ground with chiselled steps worn soft by decades. 

Bakashi snorted, walking along with the stone cut roads that supported the movement of carts or feet. The mist and fog of the nearby mountains swirled on the adjacent slopes, hiding the village from sight and dispersing pleasant cool moisture that beaded on Kusanagi’s sheath. The villagers that Sasuke spotted looked at him with minor interest, evaluating his clothes and fur cloak then dismissed him just as easily.

Sasuke hadn’t seen buildings made from individual stones and rock. Doton created reinforced barriers from solid slabs; the Howling Wolf Village built itself from callused hands and foraged boulders, chiselled with iron tools into careful shape. The cracks filled with mortar of crushed slate and clay, the thatch woven from harvested grasses and symbiotic moss that absorbed the rain.

Bakashi turned his head, baring his teeth at another ass that peered out from a stone fence made from stacked plates of slate. The ass flapped its ears, curving its body to protect the thick woollen sheep that lay across the rocky ground. Bakashi snorted, ignoring the animal with a gentle nudge from Sasuke’s shoe.

There was a sort of quiet sedation in the air, in the cool mist of the village. Sasuke glanced around at countless locals, mothers with children running back and forth with thick woollen cloaks and carved sticks. There were no nearby rivers or oceans for fishermen to use, instead, the rocky landscape gave rise to extensive pastures marked by ancestral stone corrals and warped wood gates. This side of the mountain, the spruce trees didn’t grow- instead, bracken and heather dotted the rocks. The Howling Wolf Village was made entirely of rocks.

Sasuke whistled a shrill short noise, drawing the attention of a group of children. The youngest squinted up at him, wearing a woollen felt cap that covered their hair and eyebrows.

“Yes, traveller-san?” she asked, voice immature but bright and inquisitive.

Sasuke lifted one arm to gesture ahead of him, “where are your room and board?”

“Oh! The lodge!” the girl said excitedly, the boy near her shoulder shifted his weight and jammed his hands into his pockets. Sasuke ignored him, focusing on the girl, no older than seven years. “Down this road, Traveller-san! Mishki-san has the lodge and burns it all-round! Do you have things to sell, Traveller-san? Did you come from Taniku?”

Taniku was the nearest northern city in Iwa, countless weeks of travel by mule. Supplies from Iwa likely came seasonally when the floods had yet to fill the valleys and cut off the trails. The village technically was a hidden village from their association with shinobi- but not in terms of chakra abilities.

“No,” Sasuke said flatly, “from Grass.”

The girl looked interested, curiously squinting at the side bags and harness on Bakashi. “That’s a nice mule, traveller-san. You must have come a long-.”

“Kio-chan, let’s go,” the boy said quickly, tugging on the girl’s arm and dragging her out of reach. Cautious, a good trait for surviving in such a...isolated region.

The lodge was little more than a rectangular building with a central open hearth. Logs preserved and petrified by bog arranged themselves into a loose oval around the fire, a heady warmth that smelled of greenwood and herbs that left Sasuke’s eyes watering.

The doors were warped and splintered on the corners, clearly wood a commodity not easily obtainable. Where stone could be used, it was. Tables and counters made from stacked shale carved indents in the ground for storage and shelves. Ingeniously made, each building melded into the earth and smelled of mud and incense.

The lodge-owner was a stout woman with broad shoulders. Her hair woven and braided yet the humidity caused each strand to frizz until her braid looked like ancient sea-rope. She frowned, a heavy strong expression that gave no beauty- but her skin glowed milkily and her eyes grey. If not for her hair, a coppery sheen in her lamp, she could pass as a very exotic bastard Uchiha.

“Traveller-san,” she said, voice thick and accented. She spoke deep in her broad barrel chest, drumming thick hands on the stone counter, “you look well versed.”

‘Not a Uchiha,’ Sasuke corrected immediately. She resembled a shinobi Sasuke remembered hazily from Chunin exams, the proctor that basked in violence and bloodshed.

“Perhaps,” Sasuke said, shrugging slightly. The woman’s eyes narrowed on his fur, her lip creasing thinly.

“Are you here to exchange in the trader’s corner?” she asked boldly. “We haven’t seen your face before, and new traders don’t risk the mountain pass.”

“I’m insignificant, Rojji-san.”

The woman scoffed slightly at her title, aware now that she had not given her name. Lodge-owner, was not necessarily rude, but not something subtle. 

“I doubt it, traveller,” she said pointedly, ignoring the reciprocation of an honorific. “Are you a purveyor? Coming to sell a certain exotic? What now- spice? Wine?”

Sasuke shook his head very slowly and repeated, “I am an insignificant traveller, Rojji-san.”

She pursed her lips and said, “then you are here in search of something. Not a trader, or in search to sell to other countries. Not a user either, your eyes are strange and I know the users that stumble to my fire in the night.”

She tapped her hands on the stone counter, squinting and smiling a thin-lipped expression, “is that it then? You’re a humble man on a long voyage, a desperate fool hoping to buy something from this village that no other great nation can provide? I wonder what that may be.”

Sasuke didn’t twitch, phantom lessons in expression and tells had cultured his skills without active training. A blessing and a curse. “I mean no harm, I am a simple traveller.”

“Maybe you are,” she said gruffly, “and I will not turn you away. This village doesn’t barter in coins and luxuries, you’d best remember that.”

Sasuke bowed his head respectfully, following her broad frame and firm steps across the stone towards one of the thin alcoves carved into the stone. The door, little more than a splintering plank, separated him into a closet of a space. A raised bed- unlike other lodgings, built itself off the ground with thick braided ropes and a meshwork of wool. Suspended little more than a hands width from the floor, it would prevent moisture from seeping through the ground and chilling him. 

“This is where you stay,” the owner said, patting the carved dark walls with a pointed look. “There is oil in the lantern, this is all you have. There are not many travellers so you will have this room until you leave. You will exchange something for your stay.”

There was no upkeep on her and for her hospitality. No meals would be provided or fire would warm his room. She would do nothing for his comfort, which meant she lost nothing for his occupancy.

“A gift of equal value,” Sasuke reflected, knowing the ancient Uchiha values better than any idea of coin or finance. The owner’s face shifted slightly, thawing from frigid formalities into blatant weariness.

“You know that then,” she said with approval, “I do not have feed for your ass outside. You may use the back pasture, there are no others here for it to squabble with.”

Sasuke bowed his head politely, waiting as she stormed out with quiet grumbles. The people in Iwa were sturdy like the rock, but the Howling Wolf Village persisted despite fog and flood. They were hardy, built to endure and carried it in their broad bones and square jaws.

Bakashi shook himself like a dog once unbound by a leather harness. Sweat marks dampened the ass’ fur into black tattoos across his face and neck. His fur, thick and shag came out in shedding tufts along his back where his cargo for months wore down from friction.

Sasuke pat it’s flank openly, avoiding the animal’s irritated nip. Bakashi had yet to catch Sasuke’s hair- tied back with a strip of cord now that it touched the back of his shoulders, but the animal certainly tried.

Bakashi chuffed, wandering off over roughened growth and heather spotted corral. The black stone fencing reached the mule’s chest but would suffice to keep him confined. Bakashi investigated a yellow flower with large leaves growing from a fissure in the ground.

Sasuke took the bags off, hauling them across his shoulders with the smallest use of chakra. The bags, filled with month’s worth of travelling goods and camping equipment, swayed gently near his ribs and hips. The lodge-owner didn’t look at him or complain when he deposited the bags outside his door to unpack. Both bags wouldn’t fit inside the small cranny of a room.

His bedroll unfurled across the lattice mesh of a bed, blankets and fur covering it fully. Food remained packed but placed inside his room. Shinobi supplies, hidden and some sealed, slid under his bed for safekeeping. The more pressing possessions stayed on his body, disguised under the ever-worn ANBU mesh and jacket. Fur cloak over that, boots instead of sandals. He looked like a highland local, travelling the mountains and valleys in search of something he didn’t know.

The people here exchanged goods instead of money, a culture based on mutual struggles instead of a caste system. In some ways, it felt more familiar and nostalgic than that of Konohagakure. A gift for a gift, an object exchanged for something of equal value.

Sasuke understood it, the logic of interaction made sense in a rational way that other cities sometimes failed to do. The homes here were made by hands and labour, made with time and care and in return, the people ensured their upkeep. 

Bakashi would rest, he had travelled long and had begun to thin along his back and sides. The winter chill required the animal to consume its ample fat created from the lush vegetation from the Land of Grass. The long walk and strenuous mountain climb had worn his spine down, bruising the vertebrae and leaving the animal slightly gaunt. It had done well to get here, halfway across the world. 

Sasuke withdrew a bow, something carved and purchased in the weapons shop that felt like a millennia ago in Grass. The last use left Muntjac strung by their legs hanging from Bakashi’s sides. The wood warped slightly over time, the arrows were nearly all accounted for. 

‘Something of equal value,’ Sasuke knew, which meant food or fur which gave the village their strength to survive the winter. He strung the bow across his back, it’s bamboo placer kept the drawstring in prime condition. It’s a harness, little more than an old stiff vine and rope snagged strangely on the fur cloak. The arrows he strapped to his thigh, unsure how to manage both bow and quiver on his back.

“Are there animals I should watch?” Sasuke asked the lodge-owner, bowing his head once more in respect. The woman paused, looking at him with the slightest lift of her eyebrows.

“...yes,” she confessed with more casualness than before. Sasuke had earned her honesty through his careful actions and respect for their customs. “There are wild cats, let them be. The sheep with paint belong to shepherds in this village, do not kill or cull any property of another.”

A fair request, one that would only increase tensions if Sasuke accidentally preemptively murdered their food supply. “And your culture?”

Her eyebrows lifted further, looking well and truly impressed. “The Rōen sleeps, but its marks remain. Do not kill on sacred ground or any creature on the mountains.”

Reasonable request, just as Sasuke would be disgusted if anyone killed a creature in sight of Tsukuyomi’s shrine. 

The outdoor wind felt wet and cold. Already, Sasuke felt his hair grow damp and wet with the grey clouds. He hadn’t seen Amaterasu’s glowing eye ever since ascending the mountains of Earth.

“Traveller-san!” a woman called, a woollen shawl flapping about her knobbly elbows. Sasuke had rarely seen a woman grow so old, with exception to the clan elders. He looked at her with a blank face, standing still near the road curb as she hobbled to him.

“You are going out to the moor?” She asked, wrinkling her nose and thin lips. “Will you bring me the bones along the rocks?”

Sasuke didn’t twitch, but he took a moment to process her absurd request. “The...bones?”

“Yes the bones!” she said, snapping a tad irritably. “The bones of the feet! The sheep that trip and break their legs die on the moor, I want the bones of their feet!”

Much less macabre and morbid than Sasuke’s original impression. At first, he presumed the land a bloody battlefield filled with corpses. Idiotic sheep were much less daunting. “The...feet?”

“Yes!” she said, brightening at his reluctant agreement. “The square bones, in their foot near the ankle. They are square and light, but hard to find.”

Bewildered, but recognizing that an old woman in the village held power, and favour would warrant a favour- Sasuke sighed silently and bowed his head subtly. “I will...look for feet for you, Korō-san.”

She laughed a breathy wheeze, smacking a weathered hand against her woollen shawl. “Korō-san! Bah, I am old, but not known as an elder! Call me Ekisha-san, hunter.”

Ekisha-san, an augur, a soothsayer. An elder believed to interpret the birds and predict natural disasters before they came. Sasuke knew the Uchiha once had them, those that interpreted the word of Amaterasu or Susanoo. They faded when knowledge of agriculture and blight became known, the words of diviners not as needed when the shifting of the seasons became common.

Sasuke nodded once more, murmuring her title respectfully. She looked delighted, old and leathery like worn gloves. Sasuke wondered what other strange cultural concepts existed in this village.

Sasuke departed and walked on lichen and rock beyond the outskirts of the village. A world of uneven ground, of treeless hills and dew-damp violets. Mist-filled hollows and waterlogged cracks where pale yellowed femurs protruded like spears thrust into the earth. The grey endless sky gave hazy light that drew the silhouetted dark shape of horizon hills. Rolling on for miles, emerald green and blue tone flora scratched the ground as far as the Sharingan could see. The honey-heather and raspy blackcurrants embroidered themselves into the slate and rock. Peat bubbled a fetid stench from bog burrows. 

Somehow, the air here could be sold to villages for all the heirlooms in their vaults. Sasuke felt a strange yearning, the whimsical sight of lace-petal flowers and the freedom of an endless land carpeted by greenery. He looked at it, and found understanding why a diviner was still used, the land itself retained a romance of melancholy and ancient timeless energy, the demand for poetry and song and the worship of the gods.

It felt light, not that of fire or sun but an open relief of breath and air. Sasuke shivered, cold and damp but felt unburdened and lonely on the rocks.

The greatest strength of the Howling Wolf Village was not it’s medicine, but the otherworldly lure of its land. The sky and green and the yellow bones protruding from their broken ankles and bog-trapped death. Sasuke understood why someone wanted the feet of perished sheep. He gathered one, pulling apart rotten sinew to harvest the square knob in the core of its heel.

‘This place is beautiful,’ Sasuke thought to himself, simultaneously knowing, ‘I should not be here.’

How long would he stay before the urge to leave abandoned him? How long until the endless moor drug him from the stone buildings of the village until the bog and peat sucked his feet under and drowned him below the ground?

Sasuke shook his thoughts free, unfastening his bow and laying it across his arm. It had been a while since he last used it; Itachi taught him as a child how to shoot and brought him once on a mission to cull a feral boar. The Sharingan made sure Sasuke had not forgotten how to hunt, but the memories felt hurried and awkward through his body.

Sasuke walked for hours, using his natural agility to leap from rock to rock and avoid the pits. The bugs of the moor found his chakra revolting, avoiding his skin or falling off seizing in death. Twice Sasuke spotted large birds circling overhead, further investigation left him hauling rotten sheep carcasses from water and hacking open their feet to pluck out their bones. The buzzards watched, swooping down to eat on the rancid meat once Sasuke left the carcass untouched.

He walked closer to the hillsides, marked with shifted boulders larger than a wooden cart. Flowers and shrubbery dotted the incline, scraggly with wooden brambles.

The Sharingan spotted movement along the outcropping. Sasuke held his bow and drew an arrow before his brain processed what his eyes saw.

An orange animal looked at him with reddish-golden eyes. It stood a fair distance, frozen in place. Eyes affixed to Sasuke’s own, the animal made no noise.

Sasuke had never seen a fox outside that of the infamous Kyuubi. He thought they would be larger, more threatening. The animal was no more than a well-fed cat, with black paws and a tufted golden tail. It looked at him intelligently, a vole pinched between its small fangs.

A fox held value, a luxury to the Howling Wolf Village. Sasuke held his arrow motionlessly, knowing its potential, and thought, ‘I wonder how Naruto is doing.’

It was intelligent, a glimmer of knowledge in its golden eyes. Its nose wrinkled slightly, tail twitching in a quiet question. Sasuke swallowed thickly and lowered the bow.

The animal watched him carefully, skirting around carefully with silent black feet. It ran about with a smug pride to it, a silent impression is withheld snickers and loud laughter.

‘See! See! Look what I got! I bet that no-good stupid rat thing never knew I was coming! See! Look at me, Teme!’

The fox glanced at Sasuke once more, something transferring across its knowing eyes before it ran off with its vole. 

Something of equal value, a life for a life. Sasuke felt the melancholy of the bog pull on him, beckoning with its cruel bubbling pits of tar. His hand shook around his bow, arrow falling and rattling on the lichen-covered rock.

On the crest of the hill emerged several silhouettes, foxlike. One stood near statue still while the other tumbled about, pulling each other over and over in a choreographed dance of tails and tongue. When the foremost fox, with the vole in its teeth, deposited its prize on the ground, the playful kits ceased their banter and sniffed the carcass curiously. The leader yipped loudly, the kits drawn to respond with shrill barking that filled the stale air with their singing. Their hymn, a single song with no true words, just a noise of pure joy.

Sasuke closed his eyes and felt incredibly small.

The butcher accepted Sasuke’s offering, three pine marten with arrows through their small skulls, shattering the bone on impact. The rest of the pelt was perfectly preserved, no holes or tears from rocks or brambles.

The butcher stroked his impressive beard, considering the three animals with a frown. “They’re tricky bastards, I’m impressed you found them.”

Sasuke shrugged under the fur cloak, much less impressive or soft than the small weasels. “I’m good at hunting.”

“I’ll bet,” the man said dryly, “that must be why you’re wearing cattle hide instead of a bear or moose.”

Sasuke’s expression didn’t shift. The butcher scoffed, grabbing a small knife with the smallest of warps, sharpened so many times its original blade edge had eroded into a wobbling line.

He skinned and gutted the animals, careful to remove the fatty tissue from the underside of the pelt. The wrists and ankles were snapped, impossible to tear free from the skin entirely. The carcass, little more than a small rabbit, lay weirdly red and exposed on the table.

“I’ve never had Marten meat,” the butcher confessed off hand, looking a bit perplexed with what to do with it. “What do you do with it?”

“I’m going to speak with the Apothocary,” Sasuke said quietly, “would they have use for it?”

The butcher looked a little surprised before a knowing frown warped his face. “Ah, sick one, eh? Shinobi come through a tad often, I doubt he’ll have what you need. Feel free to take your...weasel meat. What do you want for the skins? Dried foods? Traps?”

Sasuke shook his head, bundling the strange skinless bodies together and looping cord around their exposed ribcages to combine them into macabre firewood. “I’m planning to leave once I get the supplies I need.”

“The Kodon run the medical supplies,” the butcher warned. He drew out a box from below the stone shelf, opening the lid and pulling out sealed leather and wool pouches presumably filled with roots and tubers. “They’re...they were once a shinobi clan. If they don’t have anything, they may make you run in the moor to find it.”

“Then I’ll do that,” Sasuke agreed. The butcher barked a quiet laugh, looking well and truly surprised by the devotion.

“Fine by me,” the butcher agreed, sorting to the side a small collection of various foodstuffs. Salted meat obviously, but parcels of dried fruits that looked like chips. Dark tubers and stunted misshapen turnips. 

“Near the medical home,” the butcher instructed with one thumb over his shoulder. “They’ve got our stores of grain. Take a loaf before you go, one of the rock-hard ones. Won’t mould easy, but will soften in a fire.”

“Thank you,” Sasuke nodded, accepting his reward for a luxury animal pelt. He’d eat the Marten, gnaw on its spindly little ribs and flank before dare touching the preserved foods. He’d likely get sick.

He found the medical home at the far end of the village, marked by an impressive garden filled with pungent weedy looking roots. The door inside was a heavy drape, woven out of itchy fibres that somehow blocked the light.

The man standing there looked shinobi, or with a unique bloodline that warranted his odd appearance. Not stocky like the other inhabitants of the village, the man was tall and lanky with dark eyes and yellowing skin. Jaundiced, yet impossibly so if this man was the maker of the famous medicine cure.

“Traveller-san,” the man greeted, voice breezy and disarming. Clearly clan bloodline, too impossibly different to be anything else. “I heard about your presence. We only receive merchants in the spring when the floods have passed, not this season.”

“I’m a desperate man, I have no need to abide safe passage.”

“That you must be,” the man agreed with a wide eerie smile. “To come so far- that bow is from the Land of Grass. What can the simple clan of Kodon provide for such a journeyman?”

‘Patronizing,’ Sasuke thought annoyed. He refused to twitch.

“I seek the medicine the village is known for.”:

“That the Kodon is known for,” the man corrected sharply. “Not the village.”

Sasuke sensed the unsteady ground. He bit his tongue and swept himself into an ornate dramatic bow, one which apparently soothed the arrogant shinobi who thought himself better.

“My apologies, Kodon-san,” Sasuke muttered, “I am but a traveller. I do not know what I speak.”

“Clearly,” the man muttered. He observed Sasuke with sharp eyes before he sighed and wilted. “Well, get up then. What do you want, what sickness does your friend or sibling or whatever have?”

Sasuke slowly rightened himself, following with loud footsteps as the man shuffled to the wall where many ceramic and glass jars and bottles decorated the alcove. Some held strange objects, the eyes of birds and tails of rodents.

“You’ve come far enough that it would be rude to turn you away outright,” the man explained bitterly, plucking a paper package secured with twine from a pile. “Here, headache? Fever? Let me guess, horrible flu has come to your village and you seek the only miracle cure.”

Sasuke counted seconds calmly in his head if only to prevent reacting to the rudeness. “No, Kodon-san. The sickness is not one known.”

“Then it’s likely pneumonia,” the man said bored. “It’s always pneumonia to you civilians.”

‘Don’t attack the healer,’ Sasuke thought to himself quickly, ‘Do not attack the healer.’

“I come asking for Kotarō.”

“Doesn’t everyone?” the man said rhetorically, rubbing his face exhausted. “I don’t have the herb you so desperately need. It’s out in the moor and I’m far too busy-.”

“Then I will get it,” Sasuke said immediately.

The man paused, then faced Sasuke directly. He surveyed his body, eyes lingering on the cloak and bag of butcher’s meat. The man’s mouth curled into slight disgust before he sighed dramatically. “Fine, go trip into a bog. I need new herbs anyways, tormentil and bog myrtle. You do know the difference between one plant and the next, right?”

‘Do not attack the healer,’ Sasuke repeated twice before he said, “yes, Kodon-san.”

“Wonderful,” the man deadpanned flatly. “I need a flower that grows on the hills around the Eastern embankment. Purple flowers, purple. Not indigo or blue. Get me those flowers, the entire flower, and bring it back.”

Sasuke breathed twice and bowed respectfully. The man tilted his head slightly, looking at Sasuke with a different expression. 

“And don’t fail,” the man warned with a tad of caution. “The cliffs are dangerous. The flower is called Vetch, it grows above the water in dry areas. They are small, do not break them.”

Sasuke had never heard of a flower called Vetch.

“Yes, Kodon-san,” Sasuke said obediently, wishing more than anything he could draw Kusanagi and ram it right into the asshole’s pancreas.

“I’ll be damned,” the shinobi said, looking at the leather bag overfilled with various herbs and plants. Those he hadn’t asked for, but Sasuke recalled from his shelf of stored medicines.

Finding a supposedly rare herb may be difficult for a civilian. Sasuke had a fully formed Sharingan, and enough chakra to spare a few clones to scour the landscape. He didn’t bother with fully used shadow clones, instead, a simple basic form would work to climb the rocks and harvest the annoying little flowers.

He filled a bag with heather and sage, dropping in the potent tubers that could cure intestinal worms or dye fabric red. He was tired of obeying arrogant idiots for the simple courtesy of being polite.

He made it, he had reached the mountain and found the man who could provide the medicine he needed. At this point, after weeks and months of pain and suffering, he was not going to obey the demands of lesser nin.

“I found it,” Sasuke deadpanned flatly. “Now, I want the Kotarō.”

“Don’t rush me,” the man said with an ugly look. He stroked the flowers, seeming in awe with the plenty provided. “Damn, I haven’t had a store like this in years… ”

“The Kotarō,” Sasuke repeated a tad sharper, “ now.”

The man looked at him with a scowl, grabbing a nearby bowl and mortar to slam both onto the counter with a loud noise. The man grabbed a handful of flowers half heartedly, chucked them into the bowl and ground them sloppily. A crackle of chakra, foreign and bitter, and the flowers wilted into a disturbing pale pink.

“Here,” the man grunted, sliding the bowl over with a scowl, “now because you’ve been rude, get out.”

‘Do not kill the shinobi,’ Sasuke thought to himself. He inhaled and held his breath, releasing it slowly. 

“My name is Sasuke Uchiha,” he said flatly with an apathetic distaste he could muster, “heir of the Uchiha Clan. I have come here politely in honour of your noble clan. This treatment invokes my right as Clan to challenge this village for your dishonour.”

The man jolted, looking well and truly baffled. He blinked quickly, struggling to think. Sasuke looked at him and activated the Sharingan, turning the world a spiral hue that revealed the weak pathetic chakra of the ‘medicine’ the man made.

“Oh Kami,” the man said. He paled so sharply his jaundiced skin turned to cream. “You- I...I beg forgiveness, in the name of my Clan for this ah- transgression on your request-.”

“I have been polite in respect to your land and people,” Sasuke said sharply. “I find my patience has broken under your disregard for my aid.”

“I- yes,” the man said quickly. He stole glances as Sasuke’s eyes, bewildered and beguiled by the unique shimmer of the Sharingan. Sasuke watched him, blinking sporadically as the man’s chakra blurred and gathered into a billowing smoke, drifting to the herbs and embedding them with true properties.

“What- what level of strength do you request, Heir of the Uchiha?” the man stumbled, a slight tremor to his hand. “Kotarō manifests in ah, three varieties for purpose-.”

“All of them,” Sasuke said. “I want everything you have.”

The man swallowed thickly, nodding quickly and setting to work. He placed different herbs and flowers into the mixture, combining them and pressing them through strange chakra forms before the room flowered with the smell of juniper berries. Sasuke doubted the man had ever made such a high quantity in one go.

Sasuke watched with half lid crimson eyes as the man scrambled to pack and store vast amounts of medicine and herbs. The flowers Sasuke harvested were mashed and shoved into waxed leather bags and porcelain containers with stiff lids. Vials filled with a purple paste of mashed heather and marigold leaves somehow intended to fight off infections. 

Perhaps there were medicinal or antibacterial properties in the herbs and tinctures, yet it all felt painfully primitive. Sasuke watched the man, scrambling to seal jars of strange powdery Kotarō marked with black ink detailing the potency of its strain.

“The- the three strains are marked-,” the man said, tapping the jars with the slightest of trembles.

“I know how to read,” Sasuke said, basking in the glee that came with finally being able to say that.

The man looked horrified, nodding quickly with eyes affixed to the Sharingan. Clearly this clansmen was no shinobi, just an arrogant man who thought too highly of himself. Cowered in the presence of actual power, it would be an invaluable lesson.

Sasuke pulled the assortment towards him, more exotic and extensive than a medical kit. He sorted it into piles, securing the less breakable sacks together with bits of twine. 

“Is- will that be all, Uchiha-san?” the man asked nervously. Clearly anxious, he kept flickering his eyes to the door in hopes of someone else arriving.

“No,” Sasuke said bluntly with a blank face. “When you go out, what do you take with?”

The man spluttered, looking well and truly baffled. “Me? I- I have no horse or-.”

Sasuke clicked his tongue with a scowl. The man swallowed visibly.

“Forget it,” Sasuke said. He paused, thinking better of it with a small tilt of his head. He gathered his chakra, letting it swirl with soothing sparks, and pressed it behind his Sharingan.

The man’s expression slackened, glazing under the unique genjutsu that Uchiha bloodline wielded. 

“I wasn’t here,” Sasuke said and pressed the words through a whispering command, ‘I was never here.’

The man stared blankly as Sasuke gathered his things, securing the pouches to his leg and the ANBU clothing below the fur. He outgrew Itachi’s uniform, the back cut away and hemmed carefully over boring nights and campfire smoke. It reminded Sasuke distantly of the low cut kimono dresses that his mother scoffed at. The deep neckline with a plunging lack of cloth behind the billowing sleeves with only an Obi to secure it to a woman’s body.

Itachi would throw a fit to see him wearing such a suggestive thing, especially since it was his. Then again, Sasuke couldn’t care less what his brother thought.

Back at the lodge, he used the hearth and its light for assembling his pack into final shape. Adjusting items from his saddlebags and taking the time to oil the straps. The lodge-owner, a woman he still did not know the name of, barely watched him as he pulled free his bow and took a survey of his remaining arrows. He was low on small-point arrows, something to replenish in the next civilian village. He could always use Kunai through the Land of Earth, there were no scouts to detect his throws or the killing blow to birds and fowl.

“You leaving?” the lodge-owner asked him, crossing her arms while holding a broom. “You stayed a bit then, heard you brought in pine-marten though spirits know how you shot one.”

Sasuke didn’t look at her. He rolled his spare clothing- Shisui’s clothing, and placed it over his shinobi sandals. The jars of Kotarō were placed inside and wrapped securely with his spare trousers. Bound with twine, he made sure that even if all saddlebags were lost, he’d still carry his travel bag. The bulkier objects were sealed in the privacy of his room, shuriken and senbon he rarely used but still could. Sealing only lessened the physical size, not the weight of all objects combined. 

The lodge-owner scoffed, walking out from behind her store with a heavy felted pile of grey wool. She dropped it on the ground with a scowl, looking at Sasuke expectantly.

“Saw your Ass waddlin’ in,” she said in lieu of an explanation. “Haven’t you ever heard of a saddle pad?”

Sasuke hadn’t, but the blanket slumped onto the ground looked like something disgusting enough for that frustrating animal. “...Thanks.”

She scoffed with a slight glint in her eye, tapping her fingers against the bulge of her bicep. “I saw your arrows. You have big-point, which means you’ve shot something decent instead of a boney little shit.”

Sasuke had shot animals before, he had taken down deer and boar with tusks as long as swords. He tilted his head slightly, a gesture that conveyed his agreement. Her eyes shifted a little, scanning across his saddlebags and the worn leather.

“You’re in fine health,” she said openly. “People here only for medicine or to die. You came for medicine then, but you look lean like a bloody stallion.”

Sasuke hadn’t ever heard the term ‘bloody’ be used as vulgarity, but it clearly fit with her enunciation. She clicked her tongue, tapping her fingers again. “You bring me somethin’ big enough to last me ‘till next season, then I’ll trade those ratty bags for a pannier.”

She paused then explained with a tired level of exhaustion, “no saddle, all bags. That mule of yours hauls and you’re too fine to be riding it.”

‘It was to carry me when Orochimaru filled my blood with venom,” Sasuke thought a tad bitterly. ‘When Kabuto drilled my legs with scalpels and filled it with something else.’

He hadn’t had those dreams in a long time. His nightmares were tinted with a wave of cold dark anger, a level of rage that felt beyond him and inevitable. The Curse of the Uchiha, Shisui told him scathingly with a morbid twist of humour. Shisui braided his hair in small deft strands, tangling short bits together in stunted five-strand braids more elaborate than knit tapestries. He always talked more honestly when his hands fiddled with something- bits of straw or grass or fur dropped from the Uchiha exotic cats they were famed for having. 

Shisui liked to fiddle with things when he was anxious, twirling and rolling the long strands of cat fur or bird feathers before braiding them intricately better than leather straps. Sasuke used to think that Shisui could have been a wonderful spinner or shepherd. 

Sasuke sighed quietly, trying to dispel the aching nostalgia that sometimes pressed heavily when he least expected it. “...I want to see the bags.”

“Fair thought,” she agreed easily, leaving him here to fetch the bags. When she returned, hauling heavy stacks of broad stitched cattle leather and willow frame, Sasuke set aside his now empty saddlebags to compare.

The saddle would be a loss, but not a dangerous one. He would always be capable of walking and had done so for quite a while. The pannier was large, enough to carry near double his supplies if filled tactfully.

“It’ll last ya’,” she said pointedly. The unstable footing of the bog led to greater use of a saddle, a broken ankle could kill a man even in a village with healing skills. “Just some meat for it.”

Sasuke could manage felling a large animal, especially one closer to the mountains. The bog had nothing large except the spare deer and nimble sheep that managed to avoid the peat and sinkholes. The mountain held goats and other horned animals, peering down from the slate and shale faces.

“Fine,” Sasuke agreed.

The deer on the mountains were larger than in the Land of Fire. They had a thick blanket of fur, framing their throat in heavy tufts with stocky joints and shoulders.

Bakashi grunted under the weight of the deer, looking ready to bite Sasuke for the injustice. The dear flopped about, it’s head pierced clean with one arrow. Bakashi shrieked something angrily, jolting about so that the dear nearly slid from his back.

Sasuke smacked the animal gently, guiding him down the slight incline. The deer had been simple to fell, easy to gut and leave its organs on the ground. It bled annoyingly all over the soil, painting Bakashi black.

The lodge-owner took one look at the deer before she gave him the different bags. No question of how or where he caught the animal, instead she accepted it and gave in return. A simple society that Sasuke found easy and familiar.

Bakashi’s bags were loaded, extra space filled with thin canvas and simple pleasures. Three loaves of bread slipped inside the left bag, the baker and grain owner giving him a shy bashful smile and a flush on her cheeks.

The elder of the village, the soothsayer with arthritic hands accepted his collection of pedal bones. She traced the white and yellow knobs adoringly, pinching away the remnants of tendon and sinew from where they connected.

“These are nice,” she said, patting Bakashi with a wobbling hand. “Very nice, the spirits will speak much clearer now.”

Sasuke bit his tongue and held silent. She beamed, reaching into her pocket to pull out a gnarled sigil, carved into broken wood.

“That will keep the spirits away on your long walk, child,” she said knowingly. Reaching out to pat his cheek with one of her hands. Sasuke’s hand fisted Bakashi’s rope tighter, face remaining flat.

“You best pray on the road,” she warned with grave caution. “The mountains are howling in anger. I fear we must sacrifice a goat to appease the winds.”

Sasuke thought that the village was ridiculously backwards.

The mountains didn’t snow, but the weather felt similar to such temperature. Sasuke’s face burned in the exposed air, Bakashi’s breath clogged with steam and slowly, the village vanished behind.

The trek through the valley had been faster than Sasuke remembered, driven by renewed energy and determination. He had medicine, the best medicine in the world as well as samples of medical cures. Amaterasu woke with gentle pressure, peering about inquisitive as slumber left its voice silent.

“I’ve been on the road for a while,” Sasuke explained out loud. Bakashi ignored him, trudging along loudly. “I have everything we need.”

Amaterasu drifted about, slowly merging its chakra with Sasuke’s. The molten warmth immediately burned away any sensation of cold, rising gently and leaving Sasuke lazy with comfort.

You’ve done well, Amaterasu agreed. I have gathered all my chakra.

“Enough for what?” Sasuke asked quietly. 

Survival, Amaterasu explained. We will travel to Amegakure?

“Yes,” Sasuke agreed openly. It would be a long walk, but not worse than his original climb into the mountains. Sasuke no longer bled, Amaterasu gathered its chakra. Sasuke would face the mountains with chakra guided steps and heightened awareness of the Sharingan.

He walked for four days, chakra fuelling his muscles and bracing his bones from blisters. Bakashi endured as his species was made to do, walking from dawn to dusk and eating the bundled grain and grass stored in the side bag.

The high mountains of Earth began to subside, sloping gently downwards along the floodplains now filled with flowers and fertile prairies. Only temporary, because the roiling storm clouds that haunted the land of Rain were visible on the distant horizon. Sasuke would walk until the rain fell over him. 

The Land of Birds, directly between him and the Land of Rain, was not a tropical oasis like that of Grass. Instead, it bloomed an open flatland of bison and songbirds, swift sparrows and hawks circled far above in the sky. Bakashi walked easier, trotting constantly through high waisted grass now that they left the cold of the mountains. The fur cloak and travelling boots were exchanged for sandals and the thin travelling cloak that still smelled of Grass. Bakashi cried out a hellish noise, startling a grazing collection of antelope that bounded away in large jumping strides. The pans and skillet strapped to his flank banged ominously, rattling a loud song that triggered an obnoxious crow to scream. Bakashi shed fur like an Izunuka ninken, dropping hefty clumps that swift cowbirds stole to line their nests. The air tasted sweet with honeysuckle and billowing thistle, blooming purple on the rippling sea of flowering grass.

The heat too increased, a pleasant balm against the frigid chill of the Northern mountains. The land of Birds would be perfect for cultivation, prime with fertile soil below the thick roots of meadow grass. The horizon, brimming with constant rain and dangerous clouds marked the border of Ame where the skies barely parted and the dirt ran thick with mud.

One night when Sasuke watched the stars, he asked aloud to no person, “what do you think will happen?”

Amaterasu rumbled low, its voice had shifted from draconic snarling to something almost human. I don’t know.

“Did you never think of the future?” Sasuke asked flatly, Sharingan recording the movement of the celestial shift of the skies above. They were familiar to the nights in the Howling Wolf Village, where different constellations Sasuke had never seen twirled across the poles. The journeymen there named them after animals- the sable, the osprey, the puffin, the red deer. 

The land of Birds, just below the cliffs of Earth fringed the cusp of perceiving the dance of ozone and light. Sasuke searched for it with his Sharingan, recalling the phantom trails of fluorescent purple and green slithering through the ozone. 

Amaterasu breathed quietly and pondered the thought. I never had the opportunity to see beyond the present.

“Is this your opportunity then?” Sasuke asked, “is this your punishment or mine?”

There were bats in the Land of Grass, small nimble animals that moved in blind choreographed performances to snatch the moths and meadow insects. There were no cicadas crying out their 7-year serenade, only crickets chirping and crooning to the night.

Amaterasu said, sounding humbled and tired, I don’t know.

Sasuke had never bothered with extensive training or research into sealing scrolls. Fuuinjutsu never spoke of raw power or use- he knew a handful of shinobi who specialized in the usage of sealing scrolls and those that did never impressed him.

Sealing scrolls were tools for transporting cargo, little more than sophisticated pouches. At the academy sealing scrolls or tags were avoided in favour of kunai practice and simple henge. Drawing a seal could lead to dangerous or lethal accidents.

Amaterasu told him the art of sealing, shared across distant memories and engraved through the Sharingan. Sasuke practiced the movements with a stick in the snow, checking his accuracy only after he left his mark. Constructing exploding tags was second nature, something Kakashi-sensei beat brutally into them while travelling to the Land of Waves. The most elaborate seal Sasuke ever tried had been a simple smoke seal, made to obscure his shape. 

Then Amaterasu placed thoughts in his mind and taught Sasuke to place senbon to his skin, dotting with sealing chakra ink along the soft skin of his left forearm. Repeatedly until the limb when numb then hot with pain. He made a summoning seal, still present along his left wrist.

Beyond that, Sasuke truthfully hadn’t considered the uses. Now he knew better, able to draw elaborate tags to store precious cargo that may spoil. Hide away the fresh meat and plants that may shrivel and rot, keep it out of the sun’s touch for a different day.

Seals were dangerous, capable of extraordinary feats that even Amaterasu eyed with hesitation.

There are ways around them, the dragon told him. The sun chewed at the dew of the meadow, evaporating the little droplets that grasshoppers drank from each morning. Seals may...damage me.

“I wasn’t aware anything could,” Sasuke commented dryly. Bakashi frolicked, determined to slaughter one cheerful butterfly near a tangle of blackberries.

In both mindscapes of the bijuu, I have been seen clearly. Amaterasu explained reluctantly yet obliging. You have seen the work of seals in both cases.

“The restraints on the bijuu,” Sasuke confirmed. He busied his hands with the buttercups nearest him, plucking each petal from the flower before removing the nub with a flick of his thumb. “You think you can be restrained as well?”

It is possible, Amaterasu said. It would be catastrophic.

To shackle Amaterasu...would limit the voice of the creature. Would it silence the loud screaming he heard in his dreams? The phantom pains and ache of growing bones, now settling in his mature body? Would it close the eye on his neck and leave Sasuke quiet in mind for the first time in more than a year?

“Yeah,” Sasuke confirmed genuinely with the smallest twists of withheld terror, “that would...be horrible.”

In time we will merge. You will gain my abilities and I will fade.

“You’re already fading,” Sasuke pointed out. He decapitated a buttercup, watching its mutilated head drift to the ground. “It’s because I’m experiencing what you have to offer, isn’t it?”

A finite amount. One that will ultimately run dry.

Amaterasu wouldn’t die- it would fade. There was no such way to ever assign the concept of death to the dragon. Every morning Sasuke felt himself understand and know more than the night before. Every step was driven by a shared experience of something else. Amaterasu would not die, it would fade because its essence and gift would one day be what Sasuke awoke to.

“When will I get your eye?” Sasuke asked openly. “The one on my neck. I know I’ll get it.”

You will, Amaterasu didn’t deny. The dragon never lied to him. It will...be a while yet.

How much longer? Sasuke left Konohagakure a lifetime ago, and each day he lived twice. Had it been only a few weeks since he left Earth? Months since he entered it? Half a year since he breached the Land of Grass?

Cumulatively, it spanned over a year now. Seasons were difficult to track, time slipping distorted through waking moments. One year had been two, and Sasuke had become Sasuke and Amaterasu.

Meditate, the dragon suggested. Sasuke had no destination for the day, the sun drifted finally free of the greedy touch of the horizon. Ame blurred dark far in the distance. Sasuke folded his legs and settled on the flattest point in a sea of wildflowers. Meditate with the sun.

Years ago Amaterasu first taught him how to breathe with the sky, how each inhale nurtured a gentle flame that pulsed and pulled blood and chakra. 

Kakashi watched in lethargic amusement as Sasuke ignored everything suggested to him and learned meditation he should not know- could not know. Now, the thought and action of meditation always came with the welcome memory of Kakashi-Sensei’s lifted eyebrow and flat maa, that’s not meditating.

Amaterasu pulsed like a fire, waning and waxing like a magma field in gravitational flux with the sun. Not Tsukuyomi and her oceans, but the pull of hot chakra through Sasuke’s flesh and bones with each breath.

He breathed. Inhaling slowly and feeling the press of Chakra through his neck. Bu-dum, bu-dum, bu-dum. He exhaled, feeling the cycle of body heat and Katon along his throat.

Meditate with me, Amaterasu smouldered. Its weight settled along Sasuke’s back and shoulders, intimately pressing along his chakra coils with a tense pressure of warmth. Along the pathways of his throat, they overlapped a restricted tension that felt akin to choking. The weight through his shoulders and chest left him keeling to wheeze into his lap. His right arm- his left abandoned and chill under the sweltering pressure- ached a fierce tremor like the rattling of lightning on a tree.

Meditate with me, Amaterasu repeated. Sasuke’s eyes burned and the sockets behind pulsed an uncomfortable hotness that left him crying tears along healed burn marks. 

It didn’t hurt necessarily, not the way a physical wound or chakra depletion could. It reminded Sasuke of Naruto’s face when he ate a hidden pepper thinking it to be meat. Bright red, drooling and crying with his whiskered cheeks red from the spice of it. ‘Ahh! Get me some water! Sakura help me! Ahh I can’t feel my nose- is it still there? Is it gone? Did that pepper melt my face- stop snickering Teme!’

Sasuke shuddered, slumping forward under the weight. Draped along his back and shoulders, along each thigh and ankle and every toe on his foot. Amaterasu engulfed him like a tailored outfit, choking him carefully without ever damaging his airways.

Breathe in with the sun, Amaterasu said with its chakra rumbling against Sasuke’s vocal cords. Sasuke inhaled hurriedly, near panting under the strain. The sun beat down above him, his heart thrumming its warrior’s cry in return as his chakra pulled itself through inflamed sore pathways. Amaterasu coaxed it along, painfully and blistering. Breathe out.

When Sasuke breathed, so did Amaterasu. When he shuddered, Amaterasu’s presence rippled through the secondhand movements. Sasuke’s left arm felt dead and foreign, a useless limb that did not belong to his body although he couldn’t fathom life without it.

His back arched the weight of intangible power, settling oddly along his spine. Familiar and not, a distorted freakish anomaly of Nature Chakra and eldritch wings made of wriggling clawing fingers-.

Amaterasu thrummed a soothing power that did nothing to quell the heat. Sasuke suffered, simply put, and endured the twitching spasm of his coils and pathways protesting a change so suddenly without cause. He felt as if ropes were tied around his bones and throat, each jerking a cardinal direction with no relief.

Open your eyes, Amaterasu said. Sasuke did, the field of flowers distorted and glowing in a patchwork configuration of glowing trails. Bright impossible pigments, pastel purples hazing in the darkness with bold patterns and soft mint greens and pastel blues. Something otherworldly, a subterranean environment of exotic flora and fauna that Sasuke had never seen before-.

Amaterasu thrummed, a burning presence that left Sasuke’s teeth grinding together. 

Visually, everything pulsed. Fading into and out of focus sharply and dizzying. Sasuke recognized he made a noise of pain, vertigo swooping to taunt his brain into a shift in gravity. Sasuke endured, as he always did.

The flowers were warping, the hazy display of bright bioluminescence flickering impossibly to dull yellows and whites- then back to spectacular vibrant shards of stars. Repeatedly, until Sasuke blinked firmly and opened his eyes to a setting sun and the normal haze that dusk brought with it.

The flowers, utterly unremarkable wildflowers (daisies, violets, sunflowers) stood in the same orientation and location of the gemstone flora from before. The Sharingan lit them bright with hyperfocus and awareness of every deformity in the velvet petals. They were utterly unimpressive.

“What?” Sasuke croaked, his mouth dry and stiff from hours of clenching. “How…?”

He never meditates beyond an hour, certainly not for an entire day. The sun was rising when he last opened his eyes, the air was cool and crisp and his heartbeat strong with the sunrise.

Now the settling dusk revealed the ache in his body, unlike anything he knew before. A deep horrible burn like growing pains in his skin. His head throbbed, breath shuddering as he tried to fathom what surreal genjutsu he had seen.

My eyes, Amaterasu rumbled contently. Not exhausted, but strained and tired through mental devotion rather than effort. My sight.

“You see- what…?” 

The other sight, Amaterasu explained horribly. The shift of pattern.

Sasuke had used the Sharingan extensively, he had grown up hearing the stories of its power and abilities. He had never heard of the different vision, of the overlapping contrast of glowing colours in a blackened night and yellow flowers turning into moonstone. “No..what was that?”

My eye, Amaterasu said once more.

Sasuke wanted to shout, to argue that such a thing was impossible because he had seen the Mangekyo and it did not give a transformation of all living things. He wanted to argue and remembered the ominous sight of a purple eye swirling forever in the dragon’s skull.

Sasuke’s mouth turned dry, lacking all moisture. Bakashi, sleeping peacefully a fair distance away snored gently. The bats were emerging, crickets screaming into the night.

“What is it called?” Sasuke asked hoarsely, body trembling. No human could ever wield such a power, it was too much for anyone. Sasuke had seen only a glimpse but knew it to be a forbidden apple on a tree with branches tantalizingly out of reach. “The eye.”

Amaterasu rumbled, closer than ever before. The Rinnegan.

Sasuke shivered, his body felt flushed and warm which left the air cold. Bakashi snorted, adjusting in his sleep. The bats squeaked loud overhead, darting back and forth just above the tallest strands of grass and thistle. Sasuke settled from his stiff crouch into an uncoordinated droop near the side bags and makeshift firepit.

It is a blessing, Amaterasu explained quietly, from the Sage of Six Paths.

“The father of the bijuu,” Sasuke realized unconsciously, “that’s what you’re waiting for. You’re stalling until you can- can give me that.”

Yes, Amaterasu said. It holds the power needed to prevent a horrible future.

Sasuke remembered it, the sight and smell of battlefield and blood. The pain of betrayal and loneliness and the overwhelming urge to give up. Sasuke looked up at the sky, darkening in the night, and slumped relieved that there was no moon in the sky.

Sasuke walked with Bakashi following faithfully. Occasionally nipping with yellowed teeth to snag and pull on Sasuke’s hair. It was long now, tied back with a leather lace stolen from his fur boots. It brushed the bottom of his shoulder blades, an untamed array of spikes pulled back into a loose tail swishing with his movements.

The border of Rain marked itself with a thick scar engraved by Doton and remnants of ash. All trees were uprooted and left upturned, fire ravaging the bark and bodies until blackened stumps remained.

I have never been here, Amaterasu said. Sasuke shrugged one shoulder, tugging Bakashi’s lead to haul the animal over the rock ravine that made the border.

The land of Rain smelled wet like that of its Northern neighbour. Instead of Grass’s tropical climate, Ame felt cold and slimy. Mud squelched underfoot, squeezing between Sasuke’s toes in his Shinobi sandals. It was overcast, not yet raining but staying dry was impossible here.

The forests were dark, the bark slick like fish skin and blackened. Bakashi jerked, dirt coating the bottom of his rounded belly and thoroughly clumping the long strands of his tail. 

They walked together, quiet because the forest of trees did not speak, deeper into Ame.

Once travelling through East, Sasuke would detour south along the Southern border to skirt widely around the capital. Bloodshed followed the rains of Ame, it welcomed no persons either nin or civilian.

Sasuke made camp under the canopy of a young tree, not yet tall enough to join its kin with their tall trunks. Bakashi shuddered, spraying raindrops from its enormous ears to decorate Sasuke’s face.

“Cute,” Sasuke deadpanned to the animal, smacking its forehead affectionately. Bakashi scoffed, flapping his velvet lips and tried to eat the collar of Sasuke’s jacket. He pushed the animal’s face away, directing it to the bag filled with grain and grass which had been filled only for Bakashi’s appetite.

“You’re such a dumb animal,” Sasuke scoffed, watching the ass try to eat the bag instead of the grain. Sasuke sniffed, fearing he would develop a cold before he broke the southern border of Rain.

His campfire crackled and spluttered on the fallen branches from the trees. It popped loud and smoked on leaf mould when Sasuke struggled to fuel it. Ame was a damp cesspool of mud and grime. There was nothing redeeming about the place.

Sasuke slept horribly, dripping water and shivering under the curious bite of a thousand insects. Chakra killed them, Amaterasu kept him warm, and still, the grey sky left Sasuke in a bleak mood. If he pushed forward, it would be a week of wandering at Bakashi’s rate to skirt widely around Ame and reach Suna’s border. Sometimes, Sasuke dearly despised the animal.

Sasuke succumbed and complained audibly on the third day in Ame. The green plants and ferns smouldered a pungent smoke that, although cooked meat, gave it a horrible taste. The bag of grain for Bakashi had begun to mould from constant rain although the sealed foods remained preserved. Bakashi ate some of the plant greenery, including a suspicious mushroom, which led to the animal violently heaving for a rather short day’s walk.

“I hate Ame,” Sasuke seethed, glowering at a frog stuck to a tree with bulbous eyes. Knowing his luck, the damn thing would end up being poisonous. 

Bakashi of course snuck closer to eat the frog. Sasuke smacked away the animal’s nose, scolding it with a sharp, “no!”

Bakashi snapped his teeth angrily, ears flickering about before the animal sulked. 

Sasuke glared at it, the ass smelled horrendously bad with the multiple layers of mud and damp hair. “You are a repulsive individual.”

“Oi! Some could say the same about you!” 

Sasuke spun on his heels, senses flaring quickly to locate and target the individual in question. His eyes itched to channel chakra, but best not use the Sharingan against an unknown person.

Sasuke took once glance at the man and his ridiculous weapon before Amaterasu drooped heavily with a shared muttered, “shit.”

The man frowned, eyebrows scrunching in childish disappointment. “That’s it? Damn, rude little punk aint’cha?”

Sasuke’s fingers twitched, Amaterasu’s lack of awareness burned a bright warning in his skull. Diluted memories, distorted through a secondhand appraisal warped a name and general impression. Amaterasu struggled, attempting to recall through a filter of something else.

“Aww, and a quiet little brat,” the man sulked. He held his scythe across the tops of his shoulders, wrists looped over the shaft like he was restrained in stocks. Sasuke’s mouth dried as once more, he failed to think and understand anything about his enemy.

“Wow,” the man said, arching both eyebrows with a thoroughly unimpressed expression, “maybe you are just a washed-up bastard.”

Sasuke grabbed Bakashi’s lead and held it tighter. He recognized the cloak in both dreams and waking memories. It felt forever ago and perhaps it was. His last enemy (a man he knew and never would) had been formidable, but this one he knew barely any about.

“Sorry to disappoint,” he said flatly. 

The man did a double-take, eyebrows scrunching so high his forehead wrinkled like Bakashi’s nose. “Holy shit- holy shit. Wait, oh my god you look just like pale-and-grumpy.”

Bakashi tried to pull his head away, curious with the new voice and person. Sasuke held firm, even as Bakashi made efforts to bite him in frustration.

The man stepped forward, face lighting up in genuine glee and curiosity. “Damn, you look just like him. Say something else!”

Sasuke eyed the scythe, dangerously long with three forked edges. He hadn’t seen a weapon like it before, but given the Akatsuki cloak, the man could use it. Sasuke said, flat and monotonous, “something else.”

The man looked overwhelmed with delight. “Oh, man. This is fantastic. Deidara-chan is going to fuckin’ lose it!”

Sasuke thought this man already had lost it, considering he was shrieking about like an oversized child. Sasuke did not like the situation or the odds around him. 

Bakashi wasn’t prepared to move, his saddlebags were set against a tree in the highest point out of the mud. A rather pathetic fire pit made from scattered rocks and mud smouldered wetly, the rain trickled in a gentle mist that made Sasuke feel dirty.

“What’s your name, baby-bastard?” the man snickered, pulling the scythe off his shoulders to twirl decoratively and nimbly along his left arm. “You seem like a cute little dumbass.”

“Why is it important?” Sasuke asked flatly.

“So I can scream it to Jashin-sama when I rip out your spleen,” the man said, looking very much as if Sasuke had asked a remarkably stupid question. “Although you are kinda hilarious, man, maybe I should skin your face and take it back to show off to the others.”

That sounded absolutely horrible. No form of morality around- the casual idea of skinning someone’s face.

“It’s polite to offer your name before asking for a guest’s,” Sasuke said flatly.

The man stopped walking and looked entirely flabbergasted. “You- uh, alright? I’m Hidan, loyal servant to the holy Jashin-sama, god of-.”

‘Oh great, he’s a heretic,’ Sasuke thought a tad dazed. Sasuke said, a tad off-kilter but doing his best to disguise it, “a pleasure to meet you, thrall of glorious Jashin.”

The man froze, jaw floundering a few times before he closed it and squinted suspiciously at Sasuke. After a few very long seconds Hidan paused and looked thoroughly miffed, “huh, I guess I am a thrall...but that sounds like I’m a dumbass...but... Jashin-sama…”

Sasuke waited a few long seconds tensely until Hidan slumped with an annoyed expression. “Ugh, you really are like that fuckin’ blank-and-boring. Dammit, now I can’t slaughter you because you complemented Jashin-sama so killing you would be like, blasphemy.”

Hidan sighed loudly and leant on his scythe obnoxiously, one cheek squished under his scythe blade. “Guess I gotta’ just follow you around, pipsqueak until ya’ fuck up then I can butcher you.”

‘Who is this guy?’ Sasuke thought, maintaining a blank face. He bowed, skin itching to keep the man out of his sights even for a second. When he rose, the man had a flush on his cheek and looked a mixture of awed and infuriated.

“You…” Hidan struggled to think of words, “...are a fuckin’ douche, you know that?”

Sasuke shrugged slightly, keeping a careful eye on Bakashi. He wouldn’t trust this man as far as he could throw him.

“So,” Hidan said, snorting in disgust at Sasuke’s camp, “you call this a...a fuckin...I don’t even know what it is, it’s that pathetic.”

Sasuke knew that, but he didn’t like a random creep throwing that information back into his face. Anyone could observe the land of Ame and recognize that the environment was a ridiculous climate. It wasn’t fair to have high standards.

“Anyways,” Hidan said, plopping himself happily into the mud and soiling the Akatsuki cloak he had draped around his shoulders. “You move so slow. Like, it took you days to get here. Days!”

Bakashi sneezed, coincidently right into Hidan’s face. Hidan went carefully blank, his hand drifting towards his scythe.

Someone else said, “don’t.”

Hidan twitched and lowered his hand. Sasuke stilled, Amaterasu surging in wordless emotion and an overwhelming array of thought and feeling and-.

“Hey, black-and-bitchass,” Hidan waved with one arm lazily, “come meet your weird little copy-.”

Amaterasu shuddered and Sasuke followed the movement, his chest stuttering as his breathing became much tighter. How long had it been? A year? Two years? More? It felt forever and yet not any time at all. Amaterasu ached and Sasuke ached and at this point, the emotional connection was inseparable.

“I- I offer an armistice,” Sasuke said with a croak in his voice, hands falling limply from Bakashi’s rope to settle limply at his side. “For...a parlay- the terms agree for the… the duration of the night with further terms given tomorrow.”

Hidan’s jaw dropped slightly, finger shifting to point between the two with a confused expression. “Wait, why are you now all chatty-.”

“I am in accord to those terms,” Itachi said. He reached into his cloak and withdrew a blade, throwing it across the distance to settle on the ground.

Sasuke’s stomach fell when he recognized the markings, the carefully polished blade and the beautiful blue patina. His mother’s knife- their mother’s knife.

‘Something of equal value,’ Sasuke thought with a confusing bubble of affection. A precious heirloom, the only reminder Itachi had, somehow equated to one night of equal conversation.

Sasuke exhaled heavily and let his body drop and mud squelch around his legs. Sasuke collected the knife, sliding it under his cloak to rest against the obscured Kusanagi. Itachi emerged from the trees, eyes glowing red and expression entirely flat. He skimmed his eyes over Bakashi for a tad longer than necessary before focusing on the sad state of the fire.

“Alright,” Hidan said firmly, “you two...are fuckin’ weird.”

Itachi said nothing, settling himself primly on the mud although no dirt adhered to his cloak. Sasuke wouldn’t put it past him to flash hand signs inside the cloak to dry the ground before sitting. Itachi’s arm half hung from the cloak, resting gently with the impression of being bored.

Sasuke knew that Itachi was incredibly curious. 

“So,” Hidan said, a ridiculous conversationalist apparently. “What’s with the fuckin’ horse?”

“It’s a mule,” Itachi corrected in a low murmur.

Hidan looked at Bakashi again. “Is that a species of very ugly horse?”

Bakashi sneezed again, Hidan looked ready to murder him. Sasuke reached out for Bakashi, Bakashi avoided him which ultimately led the ass to walk further away. Hidan glared at the animal, Bakashi glared back.

“My name is Sasuke,” he greeted in a quiet apathetic voice. Hidan looked at him, thankfully leaving the animal alone now.

“He’s my younger brother,” Itachi said, somehow even more apathetic. Hidan’s eyebrows hiked up, eyes rapidly flashing between the two.

“Okay…” Hidan said slowly, “...so this one is... not okay to kill?”

Itachi looked at him with dark red eyes. Hidan flushed angrily, fingers tapping quickly along his scythe. “I wasn’t going to! He praised Jashin-sama. I can’t kill him after that.”

Itachi closed his eyes, appearing bored of the conversation. Hidan clearly wasn’t. He leaned across the pathetic smoke pit and asked with a manic gleam in his eye, “does that mean this fucker here actually slaughtered all his family? Because you’re here and I really didn’t think he was the liar. I mean, Sasori is a humpback whore, but slaughtering a clan? Nah.”

Itachi stiffened ever so subtly, so small that Sasuke hadn’t seen it. It was Amaterasu’s eye peering through his collar that watched the fine tension of his jaw.

Once, the thought and memory hurt, but now the saccharine joy of finally finding him overrode the horrors of before. Sasuke said entirely flat, “no, that’s true.”

Hidan blinked quickly, “really? Damn. Stone cold, how did you get out of it?”

“I didn’t,” Sasuke said apathetically. “He left me alive because I was too pathetic to kill.”

Hidan very slowly turned his neck to look at Itachi, who still seemed bored. 

“Dude,” Hidan said seriously, “the fuck?”

Itachi blinked, which was his equivalent of a shrug. Sasuke felt a strange urge to laugh. The entire situation was hysterical.

“Okay...not touching that,” Hidan said pointedly. “Why the hell are you crossing into Ame? From the West?”

“I was travelling,” Sasuke said simply. “I’m a missing-nin.”

Itachi’s eyes opened in a flash, fixating on Sasuke with a narrowed intensity. “No you are not.”

Sasuke lifted his chin, bristling slightly at the subtle barb. ‘You aren’t capable of being a missing-nin’ his expression said. Sasuke said a tad viciously, “not everyone needs to murder their way into being a missing-nin.”

“Uh, I did?” Hidan said, raising his hand sheepishly. “What the hell did you do then?”

“Yes, otouto, what did you do?”

Sasuke glared and said a bit too sharply, “got blessed by a god and became a messenger.”

“Oh,” Hidan said a tad surprised, “I did that too actually.”

Itachi stared unblinkingly for a long moment. When he spoke, he said his words slowly as if that would make them seem any more rational. “You...became a messenger. For a god.”

“Yes,” Sasuke said equally slowly. 

Itachi said, “what were you possibly thinking to run away using that as an excuse-.”

“Careful, nii-san,” Sasuke said with petty delight. “Don’t go speaking sacrilege.”

“Okay, I like him,” Hidan said cheerfully. “Fuck off, Itachi. He’s mine now.”

Itachi closed his eyes and looked, in Sasuke’s opinion, pained. Sasuke snorted under his breath, internally glowing from delight.

The rains of Ame were miserable, Sasuke was muddy and tired, Bakashi smelled like something died in the dirt legwarmers he used to call ankles, and Sasuke felt at peace.

“Can I offer you food?” Sasuke asked flatly, expecting Hidan’s bright enthusiasm and Itachi’s silence.

“Hell yeah,” Hidan crowed delighted, “not like poison will kill me anyway. Give me what you’ve got.”

Sasuke stored that fact away for future evaluation. Amaterasu rumbled wordlessly, watching intently as Sasuke fished around for the portion of preserved food not tainted by disgusting fern smoke. Hidan tore into the salted meet with reckless abandon, Itachi accepted his small piece with strange reverence and held it almost confused.

“Ignore him,” Hidan said, swallowing a chunk of food large enough to cause choking in a normal person. “He’ll warm up to you. Maybe. Or just set you on fire.”

Itachi silently slid the meat into the sleeves of his cloak, likely into a hidden pocket. He closed his eyes and resumed his strange meditative sit.

“So, where are you going, mini-tachi?” Hidan asked.

“Further East,” Sasuke said. “Then South along the Suna border, then East.”

“To Konoha?” Hidan asked, whistling low. He ran his hands through his hair, flatting the slicked back strands further to his scalp. “Crossin’ that many borders will fuck you up.”

“You set off perimeter wards, seals,” Itachi murmured quietly. “Along the border of the Land of Birds.”

The ravine, Amaterasu realized immediately. Sasuke rolled one shoulder halfheartedly. Hidan snickered a bit, peering at Sasuke with outright fascination.

“I don’t know you,” Hidan cooed, sounding every bit like a fangirl. Except much larger, and much more deadly. “Jashin-sama doesn’t know you, little Sluts-uke.”

“I am nobody of importance,” Sasuke said entirely monotone.

“Aww, no follower of a god is entirely worthless,” Hidan crooned, casually touching the burning embers of the fire and searing his skin until it cooked. The smell rolled Sasuke’s stomach, although the man didn’t pay it any attention. “Tell me, little bastard, what did your cute little god bless you with, eh? Do you sleep in coffins? Eat fetuses?”

Sasuke twitched ever so slightly. Hidan’s smile sharpened further, his eyes alighting with a manic gleam, “or did you lie to me, eh? Maybe you don’t care about the old gods, maybe you were trying to... weasel your way out.”

Itachi didn’t move. Amaterasu told Sasuke that Itachi hadn’t breathed.

Sasuke swallowed thickly and said with a measured voice, “I am blessed with terrible sight, thrall of Jashin-sama.”

Hidan frowned. “But...but you aren’t squinting at me.”

‘Is he joking?’ Sasuke thought a tad unbalanced. Amaterasu said, I don’t believe so.

“Beyond the physical plane,” Sasuke explained after a suitable pause elapsed. “Prophetic dreams and messages.”

“Ah,” Hidan said, looking suspiciously at Sasuke. “Where’s your marker then? All loyal followers of the old gods hold a marker-.”

Sasuke quickly tugged down the side of his caller, the Mangekyo on his through swirled once clockwise before stilling. Hidan harrumphed in frustration, accepting that and quenching his bloodlust. Itachi on the other hand froze entirely and stared at the mark with a tightened jaw.

“Okay yeah,” Hidan muttered sourly. “That’s a god’s mark. Jashin-sama says you’re touched, so If I rip out your liver I’ll be pissing off someone else.”

“That makes things messy,” Sasuke agreed, trying his best to withhold the tremor in his words. “What...gift has Jashin-sama given you?”

Itachi said a very low quiet, “Sasuke…” which he ignored pointedly.

Hidan brightened, the mania oozing from his pores. “Oh! Jashin-sama whispers to me her wanted sacrifices, and I make them beg for death and blood, and I give them pain which we share together before she takes them to her arms.”

This man is insane, Amaterasu told him calmly. Sasuke entirely agreed.

“What about you?” Hidan asked, clearly fascinated. “I don’t meet others like me. What does yours demand of you?”

“A pound of flesh,” Sasuke said immediately. “The injuries of prophecy.”

Itachi looked at him with barely withheld horror. Hidan nodded contently and chirped, “yep!”

“And...your curse?” Sasuke asked carefully. 

Hidan hummed in thought, fingers dancing quickly along the shaft of his scythe. “Mmm, I don’t die. A horrible thing, I can only meet Jashin-sama between sacrifices, I wish to praise Jashin forever so I must kill and kill and kill…”

Hidan’s face turned serious, he looked at Sasuke expectantly.

Sasuke said a tad stressed, “I burn.”

Hidan pouted, “that’s it? You burn?”

Itachi jolted visibly, looking at Sasuke with a strange horrified expression. Hidan scowled at him, annoyed at the distraction. “Stop looking at us like that! Like- like you’re judging us you- you non-believer.”

No, Amaterasu said with slight worry.

“He believes,” Sasuke confirmed quickly. “I hold the blessings of Amaterasu.”

“I- yes,” Itachi quickly confirmed, looking at Hidan with a quickly formed blank expression. “I worship Tsukuyomi and her divine message.”

Hidan scowled darker, “bullshit. You’re a fucking faker, you don’t hear anything-.”

“I heard the word of goddess Tsukuyomi of the moon as a child,” Itachi said, entirely deadpan. “She delivered prophecy I hold dear.”

‘What.’ Sasuke thought, thoroughly caught off guard.

What. Amaterasu said, absolutely floundering.

“...fine,” Hidan growled low. “If you’re fuckin’ lying…”

“We are on peaceful grounds,” Sasuke said immediately, “breaking it is sacrilege.”

“Not to be a dick,” Hidan said viciously, “but I’m positive Jashin-sama would wreck the fuck out of your gods.”

Hidan settled himself comfortably, stretching into a lounge despite the tension of the fire. “You know, just saying.”

Sasuke looked at Itachi, now carefully blank. Sasuke, for the first time in a long time, felt fear in Itachi’s presence but not directed at the man. Rather, fear for him.

Hidan, whatever ability he had that ensured he couldn’t die, was a very dangerous threat. Now, Hidan knew information that granted them peace currently, but how long could Sasuke roam freely with that information known? What could he do to the man if apparently poison couldn’t kill him?

He can not die, Amaterasu said, stiltedly and tentatively. Hesitating in memories unfamiliar, flashes of a sword clean through Hidan’s chest and somehow the man continued. He will not die.

‘Then he needs to be incapacitated,’ Sasuke thought with cold certainty. If the man would not die, then his legs would be broken so he could not walk. If he tried to kill them, then his arms would be shredded to the bone. If he tried to bite them, then Sasuke would tear his neck from his body.

It may be the only way, Amaterasu settled in agreement. Kusanagi could certainly cut the man’s limbs off, decapitate him if Sasuke was fast enough. Would Itachi fight back? Would he try to combat or counter him?

The embers smouldered, Bakashi snorted then sneezed loud once again. Hidan’s face shifted into something vicious, insanity collapsing and leading to something animal.

“That’s it!” Hidan roared, lunging forward with his scythe spinning to tear Bakashi apart. Sasuke countered on instinct, hand finding his mother’s knife and lifting it to deflect the blow.

“I’m going to murder that stupid horse!” Hidan howled, lunging forward again.

Itachi moved so swiftly, Sasuke almost missed the flash of color. He swung one arm around in a simple taijutsu move, smashing his forearm into Hidan’s face and fracturing his nose in one movement. Hidan’s head snapped back, blood dripping from his nostrils as he flailed in surprise, one of the scythe blades tearing Sasuke’s outer cloak and another ripping through Itachi’s sleeve.

“Ow!” Hidan howled, clutching his face in surprise. Blood dripped slowly, his nose bent clearly towards the right side of his face. Hidan blinked twice, processing it. Then, his expression darkened viciously. “You. Broke my nose.”

Itachi’s face settled into an impressive apathetic expression. Somehow, he looked disappointed.”Stop rising to simple taunts.”

“You broke my nose,” Hidan repeated slowly, looking very calm. “I am so, so sick of you.”

Itachi tensed ever so slightly. Sasuke’s hand shifted to grip Kusanagi’s handle and draw slowly from its sheath. Hidan didn’t look upset at the sight of a sword, instead, he smiled a bloodied grin.

“Oh, yes.” With a careful twist of his blade, the scythe twirled in a heart-stopping feat of control, “I’m finally going to get my revenge. Poor Deidra-chan will be heartbroken.”

Itachi, still calm, drew four kunai. Hidan’s expression warped and Sasuke found himself levelling Kusanagi in a practiced stance he knew from dreams.

“I’m going to gut you,” Hidan promised Itachi with a wide grin, “I’m going to rip out your organs like a pig.”

“Otouto, stay back,” Itachi said, pleasantly calm. The kunai glittered in his hands, still, one hand stayed inside his cloak. “Hidan is dangerous.”

The sun was above him, even obscured by the clouds. It was late in the evening yet- the sun still existed above the storm. Steady and warm, Sasuke grounded himself and breathed in and breathed out. Buh-dum, buh-dum.

Amaterasu settled on him, a sweltering inferno engulfing his body and blood. Sasuke said calmly, “so am I.”

Itachi frowned, Hidan laughed, and blades began to fly.

Itachi’s kunai lodged itself near Hidan’s arm, the other three deflected skillfully from his blade. When Hidan yanked the knife free and hurled it back, Sasuke spun Kusanagi in and smacked the kunai back in Hidan’s direction.

Hidan yelled, ducking the blade whilst countering Kusanagi between two of his scythes. Hidan cackled loud and free, looking entirely unhinged.

“Oh, you are fun!” Hidan cackled in delight, “maybe Jashin-sama won’t mind just this once!”

Itachi’s lip curled, the lines of his face deepened. He moved with further devastating accuracy, maintaining a safe distance. Sasuke knew Itachi was a capable taijutsu fighter- there was a reason he kept a distance. 

Hidan twirled, cackling a loud delighted noise. He didn’t care how many knives lodged themselves into his skin, or how much blood painted the mud. Bakashi screamed and ran off at some point, leaving Itachi and Sasuke scrambling to hold their own.

Something is wrong, Amaterasu rationalized. No injury was keeping the man down, even a cut femoral artery from a careful Kunai Itachi threw.

He wasn’t trying to kill the man, he was trying to bleed him out. Presumably even humans who could endure injuries had a set amount of blood in them- Itachi wasn’t fighting to win, he was attempting to stall the fight long enough for the man to pass out.

He’s impressive, Amaterasu said simply. Itachi, somehow, had hit both femoral arteries and one radial artery without Hidan ever noticing. Sasuke in comparison was simply countering with Kusanagi the best he could.

“I am sick of you!” Hidan screamed, nearly losing his footing in the blood-made mud. The man lost his cloak somewhere, now twirling about shirtless and bloodied with a massive scythe. “I am- oh, oh I’m done playing!”

Hidan, inexplicably, lifted the scythe to his face and licked down the top blade. Sasuke staggered- driven out of confusion. “What-...”

“No!” Itachi snarled. Sasuke felt his heart jump, he had never heard such a tone before. The air burned with chakra, a once familiar sensation settling oddly under the shifting tide of genjutsu. Sasuke staggered, wincing under the sensation and presence of chakra.

Hidan gagged, contorting yet cackling a horrific deranged noise. The blood on the ground was moving, changing into a strange symmetrical circle as Hidan’s skin melted black with viscerally white markings.

“Get him out of the circle,” Itachi said, voice layered with something. Sasuke jolted, slamming Kusanagi overhead only to be blocked by the three-blade scythe.

“Not today!” Hidan howled, eyes sinking and resembling a human skull.

Itachi hissed a wordless noise. The chakra heavy in the air manifested, slashing forward with luminescent ominous bones of a chakra formed arm-.

Hidan cackled, spun his scythe around him in a far reaching loop. The upper two blades countered the skeletal chakra manifestation, the bottom blade plunged straight into Hidan’s torso.

Immediately, Itachi made an aborted sound. Sasuke turned, Sharingan manifesting to permanently remember the exact second that Itachi’s eyes widened, his cloak tore open, and blood began to gush from his body.

“Oh,” Itachi said quietly, looking at his bloodied hand in surprise. He blinked quickly, inexplicably looking relieved, “I thought it was you.”

“Itachi?” Sasuke said, brain not registering the sight. The strange chakra manifestation, a Susanoo, evaporated as Itachi stumbled to the ground, both hands struggling to his lower abdomen where something was falling out.

“Hah!” Hidan cheered, whooping loudly in blatant glee. “I told you I’d gut you! I told you!”

Sasuke’s Sharingan whirred, quick enough to process the exact sheen of entrails and the precise quantity of blood or the waxy flexibility of internal fat pooling between Itachi’s trembling fingers. Sasuke blinked, trying to process it, and felt himself grow entirely cold.

“No…” Sasuke said and thought and felt in his body. Itachi slumped, too relieved in the face of his intestines falling out. “No, no.”

“Jashin-sama will be pleased with you,” Hidan crooned delighted, twirling his scythe again and again. His mirror injury spilled his guts across the ritual circle, the pain didn’t prevent him from moving. “I will tear open your throat-.”

“No,” Sasuke repeated. Amaterasu was shaking, a trembling force like gale winds and tectonic plates shifting. The dragon screamed a horrible noise, a wretched wail that made the ground shake and Sasuke’s vision swim- or maybe it was Sasuke screaming.

No, no, no. The idea was impossible, too outlandish to be true. He couldn’t just- just keel over and- Sasuke had come so far.

He had come too far to fail, and Sasuke screamed and dropped his sword. Hidan said something unheard in the roar of blood, but logic and Sharingan processed faster than the brain could think. The ritual circle somehow made injuries apply outside of it- a warped distorted voodoo doll with blood somehow being the anchor.

Itachi said to get Hidan out of the circle. 

Itachi was dying on the ground.

“No,” Sasuke whispered. Dissociative, he didn’t feel like the world was happening. Everything felt so different and odd and Amaterasu was screaming.

Itachi remembered the sight from so long ago in the forests of Konoha. He remembered the sound of his little brother screaming, the instinctual moan of pain under broken bones. Itachi recalled the exact sound of Kisame’s sneer and could match it to the memory of his expressions and posture.

Itachi remembered the screaming and the horrible churning pull of chakra. There was a dark feel to it, aged and deepened like alcohol locked in a cellar deep below the ground. Then, Itachi watched helplessly as a strange tug pulled in his brother’s chakra coils. Back then, Sasuke screamed and burned and Kisame burned as well.

This time, through the warm blur of blood loss and a crippling pain too great to process consciously, he felt the same tug and flow. A gentle ebbing and pressing of chakra and emotions- rage and fear and crippling loneliness. Itachi wanted to smile, to comfort that it was only him dying- Sasuke would be alright.

His otouo who had grown up in his absence. Who stood tall and lean with muscles and too few scars, who had his hair pulled back like Itachi himself and a fully matured Sharingan burning in his eyes. The Mangekyo on his neck was something Itachi couldn’t fathom, but when had the gods been nice to the Uchiha?

‘It is alright,’ Itachi wanted to say. The feel of abdominal fat and fluid distracted him, running between his fingers. Sasuke screamed a horrible noise, turning on Hidan with an expression Itachi couldn’t see- but the Jashin worshiper froze and looked genuinely baffled.

“What?” the man asked, gaping for a second and spinning his scythe around again, “what are you-?”

Sasuke threw his knife, their mother’s knife, at Hidan. Itachi smiled tiredly, silly otouo that will kill me, but it missed. Over Hidan’s shoulder, well above the man to ever hit.

The chakra spiked and surged, not ocean waves but a hot warmth of magma tugging and pushing, and Sasuke vanished as the air rippled with power. 

Sasuke reappeared in place of their mother’s knife, just behind Hidan and close to touch ( impossible ) and spun around with a feral expression and an eye glowing a legendary purple ( impossible ) and clamped one hand on Hidan’s shoulder and somehow the world parted in half, torn at the seams of reality and ate Hidan like that of a breaching whale.

Impossible, and it closed and Hidan was gone except for half of his scythe, melted exactly where the man had held it. Sasuke stared forward with an otherworldly crack of chakra and a glowing gaze of a single legendary eye.

“Impossible,” Itachi whispered, the haze receding as reality informed him that he would not die there. He would not allow himself to die like this.

Sasuke looked at him, a foreign expression but undoubtedly silly little otouto, and Sasuke said relieved, “Nii-san.”

Itachi watched Sasuke’s chakra shuttered, sucked dry too quickly his coils protested raw and inflamed with the infamous signs of exhaustion- and Sasuke crumpled into the bloodied mud unconscious.

Alone, Itachi held his intestines inside a gaping wound. Sasuke unconscious from severe chakra exhaustion after an impossible feat, Hidan simply gone, and both in enemy territory where no healers would give aid.

The clouds rumbled and began to rain.

Chapter Text

Before

The morning was overcast, a bit overcast with lumpy overturned hazes of clouds. They were misshapen, drooped with moisture and likely would deposit it this afternoon if the humid bite had any say. Shikamaru liked to consider himself a sort of expert when referring to clouds, although a lot of others tended to laugh at his hobby. You could learn a lot of things from the clouds- which direction the sun was blowing, how close you were to the mountains or the ocean when it would rain or the weather the following day. Sometimes the clouds told him when the seasons were changing, or when the heat mandated a healthy afternoon nap.

The sky was overcast and although there was nothing glum about it, Shikamaru felt the humid air shiver down his back. No number of clothes could quite remove that level of discomfort, it would be a bad day to watch the sky.

All Chunin were permitted to specialize within a specific area of interest. The Nara clan tended to operate in the realm of special interest, particularly information gathering and usage. Shikamaru wasn’t ever one to look a gifted horse in its weirdly large mouth, even when documents and papers tended to fall right into his lap.

Of course, everyone else would consider it a massive hassle and Shikamaru considered it one as well, but with how much information he already had, it was practically a very slow walk through Konoha’s forest to wrangle it properly.

Temari thought he was a complete idiot, but he genuinely didn’t expect her to understand the unique social structure of Konoha. He didn’t bother telling Ino, knowing how haunted and unsettled she still felt. Choji wouldn’t offer any sort of wisdom and it would trouble the boy instead, the latter two remaining Genin still despite their best efforts.

Shikamaru could tell his father, but something in his gut said it would be a bad idea. Working on his own tended to lead to the best path, and something in the air and the sharp bite of oncoming rain was stirring him to walk a tad faster.

Shikamaru submitted the proper forms, signed where he had to, growled and snoozed through the informal briefing as was expected for all visitors regardless of level, and found himself a nice pretty meeting with the Lord Hokage. He hadn’t particularly talked much with her- mostly he overheard vague murmurs through the walls from what his father said after long nights. All of it careful and guarded, although apparently the Lord Hokage was a fan of expensive and cheap booze. Shikamaru could work with that, she seemed like a woman with a good knowledge of leisurely pursuits.

The walls of the Hokage building and mission station were normal, a tad busier with various nin having their lunches and meetings inside to stay out of the rain. Shikamaru brushed past, adopting a casual demeanour of importance but no hurry to arrive. 

The Lord Hokage was guarded at all times by ANBU. Tall imposing guards with phantom chakra signatures, feeling of smoke and glass and only manifesting to Shikamaru’s senses through the hot pulse of heat in the space they occupied. A Nara clan technique, one that others rarely knew and were unlikely to use. ANBU would hide even from that when they were truly undercover.

“I have an appointment,” he said bluntly, jamming his hands in his pockets around the thin bound scrolls lodged near his right leg. “The Lord Hokage is expecting me.”

He didn’t bother introducing himself because the ANBU knew who he was the moment he entered the tower. The one on the right (with a boar pointed mask) reached out with a gloved hand to rap metal-plated knuckle guards on the brass door. It clicked twice, then answering with another flurry of taps. The doors opened to reveal two more ANBU, each with carefully decorated masks painted in simple colours.

Shikamaru would never confess how terrifying ANBU was. Shikamaru knew the level of skill required for the rank, he knew the mental fortitude and the dissonance between humanity necessary for any extended periods of time. He knew that nin that joined were tattooed on their arms and removed entirely from the public record- turned into a deceased file as if signing into service meant a chronic disease.

Every time he saw one of the masks, Shikamaru tried to understand who or what would ever subject themselves to such a life- and knew that they were horrific but necessary. 

“Lady Hokage,” Shikamaru said, knowing that undisputedly ‘Lord’ would be better, but she looked tired and in desperate need of sleep. Judging by the dark marks under her eyes, she hadn’t slept in quite some time. “A pleasure to see you this bright and chipper morning.”

She looked at him, squinting a tad dramatically before snorting and waving her hand. The ANBU bowed in synchrony, stepping outside the door to take guard four strong on the other side.

“Nara,” she said dryly and a bit bitterly. “You look just like your dad, but miniature.”

“Bothersome,” he said, crossing his ankles and standing with a casual comfortable slump. Lady Hokage looked at him and snorted, smiling wryly.

“Yes, clear resemblance,” she said a tad sarcastic, “what is it you’re bothering me with, brat?”

Oh, Shikamaru liked her. She was blunt, straightforward, unlikely to cut around the bush. Intelligent too, but he knew that long before she returned to Konoha. “I have a question for intelligence specialization, Lady Hokage.”

She drummed her fingers against her chin, each nail clean and cut to medical specification. She was working in the hospital then, taking shifts or management. Curious.

“Right,” she said slowly. “And the reason you’re bringing this to me instead of our wonderfully competent registration department?”

Shikamaru didn’t smile, although he wanted to. He had a good feeling about this woman. He withdrew the bundle of documents from his pocket, waiting for permission before walking to her desk and depositing them. She opened the ribbon and unravelled the document, face clouding darker and focused upon recognition.

Shikamaru took this as his cue to speak, so he did. “As is customary for designated Clan land, a curator is used to maintain and uphold historical knowledge of said clan.”

“Yes,” she agreed calmly before her eyes turned bright and sharp. “Yet, there are things like Clan secrets, Nara. There are laws in place to avoid leaking of said secrets to outsiders, such designation to an outsider would be breaking the law itself-.”

“With all respect,” Shikamaru said, “I have no personal care or curiosity for clan jutsu or secret techniques. The law demands that shared blood or familial bonds are mandated for the curator to uphold clan secrets.”

The Lady Hokage frowned at him, looking down at the three documents and reading the small notes around various wording. She huffed quietly at a few points, tapping her index finger along a portion of text dictated to a religious ceremony. Shikamaru calmed himself, careful to avoid pulling chakra and feeling the shadows as he normally did when nervous. Watching the clouds, feeling the shadows. Doing such a thing with four ANBU outside the door would be suicide.

“Well, you’re thorough, I’ll give you that,” she admitted, muttering under her breath. “This is ridiculous. What are you planning, eh? What is your goal in this?”

Shikamaru wondered that himself sometimes. All of this felt entirely odd, out of character according to Temari. 

Shikamaru remembered how the jounin’s faces clouded over, how they suffered in shared misery in memory of a fallen comrade that had no kin left to light their altar. 

“I don’t have any goal,” Shikamaru confessed outright. “It...I was assigned to cleaning the Uchiha district.”

The Hokage straightened carefully, just enough to show her utmost attention to his words. She frowned slightly, tilting her head the subtlest amount. “And what did you see?”

Bloodstains. Empty houses. Children’s drawings.

“A lot of gardens that need weeding,” Shikamaru said, “a lot of books that should get dusted eventually. Some shrines that should be cleaned and a pyre that needs to burn.”

“And what happens if this pyre goes out?”

Shikamaru said quietly, “then I imagine I failed my job.”

She looked at him, unimpressed but thoroughly assessing. She pulled open her lower drawer, withdrawing a few files thick enough with bold seals to suggest top level clearance. Seals and information far above Shikamaru’s level and well beyond his paycheck.

“Shikamaru Nara, you went to the academy with Sasuke Uchiha,” she said outright. “You also went to inform Naruto Uzumaki of a potential threat, going so far as to chase down Sasuke Uchiha after his defection from the Leaf.”

Shikamaru felt his stomach drop. “I was.”

She asked him, “and if your duties would have no relevance to Sasuke Uchiha?”

“It would not change anything, Lady Hokage.”

She hummed a bit, tapping the papers again with a scrunched brow. “Unfortunately, I still cannot grant you permission due to clan law. You are a Nara. Although the Uchiha clan is all but extinct, it still requires only those bound by blood to assess and access the clan secrets.”

Shikamaru knew this. There was a reason he went on such a long walk this morning, watching the sunrise and searching out his old senpai so boldly. Shikamaru nodded, smiling ever so slightly. The clock on the wall ticked, just half an hour late now-.

The window creaked open loudly, too loudly to be an accident. A single head poked in, offering a dismissive wave before looking directly at the Hokage.

She blinked back, before chuckling quietly and shaking her head. “You truly are your father’s son, Shikamaru Nara.”

Shikamaru rubbed the back of his neck, far more than simply anxious. He knew the rumors, he knew the academy scores and records and knew he could die in a heartbeat without the man even trying. Kakashi Hatake was a mystery, an enigma of skill and true ability that had a painfully thin paper trail. After he graduated from the academy, he completely vanished from papers before arriving many years after. Shikamaru wondered what the man’s ANBU mast had been.

“Yo,” Hatake said with a two-finger salute. Shikamaru always envied how lazy the man could appear while still being the most lethal in a room. “Sorry I’m late. They ran out of chopsticks at this cute little-.”

“Hatake,” Lady Hokage said firm and smoothly, “congratulations, you’ve been assigned as co-conservator of the Uchiha clan secrets in historical preservation.”

The jounin blinked wide-eyed twice before looking at the papers on the desk then at Shikamaru. He stared with an unwavering focus, a level of dangerous clarity that left Shikamaru too afraid to breathe. Nobody came back from ANBU, they all died.

Except Kakashi.

“Well, isn’t this a surprise,” Kakashi said slowly and with a small stretch to his neck. “Here I thought I’d be out of a job.”

“You read enough all day anyways,” the Hokage huffed, tapping the signature line rapidly to try and haste the man into walking closer. “Now you get to read alone, I thought you’d like that. No more loud annoying challenges that lead to expensive property damage.”

Shikamaru had only the faintest idea of what she was referring to. Sometimes he talked with a girl a year older than him- she was friends with Temari and specialized with exotic weapons. Kakashi Hatake alternated between two far spectrums, outright killing potential and actual execution, or boisterous public childish activities. No sane person acted like that without a reason. 

“Ah,” Kakashi said, pausing a tad too long before humming in thought. His tilted his head, thick coarse hair shifting slightly like Kiba’s dog, Akamaru. “That... would be a good idea.”

“It is a good idea,” the Hokage repeated flatly, “sign the damn form, Hatake.”

He lifted both arms in mock defence, slumping and drifting closer. He read it over far too quickly, skimming more than actually reading but paid particular attention to Shikamaru’s notes.

“Ah, I know you,” Kakashi said suddenly, turning to gaze directly at Shikamaru outright. “I know your father, Nara.”

‘Likely for a psychological exam’ Shikamaru thought and tried to keep his expression flat. ‘Rumor is you see psych every other week just to make sure you don’t snap.

“What a charming man,” Kakashi said, smiling in such a way his entire face tightened unnecessarily to convey the expression. “Dangerous at Shoji lost quite a bit to him a while ago…”

“...yeah, I haven’t ever won either,” Shikamaru said. He tried to relax, but his shoulders tensed ever so slightly. How had Naruto survived being genin to this man? How had Sakura come out relatively unharmed? Although rumour had it she was working under Lady Hokage herself…

“Maa,” Kakashi said, flapping one hand casually before taking his pen and twirling it around each finger as if a senbon. “So you want to play house for the Uchiha District? There’s a lot of cats there.”

Shikamaru couldn’t tell if that was a legitimate warning. “I- I’m alright with cats.”

“Eh, they’re annoying,” Kakashi said plainly. “More of a dog person, you see?”

“Well, if you two morons are done measuring your kunai,” the Hokage said between grit teeth, “sign the damn papers then get the hell out of my office so I can take a damn nap.”

It bothered Shikamaru more than he’d like to admit. Everything surrounding the Uchiha clan ended in sad terrible misfortune, but under the title of legacy and storytelling, a range of humanity left. The Uchiha were people too, but Shikamaru couldn’t think of more than three names of Uchiha clan members he knew. Of course, the massacre had occurred when he was a boy, but even then- shouldn’t more people remember them? Didn’t they have friends? Partners? Legacies carved into Konoha just as sure as the Hokage monument or even passing guests to visit their shrines?

Kakashi Hatake had been rumoured to visit the memorial stone and Uchiha shrines- mostly through Tenten who heard it from Lee who overheard it from their insane sensei. Nobody said names, but Shikamaru was intelligent enough to check the public records for genin assignment and subsequent nin placement. After Chunin rank, teams sometimes remained but often reformed. Only genin had firm paper trails, and Kakashi Hatake’s were suspiciously worded. 

Kakashi Hatake hadn’t been on a genin team. He was an outlier, apparently testing out of the academy after enrolling for a painfully short period of time. 

Shikamaru wasn’t a Nara for nothing, and despite common belief, he did know how to research when it was necessary. Kakashi Hatake wasn’t on any sort of genin team, thus, he was void of actual assignment where the forms were structured to put three names.

That implied he worked in a team less than three, or more. His teammates likely were genin themselves- maybe structured how Shikamaru was now with both Ino and Choji being genin but himself a Chunin.

Kakashi Hatake was Kakashi of the Sharingan, and Kekkei Genkei didn’t pop up frequently. Uchiha usually were assigned to jounins of prominent status or skill, considering how dangerous the man was, likely someone incredibly well certified at the time. 

Now, the man was the epitome of leisure relaxation. Sprawled on one of the broken wood benches along the training grounds of the Uchiha district. The wards to the clan ground had rejected their approach at first, then fell quiet as Kakashi offered the signed scrolls as if the Uchiha guardian spirits permitted them inside.

The training grounds were eerie and quiet. A few cats lingered on the edges, peering at them with big eyes and obnoxiously long fur. Shikamaru hadn’t ever seen cats with such markings before, thick and fluffy with a stocky build. Had the Uchiha kept them as a private stock?

“Funny clouds this day,” Kakashi said abruptly, talking almost rhetoric if not for the topic in question. Shikamaru didn’t tense, invested with the few maps spread over the ground. Markings and checkmarks passed to him from Genma, used to help divide the sectors to search the ruins for the funeral pyre.

Shikamaru tapped along one of the unnamed streets (maybe once it had a name, but there were no people left to speak it) and said: “it’s supposed to rain today.”

“Is it?” Kakashi asked curiously, seeming invested somehow. “How are you planning to keep that fire lit?”

Shikamaru’s finger twitched, disguised as a tap across the map. He had been to the district before and investigated its far corners as politely as he could. The pyre in question was the shrine, build from tall stacked rock like a wooden cabin with open holes between the logs. It smelled faintly of methane gas, like flaming poison and burning grasses. Shikamaru had no doubt that the hot plume of fire could endure a tsunami from Wave country. 

Kakashi’s question was laughable, but realistic to anyone who hadn’t the foresight to investigate first. Shikamaru said a tad dry, “we both know that isn’t going to be a problem.”

Kakashi hummed loudly, tapping his fingers on the bench and looking completely at ease. “You seem to have thought this out.”

“Only morons rush into things they think they can handle,” he explained, “without the knowledge to know how they’ll fail.”

Kakashi’s single exposed eye sharpened ever so slightly, looking at him with brighter intent. “You never got along with Sasuke.”

“I didn’t,” Shikamaru agreed with a roll of his shoulders. “I respect him, a lot.”

Present tense, not past. He still did respect him, the other was dedicated and loyal to his own morality with such passion it was enviable. He was quiet, cursed with every girl crushing on him, and burdened with ghosts following him everywhere. Shikamaru grew up in the shadows and learned how to use them, but the open empty houses of the district pulled soberly at him.

“Do you know how to use the pyre?” Kakashi asked him with the same level of flat uninterest charisma.

The pyre was for some sort of religious service, but Shikamaru hadn’t the time to locate where the Uchiha placed their religious texts. If they were a didactic clan, like the Izunaka, then Shikamaru would have to really investigate deeper. “I don’t.”

Kakashi looked at him then rose to his feet with overexaggerated movements. A ploy put on to make Shikamaru more comfortable with his presence. “Come on then.”

They walked, Shikamaru with his hands in his pockets and Kakashi with similar posture yet with his eye closed. Shikamaru couldn’t tell if his hidden eye was open, Sharingan piercing his forehead protector to illuminate the path while maintaining a lazy composure. It seemed a bit impractical, but with an electric chakra burning bright and numbing the edges of the shadows, tingling and throbbing painfully. The man was entirely on guard, paranoid with hypervigilance that mandated recurring psychiatric evaluation.

“The pyre is to worship the god Amaterasu,” Kakashi explained bored, “the deity of the sun and jutsu origin.”

“Those two things don’t often go together.”

“Maa, The Uchiha are a bit like cats.”

‘Jutsu and fire and the sun,’ Shikamaru thought, a tad overwhelmed. He hadn’t known anything of the sort.

“Well, the Uchiha have three patron deities, clan members worshiped a different deity in respects to what prayers they give. Amaterasu is the burning pyre we’re heading to. The other two are Susanoo, patron of the seas, storms, and steel; and then Tsukuyomi, the patron of the moon, night, and illusion.”

Shikamaru’s brain struggled to keep up with the specific information provided so easily. “Genjutsu then?”

“I imagine taijutsu as well. There’s a degree of...stealth necessary in all forms of fighting, taijutsu relies on it extensively.”

The pyre burned bright and hot, a glorious wave of heat rippled in its presence and the immediate border of its stone undulated in a burning mirage. Despite the heat and proximity, there was little threat to burning and no stray sparks exploding or crackling out aggressively. If the blaze had been fuelled by wood or kindling, then it would always snap and splutter like a furious cat. Instead, it simmered on the gasses released below the ground, like the theory of the onsens and hot springs. 

“The Uchiha were pretty smart to find this,” Shikamaru commented, shuffling in place and watching the thin trail of smoke dance into the sky. “What did they do before Konoha was founded?”

Kakashi said, “I was under the belief this is the original site, even before Konoha’s formation. They likely went on pilgrimage and built smaller shrines within their homes.”

Shikamaru knew home-shrines were common for some religious groups. Particularly along the coast where any establishment never truly survived more than a couple years. “A kamidana?”

“Uchiha were traditional in their architecture, it may have been more of a tokonoma, but I don’t really know,” the man said before shrugging both shoulders. He looked at the fire with his eye half-closed, almost lazily basking in its heat. “This is the shrine to Amaterasu, pay respect.”

The man was bold, to outright tell Shikamaru of another religious belief to pay homage to a shrine of another. Borderline sacrilege, if not for the fact this was technically Shikamaru’s job now.

He sighed through his nose, scratching the back of his neck. “Yeah, I suppose there would be no shadows without the sun.”

Kakashi looked at him blankly, with the sharp evaluating eyes of a man who knew he was superior. He said from behind his mask, “I don’t care for your personal values or ninja code. I have...a strong notion, that Amaterasu is a rather attentive deity.”

He withdrew from his pocket a packet of something, wrapped in rice paper and secured with twine. He unravelled it, plucking delicately and birdlike at the knot before the paper softly peeled away. Shikamaru didn’t mean to spy but curiosity won. Besides, there was no way Shikamaru would ever gain a look if Kakashi Hatake didn’t want him to- only a handful of people had ever seen the man’s face before.

“I’ve been told to provide something of significant value- the Uchiha Clan revolved around the traditional style of barter and meaning- from the Land of Earth or nomads throughout Lightning. You offer something of value, and in turn, you receive something of equal worth. Not necessarily monetary value, but sentimental, or personal.”

Shikamaru hadn’t thought the Jounin would talk to him, let alone explain something obviously very special. 

Kakashi Hatake, infamous nin and the famous Kakashi no Sharingan, slid a careful pile of wildflower petals on rice paper into the gaps between the stone plates. He reached into his pocket, pulled out something lumpy which revealed itself to be a horrendously made blue lump of fabric.

“Maa, it’s significant,” the nin said, completely unashamed and absent of embarrassment being caught with a horrific knit project. The hobby was laughable, but the setting gave it serious weight.

The two objects- tributes, began to smoke and smoulder before catching flame and burning. Once lit, they reduced to little more than ash in moments, being swept upward in the plume and travelling in the dancing smoke.

“Who did you lose?” Shikamaru asked neutrally. Everyone lost someone at some point.

“Mm,” Kakashi said, musing on something. “There are no more Uchiha, and it seems I’m the last to see it.”

Shikamaru wondered which Uchiha had given Kakashi that eye. He wondered if he had cleaned out the house, set its token on fire in the central plaza. “Did you know Shisui Uchiha?”

“A little,” the man offered. “Talented. Fast.”

Talented coming from Hatake left outright horrifying thoughts in Shikamaru’s mind. “ANBU then?”

Kakashi shifted a little, not enough to mean anything. It wasn’t necessary, it was practiced and intentional and very much felt like a threat. “How would I know?”

Almost certainly then, which felt, even more, an enigma. Something felt wrong, sad and horrible and Shikamaru wanted to find out where everything went wrong.

“Mm, you remind me of my cute little genin,” Kakashi said bored, evaluating Shikamary keenly despite it. “That look you have.”

Shikamaru didn’t want to be compared to Sasuke Uchiha, no matter how secondhand the praise may be. Kakashi apparently deciphered this and clarified further, “Naruto. You have the same look before he pries where it isn’t needed.”

“Good thing I’m not a Genin then,” Shikamaru said. He twitched, waiting for a flash of chakra and the tingling hurt on the edges of his senses to turn searing.

It didn’t, and Kakashi tilted his head. His thick hair, more like a dog’s coat, flopped slightly but never parted enough to see his scalp. He hummed curiously, looking back to the pyre before looking at Shikamaru. “Offer your tribute. Pray then, little Nara.”

He walked away, hands lodged in his pockets and ash trailing through the sky.

Shikamaru Nara had a few advantages compared to other individuals. His clan, his intellect, but more than that- he had spent years forming proper connections. A general sense of reliability with people with importance.

Asuma Sarutobi was his mentor and still remained an incredibly close friend and asset, often playing him in shoji and increasingly losing to him. Ino herself was a powerhouse, the heir to the Yamanaka clan which inherently had intel and would sometimes leak more than glasses if drunk enough. Choji knew a surprising amount, just from barbeque discussions.

Outside of that, Shikamaru was the son of the Nara head for intelligence. He didn’t leave anything sitting out inside the house but pretending to be informed or having clearance worked wonders. Shikamaru was friends with Temari, who had considerable power considering her brother’s recent promotion in Suna to that of the Kazekage. Temari had overnight become a contender not only in power but in the political world.

That didn’t even include the sudden kinship Shikamaru had somehow developed with the famous Sharingan-no-Kakashi. Half of the information Shikamaru knew about the man came from drunken Jounin, nursing grudges and shivering over a thorough hospital visit brought on by his hands. 

Raido, Shikamaru learned, had been the main victim of most lightning chakra induced hospital visits.

“I don’t get why you’re all so afraid of him,” Temari said, swinging her legs back and forth as she nursed dango in her hand. “I saw him back at the Chunin exams, he didn’t seem special.”

Shikamaru agreed with that. “He purposefully makes himself appear that way.”

Temari tilted her head and thought, nursing the remaining dango semi-ravenously. “Mm, I’ve never seen him be scary. I’ve seen scary, Shikamaru.”

“Yeah, well,” he said, huffing into the air. One hand supported his chin, tapping lightly against his jaw. “Best keep it that way. I’m just...frustrated.”

“Mm, with that clan?” Temari guessed, nibbling on a bit of dango before swallowing it down whole like a crocodile. “Why are they so interesting to you? I heard you took custody of it. I mean, back in Suna we have clans too but they’re mostly only a couple families since we’re nomads.”

“Yeah, a bit bigger than a few families,” Shikamaru muttered sourly. “Could have populated two small farming villages.”

Temari stopped eating immediately, eyes widening in surprise. She asked, clearly startled, “and they died out that fast? I mean, we heard in Suna that the Sharingan wasn’t a risk anymore…”

“They died overnight,” Shikamaru said simply. “There was a massacre, and I don’t know why.”

Temari looked at him with an expression very unflattering. She blinked quickly, scrunching her eyes oddly to rid them of nonexistent sand. She said slowly, sounding out the words, “they died... overnight?”

Shikamaru nodded and she cursed something surprisingly vulgar. She blushed immediately after, slapping a hand over her mouth scandalized. “I didn’t say that. You didn’t hear me say that.”

She looked at him, Shikamaru agreed immediately with her when she threatened to smack him into submission.

“I don’t understand it, even in Suna desert raiders couldn’t manage that on caravans,” Temari said, sounding grudgingly impressed. “Must have been...something powerful.”

Shikamaru knew she was thinking of her brother, a container for a bijuu that went feral in one dramatic explosion of strength. It wasn’t the power of the land gods, one of the many tails that used to roam the lands- it was simply the power of a man. He wouldn’t have been older than Shikamaru was now.

“Actually,” Shikamaru said, straightening slightly, “could you do me a favour?”

“Depends,” Temari said, eyebrows furrowing in suspicion. “I’m not doing your laundry.”

“No no- your brother is Kazekage now, could you get me reports of Sharingan in Suna?”

“What, like mission reports?” Temari asked, visibly startling, “I mean, I probably could ask but I wouldn’t be able to get any details.”

“Dates, just dates,” Shikamaru clarified quickly, “I just want...to see if there was anything suspicious.”

“Like a plague,” Temari incorrectly presumed, looking as if such a thing was outright common in the deserts. Knowing the limited water reserves and marked oasis’ along the path, maybe it was. “I can probably get you dates of Sharingan users.”

“That would be perfect, thank you.”

Temari spluttered, looking down quickly with the slightest blush along her cheekbones. She smiled slightly, then chucked her Dango stick with dangerous accuracy, lodging it into the side of the nearby waste bin instead of being inside.

“Hey,” Shikamaru said, straightening slightly to look at the lodged stick with a bit more intent, “if you were to be given anything, what would you want?”

“M- me?” Temari squawked, looking thoroughly baffled. “Ah, as a gift? I uh, I’m not really sure-.”

“For a pyre,” Shikamaru attempted to clarify, ultimately making it only worse. “For a god, uh-.”

“Oh, like a traveller’s shrine?” Temari asked, relaxing into the question more than before. She crossed her eyes, scrunching her brows and staring upwards at the spectacularly fluffy clouds. “Hmm, what patron is it for? Deva? Ispil?”

Shikamaru hadn’t ever heard of those deities before, but with the travelling nature of Suna and its nomadic colonies, it built itself into a collection of different cultures and ideologies. “For a god of the sun. It’s...it’s an Uchiha deity, since I take care of the grounds it feels.. right, to take care of the shrines.”

“Mm, that’s polite of you,” Temari said, smiling wide with her entire face although she didn’t look away from the clouds. “I always offer water on the edge of the desert. Don’t laugh! Water is precious- I carry it from the city across the sands and there’s a shrine along the border where I put it in the oasis. I like to think that the voyage makes my offering better. I know Kankaro brings carved things? Gaara never...well, he wasn’t exactly the religious type.”

Since her brother technically carried a land god within him, it could have been horribly offensive to offer tribute to something else. 

“Maybe Konoha’s produce?” Temari offered awkwardly, knowing that there was no water shortage inside the walls. “Flowers? You have a lot of flowers here, in Suna we only had cactus blooms…”

Something of Konoha would be an obvious tribute to a pyre, but it didn’t quite fit right. The Uchiha hadn’t valued flowers or things like that, their homes had been filled with metal and artistry. Shikamaru wasn’t skilled with calligraphy or painting, and purchasing something didn’t fit properly. He could offer all sorts of things, but if it didn’t have significance to him, then what use would it be?

“Thanks, you’ve given me something to think about,” Shikamaru said, still deep in thought as he said his goodbyes and wandered into the boundary of the Uchiha Complex. The warding and seals along the gates accepted him with ease, now one of its two owners and guardians instead of dozens.

“Hello,” Shikamaru muttered to the empty buildings, only a few cats appeared to glance out curious and skittish. All were plump with thick coarse hair. They would die in Suna’s desert from exhaustion. They looked near woolly, thick with grey and black striping and lush broad paws for snow. One meowed at him, loud and demanding with a sharp aggressive enunciation.

Shikamaru smiled at one, squatting to offer one hand. The cat wrinkled its nose, walking over and swishing its tail over the ground with a haughty swinging walk. 

“You know, the deer in my compound are a lot less picky,” he said, finally scratching his finger along the fur. The animal had mats, little tufts where saliva and dirt had melded into a little knot. The animal grumbled a low rumble, a warning cry as Shikamaru worked it out from under its neck. Once free, he plucked out a collection of burrs. It rumbled, not quite a purr but a secondary glance with strange eyes.

“Do you have cataracts?” Shikamaru asked it, scratching behind one ear and looking into its cream eyes. It wasn’t quite obscured, but there was a noticeable white tint over its eye.

It meowed at him and batted his hand away with a broad white paw. Shikamaru withdrew and watched the cat drift away with its long white tail swishing over the stone.

The pyre burned hot enough to draw sweat from Shikamaru’s face before he even approached it close enough to touch. The stone glistened dark and black, hinting at the orange in its core through the gaps.

He stood there, looking at its impressive fire and wondered what other Uchiha had brought so many times. Metal weapons, trinkets, grown and made goods. Objects crafted by hand and offered because of their value and sentimental worth.

The pyre burned and Shikamaru had nothing to offer but himself. He drew a kunai and with very little pause wrestled free a lock of hair behind his left ear the thickness of his finger. Wrapping it a few times to assure it was secure, he shaved it free with blind strokes.

He didn’t bleed which was better than anticipated and approached the pyre. It kissed his fingers, heat singing and whispering to withdraw away. He pressed forward, unwrapped the hair (longer now that his ponytail could be folded into a bun) and carefully tossed the lock inwards towards the flame. He didn’t see it burn but smelled its sharp aroma. 

Sharingan-no-Kakashi had told him to pray, so Shikamaru settled on his knees and closed his eyes and settled.

Shikamaru didn’t dream often, nothing beyond that of confused colour and delusional thinking that proved itself irrational once he woke and had a cup of tea. Sometimes elaborate ploys that slowly became more idiotic the longer Shikamaru was lucid.

He didn’t often dream and remember it, which fell into ironic territory considering his love for long naps and summer air. Sometimes, if he dedicated all mental power to a certain dilemma, he woke with a tentative thought on how to proceed.

He knew himself to be dreaming when he watched his hands stroke the bristly fur of a large doe, feeding curiously nearby and nuzzling a soft cartilage nose into his open hand. It failed to offer proper texture, no idea of warmth or heat and a disjointed in action and recognition.

A genjutsu of absurdly shit quality, without any actual definition and all the heavy pacifist thinking that only dreams gave him.

He dreamed himself petting the thick fur of a deer, walking stupidly off into the woods that turned into dark stone and abandoned waterways. There were large deer looking at him from the windows of the abandoned Uchiha compound. There were fawns rooting through trash cans as cats should, and a stag drinking from a small waterway.

He dreamed of a laugh, loud and ringing and the burning heat of the pyre. Not a funeral pyre, where objects and weapons melted under a steady blaze.

“There is no funeral to be had here, Nara,” a stag told him, tossing its head and snorting steam. Shikamaru said something and the deer laughed with a man’s voice, transforming between blinks into the hazy outline of tatami mats and hanging lanterns with gentle candles.

“A Nara to join the cult of the sun,” it said, a man sitting on the mats that shifted between blinks to a blanket on the forest floor. The trees spread tall around them, mighty redwoods and flowers Ino knew by smell alone. 

Shikamaru knew himself to be dreaming because dreams held no logic or rational progression. There were no sounds or feelings from walking on the forest floor, no taste or smell of broken rosin or pitch and the man kneeling on a woven blanket looked all too familiar in-memory association instead of actual sight. 

If a Yaminaka walked in his mind, maybe they could tell him the appearance of the man. Shikamaru couldn’t remember a feature, only distinct isolated components that formed no reference or informed him of anything. A faceless person with a handful of parts- pale skin, two eyes, a tilted smile bordering a grin and petite hands holding a sword.

“A wakizashi,” they said a half moment out of sync from the movement of a mouth. Black hair so familiar but Shikamaru knew he had never seen this man before.

They laughed, a sharp clear sound that fell a tad to the side, and they recited, “I have heard the sun god of fire...conceals its true being in that of others, and that it has appeared in this world in the guise of a dragon god of the red trees.”

Shikamaru woke up with a word he never knew, the name of an old epic the elders once talked about before other forms of entertainment became modern. Dating from before the founding of Konoha, when storytellers would dress in elaborate clothes to recite over a fire and the Nara would bend shadows to dance as puppets do.

He woke up, groaning and perplexed, and wondering why he had a feeling that Sasuke Uchiha wore his hair long.

“Here you go,” Temari said, dropping a thin book directly on Shikamaru’s lap. “Kankuro sent this through- if you can’t read it it’s because of his writing.”

“That was fast,” Shikamaru said, flipping through the elaborate scribbles dating back years. “What did you bribe him with?”

“Nothing. Turns out he has a grudge against Uchiha,” Temari shrugged, folding her legs up to plop next to him and peer into the book. Her hair brushed against his neck slightly, finger poking the pages curiously. “Not too many Uchiha in Suna.”

“Not many at all,” he mused low, tracing a few dates with skepticism. “I know there weren’t many in active shinobi forces-.”

“Eh? Why not?” Temari asked, spluttering at the thought. “Uchiha are- were really dangerous. We had warnings against certain Kekkei Genki!”

“They handled the domestic police force-.”

“Well that’s a stupid policy, nobody likes the police. Who do you blame if someone steals your camel?”

“We don’t have-.” Shikamaru grumbled, then paused. That was a fair point. Who would you blame? The police certainly, but using only Uchiha as that fell into a massive problem with policy itself. “There are a lot of missions here for only a few Sharingan users.”

“Yeah, maybe half a dozen?” Temari offered helpfully, “pretty active shinobis.”

As far as Shikamaru knew, only a couple Uchiha were standard Jounin in the public record. The rest then were presumed ANBU. That still left only a shocking few Uchiha in actual operations considering the fear of the Sharingan.

“Really strange,” Temari hummed, leaning back and looking over across the park. “Anyways, I said I’d meet with Kamatari today, something about a river south of the village?”

“Mm, just a short trek through the forest,” Shikamaru agreed, still thinking as the day went on.

He found Genma relaxing outside near one of the shinobi koi ponds. Different from the civilian parks due to the...potentially high stress and tension shinobi had. Often, individuals could snap on a hair-trigger and it was much easier to manage when the koi ponds were reinforced to endure Kunai or chakra.

Shikamaru fled, then returned with a small box of fried meat, offering it partially as a halfhearted bribe.

“Oh no, not a little Nara,” Genma said flatly with absolutely no inflection. “I already have your dad riding my ass-.”

“This is just an off-record little meeting,” he offered lightheartedly. “Can’t I talk with a friend?”

“Friend normally equates to needing something illegal,” Genma bemoaned, taking the meat and chomping down delightedly. “And off-record normally means a different thing.”

“Maybe I just want to show a friend a nice cloud-gazing spot?”

Genma looked at him suspiciously, lip curling a bit but the message coming across clear. A handful of lighthearted jokes, a few gentle barbs, and Shikamaru was escorting Genma through the empty buildings of the Uchiha District.

“Sage knows this place gives me the creeps,” Genma said, shivering slightly and warily. “Never liked it here.”

“Mm, you've been here often?”

“Sounds almost like a preposition,” Genma joked, eying the buildings. “I came here a few times. As a Genin. Got chased out once on the southern gate.”

There was a crow on the building, pecking at the old wood. A cat was sunbathing near a porch. One of the doors creaked open then banged close loudly, whistling in the bare air. 

“Alright kid,” Genma said, leaning against a wooden beam that once supported a hanging lantern. “I know you’ve been weird about this place. Word’s been spreading.”

“Has it?”

“You’re lucky you picked Hatake to buddy up with,” Genma warned with a shift of the senbon in his mouth, “if it wasn’t for that fleabag’s repressed trauma, someone may look a bit harder.”

“Repressed trauma, because of the Uchiha teammate?”

Genma gave him a look of such caution and resignation. He ran one hand through his hair, pulling out the needle and actually fiddling with it between his fingers instead. “Kid, you need to drop it.”

“Mm, if I did that I wouldn’t be much of a Nara, would I?”

Genma made a low groaning sound that felt fairly relatable. “Damn right. Alright, fine. But you never tell Hatake about this, got it?”

“What conversation?” Shikamaru asked, slinging his leg onto a porch to lounge comfortably. Genma said something under his breath, potentially an apology. “Yeah, don’t get me killed.”

Shikamaru wandered through the long roots and abandoned walls and wondered if he gained the power to hariolate. 

The leaves laughed, a brightly crisp sound and Shikamaru found himself observing a disjointed impression of a man standing ten paces from him.

“You are no soothsayer,” he said, amused. “You have no bones to burn or smoke to interpret.”

Shikamaru said he had the shadows, which only made the man smile wider. 

It was strange, odd. Perhaps dreams were made to serve as a warning, a source of anxiety that processed problems for his waking moments.

“There are many problems,” the man said, his face familiar but Shikamaru couldn’t retain the sight long enough to remember. “And more to come, Shikamaru Nara.”

Shikamaru thought, troublesome.

Genma said with a sad sort of timbre, “he was a real mess of a kid. Really incompetent honestly. My team went up against Hatake’s, a complete disaster.”

“Yeah?” Shikamaru asked, trying to pretend he wasn’t paying attention.

“The kid’s name was Obito Uchiha, loud mouth and utter clutz,” he explained. It ruined every idea Shikamaru had for any sort of Uchiha reputation. “There was a girl on their team that went medi-nin. Kid was absolutely obsessed with her. He died, gave Hatake his eye. Then she died, and well, there’s the repressed trauma.”

Shikamaru didn’t whistle, but he very much felt like it. That sort of...unlucky trend didn’t often occur. Absolutely horrible.

“Did Obito Uchiha make it past genin?”

Genma shrugged one shoulder but said nothing. Negative then. That left him out for the many many mission runs.

“What about Shisui Uchiha?” Shikamaru asked casually, and Genma exhaled in a huff.

Genma sat up sharply, jamming his senbon into the wood without mercy. He looked at Shikamaru with a scowl, something hurt and wounded in his expression. “Why can’t you just let it die?”

“Like he did?” Shikamaru asked casually, gazing up at the clouds.

The third time, Shikamaru saw the wakizashi held in a pale sword-practiced hand and forced himself to see clearly.

Sasuke Uchiha had grown. His hair longer, bristling in the front but long in the back like one of Lord Hokage’s twin tails. His eyes were black, but twisted and flared with strange starbursts- the smile arching in sometime self-confident and cocky all the same.

Shikamaru thought and said without speaking, why am I dreaming of you?

“Why do we dream of anything?” he said, twirling the long thin sword through decorative movements before sheathing it in something with no source. “You are not a prophet, Nara, but you’ve worshiped the pyre.”

Shikamaru asked, you?

“There is none left to listen,” they said, burning in the sunlight. “My brother was once a kind man.”

Your brother? Shikamaru wanted to ask. He knew the man, the prodigy. The heir of the Uchihas, the clan killer.

“A false killer,” they said. “Lies. He was once a kind man, but he no longer worships the light. He does not hear my cries.”

Shikamaru woke up shivering, wondering why he felt so afraid.

“This is where Shisui and I trained,” Genma said, fingers twitching as he glanced across the training field forlornly. “The kid was fast, we trained to go faster.”

Shikamaru knew of course what Genma was talking about. He was one of the few that knew the fabled seal technique that the Third Hokage specialized in, capable of moving so quickly he was only a blur. Apparently trained personally, but Shisui was a legend according to those who talked about him. 

“Did you often win?” Shikamaru asked, waving to a cat that watched in the shade of a sideways bench.

“Almost never,” Genma said fondly. “Bastard was fast, an absolute ray of sunshine that took too much glee in throwing you into trees. Right moron too, smart but horrible with basic things.”

Genma sighed. He flipped the bench and scared the cat away. He took a seat, resting one hand in his lap while the other twitched anxiously. A nervous tick. “Once the moron couldn’t figure out how to undo a knot on his bento. Smashed it open against a rock. He spent a month learning how to braid hair just to make a stupid bracelet on every mission.”

The Uchiha made things, it made sense that Shisui would weave or braid like everyone else. “I don’t think he died from suicide.”

“Of course he fuckin’ didn’t,” Genma scoffed, glaring pointedly with a fire in his eyes. “The day Shisui actually killed himself is the day Hatake loses to- to- I don’t know, a genin!”

A cat screeched in the distance. Shikamaru shifted uncomfortably. “You were friends?”

“Ran a few missions together, trained all the bloody time. He stole my wallet, I put mud in his shoes. The usual.”

“The usual,” Shikamaru agreed calmly, “who do you think killed him?”

Genma’s expression shuddered, turning downcast with a worried scrunch between his brow. He said, slowly and with careful measure, “there’s a guy you should talk to. Make friends with.”

Shikamaru looked at Genma very carefully. Something important was to be said, but not in anything as easy as words. “I’m sure we’ll get along.”

“Mm, nice guy. A bit weird, but you’ll get to know him. Hatake is friends with him,” Genma said pointedly, although it meant nothing to a normal person. Shikamaru interpreted it as a warning and both a threat, dangerous shinobi. “His name is- I don’t know actually. Yamato. Or Tenzou. He’s a good apple.”

Shikamaru found that phrase absolutely ridiculous, which obviously meant it was code. A good apple. Doesn’t fall far from the tree. 

“Right,” Shikamaru said, feeling an urge to visit the fire pyre and maybe beg for something to take away his headache. “I’ll do that.”

It was raining, a heavy downpour of monochrome that turned the redwoods grey. The sky blurred black with no stars- there was no moon or warmth or light in the sky.

Shikamaru choked, spitting endless water. It burned and seeped through his skin, tingling like kunai and lacerations on his skin.

He choked, drowning and swallowed a scream. Hollow eyes and the bloated corpse of decay gazed at him with rotted sight. It wore the face of an obituary and an ANBU roster and the childish baby fat diploma of graduation. 

“You serve a thief,” a corpse told him. It drooled water opaque and black in the oragious air. “Offense to the carrion-feeders.”

Shikamaru choked, drowning on water. He gasped and spluttered, your crows, your crows.

Shisui Uchiha’s body had burned on a funeral pyre, but in Shikamaru’s dreams (nightmares) he dressed like that of the morgue, bloated and distended. Hollow pits for his eyes leaking water.

“Find my weapon,” a dead man told him with bared teeth and river slime. “My belize.”

Shikamaru had never heard that word before, but he knew its meaning a moment after its utterance. A pole or frame raised as a sea beacon or landmark.

Shisui Uchiha stood in the centre of a storm, wielding knives and swords in a moonless night and they said, “when you reclaim it for the rightful claimer, find my bank and blue waters. My only act of theurgy.”

Shikamaru choked and drowned and just as his lungs begged for air, he woke himself up screaming.

Shikamaru dreamed of the man in Sasuke Uchiha’s skin, holding his wakizashi reverently.

“My brother was a good man,” they repeated. He sat on a black rock, where the pyre to the sun god used to burn in the daylight. “There are parasites.”

Where? Shikamaru asked, desperate and urging. The man held the wakizashi- eyes burning with fire. The air crackled, hissing and burning hot flashes of black flame-.

“Where we cannot touch,” it whispered through the hissing of a flame. “Above the seas. Below the sun. Where the moon doesn’t see.”

Shikamaru woke, with an urgency to find that damned wakizashi and a sense of dread.

There was something in the ground.   

Kakashi Hatake acted odd, different. Something about his posture shifted in such a way that conveyed high stress and worry. Paranoia, hypervigilance on his surroundings.

“Rough night?” Shikamaru asked. A bit underwhelming, when in truth there was a high ranked nin on fight-risk. Shikamaru had no doubts that there were ANBU around, hidden in the trees and on the roofs out of sight. He would never see them, even with the shadows.

“Mm,” Kakashi hummed, seeming boneless and every bit as lethal as his reputation demanded. “You could say that.”

Alarming, very alarming. Shikamaru quickly averted the topic to something much safer. “I heard Sakura saved a returning group of genin.”

Kakashi looked at Shikamaru with a bored expression. “Saving is a bit of an exaggeration. They just went as representatives of Konoha.”

“And got ambushed by Sound,” Shikamaru pointed out dryly. “Wasn’t the one genin stabbed?”

“Mah, details,” Kakashi shrugged off casually. “They went to witness the new Mizukage, they had nothing to do with it.”

“Don’t want to start a war with Kiri,” Shikamaru pointed out. “Although, the former Mizukage vanished rather suddenly, didn’t he?”

There were ANBU around, but everyone in the intelligence department had been muttering about it. Karatachi Yugara had died rather suddenly, vanishing almost overnight with a devastating amount of wreckage.

“Mm, the bloody mist is a dangerous place to get lost,” Kakashi said with more weight than his normal words. “Good for Sakura, fixing a little prick.”

Back off, he implied. Shikamaru did so, if only for Sakura. “I saw her the other day, she’s really grown into the position.”

“And the Lord Hokage’s mentorship has given her an impressive punch,” Kakashi pointed out distantly. “Not so much a cute little genin anymore.”

“Naruto was already something impressive before he left on his mentorship,” Shikamaru said. He braved the lightning storm and said with forced ease, “where do you imagine Sasuke Uchiha to be?”

“A traitor,” Kakashi said easily. “A missing-nin. Have they updated the bingo books with him then?”

Back off, he implied. This time, Shikamaru knew it would end bloody if he pressed further. “I was wondering if you could introduce me to a friend of yours.”

“A friend? Lucky me.”

“Maybe for a game. I think he prefers Tenzo?”

Kakashi turned and looked at him fully, eye open all the way and surveying with brutal efficiency. Shikamaru wondered if he would be a victim to the famous Sharingan. He had heard rumours the training grounds were being brutalized more than usual. Strange damage happened after dusk when Hatake claimed the field. 

“Well, it looks like we do have a friend in common,” Kakashi mused patiently. He patted his pocket where his famous novel lay, tilting his head and flopping his hair to the left. “How nice of him to offer his service later today with repairing broken fences.”

Shikamaru swallowed thickly and nodded slowly. Tenzo, whoever he was, would not have known about repairing fences prior. Bothersome to be roped into such a mess. “Nice friend of yours.”

“Mm,” Kakashi hummed, then leapt away with a chakra enforced leap. The pavers below his feet didn’t crack, he had impeccable control. 

Temari was planning on leaving soon since her visit had mainly been political to monitor the movement of genin for the final Chunin exams. The exams went without a...severe problem, countless finally graduating to chunin level and now partaking on extensive missions. Ino had been thrown into the world of cognitive interrogation, something she gladly ranted about when intoxicated. 

It had been a long while, months and seasons since the death of the previous Hokage. Lady Tsunade Senju took up the mantle with ease, but still discontent spread throughout Konoha. The civilians don't understand her, and some shinobi discouraged her expansion of the hospital and choice in an apprentice. The legendary Senju heir taking in a civilian shinobi with no future outside that of an operating room?

‘Idiots,’ Shikamaru thought. The seasons were changing so quickly, he hadn’t realized how long it had been already.

When Kakashi brought his friend, Tenzo, to the Uchiha district, it was under the heat of noon and with the man carrying a box of paint and brushes. Hidden under the disguise of manual labour, Shikamaru waited with a small collection of clay figurines he had struggled with for weeks.

“Cute,” Kakashi said, poking one with a toe before meeting Shikamaru’s eye. “Nice cats.”

“Thanks,” Shikamaru said dryly, shifting the shadows the best he could to mould damp clay into the fine details of whiskers and fur. Kakashi’s eyebrow lifted slightly, looking a bit more intrigued at the chakra control.

“This is the kid?” Tenzo asked, looking disgruntled by being Kakashi’s pack-mule. “Hi, you can call me Yamato.”

“A pleasure,” Shikamaru said, making no move to stand. The man didn’t look that strange, a bit different in his skull and eyes like a developmental defect. Nothing memorable, eyes a bit dark and blank. “I heard we have a lot in common.”

“Besides this idiot?” Yamato asked dryly, throwing a pointed look at Kakashi who was innocently poking Shikamaru’s figurines. “It’s nice to meet you. I’ve been a bit held up but I’m glad to help out in any way.”

“Mm, my little kohai is going to repair all the fences.”

Yamato looked at Kakashi wide-eyed, clearly taken aback. “I- sensei-.”

“It’s fine,” Kakashi dismissed, flapping one hand dramatically. “This is Shikamaru Nara. He decided to own this little property, fix it up nicely for us.”

“Little property,” Tenzo parroted with increasing expression of exhaustion, “right. Did he rope you into signing off on it too? Nice one, kid. He’s a handful-.”

Kakashi huffed in mock offence, looking casual and at ease as always. “So rude to your senpai.”

“I imagine,” Shikamaru said stiffly. “I was wondering if you could help me with a pet project of mine.”

“Maybe if you let me know who told you my name, we could work something out,” Tenzo offered politely. There was a dangerous tension in his limbs, a power that stayed sheathed and lithe under his arms. Shikamaru knew that kohai and senpai could only refer to that of ANBU. He wondered what Genma had thrown him into.

“I’ve been looking into Uchiha, namely Uchiha Shinobi,” he said calmly. No wonder Asuma had a lighter to fiddle with, the paranoia and anxiety was contagious. “I’m thinking that Uchiha were sent out on unofficial missions.”

Tenzo blinked and looked at Kakashi innocently. Kakashi made a low noise of surprise, drumming his fingers on the wood of the deck. 

“I’ll bite,” Kakashi said brightly. “This should be fun.”

“I’ve been looking for some mission reports,” Shikamaru started to explain. Tenzo leaned against a nearby pillar, crossing his arms but taking the discussion seriously.

He asked a little easier, “the mission desk missing some in your archives?”

“I don’t work in the information department,” Shikamaru said. A little defensive, enough for Tenzo to look at Kakashi with a blank face. Shikamaru elaborated further before he lost both men to a different topic. “There’s a lot of lines that don’t match. Uchiha were running around on someone’s orders.”

“Some missions are off records for a reason,” Kakashi said.

Shikamaru said, “Off records included. I cross-referenced with Suna for border crossing, missions that ran under the radar still showed up.”

“Clever,” Tenzo said with a slightly lifted eyebrow. “Your source could be faulty-.”

“The Kazekage,” Shikamaru said pointedly, “is a brave person to call faulty.”

Kakashi breathed through his nose, something like a laugh. “Cute little Chunin are messing around in holes they shouldn’t dig.”

Shikamaru, half in spite and half on pure adrenaline, said; “maybe I am. Was it Major, or Lieutenant Colonel Hound?”

“Mm,” Kakashi said, bored and disinterested. “Colonel actually. You said missions aren’t lining up?”

Genma was going to kill him, once he remembered exactly what he said under heavy alcohol and nostalgia for Shisui Uchiha. At least now the two were taking Shikamaru seriously.

“There are at least 14 unexplained missions by a Sharingan user-.”

“Let me see,” Tenzo said, offering one half gloved hand.

“You wouldn’t know without any source to cross reference-.”

“Itachi Uchiha was on my squadron,” Kakashi Hatake said like a kunai between the ribs. “Let him see it, Nara.”

Shikamaru handed the book over, and slowly the man started to flick through the pages. His eyebrows lifted, a little then a fair bit the further back he skimmed. He looked up, visibly surprised, and said, “he’s right.”

Kakashi’s body altered into something tense but obvious. His slouch corrected into a cautious recline, eye narrowed in thought. “How many?”

“Nine, sensei. In the course of three years.”

“Someone wanted to keep him out of the village,” Kakashi mused, tapping fingers on the wood rapidly. 

Shikamaru said, a bit dangerously, “Shisui Uchiha you mean.”

“Ah.” A tiny pause where the two men shifted the slightest bit. “Yes. He was a Lieutenant Colonel, our missions never matched.”

‘To keep Itachi Uchiha and Shisui Uchiha apart’ Shikamaru realized. He knew from the hidden letter, that Shisui and Itachi were close in both kinship and friendship. Close enough that perhaps they would be a danger on the field.

(Shikamaru tried to ignore it, but even the name Shisui made him think of empty eye sockets and the chilling gurgle of-).

“Did they get along?” Shikamaru asked.

“I never saw them together, I heard they were friends.” Tenzo said slowly. “I-...actually, I never saw them together on the training grounds at all. Missions were always being run- sometimes personal request-.”

“Nara,” Kakashi asked suddenly. “You’ve checked the scrolls in this compound. Have you found one for snakes?”

“No, not snakes,” Shikamaru said quickly. “A few for feline summons, leopards-.”

“Mikoto Uchiha,” Kakashi said quietly with the bitter taste of nostalgia and grief. “The cats here are unique to the Uchiha. They’re similar to those in the Land of Earth, but some are descendants of ninneko.”

“Ninja-cats?” Shikamaru asked, feeling dumb. “Nobody has used ninneko in-.”

“They populate Sora-ku, the Sky Ward,” Kakashi said quickly as if he wasn’t destroying Shikamaru’s mind and prior notions. “The city isn’t abandoned. It’s a store site for weapons or utilities the Uchiha clan once used. If you didn’t find any summoning scrolls here, then they would be in Sora-ku.”

“Wha- senpai that city is in the completely opposite direction!” Tenzo argued quietly. “It would be impossible to reach there and still make it to the Land of Earth in the time-.”

“Which meant it was a reverse summons,” Kakashi confirmed quietly, leaving Shikamaru completely out of the conversation. “Tell me, little Nara. Where did you learn these dangerous things?”

Shikamaru licked his lower lip and said a little tentatively, “would you believe me if I said a god?”

“Oh kami, not another one,” Tenzo groaned impossibly, holding his head tiredly. “Senpai, how do you deal with this?”

“By beating Anko at cards,” Kakashi deflected easily. “Which one.”

“Which one?”

“God,” Kakashi said a little impatiently. “Tsukuyomi-.”

“No, Amaterasu.”

Kakashi stilled a bit, looking at him and then through him. “Oh?”

Shikamaru said, a little unsettled. “I...he came to me in a dream. With a sword and...and a warning. He looked like...like your genin and said there was something in the ground.”

Tenzo groaned something and Kakashi closed his eye, breathing slowly. “Alright. Listen carefully, little Nara. This is a dangerous thing to know.”

“Okay,” Shikamaru agreed.

“No, it’s really dangerous to know,” Tenzo said miserably. “So, first. There is an operation in Konoha known as Root…”

Word spread that Naruto Uzumaki returned to Konoha on a bright sunny morning. Shikamaru wasn’t the first to learn about it, but admittedly he was high on the totem pole. Jounin stuck on border duty always talked, so when Kotetsu let out word that a certain ninja had passed through the border, Shikamaru knew it would be an interesting day.

Not only by the presence of the loud excited ninja, but mostly by the connotations of it.

There were people working in the shadows of the village, ones that started to move quickly after the return of Naruto. Like Tenzo warned, the moment Naruto started poking around for someone to fill the one broken Team 7, a new foe appeared. One made of ink and paper and translucent skin like deep-sea fish. Empty eyes and all the signs of a shady organization.

“I don’t like it,” Kakashi confessed during one evening near the shrines and pyre. “I don’t know what’s being planned, but I know it isn’t good.”

“A bothersome mess,” Shikamaru agreed sourly. “I only met Sai for a few minutes and he hit every warning bell I had.”

“When the Third Hokage was in office, agents like Sai were hidden,” Kakashi explained quietly. “Now, they’re being brought to light since the Lord Fifth isn’t aware of the previous history. Or it’s been erased.”

“Bothersome,” Shikamaru repeated.

Naruto had grown, now taller than Shikamaru even if he stood with his back straight for once. According to Kakashi’s halfhearted compliments, his skill with jutsu had increased tenfold. Strategy...partially. 

He was still loud, obnoxious, but somehow more...genuine. Open-minded and walking charisma wrapped into a ball of dangerous potential and sunshine. Naruto burned bright enough Shikamaru twitched away when he could, shadows receding in favour of safer grounds. It was hard to believe he carried a bijuu- the nine tails if Lady Tsunade hadn’t been kidding, under all his bubbling energy.

“Ay! Shikamaru!” Naruto shouted, waving with both arms and grinning so wide both eyes squinted shut. “Get on over here you lazy bum! Choji was telling me that you bought a house!”

‘Bothersome,’ Shikamaru thought and trudged over. Naruto casually flung an arm around his shoulders, yanking him close with no idea of personal space. Shikamaru didn’t mind, it wasn’t like Ino didn’t regularly strangle him with an impromptu piggy-back ride, or Choji punch him on accident.

“It isn’t a house-.”

“Well it kinda is,” Choji pointed out, looking sheepish and a bit thrilled. He lived off Naruto’s energy, compounding into a cannonball of excitement and too much food. “Asuma’s been sad you haven’t been to the team barbeque!”

“Shikamaru bought a house?” Sakura asked the first time he had actually seen her in almost a month. “Aren’t you moving a bit...fast?”

“Fast?” Naruto parroted, blissfully confused. “How is a house fast? I had a house of my own ya’know!”

“Naruto you had a disgusting apartment! That’s not the same!”

“Aww, you’re a violent woman,” Naruto grumbled, pulling back to avoid her wide swipes. “So a house? What do ya’ need a house for, ‘Maru?”

Shikamaru really did not need a nickname. “It isn’t a house. I just took up being a caretaker.”

“A caretaker?” Sakura parroted, tilting her head slightly. “For a house? Why would you do that?”

“It’s not a house, he took on the old Uchiha compound-.”

“You what?” Naruto shouted, forgetting he was near attached to Shikamaru at the shoulder. The decibel of his shouting left Shikamaru wincing, as well as the accompanied shaking. “You- you bought the compound?”

“I didn’t buy it!” Shikamaru shouted, jerking away if only to save his own mind. “I just take care of it- fix the houses, take care of the cats.”

“There’s cats?” Sakura asked, looking thoroughly stunned. “I...I didn’t know you were doing that.”

“Yeah well…” he muttered grumpily, “someone had to.”

Naruto looked at him, something urgent and sad and also very happy in his bright blue eyes. “Thanks, Shikamaru.”

“Yeah, uh, no problem,” Shikamaru tried to deflect, feeling very off edge. “It’s really just...taking care of the buildings. Pruning the gardens. Cleaning the shrines a bit.”

“The shrines?” Naruto asked, nose wrinkling and scrunching a bit. “You mean that big fire thingy?”

“Uh, yes,” Shikamaru said. “I...didn’t think you knew about it.”

“Of course I do!” Naruto whined, huffing loudly. “I’m not stupid! That Ama-rat-soup is just a big prickly dragon-.”

“Wait- back up,” Shikamaru blurted, taking three steps back very quickly to try and regain composure. “You mean, Amaterasu?”

“Wasn’t that the dragon in-...” Sakura paused, trailing off before looking downcast. Choji, still remaining, looked very much like he was intruding and didn’t want to be there anymore. He mimed leaving, then ran off like a large bull in a farmer’s field.

“Yeah, big black dragon thing, so you’ve got it in your head now?” Naruto asked, looking at Shikamaru a little suspiciously. “That big lousy reptile didn’t do much but yap all the time-.”

“You actually know the god Amaterasu,” Shikamaru repeated dumbly.

“Of course I do!” Naruto shouted, looking a bit confused before his expression warped outright into something hard to understand. “He...he was Sasuke’s…”

Immediately, Sakura’s eyes turned downcast. Her face twitched into something of outright misery.

Naruto on the other hand, looked torn between self-loathing and outright frustration. He looked at the ground like it did a personal injustice to him- which maybe it did. 

Shikamaru and Naruto both remembered that day and the horrible events of it. Maybe Naruto less so, but the guilt and regret still bothered Shikamaru sometimes. More so in the empty streets of the Uchiha district. 

Sasuke Uchiha grew wings of fire and screamed and Naruto for all his worth screamed back. It was a clash of twelve-year-old titans but even now, years later, it bothered Shikamaru to think about. Something felt horribly wrong about that meeting, and Naruto wore that guilt around him like a personal target.

Naruto looked at the ground, between his teeth grit out a very quiet very mournful, “...Sasuke…”

Shikamaru thought the discussion had turned much too sad, far too quickly. He changed topics, awkwardly muttering a tad too loud; “so that’s why Hatake didn’t doubt…”

“Eh?” Naruto brightened so quickly the contrast was enough to spawn a migraine. “Kakashi? What’s that big pervy jerkface doing now! He didn’t say he was hanging out with you! The next time I see him...oh why I outta…!”

How in kami’s name did Team 7 even survive?

“Naruto, don’t be so hasty,” Sakura complained with a huff. “It’s not like we had the time. He did introduce us to Sai-.”

“That lousy washed out replacement-!”

“ And, he did spend the day with you when you came back,” Sakura said, ignoring Naruto completely to keep talking. “He said he missed you even!”

Shikamaru didn’t think Kakashi Hatake was capable of human emotions, let alone missing someone. 

“Oh, fine,” the whiskered boy huffed, “but the next time I see him, I outa-.”

Then, of course, Temari came sprinting around the corner with tears in her eyes and her massive summons, Kamatari the one-eyed weasel, lugging an impressive assortment of bags and a large jug of water. Temari screamed, shouting frantically and flushed, “Shikamaru! Shikamaru I just got word from my brother- you have to help!”

She came flying into him, minorly assisted by the wind to crash against him and nearly send them both sprawling. Ignoring Naruto and Sakura completely, she gushed in frantic terror, “I- someone kidnapped Gaara! They, someone came and took him! They wore cloaks with clouds and bombed my home and-.”

“Clouds?” Naruto parroted, expression icing over with cool intensity. “Akatsuki, those bastards!”

Temari floundered, looking at him in surprise. Naruto wasted no moment, grabbing Sakura and Shikamaru by the arm. He declared loudly, “don’t worry! We’ll get Gaara back!”

Temari nodded, a little numbly. Naruto shouted something, releasing Shikamaru and instead hauled Sakura stupidly up a pole and across the rooftops towards the Hokage tower.

“What…” Temari asked, looking a bit stunned by the speed of the statement.

“That’s Naruto for you,” Shikamaru apologized, his mind whirring at a dangerous speed. “Who came for your brother?”

“Kankuro didn’t write much, just-.” Temari struggled to speak, her summons offering support through its bared fangs. “He- there were two of them. In those red cloaks, they came and took him!”

‘Akatsuki,’ Shikamaru thought and knew this would be very bad.

They rushed to the main gates, wherein truth to Naruto’s speed and efficiency, the blonde was already throwing objects out from his pack and Sakura grabbed them quickly to shove into hers. She had an elaborate thigh bag filled with medical supplies and custom scalpels along her forearm.

“Shikamaru!” Sakura shouted, face stony and firm as she threw something at him, “-take these. They’re blood replenishing pills-.”

With a swirl of leaves, Kakashi Hatake stood there calmly, leaning against the archway. He had his own pack, strung against his sides and hips and secured for long-distance running.

“Ah, hello Shikamaru,” Kakashi said pleasantly, wiggling his fingers in greeting. “Sai is on his way-.”

Naruto groaned loudly, slapping his hands against his bag. “Do we have to, Kakashi-sensei? He’s weird! I don’t like his smile!”

‘You likely don’t have a choice,’ Shikamaru thought. “Is he really that bad?”

“He’s... different,” confessed Sakura with a shudder. “Are we going straight to Suna-.”

“I can show the way,” Temari offered, throwing a look at her summons who was truly ready for the run. “It’s hard to cross the desert if you don’t know the oasis path-.”

“Wait,” Kakashi said with one hand raised.

He looked out across the gates of Konoha, hyperfocused on something unseen. Shikamaru tried to sense it, but nothing stirred to him beyond the chakra of nature and wildlife.

“Oh,” Kakashi said, exhaling in a quiet breath. He stepped out slowly, looking down the road before lifting his forehead protector to reveal his Sharingan.

Naruto tensed, looking ready for a fight. He stood slowly, hands at the ready. “What is it, Kakashi-sensei-.”

“A friend,” Kakashi quickly stated, a poor excuse in the face of stress.

Temari’s summon growled, lowering to the ground with a muffled snarl. Sakura blinked in surprise as, from down the road, a large snake appeared.

“Ah!” Naruto shouted, cringing back and conjuring four shadow clones in quick succession. “It’s it- it’s that creepy freak again-.”

“No, Naruto, stop ,” the man ordered. Immediately, Naruto heeled like a dog and waited anxiously as the large snake approached. Dark blue, frantic and quick with thinly slit eyes. It opened its mouth- large enough to swallow humans and said with the hissing voice of butchered English; “ Ka-k-hss. ”

Sakura gasped quietly, Temari drew her fan. Kakashi lifted one hand to keep them at bay, as the snake neared closer then slumped to the ground. Kakashi paused, then awkwardly reached out to pat it’s dorsal nasal scales with an open palm twice.

“Hi there, Aoda,” Kakashi said, a little strained. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

“ Ka-k-hss ,” the snake, Aoda, said. Its tongue flickered out, slapping against Kakashi’s jacket with a weird slide of fabric and tissue. “ You musss-t, follow-!”

Then, Sai emerged, looking baffled by the enormous snake as wide as a redwood. He blinked twice at the snake, looking around a group a little unsure before offering a loud, “ah, who does this obese worm belong to-.”

Aoda jolted, eyes focusing on Sai with a keen awareness before it said, “ I will eat you.”

“I meant a beautiful creature,” Sai corrected with a thin strange smile.

Kakashi bowed his head, closing both eyes before he said very calmly, “Naruto, I can’t go on this mission with you.”

“Eh? But- but sensei!” he shouted, looking ready to punch the ex-ANBU in his spiky hair. “This is Gaara! We can’t just leave him-.”

“I know!” Kakashi said, elevating his voice just enough for Naruto to quiet. “I’ll send Pakkun with an ally of mine. Listen to everything he says, Naruto. I mean everything.”

Then, a single red eye Sharingan and a grey eye settled on Shikamaru keenly. “Shikamaru, I need you to alert the Hokage. Tell her Aoda is here and needs her help.”

Naruto, finally understanding the significance of the snake’s appearance asked a tad meekly, “is...everything okay, sensei?”

“No,” Aoda said instead, looking exhausted now that they could examine the massive reptile further. 

Kakashi summoned Pakkun with rapid speed, sending orders to track and update someone else ( Tenzo, Shikamaru recognized) on a new mission. Shikamaru took only a minute to say his goodbyes to Temari before wishing her the best. 

The Hokage reacted unexpectedly. Her expression turned stony and she rapidly called for her supplies. She pulled her hair back into a single bun, threw on a travelling cloak, and gathered a medical kit from her assistant. In minutes, she rushed from the office and waived back ANBU that detoured from rooftops.

“If Hatake has brought you with,” she said solemnly, “then he trusts you enough to involve you with this situation.”

“ What situation?” Shikamaru asked once the three of them (Aoda reverse-summoning away once informing Kakashi of their destination) took to the trees heading south. They ran, moving quicker than normal Chunin missions. For hours they ran, to where even Shikamaru’s scouting abilities were strained thin and he forced himself to conserve chakra. Kakashi looked at him with one grey eye, taking point and rapidly communicating through confidential hand signs. Lady Tsunade, communicated back with short words, only confirmation of his rapid language.

Shikamaru felt completely in the dark.

“We’re almost there,” Tsunade lied, almost an apology. Shikamaru was lagging, feeling exhausted in his bones. His lungs burned, no level of chakra endurance training could have prepared him for this brutal pace.

Lady Tsunade looked like she had gone for a stroll instead of a suicide sprint towards an unknown destination. Told to Kakashi by a giant snake. 

Who could it be? The only common snake summons was Anko, who (as far as Shikamaru knew) wasn’t working in the public eye. There could have been another nin with a snake summon, but who?

‘He asked me a while ago about snake summons,’ Shikamaru remembered. ‘This isn’t something as basic as a call for help.’

They ran, pausing for a half minute as Shikamaru almost keeled over and vomited over a tree edge. Kakashi scanned the surroundings, he had been completely silent on the run and spoke only with his hands.

“Back at it, Nara,” Tsunade grunted, rolling up her sleeves to stretch her wrist. “We’ve got at least two more hours ahead of us.”

“Where are we going?” Shikamaru asked, voice a wheeze towards the end. Kakashi said absolutely nothing, moving without the slightest sign of his current position. His face blank, Sharingan open to scan rapidly through the forest.

“A bit further,” Tsunade said quickly.

Shikamaru pulled himself together, swallowed down nausea and cramping and ran. Kakashi was a slave driver, an absolute monster. He didn’t hesitate, managed to land every jump without the air so much as drifting. Tsunade moved efficiently, Shikamaru was lucky to keep up.

They ran, finally, the trees and the redwood forest began to pull apart into broader open undergrowth. Bedrock broke from the ground on occasion, making the terrain now unsteady with clumps of uprooted trees or rock piles.

Finally, the ground split into multiple thin crevices that turned into dangerous pits opening to underground caverns. Shikamaru scrambled to land wherever Kakashi Hatake did, frantic to not stumble into a crack.

“Up here,” Kakashi said, the first word over the near half-day of frantic running. “Aoda said-.”

A snake reared back and hissed in surprise, scrambling away into the cracked ground. Tsunade bit back a curse, paling a bit as the ground wriggled. Dozens of snakes in different shapes and sizes bolted into the ground or towards a larger looming cave. It was a maw of a hungry beast, with a thin waterfall feeding it and the shadows within.

“Any idea what’s in there?” Tsunade asked, settling at the precipice overlooking the cave.

Kakashi inhaled and said flatly, without emotion, “no. There are too many snakes.”

“Give me a second,” Shikamaru croaked, trying to catch his breath. He closed his eyes, swallowing down exhaustion and bile and forced his chakra to react. It surged, sluggish and drained, feeling the weight and shifting of a hundred squirming bodies-.

He felt the urge to vomit again at the uncomfortable sensation. Reeling himself back, nearly swooning, he said, “there’s a lot of snakes in there. More than a hundred, different sizes.”

Before

The skies rained and Itachi struggled to remain at ease with his current situation. Mud saturated the ground and tinted the air with the overwhelming reek of dying plant matter.

He hadn’t prepared for a fight of this severity. Hidan, despite his loud brashness, wouldn’t completely abandon a useful member of the Akatsuki. If this did occur, Itachi would have received medical attention to whatever botched level Sasori felt that day.

Itachi had contingency plans, being left for dead was actually the third situation he commonly ran through. After Kisame’s death, the Akatsuki had been slightly on edge with him. Abandonment was just a matter of time.

Severely injured while abandoned- that hadn’t been considered.

The rain fell hard in Ame, thick drops that added to the sludge and saturated the thick wool of his outer cloak. Blood and other equally rank fluids saturated his inner cloak. He felt disgusting, a revolting mess that may soon attract flies considering the state of his bowels.

He closed his eyes, regulated his breathing, and checked again on the simple genjutsu he layered over his senses. Pain was merely the information delivered to the brain, a bit more elaborate and interwoven than other sensory units commonly affected by genjutsu, but one Itachi learned how to dampen and eliminate at a young age. He hadn’t figured it out, it was taught to him during midnight sparring where snared rabbits were shared on a campfire.

He didn’t actively feel his disembowelment. It was a problem only in the concern of infection- that was how shinobi died. The injury was severe, but with the edges of his wounds closed with the clotting supplies he had on hand- his only true risk was the vile contents of his innards infecting the exposed tissue. A concentrated flush of chakra washed that away, kept his blood circulating the best it could, and kept him from feeling pain.

That didn’t remedy the problem that was, his innards were spilling out. 

Sasuke was unconscious five strides away; beyond his reach no matter how hard he stretched. Jutsu was out of the question, even maintaining his circulation and delaying infection to this degree would last only until his chakra reserves and pills ran out. Then he would die. Hopefully, Sasuke wouldn’t be unconscious then, and far away.

Itachi breathed slowly, forcing his chakra to move carefully and gently. His clothes would start to rot if the blood wasn’t cleaned. He couldn’t move beyond his arms and careful posture shifting, or his intestines would tear and his chakra would struggle to maintain the injury.

He breathed slowly, trying to maintain a state of relaxation that would slow his metabolic rate. He had no food or water, but with the rains of Ame, he presumed he could fashion a catch of some sort. He wouldn’t die of dehydration.

“Sa-,” he attempted, coughing hoarsely and feeling his chest tighten and quiver. No blood, but the pressure exchange was not kind to his organs. “Sasuke.”

He didn’t stir, still unconscious. He would get hypothermia, lying so still in the rain without any cloak to keep him warm.

‘If he wakes,’ Itachi thought horribly. ‘If what he did, what forbidden jutsu that was, didn’t kill him.’

The distance and angle meant Itachi couldn’t tell if his brother was breathing. He contemplated activating Susanoo, but a chakra spike of that degree would certainly draw the eyes of Pein. 

He waited, licking his cracked lips and croaked once more, “Otouto.”

Sasuke didn’t stir. Itachi let his head fall back until it hit the bark.

The night was cold and bleak, silent and agonizing. He heard nothing beyond his own breathing and the intrusive dampness of something he couldn’t tell. A Katon would burn his chakra, so he suffered and dreamed in shaky handfuls until the morning dawn and dew left him shivering for air.

Sasuke hadn’t stirred.

“Sasuke,” he tried, voice quieter and more mournful despite his efforts. “Sasuke. Otouto. Sasuke get up.”

‘He can’t if he’s dead,’ his brain told him. Itachi wanted to scream, but he didn’t.

There were birds in the trees and small mammals feasting on the nuts shed by the tall trees. The wet bark ran slick and sticky with resin and sap, which insects ate and also died entrapped in. The skies were grey and never lit with actual sunlight, it was miserable.

He pushed his chakra, forced his blood to cycle. He was tired, hungry, as obscene as it sounded. His skin near his thighs burned with a damp slickness, bruises forming from his sedentary spot and soon, ulcers would replace them. Itachi once saw a man in a hospital, his rear swollen and bloodied where the ulcer dug so deep it touched the bone of his pelvis.

“Sasuke,” he said again, hoping miserably in the cold, that he would stir. He didn’t.

The day continued, the blood cycled, there were the beginnings of an infection near his right hip, he killed it and closed his eyes and breathed.

“Sasuke,” he tried again quietly, speaking out loud for his sanity more than that of a true plea. “Sasuke, otouo...wake up.”

Itachi clenched his jaw shut, closed his eyes and wondered. He could summon a crow, tell it where Sasuke was and send it to the few (any?) allies he had. They could potentially reach them in time, but passing Ame from the East was impossible since the blockade. Passing from the Land of Earth was tedious and long. From the south meant from Suna across the desert that would kill a man in three days.

What message would his crow have? A location for their corpses to be collected? Whoever came would cash a hefty bounty- two missing-nin dead. Nobody would come fast enough to save them, lest of all save Itachi from his own terminal state.

He wanted to laugh, bitter and dry but knew it was pointless.

“It wasn’t supposed to be in this order,” Itachi said to his brother. “You were to hate me, grieve me. Not the other way.”

Shisui would be so upset with him, furious at his failures. Itachi killed his friend and family and now he killed everything important to him. 

The sun set and this night was colder than before. The moon glowed only slightly through the overhead trees, the needles feathery on its boughs and blocking that of the stars. Itachi felt his eyes itch and his throat crackle (he was so thirsty but knew better than to beg a nameless source) and he asked, “I am so sorry, for all my failures.”

There was a part of Itachi who felt incapable of understanding it. He would never believe that Sasuke wouldn’t come bouncing around a corner, laughing at where Shisui dumped a bucket from the well on him. He couldn’t accept it, that Sasuke wouldn’t come around the corner to ask him ‘Nii-san, can we play today? You promised!’

One day Itachi would grieve for him, but first, he would have to accept that Sasuke was truly dead. He refused, even now in the night he bared his teeth and red eyes at the sky and refused to accept what his senses and heart told him.

“I refuse,” Itachi said in a hoarse whisper so quiet it barely broke the air. 

The clouds drifted above him, just enough for Itachi to know the world had not yet ended.

Something chuffed near the tiny clearing, a heavy sound of a chest much larger than his. An animal attracted to the smell of potential carrion.

Itachi hadn’t counted on an animal finding them so soon. They were deep in Ame where the mountainous leopards would struggle to find them, but bears were plenty in these woods. Boar, if they were particularly unlucky.

It shuffled closer, a faint blur that Itachi illuminated with his Sharingan. Four legs, a heifer-.

No, it was Sasuke’s thrice-damned pack animal. A mule or something else named that wretched joke, Bakashi.

“Bakashi,” Itachi whispered, trying not to cough and startle the animal. “Mule. Ass.”

It swung its big head to look at him, still bridled with leather and Sasuke’s pack. Its eyes were milky in the dark, lit like pearls and luminescent. Itachi reached out shakily, the animal approached to nuzzle his fingers with its hot breath.

“Bakashi,” Itachi repeated, feeling the return of hope so fast his brain and addled mind swam with it. He gripped its bridle, securing his grip. It snorted, nuzzling against his neck and throat warmly.

“Bakashi,” Itachi repeated numbly, looping his arm through its bridle in a way certainly uncomfortable. The animal blinked its milky eyes and flicked its large ears twice. Itachi grit his teeth and forced his eyes to blur a simple genjutsu on the animal’s mind. A calming illusion, one layered with a command and urge, forward.

The ass stepped forward. It dragged Itachi through the mud by his arms around its throat, plowing a groove through the mud with Itachi’s limp legs its blade.

It hurt in a distant place Itachi ignored, but the beast moved with more care and obedience than any normal animal. Closer, it took care not to step on Sasuke with its addled brain. It nibbled on Itachi’s hair, gumming the strands between large lips before it bowed its head further and let Itachi slump to the ground beside his brother.

Bakashi stood there, grazing on nonexistent grass. Itachi’s hands shook when he clutched his brother’s sword, now within reach, and carefully sawed free the leather tack. His halfhearted genjutsu told the beast to remain still as he freed it of its burden, stripping it of weight and granting a gift.

It took two tries to drag Sasuke on his thighs, below his reopened wound but close enough to monitor his state. Three fingers to his neck felt a steady pulse.

“Thank you,” Itachi whispered to the heavens and to a lonely ass, “thank you, thank you.”

When he looked up, after tracing the features of his brother’s face, he learned the animal had watched him calmly despite nullifying the genjutsu. It flicked its ears, blinked its white eyes and turned to wander off free into the brush. 

It wasn’t easier. Sasuke had inexplicably survived the hard life on the road like that of a civilian or a travelling salesman. There were few shinobi objects, even fewer tools or objects for that of chakra.

He had a heavy blanket that once must have settled under a saddle. It wasn’t soft or gentle on Itachi’s skin, but it was dry and warm compared to the water-laden cloak. He couldn’t quite lift himself sufficiently to completely remove the garment, but now he had little use for it in truth. He used Sasuke’s sword- a remarkable quality that prompted further questions and cut away the bottom and his sleeves. The blanket covered Sasuke entirely, staving off hypothermia as Itachi attempted to clean his injury the best he could.

Sasuke had food in his bags, the namesake of the Land of Earth. Preserved meats, fruit, bread in careful wrappings that wouldn’t spoil easily. One saddlebag had burst full with grain and grasses for the now absent mule. He pulled those out and stuffed the torn sleeve from his cloak, sliding the makeshift pillow under Sasuke’s head across his thighs.

“Your hair is so long now,” Itachi said, trailing dirtied fingertips through the long strands. The last time he saw his brother, his hair had grown and turned a tad messy. Nothing like this, where he could tie it back with a thong of leather.

He brushed it, coming across a snarl induced by mud. Picking at it until it came free, he continued to brush his hands carefully through the black strands until they were cleaner. Here, they had nothing but time to wait.

“You used to steal mother’s hairbrush,” he whispered, tucking a strand behind Sasuke’s ear before pulling the blanket higher. “You used to sneak into her room and take it. You always wanted to brush my hair, and yanked too hard.”

Sasuke breathed evenly, unresponsive but with a healthy flush. Chakra exhausted, weak and tired. Itachi smiled and said, “you thought you were so sneaky, but mother left her brush out for you to find.”

It wasn’t raining yet. Sasuke’s bags had a long flap of canvas that may have a proper orientation to a traveller’s tent. It wouldn’t prop itself without a careful hand, and Itachi knew better than to attempt to stand. It flopped partially, brushed the top of his scalp and flapped bitterly on his left side. It looked like that of a slum, pathetic and flimsy. 

Itachi felt happy, so relieved he could cry. Sasuke drank palm fulls in his unconscious state. He breathed steadily, twitching on occasion and nuzzling harder into Itachi’s thigh. Itachi smiled tiredly, he said; “sleep. I’ll watch over you.”

Food became a problem. His intestines were lacerated from Hidan’s blow, slicing through a small portion of the casing. Removing the contents was a disgusting affair, one that Itachi was thankful Sasuke had been unconscious for. Sasuke clearly anticipated travelling across Suna from his frankly overwhelming quantity of waterskins. Sasuke wouldn’t notice Itachi reclaiming one of a foul purpose, at least the smell vanished under its cork.

After that, it was no worse than the crimes and gore Itachi had handled before. He repurposed the sewing kit, lacing the cotton thread after five tries through its tiny eye. 

“I’ve never eaten sausage,” Itachi confessed to his brother. “I once made it. On a Genin mission. We ground pork and beef and slid them into casings. It’s not that different.”

Itachi didn’t feel it, but there was a revolting sort of existential horror to binding and tying his large intestine shut. Looping through his severed points, but keeping the uppermost small intestine free for the...more unmentionable maintenance.

Itachi wasn’t a medic, but he knew enough from his own desperate search to prolong his life. The intestine was the hidden stomach, the point where nutrients were absorbed. Even eating to the point of gluttony, Itachi would starve to death in this state. The stomach absorbed only water, and carbohydrates. And Sasuke did have bread.

“You’ve grown so much,” Itachi whispered when night fell. Three days now. He bent the best he could and kissed Sasuke’s forehead with chapped lips from dehydration. “I’m so proud of how far you’ve come.”

It’s hard to watch your body waste away. Itachi could sustain himself on bread for only so long. The brain burned only sugars like those from bread. He could use that more than meat or protein, keeping his brain active would keep the genjutsu longer which subsequently left him more lucid. If that faltered, then everything else would crumble apart.

Seven days. Sasuke had begun to stir more, just small moments of activity before he went quiet. Itachi fed him water when he could, rehydrated fruits and sugars and the thinnest scrap of meat when it became soft enough.

“There is much comfort to rest with you,” he confessed, knowing his time was drawing short. “A kind of rest that’s pure.”

His chakra reserves were dwindling, sustained longer with bread but only bread. He was starving, his muscles wasting. The infection came about near every hour and deep pits and lacerations opened along the weight of his bones.

“I fear we will be parting soon,” Itachi confessed in a murmur, resting his forehead against his brother the best he could. “I’m sorry I could not offer you more.”

Sasuke twitched gently, his eyebrows furrowing. Itachi wondered if his brother would wake before he died.

On the morning of day nine, Sasuke woke with a quiet groan. It was a grey overcast day, smelling of mud and pine resin. Sasuke struggled to move through the stiff burn of unused muscles.

He shifted slightly, then with more effort as he recognized the feel of a straw pillow and the smell of decay.

Opening his eyes, at first, he imagined it to be a prophetic dream where he lay in the lap of a corpse.

“What-“ he tried to say, coughing and choking on the dry burn in his throat. His head felt slow and uncertain, his stomach screaming desperately in hunger. He had never felt a sensation like this before, such a crippling weakness. “What- where am I-...?”

It took a moment to understand and place the trees. It took longer to comprehend the smell of decay and a dead animal to be originating from the corpse he lay on. And the shallow breathing from the corpse itself.

He moved sluggishly, prodding and shifting the blanket off his shoulders. It smelled like mildew and Bakashi.

The corpse moved with a quiet wheeze of universal pain. A twitch of hands with constant tremor. One reached out, snagging one lock of Sasuke’s hair that had somehow come free of the usual tie.

“Who-“ and then, Sasuke placed him.

He struggled to sit up, muscles cramping and protesting silently behind the migraine budding in his eyes. The blanket fell into his lap and further revealed the sorry state of his clothes, and also the hideously large and putrid wound like that of a gutted animal.

Sasuke said, with disgust and terror; “ nii-san?”

Itachi was breathing and his eyes were open partially, only a flat grey that Sasuke couldn’t remember seeing. His brother always had his Sharingan active. He smiled a thin quirk of pale lips with deep cracks of dehydration. Itachi said in a horrible croak like that of one of Naruto’s toads: “you’re awake.”

“What-,” Sasuke asked before he choked down his words and scrambled to face his brother entirely. It was a gruesome sight, one that contradicted his concept and the definition of Itachi.

Itachi looked unwell. Sick in a way beyond his chronic condition. His skin was waxy and pale, blue hues where the flesh was thinner such as his lips and below his eyes. His hair matted towards the back of the scalp with sap and debris, he hadn’t moved from this position in a long while.

“You…” Sasuke trailed off, exhausted and horrified. He had the confidence and comfort of a spiritual guide but here and now, he felt so young and small.

Itachi smiled thinly. One of the fissures along his bottom lip split wider and beaded thinly. The air smelled of something dying and Sasuke refused to admit it was his brother.

“Sasuke…” Itachi said softly and with a crackling of deterioration. “...you need to leave me.”

“No,” Sasuke said immediately, scrambling with his hands to do something. He wasn’t a medical-nin, and all field medicine had already been applied.

‘Oh kami,’ Sasuke thought, fighting nausea biting at his tongue. ‘He sewed his intestines closed like motsu.’

Prepared intestines from a hog. Fried and sold on street corners by vendors with miso. 

Sasuke turned his head to the side and retched, nothing came from his empty stomach.

“It’s fine,” Itachi said quietly, dazed and strangely relaxed. He reached up with a horribly shaking hand and poked Sasuke on his forehead.

‘You have that same expression,’ Sasuke thought with bile coating his tongue, ‘the last time you knew you were dying and wanted to spend it with me.’

This time, the sky was not on fire and the heavens were not crying. There was no Susanoo shielding his brother and Sasuke had not the foul chakra corruption of a curse mark. There were no black flames or lightning Kirin to lay waste on the Uchiha hideout. 

“There will be no death today,” Sasuke whispered, voice breaking and hitching between efforts to withhold tears. Itachi would not survive, it was a miracle he existed so long without moving. Pure dedication and devotion to a single cause. He had waited for Sasuke to wake before his last moments.

“It’s okay,” Itachi repeated numbly, hand sliding down with no strength to hold it up. 

Sasuke refused.

“Don’t-“ Itachi’s words broke as his eyes unfocused, breathing fluttering slightly. He had no more chakra. “Don’t- fight this.”

Sasuke refused.

“No, Nii-San,” Sasuke said with tears. “No! You are not going to die! I won’t let you!”

Itachi laughed a huff of air, going so far as to roll his eyes. He smiled, and it tore Sasuke’s heart in two. “You have no choice, silly Otouto.”

“I won’t let you-.“

“There are no gods for you to curse,” Itachi scolded gently, he closed his eyes fully and let Sasuke hold his hand desperately. “There are- are no nin to...to take revenge.”

“I don’t give a shit about the gods,” Sasuke said, scrambling to grab the blanket. “I can... I can help you bandage that and maybe head north to Earth-“

“I’m sorry,” Itachi said.

Itachi had never apologized openly before.

“Do you hate me?” Itachi asked, innocent and somehow so young. He opened his eyes, glazed and distant and somehow, begging for any sort of confession from his brother.

And Sasuke promised him, “I never did.”

Itachi relaxed and closed his eyes, happy to indulge his brother with whatever desperate plan he concocted. They both knew it was futile.

“I’m sorry,” Sasuke said, “I went into Earth to get you medicine. And this was...because of me-“

“No,” Itachi argued quietly. He didn’t open his eyes but said with strength, “it was worth it. Everything is.”

“If I searched for you sooner-.“

“We do not know what kind of people we truly are until the moment before our deaths,” Itachi said and Sasuke had not the heart to stop him. “As death comes to embrace you, you will realize what you are. And I realize now, that I am your brother and I have always loved you. Whatever you decide to do, I will love you always.”

‘No matter what you decide to do from now on...I will love you always,’ 

Sasuke looked away, jaw clenching to bite back the howl he wanted to release. His eyes burned and not from chakra exhaustion. His body trembled, never had he felt so useless.

He looked at the pine trees and the canopy floor. The large furrows in the mud and the old tracks of animals lingering. He saw a snake near a bundle of fallen needles, its eyes clouded and white as it entered its shed cycle. Sasuke looked at the snake and found new motivation burn through his body.

“No,” Sasuke said as a smile started to spread, “you aren’t going to die here.”

“Sasuke…”

“Not here,” Sasuke repeated as he lifted his left sleeve to reveal the handmade tattoo. He reached for his sword and split the skin on one hand, slapping blood to the summoning contract- “Aoda!”

A puff of air hot and dry like the forest was not, buffeted the pair. Sasuke had not summoned the snake since before he entered Earth, and before he found prophecy with that of his false-god.

The snake had grown to epic proportions, flattening a tree under the girth of his scales. Aoda’s eyes scanned with fixed attention, as large as a small wagon wheel. The snake breathed and scented the air, recoiling in surprise and morbid curiosity. “ Lord Sasuke? What is that…?”

“Aoda,” Sasuke repeated, slumping to the mud as relief and hope overwhelmed him. “I need your help, please, my brother…”

“Of course, Lord Sasuke,” Aoda promised immediately. “He is unwell, he smells of rotten meat and spoiled things…”

“The cave, can you take us?” Sasuke asked exhausted. The summoning jutsu did not demand much chakra but he had barely awoken from his condition. Already, unconsciousness beckoned him. “Then- then can you find help-...”

“Yes, of course. I can- Lord Sasuke?” Aoda cried, prodding his side with his behemoth head. “You are weak. I can take you and your kin but we must-  Lord Sasuke!”

“Do it,” Sasuke rasped as his vision began to warp beyond recognition. “Save him-.”

“Of course I will, I will carry you below my fangs but only for a moment- Lord Sasuke stay awake-“

And Sasuke fell asleep like a childhood memory, draped over his brother’s lap.

Now

“We’re looking for a human,” Kakashi said. He looked at Shikamaru with half-lidded eyes, a Sharingan whirring so quickly it felt like a threat. “Try again.”

Shikamaru nodded, the hair on his arms standing on ends. He forced his chakra to surge, stuttering twice before it felt around better. Shikamaru’s leg buckled, Tsunade grabbed him under one arm as his shadows felt further-.

“There isn’t-.” Shikamaru struggled to say, vision swirling a small bit, “there’s two.”

Chapter Text

The cave smelled musty and damp, the universal aroma of petrichor and leaf decay. It had rained sometime within the past day, water trapped by tension to the straggling taproots and moss. 

The cave wriggled its way at least half a mile. Its walls were ovoid with porous grooves where small insects lay just out of sight. The darkness of the cave, it’s impenetrable maw, shied back only slightly from the burning torch fashioned quickly out of a broken tree limb, blade oil and Katon. 

Kakashi took the point, wielding the fire with casual ease. His Sharingan glanced around, catching far too much movement of the hundreds of hatchling snakes or mature insects eating reptiles. Even to Shikamaru’s senses, who could navigate slowly in complete darkness, it was overwhelming.

“Ugh,” Tsunade grunted quietly, nearly flinching at one snake that peered up with curious eyes and the remnants of shed skin capping over one eye. Her nose wrinkled in displeasure, but she said nothing verbally that denoted disrespect. “How much further, Hatake?”

“I don’t know,” Kakashi said. Using hand signals would be a moot point considering the Hokage couldn’t see that well. “There’s too much movement and chakra. There’s a ledge.”

Shikamaru sensed it, the little flux in altering shadows that signified a ridge. Tsunade tripped, stumbling broad and causing three startled snakes to hide further in their holes.

The absence of light meant the absence of a warm touch. The cave didn’t plummet into the unbearable coldness of most mountain fissures- instead, it held warmth through thick granite insulation. It had to be warm somehow, for so many snakes to find a home in the passages.

Shikamaru stretched outwards, reaching with broad fan palm fingers to probe the darkness. Snakes wriggled about, dancing away in alarm at the coldness of manipulated chakra.

He felt them, much larger and oddly shaped compared to serpents further ahead where the cave began to open upwards. If felt warmer, his shadows becoming stronger in a potent flair which through practice, Shikamaru knew there was a nearby light source.

“Further ahead,” he reported quietly, voice echoing along the labyrinth. “There’s light, we should see it soon.”

Tsunade grunted quietly, almost tripping over a stalactite covered with tissue paper remains of something very large. Deep in the cave, something rumbled, crazed and mad.

Kakashi twitched, head swinging around to stare in the direction of the noise. A heartbeat longer and he moved the slightest bit more urgently, coaxing both teammates along. 

“What is it?” Tsunade asked quietly, voice serious and firm.

Kakashi said with low caution that still made Shikamaru’s heart squeeze instinctually, “Orochimaru. I smell his summon, the alpha.”

The alpha? Shikamaru didn’t have any summons himself, something that the Nara clan didn’t particularly rely on. They used the shadows and the energy from the forest instead of a single contracted species. If he asked, he could manipulate any creature with gentle consent. He preferred not to, but his mother had been quite a marvel with the rabbits near the forests’ edge.

“Ah, yes,” Tsunade said with dread and recognition. “We should stay away from her.”

They kept walking, a little more careful now that a noticeable threat had been recognized inside the caves. They approached further, Kakashi’s head swinging side to side rhythmically as he took the time to systematically scent the air with soft snorting noises.

“Blood ahead,” Kakashi said monotonously, not hurrying his pace. “Two smells, similar-.”

“A snake around them,” Shikamaru interrupted and cut off before the man finished speaking. He recognized rationally that Kakashi may now kill him once this was done for being so disrespectful, but he felt the information was important. “A very, very large snake.”

“Aoda,” Kakashi said clipped. He didn’t glare at Shikamaru, but the younger certainly shrunk a bit at his tone. “I recognized him. He’ll let us through.”

Shikamaru still didn’t know who exactly this was. Not Orochimaru if they were being cautious of the other snake in the tunnels. A prodigy of his? How would they get a summoning contract with serpents if not through the missing-nin?

“Contact in thirty seconds,” Kakashi warned quietly, “there’s a lip-.”

“Goddammit!” Tsunade hissed, stubbing her toe on a significant crack. She pinwheeled her arms, nearly falling if not for Kakashi’s mysteriously quick presence. He waved Shikamaru forward, aiding the spluttering and foul swearing Hokage.

Shikamaru nodded slowly, trusting his senses. He walked, avoiding the larger rock protrusions as he drifted further from Kakashi’s torch. The cave echoed dreamily, a hypnotizing lull of dripping moist water and the heady soil. It whispered to him, his peripheral vision squirming like tentacles from the constant movement.

The snake in front of him resembled more a wall of scales, each larger than Shikamaru’s hand. The creature was big, curled in an open loop with its head resting on its midback. It looked at Shikamaru although he could not see it. He felt its tongue move in the air, felt the vibrations as it opened its body and slid tree its tail to grant entry into its coils.

Shikamaru swallowed down nausea, induced from adrenaline and panic of the unknown. He shuffled forward, narrowly missing a rock the size of a kunai protruding by his foot. The caves were a deathtrap and a maze of potential hazards.

“Hello?’ Shikamaru asked, approaching the figures inside the coils, two of them. The two bodies he sensed before emitted a chakra different than that of snakes. Warm blood and natural chakra movement radiated heat and its own tint compared to the cold-blooded animals. There were two people here, two bodies for sure.

“My name is Shikamaru...“ he said hoarsely to the darkness, approaching warily. “I’m here to help…”

He felt the shadows a little better, probing closely now with more physical touch. A gently caress to better understand the shape of his target- on the ground of the cave while also reclined against the broad scales of the snake-.

The cave rattled, vibrating and flashing dim and rapid. It contrasted hideously to the segnity of the environment, dazzling and frightening. Brighter then gone, a flash then darkness. Too quick to produce any shadows or to warp anything under the sudden strobe.

Shikamaru stepped back, his foot scuffling on rock loudly. His breathing rattled in his ears, heart thrumming so potent he felt it across his limbs and in every major organ. Shikamaru lifted his arm defensively- protect his face from whatever fangs lodged into his skin…

Something screamed at him, piercing and hoarse with the immediate rise of panic. Hysteria even, if not for Shikamaru’s mental knowledge that both Kakashi and Tsunade were with him. The cave flashed again with a shapeless imprint of something looming over him. A dozen bloodied eyes, glowing malicious garnets supporting pairs of sharp scaled legs and talons. They reached for him, clicking with tar dripping points-.

“Guys?” Shikamaru asked in an octave too high. He had never seen a monster like this, rolling and black with sharp hooked teeth that opened- (beaks, he realized) and so many glaring pupils and eyes. The feet resembled a millipede, far too many to ever sustain a filthy freakish monster.

Shikamaru felt like screaming, a compulsion to run out of the cave and never look back. He stood there, quaking and feeling every bit a Genin, completely useless…

A hand grabbed his shoulder from behind, jolting him with acrid chakra and low command; “Kai!”

The demon melted into nothing, the flashing soothed from the migraine burn and Kakashi stood behind him, torch held protectively before them both. Tsunade stood a step behind the two, leaving the fight to those with eyes.

“Sage,” Shikamaru said, almost falling to his knees. “I don’t- Ancients.”

That time, he did let his body shudder and a retch take him by surprise. He managed to suppress it, with some dignity left.

“That’s a nasty Genjutsu,” Kakashi said, eyes bright and sharp while the other hid in the shadow of his occipital bone line. “You alright?”

“Fine,” Shikamaru said, “I can keep going-.”

“Step closer,” the shadows said in a low wet rasp of something weak and feral, “and you die.”

Kakashi’s grip slackened immediately. Shikamaru stepped forward, carefully with both arms up. “We aren’t here to hurt you; we got the request from Aoda-.”

He heard the wounded noise, a small muffled sound of pain before the ground shifted and the shadowed mass moved. One of the bodies stood, leaning on the scaled wall and holding something protectively in front. Shikamaru prodded the shadows once more, struggling to comprehend the shadow. Were they holding a weapon? An artifact? Hand signs at the ready?

“We just want to help-.”

“I will kill you,” they said quietly. Fear turned people disappointingly primitive, fueled by adrenaline in the collection of signals to fight or flee or freeze entirely. Shikamaru could tell that their target had the tired assurance that they would have to attack. 

‘The Genjutsu,’ Shikamaru realized sharply. ‘It was a whole new calibre. They actually could kill me if that was just a warning display-.’

Shikamaru stopped advancing, trusting Kakashi to back him up and subdue the threat. The other unknown body was breathing, he could feel their chest move in the darkness, but wasn’t sure they were unconscious.

“Hold your horses, kid,” Tsunade said from a few strides behind. Her footsteps were heavy and purposeful, enough chakra funnelled into the ground that even if she stepped on a rock, the poor thing would be pummeled into nothing. “We aren’t here for a fight-.”

The held object swung forward sharply. Shikamaru threw one arm out to shove the Hokage behind him, feeling the air distort.

Kakashi brushed past like a ghost, drifting over the ground more than running. With one hand, he drew a kunai and countered the thin metal sword whilst maintaining their light source high enough to illuminate the nook.

“Calm down,” Kakashi said firmly. Shikamaru thought Kakashi was too calm to be human. 

‘What the fuck,’ Shikamaru thought a tad hysterically. His nerves were ruined from that thorough Genjutsu, he’d need to check with Ino that there were no lasting damages. 

Kakashi held the sword at bay with one arm, something that shouldn’t be possible. Tsunade inhaled sharply, her gaze lower and Shikamaru followed her sight dumbly.

“Kami,” she whispered quietly, looking thoroughly shocked and startled. Shikamaru couldn’t think of words.

Their enemy was beyond normal, somehow capable of the impossible. They stood on trembling legs as their lower stomach peeled open like a deconstructed dumpling. Organs hung out, dangling in long meaty ribbons like pork sausage barbeque Choji loved to eat. Some sections dangled like little minnows, others trailed so far they pulled out bright yellow curds of cheese (fat, he realized) and scraped the floor with bound off twine.

There was also an impressive amount of ooze dripping out, various fluids that had accumulated in the cavity and now spilled free. 

Something lit in the glassy red eyes, more maroon or dark ruby than the bright gleam of the Sharingan. Pale skin, glassy and translucent in the torchlight, struggled to fit around the prominent feminine cheekbones. The sword lowered, Kakashi withdrawing his defence. Kakashi said, slow and a little cautious, “are you responding, wiizeru?”

Wiizeru, weasel.

Glazed eyes blinked slowly and turned into a deep-set glare, emphasized by the indents below his eyes. “I’m retired.”

Kakashi didn’t bluff it off like Shikamaru learned he likes to. He didn’t relax or joke, he remained tense in posture. Itachi Uchiha, struggling to remain upright and clearly on the limits of human endurance, glared openly hostile.

Tsunade stepped forward, brushing past Shikamaru to gaze at Itachi in open appreciation. His eyes flicked to her, then over her shoulder in open defiance of her presence.

“Itachi Uchiha,” she said officially with a heavy voice. “I am Lady Tsunade Senju, the Godaime Hokage of Konohagakure.”

Shikamaru noticed how although Itachi had been looking over her shoulders, his line of vision dropped just slightly to be level to her elbows. 

“Currently, you are rated a S-class Missing-Nin, and a speculated member of the terrorist organization the Akatsuki,” she said formally with a calm level voice. “Konoha has placed a bounty on your retrieval, with orders of execution immediately.”

Kakashi did not move, but his chakra tightened subtly. Reigned in, leashed to his side and made to heel closely. Itachi still did not move.

“However,” Tsunade said, her voice tilting upwards ever so slightly. “In the eyes of a current investigation, the current status of your conviction has been revoked. As such, you are no longer a convicted missing-nin of the village. Exceeding the walls of Konoha on an unapproved mission for more than three years changes this, but Lord Third was very messy with his paperwork. Since the formation of my new office, over two years but not exceeding three, I am able to confirm a highly confidential mission that nobody except you were aware of. Since your return, I am removing the disguise of Konoha bounty and reinstating you and compensating you for your efforts.”

Shikamaru floundered, his jaw-dropping. Kakashi’s arm twitched, a flicker of chakra escaping his normally spectacular control to spark bright and white along his right arm. It fizzled out immediately, leaving the torch as their only source of light.

“You…” Itachi said slowly, a frown turning his lips downward, “...are claiming something that is not true-.”

“Itachi Uchiha,” the Hokage said very calmly and with the obvious layer of exhaustion, “stand down. Don’t make this harder on yourself, kid.”

Itachi, visibly confused, lowered the sword so it slipped from his fingers. It clattered to the ground, just shy of where one organ rested on the rock. He inhaled and exhaled shakily, strength sapping from his body as the adrenaline and chakra faded.

“Well,” Kakashi said, “that was unexpected.”

“No joke,” Shikamaru agreed, feeling a headache from both the Genjutsu and the rapid turn of events. “Is that Sasuke?”

“Yes,” Itachi said tiredly. He lifted one hand to press his palm against his forehead, kneading it to ward off a headache. “He’s- unconscious. Chakra exhaustion. He- his summons is this...Aoda-.”

“I know,” Kakashi said. Itachi nodded, closing his eyes and struggling to open them again.

Itachi said with a slight slur to his voice, “L-Lord Hokage. I would...appreciate medical assistance.”

“When did that happen-.”

“Twelve days ago, I believe,” he said. He paused, struggling with words clearly. “I... have been cycling chakra to ward off infection and continue blood circulation. There is...a decubitus ulcer...insistent on damaging my sacral vertebrae.”

The three of them gaped, fully realizing that somehow, Itachi had gotten to his feet and tried to attack. Trying to ward them off.

Tsunade said, a little dumbstruck, “how are you even standing, kid?”

Itachi said, “with...with great effort.”

“Okay,” Tsunade said, looking strained. “I thought Hatake was bad, kami. Nara, get the ground covered. I need light, Hatake. We’ve got emergency field medical right now-.”

“With all due respect, Lord Hokage,” Kakashi said carefully, “he has survived this long, surely relocation would be better-.”

“The man is starving!” Tsunade snapped, throwing down her bag and pawing through it quickly. “He’s wasting away, his organs are likely already damaged beside the ones hanging out of his body!”

“I’ve had bread,” Itachi offered quietly and simply. “A... lot of...bread.”

“Yes, okay,” Kakashi submitted quickly. His hands cycled through a few signs before the loud screaming of his famous assassination jutsu lit. Shikamaru shied away from it, although it did conveniently offer bright white light.

The walls of the circle began to move as the snake decided to unravel. Its large head poked in, looking down curiously at the ensemble and apparent great hurry.

“Hello there,” Kakashi said with forced cheer to the large reptile. “I hope you don’t mind; we’re going to perform emergency surgery inside this cute ring you made.”

The snake flicked its tongue, as long as Shikamaru’s leg. It rumbled a nasal hiss and slowly turned its head, watching the darkness with keen awareness.

“Sorry about this,” Tsunade said before she grabbed Itachi and practically slung him onto the small prepped station. The man didn’t flinch or withdraw, didn’t seem to notice any pain although he did bare his teeth and flinch away from the contact.

Shikamaru remembered that there hadn’t been one body in the darkness. He addressed the lump, buried under a mess of a blanket and nearly out of awareness. There was no chakra signature at all. It was Sasuke, unconscious but unharmed. If Itachi Uchiha had gone to such lengths as to valiantly try and murder them while on death’s doorsteps, Shikamaru never wanted to face the man in full health.

He walked to the bundle, careful to keep an eye on how tense the Uchiha was. Itachi watched him keenly, although Shikamaru only lifted the unconscious other and carried him over to their ring of light.

Kakashi didn’t look at the bundle, although he could smell who it was. They slept softly, breathing calmly. Long black hair fell from one of the folds. 

“That blanket smells horrible,” Kakashi said, attempting light conversation. “Truly, no worse a smell I can think of.”

“I know,” Itachi said. He cringed away from the Hokage’s probing, her fingers glowing ever so faintly as they dug inside his open lower torso. “It’s from...Bakashi-.”

“Pardon?” Kakashi asked, jerking back in open surprise and disbelief. “I- you-.”

“Donkey,” Itachi said with a weak cough. “Mule. Ass.”

“I am not,” Kakashi scoffed, looking offended. “That may be the meanest thing you’ve ever said to me, my little kohai.”

‘They were on the same unit together,’ Shikamaru remembered. ‘Both ANBU.’

“Can you idiots stop talking?” Tsunade asked, teeth-gritting together. “I’m trying to fix this ridiculous problem- and get your chakra out!”

Itachi exhaled in a flutter, face twitching slightly. Tsunade mucked around some more, using a knife to cut off the sewn intestines. Her hands glowed green, then stuttered away.

“All your chakra, Uchiha,” she growled with focused determined eyes. “I can’t tell why, but you put a Genjutsu on yourself. If your chakra is active mine won’t take.”

“No,” Itachi said quietly. His fingertips twitched, curling against the rock floor and the thin sterile sheet. “I...block sensation…I can’t drop it…”

“You’re blocking pain?” Tsunade asked in surprise. She struggled to process that, looking more confused and helpless by the second. “You...need to drop it. I’m sorry, I am sorry. I can’t fix the damage and get you stabilized unless you remove it, and I can’t place you in a healing coma because of your weakness.”

“Ah, shit,” Kakashi said pleasantly. “This is going to be fun.”

Itachi looked to the side, focusing on the wrapped sleeping bundle that was his brother. Shikamaru couldn’t imagine the level of chakra exhaustion to no longer register to his senses. What had he done?

“A-after…” Itachi struggled to speak. One hand skirted over the ground, brushing and clinging to Sasuke’s smelly blanket.

“Yes, after you’re stabilized I’ll check him over,” said Tsunade calmly. She said, genuine and honest, “you can rest now, Uchiha. You’ve done well.”

Itachi swallowed then nodded subtly. He closed his eyes with a shudder and muttered the smallest kai.

Immediately, he screamed. 

A complete opposite, an illusion of peace torn away with branding irons. Itachi screamed loud enough to break his throat, burst vessels in his delicate sacred eyes. His legs contoured, curling up fetal like his knees could protect the open cavity of his body. Fingers curled, his wrist and elbows popped in strange jerky movements induced by the agony inhibiting higher thinking.

“Hold him!” Tsunade shouted, morphing her hand in clumsy ANBU hand signs. Kakashi pressed down, forcing Itachi’s shoulders to still and nothing else. 

Tsunade cursed, wrist deep in Itachi’s innards as the failing continued.

“I’ve got this!” Shikamaru shouted, dropping to his knees and pressing his fingers in place, “shadow possession jutsu!”

Itachi became absolutely still, locked in place by the shadows made by the torch. Kakashi slowly let go, snatching the flames and holding them better to give Shikamaru an advantage. Tsunade cursed, wincing and looking at Itachi with a pale complexion. His eyes were open, tears trailing from the human response to unbearable pain.

“I’ll go as fast as I can,” Tsunade said, sweating slightly as slowly, each intestine pair was found and sealed together again. “I can’t do anything about the ulcer, that takes regeneration of tissue and time. There’s a muscle here that’s gone, but I can close this temporarily and open it again during sessions.”

“Enough for transport,” Kakashi confirmed quietly. Shikamaru held the jutsu, feeling a tired tortured consciousness flutter against him weakly. Just how much longer could Itachi have survived? How long until he was nothing more than rot?

“Oh, kami- this little piece of- of-” Tsunade said, fumbling on her curses as the healing glow spread further along Itachi. “The fuck is this? The fuck is this- I’m going to smash this dumbass into the ground-.”

“How much longer?” Shikamaru grit out. The echoes, phantom sensations were numbing his hands and leaving his stomach cramping horribly. “I’ve...I’ve got maybe twenty more minutes in me.”

Tsunade promptly quieted, and really set to work.

When they were ready to leave, it wasn’t a pretty sight. All of them smelled of something disgusting, coated in unknown substances and desperately wishing for the sun. Shikamaru vomited a few times, both from overuse and the reflections of the surgery. Kakashi looked particularly tired, haunted a bit as he cradled the little potato sack that was his previous student.

“Is he-.”

“He’s fine,” Kakashi confirmed quickly, clutching Sasuke Uchiha closer to his chest. They hadn’t even unwrapped him enough to see his face, and already the ANBU was going full parental on him.

“We can make it back to Konoha by the evening,” Tsunade said, her voice hoarse and incredibly tired. “Obviously not in the main hospital, not when-.”

“The compound has healing rooms,” Shikamaru said quickly. He was the only one without a passenger, although a couple of snakes had looked at him quite eagerly. “Nobody can get in without our permission-.”

“Being the Hokage has some perks to it, boys,” Tsunade said gruffly. “It’s fine, nobody will go sifting through all the hospital rooms looking for a wayward patient.”

“The patrols?” Shikamaru felt the need to bring up. “How are we going to get past them-.”

“I have all the patrols memorized,” Kakashi said simply.

There were over a hundred patrols, a mixture of simple Genin and Chunin, then the Jounin outskirts and finally, ANBU perimeter updates. He had them all memorized.

‘Kakashi Hatake is the scariest human on the planet,’ Shikamaru thought. ‘I’ll never be terrified of Temari and Ino together again.’

They ran at a more subdued pace, mindful of their cargo. The trees felt different now when there was a weight on their shoulders. A pressing concern that reassurance could not relieve. 

Shikamaru hadn’t seen Sasuke Uchiha in years. Then, mysteriously he dreamed of someone with his face and long hair- that matched the ponytail hanging over the ANBU’s shoulder.

“Is there a building set up for medical aid?” Tsunade asked Shikamaru, eying him openly as Itachi stared at the trees without registering anything.

“Not exactly,” Shikamaru confessed quickly. He jumped, gathering his thoughts between trees. “All the buildings are abandoned, but those closer to the training areas and forests are more Shinobi populated. Easier to clean and better access to water. They’re further from the gates and walls as well, pressing against the forest-.”

“Sounds good,” she grunted. “I can visit tomorrow, just to get working on the other problems. I can’t risk all my chakra on one patient. Hatake, you know standard postoperative care?”

“Yes Hokage-sama,” he said.

“Good, keep that up for both of them. When we get there, I’ll scan the kid. I do think it’s just exhaustion and you’re our resident expert on that…”

They kept conversation to a minimum, instead of taking the time to pause and wait for specific times to cross the border or certain patrols to pass by. The wall of Konoha was an imposing defense, but Tsunade flashed a few hand signs and a fissure opened near the base, allowing them through.

“Okay the Hokage can do this, don’t get any ideas,” she defended. They emerged in the forest that belonged to no clan in particular. Any further North would start to get towards the Hyuuga compounds, although they didn’t venture into the woods.

They cycled around the necessary seals, avoiding the Yamanaka’s forests and lucrative flower fields. The skies had birds watching them, but none paid any attention beyond a precursory look.

“Here,” Shikamaru led, passing through the boundary of the Uchiha property. They didn’t slow, even as a few old homes on the outer ring began to appear. The forgotten stonemasonry and miniature quarry. The beehives now abandoned and filled with spiders. The watermill further down the Naka River where the cats had overrun it and gulls roosted in the upturned buckets.

The home selected was just shy of the training fields, large enough on entry to belong once to many people. The wooden kitchen table became their operating table, the tatami mats pulled from the adjacent houses to create a lifted platform bed resembling more modern furnishings than the traditional style of the Uchiha.

“Put him up here,” Tsunade ordered towards the table while placing the quietly whimpering Itachi on the mound of mats and bedding. “I’ll take a look in a second.”

Shikamaru watched Kakashi lower Sasuke Uchiha onto the table with gentle hands, pulling back on the blanket and smoothing one hand through his hair. Shikamaru looked away abruptly. He wasn’t privileged to see that.

“Okay, this one is fine,” Tsunade said exhausted. She ran both hands down her face, dropping her impressive medical kit that now lacked some key tools. “Unless the younger is missing an arm, I can treat him now-.”

Kakashi lingered, looming carefully like a mother wolf prepared to bite out her throat. She ignored him, cycling her chakra up and down his bodies flushing it through his vessels and systems until she was satisfied with the amount.

“His coils are fucked,” she said outright. “In his head, they’re tangled to shit. Weirdly clumped- he’s fucking rootbound.”

“Do not repot my student-.”

“Shut up, Hatake,” Tsunade said, pushing more chakra in and around his body. “He’s drained, not to where his chakra is being taken from his organs like a certain idiot here. He’s a damn sponge, he’ll wake up in a bit. A bit malnourished but that’s because he’s been in a trance. I can either IV him or injections.”

“IV, for now, injections if he wakes,” Kakashi confirmed simply.

“Peachy,” Tsunade said, rubbing her hands and crackling her knuckles. “His coils are still growing, something pushed them too fast, but they aren’t damaging at all, but if he uses them it’ll suck out whatever chakra he’s got until he’s like this again.”

“Mm,” Kakashi offered unhelpfully.

“Itachi Uchiha on the other end…” she paused, looking visibly uncertain. “The bastard’s sick. Like, sick. I haven’t seen anything like that- I read about it happening in the Land of Earth but the state of it means he’s had it most his life. Chronic problems in the lungs reduced usable tissue- it’s similar to mountain sickness.”

“Mountain sickness?” Shikamaru asked, frowning slightly. “Chronic mountain sickness? Like the acquired problem when travelling in Earth or in Lightning?”

“Similar,” Tsunade agreed instantly. “Basically, the bastard has massive problems in his lungs that have led to clotting and issues in his body. It’s called polycythemia, he has excess red blood cells which makes his blood fucking syrup.”

“That’s not optimal,” said Kakashi.

“No shit!” Tsunade grumbled, running both hands through her hair anxiously. “If I give him blood thinners- great. The clotting problem is fixed but not the dead patches in his lungs! He’ll drown alive! If I slow his rate of making cells, that wrecks his immune system, which is already shit- ugh!”

Shikamaru asked unknowingly, “what about just...a blood transfusion?”

“That doesn’t stop the clots on his lungs! He has bad lungs because they haven’t healed! They haven’t healed because his blood is fucking molasses! His blood is molasses because he can’t fucking breathe right which is because he has syrup blood-.”

Shikamaru shared a confused expression with Kakashi. Tsunade said, with utter loathing only a medical provider could offer; “how did he even get this bullshit?”

Sasuke woke up and nobody told Shikamaru.

Sasuke approached him when the sun began to decline, the sky burning a mixture of pink and orange. One of the old Uchiha stores that once sold flowers desperately needed help- flower seeds spilled from decayed packaging and sprouted between the stones on the floor.

Shikamaru was elbow deep in a small wooden wagon, compressing old dried plant matter so he could accommodate the collection of broken porcelain vases. He stood there, caught in the act of home renovation. Dirt layered on his skin and decades-old pollen staining the beginnings of his beard.

Sasuke looked at him with an odd expression, like he couldn’t understand what he was looking at... He was taller, hair bristled at the front then pulled into a sleek ponytail that hung over his shoulder. He wore a robe and trousers, forgoing a shirt. The robe may have been conservative if its tie were secured properly, instead of the weird bulging knot wrapped around Sasuke’s hips. Inelegant, awkwardly done but secure enough it almost felt...repeated.

 Shikamaru felt taken aback by the strange nature of his clothing decision. The robe had left Sasuke’s chest exposed, revealing large mottled bruising, a knife graze, and at one nipple open to the air. 

“Sasuke,” Shikamaru greeted carefully. He didn’t know why the Hokage hadn’t healed the damage when she was here prior. Shikamaru didn’t know how the Uchiha would react to his home being reclaimed and cleaned. Sasuke looked around slowly, Sharingan spinning into existence to remember an old dilapidated flower shop.

“You take care of my clan’s land,” Sasuke said. His voice changed over the years, deepening and smoothing out fully. A lazy drawl touched his words, stretching out some of the vowels and giving an impression of boredom. Puberty had altered Sasuke in ways that Shikamaru knew it would; Sasuke matched the image the gods depicted.

“Someone has to,” Shikamaru said carefully. “It felt...wrong, to leave it like this.”

“It won’t matter,” Sasuke said distractedly. He looked to the side, where marigolds had forced their way through the cracks. There were faint bruises along his throat in the shape of fingers. A small cut on the underside of his jaw that Shikamaru missed at first.

Sasuke said; “You brought him back.”

Shikamaru’s hands clamped instinctually, wrapping around the wagon’s lip. “Itachi? Yes, uh, Lord Godaime healed him and brought you both back-.”

“Thank you,” Sasuke said simply. He shifted uncomfortably, looking away to stare at a shattered pot housing the shrivelled remains of roses. He gave the impression of not actually looking at it, somehow seeing through it with his red Sharingan. Shikamaru hadn’t seen the famed dojutsu so close before, he was surprised to note that the iris was not one solid colour like the Byakugan. Instead, it was made of very thin vessels each a different shade of red. Each interlocking so carefully, it gave the illusion of one colour. The tomoe in each eye, too, were unique- almost scaled like butterfly wings and existing somehow on a tendinous thin ring that allowed their movement-.

Sasuke said stiff and uncomfortable, “I...don’t show gratitude often. Thank you-.”

“No, we’re not doing this,” Shikamaru said plainly. “Not with words. Something of equal exchange, right? I- we saved Itachi Uchiha from death. Something of equal value.”

Sasuke blinked quickly, looking genuinely startled. He adjusted his weight, looking exhausted and uneasy. His eyes shifted the smallest amount, a small vessel thinning while another expanded to turn his eye ever so slightly darker, focusing closer on Shikamaru. Sasuke said, openly uncomfortable; “I... I don’t know your clan-.”

“I know,” Shikamaru said, “I take care of the grounds, we’ll do this in your customs. We do this your way. I know that he means a lot to you, even when…” 

Sasuke stared at him oddly. Something pinched on his face as he looked at Shikamaru and then through him. “A gift received; a gift given. Something of equal value then, Nara. You helped save the life of my brother. I…” 

Sasuke brushed past him, walking with the smallest limp on his left ankle. He reached out, touching one of the old broken vases. His eyes were slightly unfocused, the exposed skin of his neck blackened and bruised horribly along the one side. Sasuke swallowed thickly, twitched, and said, “there will be a mission soon, for Asuma Sarutobi. Convince him not to take it.”

“What? Why?” Shikamaru said. He jolted, felt frazzled by the random declaration. “How could you know that?”

Sasuke said nothing, he shrugged one shoulder ever so slightly. The robe slipped a little more.

Then, Shikamaru asked quietly and unsure, “Hatake mentioned once that...there was another with a prophet or dreams.... are you talking about...Amaterasu?”

Sasuke turned slowly, tilting his head curiously to one side. Like this, his hair fell over the side. If not for the clothes and the injuries, he bore a striking resemblance to the dream Shikamaru had.

‘My brother was a good man,’ Shikamaru remembered immediately. Sasuke’s eyes were different, shifting and rearranging like tree roots- but nothing changed at all. They distorted, warped visually with a half-faded impression of something different. A smoky crosshatch design in black and dark red-.

“Convince your sensei, Nara,” said Sasuke formally. “There are things beyond your control.”

“Where we cannot touch,” Shikamaru remembered. “Above the seas. Below the sun. Where the moon doesn’t see.”

“Okay,” Shikamaru said carefully, testing the strange tension between them. “There’s something in the ground, isn’t there?”

Sasuke stilled, body shifting and frozen in its movement. There was a muffled noise, distorted and waxy through an intangible humidity to the air. Something obscuring his ears, like smoke.

A muffled crack, like chips when Choji tried to hide his snack. Like the sound of rocks meeting below the water. 

Sasuke Uchiha’s right wrist jolted, falling out of alignment and bruising immediately. He looked at it, expression flat and unimpressed. It broke, fractured on the radius by nothing more than clean air.

“Wha-,” Shikamaru choked out, strangling his own inquiry. Internally, he repeated a frantic what the hell? Oh kami, what? 

He gathered his composure, and asked a tad stressed; “how did that happen?”

“Underground fighting,” Sasuke said, looking at his wrist curiously. “I was sloppy.”

Completely ignoring the fact there was no underground fighting in Konoha, and Shikamaru watched it break spontaneously, that sounded valid.

“Do...you want me to get a healer? Or the Hokage?”

“It’ll heal,” Sasuke dismissed with his clouded strange eyes. “What day is it?”

Shikamaru told him. Sasuke frowned and looked out from where the window once was. Something tilted his face, twisting it ever subtly into something resigned and filled with dread.

“What is it?” Shikamaru asked, wondering how long he could stretch this conversation. This wasn’t the Sasuke Uchiha he knew from the academy and the Chunin exams. This was a stranger, one that drifted about half-dazed with phantom injuries like a ghost story.

“You said you spoke to Amaterasu,” Sasuke said, “don’t.”

On cue, one of the Uchiha’s fingers snapped backwards horribly. Sasuke twitched, then ignored it.  He brushed past, leaving Shikamaru thoroughly perplexed, and wondering how on earth to proceed.

Kakashi once told a room that he had a theory that Sasuke experienced the physical aftermath and implications of every vision. He explained at the time to the Hokage, Inoichi, and Shikaku, that Sasuke experienced any vision he saw.

It was still unsettling to see his youngest student carrying injuries he shouldn’t have. It alarmed him, to watch as Sasuke stretched out leisurely and his wrist snap together from a complex fracture.

“I saw that happen,” Shikamaru said, twitching slightly as Sasuke’s finger corrected itself with an audible snap. “I didn’t touch him, it just happened.”

Kakashi hummed, swinging his left leg from where he sprawled over the stone bench. “Sasuke is...a special case.”

Shikamaru snorted. Kakashi winced a little, “he’s a bit sensitive. I’m surprised you aren’t upset to see him. Or his brother.”

“If I’m getting prophetic visions from a Uchiha deity, I don’t need to be a jerk about it.”

Kakashi snorted loudly, trying to hide his amusement. “Maa, you should have been my Genin.”

Shikamaru’s face screwed up, visibly shuddering. “And deal with Naruto? No thanks.”

It was a comfortable silence, excluding how Sasuke Uchiha had settled on his knees in the courtyard with his eyes closed. A peaceful meditative trance, excluding the spontaneous healing of broken bones and injuries. It was like a medi-nin were there in person, absorbing bruises like a sponge.

“I want you to watch Itachi Uchiha,” said Kakashi. Far too casually, he already anticipated an eruption of some sort at that information.

Maybe he had grown accustomed to such a response. Naruto was...loud, and Sakura similarly erupted on occasion when something offended her. Sasuke...Shikamaru didn’t know much about Sasuke beyond how the other often glared in class and frequently huffed during exams. Sasuke seemed more the brooding type.

So, to both be contrary and irritating, Shikamaru said, “sure. You have to tell Naruto his ultimate-rival is back.”

“What, no-,” Kakashi said quickly, looking startled and somehow incredibly sheepish. “He- I mean Sasuke and Naruto aren’t-...I’m sure they don’t think of each other as…”

“I don’t know…” Shikamaru said, barely managing to hold back his grin. “Did you see what Uchiha was wearing? A step down from a green jumpsuit in my opinion…”

Kakashi’s face crinkled into abrasive horror and dismay. He said, forlorn, “oh, I know. He’s indecent-.”

“I only saw one nipple,” Shikamaru offered unhelpfully. Kakashi made a low noise of pain.

Itachi woke impossibly. Barely any time had passed, far too little for the nin to be completely recovered from his physical and psychological trauma. Shikamaru agreed with Tsunade, that there simply was too much stress to ignore. Kakashi argued that both he and Itachi had seen and done worse, which failed to help. Tsunade argued that Kakashi was not a case study of excellent mental health. Kakashi argued that Itachi was a very bright young man who hadn’t experienced a psychiatric incident in years.

(It was anonymously decided to not discuss or refer to Sasuke’s mental health.)

Sasuke, Shikamaru learned, had left Konoha. Not with true intentions of the malicious kind. Not with the desire to sell secrets or under the thrall of a mature Sharingan- he got up and... left. Shikamaru and Naruto had presumed Itachi had done something to abduct the younger, stealthily hiding him. Instead, Itachi hadn’t known about Sasuke at all, beyond that of his traitor status.

“He went into Earth,” Kakashi said, reclining back against the wall of the renovated Uchiha building, dubbed the infirmary. One surgery had occurred within its walls, and Tsunade would bet a half dozen more would before she retired. “I had brief contact, more a status update when he crossed Grass.”

“You simply let him go?” Itachi asked. His voice recovered, deceptively monotonous and smooth. His eyes too burned with a near-constant Sharingan, vessels distorted and misshapen near the edge of his iris. “Sasuke is a Genin.”

Shikamaru shrunk ever so slightly. Kakashi didn’t budge. “Maa, a scary Genin.”

Itachi’s eyes burned with frustration and his face relaxed and flat. “Sasuke is too young to travel alone in Earth.”

Kakashi shrugged one shoulder, not looking too upset or bothered with the situation. Itachi’s hand clutched the blanket a little tighter, fisting a wrinkle and pulling it taut.

“Sasuke was top of our class at the Academy,” Shikamaru said, “if that helps at all.”

“It does not,” Itachi said icily. The lines under his eyes shifted, one of his eyes twitched. “I cannot believe-.”

“You also saw him murder one of the Akatsuki-.”

Itachi’s expression shuddered. He closed both eyes and inhaled slowly. After a few seconds where both men waited patiently, the Uchiha opened his eyes. They were black, darker than the bags below his waterline. Almost as purple as the chipped enamel painted on his fingers. 

“Two. Two Akatsuki members,” he said.

Kakashi shifted his weight, bouncing back and forth casually. Too much tension or stress, the man working it out through the smallest changes in body posture. He said, “who?”

“Missing-Nin,” Itachi said stubbornly. He said nothing else, Kakashi didn’t look quite pleased with that.

“What was Sasuke doing in Earth?” Shikamaru asked after a pregnant pause. Both ANBU looked at him with eerily similar expressions. Shikamaru held his ground, one of them was bedridden and the other read porn in public.

“I don’t know,” Itachi said smoothly, turning an icy look on Kakashi. “Clearly someone knows.”

Kakashi shrunk back, sheepish and slightly ashamed. “I got a missive from Aoda, Sasuke’s summon-.”

“I know my brother’s summon,” Itachi said icily, “I was transported in its mouth.”

‘Yikes,’ Shikamaru thought. Kakashi twitched, looking put out. He recovered, unnecessarily clearing his throat, “we found medication in his bag. His personal one, on his body. Lady Fifth had a ah, an outburst of lovely delight-.”

“Was that why she broke a tree?” Shikamaru muttered.

“-and deemed Sasuke a wonderful boy. So wonderful, she confiscated the entire store and has sworn at us only four times.”

Itachi’s nose wrinkled slightly. He blinked slowly, looking thoroughly unimpressed. “I don’t understand.”

It wasn’t referring to the immediate sentence. Itachi Uchiha looked down at his blanket, a nice patchwork one from Hatake’s personal stash of stupid gifts, and where it covered his lap and healing gut wound. He hadn’t hoped to ever return to Konoha, not alive.

“Well,” Kakashi said with false cheer. “When one celestial being loves a little boy very much-.”

“Oh kami,” Shikamaru said. He rubbed both eyes, understanding why Asuma smoked. “I take care of this complex since Sasuke ran off and I fulfilled the last funeral rites-.”

“You did what?” Itachi asked him, choking on his words. His eyes widened, whites visible and the bloodied mess of his left sclera from the ferocity of his screaming. 

Shikamaru thought, suddenly and unwanted, that the Uchiha heir looked quite frail. He said, “I did the funeral rites or the pyre rites. I was on a team with a few others and took trinkets to the pyre, burned them under high sun.”

Itachi had turned ghostly white, hands limp on his blanket. “Why would you do that?”

“It was a request put in on the mission desk before Sasuke defected. We went into every home and uh, let their spirits rest.”

“Oh Amaterasu,” Itachi croaked. It didn’t sound like a blessing. “You...why?”

“He put in paperwork to be the official groundskeeper of the Uchiha complex,” Kakashi said smoothly and calmly. “Placed me as the guardian of Uchiha clan secrets, as per bloodline law.”

“A Nara,” Itachi repeated. Shikamaru placed it there, the Uchiha was horrified. 

“Shikamaru, actually,” he introduced with a slight drawl. “Nice to meet you. I have it on good authority from the God of the Sun that you’re a good man.”

Itachi’s jaw twitched, adjusting. “I regretfully cannot claim similar.”

“Gods this, Gods that,” Kakashi sighed, twisting his wrist and flopping his hand about lazily, “soon, we’ll have snow in Konoha. Or Naruto will stop eating Ramen.”

Itachi, still, looking horribly overwhelmed. “You can’t…”

“That reminds me!” Kakashi said, brightening up noticeably. “Mm, why would a Uchiha give an eye as a gift?”

Itachi twisted himself without moving. He said, calm and measured like that of ANBU, “I do not know anything of your circumstance-.”

“It seems like an eye would be a very important gift,” Kakashi continued regardless of Itachi’s words. “Very symbolic, most people are very attached to their eyes, well, before you take them out.”

Shikamaru snorted. Kakashi elbowed him smoothly in the side and silenced him cruelly. He said casually, “you Uchiha, all about equal value. What could be worth your eye? Your legacy, your life.”

“I am sorry,” Itachi said stiffly and regally. “My...uncle must have been of great importance to you, Hatake-san.”

“Mm,” Kakashi dismissed. His visible eye half-lidded, falsely relaxed. “Tell me, Uchiha-san, what could be of equal value?”

“Everything is without value,” the Uchiha said quietly, “until the moment in which it is given.”

Shikamaru contemplated. It was true, on a theoretical basis. Beyond that of economic value, or the potential wealth an object brought. Selfish possessions lacked any sort of use until they were presented to others, either as boasting or as gifts. A... weirdly selfless philosophy for a clan tethered by violence.

“The Sharingan does not forget,” Itachi explained, “my clan is one built on the knowledge that we will remember. To gift a Sharingan is to revoke that which is our fundamentals. It is the...the loss of yourself-.”

Kakashi hadn’t reacted, but he stood at full height with his head bowed gracefully in respect. Itachi spoke with solemn sadness and the lack of crimson in his eyes, “to forfeit the Sharingan is to willingly subject yourself to forgetting. It is saying that the receiver is equal to that of your past and future.”

“That seems...hefty,” Shikamaru understated.

Itachi Uchiha looked so incredibly sad. “Nothing can take your memories from you. You constantly create them, experience and share them with those around you. To give a Sharingan is to...to say they are the memories you will, and have, forever cherished.”

Kakashi said, devastatingly, “and what is equal value to gifting the Mangekyo Sharingan?”

Itachi stared at him, silent. Hands clutching a thin blanket in the home of a ghost. 

How old was Itachi? Barely into adulthood, forced into war and witnessing blood and chaos until he knew nothing else. How young was he when he joined ANBU? How many lives did he take with shaking hands?

What could be worth that of a Mangekyo? What could be of equal value to the means in which it developed?

Itachi said, “nothing.”

Itachi’s first day outside was a remarkably dull occasion. The sky was overcast, a strong wind turned hinges creaky, and the cats were screaming. Itachi sat outside on one of the remodelled benches, hidden from the public eye within the walls of the forbidden district.

It was rapidly approaching a week since their grand return and equally grand field surgery of epic disaster. Sasuke had awoken only after two days, startling into awareness so quickly there was no moment of dazed confusion. Sasuke had been unconscious, sustained on an IV drip of nutrients and chakra supplement, then he was awake and standing with his sword grasped tightly in his right hand. 

Itachi on the other hand seemed more dead than alive. He spoke little, complexion chronically waxy or translucent. Malnourishment and starvation could be remedied with careful chakra and dietary care. Caring for both near-lethal levels of chakra deprivation and hunger left his body achingly frail.

That, as well as the unknown phenomenon occurring in the Uchiha heir’s lungs. Sasuke hadn’t broken his composure, expressing a bland affect that didn’t alter in wake of the horrible revelation. Hatake at least looked contemplative before grumbling something about ‘catch my breath, my ass,’ and Itachi quieted further.

Sasuke elaborated thinly about what exactly he brought back with him from his travels across the continent. Not only medicine, but a specific kind famed for its healing properties.

“How the hell did you get this?”’ Tsunade asked him, gawking slightly over the sheer quantity of preserved vials and medicinal herbs hidden in a transport scroll. One that Sasuke had always kept below his clothes and on his person - which ironically Itachi never found while disembowelled. 

“At its source,” Sasuke said flatly. “The rest is yours, providing you use the Kotaro to cure my brother.”

She looked hungrily across the plethora of plants and flowers. Konoha used more modern technology for medical treatments, but the medicinal value of specific plants always outshone that of synthetic construction. Some flowers and roots, Sasuke knew, didn’t grow on this half of the continent.

“The thing is, Uchiha brat,” she said, snatching a jar to squint at the crushed flower inside scrutinizing, “I don’t know what’s wrong with him. I’ve never seen such a sorry state, even with this I don’t know where to start.”

Sasuke blinked slowly, looking the smallest bit perplexed. The first shift of his expression and it was timid confusion. “His lungs are damaged.”

“Wow,” Tsunade said. “I never realized you were such an esteemed Medi-nin. What’s next, you’re Hokage? Going to go screaming off the mountain about your dreams?”

Sasuke frowned, huffing quietly. “It will kill him.”

Tsunade crossed her arms. Under her Hokage robes, the muscles bulged slightly and unintentionally. “That’s a given. I don’t know the actual remedy for this problem. His lungs are damaged and can’t heal because his blood is clogged. His blood can’t fix itself because his lungs are clogged. It’s a feedback loop, I can’t cure one without curing the other, but I don’t know how to fix it simultaneously.”

Sasuke frowned, looking at the ground intently. His eyesight rested just shy of her knees, a tad glassy.

He stood there, weirdly meditative with the fingers of his right-hand twitching sporadically. His left hung completely limp.

“...What are you doing?” she asked. Completely exhausted, a little irritated. “Are you...meditating?”

“No,” he said, voice hazy and a little distant. His right hand curled into a loose fist.

“No, no you’re doing that thing,” Tsunade realized, snapping her fingers loudly. “An episode! But how would an episode of prophetic vision potentially fix this? If you say you see me finding a cure and know what it is, I’m going to break your bones and rearrange them into the word paradox.”

Sasuke looked at her, forehead creased. He was irritated, a tightness around his eyes denoted some level of pain. He said, shuddering subtly down his back between his shoulder blades, “I’m thinking.”

“Well think harder, and take the hat while you’re at it,” the Hokage muttered sourly.

Sasuke turned on his heels, pacing back and forth with a strained tension. He walked rhythmically, bouncing slightly through his calves and teetering towards his left with his shoulders. An odd balance, a weird shift of gravity. 

“What are you doing.”

“Thinking,” he repeated, snapping at her before spinning and pacing the other direction. The room was small, he could only stalk a few paces before turning and coming back. His hair swished around, flapping from its tie like a long tail. He resembled a very large, pissed off cat.

Then, he paused and stared at the wall midstride. He looked at it, unblinking, for so long even Tsunade started to investigate the wall for some sort of object or focus.

“You told Kakashi it was mountain sickness,” Uchiha said with the weird mystical property of being an utter idiot. “The mountain air.”

“That’s not how oxygen works, kid,” Tsunade bluntly informed him. “Mountain air is thinner due to gravitational properties. Not that they teach you gravity at the academy. I should really  look into that curriculum…”

“It’s mountain air,” Sasuke said, ignoring her outright. It reminded her a little of another nin, one much louder but equally stupid and stubborn about it. “Kakashi said that...people become sick when breathing the mountain air.”

“God, you are idiots,” Tsunade said. “The air is thinner. You’re used to a certain level of oxygen, when you don’t get that amount you get sick. That’s the problem your brother has, he isn’t breathing an adequate level of oxygen because of lung damage which has secondary accommodations to try and get more oxygen- but that’s making the situation worse.”

Sasuke looked at her. He asked, “why didn’t Konoha invade Iwa?”

“That’s a deep question that you’d have to ask the Third Hokage oh wait, he was an idiot.”

Sasuke frowned, eyes lowering and shimmering slightly red. The Sharingan, active to do nothing more than memorize the pattern of the flooring. “On the border of Grass and Earth. There were...men, to help with traversing the path. They didn’t have them deeper in Iwa.”

“Of course not, dumb civilians and tourists wander up mountains and pass out and need help getting down all the time,” she said. “It takes weeks to acclimate to the thinner air, there are various mechanics for your body to adjust.”

Sasuke said, “I didn’t. I just...climbed.”

Tsunade frowned, tapping her fingers against her arm. She looked out the window, still broken and dusty but with the overcast light of day, she could see the faint spark of colourful flowers in a messy garden further down the street. “That’s odd. Nothing? No headaches, nausea? Unexplained difficulty thinking or breathing? Vision problems?”

Sasuke said, “Uchiha are descendants of dragons. The land of Iwa once housed many dragons, the native people travelling from cave to cave over the peaks, giving offerings within the caves to stave off the mountain beasts.”

Tsunade said, “I’m more into facts than fiction, but I will clarify- are you suggesting the Uchiha Clan originally came from Iwa?”

The door creaked open, a familiar lanky scarecrow of a person leaning into the doorway with impossible balance. How he looked comfortable while pressed against a wooden frame, the two would never know.

“Maa, many clans are from Iwa, Lady Hokage,” Kakashi said. He smiled cheerfully, wiggling his fingers in a very casual greeting. “It is a very big country.”

“It’s Iwa,” Tsunade repeated in disbelief, “it’s nothing but rocks and mud and dirt!”

“Mud is dirt, just wet,” said Kakashi.

“I will hit you,” Tsunade promised. “And you know what? Everyone would think you deserve it. I would crack you like a walnut and then, I would put you back together so I can do it again.”

Hatake looked at Sasuke completely unaffected. Sasuke’s face wore the smallest smile.

“And here I was,” Kakashi said, maintaining eye contact with the youngest Uchiha, “coming to explain such a complex thing as migration.”

“I’ll make your jaw migrate to your pancreas,” Tsunade said with a smile. “Do you know where your pancreas is, Hatake? I’ll show you, right now you little shit.”

“Ah, no no that’s alright,” Kakashi backpedalled quickly, lifting both arms yet somehow retaining his sideways slouch. “I am very happy with my organs.”

“Organs, right,” Tsunade said. The tone fell flat, immediately the entire atmosphere dropped to something sombre and contemplative.

“...I don’t believe that the Uchiha were from Iwa…” Tsunade confessed after a pause, “but there is a potential theory there. Hatake, your clan was from Kumo, correct? Your genetics have a predisposition to accommodate for low oxygen, which is why you wear that ridiculous thing. If the Uchiha are similar, then it wouldn’t be a failed adaptation- it would be genetics reacting inappropriately.”

“Close,” Kakashi said with another large smile, “my clan is from Iwa.”

“Fuck Iwa!” Tsunade roared, waving both fists in the air. “The only damn good that mole infested hell hole is for, is making medicine!”

“If Itachi’s illness is a reaction in his bloodline,” quietly, Sasuke asked, “Then why am I not affected?”

“You probably have it too, genetics are like that,” Kakashi said helpfully. “Your brother had a severe injury at a young age, a few nin from Kiri damaged his lungs I believe.”

“How the hell would you know that, Hatake?”

 “Oh, ah, I believe I may have been there. Don’t worry, the nin weren’t too dangerous, only a small pack.”

Tsunade closed her eyes, looking strangely like she was praying. After a moment, she said very calmly, “how did they damage his lungs?’

“Oh, a funny thing actually,” Kakashi said hesitantly, “there may have, ah, been a very offended giant salamander with the foulest mouth.”

“No, no more,” Tsunade said. “I am... why can’t you be normal. Why?”

Kakashi shrugged, finally falling from his slump into something resembling a standing posture. “The emotional trauma?”

“I can’t believe you-.”

“This is why I have emotional trauma, Lady Hokage-sama. So, mean to me, my feelings are so fragile.”

Sasuke, the quiet pillar of internal speculation, said loud and commanding, “the Kotaro is from Iwa.”

“I- we are not done,” Tsunade warned Kakashi before she addressed Sasuke once more. “Yes, Kotaro is a damn strong drug, I don’t know all the effects because Iwa are sneaky bastards. They have a lot of medicinal herbs that are hard to access due to the environment. Even for nin.”

Sasuke’s face twisted, his eyes red and strangely unfocused. They flashed tomoe spinning and distorting strangely before settling. Tsunade glanced at Kakashi from the corner of her eye, he nodded subtly.

“The Kotaro is from Iwa…” Sasuke repeated slowly. “Wouldn’t...they would also carry the blood sickness. For mountain air.”

“I imagine most Iwa nin would have it in some capacity, especially if they’re actually from original clans-.”

“Why don’t they have the sickness?” Sasuke asked quietly, looking perplexed and clearly through both adults. Ignoring them, he asked rhetorically, “why would they not grow sick?”

Sasuke jerked his head upright, eyes glowing bright red and alert and alive. The last Tsunade saw Sasuke, he had been so young- a boy. Now, standing taller with hair as long as her grandfather's had been, Tsunade recognized that her Genin had grown into something larger than she expected.

“They do grow sick,” he said, “they have the plants you’ve never seen. The plants with no purpose outside the mountain. The covering for burned skin. The-.”

Sasuke hissed, breaking off his words suddenly and dropping to one knee. He slammed one hand around his torso, clutching his stomach tightly as his complexion turned pale and clammy.

“You’re right,” Tsunade realized, looking astonished. She snatched specific bottles, tapping the written labels with one manicured nail. “Kami, you have a point.”

Sasuke twitched, closing both eyes and grimacing at nothing in particular. Kakashi stepped forward, offering one hand which Sasuke accepted in shame. The taller man hauled him up, supporting him subtly and casually.

Neither two addressed what very obviously had been a backlash of Sasuke's unknown ability. A ramification from internal insight, which likely had just prompted the discovery of a potential cure. Sasuke hobbled, favoring one leg and clutching his abdominals quietly.

“Come on, little problem child,” Kakashi sighed, directing him to the absent medical bed. Sasuke sat down gingerly, wincing and palpating along his sternum. “Did you break something?”

“...No?” Kakashi guessed as Sasuke remained silent. Kakashi poked him in the shoulder, then on his upper arm. 

Sasuke grabbed Kakashi’s wrist, clutching it tight enough so the small bones of Kakashi’s hand shifted. Tsunade thought, ‘if that brat fractures Hatake’s lunate again…’

“I need to leave,” Sasuke rasped. His grip tightened, the bones in Kakashi’s wrist shifted. “I...I need to leave.”

“No, you’re injured, and these episodes are increasing in frequency,” the Hokage dismissed. “You need to report, help us with what exactly happened. You killed two Akatsuki members, surely you can provide us with better insights.”

“I need to leave,” Sasuke repeated with the smallest twitch. “You don’t understand-.”

“Shikamaru Nara has been in communication with that voice in your head. Which is a sentence I reasonably did not think I would ever say,” Kakashi said simply. “You can take a break for a while. You just returned, nearly dead.”

“You don’t understand,” Sasuke repeated voice hitching into a higher octave. “I can’t stay here-.”

“This isn’t up for discussion, Uchiha!” Tsunade ordered.

Sasuke’s jaw twitched, eyes wide and minutely startled. He had yet to release Kakashi’s wrist. Instead, he held it tight enough the man reinforced the joint with chakra to stave off a fracture or dislocation.

“Stay, just a while,” Kakashi soothed the best he could. “You’re not easily afraid, Sasuke. Why do you need to leave?”

“I…” Sasuke struggled, trying to think while looking distracted by either pain of internal distress. “I can’t be here tonight.”

“What’s tonight?” Tsunade asked.

Kakashi inhaled sharply, his mask billowing concave as he realized something. He squatted, looking into Sasuke’s wild Sharingan with no timid fear or anxiety. He reached up with his left hand, enrapturing Sasuke’s in a loose grip. He said, vaguely conspiring and mock confidential, “Aoda told me your visions come every night. What has you so worried?”

Sasuke looked at him, shaking his head subtly. “I can’t be here tonight.”

“Why? Nobody is in the district; it is warded for privacy. You won’t be interrupted, or potentially found. If you leave Konoha, you won’t make enough distance to avoid ANBU patrols at night. If your summon claims you, would you be happy to wake in a den of snakes?”

Sasuke flinched, jerking back so sharply even Tsunade felt her heart flair in concern. Sasuke grit his teeth, closing his eyes and gritting, “it’s not safe to be around me-.”

“Mm, funny you say that,” Kakashi said, “I say it all the time, also.”

Sasuke swallowed thickly, his head drooping in defeat. Silently, he nodded. Kakashi didn’t release his hands until Sasuke relaxed. By that time, Tsunade had long since left them to their privacy.

The moon was near full. If Shikamaru strained his ears, he could hear the muffled wailing, minor screams muted behind many walls and blankets. 

Itachi sat in his chair in the middle of the street, holding a blue kunai in his hands. Shikamaru recognized the colour of the steel, the same patina residue from the blessed pools of Susanoo.

“Funny you’re out here,” Shikamaru said. Itachi didn’t stir, keeping his eyes above to look at the lopsided moon. Shikamaru gazed up, he preferred cloud watching to stargazing, but wasn’t exactly opposed.

“He’s been screaming for hours,” Itachi said quietly. Not necessarily a confession or a mumble of a secret- it was a standard fact. Shikamaru heard it also, if he tried hard enough, he could trace the shape of shuddering muscles and jerky flinching. 

“Lord Hokage requested I stay overnight actually, just...in case,” he explained.

“In case you need to place your shackles as his organs are torn apart?” Itachi asked with the sharpest most acidic scathing Shikamaru had ever heard. Red eyes, near luminescent in the darkness, penetrated him like senbon.

Shikamaru closed his mouth. Itachi waited, then slowly returned to staring at the moon. Shikamaru knew about the moon of course, he had read the religious texts and cleaned the various travellers' shrines throughout the compound the best he could. Hatake helped slightly, demonstrating more than actively explaining how to use them, leaving melting wax and a jaunty wave instead of words.

“Tsukuyomi is the patron of illusions,” Shikamaru prefaced, “is she your primary deity?”

Itachi said nothing for so long, Shikamaru assumed the question had been forgotten. What felt like an hour of silence amidst distant screams, Itachi said, “Tsukuyomi is the goddess of illusion, both in mind, body, and heart. You may entertain yourself with pretend worship, but your actions do not rest well, Nara.”

‘Pretend worship?’ Shikamaru thought, genuinely surprised. Itachi had yet to look at him, instead gazing upwards. Hands loose and open, resting on his knees. There was a cloak thrown over his shoulder, a deep blue indiscernible in the dark. 

“I’m not...pretending,” Shikamaru said, the word tasting sour to him. “I really am the caretaker for the district.”

“Then you are stupid and nostalgic for normalcy, the Uchiha said.

Shikamaru didn’t quite know how to interpret that. There was a lot of tension in the other, a lot of misplaced rage or loathing that interfered and poisoned the conversation. Itachi Uchiha was a vicious threat, on par with Hatake if not in a different way, and although the man was crippled Shikamaru remembered that.

“I’m sorry if I offended you,” the Chunin apologized. “I... hadn’t realized such actions would be disrespectful.”

Itachi ignored him. When Shikamaru arrived, he placed the cobalt kunai on his lap. Now, he delicately held it in a deceptively loose grip, fingers resting on the central spine of its double honed edges. He gazed skywards, ignoring the muffled whimpers of his youngest brother in pain.

“Shikamaru Nara,” Itachi stated, testing the vowels of his name like some nobles tasted sake. “The Nara do not follow that of a standard theology. I do not understand what ploy you are constructing, but this district will bring you nothing but pain and death.”

Shikamaru knew that well before he submitted the paperwork. He also knew that Itachi thought him indispensable. He wasn’t, but the man had yet to fully learn the reason why Shikamaru was here, and thus, he wouldn’t kill him without knowing it would be forgotten eventually.

“They said you killed everyone here in a single night,” Shikamaru said. Calmly, he drawled the words and kept his hands deep in his pockets. Fingers curved through signs, held taught and prepared to twist the shadows of the night to stave off a killing blow. Night, especially close to the crux of the lunar cycle, always increased his own weaponry.

Itachi ignored him. Shikamaru continued talking, stating; “I don’t buy it.”

“I thought Nara were smart,” Itachi said coolly.

“Well, I’m not saying you didn’t do it, I just think there was something else to it,” he elaborated with a flat affect. Playing cocky or brave wouldn’t benefit anyone, least of all a man in pain. “I’m pretty damn sure you did stab or cut down everyone inside these walls but not because you went on a psychotic rampage.”

Itachi flipped his kunai, catching it lazily between his pinky and ring finger. An impressive party trick, certainly an intimidating one that the man did completely unaware. A very strange but understandable fidget for boring conversation. “You’ve never met me, Nara.”

“You’re right, I haven't,” Shikamaru agreed. “But I’ve seen enough families to know that you left Sasuke Uchiha alive on purpose.”

Itachi’s eyes burned red, devilish and foreboding. The kunai in his hands held between two fingers. Shikamaru said, “you kept him alive on purpose. You murdered everyone, but you’re a pacifist.”

“I question your capabilities, Nara, if your reasoning concluded that.”

Shikamaru shrugged again, looking away. He knew Itachi was watching him, scrutinizing every movement and memorizing it for further evaluation. He remembered, years ago, how Genma explained that Itachi Uchiha had been a genius. He could have been in the intelligence division, he reasoned situations better than veterans. Itachi had been a pacifist in ANBU.

“You know, a few years back I was placed on a mission to clear out the district,” Shikamaru said, pointing towards a few houses down the street. “They had a pair of daggers, a bronze pommel and blue blades. The one next to it had a woven handmade tapestry. They had a daughter.”

Itachi Uchiha said, monotone; “I know.”

Shikamaru once thought heavily on this exact situation. What he would say to the infamous Itachi Uchiha. He remembered rationalizing and organizing his thoughts to a horribly sad conclusion.

Shisui Uchiha had reportedly drowned, but in moments of death adrenaline and fear often triggered a chakra spike that, based on Shisui Uchiha’s ANBU abilities, would have been pretty damn noticeable. Shisui couldn’t have died slowly through natural drowning, but his body was recovered in the Naka River.

There had been a recovered suicide note and although Shikamaru never read it personally, that alone sounded entirely strange. If consensus within a clan rested with guilt on one member, often clan law mandated punishment immediately on the clan member. The rumor that Itachi Uchiha had murdered Shisui reached outside of only the clan- Genma had told him years ago, which meant the clan failed to keep it quiet.

Shisui Uchiha died prior to the clan massacre but not that long before. His funeral rites had been prepared, but the ANBU had fully anticipated dying at some point, hiding a will and last letter to Itachi Uchiha where he apologized for failing. He treated Itachi Uchiha as a brother- and Itachi Uchiha left his brother alive during an entire massacre.

Shisui left a note referring to him working with Itachi, then died quickly and quietly which was near impossible for his level of skill.

Everything bothered him, screaming set-up! Fraud! And now, Itachi Uchiha fully cloaked himself with the false accusation of complete guilt. Yes, he did murder people, but there were far too many thoughts and evidence to suggest it was due to a random psychotic break.

“A while ago, I got a strange vision,” the Nara said. He crossed his arms, looking skywards even as the Uchiha heir’s eyes slid to him again. “Beyond that of the normal odd prophecy vision from before. I asked why, and he said that there is nobody left to listen.”

Itachi said, “‘I am tired of your lies, clan-claimer.”

“I didn’t only get visions from the pyre. Once, I had the strangest dream of a living corpse,” Shikamaru said. He finally looked down, pulling his hands from his trousers to hold spread and defensively before him. “I dreamed of a place where there were no stars or moon. There was no light and only endless water.”

Itachi frowned, pulling on his lower lip. His hand twisted the smallest bit towards the boar sign, one of the beginning steps for any number of Genjutsu. Shikamaru let him do so, it would provide comfort. 

“I dreamed that I was drowning,” Shikamaru said very quietly. His heart thumped in his chest, heavy in his throat. Even recalling it brought fresh terror, horrible nausea twisting behind his lungs. “I drowned and couldn’t scream. And he said to me, to find his weapon. His belize- a beacon or landmark used by the sea. And he said, when you reclaim it for the rightful claimer, find my bank and blue waters.”

The words tasted salty. He didn’t know when he bit the soft skin of his inner cheek.

“You lie,” Itachi said softly like the breeze. He struggled to stand, legs trembling slightly as clothing draped over a horribly thin frame. He hunkered, unable to stretch upright with the taught skin and bandages around his abdomen. Shikamaru knew the man could kill him in less time than it took to activate the shadows.

“I’m not lying,” Shikamaru said, struggling to express it. “He said, ah, I serve a thief. A- I was offending him because- no, I was offending the carrion-eaters.”

“Crows,” Itachi corrected airily. “You should have stayed away, Nara.”

“I can’t do that, not when there’s something wrong here-.”

“There is nothing wrong. This has been your imagination, inspired by that of fitful sleep,” Itachi said completely calm. He lifted one hand, flashing through four signs in record time. Shikamaru jolted, taking one step backwards. He had no illusions that whatever jutsu would convince him of the Uchiha’s words.

“He died for you!” Shikamaru shouted, frantic. Itachi’s hands paused momentarily, holding that of the tiger seal. Shikamaru licked his lips and said, “He loved you, and he trusted you-.”

“I am very tired of you,” Itachi said flatly and apathetically.

“I-” Shikamaru struggled, then patted down his body frantically. Itachi watched him, curious, as Shikamaru untied his shuriken pouch and threw it away from him. Followed by kunai and two senbon in his shoes. He located every weapon on his person and threw it namely away, letting it clatter on the ground. “-there! I offer my weapons and leave myself vulnerable as a gesture of well-meaning.”

Itachi looked at him with a strange pinched expression, souring along the lines of his nose. He exhaled softly, an audible sigh before he too relaxed his hand and released the build of chakra. A gift is given and a gift returned, something of equal value.

“You have studied our customs,” the Uchiha said.

“I don’t want to fight,” he stressed, struggling to have the other believe him for once. “I just have some questions I want answered.”

“A sentiment shared by everyone,” the Uchiha said coolly. Shikamaru felt the hair on his arms stand on end, susceptible to the chill of the night. 

“I just have a few questions,” Shikamaru repeated, licking his lower lip nervously. “I’ve had visions and I- I don’t understand them.”

“You aren’t meant to,” the Uchiha said monotone. “Celestial bodies exist beyond our comprehension.”

“Your younger brother has one in his head, from what I’ve gathered,”

“Sasuke has always been…” Itachi trailed off, rolling one shoulder in a halfhearted shrug. 

Shikamaru wanted to laugh, feeling a little hysterical about the situation. Sasuke, somewhere, screamed mutedly into the night. 

“I was tasked with something from a god-.”

“Then you best not fail,” Itachi Uchiha said, sounding almost amused by the stress Shikamaru carried. Shikamaru wanted to shout, to shake the injured ANBU into listening to him.

“Yeah, I know,” Shikamaru said a tad sharply. “What was stolen from Shisui Uchiha?”

Itachi stilled, his face turned blank like that of a woven tapestry. Pale in the lopsided moonlight, fixed on an unreadable expression. It was remarkable how quickly one could censor themselves into something distinctly not them.

“I know there was something taken,” Shikamaru said, his voice slightly raspy. “I was told to reclaim it and put it in blue waters-.”

“Susanoo’s waters,” Itachi corrected utterly void of emotion. “Good luck with that task.”

“I need your help-.”

“I refuse.”

A cat watched them from the shadow of a building, tail twitching slowly. Its eyes glowed white and reflective in the moonlight, its claws tearing into grass and uprooting it. Shikamaru longed for something so normal, something void of trauma or heartbreak.

“He trusted you,” Shikamaru said. “I found a note from him to you, untouched. He trusted you and he loved you.”

Itachi closed his eyes and reacted no further. Shikamaru waited, nervous and anxious as the man thought.

“I will not help you,” Itachi said quietly. 

Shikamaru twitched, frustrated and annoyed and desperate. “Why? Because you’re busy? Because you think it doesn’t matter?”

“Because there are factors you have not considered.”

“Like what? Ignoring a god?”

Itachi’s hand clenched tight around the blue kunai. His face twitched slightly. 

“I refuse to let whoever stole something just- just keep-.”

“I will not interfere with this-.”

“Shisui was your friend-.”

“I know that!” Itachi snarled, turning to face him with Sharingan twisted in a new configuration. Distorted and wild, alighting his face with a holy sort of power and terror. Shikamaru swallowed his tongue, his words freezing and his blood icing to that of slush. His heart thrummed faster, forcefully as chakra singed and seared-.

Shikamaru thought of bloated skin, a corpse oozing water and the horrible grimace. The burning eyes of a heavenly Sasuke Uchiha who wreathed himself in fire and said, my brother was a good man.

Itachi’s expression was that of murder, a furious fracture along an unhealed break. Shikamaru heard that Uchiha were children of dragons, and now he faced a maw of fire and blue-tinted claws and thought, I will die before the sun rises.

“I know he’s dead,” Itachi snarled, straining his muscles and wound to stand shakily. He stalked like a predator, a mountain feline with teeth like senbon and tongue burning like embers. “I know-.”

C-aww, said a black crow wreathed in the moonlight. It fluttered between them, catching the moon's reflection in its eyes. It settled, standing just shy of in between them, hopping about with little jerky movements. It clicked its beak, staring pointedly at Itachi and screamed C-aww!

Itachi stilled. He looked at the bird with a frozen expression, trapped in a photograph that wouldn’t change. The bird hopped a little more, then spread its wings and flapped off. Shikamaru knew the Uchiha had bird summons, did the crow come with news? State something only the man could understand. 

Itachi said, a little stunned and off-key, “you are not mine.”

The bird circled overhead twice before flying off, consumed by the night. Itachi said, in the same fractured voice unused to confession, “you were chosen by the gods, Nara?”

“I- yes,” Shikamaru said a little tense. He didn’t understand the significance of a strangely timed bird. “I... I’ve had dreams-.”

“Shisui’s eye was stolen by Council member Danzo Shimura. I am unable to confront him, lest he takes action against my younger brother.”

Shikamaru felt ice in his chest, water drowning him and oozing from his dropped jaw. Choking, he asked, “a council member?”

“A cruel man,” Itachi said, watching the sky and moon for the shape of a vanished crow, disappearing into the sky. “You best tread carefully.”

Sasuke woke with the strangest phantom pain of a monstrosity growing from his back.

He knew it like he truly wore the bastard thing- the fleshy amalgamation of wings born from freakish mutation. A horrid thing made from chakra, sapped from the world and uncomfortably forced. A rush of power and ability and-.

Sasuke exhaled slowly, feeling the hoarseness in his throat. His head hurt in the double layer of impossible images, the cold stone and torchlight. The hissing sounds and burns from frayed muscles.

Sasuke dreamed a horrible thing, where a snake lay dead from his blade. Orochimaru had tried, he had fought, and eventually, Sasuke won. His chakra felt wrong, lonely and isolated where before he felt the bonds of a hundred snakes. Aoda pulsed distantly, a foreign touch that waited for his beckoning. 

He only had Aoda which was wrong, he held the contract (did he? Didn’t he?)

The bed he lay in was burned beyond recognition, gouged apart in the rough shape of the (impossible) wings. Sasuke knew, realistically, that in memories of important events his back split open with fire and-.

“Back with us?” Kakashi Hatake asked, his forehead protector absent although his red eye closed lazily. He treated Sasuke with a level of careful attention, waiting for some outburst of...

“I’m fine,” Sasuke lied, his words a little louder than a raw whisper. His head throbbed, burning raw and numbingly empty. He hadn’t heard from Amaterasu in quite a while, it bothered him. The dragon had grown quiet before, silent in slumber as it recovered from grave interference. Sasuke felt alone.

“Mm, a little liar now?” Kakashi asked playfully, drumming his fingers against his arms. “You did ruin that bed, I see why you wanted to run before, it isn’t every day my cute little student catches on fire.”

‘I need to leave,’ Sasuke thought with heavy recognition. ‘Orochimaru needs to die.’

(Had he not died yet? Sasuke remembered it, he lived it. Walking into Orochimaru’s bed chambers, drawing his sword-. He hated that room, he hated it-.)

‘No,’ Sasuke thought, flinching physically from the intrusive thoughts. ‘It hasn’t happened yet.’

“I need to go,” Sasuke repeated quietly. His hands itched to hold his sword- he knew now why the blade always felt comfortable in his grip. He couldn’t imagine ever going without it. “I need to leave-.”

“Why the rush?” Kakashi asked curiously. “You only got back, and your brother still needs someone to wheel him around.”

‘Itachi,’ Sasuke remembered with a heavy heart. He would have to leave his brother, still wounded and in need of care. Sasuke said, strained, “I need to go.”

Kakashi looked at him, then nodded slightly. “Stay a little longer. Lady Tsunade still needs to check out your injuries, they’re occurring too rapidly to be safe-.”

Sasuke, who remembered the long slash of a sword lacerating his thigh and upper chest, wisely said nothing. Orochimaru had struck him unexpectedly, his skin catching on its blade and popping ever so subtly. Even now, he could feel its scabs brushing against his shirt. He could remember the foul stink of Orochimaru’s bottomless maw, the sharp tang of copper as his skin split, again and again, the musk of scales sliding away. He did not mention any of it to Kakashi.

“I need to leave, Sensei,” Sasuke repeated tiredly. “I can’t stay here.”

“Are there more Akatsuki to stop?” Kakashi asked a little rhetorically.

(An orange mask with an inward spiral, the warped distortion of vessels as a Mangekyo-).

Sasuke shuddered and Kakashi sighed, looking away. Sometimes, Sasuke couldn’t fathom his own mind, what was real and what wasn’t. He wondered if he was growing insane.

“I’m heading into the city- Naruto will be back soon,” Kakashi explained lightheartedly. “There was an incident in Sand. The One-tail was taken, well, according to those very classified reports I conveniently stumbled across. The Kazekage has recovered, not a feather out of place.”

“Conveniently stumbled across?” Sasuke rasped, echoing the obvious lie. Kakashi smiled widely, not contributing to the conversation. 

The entire ordeal was phantom memories, numb and tingling along his arm like a poorly conjured Chidori. It burned strange, nonexistent yet with enough thrumming urgency to draw his attention. The Kazekage had been taken, the one-tails extracted. The city fell under siege from reports, no casualties except an old woman he never knew. He could hear it, the loud accent and shrieking noise of a bombshell blonde. Sasuke, somehow, knew that this would happen.

“I need to pray,” Sasuke rasped. Not to beg the gods for their council or guidance, but mostly to get away from the vaguely pitying look in Kakashi’s eye. Itachi wouldn’t understand. Nobody would understand. Amaterasu had been so quiet, leaving him empty and unsure in the tide of paranormal occurrences. Sasuke’s body ached from subconscious battles. He recalled the sound of Orochimaru’s wailing and the papery rattle of skin peeling back with broken scales. His sword felt heavy in his hands, then heavier once Kusanagi pierced the reptilian hide of a Sannin.

‘Too many things,’ Sasuke thought frantically, anxiety beating sharply like a crow inside his lungs. ‘Too quick, too many memories that don’t belong to me.’

(He knew, in a kaleidoscope of colour and heartbreak, that the memories were his in a life he hadn’t lived. Where Amaterasu didn’t burn, where the mark on his throat spread like fire and left him burning for more and more-).

“Okay,” Kakashi said breezily and trusting, and all at once, the anxiety extinguished its flame to ash. “But before you run off, I need to see how your training has come.”

There was no way to beat Kakashi. Sasuke knew that, but he hadn’t ever considered the full consequences of that.

Kakashi was dangerous, perhaps one of the most lethal nin in all of Konoha in a straight-on fight. There was always a way to defeat an opponent, through either environmental manipulation, secondhand tactics, or less savoury techniques. In a simple fight, blow by blow, there was no way to beat Kakashi Hatake. 

He knew that, but the older nin didn’t let it affect him. He treated Sasuke as an equal threat, a target to be appraised and analyzed until the chance of failure lessened. There was always a way somehow to kill anyone. Even a Genin could kill a jounin if they were truly dedicated and exceptionally sneaky.

The Uchiha training grounds hadn’t been used in a very long time. They were tidy, cleaned and organized but untouched since the cleaning crew years ago. The well hadn’t run dry, but the buckets dredged thick carpets of algae from the cesspool. Kakashi poked it with one finger before clicking his tongue and taking advantage of a convenient jutsu. He told Sasuke to not tell anyone and returned the groundwater to an adequate state.

Sasuke felt sore and raw although he could ignore it dangerously well. He had scabs healing quickly, torn muscles nearly repaired. Kusanagi’s grip felt tighter, the leather wrappings not soaked in blood or fluids. His wrist clicked a little from where he (he hadn’t) tweaked it a month ago learning a different stance before he was ready.

“Mm, I thought you’d want a bokuto,” Kakashi mused, looking comfortable and slouched. A bokuto, the wooden training swords, were commonly used when students were learning to use a sword. 

“There’s no point,” Sasuke said, stretching his arm and rolling the sword to stretch horizontal, getting a better grasp of its current length. He remembered (did he?) how Kusanagi used to disorient him, shifting lengths when he didn’t want to. 

“You’re confident with yourself,” Kakashi said, looking entertained by the thought. Sasuke glanced to the side where the nin had set his book and what looked like a basket full of apples, unsurprised to see a boring sheathed sword below the bench. 

Sasuke ignored him, trying to loosen a creak in his bones and ignore the weird layer of memories and knowledge. He knew kenjutsu and katas, he had spent months training daily until Kusanagi was an extension of his body. He broke his arms, cut dozens off in the mountains of northern Sound, where the warring tribes rode on horses and-.

“No jutsu,” Kakashi said, plucking the sword he had brought and held it between his forefinger and thumb. It swung like a pendulum, back and forth as he sighed dramatically. “I’m too busy to end up exhausted from dealing with you.”

In another world, he may have been offended, but this time Sasuke could hear the doublespeak and knew his words. ‘I can’t afford to use all my chakra for a spar.’

Sasuke said nothing and looked at Kusanagi. He hadn’t a genuine sparring partner before. Only raiders and northern mercenaries dragged in by curse mark prisoners, the ones that listened to the cry of if you kill the lapdog, you can go free.

Nobody survived. Nobody had ever died here, had they?

“Is your sword conductive?” Sasuke asked flatly.

Kakashi’s eyebrow lifted, looking a little surprised by the question. “It is. I called in a few favours.”

Lightning chakra conduction metal? Very expensive, especially this far from the Land of Lightning or the Land of Earth. Kakashi held the sword grip loosely, twirling it through his fingers in a way stupid and childish for such a rare weapon. Kakashi smiled broadly, the act on purpose.

“Well then,” Kakashi sighed and held the sword finally in a proper grip. “I guess we should get on with this.”

“You’re the one that dragged me out here-.”

“Shush, don’t talk back to your sensei,” Kakashi scolded lightly.

(Was he still his sensei? Even now? So much had passed and he hadn’t learned by his hand-).

“Alright,” Sasuke said with a heavy tongue. Amaterasu was quiet, obscured and dark with flashpoint burns all across Sasuke’s mind. The sword felt light in Sasuke’s hand, chakra tingling and begging to be set free. Sasuke had killed a Sannin, but there was no way to beat Kakashi Hatake.

Their sword met near gently, sliding against with the sliding glide of metal. It glinted, sliding down to the hilt before departing near whispers of sword on sword. Kakashi made the softest rumble, a wordless inquiry as he noticed the well-practiced stance and posture of rigid training. 

“Well, you are full of surprises,” Kakashi confessed near delightedly. He twirled his sword, a dazzling spectacle that served no purpose beyond being distracting, before lunging with a side jab. IT deflected away with minimal effort, Sasuke reciprocated with equal ferocity.

Kakashi exhaled in a gentle puff, looking more intrigued by the moment. They walked, shifting stances into that clearly foreign from the Leaf. Konoha taught their nin how to throw kunai and shuriken, how to rain metal like that of falling leaves. The movements of Kakashi were that before a lightning strike, sturdy and strong and moving with anticipation of an unstoppable force.

“Interesting little dance you have there,” Kakashi mused, breathing steadily with no obvious sign of effort. “I thought you were travelling the nomadic life?”

“I was,” Sasuke said. He had Bakashi (not Kabuto) and he met Han, a jinchuuriki (he was likely dead now) and he found medicine (he killed Orochimaru with a sword between his ribs-).

Sasuke hadn’t thought to change his face. It remained glacial and blank as chakra boiled and twisted, sparking and igniting on that of lightning bugs. Kakashi inhaled sharply and stepped backwards with a vertical parry, deflecting and forcing Kusanagi away as it light alight with electricity.

Kakashi said something, a hot lashing from his mouth before he too ignited his sword, the metal screaming shrill and brighter than a normal Chidori. It smoked in white plumes, metal tarnishing and baking from the intense heat. Their swords clashed, Kusanagi vibrated under the surge of electricity and chakra, not entirely his own.

Sasuke hissed between his teeth, forcing his hand to move through a surge of chakra reinforcement. Lightning tended to paralyze the grip, locking up an opponent’s body and forcing them to remain in place. Kakashi, having known this, secured Sasuke’s grip and would generally have won the fight.

Something in Sasuke’s hand crunched- potentially the joints fracturing from how quickly he made the move. It didn’t matter to him- his left arm was smoking and cramped, Kusanagi dropped onto the ground.

“You have improved, just a bit,” Kakashi said, entirely unimpressed. It was juxtaposed by the state of his expensive sword, burned so severely it lost its temper and now sported horrible thin holes along its length. It looked eaten by moths, smoking so thickly it likely had heated to the point of melting.

“Tch,” Sasuke said, clicking his tongue. He couldn’t feel his left arm, but it didn’t bother him. He picked up Kusanagi with his right arm, the weight and grip feeling inexplicably better in his right.

“Ah, you’re just full of surprises,” Kakashi said, noting the ease of which movements came. Sasuke had always been a tad ambidextrous, training both hands to move quickly and react even quicker. Kenjutsu was different, in fact, he wondered if it felt better in his right.

Kakashi hummed and considered his sword, then tossed it over his shoulder where it pinwheeled and lodged itself through the wooden bucket to the well. Kakashi nonchalantly lifted his forehead protector, stretching leisurely and blinking quickly to ‘adjust’ to the light.

Sasuke saw his sensei’s Sharingan focus with its eerie perception. Sasuke blinked the world into red and watched the thrum of chakra and potential. 

“I wonder where you learned to use that sword,” Kakashi said a tad rhetorically. “I’ve seen those katas...oh...decades ago?”

Sasuke rolled his wrist. He decided that his right hand felt much better. Kusanagi burned weirdly, tingling strange along his elbow but it was nothing he couldn’t deal with. He had been worse off before.

“You used to be so easy to rile up,” Kakashi pouted, popping one hip and crossing his arms lazily. His Sharingan burned, assessing as Sasuke relaxed into himself.

Kakashi sighed again, lowering ever so into a crouch. Sasuke leaned forward, the open neck of his robe (it had just...felt right to wear) slipping to the side. It felt strange, the scene before them.

How far you’ve fallen, Sasuke!

Sasuke flinched back and let Kusanagi clatter once more to the ground. He looked at Kakashi and said, “you tried to kill me.”

Kakashi paused and said with forced casualness, “that wouldn’t be nice of me.”

Sasuke couldn’t remember it, only the impression of foggy pictures. Perhaps Kakashi had killed him, and his fading memory and vision were that of a dying man. “You try.”

“Well,” Kakashi paused in thought. “That’s comforting to know that I tried to kill you. Maybe I do, but it means you’re competent enough to need me to hunt you down.”

It was strangely comforting in a backhand compliment. Kakashi was right, if he was sent to kill him- then Sasuke was too dangerous for any normal hunter nin to fight.

“So, why will I try to kill you?” Kakashi asked, sounding like he’d rather be anywhere else. He looked at his nails, drawing a senbon from his leg to pick under his thumbnail. “Are you going to murder someone important?”

“No,” yes. “Maybe.”

Kakashi looked at him pointedly, then sighed. “You really are my student. Don’t kill the Hokage, she’ll break your spine.”

“I don’t,” Sasuke said before twitching a bit. “I need to leave.”

“And now I know you’re capable enough to not actually die on your crazy obsession,” Kakashi mused. He drummed his fingers on his arm, looking at Sasuke’s right arm and the grip on his sword with a slight tilt to his head. “When you change hands, you lean to the side.”

Sasuke looked down. Kakashi was right, his entire stance had become unstable. A little embarrassed, he shifted into a proper stance and adjusted his center of gravity back to normal. He hadn’t ever done that before.

“You do that with swords, or when using your right arm primarily,” Kakashi explained. “Before you eloped off with a big snake, you started to do that. Whenever you use Chidori with your right hand, you become unstable to accommodate for something on your left. An injury, or one I guess you may get.”

Kakashi strode up to him, plucking Kusanagi out of his grip to hold appraisingly, then slide into its sheath on Sasuke’s hip (it didn’t feel right on his back). He patted it twice, then poked Sasuke’s exposed abdomen a little too sharply. “Fix that next time I see you. Oh, and put on some clothes, you’re running around indecent.”

“You read porn in public,” Sasuke hissed, flushing hotly to his ears. “I don’t need to listen to anything you say-.”

“I saw what you did to your brother’s old uniform, pretty risqué to cut the back off,” Kakashi teased with his Sharingan spinning slowly. “He hates it. I approve. Where are you heading?”

Sasuke thought he had to leave secretly, departing again in the night. He hadn’t considered that maybe, maybe Kakashi would help him. Sasuke admitted, expecting resistance, “North, to Sound. I’m going to kill Orochimaru.”

Kakashi asked him, “have you killed him before?”

“Last night I did.”

“Ah, that would explain the screaming,” Kakashi agreed. He patted Sasuke’s shoulder with his palm, letting it rest there as a heavy weight. He said, “you’re going to have to tell your brother.”

Sasuke stiffened. 

“I know you don’t want to,” Kakashi soothed awkwardly, “but he’s panicking. It’s a bit precious, now that I know he’s innocent and not homicidal. Reminds me of a chicken.”

“I am not going to talk to Itachi, he’ll want to come with and he’s safer here.”

“He knows that,” Kakashi agreed, “your brother is intelligent, Sasuke. If you need to leave, he’ll know that. Or I’ll make sure he understands that. You need to go kill Orochimaru, and normally I’d doubt you’re able to do so but, ah, well, my one student can break a mountain with her fist. My other student has a chakra beast sealed in him and only cares about ramen. My other student, the most ridiculous one, speaks to a literal god.”

Sasuke floundered, then decided to stay silent. Kakashi patted his shoulder, cheerily informing him, “fantastic! I hope you don’t mind; I already told your brother you’d be running off again. Don’t be late, he’s been waiting an hour already for you.”

Sasuke thought, ‘I hate this man.’

Kakashi said, predicting what Sasuke was thinking, “no you don’t.”

When Sasuke gathered his things, he paid special attention to what he could bring with. He wouldn’t be leaving Konoha like that of a foreign traveller. He had to move quickly, running when he could and hiding under the stars. He had his bag (old and abandoned from his Genin days) packed to the brim with equipment and tools. New Kunai and Senbon, extra gear and medical kit. Kakashi slipped him a worrying amount of chakra pills with a pointed look, Sasuke hid those ones his body just to be safe.

He took Kakashi’s advice and slid on the bastardized ANBU outfit that he stole forever ago from Itachi’s closet. Itachi had wrinkled his nose when he recognized what Sasuke had done but never said anything more way back in Ame. It was cold with the entire back of Sasuke’s shirt exposed to open air apart from thin wire mesh. If he had, for unexplained circumstances, Amaterasu bursting from his skin, he wouldn’t be entirely nude.

His bag felt strange after so long of a traveller's pack and the stink of Bakashi and the memory of Fishcake. He didn’t have the luxury of a disguise, now, he had to move fast.

It was dangerous and necessary even though Itachi couldn’t understand why. The sun was beginning to descend, the sky shone beautiful shades of red and orange and Sasuke stood in the doorway dressed in black.

“I need to go,” Sasuke apologized with his tone and awkward shuffle. “I’m- I’m sorry, I’ll explain when I’m back but-.”

“I know,” Itachi said very calmly and quietly. He watched the sky, gazing at the sunset relaxed and sad. “I can’t keep you here.”

He waved one hand towards his wheelchair, where his organs were still healing so slowly. Sasuke shifted uncomfortably, adjusting the pack on his shoulders. Itachi said, after a long pause, “you don’t have crow summons, do you?”

“No?” Sasuke asked, legitimately startled. “I didn’t know there was a contract.”

“There isn’t,” Itachi said with a quirk of his mouth. He sighed through his nose; eyes tired but knowing. “You will come back?”

“Of course,” Sasuke said, almost hurt at the hesitant doubt in Itachi’s voice. “I wouldn’t leave you here, Nii-san!”

“I wanted to check,” Itachi said, then reached to his neck. “Bring this back then.”

Then Itachi took off his necklace, the necklace. The one Sasuke remembered Shisui working on for months, teaching Sasuke how to braid and weave- the one woven from feathers and hair smoothed so fine it lay like silk.

“I can’t take that, it’s yours,” Sasuke said, dumbfounded. “It’s one of your most treasured things.”

“I know,” his brother said with the smallest eye roll, and a fond expression. “Something of equal value, silly otouto.”

“Oh,” Sasuke said, accepting the priceless thing. He would come back and that would be the equivalent of his gift. “Have you ever thought about how strange our customs are?”

“All the time,” Itachi said with the smallest smirk. “Go on, or do I need to pester you now?”

“That’s too strange, please don’t.”

“The gods are speaking and that’s too strange for you,” Itachi scoffed, shaking his head fondly. The sunset was quite beautiful. “Watch it with me?”

So Sasuke settled down, he could wait a little longer.

Chapter Text

“Which one are you then?”

Sasuke looked over his shoulder, bored and apathetic. Kabuto froze, near trembling at the thought of what he believed impossible. Sasuke lived to defy preset barriers, testing the limits and subsequently breaking them.

Sasuke said, “Which one do you think?”

Sasuke stood in Oto, the cavernous land pitted with pine trees and vicious underbrush. Occasional rivers subdivided the southern border into Leaf before it plateaued into the open grasslands that the nomadic tribes of Oto traveled.

Sasuke knew this land like a dream, so heavenly touched he wondered if cosmic irony influenced his sense of humor. 

Sasuke tilted his head slightly, looking skywards into the sunny morning permeating the long thorny tree boughs. The smell of sap and the occasional sound of woodpeckers felt homely. Familiar and similarly made him feel guilty.

“It’s strange, being here,” Sasuke confessed to no person. “Where there have been no deaths at my hand.”

There are no burials here, Amaterasu told him. It did not lessen the guilt in any way.

Orochimaru had many hideouts, so numerous that only Karin had an idea of each location. Sasuke remembered where the largest facility had been, the defensive cave where Orochimaru held his ground and died under his hand. Sasuke heard the snakes and felt their nostalgic chakra before he set foot on the ground. He knew Orochimaru was inside, or at least Kabuto who, both he and Amaterasu agreed, had to die.

He is too dangerous to live, Amaterasu verbalized. Sasuke agreed, knowing exactly what the dragon referenced.

Sasuke touched the ground of Sound, it felt somehow like returning home. He remembered entering and leaving this hideout many times. Dozens of times.

He remembered encountering Naruto and Sakura with a fake-replacement, and Amaterasu’s assurance it’s not your fault.

“It doesn’t mean in another world I didn’t do that,” Sasuke said. He spoke completely monotone, chakra spread carefully to feel the shift of snakes or perimeter wards.

Orochimaru and Kabuto had neither the skill nor patience to invest in elaborate seals to mark their privacy. Instead, they preferred the use of snakes to spy on open accesses, employing the use of wardens like Karin, or simple trigger alarms. The way to pass unnoticed remained the same now as it never had been- the same alerts and ways to avoid the many eyes throughout the area. Sasuke felt like he was returning from a mission, in remarkably different clothes and exceptionally better supplies.

Amaterasu thrummed slightly with apprehension, then a strange simmer of something unidentifiable. A snake on lookout watched him, flicking its tongue and then settling as Sasuke shifted his chakra as Amaterasu taught. He pulled the warmth from the sun (what Orochimaru once taught him) as the snakes showed him (the Snake Sage art he could never master). The snakes settled, flickering their tongues and resting back with no concern.

This fortress is impenetrable to any who don’t belong.

“I don’t belong,” Sasuke contradicted blandly, ignoring the torches on the wall as the tunnels darkened into a hazy passage. Sasuke walked quietly, shifting his feet careful over the loose gravel, mindful of the labyrinth of twists and turns along the hallways. A maze to turn weaker men insane. Sasuke remembered the path his very first walk, then the subsequent wandering when he couldn’t sleep.

Be careful with Orochimaru, Amaterasu warned him simply. His body-stealing Jutsu is dangerous.

Sasuke said in a hushed murmur, “you’ll burn him alive then, wouldn’t you?”

Amaterasu hummed with fire, a warm pulse of chakra through his neck and back. Perhaps.

Sasuke smiled thinly, he felt how eager the creature was to burn the man alive.

The halls whispered their memories, the acid burns where chemicals seeped through the walls. The slashes in the ground- now absent, where Sasuke drew his sword in a fit of rage and lacerated it with Kusanagi. It felt wrong and odd, and Sasuke knew it as an illusion like the best Genjutsu his brother could make.

He entered the laboratory, failing to sense the man but finding one of his targets crouched over a book and blissfully ignorant of his shadow.

Kabuto...Amaterasu said, voice layered and distorted with a thick hue of undisputable rage. 

Sasuke stood there, silent and observing. Kabuto, blissfully unaware, continued to write for a few minutes before rotating to stand.

When he saw Sasuke looming in the doorway, he flinched back in alarm and threw a nearby letter opener with pinpoint accuracy. For any other assassin, it would have struck. Sasuke, clothed in Itachi’s old armor and a collection of other toys, lifted one hand to deflect it with a backhand swipe across his handguard.

Kabuto hissed something quiet, a curse of some sort before he withdrew his chakra scalpels and Amaterasu hissed a low simmer of utter contempt. Sasuke left his face flat, Kabuto’s face shifting with a memory blur of distorted serpentine features and dead eyes.

“Who are you?” Kabuto demanded, and Amaterasu hissed, kill him.

Sasuke didn’t. The dragon seethed, claws carving into stone and eyes burning bright red. Sasuke blinked slowly, the tomoe swirling ever so slowly around the epicenter of his pupil. Amaterasu rumbled low, vibrating sparks along Sasuke’s nervous system and Sasuke looked at Kabuto silently.

Kabuto’s eyes were wide, hand drifting carefully towards his desk where Sasuke knew, he had a jar of some sort of poison or neurotoxin. He didn’t know if he would be immune to it, since he had never experienced vaccinated immunity.

You do, Amaterasu rumbled grudgingly. Sasuke found that bit of information incredibly interesting.

“You’re an Uchiha,” Kabuto breathed, recognizing the Sharingan and then, ultimately, recognizing Sasuke entirely. “You’re him.”

Sasuke said nothing and Kabuto exhaled a shaky laugh, looking somewhat awestruck and malevolent. “You’re Sasuke, you vanished after…”

Then, Kabuto’s eyes flickered to Sasuke’s neck where for all purposes, a curse mark should rest. The mark of Amaterasu hadn’t been opened in some time, its eyelid remaining shut in a thin silver crescent that blinked open slowly. Dozily, the Mangekyo design whirred slightly and Amaterasu burned with dark amusement as Kabuto paled.

“That’s not possible,” the medic breathed, horrified. “That...that isn’t possible.”

“Kabuto,” Sasuke addressed. “Where is Orochimaru?”

Kabuto shook his head, expression closing off into something serious and ready for a fight. At this point in time, Kabuto had not been a threat beyond that of his impressive healing rate. Killing him would consist of disembowelment or decapitation, nothing as easy as a stab or pierced heart. Perfectly manageable but infuriating to execute.

“Sasuke Uchiha, where did you go?” Kabuto asked, still friendly although his body betrayed his tension. “You vanished quite suddenly from Konoha.”

“Where is Orochimaru?” Sasuke asked bluntly. “Don’t make me repeat myself.”

“I’m sure Lord Orochimaru would be delighted to see you,” Kabuto said slippery, shifting to walk along the periphery of the research lab. Towards projects Sasuke didn’t recognize. His hands slipped downwards, pausing in preparation for hand signs. What was he doing?

“If you wait for me to finish my projects, I’ll be glad to escort you to him,” Kabuto soothed.

Amaterasu snarled and Sasuke thought, ‘play nice.’ The dragon settled, thinly reigned, and watched as Sasuke nodded blankly. Kabuto settled immediately, still alarmed and cautious but recognizing Sasuke’s ulterior intent.

“I’ve heard a few rumors about you, Sasuke,” Kabuto said, faking kinship between them. “Lord Orochimaru hadn’t believed them of course. He’ll be impressed to see the rumors confirmed.”

“And what do they say?” Sasuke asked, stepping to the side to better watch. Kabuto shifted towards a collection of seals on the ground, drawn with blood and large ornate ruins with carved inscriptions. Sasuke didn’t recognize any of it, neither did Amaterasu.

“That you’ve been a hard man to kill,” Kabuto said, tapping on a seal with subtle movements. Kabuto didn’t know how the Sharingan operated, else he would have blocked even Sasuke’s periphery.

A summoning seal, Amaterasu informed him. For a body, a corpse. Why…

“Well, with news that Kisame Hoshigake dying…” Kabuto trailed off, fishing around and plucking oddities and bottles from his nearest medical contraption. A glass vial with what looked to be hair rested in a slightly tight grip. ‘That’s his target, whatever is in it.’

I know. Amaterasu said with a dark undercurrent. Suspicion withdrawing into potential dread. Kabuto approached the scrolls, summoning a corpse- just as Amaterasu said he would.

“Killing a legendary swordsman of the mist is enough to boast about,” Kabuto continued talking, hopelessly attempting to distract Sasuke from his actions. “But then I hear rumors that both Itachi Uchiha and Hidan the Immortal go missing? Well, I’d be a fool to not think it was you.”

The corpse had markings on it, sigils that Sasuke memorized with the smallest of glances. Frantically, he attempted to decipher what precisely they were. Had Kabuto rigged the body as an elaborate trap? A potential bomb? If Sasuke moved against Kabuto now, would he trigger something much worse?

“I don’t know how you managed to kill that religious zealot,” Kabuto said, rotating to show his back to Sasuke. Alarm bells rang, Sasuke’s focus narrowed. “Never did I imagine the world of the undead and immortal so...fascinating.”

No, Amaterasu snarled, and Sasuke twitched at the overwhelming surge of rage. Sasuke moved forward at the exact moment as Amaterasu cried, stop him!

Kabuto swung his arm back, slashing upwards with one glowing chakra scalpel held between two extended fingers, moving through frantic hand seals. Sasuke ducked to the side, feeling the superficial sting of his skin being nicked. There was a brief tugging feeling, one that alarmed Sasuke in its unique and unfamiliar sensation before it abruptly vanished. Unbeknownst to both Sasuke and Amaterasu, his necklace (Itachi's necklace, Shisui's necklace) tore free under the sharpened blade.

They danced over the corpse, Sasuke struggling to counter the petite chakra scalples rapidly twirling between frantic hand signs as Kabuto sneered and healed from every injury. Sasuke didn’t dare to breathe Katon, not with the unidentified chemicals on the table. He couldn’t draw Kusanagi in such close quarters, least he break other specimens and release something far worse.

“Get back,” Kabuto hissed, tossing his scalpel upwards to catch between his teeth before finishing his final hand seal. The corpse below them glowed cyan, sluggishly warping with chakra. Sasuke leapt away, towards Kabuto to grasp Kabuto's shoulder with talon-like fingers. Sasuke met Kabuto's eyes, but it was not he who greeted the medic.

Die, bastard, Amaterasu spat, and through the twist of Sharingan, it lunged into Kabuto’s skull and rendered his mental barriers to ash.

Sasuke grunted, slumping to his knee as Kabuto screamed. Amaterasu roared a horrendous sound, accompanied by flashes of an underground cave and a long serpent tail. Sasuke crumpled beneath the impression and phantom sensation of a forehead pressed to his, and the whispered somber words, “I will always love you.”

Kabuto seized, gurgling wetly as his eyes rolled back in his head. Amaterasu withdrew, breaking away and rellinquishing control. Sasuke caught himself on hands and knees. He trembled, breathing shakily as Kabuto vomited, asphyxiating on his own sick. It wouldn’t kill him and Sasuke knew he should shift Kabuto to his side, but Sasuke felt too flimsy to stand.

Amaterasu snapped around like a feral thing, furious and clawing in his constraints to where Sasuke felt blood drip from his nose and eyes, filling his mouth with its metallic taste.

“Stop,” he gasped, elbows buckling and dropping him to press his forehead to the cold stone. “Ama- stop.”

The dragon settled with a bloodthirsty noise, pounding a migraine into Sasuke’s skull. Kabuto whimpered beside him, twitching feebly on the ground. Sasuke coughed, his chest tight as his body shook with the aftershock. 

When he recovered, it was to the noise of paper ripping and the heat of boiling chakra. It felt familiar and similarly horrifying. Amaterasu pressed against the limits of Sasuke’s mind, and Sasuke feared he would snap under the pressure.

The body, Amaterasu demanded. His voice resonating and echoing like a paper bomb in a closed metal room. Sasuke flinched, whimpering instinctively against the burn of it. Amaterasu pressed and blood dripped from Sasuke’s eyes. Get up!

Sasuke forced his arms to lift him, legs sprawled about, and elbows propped. He lifted his head and greeted the acidic stench of Kabuto’s vomit- the other’s eyes still rolled back in his skull. 

The corpse, which Amaterasu had been stressing over anxiously, was no longer a corpse. 

“What?” Sasuke asked, voice hoarse and grating on his ringing ears. “What is- what?”

The corpse was a paper doll, assembling and tearing with chaotic folds, contorting and stretching itself around a familiar necklace that decayed to ash before Sasuke's eyes.

Sasuke reached for his neck. His fingertips came away bloody from Kabuto’s slice, which broke his skin and severed the necklace he had been wearing. He was bleeding slightly, the thin slice burning like citris along a papercut. His stomach twisted, guilt churned at the knowledge that the necklace was ruined.

Itachi’s necklace. Now consumed and caressed with papering tongues that lashed about like bean sprouts and imploded in then out again. Itachi's necklace, his most priceless treasure gifted to him by a deadman. Amaterasu, similarly, pulsed with dread. The dragon whispered, meaning lost to Sasuke until seconds after it spoke.

No, this wasn’t supposed to happen.

Sasuke could barely think, too dazed to truly understand, but he thought Amaterasu sounded afraid. Recoiling at the thought and sight of the paper cocoon, transforming itself into something else. Independent of Kabuto, potentially cognitively useless now, but certainly nothing Sasuke understood.

Sasuke struggled to his knees, head swaying at the shift in posture. Vertigo tainted his perception, leaving him teetering towards the right. He spat a globule of mucus and blood to the side, just shy of Kabuto’s vomit. 

‘For a second,’ Sasuke thought dazed, ‘I’ll close my eyes for a second.’

When he opened them again, compelled by the heavy drum of Amaterasu’s shout, it was to an impossible figure sitting upright with an audible groan.

Sasuke blinked quickly, and said with a wet rasp, “Shisui?”

“Peace,” they said. Exhausted and tired like all nin did when near the point of collapse. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

There were a hundred reasons why that was unlikely, a thousand foes that could be standing right there and pretending to be an ally. They burned hotly like fire, a numbing burn of lightning and a familiar hurt of exhaustion. The room stank horribly, of chemicals and tainted chakra. Like the hospitals sometimes did after a failed surgery or a horrible mutation of unknown origin. It also smelled like vomit and blood, and the sweet tang of sweat.

His legs struggled to hold him when he forced them to lift him upright. He struggled to breathe, throat wet and somehow raw. He teetered, maintaining equilibrium before vomiting thin slime across his bare feet. It splashed warm on his toes, wet and diluted acid mixed with Naka River water. He didn’t know how he got here, or where here was. The Naka fed many rivers and farmland, had he drifted out past the walls to be hauled from a ditch by a civilian? Was he yanked out from a rice paddy, stripped naked by an unimportant family?

No, there was chakra in the air and beyond that, something of summons and damp soil. He felt the tingle of previous Jutsu, one that still quaked after and felt every bit like a seal. Shisui asked, vomit on his lips, “who are you?”

“Family,” the injured nin lied. “I know this is strange-.”

Shisui laughed, shrill, and piercing. His head felt wrong- chaotic and echoing with his senses burning. His hearing was too loud, too focused on all the wrong things. His skin itched then felt like he was burning from the touch of stale air. “I’m calling shit, I don’t know you-.”

The other nin moved, struggling somehow. Were they injured? Bleeding from a wound? It would explain why they sounded so tired and exhausted, and why there was such a smell in the air. Shisui didn’t normally feel anxious. Kami, he was an ANBU captain, but right now he felt a bit like screaming for the sake of it.

“You fell,” they said exhaustedly. Then coughed, hacking something wet onto the ground. “Then- you fell into the Naka River.”

“No shit,” Shisui snarked. He didn’t know if he could conjure the powers of his Mangekyo, since he tore out the one and the other was stolen from him. He felt weak, at best he could grapple but he didn’t know how to find his way. He was underground- but how far upwards would he need to dig to find air?

“Susanoo welcomed you,” they said, stressed and anxious. They sounded like crying, or maybe like screaming also. “I- we burned you.”

Something in Shisui asked him, what if this isn’t a lie? He kindly told that part of his brain to shut up. Shisui hissed; “Don’t bring up my clan’s-.”

“Shisui,” they repeated his name with a throaty croak. It hurt him, his name pained the stranger. “I... Amaterasu brought you back.”

Shisui lifted one hand, carefully tangling around the (wet) strands of his hair. They tugged sharply, the sensation of pain feeling muted. He argued, “that’s impossible. I should be drowning-.”

“You burned on the pyre and your ash and metal joined those before you,” the stranger said. 

Shisui thought, what if this isn’t a lie? 

“Shisui,” they repeated, stumbling over the shape of his name. “Shisui.”

Oh, Shisui realized. He said, “I was dead.”

“Yeah,” they confirmed wetly, pausing before offering a slightly mad laugh. They said, a little hysterically, “I- I accidentally brought you back.”

“How the- how do you accidentally-.”

The stranger giggled and then it gained a wet side to it. Not blood or injury, but the hitching open gasps of crying and struggling to breathe. They said- begging, “They say you need to- you need to release the Jutsu.”

“What Jutsu?” Shisui asked, alarmed. “What the fuck is wrong with me?”

“I brought you back,” they said a little manic. Shisui thought immediately, ‘you did a shit job of it’ but he didn’t bother to verbalize it. His head hurt, but his senses felt wrong, drowned.

They shifted, shuffling softly to adjust their weight. They repeated, “you...you need to release the Jutsu- “

“What happens if I do?” Shisui asked sharply. Was it another trick of Danzo? A shady tactic from his collection of blank-faced nin? What if by doing this, he fell into their greedy little paws? He didn’t even know who this nin was.

“I…my head...” they trailed off with a small helpless sound. Dismay, perplexed, so confused Shisui could taste it in the air. Kami, what Shisui would do to have his sight.

Then they said with gasping breaths, “Shisui-Nii, you... “

Shisui-Nii, there was only one person who ever called him that. 

Shisui was an only child, his parents loving but not always present in the way family should be. His father was a good man, until his later moments where he failed to remember who Shisui was and then his own reflection. His mother offered what care she could, but with the constant job of tending to his father, there was little excess love to be offered. Shisui was a prodigy, enrolling and graduating from all levels of certification well before he should have. He had many names and titles from others in the village. Shisui-kun, Shisui-chan, Shisui-bo, kohai, senpai. Only once was he oniisan which left Itachi floundering and hilariously unsettled. Never was he niisan, he didn’t have a younger brother-.

Except he did, in all ways but blood. Itachi’s bratty younger brother; the one that once threatened Shisui with a dull Kunai if he ever hurt him. The same little kid Shisui spent ages trying to make a nickname out of his stern face and pudgy cheeks, following Itachi like a baby duckling. 

(He came up with karasu-ke. Crow-Sasuke. He never told Itachi about it before he drowned.) 

This man wasn’t him, he wasn’t little Sasuke-kun. This man was older, bleeding and struggling to stand. He sounded older, after puberty. Years out of alignment. But Shisui kept thinking, ‘you were dead’.

‘It was an accident,’ they said, which meant Shisui’s spontaneous resurrection wasn’t intended. It was a consequence of some grand mistake, which felt a little hurtful. 

What happened to him? Was this the cute little Sasuke he knew? 

A part of him wondered, frantic and terrified, ‘Where are you, Itachi?’

“Prove it,” Shisui demanded sharply, wishing more than anything he had his eyes or crows or something to better understand. “Prove you- that you’re actually-.”

They breathed, the imposter of Shisui’s family. They stood, struggling onto their feet and walking with the slightest squish of shoes on vomit. They approached, and Shisui felt apprehensive. He also remembered he was completely naked, and the room was bitterly cold.

“Shisui-nii…” they repeated, much closer and using his words as a polite gesture to convey their whereabouts. Without the distance, Shisui could tell there were no lung punctures or no hiss of escaping air. 

They approached, an arm’s length away as they gently took Shisui’s hand with two tacky palms. Bloodied, hopefully. Shisui hated it when he was elbow deep in literal crap.

They breathed audibly, loud and panicked. ‘The feeling’s mutual,’ Shisui thought, as the imposter dragged Shisui’s bare hand up along his forearm and along the crux of their elbow.

Distinctly male, which was nice to confirm since Shisui was blind. Shisui let his fingers drift up the man’s bicep, across the strapped pouch for a kunai along his outer triceps and to his shoulder where he clasped him firmly.

Shisui squeezed a little too tight, enough where it would bruise but the imposter didn’t so much as whine. He exhaled a tad quickly, feeling it, but didn’t react. Shisui frowned, searching higher.

“I know this…” Shisui muttered, feeling the seams and thicker stitching alongside the corners of reinforced layered fabric. The location of the seams, the exact crease along the collarbone, and thicker plates that resisted the pressure. It was ANBU armor, but beyond that Shisui recognized this specific set but he couldn’t place it.

‘There’s no injury,’ Shisui realized as he skimmed both hands along the stranger’s chest, feeling the prominent muscles that spoke of Kenjutsu, and the dorsal hip sheath of a longer blade. Shisui thought there would be a laceration or a cut, some sort of damage to explain the imposter’s poor state. The armor had seen better days, there were stitched patches and weakened corners. No upkeep by maintenance staff or the ANBU armory. 

Shisui’s left hand drifted a tad backward, tracing a poorly hemmed edge and bare skin. He barked a surprised laugh, explaining; “what did you do to this uniform?”

The imposter shrugged, puffing a soft laugh. “Why does everyone say that?”

“You cut the back off,” Shisui stressed in disbelief. “You cut up an ANBU uniform, that’s literally made to help with being stabbed in the back.”

“Hasn’t happened yet,” they said calmly. 

The situation finally caught up to Shisui, his grip tightened again, fingers digging into the exposed skin of ‘Sasuke’s’ shoulders. Shisui said, a little flippantly, “so what did you mean when you said you resurrected me?”

They paused, struggling for a second before they flinched sharp and sudden. Almost buckling, Shisui’s grip alone kept them upright for a few seconds. They said through gritted teeth, “I... stop talking-.”

Shisui paused, offering a baffled, “I didn’t say anything…”

“Not you,” they said, twitching again with a hiss of pain. “You were resere- I know. A Jutsu of Orochimaru. I intervened and it targeted you. You need to release it.”

“What happens if I do?” Shisui asked, relaxing his sharp grip the slightest bit. At this angle, with both hands on the stranger like a looping hug around their neck, Shisui could confidently break their spine in a second. “What happens then?”

“I-,” they flinched again and said in a pained rush, “it releases your bond to the summoner. Kabuto- the nin I incapacitated.”

“Ah, that’s why it smells like puke in here,” Shisui said lightly. “Are you lying to me?”

“No,” they said fervently, “no. I swear I’m not,”

Shisui hummed, contemplating the exact course of events. He could snap this one’s neck, stumble to where this ‘’Kabuto’ was unconscious on the ground and kill him too. He still didn’t know where he was, let alone how to find his way back to Konoha. Hopefully above ground he could summon his crows, maybe contact Itachi and figure out what happened.

“Shisui…” they breathed again, and Shisui had the impression that they were looking at him desperately. Did Shisui know him? It couldn’t possibly be little Sasuke.

They leaned forward. At first, Shisui thought they fainted against him. Shisui secured his grip, feeling ANBU tactical gear press against his bare skin and chest, and a sweaty forehead press against his desperately. They shuddered, overwhelmed, and Shisui froze.

The last person to do this was Itachi, when the other had that small shy smile and his eyes closed in utter trust. No stranger would do this, especially not when they knew who Shisui was.

“...Sasuke?” Shisui asked carefully, evaluating their response. They shuddered, pressing their foreheads together harder and breathing little puffs against Shisui’s face. Desperate really, fingers clinging uncomfortably against Shisui’s ribs and hipbones in an awkward jitter.

“We burned you,” they repeated quietly, twitching slightly. “They said Nii-san did it and…”

‘If they’re an imposter,’ Shisui thought as his stomach dropped out, ‘then they’re a really damn good one.’

Shisui awkwardly patted their back, still a bit hesitant to believe them. Sasuke was too young, he wouldn’t be running around with butchered clothing without backup. Shisui asked, “Where are we?”

“Oto,” they said immediately. “Two hours from the border, in one of Orochimaru’s hideouts. I came to kill Orochimaru, but I don’t think he’s here.”

“Instead I came back from the dead,” Shisui said with the smallest huff of laughter. “Damn, this is going to be one hell of mission report…”

“We need to leave,” they said, releasing their tentative pawing at Shisui’s skin. “I... I have clothes that fit you.”

‘What a coincidence,’ Shisui thought, suspicion coming back at full force. “Weirdly prepared, aren’t you?”

“They’re yours,” they explained stiffly and a little awkwardly. “If I ruined Nii-san’s.”

Shisui wished he could blink in baffled horror at the thought. “You mean this wardrobe disaster is Itachi’s?”

The imposter shrugged, stepping backward loudly and looking down at the other nin. “I... I need to get rid of…”

“Kabuto, right,” Shisui said with one arm waving where he thought the body was. “Don’t let me stop you. Stab away.”

“He self-regenerates,” they said, dropping that horrifying bit of information like it didn’t have disastrous ramifications. They took one step to the side, paused (maybe looking at Shisui?), and said in a hissed voice and a wicked surge of chakra, “Amaterasu!”

Shisui felt the chakra erupt and the bright crack of fire on flesh. Shisui stepped backward, freezing in abrupt knowledge that he didn’t know the layout of the room. The heat tickled against his skin, incredibly evident on his upper thigh and outer arm. The chakra of it, the amount of power and effort forced into it was out of proportion for what was necessary, it burned.

Above all that, Shisui felt the confirmation sink into him with a strange emotion. He said, with a breathy high pitch whine, “...Sasuke?”

Because he couldn’t think of any alternative. He knew all active Uchiha in the police force and the bare handful in Shinobi forces. He knew every active Mangekyo, except this one.

The fire of Amaterasu couldn’t be faked. As far as Shisui knew, even transplanted Mangekyo couldn’t utilize the chakra properly.

Which left only a few increasingly impossible options. This was a supremely well-crafted Genjutsu. There was an Uchiha bastard running around pretending to be Sasuke.

...or this was Sasuke.

They shuddered, stepping closer to gently take Shisui’s wrist and guide him away from the fire. It wasn’t necessary since Shisui could feel the black fire, but still a polite act.

“Give me a second,” Sasuke said, setting something down and fumbling around. Logically it had to be a travelers pack, normal clothes to prepare for a bad mission.

Shisui still didn’t expect the clothes pressed into his hand. A tad stiff but freshly washed. Body armor and tactical plates sewn in and the stitched broken sides where Shisui fucked up months ago from ninja wire.

“This is mine,” Shisui said numbly. “Like, mine.”

“I said it was,” he said nervously, pausing a short distance away. “I took it from your closet.”

Shisui felt like this was a fever dream. He donned his clothes, struggling a little to find the laces and buckles with no sight to guide him. Sasuke kept a polite distance away, standing between him and the relentless black fire.

“I’m decent,” Shisui croaked. Sasuke took his arm again and aided with guiding him out of the room.

Periodically, Sasuke would flare his chakra in a way that felt every bit like a beacon. It shifted through him, moving fluid before fading back to normal. Sometimes Sasuke teetered to the side, struggling to balance before he stumbled into a wall and dragged Shisui with him. 

“Are you okay?” Shisui asked, catching Sasuke’s forearm tightly before the younger (was he?) collapsed.

Shisui presumed that they grimaced. Itachi always did, in similar instances. 

Sasuke grunted out a sharp quiet, “walk.” 

Shisui let go of him, thinking, ‘He grew up bratty.’

They walked until Sasuke grabbed his arm and forced him to stop. Shisui wasn’t the best sensor, but he knew his range to be better than Itachi. Any other instance where he didn’t feel like he got pummeled by the giant hammer used to make mochi. 

Two people passed by quietly, their footsteps echoing through the hallways. Once they faded, Sasuke dragged him forward and nearly tripped over nothing to smash face-first onto the ground.

“Kami, you’re heavy,” Shisui hissed between his teeth. He barely managed to catch the other, hands scrabbling on a sheath for a sword and Sasuke’s exposed shoulder blades. Sasuke batted him away weakly like a kitten, demanding they keep moving.

‘Definitely brattier,’ Shisui thought, ‘but that stubbornness is all Itachi.’

The first touch of open dry air pierced right into Shisui’s fresh and painful eye sockets. His breathing hitched, neck bowing as it stung. Sasuke ignored him, grunting and shoving both forward over crunching pinecones. Oto then.

“What’s wrong with you?” Sasuke asked sourly, ignorant of how he was swaying dramatically.

“Me?” Shisui asked a little high pitch, “I had my eyes ripped out, died, came back to life, and had to drag your heavy ass through a Sannin’s hideout!”

Sasuke clicked his tongue into a little tch, and Shisui felt the urge to strangle something. He asked, a little irritated, “are we even far enough away?”

“It’s fine,” Sasuke said and failed to elaborate further.

“But is it really?”

“Yes,” Sasuke said. Sensing Shisui’s eyeless glare, he said, “I summoned Aoda.”

“Thank you, that means absolutely nothing to me,” Shisui told him a little snappishly. The sunlight made his head ache, optic nerves screaming at him. He wasn’t exactly skilled with medical Jutsu, but he took to field medicine better than Itachi. Plus, he managed to tear out his eye in a way that didn’t hurt him too badly. The other one that had been stolen was where the pain was coming from.

“My summons is a snake, he’ll distract any patrols.”

‘Smart,’ Shisui admitted. Orochimaru used snake summons also, it was a clever distraction. 

“Right,” Shisui said, swiping one eye under his firmly closed eyelid. He didn’t feel any blood, which was strange. Even the sense of pain seemed hazy. “What was that damn Jutsu thing you said to do?”

Sasuke shifted, standing in front of Shisui according to his chakra sense. Sasuke spat onto the ground again, rubbing his hands on his pants before he said, “follow these hand signs. Rat, Ox, Monkey, Tiger, Dragon, Boar.”

Shisui waited for more, then cocked his head when no more instructions came. “That’s it?”

“Yes,” Sasuke said, his clothes shifting slightly. “Then you...you should find a tether and resist it.”

“This must be an elaborate Jutsu,” Shisui sighed, but obeyed as such. He trusted Sasuke, as loathe as he were to trust someone so quickly. He shifted his hands, forcing what little exhausted chakra he had recovered through the necessary signs. Rat, Ox, Monkey, Tiger, Dragon, Boar.

He felt the tether immediately, a disgusting link, and sap on his chakra. A parasite, clinging to him with long claws or fangs and although passive, it felt very easily like something that could turn foul.

“Oh,” Shisui said, a tad shakily. His hands froze, body twitching. The tether felt...horrible. An unnatural link, like he a simple vassal for a summoner.

“You can break it,” Sasuke told him, pausing and flinching again. “I... I heard it from…” he trailed off, twitching so hard Shisui wondered if it was a fit. Then, when Sasuke spoke it was smooth and unfazed, still his voice but different.

“Shisui,” they said, apathetic and professional. ‘Danger!’ Shisui thought and held himself still.

“Shisui,” they repeated, confirming it. “These are the seals to break the contract. Snake, Ram, Boar, Dog, Tiger.”

“How do you know that?” Shisui asked him warily.

Sasuke said almost indifferently, “A source told me. Break the contract, you will remain in full control of your body.”

Shisui hesitated, but the idea of a contract binding him was near overwhelming to think about. Shisui treasured autonomy and free will above anything else, part of why he rarely ever used his Mangekyo. He loathed the idea of being forced to do something horrible unwillingly.

“Okay,” Shisui said cautiously, sliding through the hand signs with his chakra at the forefront.

It snapped immediately with a surge of uncontrolled power, washing out and away. Shisui staggered forward, stumbling to his knees and one hand as the tether tore free.

It was immediate, the subliminal leash snapping off and suddenly the world felt so bright. Shisui inhaled sharply and then choked.

He vomited twice on the ground, spewing water that continued to fill his lungs by the mouthful. He choked, collapsing and retching hard enough to fracture a rib.

“Shisui?” he heard Sasuke ask, then hands on his upper arms to prop him upright, supporting him as Shisui drowned. "What- you didn't say this happens-."

It went on, so long that Shisui’s mind felt hazy and disjointed. He couldn’t feel his fingers, his jaw cold, and water dripping from both his nose and mouth. He floundered, whining and gurgling between desperate attempts to breathe. It went on, everlasting.

‘No more,’ Shisui thought, entirely limp as water flowed from his mouth. Unproportionate to the amount a human could contain.

Sasuke, similarly, was reacting badly. Thumping heavy slams to his back and attempting to prop him with his head downwards. He repeated something, a strange one-sided conversation Shisui couldn’t follow before Shisui’s hearing flickered itself.

‘No more,’ Shisui thought and wondered if it all had been a punishment. A horrible concoction he made in the moments of his death. How ridiculous, to think it was Sasuke comforting him in blindness.

Shisui died and drowned alone, desperately begging the gods to keep Itachi safe.

Shisui woke up with a frantic inhale of breath. His heart pounded on the verge of too much, wherein ANBU it was deemed a critical event.

He coughed, spitting globs of mucus on the ground and wiping drool from the corner of his mouth. He groaned, quiet but then louder. After a pause, he decided to groan again just because he could.

A clatter to the side alerted him of another person. They grabbed his upper arm, propping him with an arm behind his shoulders.

“You’re awake,” they said and offered a cloth which Shisui took uncoordinated with one hand to wipe across his face. Shisui groaned again, feeling miserable.

“What happened?” Shisui asked, slurring it into the towel. It sounded a tad more like wr’ h’r’pp.

Sasuke tentatively patted his back, awkwardly rubbing it with jerky movements. “You released the Jutsu.”

Shisui scowled, pulling down the towel with a scowl. “You could have told me it sucked.”

“It wasn’t supposed to,” Sasuke said. He patted Shisui awkwardly again before pulling aside and fumbling with something else. “You...died.”

“I am dead,” Shisui muttered sourly, rubbing his face again. He groaned, feeling miserable and weirdly cold.

Sasuke shuffled, pulling something out of his bag before coming back. He offered a canteen which Shisui accepted and sipped from it quietly.

“One of your crows came,” Sasuke said. Shisui lifted his head and looked in the vague direction he presumed Sasuke to be.

Sasuke shifted, uncomfortably. Shisui asked him a little bitterly, “how do you know it’s mine?”

“It has a Mangekyo.”

Shisui jerked upright, grunting and nearly falling on his back. “It has a what?”

“A Sharingan,” Sasuke said. He paused then said a little quieter. “You were unconscious for three days. The crow arrived then.”

“Three days?” Shisui asked, trying his best to stare incredulously with no eye sockets. He offered one arm, using his free hand to scrub his face again.

He heard the soft scrambling of tiny claws and the gentle whisper of wings. The weight of a crow was one he remembered, settling just above his wrist along the metal guards both he and Itachi had installed. The bird shifted its weight, offering a throaty c-aww.

“That’s the one with an eye,” Sasuke explained, unwrapping something considering the crinkle of wrappers. “It’s a Mangekyo, a... four-point. Itachi has a three-point.”

Shisui wanted to correct him, but something about the thought left him reeling. He knew this crow, although most presumed each crow were identical, there were primary birds and those that came to him more than others.

This one, he knew, was his primary summon. The bird answered his call whenever he asked, and Itachi knew that.

“Well,” Shisui said, stroking the bird’s breast feathers with one trembling hand. “Aren’t you a clever bird?”

It said, c-aww.

“Did you put that eye there?” Sasuke asked, staying a respectful distance away. 

‘Oh, he wouldn’t know.’ Shisui thought. The information regarding his eyes wasn’t popular knowledge, let alone the location. The bird shifted its weight, flaring its wings to remain balanced. 

“Eh,” Shisui didn’t confirm, hands trailing up the birds’ neck where it politely ducked its head to where one eye was much larger. The entire skull warped around it in a strange disfiguration, bone broken, and forehead feathers strange.

“Oh, you poor thing,” Shisui shushed the bird. It pressed into his fingers, clicking its beak affectionately. “Yeah, I’ll help you out.”

Sasuke shifted a little, the bird twitched to stare at him (Shisui assumed). Sasuke asked a little quietly, “are you going to take it back?”

“Yeah, it’s hurting him,” Shisui explained with another soothing touch. “I took my eye out myself, and I made sure not to mess with the nerves too much. Should be an easy patch, most field medics are able to do it.”

“Tch,” the younger said. “My old sensei has a transplanted Sharingan.”

“Hatake?” Shisui asked a little curiously. He barked a quiet noise, “damn, how are you sane? Hatake that old bastard, he owes me so much money. How’s he doing?”

“He reads porn in public.”

“You don’t?” Shisui asked, which evidently was not a good question to ask.

The crow was very polite about having the eye removed, patient and gentle as Sasuke (the one with working eyes) gently removed it with the use of a senbon and a scalpel from the field medicine kit. Shisui took the eye (slightly feathered), washed it off, and shoved it as delicately as he could back into the socket.

“It can’t be that easy,” Sasuke doubted.

Shisui snorted, taking bandages and tape to hold the eye in place. “Sure it is. If you break your eye socket, your eye will fall right out.”

“You didn’t break your eye socket.”

“I broke that before I died. I’m keeping it in place until the bones fuse enough,” Shisui grunted, wincing slightly before taping it down more securely but snagging some hair along his temple.

The crow made a mumbling noise, hissing and coughing a barking noise. Shisui mourned the fact he still couldn’t understand implicitly what his summon meant. They didn’t so much as...speak, as they did show him what they wanted or what they knew. Crows were marvelous creatures, but ones he relied almost exclusively on the Sharingan for.

“Itachi has crows,” Sasuke said, breaking the quiet between them. Shisui presumed the other had made camp during Shisui’s three-day-sleep, although their exact whereabouts were still unknown.

“Yeah,” Shisui agreed, rolling his shoulders. “We got them together. They aren’t a traditional contract.”

“They don’t speak,” Sasuke said simply.

“That’s...right,” Shisui agreed slowly. He asked, a tad hesitant, “how do you know that?”

“You told me. When I was younger.”

‘Oh, I guess I did.’ Shisui thought, feeling still incredibly off-kilter.

He could feel the sun setting and night pulling itself up again. He felt his crow settle, first on his arm before fluttering off clumsily to perch in a tree. Shisui’s face hurt, his transplanted (recovered?) eye itching like all healing wounds liked to do. 

He was lucky that the wound somehow was still fresh. Although he died, apparently his corpse shrugged off the bloating and decomposition and instead reverted to the state he was in when he died. His optic nerve hadn’t time to so much as scab over when it was patched back together, chakra rushing the connection to make it functional but in no way neat. His poor field medic (if they were still alive) would cry at the mess he made.

Sasuke offered one of the many chakra pills and not the lower quality ones from the shinobi storehouse. These ones were dangerously potent, enough for Shisui to vibrate excessively and sweat uncontrollably. It made his armpits itch and prickle; overall, he felt dearly in need of a shower.

He forced his chakra to metabolize and repair the bone of his eye socket faster than it should. Once he got back to Konoha, he could deal with a medic’s angry glare and break it again. Maybe shave down the annoying little bump just below his eyebrow. It didn’t matter to him, he had been called pretty-boy far too often and normally his scars healed invisibly. 

On the second day of camp, when Shisui bartered the idea of easting yet another chakra pill or maintaining any form of hygiene, Sasuke broached the topic of returning south. 

“I’m fine with that,” Shisui said, drumming his fingers along his trouser leg. They too desperately needed washing. “Give me a second, I can unwrap my eye.”

“It’s healed?” Sasuke asked, sounding a tad baffled and amazed. “I thought transplants took weeks to heal.”

Shisui boggled at him, one of his crows c-aww’ed loudly to echo the sentiment. Shisui asked him, “who in Kami’s name told you that?”

Sasuke said something under his breath, a mumble that Shisui recognized Itachi adopting a few times he was embarrassed. Shisui snorted quietly, fishing his fingers along the bandages to better find the end of the tape. It peeled off easily from his temple, turned slick by hair grease and sweat and then ripped out a half dozen strands of hair around his head. He yelped at that, batting away one crow that landed on the top of his skull, pecking worriedly and unhelpfully at his hairline.

“No, go away,” Shisui moaned to his feathered friend. “Leave me to my misery. I’ll be ugly forever.”

The crow fluttered again, tiny claws scrabbling on the back of his neck. Its feathers slapped him sharply, a bit like a very still flap of canvas. He grunted at it, pulling aside the bandage and keeping his eye socket closed.

The other eye had some serious damage that he tried to remedy. Clotting closed the torn vessels, trying to stop the further deterioration of the nerve that had been ripped out so cruelly by Danzo.

The eyelid would collapse inwards he knew, eventually filling the concave hollow unless he found a glass prosthetic or something else to fix that problem. But that was an issue for later.

Shisui pressed around his cheekbone, feeling the crack and where it still flared tender. Sasuke, from a polite distance, informed him that he had an advanced black eye.

“I figured I would,” Shisui dismissed, it wasn’t unexpected. Slowly, he fluttered open his eye.

In Shisui’s short week of blindness, he realized the world was all about sounds, the taste, and the gentle heat from air. He had been eerily aware of the frigid kiss of dew and the nighttime temperature drop. He felt the breeze on his skin more warmly and let his hands explore the overhanging branches of the hemlock trees. The collection of hues from the grass and brambles and pine needles had been lost, but he recognized their smell and the low sugary treat of sap and rosin weeping from woodpecker holes. Shisui knew the flowers of Konoha by their scents alone, particularly from one shy Yamanaka who brought him fresh buds every other day. He learned the flower’s names between shameless complements and how crushing their petals, leaves, or stem released a different fragrance. Shisui knew each bird species and knew each of his crows by their song alone.

When he opened his eye, shadows of light and dark were all that Shisui could first detect. He knew the proximity to their fire and the tree line from a careful journey, but distinct details did not yet register. His crow plucked against his hair, preening away bits of bark and fallen leaves while Shisui’s vision warped twice, then bled improper color and vibrancy with the ferocity of the Kyuubi.

Shisui blinked quickly, the colors spiraling and settling in a more beautiful picture. Shisui thought that the colors of the redwood trees were more beautiful after Susanoo polished the forest with his water, giving new life and the soft smell of loamy earth and petrichor.

This, Shisui decided, was much better. He opened his eyes and there it was, and everything was so beautifully real. He couldn’t process his thoughts at first- the blue shade of the sky, the yellowy-gold flowers between the grass, the clay soft texture of tree bark. 

Shisui giggled, a high pitch noise that one of his crows curiously replicated to a much more demonic effect. Shisui blinked again, resisting the urge to rub his newly recovered eye to remove the weird sensation of gravel under his eyelid.

“Is it fixed?” Sasuke asked him from his right, and Shisui turned to look at him.

“Oh,” Shisui breathed.

He thought that Sasuke first was an imposter, and despite proof upon evidence provided to him, a portion of his mind still doubted. The story felt too impossible, too ridiculous and unparalleled by real-life experience for Shisui to believe.

Now, with Sasuke kneeling in a somewhat courteous position, Shisui couldn’t consider the man not to be Sasuke. He had the same sharp jawline, inherited from his mother. The same dark eyes politely averted into the forest. His hands were ladylike and thin on his thigh, nearly interwoven in a well-mannered innocuous expression. 

“Oh you’re kidding me,” Shisui blurted in disbelief. “You’re doing that osuberakashi?”

Sasuke’s eyebrows scrunched and his lower lip shifted into an almost pout. He asked, quietly confused, “osuberakashi?”

“The noblewomen thing!” Shisui said, waving one arm in further disbelief. “You’re telling me this was an accident?”

Sasuke, a complete idiot, blinked owlishly.

Shisui wanted to groan, but also found the situation unfairly funny. “Your hair. It’s so long. But all of it, it’s called osuberakashi- it’s a hairstyle for noblewomen, like the daimyo’s wife?”

“Oh,” Sasuke said, sounding every bit like his idiot brother. He pulled the tail of his hair over his shoulder, pulling his fingers through the wispy tails unconsciously. His eyebrows furrowed again, looking deep in thought. He said, a little unsure, “Nii-san has long hair?”

“I know,” Shisui said, trying not to laugh. “I’ve told him, and he smacked me.”

Sasuke grunted, his eyes staring off into the forest again blankly.

They packed up camp smoothly, with the exception to Shisui running into a tree due to his sudden limitation in his visual field. The lack of an entire side was making a mess of his depth perception, making him lean too far to one side to compensate. Sasuke said nothing about it, preferring to ignore him rather than address him with the quiet childish nostalgia burning in his eyes.

“So,” Shisui said once they began walking (Shisui wasn’t going to risk running with how often he slammed his hip into things), “are you in ANBU?”

“Tch,” Sasuke said with a blank face. “No.”

“No?” Shisui parroted, one crow C-aww’ing above them about something of interest. “How did you get the uniform?”

“It’s my brother’s,” Sasuke explained. They approached what had interested the crow, apparently a very shiny mushroom that Shisui plucked and offered to the bird. It flapped off happily, only for two other crows to investigate and start a miniature battle over a fungus. 

“I’m not trying to start anything here,” Shisui disclaimed before he rested one spread palm on the entire exposed back of Sasuke’s torso. “But you’ve got a little wardrobe malfunction here.”

Sasuke rumbled, swatting him away. Shisui said, a little gleefully, “it’s alright Sasuke-bo, it happens to everyone.”

Sasuke, who clearly remembered the hideous affectionate nickname, glared at him with two bright red Sharingan. “It isn’t a malfunction.”

“I remember once when a horrible malfunction happened on my squad,” Shisui sighed dramatically, picking up a twig to toss upward for a more doglike crow, waiting to play. “They were so ashamed, they had a full belly button exposed. Absolutely indecent.”

“You’re worse than Kakashi,” Sasuke sulked. The crows, previously fighting over a mushroom, lost their grip and dropped it directly on Sasuke’s head.

Naruto was, in Kakashi’s perspective, one of the strangest people he had ever met.

That said something because Kakashi tended to meet a wild assortment of people. He met assassins, hunter-nin, medics with a temper, once even a shinobi who specialized with the usage of snail summons that they themselves turned into a snail.

Kakashi understood people- on a basic principle, humans were simple. They desired and craved power or authority and tended to act in ways to obtain it under any circumstances. Humans were greedy vengeful things, and Kakashi’s experiences reflected that.

Naruto, of course, proceeded to defy his every expectation or prediction in the boldest loudest way possible.

This also extended to the size of his stomach, capable of slurping down a freakishly unproportionable amount of ramen. Naruto of course found out Ichiraku decided to change specialty, circumvented the problem and of course managed to basically order ramen anyways.

“Isn’t it basically ramen already?” Kakashi asked, not comprehending why Naruto was looking like he had been stabbed.

“No, it’s different,” Tenzo said, strangely passionate about the difference of noodles. “As with soba noodles, you dip tsukemen noodles in the sauce before you eat them.”

Kakashi, very tired, asked, “it’s the same thing in the end, right?”

Tenzo huffed, lifting his face offended. He told Kakashi a little sharply, “The concept is different.”

Kakashi felt like he had been stabbed. Betrayed by his kohai, for noodles.

“Yes yes!” Naruto said, looking close to crying. “It’s different, so, can I have tsukemen?”

Kakashi watched, absolutely fascinated as Naruto circumvented the system of classic culinary decisions. Ordering the bare ingredients of ramen before combining them entirely, much to Tenzo’s horror.

“You can’t do that!” Ayame, Ichiraku’s chef cried out in horror.

“Ayame…” Naruto said, deathly serious, “you forget...isn’t it more important for a customer to be satisfied?”

‘Huh,’ Kakashi thought, eating his noodles like they were intended with no fuss at all. ‘Maybe Naruto did mature some.’

His thought changed into grudging awe as Naruto proceeded to eat four bowls. Naruto, now lethargic and lazy from excessive food intake, relaxed contently on his stool. Just as both Kakashi and Tenzo intended.

“Now then,” Kakashi sighed, playing with the offered chopsticks on the countertop. “Naruto, there are a few things I want to explain to you.”

“Eh?” Naruto asked, looking at him like a cat caught in his pack’s sights. “More complicated explanations? No! Kakashi-Sensei I just ate!”

“You’ll like it,” Kakashi promised, and slid the bill subtly towards Tenzo.

When they arrived on the training ground- Kakashi’s officially preferred one (now reserved since any Genin stumbling in could result in accidental casualties), he settled Naruto the best he could. 

“This is what I wanted to show you,” Kakashi said, bracing his right wrist to prevent any accidental fracture at the joint. He hadn't practiced it in... years, not since Jiraiya visited and wanted to know any advice on differential techniques. Kakashi had adapted it to better fit his needs, but the fundamental beginning wasn’t difficult to forget.

Especially since he had a wonderful sensei to teach it to him, over the course of months while his two Genin teammates were learning the basics. It had been a long laborious task, filled with meditation and occasional chakra explosions. Back then, he didn’t have a Sharingan, so he didn't run the risk of dangerous chakra exhaustion.

‘Minato-Sensei was much more patient than I am,’ Kakashi thought fondly. 

He gathered chakra in his hand, shifting it through old movements that returned to him quite easily. Naruto of course gaped, his eyes widening and expression somewhere between shock and outrage.

“That’s…” he trailed off, overcome as chakra swirled and resonated with its trademark glow. “Kakashi-Sensei...you can do the Rasengan?”

‘It took longer for me than it took you,’ Kakashi remembered. He hummed a flat confirmation, Tenzo smirked a little at Naruto’s outrage. 

“That’s not fair!” Naruto complained. “You’re easily using the Rasengan even though it’s my secret technique! Sensei! That’s not fair!”

Naruto huffed, stomping his feet and scowling. “And- and you made me go with Pervy-sage! He was horrible trying to teach me! You could have- have-...”

“We’re just getting to the main issue,” Kakashi said, ignoring Naruto’s subsequent complaints.

Naruto wilted, emotionally distressed as anger and frustration sapped out of him. 

‘Oh boy,’ Kakashi thought. Sometimes, he missed Sasuke’s moods. At least they deviated only from weird apathy to occasional compulsions for arson. Naruto was a wheel of emotions, shifting from anger to sadness to hunger like a Pakkun chasing his tail.

“...All I can do is spin it around into shape with a clone…” Naruto said, heartbroken. “This is...this is hopeless.”

Kakashi sighed and Tenzo looked at him awkwardly. Naruto muttered a bit, flapping his arms and wandering off with snaps of chakra. Kakashi looked at Tenzo, recognizing his indecisiveness and ambient confusion and suggested, “we’ll wait until he calms down. He’ll run around for a bit still.”

Naruto struggled, grunting and flailing a bit. Eventually, he wound down into a Naruto slump.

“I didn’t show you the Rasengan to gloat,” Kakashi stressed, although Naruto growled angrily. “The Rasengan is only a change in chakra form taken to the extreme, right?”

“A change in chakra form?” Naruto asked, blinking a little dumbly. “Like...taking chakra and... forming...it?”

‘Oh boy,’ Kakashi thought. “Yes, Naruto. You take chakra, and then form it.”

“Yes!” Naruto said, beaming widely. Finally, they were getting somewhere.

“If you make a change to chakra form, and then add a Jutsu with the change in chakra nature, you can create a powerful Jutsu. For example…”

Kakashi flashed through signs ingrained in him, conjuring a bright ball and chirping birds. He held Chidori a safe distance away from Naruto’s face, although the teen was leaning closer and threatening the integrity of his nose via electrocution.

Naruto hummed, squinting before accusing, “you’re bragging more, aren’t you?”

Kakashi wilted, Tenzo exhaled so quickly it was near comic.

“Listen up,” Tenzo said in a near bark. “When you take chakra and add in a change in chakra form, you adjust its size and range. Rasengan is just that, you’re adjusting your expression but it’s still simply chakra.”

Naruto frowned, looking indecisive and a little self-conscious. Kakashi recognized that expression, all three of his students had serious issues with self-worth and their personal abilities. Naruto’s greatest insecurity was his intelligence or rather occasions where he believed he was failing in understanding a simple concept.

“It’s a very complex technique,” Kakashi interjected, disarming the potential bomb that was Naruto’s rapid mood swings. “There are hardly any shinobi who can use both a change in chakra form and a change in chakra nature.”

Naruto’s frustration shifted, changing into contemplation and introspection. Crisis averted. He huffed a little, not truly upset anymore but playing the part well. He muttered under his breath, “you’re still bragging.”

“You’ve already managed to obtain a change in chakra nature in your training,” Tenzo explained with one hand gesturing to Naruto. “And you can manage the Rasengan, one of the most versatile and strongest changes in form.”

Naruto’s head shot up, eyes widening as the implications struck him. “I can do both?”

“Pretty much,” Kakashi admitted. “I didn’t oversee your training personally for either because I never...struggled with developing either a change in form or nature.”

“Now you are definitely bragging.”

“Only since you managed both consistently, did I tell Kakashi-Sensei about it.”

“Eh?” Naruto said, looking at Kakashi with an obvious pout. “You mean you weren’t watching me? Aww! Sensei! I looked so cool!”

Kakashi couldn’t very easily explain that he had been sneaking around behind the village’s back to help Shikamaru Nara take care of Itachi Uchiha, currently a wanted nin and his missing brother. Kakashi shrugged and said nothing, which Naruto accepted with a huff.

“Aww man, it’s going to be so easy to make a new Jutsu!” Naruto said, enthusiasm overwhelmed him once again.

“It’s not so easy,” Kakashi said. “I wasn’t capable of it.”

Naruto froze. Staring in open surprise and something a little like muted shock. Kakashi lifted his arm, bracing his wrist and shifted his chakra. Rasengan swirled into his palm gently, a slow hissing of energy that tickled along his wrist warmly. He looked at it, biting back the nostalgia that wanted to reveal itself.

“It would take a phenomenal amount of control to transform chakra nature while maintaining this form,” he said. Rasengan swirled, contained and simmered slowly with just enough power to remain visible. None of the dangerous force or power that could injure any of them if it reacted to a sudden surge. “Chidori is a change in chakra nature, but it is unstable and has a severe flaw. Maintaining a chakra nature change for lightning is immensely difficult, and subsequent chakra alterations destabilize it and harm the user.”

Tenzo patiently elaborated on it. “Your Sensei, when using Chidori, can’t use chakra in any other way when striking. He can’t climb trees, walk on water, or move away from counterattacks. He avoids this problem by being as fast as possible, which is still very dangerous.”

Naruto looked at the Rasengan with wide eyes, comprehending the risk and threat to using what he once believed was an unstoppable Jutsu. “Sensei...Chidori is dangerous?”

“It is,” Kakashi confirmed. “It can only be used by those with a Sharingan, it’s the only way to move fast enough without endangering the user.”

Naruto drew solemn, face shifting with his thoughts. He asked, timid but honest, “is that why you taught Sasuke during the Chunin Exams?”

Kakashi felt something twist. He knew that his two students believed he had tossed them aside in favor of Sasuke during the exams. “Yes, but also the threat was much greater.”

“Because Gaara is a Jinchuriki,” Naruto confirmed with a nod. The implied, he would have killed him was well understood.

“How did you learn the Rasengan?” Naruto asked him, entirely out of left field. Tenzo shifted ever so slightly, recognizing it as territory even he never dared to walk. 

Kakashi thought, ‘I’ve been grieving a long time, haven’t I?’

He said, without any of the playful humor he often used to distract from the topic; “my Sensei created the Rasengan.”

Naruto’s eyes widened. He hadn’t anticipated any form of outright honesty and took advantage of it with considerable respect. “Your Sensei must have been pretty cool.”

Kakashi smiled slightly, which nearly murdered Tenzo on sight. Kakashi said, appreciative; “He was.”

Maybe it was seeing both Itachi and Sasuke together- but something that had once been a firm rule in Kakashi’s mind now felt cruel. He knew why, of course, but the order felt disgusting now with the knowledge of what else that Third Hokage had done when he wore the hat. 

Mindless of Tenzo and how he would react, Kakashi said, “you remind me a lot of him.”

Naruto’s expression shifted and Tenzo physically shifted as if horrified. Kakashi carried on, unaffected by his two guests. “He was the Fourth Hokage. He took the change in chakra form to the highest level known, and likely possible. That’s the Rasengan. A change in chakra form alone is an A rank Jutsu but adding chakra nature transformation is far beyond that. Maybe a S-rank difficulty level, or even higher.”

Naruto gawked struggling to process the entire bucket of information Kakashi threw at him. The blonde said, struggling to process it all, “you...you’re the student of the Fourth Hokage?”

‘Of course, that’s what you’d focus on, Naruto.’

Naruto looked very much like he needed to sit down. Kakashi said, “I don’t know how to teach you beyond this point, Naruto. I don’t know if it’s possible to combine both a change in form and a change in nature. Do you...Do you know why I’m telling you this, Naruto?”

Naruto, overwhelmed to the point of anxious stress and sweat forming, shook his head silently.

Kakashi smiled, because Naruto was an anomaly amongst nin and what Kakashi accepted as impossible never applied to his student. “I think you can surpass him.”

Naruto then sat down. He collapsed to the grass and stared at his hands entirely without words, looking anxious to the point of being sick. Kakashi gracefully followed him, opting to squat instead of sprawl.

“You think I…” Naruto trailed off, almost trembling really. He looked at Kakashi with wide nervous eyes. “You think that I could do it?”

‘There’s that pesky self-worth issue,’ Kakashi thought. He reassured Naruto, “I do.”

“Would…” Naruto looked down, hiding his face and curling his hands into fists. He looked up, even more nervous. “Wouldn’t he be mad? The Fourth Hokage? That I- I took his Jutsu and...and just-...”

“On the contrary,” Kakashi said. “In fact, I think Minato-Sensei would be honored.”

Naruto stared at him, floundering. Kakashi often made up excuses, lied about small things that had no significance in the world. He didn’t lie about things like this.

Kakashi stood and walked away, letting Naruto process. Tenzo immediately came to his side, looking a bit stressed and alarmed. “Kakashi! You can’t…”

“I think it’s time to start wondering why we aren’t allowed to,” Kakashi said instead, listening keenly to the sound of Naruto rising from the grass. Tenzo gulped, paling harder. Kakashi ignored it, shifting topics swiftly and obviously. “You said you’re free today?”

“Aye,” Tenzo said, “but you can’t think he’d want to begin today-.”

Naruto, just as Kakashi thought, shouted immediately for them to come back.

Training stretched long into the afternoon, and then some. The basic shifting of Rasengan quickly transformed into absolute misery. Tenzo stressed, struggling to maintain his chakra in preparation of restraining instances where Naruto’s chakra drain sapped too much and left him volatile from the Kyuubi’s influence.

Again, it destabilized, and Naruto found himself heaving for breath. Sweat ran from his face and matted the roots of his hair. Even from so far away, Kakashi could smell the stink of his body odor. 

Clouds drifted overhead, blocking the sky and leaving everything a dreary monotone. Naruto dropped, sprawling to stare upwards miserably. He felt terrible, wretched and sore. His body didn’t tingle with what he heard chakra exhaustion felt like, but his head throbbed dully from such extended focus.

Beyond all that, Naruto felt his stomach eat at his chest with the hungry appetite of guilt. He looked at the sky, feeling the light sprinkle that thickened to fat drops of water. Naruto thought, ‘I’m pathetic.’

Kakashi-Sensei had such high hopes for him, truly thinking he could surpass his sensei, and Naruto was failing to do anything. He lay on the ground, limbs spread and jaw tight and struggled not to cry.

“What should we do?” Tenzo asked quietly, looking to his sensei for guidance. “Do we stop?”

Kakashi said quietly, “If that’s what he wants to do.”

It rained heavy, splashing on the ground and turning it to mud. It rattled in Naruto’s head, echoing off the leaves and trees and finally, the rain thickened to where even a Sharingan couldn’t decipher him crying.

‘I couldn’t stop Sasuke from leaving,’ Naruto thought. He stared at the sky blankly and wondered, ‘is there a point to all of this?’

He was a horrible ninja, and an even worse friend. He had run off with Pervy-Sage and left Sakura all alone. He wasn’t around when people needed him, and now he was letting them down once again. If he had been better, then he could have helped Gaara and maybe the old woman would still be alive.

And maybe he would have managed to bring Sasuke home again.

Tenzo bit his lip, lowering his hand. He ducked under the assault from the sky, trying to avoid it whereas Kakashi stood still. Tenzo said, “he shouldn’t be out there. He may get sick. Should we call it?”

“I don’t know,” Kakashi said, the rain washing all color from his clothes and skin.

Naruto clenched his jaw, squeezing his eyes shut and struggled not to make a sound. Somewhere, far inside, he felt the demon-fox rumble low and shift and ask him loud and overwhelming, “so this is it?”

Naruto opened his eyes and faced the creature, standing behind the bars of its cage and glowering with bright burning eyes. Naruto wiped his face, sniffled and shouted, “you’re only making it worse! I can’t get anything done when you- you-.”

“When I what?” the fox asked him. It bared its teeth, lunging forward at the cage with a loud echoing snap. “I’m doing nothing but watching you fail, again and again.”

Naruto fisted his hands in his hair and squeezed his eyes shut. He shouted, “I know! I know, okay?”

The Kyuubi rumbled a strange low nose that Naruto hadn’t heard before. Everything shook as the creature readjusted itself, crossing its paws over one another with claws peeking out like katanas. It said, “your crying is keeping me awake.”

Naruto sniffled, glaring and said, “I didn’t ask you for your opinion!”

“I don’t see why you’re so upset,” it said, turning its head and snorting hot air to the side. One eye watched Naruto, thin pupil piercing straight through him. “Humans are made to fail.”

“I don’t want to fail!” Naruto shouted, and slumped once more into the disgusting water. He let it stain his clothes and wash over his knees. He said, defeated, “all I do is mess up. I just...I keep messing up and letting everyone down.”

The Kyuubi watched him, lowering its massive head on its paws as a dog would do. It’s muzzle stretched around its long gleaming fangs, and it said with strange attention, “who are you letting down now?”

Naruto looked at it, bewildered by its unnatural investment. He explained, “well, Kakashi-Sensei said that I could surpass his Sensei, but I keep messing up over and over…”

“Kakashi,” the Kyuubi repeated, the name sounding strange and foreign in the beast's mouth. Naruto didn’t think he ever heard the Kyuubi say a person’s name before. “The yaken.”

Naruto jolted to his feet, offended on behalf of his sensei. “No! You shut your furry mouth! Kakashi-Sensei is no yaken! He’s not some- some stray dog!”

“Ownerless dog,” the Kyuubi corrected contently. It closed its eyes, uncaring of Naruto’s anger. “Wandering without a master to leash it.”

Naruto’s eyes widened, realizing the implication of the demon fox’s words. “You...you knew the Fourth Hokage?”

The creature opened its eyes in an instant, staring straight at Naruto with avid focus. Naruto took a step back, overwhelmed momentarily by the true extent of the beast. It looked at him, lifting its head slowly with the gentle swish of fur against whiskers. It looked down on him with its impossibly long neck, distorted further by the level of its focus and it said, “the Yondaime, Minato Namikaze.”

“You...you did know him,” Naruto marveled. “And not like from a statue, right? You knew the guy in person, dattebayo!”

The Kyuubi bared its teeth and snarled so abruptly Naruto froze in his tracks. The beast considered him and cocked its head, one ear flapping subtly. “The Ichibi screamed and is now silent.”

“The...Ichibi?” Naruto parroted, scrambling to understand the shift to a different topic. “You mean...Gaara’s…?”

“The Gobi screamed, and is now silent,” the fox said. Its head distorted, elongating from its normal shape into one much more monstrous. It changed from its standard form to something more wild- it’s arms shortening and shifting into a canine stance and its tails flaring into what Naruto would associate with a true fox. Somehow, the sight made Naruto freeze. The Kyuubi shifted, standing tall and true to its name and outright powerful as its fur rippled with charka itself. “The Yonbi screamed and is now silent.”

“I- I don’t know anything,” Naruto said, lifting both arms to show his honesty.  “I don’t know anything about anyone else! I only know Gaara but-.”

“What did you humans do?” the fox demanded of him, pressing its muzzle as far between the bars as it could, snapping so close Naruto could feel the air move against his face. “What have you done?”

Naruto realized a horrible thing. He said, barely more than a whisper, “you don’t know about the Akatsuki…”

The beast growled and Naruto swallowed. He spoke louder, almost frantic, “uh...there’s a group out there that is uh...looking for chakra beasts? They went after Gaara! We got there in time, but they had this weird statue and Gaara died- but he came back!”

Kyuubi’s eyes narrowed and it rumbled low. Naruto clarified further, his heart sinking, “I don’t know what happened to the One-tails…”

“You are useless!” the Kyuubi snapped furiously. Its tails waved back and forth, glowing bright and molten with its rage. “You are a pathetic excuse for a human! A waste of my time and abilities!”

Naruto looked at the creature and realized, “you’re scared, aren’t you?”

The Kyuubi froze, looking at him so venomously it made Naruto’s heart seize. Determined, Naruto pressed onwards. “You’re scared! Because- because you don’t know what happened to the One-Tails and-.”

“I do not care for that babbling creature,” it claimed.

“I think you do!” Naruto argued. “Because...because you’re family! Even if you don’t like them or...or if they annoy you so much you wanna punch them in their stupid face! Or, or if sometimes they make you so angry you can’t understand why but...but you love them, and you care about them.”

The Kyuubi rumbled, looking at Naruto with sharp barely restrained anger. “I do not care to know about any of them. I am the Nine-Tails, I do not have a family.”

Naruto looked at the fox, so angry and furious and he said, “that cage is pretty big and quiet, isn’t it?”

“Eh?”

Naruto smiled, a little sad expression as he stepped forward. He touched a bar, thicker than his body and wondered when the beast had been locked up. “I just mean, it’s pretty lonely in here, right?”

“Cease your pointless rambling-.”

“I used to always wonder why you were so loud and bothered me all the time,” Naruto said, looking up at the fox with a timid grin. “But I think I get it. It’s big and dark and lonely in there and being alone hurt so much I never used to understand it! But I think I get it now, and I think I can kinda see why you’re so mad and want out so much. You wanna find your family, but I can’t let you out because I need you!”

The Kyuubi snapped at him, bristling but shifting back to its prior form. Its eyes were so wide Naruto could see the whites of them. It roared, “you are a useless pathetic human! You dare keep me contained?”

“I’m sorry, Kyuubi!” Naruto shouted over the roaring, “but I’m going to make this Jutsu and when I do, I’m gonna help you find your family again!”

It screeched and thrashed, and Naruto focused past it. When he opened his eyes again, it was to a rainy sky and his two mentors standing worriedly to the side. 

Naruto leapt to his feet, determined and let loose a shout. He pressed his fingers together and roared, “shadow-clone Jutsu!”

It was not two that sprang forth, but instead an army. They spread in puffs of smoke across the clearing in numbers overwhelming. Each roared a cry of a new determination, focusing forward with a single goal. 

Again and again, failure repeated. Kyuubi intruded with new tactics, slipping through the layer of exhaustion and setting a clone once more into a feral state.

Tenzo stopped it, but each occurrence became more and more disheartening. Once, twice, three times.

When that clone settled, vanishing into smoke, Naruto settled on the mud frustrated with himself. 

“You okay?” Kakashi asked, looking Naruto over quickly for any visible injury. 

“I’m fine,” Naruto clipped out, hanging his head. Maybe the Demon-Fox was right.

“It would take anyone years to do this,” Kakashi said, respectful of Naruto’s personal space. “It may not even be possible.”

“It takes too much focus,” Naruto muttered. “Even the Rasengan is hard...but to put something else on it?”

Kakashi looked at Naruto, breathing slowly. His student normally bounced back, but now, sitting in mud and thoroughly drenched, he looked completely disheartened. 

“You’re unusually pessimistic today,” Kakashi noted, “why is that?”

Naruto pounded a fist in the mud, splattering it around. “Just...something the Kyuubi was saying.”

“The Kyuubi?” Kakashi asked, flinching back slightly. His mind reeled, taken aback. “You mean when the clones…?”

“No, before that,” Naruto huffed, flopping back into the mud entirely. It seeped through the back of his shirt and into his hair. “It’s really upset, and the worst part is I kinda get it.”

“Why is it upset?”

“It’s worried,” Naruto said, scrunching his face to try and translate what the intent had been behind the encounter. “It... I don’t think it’s been out in a long time, Sensei. And it has family, like Gaara! And I think it can tell when something bad happens, and now it's really worried.”

“The Kyuubi. Worried,” the older repeated slowly.

“Yeah,” Naruto said, exhaling loudly. “I can’t blame him! I’m worried too! I love my family and...and I want to protect them!”

Kakashi once again felt horribly guilty. Inside the walls of Konoha was the very man Naruto was so set on hunting down if only to break a fake Genjutsu and bring Sasuke home. It was all a lie, one that Kakashi hated.

“Sometimes…” Kakashi trailed off, stomach-churning. “Sometimes family...family do things to protect the ones they care about. Things that we look at and can’t understand.”

Naruto scowled, sitting upright abruptly. “That’s crazy talk, Sensei! Family protects you and it’s as easy as that!”

“What if by protecting someone, you need to hurt them first?” Kakashi asked gently.

Naruto froze, struggling with the idea. He stuttered, “I... but who would do that? How would it help?”

“Well, think of the Third Hokage,” Kakashi suggested. “He protected the village he loved by sacrificing himself.”

“Yeah but that...that’s different.”

Kakashi tilted his head and said, “how is it different?”

“It just is,” Naruto argued. “He didn’t hurt the village. He...we just miss him. The old man was...nice, I guess. But nothing like you, Sensei! Or Sakura!”

Kakashi hummed, tapping his chin. “I think I see the problem. You think that family can’t hurt us personally.”

“Yeah!”

“My father killed himself to protect me,” Kakashi said.

Naruto froze, looking taken aback and similarly horrified. He said, stammering, “I- I- I’m sorry I didn’t…”

“It’s alright, I don’t talk about it,” Kakashi said seriously. Naruto gulped, looking sad but in no way pitying. 

Naruto looked down at his hands and said, “I don’t understand why someone you love would do such a horrible thing.”

“It took me a long time to understand why also,” Kakashi said quietly. “I still wonder, but it doesn’t mean I have to accept it. Sometimes people have to make a horrible choice or do a terrible thing that hurts the ones we care about to protect them.”

Naruto fumbled with his hands. “That’s...that’s awful.”

“I know, but sometimes that’s what happens,” Kakashi said. “There was a rule to protect you also, Naruto. We weren’t allowed to come close to you when you were younger, in fear that you’d learn about the Kyuubi.”

“That’s stupid! Who made that a rule?”

“The Third Hokage.”

And oh, how Kakashi hated how his student folded in on himself, looking miserable and distressed. He bit his lip, hands curling into the mud and he asked with a watery voice, “but...but why?”

Naruto clutched his head and curled in on himself, accepting Kakashi’s awkward hand on his back openly. He cried very quietly, overwhelmed and emotional after a very long and painful day.

“There was another rule,” Kakashi said quietly, mindful of Tenzo on the periphery of the clearing and politely not watching them. “We aren’t allowed to tell you about your parents.”

“My parents?” Naruto asked, watery eyed and a little snotty. He wiped it messily, leaning against Kakashi’s side a bit too heavy. “You...you know who they are?”

“They died when you were born, Naruto. I’m so sorry.”

Naruto cried horribly tears, so messy they screwed his face upwards and left tracks down the side of Kakashi’s vest. Kakashi patted his back, unsure what else to do while Naruto simply burrowed into any form of contact, he could get. After a few minutes of ugly sobbing, Naruto asked him, slurred and hoarse, “why? Why did they die? Kakashi-Sensei why did they leave me-...?”

“To protect you,” Kakashi said earnestly, holding Naruto’s other shoulder with his hand to make sure the blonde understood. “Naruto, they gave their life protecting you. They loved you so much.”

Naruto pitched forward and sobbed loudly against Kakashi’s chest. The man awkwardly wrapped his arms around him, skin prickling uncomfortably from the contact; he tucked Naruto’s head under his chin and settled down for however long Naruto needed him.

The Kyuubi came to him two days later when its rage simmered low enough to speak.

Normally, the creature dragged Naruto away when he was tired or focusing his chakra. Rarely did it intrude on his dreams like Naruto knew it could- Gaara was a prime example.

Naruto felt surprised when he stood in water, looking around perplexed. He hadn’t done anything to piss off the animal, well, unless it could feel the amount of mochi he ate earlier…

“Naruto,” the beast said mockingly, watching him from behind the bars. It looked at him and asked in a deceptively smooth growl, “why do you bother trying? You won’t bring your friend back.”

Naruto ignored it and crossed his arms. He took a deep breath and let it out in a puff. Confidently, he said, “it’s okay, Kyuubi. I know you were getting lonely! You just wanted someone to talk to, huh?”

The fox flinched back immediately. It slammed one paw down angrily, seething. “I do not want to talk to you!”

“No, I guess not,” Naruto agreed. “But! I’ve decided!”

“More stupidity?” The Kyuubi mocked viciously “Who will you next let down?”

“I’m going to help you find your family!” he shouted, pointing up at the fox with a wide grin. “There’s gotta be others, like Gaara right? And you can talk to them through me! Or uh...hmm, I didn’t think that far…”

“What?” the Kyuubi gaped. It tossed its head back and laughed, cackling wildly. “You would dare defect from your precious village? Run across the globe like a lost little pup?”

Naruto held his ground. Nodding and saying, “I wanna help them anyways! If they’re like me...then they’re in danger! I wanna help your family, Kyuubi-sama!”

The Demon-fox stared, jaw sliding open the smallest amount in surprise. It said, baffled, “you are not lying.”

“Of course not!” he shouted. He ran forward, daring to pass between the cage bars to leap upon the fox’s shoulder, trying to speak eye to eye. “I wanna help you! It’s not my fault you’re being bratty about this!”

“I am not bratty!” the creature roared. It tried to snap at him, failing miserably. “You are an idiotic child!”

Naruto ignored him, tapping his chin in thought. He held out his hand, tapping fingers to keep count. “You said the Gobi...Ichibi and Yonbi. So that’s one, four, and five...hmm...what about looking for the Seven-tails?”

“The Nanabi?” Kyuubi asked in disbelief. “That loud insect? Never! Bah! Sleeping is a better use for energy.”

Naruto tapped his chin and hesitantly offered, “the Eight-Tails?”

“No,” the fox growled, it’s ears lowering slowly as it almost shivered. “I cannot stomach listening to its horrid noises.”

“Uh,” Naruto struggled, counting off which beasts he had listed. “The...Six-Tails?”

“No,” the fox said and that was that.

Naruto puffed out air, slapping his face dramatically with a groan. “Well, this isn’t gonna work! Come on you lousy fox, there’s gotta be someone! What about uh, the Two-Tails?”

The Kyuubi paused, rumbling low and said very slowly, “the Nibi.”

“Yeah! That one!” Naruto thumped his fist on the fox’s shoulder, ignoring the immediate snarl, “them! Can I uh, actually...how do you contact someone outside the Land of Fire…”

The Kyuubi snorted loud and guttural. It closed its eyes and relaxed, genuinely seeming to calm down now that there was the foundation of a plan. “The holder is not simply within a city, brat.”

“Well that makes this harder,” Naruto groaned. “I don’t even know who they are! How would I ever recognize them? I mean, I didn’t even know about Gaara at first.”

The Kyuubi breathed, saying nothing for a few moments. Naruto would have thought it had fallen asleep if not for one claw tapping the water in a gentle metronome. The ripples spread slowly, bouncing off the corridors of his mind in a soothing pattern.

“This cage cuts me off from my siblings,” Kyuubi said after a moment of pause, voice flat and uncaring. “It is impossible to reach beyond the gate.”

“Could I?” Naruto asked curiously. He didn’t know the fox could apparently contact the other chakra beasts, although the seal somehow messed it up.

“Go,” Kyuubi snarled suddenly, erupting violently and tossing Naruto off its side. “Do not bother me or I will eat you alive!”

Naruto squeaked, scrambling on the ground. As the Kyuubi’s massive teeth closed a fraction from his face, Naruto bolted upright in bed to a dark empty bedroom.

“So that was your idea,” Kakashi marveled, watching a trio of Naruto scramble around the beginnings of a new Jutsu. “You formed the Rasengan by using a clone to handle the change in chakra form, while you released the chakra. You just needed a third clone to handle the change in nature.”

“Right!” Naruto cackled, near manic with both the excitement and relief of his technique. “I just needed another hand!”

‘Only Naruto knows how to use Shadow Clones with enough mental independence to make it work,’ Kakashi mused. He never bothered making more than a single clone- and not out of chakra exhaustion worries. If he ever made three, the two clones always ended up murdering each other. It was much easier to manage one clone when it knew instinctively that you were the real user.

“Just what I expect from the most unpredictable person I know,” Kakashi said with a smile. He lifted one hand and said, “careful there, or I’ll end up liking you.”

“Gross!” Naruto laughed, releasing the Jutsu and dispersing the clones. Even then, Naruto beamed like the sun itself glowed.

A messenger arrived where Tenzo was waiting, discussing something urgently. Kakashi glanced over, noticing how both Tenzo froze and nodded his head quietly. Naruto asked a question, but Kakashi ignored him.

Tenzo stood, looking weary and tired and walked towards the two, the messenger vanished. Tenzo flashed a collection of hand signs that Kakashi translated dreadfully. Hokage. Report. Dead. Comrade. 

“Who is it?” Kakashi asked slowly, Tenzo drawing to a still with slow movements.

“Eh?” Naruto asked, looking very alarmed. “What happened? Kakashi-Sensei?”

“Akatsuki apparently,” Tenzo said stiffly and solemnly. “There was an attack. The Twenty Platoons…”

Kakashi nodded, encouraging him to keep talking. Tenzo said quietly, “Kotetsu Hagane and Izumo Kamizuki are dead. There was an attack.”

Kakashi asked quickly, “that’s Asuma’s squad-.”

“Asuma wasn’t with them,” Tenzo said, looking unsure about the information. “He...was here actually. In Konoha.”

“What? What was he doing here?” Kakashi asked, baffled.

“I don’t know, apparently he’s been with Team Ten.”

Naruto looked down, worried, and unsure. “So? Akatsuki was close? They were in Fire?”

“Apparently,” Tenzo confirmed. “You’re often with Shikamaru, any idea why he’d draw Asuma away?”

“None,” Kakashi said, frowning. He looked unsure, glancing back at Naruto with an apologetic expression.

“Go,” Naruto nodded, “it’s okay Sensei! Honest! I have something else I want to work on.”

“You do?” Kakashi asked, looking at Tenzo who shared the sentiment.

“Ah! Nothing bad!” Naruto scrambled, scratching the back of his neck with a grimace. “I ah, actually wanted to meditate.”

They stared at him, waiting for the joke. Then, Kakashi went, huh, and walked away with a wave. Tenzo sighed, scrambling after.

“Well,” Naruto said, patting his belly with a new determined grin, “let’s get chatty, Kyuubi!”

The beast didn’t react, but that was alright. Sometimes when it slept, it didn’t know what Naruto said or did.

Naruto wasn’t the best at meditation but falling into his mindscape had become very easy. When he approached the cage, the large fox snored little kitten noises, high pitched and objectively cute. Naruto beamed at it, cupping both hands around his mouth and shouted, “Hey! Wake up you sleepy furball!”

The fox woke with a roar, scrambling to its feet angrily. Naruto waved at it, and the beast groaned and flopped over to sleep again.

“Hey! Don’t do that, I thought we were going to talk with your family.”

The animal growled at him angrily, not bothering to open its eyes. “No. Go away.”

“Nope, I’ll just keep shouting around if you do that. You said there's a way to talk outside the cage so if I should loud enough maybe that’ll work-.”

“Don’t start,” the beast rumbled angrily, finally addressing him properly. It yawned widely, large enough to eat a building. “She won’t hear you, so don’t bother screaming.”

“Her?” Naruto parroted excitedly, hopping back and forth. “A sister? Kyuubi you have a sister? Oh, that’s so cool!”

“Stop talking,” the Kyuubi snarled angrily, “and calm down!”

“I’m calm,” Naruto lied, wiggling in excitement. “So how do I meet her? What do I gotta do?”

“I hate this already,” the Kyuubi rumbled. With a huff, the creature lay back down, its claws scratching against the metal beams. Naruto flinched at the noise, making the fox grin.

“Stop rambling for a start,” the Kyuubi said angrily. “I spoke with her once before. Briefly. When the walls thinned.”

“Oh,” Naruto said, flinching at the memory. He looked away, enthusiasm sapping away immediately. “When I... got upset.”

“When you succumbed to me,” the Kyuubi rumbled with a pleased look. Naruto clenched his fist but said nothing. He didn’t want to think about it, not when they had a mission at hand.

“Fine,” the Kyuubi pouted, relaxing behind the cage. Carefully, it slipped one paw as far through as it could, claws long and encroaching Naruto’s space. “The subconscious plane can only be reached by the bijuu, but this cage prevents me.”

“So, uh…” Naruto blinked, timid to touch the sharp claw. “I just...do what exactly?”

“Idiot,” it rumbled annoyed. “I will impose on your mind and push you there.”

Naruto flinched back, squawking. “Like- like possession? You’re gonna wear me?”

“No you idiot!” the Kyuubi looked like it would eat him if given the chance. “Just do it!”

“How do I know you’re not gonna try and get out?” Naruto asked suspiciously. “Can you do that?”

“You are the dumbest host I have ever had,” Kyuubi snarled. “Think of it like your simple Genjutsu.”

“Oh! Why didn’t you say that at the start?”

The chakra monster said nothing, clamping its jaws shut with a force that could break rock. With a slow breath, it said, “do it.”

Naruto touched the claw, wrinkling his nose at the texture. It didn’t feel like a claw on a dog; there was a smooth polished feel to it, like porcelain. It thrummed warmly, but not so hot it burned his hand.

“Okay, so uh…” Naruto trailed off, not sure what to do now that he was holding hands with a giant fox. “I just...uh…”

“Meditate, you pathetic rat of a human,” the Kyuubi insulted. Naruto settled awkwardly in the water and tried.

It wasn’t easy, the constant dripping of the leaking pipes made Naruto squirm and he could feel the fox’s eyes stabbing into him. The longer it went on, the more they equally became irritated.

“Okay, this isn’t working,” he said.

“You aren’t trying,” the fox countered. “You’ve barely attempted to breach the surface.”

“How do I even do that!” Naruto complained, splashing around. “I don’t know the beginning steps! You just told me to do it, but I don’t know how!”

The fox glared at him, and Naruto wilted. “I’m sorry, I really am. I wanna help your sister, especially if the Akatsuki is going to hurt her. I... I know that sometimes you need to do hard things to help the ones you care about, and I know you don’t like me but...but maybe we could try again?”

The beast looked at him, and slowly withdrew its claw into the cage. It echoed slowly, “...to do a hard thing...to help the ones you care about…”

“I’m really sorry, Kyuubi-san,” Naruto shouted, pounding one hand to his heart. “Please let me help!”

The fox looked at him, nostrils flaring. It closed its mouth, lips covering his gums and it said, slowly. “I do this only for her. Not you, brat.”

Naruto looked at him, eyes widening as the animal settled on its side, paws under its head and stomach exposed to the cage. It wrapped its tails around itself, leaving a clear spot at the base of its upper limbs along its belly. 

Naruto grinned so wide his eyes squinted upwards. The Kyuubi ignored him, glaring at a wall as Naruto slipped between the cage supports and carefully made his way to the large animal. He stayed clear of its tails, capable of burning bright and hot, and away from its hindlegs.

Its belly fur was softer than its shoulders. Thinner and lighter in color, Naruto pressed one hand to its chest and felt its breaths as strong and deep as winds over mountains. Each pound of its heart was a gong, pulsing strong and rhythmic.

“Oh wow,” Naruto breathed, settling awkwardly on his knees with one hand along the Kyuubi’s sternum, lifting and lowering with each smooth breath. 

“Shut up, brat,” the fox rumbled, settling its head back down. It ignored him, pretending to sleep as each heartbeat grounded Naruto and each breath lulled him into steady relaxation.

He couldn’t tell the passage of time and couldn’t hear dripping water. He kneeled until he didn’t feel his body and further, only the soothing warmth and lull below his fingers and through his body. Back and forth, inhale and exhale under the steady flutter, bu-Dum, bu-Dum.

He opened his eyes when he lost the feeling of water entirely. He looked around, sedate and lethargic at a place with no sky and only flat ground. It glowed below his feet, vast and endless.

“Hello?” Naruto asked, his words stolen from him the moment he spoke. “I’m looking for, uh...the Nibi?”

He stood, pivoting to gaze around at limbo. There was nothing there and nothing could be. He cupped his hand and shouted, “hello? Uh, Nibi? Kyuubi's sister? Hi?”

Words drifted away, leaving Naruto flopping around distressed. “Please! I need to talk to you! Kyuubi is worried!”

From somewhere and nowhere, something laughed gently and coy, “worried? The fox does not worry, little human.”

Naruto spun on his heels. He gasped, feeling incredibly small as from a flicker of reality, an enormous creature made from fire gracefully emerged. It had been not there, and then simply appeared, looking down at him curiously from the visage of flame.

“Uh, hi?” Naruto said to the giant creature, waving at her with how massive she was. “Are you the uh, Nibi?”

“I am,” she said, audibly amused. “My name is Matatabi, the Nibi. Who are you, carrier of Kurama? How did you find the Shinso Shiri?”

“The what?” Naruto floundered with a squeak. The large cat bared her teeth, tilting her head and pulling her two tails around her paws. 

“The psych plain,” she politely elaborated, flicking one ear. “Only those on equal bonds can reach this plain. Yugito sleeps, shall I awaken her?”

“Uh,” Naruto said, blinking slowly. “Yes please, uh, Matatabi-Sama?”

The cat rumbled something not a purr, her fire burning bright like fireworks. The cat settled, lowering onto her legs and folding her paws under her daintily. The fire flickered, simmering lower before the world shifted with a haze. Suddenly, a woman stood below Matatabi’s chin looking intrigued.

“Hello,” She greeted with a nod, suspicion shifting in her eyes. “Matatabi told me that someone wanted to speak with me.”

“Oh, hi,” Naruto said. He didn’t normally feel shy, but normally he didn’t face a giant cat. Not that a giant fox was better. He gathered himself, forcing as much confidence in him as he could and shouted at the two, “I’m Naruto Uzumaki! I’m from Konoha and I- Kyuubi said that I needed to warn you about the Akatsuki!”

The woman, Yugito according to Nibi, looked quite surprised before she smiled warmly. She stepped forward and politely offered her arm. She said, “a pleasure, Naruto Uzumaki.”

He took her forearm, giving a respectful awed nod as she stepped back politely. Matatabi rumbled happily, clearly content with her human.

“Kurama has listened to me then,” Matatabi said. Her tail tips curled softly, rolling like every cat he knew. 

“Eh? You warned Kyuubi?” Naruto asked, and then added, “and who is Kurama?”

“Kurama is the name of the Kyuubi, I presume he didn’t tell you?” Matatabi asked rhetorically. She scoffed, Yugito rolling her eyes which made Naruto like the two much more. 

“I warned Kurama about the Akatsuki and their ploy,” Matatabi explained patiently. “Word was brought by Kokuo, the Gobi.”

“You know?” Naruto breathed, relief rushing through him. “Then you know how dangerous the Akatsuki are!”

“We do, we actually ran into one already,” Yugito explained. “Just the one, a man who stitched himself back together. We could not find any weakness- he had different hearts, but we managed to damage one before we ran.”

“Kokuo said to run, to stall,” Matatabi explained with a large yawn. “Word was brought by the heavenly eyes. Kokuo has since been silent, but I have faith in her return by the hands of the child.”

“What?” Naruto asked. He looked at Yugito who similarly nodded. She stepped forward, taking his hand carefully and earnestly.

She explained; “Matatabi has already told the rest of the bijuu. The ones that can listen, at least. Gyuki- Eight-Tails, has heard and already has sanctuary prepared if any need it. Chomei and Fuu we ran into not long ago, they’re trying to get to Killer-B. Isobu has been quiet, but Saiken has told Utakata.”

Naruto looked between the two, his throat closing slowly. He croaked, “so...you all...know each other?”

“We are family,” Matatabi explained simply. “Some of my siblings I care not for, but I do not wish for ruin. It is our will to prevail in the oncoming chaos.”

“What oncoming chaos?” Naruto asked, looking between the two worriedly. “Is something bad going to happen?”

“There was a messenger, according to Matatabi, his words were to be trusted,” Yugito explained, looking at her bijuu fondly. “She said that her sibling explained...something of an upcoming disaster?”

“The rebirth of what death we were born,” Matatabi said cryptically. “Uzumaki, tell Kurama that the sage not yet walks.”

“What? I don’t understand!” 

“It’s okay, neither do I really,” Yugito apologized sincerely. “There is someone out there, someone that we all need to trust. We’re supposed to stall for time, try to stress the Akatsuki as much as possible before they can help us.”

“Yeah but, who are they?” Naruto asked worriedly. “Can I help them? What do I do?”

“What we all have done, wait,” Matatabi said. “Evade, hide. The Uchiha was clear-.”

“Uchiha?” Naruto asked, his heart threatening to stop. “What Uchiha? Where was he? Tell me!”

“You do not order me!” Matatabi roared, leaping to her feet with a shift of cerulean fire. Her body lengthened to that of a panther, flames near white with their heat. “I am not a thing to be challenged!”

“Yeah, but my friend is a Uchiha!” Naruto shouted back. His throat felt thick and his words were strangled wetly. “Please! You gotta help me! Where was he? Was he okay?”

“Matatabi, it’s alright,” Yugito soothed with a smile. “He’s just worried. It’s okay, we don’t know anything other than a Sharingan. It could have been anyone, but they met Kokuo in the Land of Earth. I’m sorry, but we don’t know more.”

Naruto felt his legs give out. He sat heavily, misery eating at him horribly. He cradled his head in his hands, dejectedly bemoaning, “I need to find Sasuke. He doesn’t know what’s out there- I need to bring him home.”

“The sage will guide your path, Uzumaki,” the bijuu snorted. Her tails lashed about, still irritated. “You will do as destiny says.”

“Where are you guys?” Naruto asked worriedly, “there were- Kakashi-Sensei said there was Akatsuki near Fire!”

“We’re not near Fire, don’t worry,” Yugito said with a small grin. “We gave them the slip. If they’re near Konoha, it may be the guy that jumped us, Matatabi.”

“Perhaps,” she agreed grudgingly. 

Yugito put one hand on her hip, expression turning serious. “Listen up, kid. I’ll tell you what we figured out before we ran for it. Pay attention, I don’t know when we’ll be safe enough to talk on this plain. Matatabi can, but I may need to be awake.”

“That’s fine! Kyu- gah, uh, Kurama can’t get out of his seal. He said he...put a Genjutsu on me?”

“He used you as a conduit and a messenger,” Matatabi realized quickly, “a clever fox, my brother. Treat Kurama well, he has been hurt many times and his chains bite deep.”

“Of course,” Naruto promised with a grin, “that lousy fox just needs a friend and now he’s got one!”

“Oh, I think I like you, Uzumaki,” Yugito said with a glimmer in her eye. Then, she told him everything she knew.

Naruto didn’t realize how long he had been gone. When he woke- in the real world and not laying in a sewer that smelled like a wet dog, it had been almost an entire night. His stomach growled and cramped horribly, something remedied immediately with ramen and a sickening amount of tea.

Armed with a good amount of knowledge, Naruto bolted over the rooftops directly to the Hokage tower. The guards posted on the corners shouted at him, then waved him through. Everyone knew by this time that the Lady Hokage was glad to see him, even if he did barge in unannounced frequently.

“Granny! Granny!” Naruto bellowed, slamming into the official office with no regard for the two ANBU that swiftly stepped aside to avoid a collision. “Granny! You gotta listen to me. I know about the Akatsuki!”

Lady Tsunade glanced up from her desk. She folded her hands, giving him her avid attention. Similarly, a man that looked a bit like Shikamaru turned to look at him, with someone else that Naruto knew to be Asuma, Shikamaru’s Sensei.

“Yes, Naruto, I wasn’t hiding them from you,” she said a little tired. She waved one hand to her two guests, who smiled or waved in return.

“No, Granny you gotta listen, I know about the one that’s gonna attack nearby!” 

She frowned, tilting her head ever so slightly. She exchanged a glance with Asuma, who shrugged a little also. She said, polite and formal, “go ahead.”

“Okay so,” he started, inhaling a big gust of air to try and rearrange his thoughts. “I was talkin’ to the Kyuubi, ya know? But the furball said I could talk to his sister who is actually this really big cat, and she introduced me to her friend and Granny there are more people like me! She’s cool, ya know? All tall and adult but really nice and-.”

“Hold on,” the Shikamaru look-alike said quickly. He addressed Naruto directly, saying; “you said you talked to Kyuubi?”

“Well, normally he kinda shouts at me and I shout back but yeah,” Naruto said, scratching his chin with one hand. “He said I gotta talk with his sister dattebayo! And she was nice, Yugito said they ran into Akatsuki and he headed on down here!”

“Yugito...hmm…” Tsunade muttered, exchanging glances with the Shikamaru-looking guy who looked a bit distressed.

“I can confirm,” he said wearily, “Yugito is known as Jinchuriki of the Nibi, although she’s a scout, no known whereabouts.”

“That’s why I’ve been saying,” the youngest complained loudly, pointing out the window. “The guy who attacked her is Akatsuki and is really weird and has tentacle arms!”

“This is all a little hard to understand, Naruto,” Tsunade apologized, lifting her hands towards her lips to better concentrate. “You said that the Nibi encountered Akatsuki? And managed to escape?”

‘Yeah, all of the Jinchuriki are runnin’ around,” Naruto shrugged boldly. The three exchanged looks, looking well and truly alarmed.

“This...man,” Asuma tested carefully. “Did the Nibi say anything special about him? His weaknesses? Strengths?”

“Yeah yeah! He uses weird masks that kinda pop out of him like a bad pimple! But they run around with tentacles and spit fire and water and stuff! Yugito-Sama said she got one that was all wind focused because she used fire and burned it up!”

“Hold up,” the Shikamaru-looking man said, drumming his fingers quickly on his leg. “I’ve heard of someone that uses chakra representations like that before. But that was in the age of the First Hokage!”

“We can’t rule him out,” Tsunade said firmly. She smiled at Naruto, genuinely thankful. “You’ve done an amazing thing, Naruto. Thanks to you, we’re finally one step ahead.”

He beamed, wide and proud. He left the Hokage tower feeling very accomplished, and every bit delighted. But...something did twist at him a little.

Kakashi and Yamato mentioned something about Asuma’s squad having casualties- but why would Asuma not be with his team? Naruto overheard something about Shikamaru requesting he stay in Konoha, but that didn’t sound like the Shikamaru Naruto knew.

It felt weird, like slightly souring milk but not quite ready to curd. Naruto thought more about it, but he felt more confused by the moment.

“Hmm…” Naruto mused, craning to look skywards with both arms behind his back. “It just doesn’t seem normal for Shikamaru to do that.”

What had Sakura said Shikamaru did? Did he buy the Uchiha district? Or he took care of all the cats or something. It was nice of him, but not a job Naruto wanted.

“I guess I could look for him?” Naruto wondered, coming to a stop. He shifted his weight, kicking a pebble halfheartedly as he sighed. Nothing was fun when everyone had missions and Sakura had to stop people from cutting off their fingers.

Naruto walked to the Uchiha District slowly, taking his time to see the sights of the village he missed in his time away. The little things about Konoha still made him smile, the exact color of the flowers and the civilians that hung laundry from their windows. Even the bakers that always made rye and no sourdough. He missed a lot about Konoha, but more than that he missed his friends.

A long time ago, Sasuke had gone out of his way to allow all of Team 7 to access the Uchiha District. Only after an incident where Sasuke broke his ankle from a poorly missed jump from a tree, he complained that he couldn’t get any training done so Kakashi simply took training to him. Naruto never forgot the ugly mess of hair Teme had, and how much Sakura screamed at all the cats leaping at her from the broken benches.

The district looked different, much cleaner and almost...nice. A lot of things weren’t yet totally right. The planter boxes were broken, and wildflowers grew through the cobblestone. Some of the benches were still broken but others looked almost perfect again. All the houses were empty, but it didn’t seem so cold and creepy like when Naruto was younger.

It seemed a lot more somber, which Naruto hadn’t anticipated. Even Kyuubi didn’t stir, sleeping quietly somewhere Naruto didn’t want to visit.

“Hello?” Naruto shouted, cupping both hands to force his voice further. A cat yowled, startled by his presence. Naruto huffed, scratching the back of his neck as he thought. He walked in the meanwhile, drifting down the center street that he remembered taking to get to Sasuke’s old house.

“Is there anyone here?” Naruto tried, looking around nervously. “Shikamaru?”

He huffed, glancing at the rooftops. A few looking incredibly unstable with broken shingles and holes in some spots. He gathered chakra and leaped up, landing softly on the strongest spine of a terracotta roof, looking around the network of old houses.

“Where is he?” Naruto asked, huffing a little put out. “Doesn’t Shikamaru hang out here?”

He puffed his cheeks then exhaled slowly, trying to imagine what the Nara would like. He slept a lot on the training grounds, the ones not often used or where only low-level Genin trained. He played shogi and watched clouds.

“Maybe the river?” Naruto guessed. He tucked his hands into his pockets and nimbly hopped to the adjacent roof, heading towards the river that bisected Konoha but primarily drifted through the Uchiha compound. 

The Naka River was pretty, Naruto only had the option to see it a few times in its natural environment. It became funneled and built into a structured canal more towards the gates of the district; Naruto saw Sasuke often along the bank there before they met officially.

The forests were nicer, calmer and prettier. The redwoods were nice, but they were so large Naruto always felt so tiny on the ground. The Uchiha forests were different, new and smaller but prettier with lush leaves and spotted flowers. The roar of the Naka river soothed away the fluttering anxiety, leaving him grinning at the birds chirping overhead.

He walked for quite a while, trying to stay quiet as any loud noise could disrupt the rare peace. It reminded Naruto of when he ran off as a kid and made a campfire on his own. The Lord Third found him, back before he knew the old man personally.

He walked, careful not to kick a rock and upset a rabbit chewing on the clover. He almost laughed at it, feeling giddy and childish in such a gentle place untouched by people.

The forest cleared a bit where the river swept around in a large horseshoe. The clouds drifted slowly overhead, large puffy things that even Naruto thought looked nice. Sure enough, near the bank of the river under the shade of a medium tree, Naruto saw Shikamaru looking upwards propped on his elbows.

‘He’ll likely wanna hear about Temari!’ Naruto realized since the blonde hadn’t followed them back after recovering Gaara. She said she’d stay in contact, but Naruto didn’t know if she sent a message. He jogged, waving one arm and shouting playfully, “hey Shikamaru! I got word from your girlfriend!”

He expected Shikamaru to groan or pretend to spontaneously fall asleep. He thought maybe the Nara would complain, or splutter under the accusation of him being in a relationship.

He didn’t. Shikamaru scrambled to his feet so quickly he kicked pebbles across the ground, raining into the gentle river. He spun fast, eyes wide in alarm and panic- he held up both hands and shouted, “Naruto! Don’t-.”

Naruto balked, stumbling to a stop. He stuttered through his question, “what- what’s wrong? Shikamaru what…”

Naruto walked closer, edging towards the river and the tree and realized why. His body froze, a weird whoosh rushing through him which gave the smallest sense of vertigo and nausea. Adrenaline pounded, his heart particularly loud near his throat. The Kyuubi stirred, lulled awake by the extreme emotional change.

“Naruto,” Shikamaru stressed, shifting his arms to try and keep Naruto away. “It isn’t what you think-.”

“Let him go,” Naruto growled, clenching his teeth furiously. Leaning against the tree, looking sickly and surprised, was Itachi Uchiha. Naruto wouldn’t forget that face, especially not after what he did. “Did you hear me, ya bastard? Let Shikamaru go!”

“Naruto, Naruto calm down. It’s fine!” Nara argued, walking towards Naruto with both arms outstretched. “It’s not like that- Naruto listen to me-.”

“I’ll rip your arms off for what you did!” Naruto screamed hoarsely, startling a small band of crows from the trees to take to the sky screaming. Naruto’s fingers itched, ready to siphon chakra to conjure his new Rasengan. “I’ll beat you to death! Where is he? Where is Sasuke?”

“Naruto! Stop!” Shikamaru demanded. 

Naruto ignored him, bolting forward with hands moving in preparation for Shadow Clones- only to freeze abruptly in his tracks. Shikamaru winced, shifting to a crouch which, subsequently, forced Naruto down.

“Shika-maru…” Naruto grit out from sharp fanged teeth. His blood rushed hot in his veins, hands bleeding from where claws pierced the meat of his palms. “...what…. are you...doing?”

“Getting you to listen to me!” Shikamaru shouted back, looking incredibly unsure. "Naruto, listen! He isn’t a bad guy!”

“He took Sasuke away!” Naruto screamed, his voice garbled and distorted. He felt the rumble through the back of his skull, low and contemplative instead of the standard egging that normally ensued. He snarled, straining forward; Shikamaru shuddered and held his ground, vessels protruding near his temple.

Itachi Uchiha, silent until then, stood fluidly. He walked around Shikamaru, the latter completely unaware of the Uchiha until Itachi stood between them. He tilted his head, looking at Naruto with a blank expression Naruto salivated to tear off from his skull.

“Calm down…” he murmured quietly, Sharingan flaring into a three spun tomoe, then warping worse into a chaotic tri-point which spun wildly, “...now, Kyuubi.”

Naruto jerked, splashing into water and sewage and faced the demon fox behind its cage. Instead of its normal rage, the kind that saturated the walls and crevices so thoroughly it leaked out, the creature was oddly subdued.

“Eh?” Naruto floundered, splashing about dumbly. “What are you doing? Sasuke’s brother is out there! I gotta stop him!”

“I’m doing nothing,” the chakra monster said bored. It yawned, gleaming fangs on display as it gazed behind Naruto lazily. “This hate is your own, not mine.”

Naruto stopped then, settling with the surge of guilt. He looked at the monster, almost scandalized. “But...but I don’t want to hurt-.”

“Oh you are plenty capable,” the Kyuubi said with a snort. It rolled its eyes, looking behind Naruto again. “Speak, Uchiha.”

“You aren’t upset to see me,” said Itachi Uchiha, sedate and terrifyingly close. Naruto screamed, spinning and backstepping towards the safety of the demon fox. Itachi, cloaked in all black blended into the shadows of the sewers. 

The Fox snorted loud, going so far as to close its eyes and rest its head on its paws. It said, mocking, “Dealing with the other brat isn’t worth eating you.”

Itachi nodded slowly, looking at Naruto but maintaining a fair distance between them. He said, monotone; “I don’t want to fight.”

“Yeah, well maybe I do!” Naruto shouted, his hand curling into a punch.

The Kyuubi chuckled warmly, its breath strong and foul. It said with smooth dark amusement, “so quick to anger. I thought you believed in second chances, Naruto.”

Naruto wilted, visibly torn. Itachi glanced at the Kyuubi and asked, “why are you defending me?”

The Kyuubi said, strangely helpful, “I was warned about your messenger, and I have an interest in my continued existence.”

Itachi Uchiha’s eyebrows lifted, he looked back at Naruto who had barely settled. Naruto growled out, “Kyuubi, this guy is bad! He took away Sasuke-.”

The Kyuubi groaned, a loud rolling moan of annoyance. The animal muttered “idiot,” and politely ignored them both. Naruto spluttered, Itachi blinked twice and otherwise didn’t react.

“I’m not your enemy,” Itachi said unconvincingly.

“You stole Sasuke!” Naruto accused. “You took him and you’re hiding him! I’ll bring him home-.”

“Naruto,” Itachi said, sounding exasperated, “I did not take Sasuke. My brother left Konoha on his own to find me.”

Naruto immediately denied it. “You’re lying to me!”

“I’m not lying,” Itachi said slowly. “My brother left Konoha and ventured through Grass and Earth. I met him near Ame, looking for me.”

Naruto shook his head, refusing to believe it. “Sasuke wouldn’t do that! Sasuke attacked me and Teme would never do that!”

Kyuubi asked in a low rumbling groan, “how else would he shake you from his tail?”

Naruto looked at the demon and scowled, muttering a quiet traitor.

“I didn’t have anything to do with that,” Itachi said earnestly. “I only just found him. My brother left again, in search of something else.”

“I don’t believe you,” Naruto said. “I- I can’t believe you. Sasuke would...Sasuke would never do that to me! He wouldn’t lie to me and leave his family! He wouldn’t hurt me like that!”

Kurama turned his head, pressing his muzzle to the bars of the cage, and he asked rhetorically, “Was it not you who said that sometimes, you need to do hard things to help the ones you care about?”

Naruto wilted, eyes widening and hurt showing on his expression. “I- well yeah, but why would...why would he do that?”

“Rage and anger are a powerful tool,” the Kyuubi laughed. 

Itachi Uchiha, in unpredicted kindness, said; “I imagine he did it for a similar reason. I hurt him as well. It is easier to protect people you care about when they are determined to surpass you.”

Naruto wanted to lie, to say that wasn’t at all what happened. But...wasn’t it?

Since Sasuke vanished, he was more focused and determined to bring him back. If Sasuke stayed behind, would he have that same drive or passion? Would he have come so far in such a short amount of time? Could he still protect his family if Sasuke hadn’t run away?

“I…” Naruto struggled to speak, his throat tight and neck constricting. “Sasuke...Sasuke’s coming back?”

“He’s been back,” Itachi said carefully, evaluating Naruto’s expression. “You must understand, if you still wish to harm me or my brother, I will do what I must to stop you.”

“You really care about him,” Naruto realized, stunned by the revelation. “Like...you actually care about him.”

Itachi nodded slowly and said perfectly calm and brutally honest, “of course I do. He is my brother, and I will do whatever is needed to protect him.”

Thinking back on it, Itachi had plenty of opportunities to hurt Sasuke. Yes, he had terrified both Naruto and Sasuke, but he never acted on open opportunities to kill either of them. He vanished after Kisame died, and he had a chance then to steal either of them. 

“Okay,” Naruto said, slouching suddenly. “I... I’ll hear you out. But only because I trust Shikamaru! And he’s too smart to be fooled by a Genjutsu!”

“I prevent Genjutsu, you’re just too stupid for even my abilities,” the Kyuubi grumbled irritated. He lifted his tails, slamming them down into the water to create a massive wave of sludge that over swept them both-.

And then Naruto was gasping and stumbling forward, Shikamaru panting and looking thoroughly exhausted. Itachi Uchiha didn’t stand between them, in fact, he still sat by the tree. He looked much worse than what Naruto saw in his mind- pale and tired and fragile.

“It’s fine,” Naruto growled, still wary. “I’ll hear him out...but don’t try anything funny!”

Shikamaru’s neck snapped as he twisted quickly to look between the two, before he cursed and slapped his face tiredly. He muttered, “of course, those damn Genjutsu. So troublesome.”

“Yep,” Naruto sighed loudly, “still Shikamaru.”

Naruto hated that the more he talked to Itachi Uchiha, the more he began to like the guy.

The nin specialized in Genjutsu and apparently was the most skilled illusionist in all Konoha. Shikamaru talked big game, and looked every bit like he was hating it, which left Naruto all but confirming it was true.

Currently, the Uchiha looked horrible. His hair was long, clean but messy with small snarls towards the end of the fraying strands. He had deep permanent stress lines, and the subtle wrinkling along the corners of his eyelids that sometimes Naruto got when he squinted in a mirror. There weren’t bruises under his eyes, but some veins stuck out bright under the grey thumbprints below each tear duct. He hid half of his face in a large black collared shirt, arms hidden under big sleeves.

“I don’t like Genjutsu…” Naruto muttered sourly, legs folded together under him. He plucked a stone, rolling it in his hand before chucking it towards the river where it splashed with a little pop.

“Why not?” Itachi asked him, voice ever so slightly different from the usual monotone. Shikamaru, apparently actually exhausted and not pretending to be tired, dozed near the tree and the Uchiha.

“Just because,” Naruto challenged, plucking another rock to hold threateningly. Like he could accomplish anything with a pebble, but the basic principle remained.

Itachi Uchiha’s eyes remained dark and grey, a peaceful gesture Sasuke sometimes (used to) do on long training days when he wasn’t trying to be a normal jerk. Naruto huffed, it was easier to deal with Uchiha’s when they were annoying. He threw the pebble, the water splashing under its weight.

“Genjutsu isn’t easy,” Itachi said calmly. He didn’t talk carefully around Naruto like some adults liked to do. Now, he knew it was because of Kyuubi. Itachi at least acted like Naruto was simply another person, childishly chucking rocks into a river. “It relies on subtle techniques.”

“I don’t like people getting in my head,” Naruto explained with a sour huff. He eyed the other suspiciously, waiting for the eventual eruption.

Itachi nodded, finally blinking passively. He asked, entirely spontaneously, “have you ever braided?”

Naruto dropped the pebble he had been playing with. He looked at Itachi skeptically, but with increasing attention. “You mean with hair? Sakura wouldn’t let me close to hers when it was long.”

Itachi didn’t seem surprised by that. He said, nearly scolding which was surreal already, “you need to be careful. Long hair is very sensitive, it’s like pulling on your eyelash.”

Naruto looked at his hands. He poked his face, his eyebrows, then tried to tug his eyelashes between two fingers. It stung and left his eye smacking oddly. He yelped, alarmed, “that hurt!”

“You need to be gentle,” Itachi agreed. He lifted his left hand, hidden under the large sleeve of his robe to the back of his neck where he tugged around the long tassel that was his hair. It brushed low, over his collarbones all the way to his lowest rib- longest strands brushing his naval.

One hand splayed open, separating his hair into five sections. He looked downwards carefully, fishing up his other hand to split the individual locks between both until he grasped only three parts between his fingers. He looked back at Naruto, seeing that he held his attention, then twisted one strand over the other simply. 

“Braiding this way is a simple twist,” he explained with the weirdest lift in his words. Suddenly warmer, not quite as apathetic. He took the furthest strand, pulling towards and twisting it. Each motion exaggerated to where Naruto understood it, the rhythm and movements almost hypnotic. Itachi said, “of course, there are different styles.”

He stopped braiding but didn’t bother to unravel the fair section of three-ply. He took the remaining strands, split them further, and curled them into five parts then twisted them in an increasingly elaborate but predictable pattern.

Naruto watched. Nobody had ever shown him the fundamental movements that composed a braid, girls always shouted at him not to touch and chased him away. Now, Naruto understood some of how it twisted together, looking very pretty and elaborate.

“The more complex braids are often taught by family,” Itachi said, splitting his hair again into eight sections. Naruto’s jaw dropped as his hair folded, weaving back and forth into something like a rope coil but much prettier. Itachi neared the end of his hair, small bits peeling up to fray apart like old fishing net. He twisted the very end, twirling it around one finger like a ring to seal the twist together.

It looked a bit silly, with his hair near the edge of his scalp twining easily with thick coils, then parting into a pretty weave, then into an elaborate twist that even Sakura couldn’t do. Naruto thought it must have taken a lot of practice.

“Genjutsu is like braiding,” Itachi told Naruto simply. With his free hand, he tapped the base of his skull where the three-ply twisted together. “These illusions are obvious, but if one portion is broken it falls apart.”

His hand slid downwards to the five twists and skimmed each individual strand. His nails, Naruto noted, didn’t have the purple polish he last saw on it. Itachi said, “more complex Genjutsu involves multiple precautions. You can escape from one aspect but fail to unravel the entirety.”

Shikamaru was watching, eyes sharp and attentive as both boys hung onto every word the Uchiha said. Naruto, impatient and struck by revelation nearly shouted, “and the really hard Genjutsu are ones where there's a ton of knots and you can’t get out!”

“Not knots,” Itachi corrected, “every Genjutsu has its flaw. A knot suggests you cannot escape, but you can. You need to find the pattern and rhythm and unravel it as it was cast.”

“That makes sense,” Shikamaru said under his breath, winded and alarmed and looking absolutely gobsmacked. “That- that actually makes sense.”

“But how do you get out of that kind with all the twists?” Naruto complained, pointing at the elaborate intricate style of the last few inches.

Itachi, from somewhere, suddenly held a kunai. Shikamaru and Naruto both tensed on instinct, ready to intervene from the supposed attack.

Itachi instead took it to the end of his hair, a finger length from the bottom wispy strands still coiled around one finger. He said, “you find the outer fibers and pull them away until it collapses.”

Both boys gawked as Itachi proceeded to do just that, using the edge to cut through one fiber then tug gently. The braid held together, even supported by increasingly fewer locks. The eight-braid stayed sturdy until just over five had been cut, then sheared away with feathery strands dropping to the ground. At that time, Itachi ceased the slow demonstration and lacerated the rest, letting the handful drop.

It wasn’t a lot, only the very bottom portion and only took off the width of Naruto’s wrist. Still, Sakura had cried when she cut her hair. Shikamaru refused to cut his hair.

“Uh…” Naruto trailed off, looking at the ground. “Isn’t that...a big deal?”

“It’s how you care for hair,” Itachi said, not laughing but Naruto was fluent in Sasuke Uchiha and knew the bastard found the situation hilarious. The crows, watching from the trees fluttered down to peck at the lost hair. One stole the largest chunk in its glossy beaked, gave a muffled noise, and flapped off.

“I can’t believe you just redefined Genjutsu using your hair,” Shikamaru grumbled equal parts angry and amazed. “I’ve been looking at it like tripwires for years.”

“My clan views it differently,” Itachi said.

Naruto made the connection, he knew about Sasuke’s weird philosophy and what he had been told along the way. “You mean cuz’ you always make stuff?”

Itachi looked at him, but he wasn’t surprised. Naruto hadn’t known Itachi for long and knew him as kinda alright for even less; Naruto had a strong feeling in his gut that Itachi wasn’t one to easily express himself. Like Kakashi-Sensei, or even Yamato in a way. A bit like Sai but completely opposite, since Sai didn’t understand emotions at all and Itachi knew his too well.

Shikamaru, the outlier in Naruto’s overworked thoughts, smacked his forehead with an open palm. Both Itachi and Naruto looked at the Nara, not saying anything but expressing their curiosity in unique ways.

“I’m such an idiot,” Shikamaru grumbled bitterly. He stewed in his thoughts silently, expression grave before he snapped his head up with eyes alight in revelation. “That’s how the Uchiha do it. That’s how.”

“Uh, is there more to this explanation? Because that really sucked.”

“Naruto shut up,” Shikamaru groused. His fingers twitched, moving invisibly against a target or along a mission report that hadn’t been written. “The Uchiha were famous for their fighting ability, because nobody could counter them!”

Naruto tilted his head and struggled to understand the relationship between that fact and Itachi braiding his hair. “Uh…”

“They make their Jutsu,” Shikamaru simplified, looking pained. “They don’t just learn what’s already made, they make new techniques!”

“But I thought that’s just a thing you’re supposed to do?” the blonde asked, entirely baffled. “I mean, I’ve been working to make the Rasengan my own and I’m almost there. Kakashi-Sensei said I should?”

Shikamaru gaped, then threw both hands into the air. He shouted, “unbelievable!”

“It’s very hard to make new techniques, Naruto-kun,” Itachi said somberly, although his eyes shifted into something like humor.

Naruto stared for a moment, amazed by the new twist. Then he laughed, plopping down to cackle at Shikamaru’s casual meltdown. 

“Maybe you need a nap!” Naruto teased Shikamaru, who slouched across the ground entirely boneless. It was hard to see Itachi’s face, but Naruto had the suspicion he was smiling a bit. 

‘He isn’t that bad, I guess,’ Naruto thought grudgingly. ‘I mean, if Teme thinks he’s okay…’

“Oh I do,” Shikamaru groaned, rubbing both eyes then deciding to simply leave his hands there. Itachi huffed ever so quietly but said nothing.

“Why were you up all night?” Naruto asked, sitting up to face his company. “And why did you bring Asuma-Sensei back? I mean, I’m not complaining! But it seems weird, dattebayo.”

Shikamaru’s face shifted, twisting and contorting like ghost expressions when fire flickered under Naruto’s chin. It made Shikamaru display a dozen strange faces.

“Do...do you believe in gods?” Nara asked eventually, voice strained. “Maybe the enormous black fire cryptic messenger kind?”

“Ama-rat-soup?” Naruto asked, a smile sliding off his face immediately. “You know about the dragon?”

“You know about Amaterasu?” Shikamaru gawked.

Simultaneously, Itachi Uchiha hissed surprised; “you know about the dragon?”

All three males looked at each other, each exhibiting their own personal style of shock. Naruto’s lips pursed and his eyelids lowered to a half squint. Both hands lifted with fingers curved. He looked eerily like a koi fish.

Shikamaru coiled rigid and tense, numerous tendons bulged near his jaw and a single vessel popped near his temple. He obviously was straining, although normally that form was behind onsen doors.

And Itachi blinked four times quickly, his face failing to shift in any way.

“I really didn’t think my day was going to go like this,” Shikamaru grouched bitterly. He huffed, cracked his neck and worked out several tight muscles with the pads of his fingers. Naruto shook his head quickly like a dog, literally shaking the stupid off.

“Eh? What does Ama-Rat-Soup have to do with any of this?” Naruto asked. Itachi, silent in the background, mouthed horrified, “Ama-rat-soup?”

“Well he’s been getting in my head and leaving very cryptic messages,” Shikamaru said.

“Oh yeah!” Naruto exclaimed brightly. “Kyuubi does that too. Well, normally it’s like, rawr! I’m a monster! Eat that person! Punch Kakashi-Sensei in the face! Grr!”

Shikamaru clearly hadn’t been prepared for that. Naruto patted his shoulder sympathetically, saying; “It gets easier, dattebayo! You just gotta compromise!”

“With the Kyuubi?” Shikamaru asked rhetorically and a bit high pitched. “What's a compromise with a demon fox? Arson? Occasional manslaughter?”

“Six bowls of ramen max,” Naruto pouted, patting his belly glumly.

Itachi, finally, snorted. It was an incredibly similar Sasuke-sound. Both younger men looked at him in alarm, watching as the man reclined against the trunk of the tree and exposed a fond smile to them both. He said, not quite warmly but a tad lukewarm, “you remind me of my brother.”

Naruto said, “gross.”

Itachi smiled again, looking upwards at the clouds. It was such a wonderful day outside, for the first time Naruto wondered why Itachi looked so sick. He hadn’t seemed ill when they last...fought? But then again, it had been a few years.

“We were going to consult that Sensei of yours, Naruto,” Itachi explained in a toneless murmur, “Your intervention and actions will be viewed all too readily as insubordination to those of Konoha.”

“You’re going to break laws?” Naruto asked, then thought better of it and looked at Shikamaru, repeating, “you’re going to break laws?”

“Well, I mean, it’s for the greater good?” Shikamaru attempted to reason. “Come on Naruto, I’ve got a god in my head and I’m really freaked out.”

“Well I also have a big furball in my head, but you don’t see me trying to eat cats!”

“Please don’t eat the cats,” Itachi said softly. “They are important to our culture.”

Eventually, the three settled themselves. Shikamaru passed along from a hidden bag near the rocks, a metal bowl and bento box. Naruto wasn’t hungry, but he may have drooled a little at the sight of the sushi and rice balls. Itachi strangely forwent chopsticks, impolitely using his hands to eat. Once Naruto spotted the alarming tremor, he looked away and felt guilty for his judgment.

“There’s a councilman in Konoha that’s been causing some trouble,” Shikamaru said lazily, twirling a small twig he found between his fingers. “But you know how messy Politics gets. There’s a whole subsection on clan-law that you didn’t learn about.”

“Uh, I don’t like old people. They smell weird,” Naruto complained. The crows from before returned, hopping around the ground and pecking at small kernels of rice that Itachi picked off and flicked onto the grass. A few birds busied themselves around the remnants of his cut hair, trying to gather every strand. 

“You’ll hate this one the most then,” Shikamaru explained. “One of them took a Sharingan, and a god in my head told me I need to get it back.”

“A... Sharingan?” Naruto parroted. His stomach twisted at the thought, suddenly he wasn’t so hungry. “Like...like someone’s eye?”

“Right from his head,” Shikamaru said darkly, scowling the entire time. “And I think he may have stuck it right in his face.”

Naruto felt a nauseating bubble. It was different with Kakashi, who he knew had gotten his eye as a gift. To steal an eye from a corpse...Naruto couldn’t imagine what monster would do such a thing.

“You can’t help us, Naruto,” Itachi said quietly. “You are the holder of a Bijuu. The council already is afraid of you, to take action would condemn you in the eyes of Konoha.”

“But…” Naruto argued, expression falling. “I- I’m friends with Granny! I can let her know! Then...then maybe-.”

“Look, Naruto,” the Nara interjected somberly. “Even the Hokage can’t challenge the Council like that. It would make a civil war, and she hasn’t been in office long enough to really get the support she needs for a political shift like that.”

“It’s going to end in a fight,” Itachi said quietly. “One that I prefer to keep quiet or unseen entirely.”

“How could you say that?” Naruto nearly shouted. “This- this guy hurt someone you care about! You should- should want to pummel him into the dirt and make everyone know!”

Itachi looked at him, and in the moments between one second and the next his iris’ shifted. This close, Naruto could see that it was not only a change in color, but it was a change in the structure of the eye itself. Small shifting waves like the iridescent scales on a butterfly wing. They glimmered, tainting his eye red with three tomoe settling undisturbed. Naruto faced Itachi Uchiha’s dangerous Sharingan, but he didn’t feel afraid.

Itachi said, serious and honest, “It is to accept the burden. I will do whatever is necessary to instill peace, Naruto Uzumaki. A true shinobi is one willing to sacrifice themselves for peace.”

“That’s martyrdom, not self-sacrifice,” Shikamaru denied. “We can’t deal with him quietly and hope everything will be fixed. There’s still the problem with Root.”

“That is something which can be brought to the Hokage’s attention,” Itachi agreed.

“So all we have left is the great disaster itself,” Shikamaru said exhausted. “Is there anything you know that we can pin on him? Get the Hokage on our side to really put him in jail?”

Itachi stilled, looking away quietly. He said, “yes. I would prefer to inform the Hokage myself, if at all.”

“I don’t understand why we can’t go and pummel the guy right now!” Naruto shouted. He jumped upright, turning on his heel in preparation to stomp right up to the Hokage Tower and find the Councilmembers.

“Naruto! Stop!” Itachi said, voice lifting higher than its steady talking tone. There was power in it, a sense of respect and authority that had Naruto immediately thinking of Kakashi-Sensei.

Naruto gritted his teeth and turned back, ready to shout. He held his tongue, guilt stirring as Itachi Uchiha very slowly began to stand. 

It looked painful, slow and very jerky. He had some sort of chest wound, and his legs didn’t support him as well as they should. Naruto understood why he had used a Genjutsu to disguise his injury; at first- he looked near crippled.

“There are many things you don’t understand,” Itachi said. He spoke seriously, pained and running with an undercurrent of frustration. “You still act like that of a child- sometimes difficult decisions must be made and you must do what you hate to achieve a greater good.”

“I have made those hard choices!” Naruto argued.

“No you haven't,” Itachi said sternly. “I will admit that you are stronger than you were before, but have you thought why that is?”

‘Sasuke,’ Naruto thought. ‘It was to bring Sasuke back!’

“You’ve started to lose sight of what you hold important,” Itachi said. “Listen to me. The people of this village once abhorred you but now that is changing. There are people here who care for you and admire you, they think of you as their comrade. If you turn against the elders of this village, you will once again be a monster.”

Naruto swallowed thickly. Itachi glared at him, willing him to understand.

Finally, Naruto slumped his shoulders and nodded jerkily. Shikamaru exhaled loudly, slouching onto the ground in relief. He mumbled, “and here I thought I’d have to take him down again.”

“Shut up,” Naruto grumbled, blushing high on his cheeks. “What can I do then? I can’t just- just sit around doing nothing!”

“You need to leave the village,” Itachi responded. “You’re susceptible to Genjutsu, and the Sharingan stolen is far too dangerous. It has the power to control you entirely and set you upon those you care about.”

Shikamaru looked at Itachi alarmed. “You didn’t tell me that!”

“You need to leave the village,” Itachi repeated. “Our enemy can be countered by those with Sharingan. Your Sensei is leaving to combat an Akatsuki member. Go to the Hokage and convince her to swap your places and fend back the Akatsuki while we deal here.”

“Is that really going to be enough?” Shikamaru asked him. “You, Kakashi, and me?”

“It’ll have to be,” the injured man said tiredly. “There are few we can trust.”

“What about Yamato?” Naruto asked grouchily. He couldn’t help here, but he could at least offer his personal assistance. “And Sakura-chan is loyal! She’d help in any way!”

“Sakura is a Taijutsu expert and a medic,” Shikamaru elaborated for Itachi’s benefit. “But I don’t know anyone named Yamato.”

“Uh…” Naruto tried to think of any characteristics the others may recognize. “He has weird eyes? And a strange smile? And Kakashi-Sensei likes to mess with him a lot.... oh! He has this really weird Jutsu where he can bend wood-.”

“Tenzo?” Itachi said, sounding genuinely surprised. “I hadn’t known...that doesn’t matter. He is trustworthy and may have more thoughts on how to dismantle Root.”

“Right, I’ll...get on that,” Shikamaru said, sighing audibly. “Is there anything else I should know before this stupid mission?’

“No,” Itachi said.

It took frighteningly little to swap Kakashi from his team. One moment, he was preparing to head out with Asuma, and other chakra affinity ANBU pairs, then he was suddenly swapped out for Naruto.

Asuma didn’t mind at all, especially since he had helped Naruto along at one point with developing his chakra nature. Lightning users were rare, but not impossible to find. His placement was filled by a different ANBU agent with a notorious use of senbon to create webs of paralyzing power. 

Kakashi received Shikamaru’s message one morning and dutifully dragged Yamato into the Uchiha District with him, pausing at the gates to shift permissions over. Itachi Uchiha, trained as the heir for most of his childhood, managed to alter the permissions with frightening ease.

The Hokage was waiting, dressed down and annoyed with the summons. She had a lot on her plate, dealing with the approaching Akatsuki and trying to sift through the well of information coming from outer villages every day.

Itachi at least looked a fraction better in the poor light of their makeshift infirmary. Kakashi hadn’t the opportunity to visit in a few days. Clearly, things had changed.

For one, Naruto was huffing and pouting along the back wall with both arms crossed in front of him. Kakashi wilted the moment he spotted the younger.

“Kakashi-Sensei!” Naruto howled, stomping five steps across the room to ram one accusing finger into Kakashi’s chest. “You got a lot of explainin’ to do!”

Tenzo stepped into the doorway, taking a moment to adapt to the less light before he gaped comically loud. He lifted one arm defensively, expression stiffening into a ready combat situation.

“Maa, none of that,” Kakashi sighed, throwing one arm across Tenzo’s shoulders to pull him into a slouch.

“But- but sir!” Tenzo spluttered, staring stunned at Itachi who was sitting in his wheelchair, a blanket across his lap.

“Relax, he’s harmless,” Lady Tsunade said, scowling at Kakashi who had, of course, arrived late. “Can we talk now or are you going to bicker like Genin?”

“Ah, no no we’re good,” Kakashi confirmed with a half-smile. “Yamato, Itachi Uchiha is innocent, surprise?”

“Pleasure to see you again, Sensei,” Itachi deadpanned. 

Yamato took three steps to the nearest chair and sat down heavily. Naruto offered an awkward pat on his shoulder.

“So, ignoring that,” Kakashi said, gesturing one thumb towards his comrade was having a crisis, “what seems to be the problem?”

“Apparently my council is a den of slimy snakes,” Tsunade said bitterly, pausing before looking at Itachi and Kakashi and saying, “I apologize. Snakes aren't that bad. They’re...grubs. Fat lousy grubs that should be scrubbed right out.”

“Aren’t slugs grubs?” Naruto wondered, then squealed and sunk to the floor under Lady Hokage’s glare.

“Oh, well that’s a surprise,” Kakashi said neutrally. “Which part of the council, Hokage-Sama? Maybe just one part? A little pest problem?”

“Why?” She asked, squinting at Kakashi suspiciously.

The man hummed in thought, saying a little slyly, “well, I have my eye on a certain little gnat that doesn’t look half as handsome as me with only one eye.”

“Ironically,” Itachi said, monotone as always, “it appears this gnat may have stolen something in mimicry of you, Sensei.”

Kakashi stiffened, glancing at Itachi in blatant surprise. “Who, me? No no, certainly not…”

He trailed off, his body icing over and locking rigid as he processed what exactly Itachi said, and the implications.

“No,” Yamato croaked, looking ill. “He couldn’t- could he?”

“No, it shouldn’t be possible,” Kakashi said, sounding off. “He wouldn’t...his bloodline isn’t compatible.”

“Compatible?” Tsunade asked with a skeptic single eyebrow raise. “Are you talking chakra, Hatake?”

“Blood,” Kakashi croaked, sounding stricken. “The...Hatake clan came from a similar geographical region as Uchiha’s originated. Some similar blood markers, it’s why I never had a poor reaction. But he…”

“Oh, oh,” Yamato said, looking at his hand. This time, he did look greenish. “I... I’m compatible with everything.”

Kakashi shifted sideways, leaning heavily against a wall. Itachi inhaled loudly but said nothing. Shikamaru, looming in the darkest corner for the entirety asked very calmly, “what are you not telling us.”

“Yeah, you alright?” Naruto asked, leaning close to Yamato before shuffling back. “Ya’ look kinda...green?”

“Lady Hokage-Sama, you have read my file,” he croaked shakily. “I... I propose the theory of...of synthetic enhancement.”

“Oh, that bastard,” Tsunade snarled, turning on her heel to smash one fist into the wall. Naruto jumped a bit at the sign of strength, boggling at the perfect puncture through the wood panel. She turned around, nostrils flaring, and eyes filled with fire. “Alright, alright. What do you clowns need from me?”

“Maybe permission?” Yamato croaked weakly with a fake smile, “it would be nice not to be a missing-nin.”

Itachi, very quietly, shifted in his chair. Yamato spun around and looked at him with wide eyes, correcting instantly, “not that I wouldn’t be a missing-nin if I had to- there’s nothing wrong with being one if it needs to-.”

“He’s messing with you,” Kakashi muttered from the doorway, looking disheartened although he met no eyes directly. He sighed, his whole body shifting with the force of it. “This isn’t going to be easy.”

“It’s worse than you believe,” Itachi said, looking at Kakashi directly. “I am... left to assume that he possesses Shisui’s Sharingan.”

“What?” Kakashi bit out. Naruto stepped back, temporarily overwhelmed by the raw visceral killing intent. He had never felt his Sensei’s chakra turn so wild, borderline unhinged. Kakashi hissed out, voice distorting like Izunaka’s sometimes did, “his damn eye?”

“I wasn’t around for that Uchiha,” Tsunade said abruptly, frown dropping further. “What are you not telling me?”

“Ma’am,” Yamato croaked, still looking uneasy but now it resembled grave dread. “Shisui Uchiha was...well, one of the more...versatile ANBU leaders.”

“Alright, and his eye?” Tsunade asked, glancing at Itachi directly. “I’ve dealt with the fucking mess of your orbital chakra pathways. I’m guessing he also had some sort of secret weapon?”

“Yes, Lady Hokage,” Itachi said in a low murmur, glancing downwards and speaking quietly. “Please understand, Shisui-,” he cut off his words quickly, sounding as if there were an honorific he instinctually almost said. Itachi resumed, ignoring his near-miss. “Shisui wielded a Mangekyo with a powerful Kekkei Genkai for the strongest Genjutsu known.”

Tsunade looked at Kakashi. The man said, voice low and dark, “he rarely used it. But yes.”

“Well, shit,” she said, almost declaring it. “Alright, well. Besides that, is there anything you boys can give me that lets me put a warrant on his Kami-damned face?”

Kakashi said, apathetic, “he manipulated me into attempting assassination on the Third Hokage.”

Yamato said, “he placed me in an underground facility and brainwashed me into a tool of the state.”

Itachi said, “he forced me to murder my clan.”

Shikamaru said, “excuse me what?”

Naruto gaped, looking around the room uncomprehendingly. Shikamaru shared his horror, although Kakashi and Yamato looked quite surprised by Itachi’s words.

“Really?” Kakashi asked, uncharacteristically chipper given how revolting the conversation was. “That’s the reason?”

“Kami, how are you sane?” Yamato asked, flinching back.

Itachi tilted his head, looking between Kakashi and Yamato suspiciously. He asked, a little timid, “you...are sane?”

“What’s a little psychotic break among friends?” Kakashi asked, going so far as to smile.

“You all are getting psychiatric aid after this,” Tsunade promised, “all of you.”

Kakashi smiled wider. Itachi simply nodded. Yamato slumped and put his head in his hands.

“Okay,” Tsunade said, breathing carefully. She looked very much like she wanted to punch a wall. “So., I guess we have to write a profile on him.”

“Uh,” Naruto said, raising a hand slowly. He bowed his head sheepishly when all eyes slid to him. He asked, clearing his throat first, “what...am I doing here? Like- okay so...you all are...uh, really good at this stuff! But I’m just…”

Kakashi’s face softened, he sighed and slumped away from the wall. He walked over, reaching out and gently ruffling the blonde’s hair. He smiled and said, honest, “Naruto, don’t sell yourself short.”

“You actually do serve a purpose,” Shikamaru admitted. “Councilmember Danzo is a tactical genius. Everyone here already knows tactics and fighting strategies, except you. But that’s where you come up with the most asinine plan and manage to pull it off.”

“It’s true,” Yamato admitted with a huff. “You ruin well thought out ideas in a puff of shadow clones.”

Tsunade nodded, “you’re useful as the wrecking ball.”

Naruto beamed, eyes bright. “Yes! I can ruin things!”

Itachi almost smiled. Naruto counted it as a victory.

“That aside, we need to come up with a strategy,” Tsunade said. She looked at each member of the room pointedly, and said, “I will not have anyone die for this.”

“Hey, I got the orders from a dream,” Shikamaru defended.

“Amaterasu?” Kakashi guessed.

Shikamaru shook his head, he looked at Itachi nervously, then away. He cleared his throat, awkwardly explaining, “no, uh...I think it was Susanoo. But, er, in... the body...of...Shisui.”

Itachi did not react. Kakashi cringed slightly.

“Fine, whatever,” Tsunade said, disregarding that. “We’re against a bloody Sharingan. We have you two to counter that, but even then, you’re basically crippled and you have the chakra stamina of a rice paddy.”
“Ouch,” Yamato said, almost smiling.

“I can fight,” Itachi said. Under normal circumstances, Tsunade would have ignored him outright. Being able to walk a few meters did not mean he was ready for a fight. 

But she was the best medic known to Konoha. She could likely get his eyes in working condition and repair the lingering damage at the cost of a grizzly scar.

“Fine,” she clipped out bitterly. “Hatake, you have a strategy?”

“Maa, of course, Hokage-Sama,” he said. He looked offended, entirely fake. 

Then, to Naruto’s awe, his Sensei transformed into someone entirely different.

“Seeing as what units we have at hand, Hokage-Sama,” he began with a flat but slightly deeper voice compared to his normal lighthearted tone. “We are approximately set for standard Field Division.”

Shikamaru, who had been attempting to pry information as to the inner workings of ANBU, leaned forward eagerly. Yamato shifted into a stiffer posture, at the ready. Itachi Uchiha didn’t so much as blink, but he did eye Hatake warily.

“Right,” Tsunade said, tapping one finger against her arm. “Run me through all of this. I haven’t put too much attention in ANBU, too busy fixing the travesty of the hospital and services here.”

“Of course, Hokage-Sama,” Kakashi said entirely unaffected. “In service I was stationed as Battalion Captain, leading the Field Division.”

“What is the Field Division made up of?” Shikamaru asked. Kakashi didn’t look at him, instead, he stared directly at Tsunade before she nodded.

“Field Division is subsection into the following. ANBU Assassination Battalion, ANBU Operations Battalion, ANBU Demolition Battalion or Demolition Corps, ANBU MSC Battalion, and Hunter Nin Battalion.”

Shikamaru nodded slowly, frowning at the influx of information. “These are just the field divisions?”

“All divisions on outsourced missions in either the Land of Fire or outer nations,” Kakashi corrected with an unreadable expression. “Not including the Intelligence Division.”

“Which we don’t need to get into since Ibiki would be very upset if I blabbed about his secrets,” Tsunade said, rolling her eyes with a huff. “Alright Hatake, you want to do the debrief or?”

Kakashi shifted the slightest bit, pausing before he said, unaffected, “As Battalion Captain, I ran all categories of field operations, Lady Hokage-Sama.”

“Fine fine, skip around the point,” she said, massaging her temple. “Just, give me your specialty or something so we can strategize.”

“If I may,” Itachi said quietly, lowering his head strangely. Kakashi snapped his head over, looking at him oddly. Tsunade nodded, and Itachi said very quietly, “It may be more prudent to restructure Team Ro.”

“Oh boy,” Yamato said under his breath, shooting a glance at Shikamaru in the corner. “We’re down two members.”

“We’ve run worse,” Kakashi said instantly, eying Shikamaru sharply.

“Uh, not to get in the middle of this weird thing,” Naruto said awkwardly, “but like, what is...uh...this?”

“Naruto,” Kakashi said, smiling strangely, “Itachi Uchiha served under me in ANBU. Yamato as well. So, it looks like we’ve gained a little Nara on our team.”

“Please don’t haze him,” Tsunade said abruptly. “Come on, debrief me. Team Ro, right?”

“Yes, Hokage-Sama. Team Ro, experienced in Assassination, Operations, and Hunter Nin missions. Primarily Operations Battalion.”

Naruto swallowed thickly. He knew his Sensei was dangerous, but never so obviously before.

“Give me specialties,” Tsunade ordered.

“Yes Hokage-Sama,” Kakashi said. “Codename Inu, Battalion Captain. Specialty in Ninjutsu, Taijutsu, Kenjutsu, tracking, intelligence and tactical analysis. Lightning Affinity and all nature releases.”

Naruto saw Shikamaru choke and look very terrified for a short moment. Naruto assumed then that Kakashi was very very skilled.

“Codename Kinoe. Specialty in Ninjutsu, tracking, stealth and diversionary tactics. Wood release and water earth release.”

Tsunade twitched at that but waved onwards. All eyes shifted to Itachi, who sighed and suddenly looked much sicklier in his chair. He said, quieter than the others, “Codename weasel. Specialty in Genjutsu, Sougujutsu, infiltration and espionage, intelligence and tactical analysis. Fire affinity, and wind, water, yin, and yang release.”

It was very telling, and a lot more information than the man had been willing to share. All eyes shifted to Shikamaru, who spluttered when put on the spot.

“I- hold on there!” he said, lifting both arms defensively. “I don’t know- I haven’t had any sort of formal-.”

Kakashi sighed and rubbed his forehead with one hand. He said, a little stressed and uncomfortable, “just try, Nara.”

“Fine,” Shikamaru said, looking very much uncomfortable. “I... I don’t have any affinity, but I have yin, fire and earth release. I know a little Fuinjutsu, but not enough to say I’m good at it.”

Kakashi waved one hand, trying to get him to speak more. Tentatively, Shikamaru elaborated. “I know my clan techniques with shadows. I’ve managed shadow possession without hand seals, but not actively for anything higher or piercing level. I... I’ve beat Asuma in all forms of tactical combat simulations.”

Kakashi made a small noise of interest, tilting his head slightly. “Alright. Another tactical analysis, a restraint and distance reconnaissance player.”

“It would be nice to have a Taijutsu specialist,” Tenzo muttered, but then nodded grudgingly. “We could run with this.”

“Keep in mind that he’s injured still,” Tsunade pointed out, gesturing to Itachi. “I can get him at least up to functional, but nothing that would hold for an extended fight.”

“It’s fine, he isn’t a primary,” Kakashi said easily, “secondary support mostly. Unless there’s something new we should know.”

Itachi paused then said, “no.”

“Well, that’s a lie,” Shikamaru muttered, but nobody bothered to accuse Itachi of anything else.

“So... plan time?” Naruto asked, feeling baffled by the whirlwind of information he didn’t understand. “Going to run in and beat him up?”

“I know little about Danzo, but I know he’s got full function of that injured arm he never uses,” Tsunade warned.

“That is a problem,” Kakashi said lightly. “I’d normally use a pincer, but we’re a bit low on attack units. We may be better with a deflationary tactic with an immobilization end.”

“He won’t be expecting me, either,” Shikamaru said. His fingers twitched slightly, eyes on the ground as he thought quickly. “If you’re an established unit, he’ll recognize normal ways to combat you. Are there any underhand or unknown techniques he hasn’t encountered?”

“This isn’t even addressing the Sharingan he stole,” Kakashi pointed out with a huff. “Personally, it takes a lot to use a Sharingan. Nothing sustained at least for a further form.”

“I can immobilize him for a short period of time for restraints,” Itachi said quietly. Kakashi tilted his head, but Itachi wouldn’t meet his eye.

“I’ve been practicing a new technique as well,” Kakashi said slowly. “I haven’t yet understood the properties, but I believe my...Sharingan allows reality distortions.”

Itachi looked up, a bit surprised. He asked, timid, “a complete drain or focus recoil?”

“A recoil snap,” Kakashi agreed. “It removes a sphere of reality, nothing greater than a foot radius in size.”

“Danzo has not experienced my Tsukuyomi,” Itachi said in turn. “I can immobilize even a Sharingan for a few seconds.”

“Then we’ll get him then,” Shikamaru said, not understanding any part of the reality-warping. “Looks like we’ll have to kill a council member.”

Naruto nodded, feeling grim. Inside his head, Kyuubi cackled.

Here’s a link to da art of Sasuke’s ANBU outfit!

Chapter Text

Shisui Uchiha was everything Sasuke remembered in his hazy memories.

He was as kind and open as Sasuke could recall, he wore that aura of ease that felt so impossible Sasuke often thought he had imagined it. He hadn’t developed his Sharingan back when Shisui was still alive; one of his greatest fears revolved around the idea that his memories had inflated the man into that of an idea. Sasuke dreaded the thought that everything he believed he knew about Shisui Uchiha was false hopes born from nostalgic longing.

“Okay, okay I’ve considered all the factors,” Shisui said loudly. He used both arms to articulate his point, smashing one fist against his open palm like a gavel. He slumped forward, shifting into a prowl and declared confidently, “we can totally convince someone to give us some weapons if we stop near a border village.”

Sasuke said, very aware of how he was needlessly feeding into the conversation, “we don’t need weapons.”

“Well you don’t need weapons,” Shisui said, going so far as to pout. “But I want a sword.”

Sasuke kept walking. They passed into Fire not that long ago, their pace picking up speed once Shisui recovered enough Chakra to effectively run if needed. There weren’t enough trees to leap across, but the Redwoods was approaching in a few hours at a steady walk.

“I used to have the coolest sword,” Shisui huffed, dramatic and not truly upset with the loss. “It was really nice, but well, I guess when you die you forfeit your cool swords.”

Shisui Uchiha wore his old uniform like he spent more time in it than not. There was an empty harness sewn into the upper quadrant on his right chest, where a sheath fit snugly and his famous blade once stayed within arm’s reach. Without it, there were small distortions from sun-bleaching. Small ripples or tears where patchwork became more evident and empty pockets that once held mission scrolls.

He walked around with boyish enthusiasm, eyes wide and bright as he babbled about nearly anything. His eye, grey and dark with flecks of irregularities, moved with hypervigilance. Sasuke thought Shisui moved and acted more like Kakashi than he did Itachi.

“How are we brothers?” Sasuke asked him. Both knew obviously that they were from the same clan, but unique genealogy often warped far beyond that of normal relation.

“You mean related?” Shisui asked, looking bemused by something Sasuke didn’t know. “I actually mapped this out with ‘Tachi a while ago. You may not remember my dad, he lost a leg in the Third war and my mother took care of him. They both passed away when you were still too young for the academy.”

Sasuke remembered that. It had been a sombre week, where Itachi was gone nearly every day and the pyre burned too hot for comfort. Sasuke had seen the pyre burn many times in his life, often for people he never knew well.

“But, I did look through some records,” Shisui said with a grin and a single wink, or a very weird blink. “My mother, Mizuki, was supposedly blessed by Tsukiyomi, which isn’t actually true; she was just coincidentally born during a full moon. But, my grandmother was named Hotaru and she was the important woman in my bloodline.”

Sasuke took all this in with a rare level of interest. He didn’t know much about Shisui’s family, it was a taboo topic since the prodigy had become an orphan so young with no true direct family. Sasuke’s family took him in a little too quickly, in hindsight it had something to do with Shisui being the next legacy-carrier of the Uchiha and Sasuke’s family being the heirs, but the finer details…

“Hotaru-obaasan was a bit aptly named,” Shisui mused, looking skywards in thought. “Little lightning bug, I got my curls from her, but she wasn’t expected. A bit ah, out of ceremony if you catch me…”

“A shiseiji?” Sasuke blurted, a little shocked by the announcement. An illegitimate child in the Uchiha clan was...a hefty sort of offence. The Elders would have been furious.

“Well, it’s not like she really chatted about that,” Shisui grumbled a little. He stretched his arms out in front of him, cracking a few joints in his right hand and his left wrist. With a cheery whistle, he waved at a curious crow roosting on an overhead branch. It cocked its head and opened its mouth, showing a little flash of the tongue but otherwise stayed quiet.

“ Anyways,” Shisui said, hurrying along with a shrug. “Hotaru-obaasan married young but grandfather passed away before I was born. Okasan came after, and then there was me! My whole family likes to find a partner young, a bit funny like that.”

Sasuke boggled, looking at Shisui perplexed. “You aren’t married.”

Shisui tripped, stumbling over a root. He blushed red along his cheekbones and near his neck. He spluttered, incoherent noises before he giggled anxiously and steamrolled right over Sasuke’s comment. “So! Hotaru-obaasan was a little secret lovechild, but her father was the one and only Kagami Uchiha!”

That time, it was Sasuke who stumbled. He repeated, a little shrilly, “you’re related to Kagami Uchiha?”

“Technically I’m a little bastard-bloodline,” Shisui snickered playfully, wagging his finger playfully. “Poor Hiijiji would be croaking if he knew I came about from rolling in the hay.”

Sasuke felt a bit stunned at that revelation. He knew about Kagami Uchiha, everyone knew about him from the foundations of the village. Kagami Uchiha helped build the district, mapping the roads and paths and houses. He was the tactical force that pushed together unity within the village as Madara Uchiha led the clan to what great legacy and fear the name Uchiha brought.

Sasuke also knew that Kagami Uchiha was of an entirely different bloodline in the clan. The Uchiha clan was broad, and although they didn’t marry out that often, their genes were assertive and left all children with trademark qualities and annoying weaknesses to heavy meats. Compared to the Hyuuga, the amount of inbreeding was dismal- it wasn’t their fault the Sharingan overrode most Kekkei Genki.

Shisui may be one of the most genetically different Uchiha in the entire clan, divergent so far back it meant he was basically a stranger.

“Oh,” Sasuke said, feeling a bit blindsided by that realm of information. 

“I know right?” Shisui said with a toothy grin. “My family wasn't really big on shinobi, but I found old notes either Hiijiji or obaasan left in the cellar, and that’s my famous body flicker!”

Sasuke felt a bit dumb. He asked with a stiff tongue, “you...your body flicker is…”

“Oh, no! It isn’t a secret technique or anything. I just combined some old notes and I’m weak for experimenting with jutsu.”

Sasuke looked at Shisui, who lifted his hands into a single seal. A normal body flicker required more hand signs, but Shisui shifted chakra inexplicably in a warping movement that spoke more of sealwork.

Amaterasu stirred slightly, blurring with distant recognition and interest. Shisui pushed his chakra and the world warped, distorting as it moved much quicker than normal academy taught body-flickers with significantly less effort.

“And here I am!” Shisui crowed, roosting smugly in a tree. He leapt down, landing silently and startling a chipmunk near the base of the forest. Shisui waved again, curls significantly dishevelled and makeshift eyepatch askew. “Truth be told, I think it’s more bastardized sealwork. Old Kagami-hiijiji was the student of the Second Hokage. I think he tried to steal a little of his genius.”

It wasn’t anything like the mesmerizing power of the old Hokages, nothing like the suffocating power of Tobirama. Sasuke never studied history as much as some others, but he had a deep memory and well of information he drew from with a bucket that didn’t belong to him. The ripples stirred a dozing mind, triggering the gentle rumbles of a resting creature.

It isn't Nidaime's work, Amaterasu rumbled and conjured the false memory of unimpressed albino eyes and threatening killing intent. But...there is something similar.

Shisui body flickered again, moving not so much as a movement of speed, but nearly a jump between locations. So fast, the afterimage remained a physical presence. He laughed loudly, moving between branches so quick with so little a shift of air, the distortions remained solid and moving near independently from his original step. It reminded Sasuke a bit of Naruto’s incessant use of shadow clones- the way the sky would turn orange with his tacky jumpsuit like a human sunset.

Shisui in comparison flickered about in waves of shadow and black. His curls bounced, feathery soft and independent of each gesture as black bodies spotted the tree branches in a flock of red eyes. 

‘No wonder the crows came to him,’ Sasuke thought, wondering if Shisui, once body flickering, was also called a murder.

How interesting, Amaterasu said as slowly the two came to a conclusion. In memories, the ghostly black phantom wore long robes and sported yellow hair, flashing like waves of grain between the grotesque white abominations. Amaterasu reasoned, he changed it fundamentally into something new. The bastard, bastardizing an invention of the Nidaime.

“He wasn’t the only one,” Sasuke said verbally. His words were not meant to be spoken, but Shisui heard and came to his side near breathless and delighted by the useless chakra expenditure.

“What was that?” Shisui asked, bumping shoulders playfully and gazing at the younger with a searching Sharingan.

“Your body flicker,” Sasuke referenced. “You took it from the Nidaime.”

Shisui cocked his head, then hummed in contemplation. “Did I? That would make sense...actually, I think Raido mentioned Hiraishin being from the Nidaime...no wonder he and I kept getting mixed up!”

Sasuke wisely stayed silent as Shisui fell into contemplative pondering. “It’s interesting if you think about it. Raido needed both Genma and Iwashi to use their weird Hiraishin formation- since the Fourth was the only one able to actually do it independently. But the Fourth learned that from the Second, which I guess my hiijiji did also.”

Shisui thought longer before he shrugged, letting the topic slide away with another lopsided grin. “So! Sasuke-kun, I can’t believe how much you’ve grown. You said you took that from Itachi? You aren’t ANBU?”

Sasuke nodded slowly, feeling distinctly uneasy. He never understood how conversation bounced along so simply. “No.”

“You’re just like ‘Tachi,” Shisui said fondly, a little smile curling upon his lips. “Every conversation is itachi gokko.”

Sasuke had never thought of that pun before, which felt criminal with how well it fit. Game of cat and mouse, going around in circles. 

“But! You’re much cuter,” Shisui grinned crookedly, ruffling Sasuke’s hair with one hand. “How is Itachi? I’ve been dead for a while, what’s changed?”

“Well,” Sasuke started awkwardly. How did Naruto do basic conversation? “The entire clan has been dead since Nii-san murdered them.”

Shisui stopped walking. He asked, strained and horrified, “‘Tachi did what?”

The moon lifted above the horizon, glowing slightly ivory in the shape of a waxing gibbous. Just over halfway filled, it wobbled lopsided like an egg and revealed its darkened pitted surface to only those that cared to look.

Itachi healed to a sufficient level wherein ANBU he would still provide support. Not enough to lead a mission, but a baseline standard that could still aid if required. In the Akatsuki, he referred to this state as an off day. He had frequent off days then.

His vision had recovered what it could with Lady Hokage’s determined forces. The degenerating pathways of his optic nerve recovered under her careful touch, cooling the rampant inflammation and compressed signals. His pathways were buffered smooth, blockages eroded until once again, they would develop with reckless use of the Mangekyo.

Kakashi Hatake exhibited similar problems with his Sharingan, although in much less severity or symptoms. Both men fell victim to a verbal thrashing and a few threats to their lives.

Itachi kneeled on the back deck of the house he killed his family in and prayed silently to the moon.

It had been nearly a month- almost a full cycle of waning and waxing since Itachi lay gutted and waiting for a miracle. He personally didn’t believe in such things, not since destiny or fate drove him to horrific ends and left his skin so bloody he wondered when he would feel clean again.

Itachi didn’t believe in heavenly touches or grace given gifts. Yet, he received a drug that cured a disease that could not be fixed, a reiyaku. He experienced things that were very improbable with the only explanation being the work of a gracious deity. He had too many questions and far too few answers and knew in his heart, that knowledge would not fix anything.

He didn’t pray to the goddess of the moon in search of new information or spiritual guidance. He knew that he did not deserve forgiveness for all he had done.

He was going to aid in the capture of Councilman Danzo, but said man was the origin of Itachi’s spiral into unspeakable horrors. If he were to take down Danzo, was there ever a purpose to every monstrosity he had committed?

He asked the moon for no salvation but asked simply for her thoughts. She came to him when he was young and whispered when she eclipsed the sun, your eyes will witness the world’s salvation, this kaigen is my covenant.

Itachi spent many years of his life struggling to understand what her words meant. He didn’t dare tell his family or the elders, not when his worship of Tsukuyomi, the pacifist, already brought stigma. He told Shisui when they became friends and then closer, and took the other’s advice to heart. 

Shisui told him, “that sounds pretty bad, ‘Tachi. The world needing salvation? A kaigen is enlightenment, but doesn’t it literally mean gaining eyesight? Opening your eyes to the truth?”

Itachi pondered and dreaded what purpose the goddess of illusion had for speaking to him. And then Shisui died, and Itachi slaughtered his family and facing Sasuke ( he could never forget his screams ) Itachi realized that he had never been specified in Tsukuyomi’s words. She merely said his eyes, so Itachi took steps to ensure all he could.

It became more reasonable with the Akatsuki, they hunted the bijuu and certainly would draw the nations into devastation. Itachi grew sicker and felt the truth and assurance press comforting with each clotted tumour in his lungs, Sasuke will fix this. 

Itachi had been so sure that the moon told him his role, and then Sasuke appeared and the situation escalated and Itachi spent a month useless in a wheelchair with healed eyes.

“What do you want?” Itachi asked the moon quietly. She had not spoken to him in such a long time, if not for the Sharingan he would have forgotten her entirely. He asked, “have I not done what is destined?”

What role did Danzo have in this? What purpose did Itachi serve if the lord of the sun took a vested interest in Sasuke? What use did Itachi’s eyes have when Sasuke sprouted wings of fire and wore a Mangekyo on his throat?

Itachi asked, voice wavering and betraying his fragile state, “what have I done to displease you?”

The ambient cats in the district scrambled around, peering at him with luminescent eyes. His crows had fled from him, a horrifying realization that left Itachi aggressive and wounded. Since the crow interfered with his dismissal of the Nara, they flew away and had yet to return. The crow- Shisui’s crow, refused his callings. Itachi felt lost and horribly small.

“Have I failed you?” Itachi asked the moon desperately, throat thigh and words scratchy. “Have I...I am sorry for what offence I have…”

There were no more fireflies or the gentle hum of the summer insects. Itachi closed his eyes and asked the moon, “I do not know what more you ask of me. What am I supposed to do?”

Itachi opened his eyes, Sharingan spinning and shifting to the swirling design of his Mangekyo. He glared upwards at the moon, and said coldly, “for the patron of illusions, you are a coward.”

The cats yowled and fought somewhere in the distance. There were faint noises of Konoha alive at night. The rush of the Naka River couldn’t be heard, but if Itachi tried he could imagine it.

He heard the squeaking of little bats in the sky, living in the broken roof tiles of old houses. They fluttered about, sneaking into tiny holes the size of peach pits.

A bat squeaked, stumbling down with clumsy movements to smack into the pillars of the back porch. Itachi sighed, his frustration and anger evaporating at the sight of such a feeble clumsy animal. 

“Careful,” he muttered to the little rodent. It scrambled with little claws, barely able to prevent its slide towards the ground. Itachi picked it up, channelling enough chakra to resist a bite. The animal squeaked shrill and wimpy, its entire body no larger than Itachi’s thumb. It weighed less than a coin.

“Such a small feeble animal,” Itachi mused. He didn’t dare pet its brown fuzzy back in fear he would crush it by mistake. It looked like a hairball, uncoordinated and too tiny to exist in such a dangerous world. Itachi held it flat on his palm and saw it struggle to comprehend what it had just encountered.

“I am afraid I must soon do a terrible thing, little bat,” he confided in the tiny animal. Its eyes are too small to be operational, and its mouth too weak to eat more than small insects. Itachi knew little bats ate the pestering mosquitos and navigated by sound. They were defenceless and near-blind. 

He sighed quietly, feeling depressed. He lifted his hand to the sky and urged the animal to take wings and fly back into the sky. It chirped, confused and distressed and Itachi saw it struggle.

“You will be alright,” Itachi assured the animal, finally daring to stroke its back with his smallest finger. It felt soft in his hand, so light he could forget its presence on his palm. It’s little claws hooked on his skin, too tiny to puncture or injure him. Itachi said, “you cannot see me and do not understand, but I’ll help you back to where you belong.”

The bat didn’t fuss or make a noise. Itachi blinked, moments stretched longer with use of his Sharingan, and when he opened his eyes the bat was gone.

It hadn’t flown, it simply vanished. No surge of chakra to signify a summons. No sound of flight or touch of air on his hand where it once rested. It was there, and then it was not.

Itachi scrambled backwards, seeking shelter in his old home. The moon mocked him, watching with a lopsided eye as Itachi felt panic fester.

“That-...” he trailed off, unable to think. There had been a bat, and then there wasn’t. He held it, felt it. Genjutsu did not allow that level of precision or tactile responses of the body. There was no rush or discrepancies in the mind. It wasn’t the manipulation of his mind and senses, it simply wasn’t there.

Itachi felt his heartbeat increase, the gentle fluttering escalating to a heavier thrum that drowned the sound of angry cats, There were no chittering bats in the sky or shriek of crows on tree branches. Itachi stared forward, Sharingan seeing and recording although he felt much further from himself. He didn’t recognize what exactly was occurring outside the loud pounding in his throat and the slight stress headache blooming into blossom.

Eventually, although it could not have been long considering the deadline they had.

It was Kakashi that came to him, wearing a standard Jounin vest with the thicker ripples suggesting under armour below the long-sleeve uniform. A thicker lump on his forearm was one Itachi knew to be an assassin blade.

Itachi stared forward blankly into the night, sighing heavily through his nose when Kakashi waved one hand curiously in his line of sight.

“Are you here?” Kakashi asked curiously, snapping his hand twice. “I’ve never seen you so bothered.”

Itachi closed his eyes, struggling to reign in the wild flurry that inexplicably overwhelmed him. His heart fluttered quickly, nausea twisted and Itachi identified the source of unparalleled anxiety. 

“You are bothered,” Kakashi said, genuinely surprised. He subtly lifted his Sharingan, trying to be sly and uncaring about the precaution. It was justified since a presumed psychotic episode was the basis of the Uchiha Massacre- and they hadn’t seen an actual psychotic break.

‘Calm,’ Itachi thought to himself. He had the animal urge to run, to get away from an unknown source of his distress. His hands sweated, that hadn’t ever occurred before. ‘Be calm.’

“Are you functional?” Kakashi asked him, voice dropping to something apathetic. 

Itachi swallowed, distantly impressed by the difficulty of the action, and croaked, “yes.”

“Mm,” Kakashi hummed, tapping one finger on his side. “What hit you?”

“Apparently it was divine intervention,” Itachi said, humour horribly off the mark. Itachi never had that great a sense of comedy- Shisui was the one to think of jokes or funny stories. Kakashi had a warped sense of amusement, but Itachi only knew when he should not say things.

“...Right,” Kakashi began slowly, taking a step closer. Itachi noticed that Kakashi left his Sharingan uncovered, carefully on alert. Kakashi asked him lightly, “did a God come asking you to do something ridiculous?”

Itachi looked at the dark and the moon and the silence of the crows and he laughed a little breathlessly. That made Kakashi stiffen more than any words could.

Itachi pressed both hands to his face, swallowed thickly and ignored the way his hands shook slightly. There was no bat, and there never had been.

“Let’s go already,” Itachi mumbled. Kakashi reached out and stopped him with one hand on his shoulder.

“Uchiha…” he paused, trailing off lightly. He asked, “what was it that made you such a timid little mouse?”

Itachi didn’t think about the bat. He said, “it was nothing.”

“Maa, you’ll have to tell me if you want to go on this mission. I’m starting to think you might be a bit compromised.”

“ What?” Itachi hissed, gawking. He had never been benched in ANBU, he had never failed a mission for the Akatsuki. 

Itachi tilted his head to glare directly at his superior and he hissed, “you are not making me step down.”

“Normally my teammates are sane,” Kakashi pointed out, voice cold and flat instead of the normal accusatory. 

Itachi clenched his jaw, and grit out slowly, “I had an argument. With the moon.”

Any other person would use that alone as proof of insanity. Kakashi merely glanced upwards at the nearly full moon, paused in thought, and nodded slowly. He stepped back, posture relaxed and upright instead of his normal slouch, and he said, “then let’s go.”

It had been a very long time since Itachi went on a mission with the comfort of knowing his partner likely wouldn’t kill him. Kisame had been tolerable, and perhaps with time, they could have fallen into some level of friendship. The rest of the Akatsuki never offered any form of companionship or comfort, avoiding Itachi like the plague on his first induction.

Then, with Deidra and his loud repeated promises to one day kill Itachi, none of the others ever bothered looking further. On occasion, Sasori would ask him questions and they would discuss various obscure topics over remarkably well-brewed tea. Sasori favoured a specific style of woodworking tools and Itachi briefly mentioned offhand an alternate method.

(Itachi thought his violent disdain of Orochimaru also increased his value in Sasori’s eye. Perhaps, they could have been allies at one point).

Kakashi walked in every way like Itachi remembered, which proved true with the aid of the Sharingan. The man hadn’t changed in any way, even with his dismissal from ANBU and mentorship to ridiculous children. 

“You trained Sasuke?” Itachi asked quietly, speaking rhetorically to prompt further discussion.

Kakashi hummed a bit, looking upwards at the various broken awnings in the district. He said, a little fondly, “I did. Sasuke, Naruto, and Sakura.”

“She’s a medic?” Itachi asked. He knew, somehow, that the girl trained personally under the Hokage. He knew very little beyond that. Sasuke didn’t speak about her in his presence.

“She is,” Kakashi confirmed it with a small shrug. “Her chakra reserves were horrible, but she has a fine touch.”

“Not Genjutsu training?” Itachi asked.

Kakashi exhaled a quiet rush, which could have been a genuine laugh. He asked a little dryly, “when there was a Sharingan on her team?”

True, that would be cruel. Plus, from what Itachi had gathered in the few words Sasuke had mentioned before, it seemed she hadn’t the temperament for slow manipulation of chakra. Healers, in Itachi’s experience, were the most terrifying type of shinobi.

“Anyways, she wouldn’t do well on this squad,” Kakashi said, elaborating on the thought everyone had since Yamato mentioned it. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a taijutsu expert?

“She…” he paused, his entire body wilting under the strange form of nostalgia. He looked distantly at a loss, baffled over a memory. “She didn’t...we never balanced out.”

Genin teams were made with something in mind, some level of balance or idea of a future squad. The girl, clearly, had been intended to balance out the loud energy of Naruto and Sasuke’s... personality. The girl turning into a loud person herself would shift everything into a very volatile dynamic.

“She felt left behind,” Itachi summarized.

Kakashi winced slightly, nodding shortly. “Naruto’s chakra stores are...unfathomable. Sasuke would have been considered a prodigy in wartime-.”

“And she has minimal chakra and fine control,” Itachi recognized. The makings of a powerful nin, but never in the bold flashy way that prodigies tended to use. She would be incapable of shadow-clones, unable to change the elements or force nature under her whim. The fine control to create Genjutsu but not enough stores to ever obtain mastery over it. 

It wasn’t impossible of course. There were legendary shinobi that used no chakra at all- a man Itachi remembered from his ANBU days when he once fought vocal and distraught with Kakashi, covered in blood.

The girl had little chakra but fine control. He specialized in taijutsu but without such traits of utilizing no charka at all, she would never be recognized. Shinobi with fine control could be used on espionage or escort missions, where muffling their chakra allowed them to slip below the eyes of foreign nations. She could pursue the arts of poisoning, like that of Kiri or Suna.

Her options were not those of fame and glory, like Sasuke and Naruto who circled each other like the sun and moon. 

“It wasn’t a fair team,” Itachi said after a thorough moment of contemplation. He could barely remember his Genin team, it had been too long and they all died before he knew them well.

“It wasn’t,” Kakashi agreed. They were nearing the gates of the Uchiha district where Itachi would draw genjutsu about him and meet with both Yamato and Shikamaru at their rendezvous spot, hopefully, cleared of witnesses. “It... could have been, but Sasuke developed exponentially. I see some logic to it. Naruto was pathetic as a Genin, but Sasuke balanced him. He knew nothing but Sakura corrected him. They could have been an excellent team if they stuck together.”

Itachi saw many flaws already in the innate foundation of the team. They reached the gates of the district and the very edge of the protective seal. Itachi slipped his fingers against the leather thong tying back his hair and let it slip across his shoulders and near his ribs. He lifted the hood on his outer cloak, long and thin material that draped sheer over illusioned shoulders.

Kakashi didn’t react in any way, although Itachi knew it was a fascinating disguise. Itachi had been very useful on ANBU missions, despite how young he was. Some targets were filthy disgusting individuals, careless of age. Itachi had been one of the few on the squadron that never reacted to murder. Itachi had been very good at using genjutsu on himself.

Itachi walked beside Kakashi, looking every bit a blushing civilian. There were many unremarkable people in Konoha with fair skin and dark hair, and Kakashi had formed quite a rumour about himself for ease of confidentiality.

“She became the apprentice to the Lady Hokage?” Itachi asked, voice distorted and lighter the moment it passed the veil they wore. Kakashi did not react, falling into easy stride side by side as the streets became populated. People saw what they wanted to see, and didn’t bother to look further.

“She did, she was...upset, when Sasuke left,” Kakashi said. “I didn’t have anything I could teach her- or rather anything I would teach her.”

“Good,” Itachi said simply. Better a medic than a murderer.

“I think so too,” Kakashi agreed openly. “That’s why I didn’t want her on the mission. She could easily fill in as a taijutsu expert, but I don’t want her witnessing this.”

“He won’t die today,” Itachi murmured to the contrary, shuffling to the side as one man looked at them a little more interested. Kakashi glanced over lazily, the man scampered away hurriedly.

They passed into the shinobi district, the civilian lanterns and children’s laughter fading near immediately. The roar of drunken idiots lifted a few streets over, the snapping hiss of exploding seals and other games echoed on the rooftops. 

“He won’t but it may be close,” Kakashi told him. He lifted one arm in a silent greeting as a Jounin near a ramen stall called out a greeting. A few others waved hello, trying to lure Kakashi into the warmth and alcohol offered inside of a bar. Kakashi went so far as to lazily drape one arm across Itachi’s shoulder, rolling his single exposed eye at the near-deafening whistles and hoots. 

Kakashi bent down, murmuring quietly into Itachi’s ear, “Pakkun dispelled. Yamato has the area cleared.”

Itachi shifted his shoulders, Kakashi’s arm slipped off and forced the younger to adjust to the lack of warmth and weight. Itachi normally would have used a crow, but the birds had become defiant and abandoned him as of recently. He didn’t dare think about it further.

They drifted from the populated areas towards the quieter gardens and public spaces. Some statues were placed, one once carved by an old half-Uchiha mason that nobody truly valued. There were metal statues dedicated to previous Hokage’s or heads of families. There were annual festivals sometimes in the gardens, where Shinobi played tiny tricks for civilian children and offered pocky and dango.

There was a little bridge, artistically decorated with metal railing carved into leaves and floral detailing. The creek that ran below the bridge was little more than a trickle, synthetically filled by an overflow of the larger lake the hospital overlooked.

Kakashi drifted by, obnoxiously close to Itachi as they walked along the creek and the many lanterns. The moon threw subtle shadows, gentle white light that illuminated the lack of people around them.

Itachi ducked his head, portraying shyness and slipped his hands into the opposite sleeve. Unseen, and seemingly embarrassed by the man next to him, Itachi shifted through signs and imposed a broad mask genjutsu. 

Kakashi couldn’t tell when the genjutsu passed, he only knew it when Itachi shifted into his side subtly. There was no sign, no twist of vision or distortion in chakra. Kakashi knew there was something at works that would push all bystanders away and disguise the events inside the bubble. 

Kakashi didn’t forget, but the ability Itachi had for creating Genjutsu without sustained eye contact was horrifying. All he required was a sight on the target or a perimeter established with tags marked prior.

Itachi leaned into him slightly, Kakashi glanced to the right and saw Danzo Shimura out on a peaceful stroll through the garden. Across the little creek, he walked slowly with his eyes closed, perfectly content.

Shikamaru Nara would be in position, but nowhere they would see him. Yamato, similarly, would be out of sight.

They were in position, with a trap ready to spring.

Danzo Shimura walked forward until he didn’t and his body paused. He opened his eye quickly, alarmed but recovering with the subtle tremor through his stiff muscles.

Kakashi lunged with the ferocity of a rabid animal. His hair flattened under the speed of his movements, laying back like hackles as his arm lit with electric light.

“Now,” Itachi whispered in their minds without moving from his spot. They shifted into position, the genjutsu altering perception just enough for a counterattack.

It would be amateurish to presume Danzo walked alone. From the nearest sewer grate, three blank-faced nin sprang upwards. One as old as Itachi, the other two are younger than Sasuke.

Itachi glanced over, head tilting slightly. Inside his sleeves, he shifted three more signs to alter the illusion subtle enough. A shift out of alignment, braiding the web further to sustain itself. The stone walkway was a half step further than actuality and left the three stumbling with distorted depth perception.

Yamato struck with flexible branches. One emerged from the sewer grate so swiftly, it yanked down on one ankle and pulled the ROOT agent into the dark and out of the fight.

The other two reacted much faster, one drawing a sword and throwing senbon while the other shifted rapidly through hand signs. Their hands lit on fire, wearing the blaze like a cloak as both arms became torches on the direct path to Kakashi.

Yamato worked, operating from the shadows to contain and redirect- and Danzo did something without moving which somehow placed him out of reach.

Kakashi made a quiet hiss, one that spoke of disaster. Kakashi had missed, but such a thing was impossible.

Danzo rushed forward swiftly, elegant in his evening robes and Obi. Kakashi drew his kunai, reflecting thrown stars as Itachi flickered through more layers.

He noticed his Genjutsu faltering, fraying apart in unexpected spots under the laser eyes of a Sharingan. It was a grim confirmation that Danzo possessed a Sharingan, desperately seeking for the flaw in Itachi’s work with a stolen eye.

‘Shisui’s eye,’ Itachi remembered through a horrific surge of gilt. He lay another web onto his Genjutsu, one a little more sharp than prior. He saw Danzo twitch, shuddering subtly as it snapped sharply on his senses.

Kakashi struck again, and somehow, missed. It was impossible, entirely unknown with Shikamaru’s shadows trapping the man with every step. Itachi couldn’t fathom how the man was escaping, flickering away with stolen movements and stolen techniques.

Itachi felt his Genjutsu twitch, fibres clicking and peeling apart irritating on his skin. He placed another layer, twitched as it tore out with a burn of chakra. 

Danzo looked to his left and saw Itachi. The Genjutsu shuddered, then tore on the seams as Itachi’s illusion crumbled.

“A traitor at heart,” Danzo said smoothly and unsurprised. Itachi hated the dread and fear that twitched along his brain, instinctively beaten into him like a whipped dog.

“Maa, I wouldn’t be so chatty,” Kakashi said, looking entirely at ease despite his failed attack three times now. Yamato leapt down from the high wall, the two ROOT agents secured together by the beginnings of an Oak tree trunk.

Danzo didn’t look upset, he placed his arms in his sleeves and nodded politely to Yamato who looked quite pale.

“It is nice to see you again,” Danzo said politely. Itachi’s skin crawled, his breathing a little shuddery as he exhaled silently across the little creek.

Yamato twitched and took a step back, saying nothing. It was easier to presume ANBU code ran still, then to face the source of your trauma and aggressor outright. Kakashi noticed and took point on verbal communication. He said, “I don’t like lying, so I’ll admit the feeling isn’t mutual.”

Danzo kept his face blank, then closed his eye insufferably and looked the description of calm. He almost smiled, and said, “I see you have brought your pack back, Hatake. I wonder why you have forgotten your other-.”

“We aren’t talking about that,” Kakashi said coolly.

“Aren’t we?” Danzo asked. “The Uchiha boy, who defected from the village and is now ordered to be killed on sight? Oh dear, I dread Hunter-nin find him.”

Itachi nearly forgot to breathe. Sasuke was strong, but Hunter-nin moved with the ravenous appetite to slaughter their prey and collect their prize. Kakuzu had been one. 

“Or the fox in boy’s clothing?” Danzo asked with devastating implications, “who is being chased by terrorists throughout the nations.”

“You wouldn’t say anything,” Kakashi said flatly. “You’d be branded a traitor yourself. Or are you already? With that snake-filth all over your skin.”

Danzo opened his eye then, looking faintly annoyed. He said, “you always were too perceptive, Hatake.”

“Comes with the eye,” Kakashi said. “But you would know that, wouldn’t you?”

Danzo smiled and faced Itachi directly. He asked, with mock fondness that left Itachi with vomit coating his tongue, “would you like to see all that remains of your cousin, Itachi-kun? Or was I mistaken, he was more than simply your cousin.”

Itachi knew he shouldn’t speak. He croaked, sickened and disgusted, “you are a hideous abomination.”

Danzo nodded, refusing to drop his pleasant smile. “And yet I possess the most powerful Sharingan known in existence.”

“Tsukuyomi would never bid you blessing,” Itachi croaked, breathy and revolted. “You are anathema.”

“A pity your clan held such weight in spiritual pursuits,” Danzo said, mocking how convincingly he shared his care. “Perhaps if they had a vision for the future and not worship for the past, they would still be here.”

“You are anathema,” Itachi spat, physically trembling with how much he hated. He felt his eyes swirl, distorting and flickering on the edge of activating his Mangekyo due to rage alone. Danzo looked at him, pleased and amused by the level of his hate.

“Would you still say such to the eye of your precious-?”

“That’s enough,” Kakashi said coldly. He revealed his own Sharingan, Chidori sparking bright and loud as he levelled himself to attack again.

Danzo shook his head, waiting calmly. He made to step to the side and avoid the strike- then froze abruptly in movement providing the opportunity for Kakashi to ram through with a rush of blood. 

Itachi heard and felt the blood pounding in his ears, and felt the subtlest touch of venomous chakra as a Genjutsu he never experienced before caressed him briefly. Then Danzo was standing a distance away with a considerable frown, looking into the well of the creek.

“I know you are there, Nara,” Danzo said. He sounded annoyed, bothered instead of dead. “Will you face me, or must I kill your companions before yourself?”

“ How?” Kakashi hissed between grit teeth. His voice lowered, the borderline snarl that Hatake’s held in their throats. Kakashi spun around, both eyes bright with reflected lightning as his Sharingan bled into a Mangekyo of a unique design.

“Ah, you’ve been holding back,” Danzo observed. Kakashi lunged, and for the first time, Danzo lifted an arm to counter the strike.

Danzo Shimura had been trained personally by the Second Hokage. He was a teammate to the Third and led an organization of bastardized monstrosities. He countered the attack of Kakashi Hatake and held him off with minor effort. Nobody could beat Kakashi Hatake, it was a universal fact. Danzo Shimura however, could wound him and leave him crippled if needed.

Kakashi snarled, thrown aside like a child. A taijutsu expert would have helped immensely; only Kakashi thrust himself forward for a killing blow that wouldn’t stick. Yamato conjured a web of spiked branches that pierced upwards in mimicry of antlers. They stabbed through, abrupt and violent and Danzo choked blood-.

Itachi shuddered at the faintest whisper of chakra and Danzo Shimura punched Kakashi Hatake in the face hard enough to send the man to his knees. 

‘How?’ Itachi wondered, scrambling horrifically to comprehend what was occurring. It wasn’t an illusion, no Genjutsu he had ever felt before. Danzo was right, Shisui had been the best between them and Shisui would have found a way to fight back by now. Shisui was the fighter, the mastermind and genius that could weave stars together with determination and idiocy. He would smile wide, with the dimples Itachi knew better than his own reflection, and tell him the weakness in Danzo’s jutsu.

‘Every jutsu has a weakness, ‘Tachi,’ Shisui told him seriously while eating stolen sweets in the tree outside Itachi’s window. ‘You just need to think about it differently.’

‘That’s easy for you,’ Itachi said then, struggling under the weight of so many expectations, ‘what’s the weakness in all jutsu then?’

Shisui had smiled and laughed and said bright and teasing, ‘me!’

“Kakashi!” Yamato shouted, stepping forward and frantically conjuring a thick basketweave wall of wooden reeds as Danzo blew fire large enough to level a house. Kakashi rolled across the ground, bleeding from where a slice to his upper arm almost struck bone. Danzo scowled, dropping the stolen kunai to advance towards the hasty barrier.

“Hey,” Nara whispered, slipping from the shadows to crouch alongside Itachi on the other side of the creek. The Nara draped himself in darkness, wearing it close like a blanket that left him near indiscernible in the night. “Strategy, think, Uchiha.”

“Not now,” Itachi grit between his teeth. He was struggling to weave enough Genjutsu to hold off Danzo’s outright physical prowess. The Genjutsu at least drove him to petty limits, shifting the area of impact slight enough to roll Danzo’s wrist or leave him off balance for mere seconds.

“What’s wrong with you?” Nara asked, somehow bored.

“I,” Itachi began with blood-red eyes and the undulating shift of kicking his Mangekyo into submission, “am upset.”

“Huh,” Nara said quietly. Itachi twitched as another Genjutsu snapped back, whipping against his senses like broken ninja wire. Nara clamped one hand on Itachi's shoulder, looking frighteningly intent. “Was that another Genjutsu?”

“You can feel them?” Itachi asked, sweat and exhaustion turning his voice hoarse. Danzo punched right through the wooden barrier, Kakashi struggled to his feet.

“I have the shadows mapping the area for me,” Shikamaru said with a sense of confusion, “I don’t know how, but Danzo is teleporting. Hopping without hand signs.”

“It’s a Genjutsu,” Itachi explained. He knew that much at least.

“What? No, it isn’t,” Shikamaru argued. He pointed to the side, gesturing aggressively. “He’s teleporting, shifting entirely with no Genjutsu snap.”

“A forbidden technique,” Itachi said. He didn’t know how to counter that. He looked into it, but never contemplated or searched so far as to actually find it. Not yet, it was under consideration but then Sasuke found him-. “He’s reversing time temporarily through a forbidden technique. But- but the ramifications-.”

“What would happen?” Shikamaru asked him hastily, forming signs to redirect one kick that nearly took off Yamato’s head. 

“He’d be blind by now,” Itachi explained. “It removes the sight of an eye, but he’s done it multiple times, how could he…”

Shikamaru thought on a plane different from Itachi. Shikamaru acted like the fight was a simple game to him, and he manipulated the movements and strategies with peculiar ability. Shikamaru said, cold and contained, “can you inform Kakashi of what we know?”

“What do we know?” Itachi asked, struggling to reset barriers, the shift of the ground, the change of wood grain that tied into the dull sense of paresthesia along Danzo’s side. 

“His arm, I think it has Sharingan implanted,” Shikamaru explained tightly. “It felt wrong, the texture is different and the shadows in it are broken from light distortions. Tell Kakashi to cut off his arm.”

“He’ll jump and avoid the blow,” Itachi said. He felt a little distant from his body, not entirely present in his skin.

“If it’s a Sharingan, you can redirect it, can’t you?” Shikamaru asked him, clamping one hand tighter on Itachi's shoulder. He squeezed it, comforting with an anxious expression. “Can you use your own Genjutsu to shift it? For a moment?”

‘Tsukuyomi,’ Itachi realized. Not the god, but the technique. It was supremely risky- it placed both the victim and user on the same mental plane with elongated distortions of time. He was just at risk, if not more for experiencing cognitive damage if Danzo countered within the field. 

“It’s...possible,” Itachi said. It may kill him. “Danzo may still counter-.”

“I’ll use my shadows then,” Shikamaru said, sounding exhausted and incredibly nervous. “I’ve never tried to keep eyes open, Kami. I need a drink after this. And a nap.”

“I’ll purchase you all the Sake you want,” Itachi croaked, dreading what they were about to attempt. “I’ve inherited a clan.”

Shikamaru burst out a curt laugh, rubbing his face before nodding and slipping off. Itachi draped another Genjutsu and hissed in both Yamato and Kakashi’s ears, “we have a plan. When there is an opening, amputate his arm.”

Itachi withdrew and felt that Genjutsu shatter like broken glass piercing his scalp. Itachi walked quietly down the stone ground, over the bridge and trailed his fingers on the ornate leaf iron detailing.

Yamato shouted something out, hastily concocting yet another shield as Danzo released fire so strong, it incinerated the unconscious bodies of his two comrades. They burned under the acrid stench of melting armour and cooking skin. Itachi swallowed down nausea and proceeded forward.

‘What’s the weakness in all jutsu then?’

Shisui had smiled and laughed and said bright and teasing, ‘me!’

Itachi lifted his head to meet Danzo’s single eye, still bright with curious contemplation and bemusement, and whispered the gentle word, “Tsukuyomi.”

The world disintegrated under the agonizing pounding of chakra through his eye. His optic nerve screamed at him, blood cascading in tears as the ground stretched as far as possible.

Danzo stood in his mind and body, inverted of colour and light as yin and yang twirled. Itachi conjured swords, which Danzo conjured away. Itachi grit his teeth and pushed more, his body screaming.

“You’re not used to your victims being capable of fighting back,” Danzo commented within a space that didn’t exist. The amount of time that comprised a single second stretched. It would take minutes of suffering to elapse before the true reality could proceed. Itachi squared himself and faced the master of illusion and said, “you are no victim.”

Danzo blanched white and black and red under the Mangekyo, smiled broad enough to show teeth. Each heartbeat sustained itself so long, breathing was only optional here.

“And you think you are?” Danzo asked, striding forward distorted through the water. There were no chains to bind a Mangekyo of equal power. Itachi pushed more chakra and felt blood where he couldn’t see it.

“I have done things and I carry that burden,” Itachi confessed. “I accept my guilt, but you deny and revoke all accusations.”

“I have done nothing wrong,” Danzo deflected easily. He waved one hand, the air swirling and pushing- closer was Kakashi, longer the seconds arced - and Danzo asked him, “I did not order you to kill your clan. It was an option you yourself made.”

“You left me no other-.”

“There are always options, Itachi,” Danzo said, sighing disappointedly. Itachi wanted to run, to steal Sasuke away like he was young and under ANBU command so many years ago, still hopeful for the future...  Danzo said, “you chose to kill your family.”

Itachi wanted to argue, but he couldn’t. He did kill his family. He had their blood on his hands, he still remembered their screams and the horrific acceptance on his mother’s face.

Itachi forced himself to stay relaxed. He said, “you have been tried for your crimes. Your words are irrelevant.”

“They aren’t irrelevant to you,” Danzo countered, stepping closer. Each step, the illusion rippled further. Each movement made it stagger, sluggish. Threatening to break- the Tsukuyomi had never been intended to combat that of another illusionary Mangekyo. Itachi knew that Shisui’s eye held more power than his, could fracture this dimension into hundreds of facets and Itachi’s mind along with it.

Danzo clearly recognized that. He did something which resulted in a piercing ache in Itachi’s skull, and the world distorted, blurred and wrong behind his slow sweeping palm.

“You thought you could keep me here?” Danzo asked him, amused by the attempt. He said, “I should have killed you then. I always presumed you to be a risk, but it seems it was my mistake.”

“It was a mistake,” Itachi agreed between grit teeth. He knew, somewhere, both eyes bled in open sobbing as pain spread excruciatingly through his head. “You should have never touched Shisui.”

“Oh yes, Shisui,” Danzo echoed. Something twitched on his face- he resisted the urge to laugh. “Your partner.”

Itachi grit his teeth, pressing harder. Danzo’s smile shifted as he struggled back. Shisui always joked that he was the flaw in every jutsu, Danzo was proving his words correct.

“You have tested my patience long enough,” Danzo grumbled, he strode forward, threatening the integrity of the Tsukuyomi itself.

Itachi cried out in the illusion, straining to hold it together. Danzo made a noise, similarly struggling to tear it apart. All of it occurred between Danzo’s chakra and Itachi’s mind. Itachi grit his teeth and made a guttural noise of pain. The realm flickered, the light of the Mangekyo wavering into true monochrome misery.

Itachi closed his eyes, attempting not to scream. How much longer would time stretch? How long could mere moments truly last?

“Give in, Uchiha,” Danzo rumbled, struggling in part. He at least still stood, forcing closer. Two strides away, forcing through the sluggish movements and distorted time. Itachi crumbled to his knees, hands curled into fists that bled black on inverted light. 

Itachi stared at his hands, watching them bleed far too quickly for the distorted time, and wondered if this was how his mind finally snapped. Trapped in a Tsukuyomi of his own design-.

‘I’m sorry Shisui,’ Itachi thought miserably, staring at his hands as peripheral vision flickered wildly. 

The world was distorting, a hazy loud chaotic clamour of noise. Time wasn’t operating in a linear fashion, warbling out of octave and ringing in Itachi's ears. The sky flickered violently between white and black, the two altering their colours and details until Itachi could see through Danzo’s skin and muscle and bone to the inner workings of his organs.

“What is this?” Danzo demanded, but his words shifted in octave and tone, wavelength contracting and compressing with freakish ability. “What is this- this distortion-?”

Itachi heard a faint noise, something out of touch and then a hand yanked him out of his drowning. Itachi fell backwards, legs numb and not working as blood gushed from his eyes. He blinked rapidly, sucking down lungfuls of air from where they screamed in his chest.

“Hey- hey!” Yamato shouted, supporting Itachi as he frantically wiped aside the mess of Itachi’s face. “Can you see me? Itachi?”

Itachi gasped, his head killing him and vision splitting in two. He’d experienced similar before when a concussion left his eyes misaligned. His eyes shifted; his vision a disorienting sway with monochrome lights and fluctuating obstacles. Itachi whined, batting away Yamato’s hand to press to his forehead.

“Can you see me?” Yamato repeated more desperately, and Itachi heard loud chattering in his ear. Shikamaru was shouting something, Kakashi howling in return. Itachi wanted it to stop.

In the black imprints of his eyelids, he could still see the wireframe outline of trees and people and a single person, in particular, growing larger-.

Then there was an accompanying shout, a wet noise and heavy thump and Shikamaru crying his name frantically.

“Hey, are you alright?” Shikamaru asked, helping Yamato lower him to the ground. Itachi squeezed his eye shut, vertigo pulling at him sickly.

He heard Kakashi walk over slowly, breathing so heavily Itachi could track him. The fighting had ended, presumably in their favour since there was no screaming, and now all his teammates worriedly fretted over his well being.

“Itachi,” Kakashi said breathlessly and exhausted, “look at me.”

Itachi flittered his eyes open, flinching at the impossible illusionary layer that faded slowly the longer he stared and blinked at the sky.

“That’s not normal,” Yamato said, a little shrill and frazzled. “That is not normal.”

“No, and it’s not a Mangekyo either,” Kakashi muttered to himself, waving a hand across Itachi’s entire field of vision. Shikamaru gaped as Itachi tracked the movement, looking even more taken aback.

“Well, this is going to be hard to explain,” Kakashi said, wilting a little.

Itachi wanted to argue, but with a strange sensation a bit like his ears draining of fluid, the overlay shifted and vanished. The night was dark, the moon near full, and bloody tears were crusting his eyelashes into clumps.

“It’s gone,” Shikamaru whispered in awe, “how did you do that?”

“Did we win?” Itachi croaked hoarsely. It confirmed that he had indeed been screaming.

“Danzo isn’t a problem,” Shikamaru said. After a moment, he elaborated hastily, “Kakashi-Senpai cut off his arm, I bound him in shadows and Yamato had him unconscious in a cage.”

Itachi would think that overkill even for a S-rank nin, but not now. He tried to sit up, struggling a little but Yamato hurriedly helped him.

“Your eyes look clear now,” Kakashi noted, speaking slowly. “You see alright? No clouding? Haze anywhere?”

“It’s fine,” Itachi argued. The use of a Mangekyo wouldn’t set in that quickly. “What occurred?”

“The strangest thing,” Kakashi said, still warily. “A little bat flew out of nowhere, and slammed right into Danzo’s face.”

“A bat,” Itachi echoed, hearing himself say it rather than say it himself.

“A bat with milky white eyes,” Kakashi repeated, “and when I looked to see you, you had the same.”

“I had white eyes?” Itachi asked, very overwhelmed.

Shikamaru at least had pity for him. He tried to elaborate to the best of his ability, which wasn’t much. “It came out of nowhere and threw Danzo off long enough for Kakashi-Senpai to strike. You don’t have bat summons?”

“No,” Itachi said numbly. There was a moment where he saw a wireframe world of rooftops and people, which correlated with the story told. “Is the bat dead?”

“It exploded into mist,” Kakashi said. “I’ve never seen a jutsu like that. It was corporeal, I can attest to that.”

Itachi’s headache was horrible and he felt on the verge of passing out. Fighting against a Mangekyo, let alone Shisui’s Mangekyou whilst keeping a Tsukuyomi active was one of the hardest things he ever attempted. Itachi said, as politely and as composed as he could, “Captain, I believe I may pass out.”

His vision shifted, not due to the blood clouding his eyesight, and Shikamaru shouted a worrying noise. Yamato struggled to catch him. The last thing Itachi heard was Kakashi’s quietly exhausted, “yep, definitely related to Sasuke.”

Naruto returned to Konoha hailed something of a miracle to the Jounin who took part in their mission. Asuma, the team leader, rained praise on the blonde much to the delight of the boy in question.

“It was amazing, Kakashi-Senpai!” Naruto crowed delighted, eyes bright and smile infectious. “Asuma-San helped so much with the Rasen-Shuriken!”

Asuma laughed, slipped closer to Kakashi and hissed under his breath, “ never let that kid use it again.”

“That bad?” Kakashi asked, intrigued. He knew it would be an explosive jutsu of cataclysmic proportions. To see Asuma this bothered was a rare treat in itself.

“He can take out three training grounds by accident,” Asuma elaborated with a shiver. “Kakuzu didn’t survive the moment we figured out his weakness.”

Kakashi glanced at Naruto, guzzling Ramen under Sakura’s loud comments on Naruto’s burned arm. Kakashi muttered, “noted.”

Danzo’s sudden slide into mystery washed under a tapestry with frightening ease. Danzo Shimura had led the council of elders that provided insight to the Third Hokage. Under Tsunade’s progressive and violent doctrine, the public eye had shifted away from the regal historical political atmosphere. It was logical in some circles that Tsunade would build her own counsel, which she had in some way.

When she walked firmly to the remaining two members of the council, cooly informing them of her knowledge of the Uchiha Massacre, they hastily resigned and moved out of the public eye. ANBU, the trusted members not influenced by ROOT, watched them under high security as they settled into their new lifestyle.

Danzo, in comparison, remained silently in a wooden cell built deep into a customized cellar below the Hokage residency. Torture and Interrogation had adequate cells, but without knowing how deep the rot had spread, it wasn’t safe to leave him where any shinobi could find him. The news of his traitor status was kept quiet, in fear that other nations would view the abolishment of the council as something much worse and take it as an opportunity. 

Shisui’s eye was removed immediately by the Lady Hokage, who went so far as to ruin the remains of the socket to prevent any form of implantation again. She delivered the eye, still in precise condition, to Shikamaru who uncomfortably offered it to Itachi.

The Uchiha took one look at the severed eye, trapped in permanent Sharingan activation, and hastily excused himself. Shikamaru took it to the shrine, as he had been instructed, and since then, all members presumed the eye forgotten.

“What do we do with him?” Shikamaru asked, feeling on edge with how to continue forward. “We can’t leave him in a cell forever.”

“I need to create a new council,” Tsunade grumbled bitterly, rubbing the crease of her forehead. “Democratic. It’ll get the clan heads to stop yelling at me.”

“That sounds like work,” Kakashi commented, somehow sitting on a rafter beam that looked very uncomfortable. “Please don’t include me.”

Tsunade rolled her eyes, flashing a gesture that was in no way polite. She shouted up unnecessarily, “you’re the reason I have all this work!”

“Are you thinking of having clan heads part of the new council?” Shikamaru asked, finding a flaw immediately in the idea. “It may shift political weight too far. An elected representative outside the clan head.”

“I was thinking the same,” Tsunade agreed, looking delighted by the sudden support. “I’ll run the idea by- your father actually.”

Shikamaru glanced away quickly. Kakashi noticed it and chuckled loudly at Shikamaru’s obvious discomfort.

“What about Itachi?” Shikamaru asked, a bit worried about the strange development that occurred during the moonlit night. 

“I checked his chakra stores, and the strangest thing happened with his network,” Tsunade grumbled. She slowly looked skywards, where Kakashi sat in her rafters and she said bold and accusatory, “if I didn’t know better, I’d think it was a Kekkei Genki!”

A pause, then Kakashi fell from the rafters. He caught himself before he hit the ground, but stumbled a bit in surprise. “Oh, well  that’s new.”

“Is it?” Tsunade asked. “His chakra network has completely rerouted itself, which is why he was probably making a fuss.”

“He was screaming and spraying blood,” Shikamaru hissed under his breath.

Tsunade ignored him, and stated, “it’s completely different now. The chakra paths from Mangekyo were already warped, but they’re different. Not quite a Hyuuga, but there are entirely new sections developed in his frontal lobe and ocular network.”

Kakashi blinked quickly, Shikamaru mirroring the movement. Her words meant absolutely nothing to them.

Tsunade breathed very slowly and forced herself to remain calm. She simplified, “there is an entirely new development of chakra in his brain, focusing behind his eyes in a way completely unlike a Sharingan or Byakugan.”

“And in comparison to Sasuke?” Kakashi asked a tad tightly.

“Very different,” Tsunade muttered with a scowl. “What technique did he use right before the episode?”

“Uh,” Kakashi said. “His Mangekyo. A powerful illusion.”

That didn’t elaborate on anything, but Kakashi looked hesitant to really say anything more.

Naruto and Sakura stuck together like they were Genin once more, but on occasion, Naruto would slip into the Uchiha district with a miserable expression and find himself on the bank of the Naka River with Shikamaru sharing his woes.

“I hate lying to her,” Naruto said, wilting under the weight of his emotions. He slumped miserably onto the grass, looking upwards. “It just feels so...so…”

“I know,” Shikamaru agreed, shuddering slightly. “Ino and Choji are really upset with me. I’ve bailed on too many meetings and they’ve decided I’m ignoring them. And Temari is increasingly worried since Gaara…”

“I know,” Naruto grumbled exhaustedly. “You shoulda seen that Akatsuki bastard. He had like, five hearts!”

Shikamaru had read the report and heard Asuma explain the event firsthand. The man, Kakuzu, was a dangerous nin who managed to kill two of their shinobi and seriously injuring three. Naruto managed the final blow, but not before Kakuzu had harmed enough of their people.

Itachi corroborated the story, listing all known Akatsuki members and the current fatalities.

“I really wanna tell Sakura.”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Shikamaru drolled. “Think of how mad she’ll be, and when she’s mad she punches people. Do you really think Itachi Uchiha, the person who tortured Sasuke, can withstand a punch right now?”

Sure he could, Itachi Uchiha was ANBU and terrifying at its core. Sakura likely wouldn’t even get within striking range, even with her speed and devastating impact.

“But Itachi is innocent, I just gotta explain that to her,” Naruto pouted. Ultimately, he wouldn’t do anything more.

“Sasuke can explain it to her, once he’s back from wherever he went,” Shikamaru soothed the best he could. 

Naruto wilted further, looking absolutely miserable. His hair had grown longer, flopping about limply in heavy tufts nearly obscuring his sight.

Naruto asked, quietly, “Do you think that teme is alright?”

“I’m sure he’s fine,” Shikamaru said without any pause.

It didn’t soothe Naruto in any way, in fact, it seemed to increase his distress. Naruto wriggled on the ground nervously, staring upwards with a downward tilt to his eyebrows. “Because of that dragon thing in his head?”

Shikamaru paused and considered his words. He said, a little unsure, “I’ve experienced Amaterasu. He... it, I’m not sure what pronouns to use…”

“Pronouns?” Naruto parroted a tad naive. He frowned, the scars on his cheeks puckering deeper to cast faint shadows. “Like...it?”

“If they’re gender-neutral,” Shikamaru muttered, “Amaterasu tends to...use masculine I think?”

“The Kyuubi does too,” Naruto said matter of factly. “But he has a sister! A big blue cat made out of fire! She’s really pretty, and kind too.”

“Sometimes I forget that you carry the Kyuubi,” Shikamaru said, puffing a single breathless laugh. He rubbed his forehead and asked, “why is our life like this?”

“I dunno,” Naruto shrugged. He looked upwards with the smallest smile tugging on his lips. “Kyuubi isn’t really that bad, ya know. A big furry bastard, but he seems kinda lonely.”

“I’d be lonely too, stuck in a cage,” Shikamaru said.

“Yeah…” Naruto trailed off, tapping an erratic beat against his knee. “He’s really grumpy, and makes fun of me, but for a long time he kept trying to get out, ya know? And now he just sleeps a lot and complains and says stupid stuff.”

“Stupid things? From a Bijuu?” Shikamaru asked, a little intrigued by what a giant fox possibly wanted to say. “What would that be? Hey Naruto, stop eating Ramen?”

“Never!” Naruto said a little too proudly. “He babbles on about like, chakra and boring stuff.”

Shikamaru thought about it. The air was fresh and gentle, the light bright and soothing to all around them. The world was a special place, but a chakra beast rested confined and caged inside a person tearing up bits of grass.

“He keeps saying to stall and stuff,” Naruto huffed bitterly, “but he doesn’t tell me what for! Why am I waiting when he isn’t gonna tell me the surprise? Ugh, stupid fox.”

“That’s odd,” Shikamaru agreed. “Amaterasu told me to stall also.”

“Really?” Naruto asked, looking a bit surprised. “Huh, must be something kinda important. Well whatever it is, you better hurry up you lazy loser! You hear me, world!”

Shikamaru watched Naruto spring to his feet, point one hand at the sky and scold it appropriately. He thought, ‘today is a wonderful day to be alive.’

For most dreams, Sasuke could wake and ignore them with a refined sense of apathy and dismissal. He could accept the actions of someone who was not him and ignore them just as properly.

Of course, it ached, burning deep with a nostalgic cry for what things could have been- but wouldn't. He still looked skywards and could imagine with vivid lucidity what strange alternate life he lived. He bore the wounds and scars of countless years of subservient obedience and subsequent suffering. There was no Orochimaru under his skin- but only Amaterasu who burned warmly and bid him apologies.

Sasuke knew when a night would be bad- because he strode closer to his goal and came one step further from morality or ethics. He condemned himself in a different life, one half-step out of candour, and it led him down a horrid path entirely in a different direction.

Amaterasu had grown weaker, quieter but always present. He did not interact as he had before, not since whatever he had done to Hidan, and not since his strange tone when speaking to Shisui and subsequently burning Kabuto. Amaterasu linger in shadows and in darkness, and then he said in a raspy tone of single suffering; You will not sleep well tonight.

Sasuke stilled misstep, slowing simply as Shisui strode ahead on the path, touching trees and animatedly narrating incessantly about the world. Sasuke ignored him, letting his eyes fall downwards as he thought with a single purpose, ‘what do you mean?’

Amaterasu shifted, curling inwards metaphorically before he rumbled with a weary quiet noise. It is tonight.

Sasuke stopped walking. He stared at his feet with an absence of mind, no thoughts manifesting or pestering him as dread filled his lungs and stomach coldly. He twitched with it. Denial had been such a balm, but in face of the inevitable, it was...daunting.

“Eh?” Shisui asked, rotating ahead of him to glance back at Sasuke. He heard the silence of Sasuke’s feet. He tilted his head to the side, long curls flopping like an unruly dog. “You alright there?”

It was mid-afternoon, they had perhaps many more hours of walking before the need to settle. Knowing this, Sasuke said with numb lips, “let’s make camp.”

Shisui blinked his one eye owlishly. In other circumstances, when he was playful and teasing, he would likely protest loud and flail a bit. This time, something in Sasuke’s expression spoke of his sincere dilemma and Shisui agreed with a quiet, “alright.”

They found a camp that was much more comfortable and homey than their usual spots. Large roots supported them, enclosing them with wooden walls and a leafy canopy that build their ceiling with a dozen shades of emerald. They built a fire, ringed with smooth river rocks Shisui unveiled from somewhere- and lit small twigs with a Katon.

Shisui’s fingers moved so quickly, they were nearly a blur. Sasuke found himself wondering who could shift their hands faster- Shisui or Kakashi. Both were unparalleled with speed.

“So,” Shisui said, poking the fire with his designated ‘poking stick’ for this stop. He reclined back on his pile of moss, torn free from a rock cladding to pad his sleeping spot. Decadent, luxurious since they had so long to rest in wait. “You wanna tell me what this is about?”

Sasuke stared at the fire, licking its long tongues in orange colours, no signs of cracking but great wells of smoke uncoiling from sapwood. Shisui looked at him, sooty fingertips scraping an insect bite near his eyepatch. He looked young, but still so old and intimidating.

Sasuke had no hunger but Shisui coddled him and forced fish into his hands. Sasuke couldn’t recall where the older found it but trusted perhaps his body flicker found a river, caught fish, and returned before Sasuke could notice.

Shisui frowned a little deeper, poking the fire with his stick. He said, “you know when I first met ‘Tachi he had a similar face.”

Sasuke looked up, intrigued below the anxiety. “What face?”

“That one,” Shisui mused, “of a drowning man. And I know drowning, so tell me,” he said, leaning forward pointedly with firelight softening the subtle scars along his skin. “What is pulling at your ankles? Dragging you further under?”

Contrary to what Shisui expected Sasuke to say, the younger said with a timid sort of hesitancy, “do you remember dying?”

Shisui didn’t react. “I remember falling, and what came with it.”

“And what happened?” Sasuke asked him.

Shisui exhaled through his nose, struggling under the weight of a few words. He said, slow with a sluggish tongue, “I...thrashed, and I felt pain. And I... heard, something or maybe myself telling me to drown.”

The fire, finally, crackled as the driest green wood dehydrated to the degree where it could splinter. Little arcs of embers drifted lazily through the blue smoke. Shisui poked it, stirring it into a tidy shape. Sasuke folded his fingers together, cracking the knuckles and tucking them into his large sleeves. 

“It was the most excruciating thing I’ve ever experienced,” Shisui told him quietly. Fingers rapping along his stick, he patterned a rhythm Sasuke could not identify. Shisui told him, “and not the pain. But knowing that I had failed those I cared about.”

Sasuke still said nothing, so Shisui elaborated out of compassion or pity or self-punishment. “I know that Itachi did what he did because I died. We discussed the potential outcomes from the coupe, and my inaction led us down this path. I was a coward, and maybe I still am.”

“You died willingly,” Sasuke said, “you are no coward.”

“I chose to die over doing a difficult thing,” Shisui argued.

“No,” Sasuke said. “If I were not aware of Itachi’s actions, and believed him to act alone in the...massacre…”

“You would seek revenge,” Shisui said, “as any sane person would.”

Sasuke nodded, rolling his fingers in his hands. His wrist popped, leaving the joint stiff and throbbing. His left hand felt odd, and Amaterasu lay still, grieving. Sasuke said, “and that is what will happen tonight.”

“What do you mean?” Shisui asked him, his frown carving deeper in the greater contrast of firelight. “What sort of cryptic crap is that?”

Sasuke ignored him and asked Shisui abruptly, “do you know the fires of Amaterasu?”

“Of course I do,” Shisui responded, nearly squawking like his crows. “Why are you being all...I don’t even know.”

Sasuke said, “when the fires start, let me burn.”

“That Sharingan...how much can you actually see?”

He knew the cloak of the Akatsuki and knew each crease on Itachi’s face. His arm hung limp, stirring slightly in its makeshift sling disguised by that of sloth and lethargy. Sasuke looked at it, impassive and simmering with disdain- somewhere far below he recognized, ‘it was never cured then.’

The genjutsus his brother wove were those compounded on one another like that of insulated clothing. Not the flimsy fibres of a tapestry, but those of multiple casings and backings like the sheep-hide boots and furred shoes of northern mountains. Sasuke had no reason to think of genjutsu as such, but remembered, ‘he always made beautiful things.’

“The third person, the one with the Sharingan,” he said through grit teeth and the surplus of saliva that drooled from bloodlust. “Who in the Uchiha Clan is it?”

“Why the curiosity about such a thing?”

“I’m going to kill him after you. That’s why.”

Distantly, unthinkingly, under the tsunami of dark thoughts, he wondered, ‘the third person?’

Itachi Uchiha, with a sword through his chest ( false false false ) said, “It’s Madara Uchiha.”

The man who held the first Mangekyou Sharingan, the founder of the leaf. Sasuke felt his words turn to ash, something subconscious and screaming at him, but suffocated under the roar in his blood and bones as he spat, “that Madara should be long dead!”

“In order to survive, we cling to all we know and understand, but knowledge and understanding are ambiguous.”

Sasuke writhed and hated and attacked. A thousand mistakes and memories that he didn’t know, something whispered softly, ‘why?’

Itachi had always been amazing at throwing shuriken, but Sasuke trained himself to the point of deterioration to match it. Every move had a counterpoint that Sasuke studied at some point- transforming all movements into a weapon. 

And Itachi said with the ghostly layer of genjutsu, “forgive me Sasuke-...” and plucked his eye from the socket.

...And Sasuke tore it apart. The walls and illusion grumbled, faltering and melting with blood that had not been spilled. Chakra that had not been exerted. Bloodlust that only grew as hate spiralled.

‘Don’t do this,’ something whispered, and Sasuke had never heard it.

Itachi sighed, clasping his hands together. There was a formal sort of dread in his expression, one eye closing to leave the other open in anticipation. Not the eye that held the dreaded Tsukuyomi-.

‘Amaterasu,’ Sasuke knew but did nothing to act or respond to.

Chidori sang as it sparked against the hot fire of Katon. Sasuke’s back ruptured with the protective limbs of the Curse mark, incapable of being burnt. It redirected, flinging the bright orange flames apart before Sasuke fed his own into it and it’s wild hunger.

Itachi opened the eye he had closed, and black fire exploded about as they twirled about. It surrounded them, incinerating as Sasuke’s back and skin burned under the black heat-.

He would die until he wouldn't. Sasuke collapsed, embraced the serpent ( always hunting, always feeding, die Orochimaru- ) and split from his skin below.

Fire burned hot towards the sky, and the heavens wept. Tsukuyomi cried above the blackened clouds, Susanoo’s storm bearing witness as Sasuke reached to the heavens and drew down a beast of untolled power.

“Come now,” he roared at the sky, as Amaterasu’s fire flickered observant around them, “Kirin!”

And Itachi grew bones of red fire, skeleton forming as he limped. Blood cascading from his eyes and mouth, blood draining from his lungs-.

‘He dies not with fire,’ Sasuke never heard.

Itachi no longer walked, but he limped with a staggering march that only those on the way to a noose did. Each step pained him, Susanoo eating and leaching further as the rains fell and Tsukuyomi cried and Amaterasu burned so hotly the world turned to Hell.

Itachi dragged further, and tapped bloodied fingers against Sasuke’s forehead with a distant gaze and blood dripping in gentle globules. Sasuke stared forward, unthinking and barely functioning as something screamed, distraught and horrified with its own personalized torture, ‘he dies not with fire! He dies with a smile, you fool!’

Shisui didn’t understand everything Sasuke said, and wouldn’t pretend confidence just to seem calm. He was outright baffled, borderline concerned that his younger... brother? Cousin?- had some form of neurosis that really was the reason he was so far from home and completely alone. The cryptic words he provided and strange awareness of the occult nature of life already hit a few flags in Shisui’s mind.

Itachi had been odd, yes, but Sasuke depicted a level of concerning symptoms that Shisui saw only in veterans in ANBU. Veterans being those that survived a year. He walked with a level of apathetic indifference, uncaring of the world around him. His attention lost inwards, and Shisui worried that if the boy searched inside too far, he may lose his path to come back.

To put the Dango on top, Sasuke told Shisui with a smile that looked painful to construct, that Shisui needed to take watch and let Sasuke burn. Complete nonsense in Shisui’s opinion, but if Sasuke had some strange development or sealwork that caused spontaneous combustion, at least he mentioned it prior to passing out on a pile of moss.

“He’s such a drama queen,” Shisui told the crow roosting on his shoulder, who also was attempting to weave a piece of dry grass into Shisui’s curls. Shisui used one hand to point at Sasuke and he whispered, “he doesn’t get it from my side! I bet you his father was a drama queen too. And his father. All the way back to Madara.”

Sasuke snored a little inhale. Shisui looked at his crow and said, all knowingly, “I bet Madara Uchiha also snored.”

The crow, his favourite and first crow, bobbed its head up and down inquisitive. It kept its head turned sideways, protective of its single lost eye. Shisui babbled words to his favourite bird, offering one finger to scratch his feathered friend behind the neck.

All was peaceful until Sasuke started mumbling individual sounds in his sleep. He jerked, legs moving and muscles of his deltoids and trapezius flexing hard enough to shift the blanket on his back. Sasuke went to bed shirtless, not willing to explain his reasoning as he stripped his clothes off determinedly.

His crow grunted, barking a little before flaring one wing boldly. Shisui snorted and reached out to stroke the exposed feathers, pulling free some pine needles the idiot animal wove in at some point. 

“You’re a silly bird, you know that?” Shisui asked the animal, patting it fondly. It looked around, beak half-open and little tongue wiggling. It attempted a chirp, which resulted in a demonic crackling sound.

Sasuke made another noise in his sleep. Shisui looked up, his fond smile slipping away as he truly attempted to analyze Sasuke’s posture. His body was tense, face shifted somewhere between slack muscles, a grimace, and furrowed scowl. A paradox of emotions- which Sasuke clarified as he hissed a low noise of wordless hate which faded into a quiet whimper.

“Sorry sweetheart,” Shisui said to his bird, tapping it three times to signal that it should flutter to a different perch. It obliged with a little grunt, letting Shisui shift to his knees and crawl over to the sleeping younger.

“Hey, you’re having a nightmare,” Shisui said softly. He grabbed his slightly burnt poking stick, still resting in embers, and used the cool end to nudge Sasuke’s leg carefully.

Most nin would react violently, and Shisui wasn’t in the mood to reattach a hand as well as his other eye. Sasuke didn’t react violently, he didn’t react at all.

Shisui didn’t know any nin to lay completely dormant, not with how spiked Sasuke’s chakra ran. If he didn’t know better, Shisui would believe the younger man had been drugged.

“Sasuke, wake up,” Shisui repeated, prodding him again. Sasuke didn’t react. “Hey, loser. Get up. My crows are eating your hair.”

Sasuke didn’t react, but he shuddered. His entire body shifted through the beginning echoes of movements- muscle tensing where a limb would normally lift. His face scrunching and eyes fluttering where a Sharingan would activate. 

Shisui mapped the exact rope muscles that changed and flexed as he pulled Sasuke’s blanket free, observing the broad pale expanse of the younger’s back for any injuries. Activating his Sharingan, Shisui noted Sasuke’s chakra was thrumming violently about him.

“Well, this is a predicament,” Shisui told his crow, watching from the nearest tree. “Figure I should throw some water on him?”

Shisui turned his back one moment, and then Sasuke wailed a half sob, curled inwards and literally caught on fire.

Shisui did not react well. He cursed, scrambling backwards and used his poking stick to smack their bags further away. The blanket Sasuke used similarly burned, stinking as it dissolved in grey smoke and Sasuke contorted and whimpered under the thrashing mess of swirling black-.

“Are those wings?” Shisui asked his crow, his voice a little hysterical. It didn’t resemble feathers like his birds, but in no way was it a bat. The wings were large and vaguely scaled in plates somehow like armour- but not. They shifted, playing havoc on Shisui’s depth perception as each tendril of the black fire pushed in and out and reduced nearby leaves to ash.

Shisui had a few questions, namely why his younger brother-cousin-person wasn’t dead. The next question was if he had been drugged instead because this felt like a chakra-pill and four bottles of sake problem.

“Okay so...Sasuke catches on fire sometimes,” Shisui said to his crow. He noticed that instead of one crow, there were now four crows watching the ordeal with blatant fascination. Shisui scowled at them, “you are not helping in any way.”

His favourite bird barked at him, then ignored him pointedly.

Sasuke burned for a long while, hours until the flames dwindled and receded below his flesh with black tendrils. They pulsed like poison, weaving under his skin before manifesting near the unique Mangekyo design of his throat- which began to lighten.

Shisui watched, flipping on his Sharingan to better remember it, as the Mangekyo curse mark seemingly blinked then faded as old paintings did in sunlight. The deep blacks turned to ash or diluted charcoal. The crimson looked old and raw from poor inkwork. It became a shadow of itself, and Sasuke awoke abruptly with a piercing scream as his eyes warped and distorted into the exact Mangekyo.

“Shit!” Shisui cursed, fluttering around his younger, impossibly traumatized younger relative. Sasuke floundered, incapable of words as his eyes distorted back and forth, scales painstakingly adapting to new painful vessels and pathways that steadily macerated his flesh and brain.

“You’re okay Sasuke,” Shisui tried to soothe. Developing a Mangekyo hurt, but it was impossible given the necessary events of it. Awakening it after snoozing and growing wings was the dango on top of stupid things. 

Sasuke fisted his hair with his hands, fingers getting caught in the tie on the back. Shisui knew some ANBU recruits to pull out their hair in tufts, with the careful maintenance Sasuke had and how long his hair was, Shisui believed it to be important to him. Carefully, Shisui pulled his fingers free and focused on straightening the crooked joints.

“You’re alright,” Shisui breathed, cupping the back of Sasuke’s head to press their forehead together. Sasuke smelled of adrenaline and fear, his pulse fluttering gently like a songbird. “You’re alright, it’s me. You’re okay.”

“He’s dead,” Sasuke croaked, voice warbling and horrified. He trembled so severely, Shisui truly worried for him. Sasuke repeated, “I- I killed him.”

“You’re okay,” Shisui said. He didn’t know what vision or night terror the boy had experienced to develop a Mangekyo, but the younger had been anxious and nervous all day. He knew somehow it would happen and warned Shisui appropriately. Not enough to make Shisui content, but enough that neither of them were hurt. Shisui held him gently and repeated, “It’s me. I’m Shisui Uchiha, you somehow brought me back. We’re a day into Fire, heading back to Konoha. You’re Sasuke Uchiha, and you’re safe.”

Sasuke clung to him once his fingers operated, sobbing with open noises and expressions of self-hate. Repeated words of disbelief and denial intermittent with anguish and agonizing pain. His eyes continued to warp, unused to their Mangekyo form and struggling to accommodate the changes of his eyes. Shisui didn’t understand- hadn’t Sasuke already obtained Mangekyo? How else did he burn Kabuto with Amaterasu?

“I was an idiot,” Sasuke said, pausing before he screamed wordless and anguished into Shisui’s shirt. Shisui patted his back gently, shifting the long tail of his hair to the side before he rubbed between his shoulder blades. 

“You’re okay now,” Shisui reaffirmed. “You knew something bad would happen, you let me know. It was just a dream, or something you knew was coming. You’re alright here.”

Sasuke pulled back, blood tears dripping down his cheeks grotesquely. He stared forward with fully awoken eyes and hissed, dark and low, “Madara.”

“Madara?” Shisui asked him carefully. “Who is that?”

“I…” Sasuke’s expression faltered, changing into timid confusion. He said, breathily and afraid, “I don’t know.”

“What about that strange cryptic annoying thing you can do?” Shisui asked him gently, holding Sasuke and rocking them carefully. Shisui knew kids liked rocking, and sure Sasuke was much older now, but rocking helped mental breakdowns didn’t they?

“I…” Sasuke paused, staring off dazed and disoriented. Shisui wondered if he’d have to add dissociative to his list of potential neurosis Sasuke had; Sasuke inhaled sharply and said terrified, “I can’t feel him. He’s...not there.”

“Who isn’t?” Shisui asked.

“Amaterasu,” Sasuke said impossibly. “I can’t find him.”