Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There is a theory, a science fiction theory meant to deal with time travel in purely fictional contexts, that posits certain moments, certain acts, certain outcomes, are actually fixed points in history.  A pin so pivotal that even if you were to go back in time to fix it, events would fold themselves up so that it happened anyway, or perhaps even cause the disaster you sought to avoid.  Moments that serve to nail down the canvas fabric of spacetime, that cannot be tampered with, at least not to anyone’s satisfaction.  

The truth, as I was to learn eventually, is slightly more complex.

But for this story, to all intents and purposes, we shall treat the tenth of October as one of those fixed points .  Again, in reality, it’s slightly more involved than that, but these are things I would not learn and concepts I would not grasp until long after that day.

The day I died.

Before the tenth I had been… myself.  Self-evaluation is a difficult thing at the best of times, even here and now trying to tack down this narrative, it’s hard to filter down the most salient points.  Boil down myself , as it were, for entertainment consumption.  I was a medical kunoichi of Konoha, I had achieved the rank of chuunin, I worked in the hospital almost exclusively at the time.  At one time there had been pipe dreams of being a field medic, but my health never quite earned me the clearance.

I was only fourteen, but the lung affliction that had pushed my father into early retirement had been passed down along to me.  As it had his mother before him, apparently.  Some families pass down bloodline limits.  Mine… mine passed down the means of my death.

I would be lying, if I said that this had not influenced my desire to become a physician.  It was certainly not the only reason, but my father’s health and my own provided a powerful motivator.  And working at the hospital meant I was at least somewhere useful in the event I had an episode.  

Limitedly useful, though, as was proved on the tenth.  

I was on the late shift when the Nine Tails, the greatest of all the tailed beasts, escaped his human prison and descended upon Konoha.  Bringing with him devastation on a massive scale and a miasma of corrosive chakra that smothered the city like a plague.  The hospital was not quite yet in an uproar, but quietly ramping up to it, as rumors flew ahead of the truth.  An invasion; a tragedy; a natural disaster.  And then-

I am no chakra sensor, but I still felt it, when the Kyuubi’s chakra hit the air, gasped for breath and found it burned.  I was stalled in the hallway by it, my entire apparatus seized with a spasm so intense I couldn’t cough, much less breathe.  I saw stars, and black and red, and did not even feel the fall to the floor, where I’m told I was found in a dramatic puddle of my own coughed-up blood.

I was insensate for that part.  I’m assuming.  Dead is about as insensate as one can get.

Death itself was…

A great empty space, gray as morning fog and just as close.  The sound of water nearby, the gentle wash as though it lapped against the shore of a lake.  I could not see the water, but the sand beneath my feet was wet and hard.  

I waited.  It seemed as though there ought to have been someone to meet me.

A light touch fell on my shoulder, and I jerked around, no pulse to pound but startled all the same.  

A girl stood there, where no one at all had been a moment ago.  No- not a girl, she was older than me probably, though possibly not by much.  Shorter, though.  Her long black hair was wildly curly, tied half-back with a silk ribbon.  She wore a bright red short kimono and thigh-length mesh armor underneath, a popular kunoichi style.  But her long legs were bare, and she wore traditional wooden sandals with no socks.  And that was to say nothing of the cute black cat ears, apparently genuine living cat ears , that poked out of her hair, or the long fluffy tail with the last two handspans wrapped in bandages behind her.

She looked at me with golden eyes, slit-pupiled like a cat, or possibly Orochimaru of the Sannin.  And a familiar, rueful expression, like this was somehow, haplessly, her fault.

“I really should have seen this coming,” she said, with an emotion identifiable as deep chagrin.  I am not completely sure what sort of expression I made, but it made her wince.  

“It’s not your fault,” I told her, gratified to hear my voice come out smooth and unbroken by a rasp or a wheeze.  “I’ve always known I’d die coughing up a lung.”

She grinned at that, sharply pointed, but paradoxically still cringing.  “But haven’t you always wondered, what if you didn’t?   What could you do , Himitsu Haruka, if you didn’t come stamped with an expiration date?”

To that, naturally, I was fucking speechless.  

“Yours is a soul of great potential,” she went on.  “Left… almost invariably untapped.  Cut short at the prime of life, turned loose to go elsewhere and do it all again.   Briefly .  I’ve always wondered- I’ve only seen it once or twice- what would you go on to do, with a second chance?”

“Everything,” I said, breathless.  “I’m not terribly ambitious.  Only everything .”

I’d not quite been born sick, but it had always been there.  My whole life, that great albatross weighing me down.  A ninja’s life is short, and a ninja with a respiratory disorder can expect even less time than most.  I had done as much as I could with what I had- and the whole time tasted the bitter ashes of not enough .  

After all, my health wasn’t the only reason I’d been drawn to the medical profession.  Like most doctors, though moreso surgeons, I did a little bit want to be god.

The cat-girl (bakeneko? nekomata? was her tail split in two, under that bandage) beamed, turning her eyes into crescents.  

“I thought so,” she said, pressing her palms together.  “I can’t wait to see where you go from here.”

Faster than I could react, she reached out and pushed me- I found myself falling backwards through nothing, through darkness, to a voice faintly calling out, “Good luck!”

I woke up on the floor of the hospital morgue, underneath a sheet.  

It wasn’t actually the first time I’d ever woken up that way, but that’s a story for the next time I’m drunk.  It was the first time I’d woken up with a toe tag- well, a boot tag, really, they’d looped it through my laces rather than take the time to get my shoes off.  I was a bit grateful for that- for being still clothed, too.  Hadn’t been long enough to get any autopsying or processing at all done, then.

...Oh.  

Forensic autopsy was usually my responsibility at the hospital, and sometimes at the Uchiha Police Department.  Of course they wouldn’t have gotten around to it.

I sat up carefully, pulling down the sheet, and looked around myself.  Not carefully enough, apparently- I noted that the room was full , tables and all other available surfaces laden with sheet-draped corpses, hence my place on the floor- my head spun, and I tried to list sideways without slumping into a dead body.  

Another room imposed itself over the one I was looking at- and another, and another, different morgues from different perspectives, thoughts about it in languages I didn’t know .  I shut my eyes tight, and tried to sort through it.  

As soon as my eyes closed, a vision bloomed- no, not quite.  A memory .  A memory I had never seen before, and yet the taste, the texture of it, it could not be anything else. 

An autopsy room, lit this time by gas lamps, the yellow light giving an artificial, waxen cast to the face of the dead woman on the table in front of me.  To my left, a short man with curly fair hair and round spectacles, his clothing bizarre and foreign, watching me with disapprobation.  To my right- and bending down to touch the dead girl’s cheek, a tan man in an ugly olive suit, nondescript except for the brilliant green of his eyes.  A wisp of luminous mist streamed from his lips, and at the same time a puff of mist rose up from the corpse’s lips.  She gasped, and opened dead eyes to look direct at me.

I opened my eyes in the real world with a jump, a hand flying to my forehead.  Oh, gods, what the fuck.

So.  What was different, that I was now having vivid hallucination-level flashbacks of things that had never happened to me?  

Well, I’d been dead, obviously.  I’d crossed the veil, if only temporarily.  Something had come back with me, then.  Knowledge, someone’s memories.  There was more where that came from, I could feel it, swimming around the back of my head.  Just waiting to attach itself to a trigger here in real life and come to the forefront like my own genuine memories.

I shivered, and pulled the sheet back towards me, wrapping it around my shoulders.  It was cold in the morgue, and I was still in my hospital uniform, with only the one cardigan over it.  A rather extensive bloodstain, already brown, spilled down the front of it, and down the back of my hitai-ate, where it hung around my neck.  It might even be in the ends of my hair- my side-bangs felt unpleasantly crunchy.  There were, in fact, more pressing issues than whatever psychic residue I’d managed to accumulate in my brief spell in the afterlife.  Like not being in the morgue.  

I hoped whoever they had on guard down here wasn’t anybody who knew me personally.  I was going to scare the shit out of them either way, but I’d prefer not to traumatize a friend or acquaintance.

Oh, hell.  Had anyone told my parents , yet.  What a fucking case of whiplash, if someone had .

I took a moment before I tried to move again, to fold myself up crosslegged (in the space the length and breadth of my corpse, nestled between a wall and the neat row of my fellow corpses) (ignoring as hard as I could the part where these were, inevitably, people I knew ) with my hands upturned over my knees, and meditate.  Centering myself, taking inventory, realigning my chakra.  Gathering the strength to get up.

My chakra was not where I’d left it.  Most of it, in fact, was glued to my lungs, dedicated to keeping the bellows moving.  The rest was buzzing through my other internals, no doubt engaged in repairing what function I had lost by spending the night absent my body.  Evidently, a magical extradimensional catgirl could throw my spirit back into my mortal shell, but could or would not fix said mortal shell in the interim.  Too much to ask, I supposed.  I’d never been that lucky .

Well, all the more reason to stumble out of here and seek medical attention.  I was scowling when I opened my eyes, but had accumulated enough fortitude by then to get to my feet, only a little bit shakily.  

I did not peek at any faces, as I stumbled through the aisle of corpses for the door.  The glimpses of hair from under motionless sheets was more clue to which of my fellow shinobi lay here exanimate than I actually wanted.  They died fighting, probably.  No one offered to shove them back across the veil.  

It felt… viscerally unfair.  I’d only died choking on my own blood, why did I earn that second chance?

The door to the morgue only locked from outside; the inside was a push-bar.  I heaved myself against it and burst through sloppily, and heard the yelp and a crash as the shinobi on guard stood up out of his chair suddenly.  I looked up and locked eyes- lazy spinning red.  Ah .

I was tense in every muscle for a moment before I recognized my former genin teammate.  I looked briefly up at the paneled ceiling, asking for deliverance, because there were more tomoe spinning in his eyes than there had been the last time I’d seen them, and that hadn’t been too long ago.  

Uchiha Fuyu, still in his police uniform even though he’d evidently been loaned to the hospital, his head a crown of the wiry curls type of Uchiha hair, his spectacles clipped to the front of his shirt.  He didn’t move even when I looked back to him, except for the lazy spin of his eyes, and the sight galvanized me.  I lurched forward and grabbed him by the face.

“Turn those off!  You imbecile , we talked about this,” I rasped at him.  Fuyu gave a little gasp, and his eyes went dark, and he almost looked like what he was actually seeing was me .  He gripped my wrist with one hand, the other fumbling for his spectacles.  Little half-moons, the better to look over them with the Sharingan active.

“Haruka,” he hiccupped, floundering.  “You were dead .  I saw you.  How-”

“It didn’t take,” I said, pretending I wasn’t leaning on him to stay standing up, even as I released my grip on his cheeks.  He still had a rather round face, younger in appearance than his actual age.  “I’ve been mailed back.  Perhaps the postage was wrong.”

His eyes flickered red again, just for a moment, and he frowned.  “The hell are you doing with your chakra?” he muttered.  “It’s all-”

“I believe I am in need of medical attention,” I said, enunciating very carefully each and every word.  I paused, and gave a sniff.  “And a debriefing.  The last thing I remember-”

Was a world all in gray and a catgirl kunoichi who recognized my soul from another lifetime, but-

“While you were gone, the Kyuubi escaped,” said Fuyu, softly, using an euphemism that I had half a mind to pinch his cheek for again.  “And then was put back again, by the Yondaime.  We’re not-  it’s still pure chaos.  I’d thought you were working at the hospital, the fight didn’t actually make it this far, but then there you were on one of the lists-”

I put up a hand, and lurched past him to lean on the security desk, to stabilize myself while I bent down to pull the morgue tag off my boot lace.  

“Hm,” I said, reading it, Fuyu hovering close enough to read it too.  “Pulmonary hemorrhage, yada yada, history of… hm.  I drowned in my own blood.  Could have happened at any time, really, the Kyuubi chakra just…”

Fuyu flinched.  “You weren’t the only one affected,” he said.  “But you might be the only non-civilian who-”

“I’m lucky like that,” I said, cutting him off before he could euphemize again.  Automatically my hand curled protectively over my lower ribs, pressing the spot at the bottom of my left lung that always burned the hottest.  “Please take me to the nurse station,” I went on, quietly.  “And then, I think, to report to Yondaime-sama.”

“...Ah,” said Fuyu, not looking quite at me again.  “About that.”

Chapter Text

I sat with my chin on my knees in a bright clean hospital room, trying to reach a meditative state and absolutely failing.  My expression was at least probably blank, a low enough bar for shinobi.  I was the closest bed to the window, handy for staring broodily out of, so I did.

The Yondaime Hokage, Namikaze Minato, Konoha’s very own golden boy, eaten by the shinigami in exchange for the power to trap the Nine-Tails once again.  Eaten by something , anyway, with no body to investigate or burn or bury.  The S-Class secret that was his wife, the Nine-Tails jinchuuriki, dead too as an inevitable consequence of the Kyuubi’s release- so perhaps it had not been too painful a choice to make.  And it was all very unfair, because if an extradimensional cat- mahou wanted to bring someone back to life that day, why couldn’t it have been one of them .

Or literally.  Just about anyone else.  I was not a strategic addition to the village.  I was.  Not anybody, really.  Himitsu Haruka, chuunin medic, could have been so much more if she wasn’t so sick, isn’t it a shame…

And here I was, sent back, no less sick than before, and the Yondaime and many, many others were dead and cold.  What the fuck .

Clearly, I hadn’t been thinking, when I gave the bakeneko the go-ahead to shove me back into my own personal meatsuit.  I should have stayed in the void, let myself be shuffled along to wherever was next .  Or come back to haunt Konoha as a ghost, perhaps.  Told the cat to fuck off and drag someone else back, someone who mattered .

Which was a fallacy, I was well aware.  Causality was much more complex than that.  Something something butterfly’s wings something something chaos theory.  But it was one thing to know this and another thing to understand it, particularly from where I was sitting.  Hence, the attempt at meditating.

Again, “attempt”.  I was not getting anywhere.  The state of my mind was not conducive to generating the necessary serenity- I could barely hit indifference.  Scraps of foreign memory kept pelting me before I even got close.  At least now I had a theory forming on what they were .  The part where these visions held emotional content on top of everything else had led me to consider that I might be seeing highlights reels of my own past lives.

The sense of deja vu that settled on me in that hospital bed was nothing too unusual, I worked in the hospital, of course it would be familiar.  Not so the sense that I had died here once.  No, not just the once ...collapsing in the corridor like a pensioner.  Died in a bed in a long white room like this, coughing my insides out.  Died in a great hall of beds, tall paned windows over me and not a familiar soul for days.  Died in a straw-stuffed cot in a humid thatched attic, surrounded by implements of medieval medicine...

A person is not supposed to remember previous lives.  The turn of the wheel is meant to be a mystery.  There is space in the human soul for the scope of eternity, but not in the human brain .  Small wonder I was having difficulties concentrating.

A tiny shift in atmosphere brought me back to the present, looking up sharply at the curtain that divided me from my roommate.  This would ordinarily have been a single, private room- it was still private, but there were two of us in here.  He’d been here when I was brought in, unconscious then and unconscious persistently since.  And now, unless I missed my guess, he was awake, and only pretending not to be.  

With a sigh, I slid my legs over the side of the bed, grateful for the fluffy socks Fuyu had brought me.  Grateful for the clean hospital pyjamas, too, even though it was still too fucking cold for me, with only the one cardigan.  I liked wearing a haori and at least one sweater, maybe two.  

Yes, I know the Land of Fire is temperate bordering on tropical, even in October.  Too fucking cold .

I wasn’t being IV’d at the moment, so I was free to shuffle over to the rack of clipboards by the whiteboard on the wall.  Someone would doubtless come by eventually to perform phlebotomy and hook me up to a gallon of whatever I’m still deficient in, but judging by how busy the hospital sounded in just the corridor outside it might be a while.  I took one of the labcoats off the pegs by the whiteboard and pulled it on, before I took the other clipboard off the wall.  I knew what mine said already.

Hm.  Such a lot of [REDACTED].  It’s like they don’t trust me, or something.  

If anything, it was HQ’s own fault that I’d gotten so good at reading through a line of black marker.

My roommate, it seemed, was Hatake Kakashi, if the shock of gray hair peeking out above the sheets wasn’t a clue.  Sharingan Kakashi, or that goddamn eye thief , as he was affectionately known around the Uchiha district.  A controversial figure, for someone no older than myself.  If he’d not been Namikaze Minato’s student he might have had the eye stolen back by this point, such was his popularity.

...Oh.  He’d been Namikaze Minato’s student.   His last living student, famously.  Now the last living member of his whole team .  

It was like someone kept dropping bricks on me.  Surely, at some point, they would have to run out of bricks.

...Hatake Kakashi was probably hoping the bricks would run out soon, too.

His chart said he was largely unharmed except for the chronic exacerbated chakra exhaustion, for which the only treatment plan was a week or so bed rest.  We’d be lucky if he stayed put after he could get up under his own power, but such was the nature of shinobi.

I shuffled over to his bedside, to take a peek at the instrumentation he was attached to and make notations on the chart, where the nurse should have done about twenty minutes ago.  Negligent, tisk tisk- but the hospital was very busy, and we were ostensibly stable.  Anyway, that’s what I was for, picking up the slack, even ill and wearing someone else’s labcoat.

He was awake and pretending not to be, even as I was pretending not to know he was awake, and pretending I was supposed to be here. The sheet pulled up over his nose to hide his face, and I knew he’d have a surgical mask underneath that, even with his usual mask missing.  His headband was gone just like mine was- Fuyu had said he’d change it over to a new bandanna, if the blood wouldn’t come out of my old one.

The bad-ideas gremlin on my shoulder whispered to me that I ought to try pulling his mask down, just for funsies.  Better ninja than I had tried, to catch a glimpse of Hatake’s face.  Now was not the time, and I would surely fail, but the temptation was there.  I could ignore temptation, and bide my time.

“The reason you’re not in a completely private room is the same as the reason you didn’t get the window seat,” I said aloud, still making notes in his chart.  “The hospital is crowded at the moment, but you’re also a flight risk.  Less work for on-duty staff if you have to climb over me to go out the window.”  More work for me , but then, the staff knew me, and knew I never minded.  You never really stopped being a medic, on or off duty.  

His breathing stayed even, and I remained unacknowledged, but I did see his eyelids flicker.  Good enough.

“Try to go back to sleep,” I went on.  “Everything will be just as fucked when you wake up, so do try not to worry about it.”

That got me a reaction, a single baleful dark eye peeking up at me through long, pretty eyelashes.  

“Who are you,” he said, quiet and very muffled.  I smiled minimally, lifting a forefinger to my lips.

“Himitsu Haruka,” I said.  “Chuunin medic, theoretically off-duty.  Shhh .”  A spark of recognition, but only very little.  

We didn’t really know each other; except perhaps peripherally, by sight and reputation, names on paperwork.  He’d already been gone when I entered the academy, graduated and promoted and thrown face-first into an apprenticeship.  Our genin teams had only the briefest of interactions.  Our teams had been in a chuunin exam together, the one they’d passed and we hadn’t.  It had been a bit fun, actually, even though we hadn’t passed that time- I hadn’t seen much of him , an aloof and cold lad, going through the exam as a formality to legitimize his field promotion.  Maybe Hatake’s teammates had told him about the shenanigans we’d got up to backstage (another story for the next time I’m drunk perhaps).  Fuyu, straight-laced and rule-abiding when not under my immediate influence, had not really known Uchiha Obito.  I had known Rin, from around the hospital.  

Her death had been a particularly heavy brick.  I’d found the nickname Hatake had gotten out of it to be needlessly cruel.

The village could be like that, sometimes.

“...Team Shenanigans,” he said, still muffled and still very unamused.  Ah.  So he did recognize me.  My smile got wider, and a touch sparky.  

“Technically, that isn’t my team’s informal call sign,” I said.  “But yes.  Shenanigans.”  I made my expression soften- ninja medics weren’t really about bedside manner, so a little bit went a long way.  “...If you need anything, I’ll be in the next bed over.  Might be faster than calling the nurse.”

His open eye slid over, briefly, to the water bottle still sealed shut on the rolling bedside table.  I reached for it without being asked, and cracked it open.  A moment of hunting turned up bendy straws stored in the usual place in the cart, and I dropped one in the open bottle.  I made sure the bedside table was scooted close enough that it would take minimal effort to reach it, and then I left him alone, dropping off the labcoat and chart on my way to my side of the curtain.

Even bored and unbalanced as I was, I couldn’t bring myself to pick on him too much.  Only a little, just enough to get him to growl at me, instead of that coma patient impression.  He wouldn’t benefit from much more than a gentle annoyance, at this point, unless I missed my guess.  I rarely missed my guess, when it came to people.

I found myself oddly exhausted, back in bed on my side of the curtain, my ears ringing almost too loud to make out the quiet shuffle of Hatake making use of the water bottle.  Even little things were taking a toll, with my entire reservoir of chakra dedicated to operating my respiratory system.  Still, I made myself sit up, and pulled my hair out of it’s low ponytail, to put a low braid in it.  My hair was a little curly and perpetually brittle, the color and rough texture of straw.  If I slept on it without doing something with it, I woke up looking homeless.  With all the layers I liked to wear, the combined effect was awfully bag lady .

Which was nice, sometimes, for undercover.  But as much as it suited me it wasn’t what I wanted to be.

I spent about twenty minutes drifting, staring up at the ceiling panels, before I rolled over and pulled the blankets up.  

“G’night, Hatake,” I mumbled, even though it was still afternoon, and light out.

No one was more surprised than me, when I got an indistinct mumble back.

The first visitor I had was my mother.  She came alone.

My mother, Himitsu Moriko, was civilian all the way down, but that did not keep her from being one of the strongest women and yamato nadeshiko I knew.  I had great respect and admiration for her.  Such was our relationship that I’d rather be salted and eaten than tell her so.

She had married my father before his medical retirement, and was completely ambivalent when he was taken off-duty.  She disapproved of all kinds of things that went on in Konoha, and sometimes she even said so out loud.  Civilian, when speaking about my mother, did not equate to feeble .

When she came to my room alone, a tiny woman in solemn traditional kimono, grays and violets that brought out her blue eyes, the first wisps of gray in her sable hair at the temples and crown, I felt my stomach drop.  She met my look, and her mouth thinned.

“Your father-” she said, saving me from having to ask .  She swallowed to steady her voice.  “Iwashi was called up.  Everyone was, retired or not.  He didn’t- he didn’t make it very far.  Lung hemorrhage.”

Just like me.  I felt cold all over.  I had no control whatsoever over my face, but whatever I looked like, it made my mother wrap me up in her arms, close and a bit too hard.  I buried my face in her shoulder, my eyes burning.  Her kimono was real silk.  It would stain if I cried.  

“I’m sorry,” I rasped out.  “I should’ve-  I couldn’t-”

She shushed me, because apologizing didn’t make any sense, if you didn’t know what I knew.  If you didn’t know that I’d been stupid enough to take a second chance for myself , forgotten about literally everyone else who might deserve it more.

The longer I went the more I was resolved to never fucking tell another soul.

I stayed in my mother’s arms, and we made meaningless noises at each other for a while, all part of the process.  

“The house is… it’s not much left,” she told me, a hand petting my braid.  “It was in one of the districts that monster destroyed.  It hasn’t been cleared to do anything but look.  Still unsafe.”  

Neat.  Now I’m homeless, too.  Something to worry about more thoroughly when I was out of the hospital.

“...You’re staying at the civilian shelter?” I asked, very hoarse.  She shook her head, the corner of her mouth turning down.

“I’ve been offered a place at the Kurama estate,” she said.  “They’ve said they’ll inter your father in the family plot, as well.”  My lips peeled back.

“A bit tardy for an attack of conscience on their part,” I said, delicately as I could.  “They’ll admit we’re family now that he’s died a hero?  Of course.”

“Shh,” said my mother, in a tone that let me know she agreed with me.  “They’re being very generous.  Of course, your grandfather has extended the invitation to you, as well.  Once you’re out of the hospital.”

“That I can stay at the compound, or that they’ll host my funeral?” I asked, airily.  

“Yes,” said Moriko, just as dry.  “I will tender your refusal, then.”

“No, no,” I said.  “Don’t.  I’ll tell grandfather in person.”

She sighed, smoothing my hair back from my face.  “It probably won’t kill you to see a pot and leave it unstirred, Haruka.”

“Why take the risk?” I snorted.  I had a thought.  “...If there are any of dad’s paintings left…”

“They’re not getting any of them,” she finished, all steel.  “Not a single one.  If none of the ones at the house survived, there’s still the storage unit.  It’s nowhere near the damaged parts of town.”

“You know what they say,” I said, softly, looking away and out the window.  “...They’ll be worth more, now.”

She smiled, bittersweet.  “That money isn’t just for taking care of me, you know,” she said.  “...Any of them that you want…”

“...Thanks,” I said, choked up again.  “I’ll… when we know what’s survived.  If I can.  There are a few I’d like to keep.”  I looked back up at her, watery-eyed.  “If grandfather wants any, he can pay through the nose like everyone else.”

Her smile was still sad and the chuckle that got out of her very dry, but at least it was there.  

We talked until the nurse came in to shoo her out.  I didn’t feel any better for talking to her, but then, I also didn’t feel any worse.  Part of me wondered if that was because there wasn’t anywhere farther down to go.

...I think I’d almost known already , actually.  If the Nine-Tails had caused me a fatal attack just by manifesting, me with my small handful of years being ill, then my father, carrying the disease since he’d been a young man…

At least I could extrapolate that it had been quick.  Mine was, anyway.

… Dad would have laughed, at the whole fucking fiasco.  Once he was done being furious.  He had a temper he’d passed on to me, and there was always someone to blame, in a fuckup this big.  I kept trying to direct mine at someone other than myself.  It might take a while.  

My father had an irreverent sense of humor, which he’d tried to pass on to me, with mixed success thanks to my mother’s interference-  sorry, temperance .  Not that I contained much of that particular virtue either.  But he would have appreciated the deep layer-cake of irony I’d woken up to, would have had a joke to crack to make me feel better about it.  

I missed him the way I imagined I might miss an arm or a leg.  Bereft.  Something vital removed.

He’d been sick my whole life, but his death was still a sucker-punch.

A soft noise from the ceiling caught my attention and dragged it off of my own misery, my head snapping up.  I locked eye with one Hatake Kakashi, halfway through lowering himself back down from the space above the ceiling panels, still in his hospital pyjamas and surgical mask and eyepatch.  We were both frozen for a long moment, watching each other’s brains tick over, and then I threw back my blankets and slid across the room to his side of the curtain.  Haste made him ungraceful in his renewed scramble to get out of the ceiling - halfway through he registered what I was doing, changed his mind, and tried to climb back up .

I got up on his hospital bed, planting my feet to make up for the way it rolled, and grabbed him by the scruff.  Hard enough to make him whuff like the wind startled out of him, jarring him enough to let me haul him out of the ceiling and overbalance, sending us crashing down onto the bed.  It wasn’t meant for this level of abuse; the side-rails collapsed down when we landed, and the bed itself skidded into the wall.  

I had him in a headlock, one leg around his chest for good measure, much good it may do me.  But if the amount the room was spinning for me was any indication, neither of us were going anywhere for a minute.  I had no breath, and it was in no hurry coming back.  Hatake made no effort to move, either.

“Sage’s saggy balls,” I said, as soon as I could.  “The room won’t stop spinning.  Is the ceiling more comfortable, then?”

A single baleful dark eye met mine.  Languorously, he started the process of untangling from me.  

“You were having a private conversation,” he mumbled, not looking at me for it.  Lazily I reached out and pinched his cheek.

“You are on bed rest ,” I said.  “These are privacy curtains.  We cannot see each other past them.  If you’re that uncomfortable eavesdropping, there are earplugs in the bedside cabinet .”  I hooked the appropriate drawer open with my fluffy-socked foot, to illustrate.

He listed away from me, and I let him pull his face out of my grip to faceplant into the pillow.  He said something indistinct into it, that sounded like “ just let me go home. ”

“Why can’t they, you mean?” I said, reaching for the chart at the foot of his bed.  I flipped through it perfunctorily.  “...Numbers still too low.  They’ll let you go tomorrow or the day after, maybe.  Hoping I’m out by then, too.”  I chewed a cuticle, thinking.  I’d have to figure out where I was going, when I got out of here.  After I told grandfather where he could stick it, as I certainly wouldn’t be staying at the Kurama compound after that.

I propped myself up at the foot of his bed, as Hatake oozed into the pillow at the head of it.  Pulled the second pillow out from behind it and handed it to me, so I could make myself comfortable.  

“...didn’t have to throw me around,” he said, more distinctly now, and very sullen.

I fluttered my eyelashes, to the benefit of no one, since he wasn’t looking at me.  “...I do apologize,” I said, a hand resting on my breastbone demurely.  “It may have been something of an overreaction.”

That got a longsuffering, exaggerated sigh, instead of the snort I was hoping for, but at least he was playing ball a little .  

“I can promise it won’t happen again , as long as you stay out of the ceiling,” I went on, looking up at the still-askew panel.  Be a while before either of us got up there to fix it!  The next orderly to come in would be subjected to some slightly comedic visual storytelling, particularly if I hadn’t made it back to my own bed by then.  

“...think you’ll have any more visitors?” asked Hatake, flat as a board.

“Most likely,” I said, thinking of my sensei and my genin team.  

“...then no deal,” he said, and I laughed.  I couldn’t help it.  My laugh was an ugly sound, hoarse and wet and invariably ending in coughing.  It sounded bad enough that it got him to actually look at me, skeptical and almost concerned.  

“Don’t make that face,” I rasped, my hand sliding to press the part of my ribs that burned .  “It’s fine, I just do that.  Little hobby of mine.”

“Choking on your own spit?” he suggested.  That got me to giggle, low and stuttering.

“Ahhh, laughing hurts,” I sighed, regretful but smiling.  “Don’t you dare stop telling jokes to spare me, though.”  I had teammates to threaten that, occasionally.

“...I wasn’t being funny,” he said, flat again.  

“Then by all means, continue not being funny,” I told him.  He gave me the sort of suspicious look I loved to engender in other people, and I continued to smile.  

A moment before the door opened I felt him tense, and employed the leglock I’d left loose between us to keep him from bolting up the ceiling again.  The doctor who bustled in with a wheelchair was fortunately one of my very favorites, and familiar enough with me to take in the scene and just sigh .  

“Suzume-senpai,” I effused, and felt Hatake tense further at the sheer insincerity of it, like he ought to.  “My day gets brighter and brighter.”

“Was your own bed just not comfortable?” asked Dr Kawara, raising both eyebrows behind their large round spectacles.  An unimposing thing, short enough to tuck neatly under my chin when I was capable of standing, with soft, short brown hair and intimidatingly perfect chakra control.  My smile got wider.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said, earning a very tiny sigh from Hatake.  “Are you here to take me back to the funny farm? Or are you here for him?”

Dr Kawara sighed, and rolled the wheelchair up next to me.  “I’m here for you, unfortunately,” they grumbled.  “Get in, loser, we’re going to run some tests.”

I saluted jauntily, and began the process of extricating myself and sliding into the wheelchair seat.  Suzume-senpai very conscientiously made sure my feet were up on the slats, before backing me up towards the door.  I waved cheekily back at Hatake as I was wheeled away.  He did not look at me, nor wave back.  I expected as much, and was not at all put out.

Chapter Text

I was returned to my hospital room much later, after many needles and tests and what I had sworn up, down and inside out was a totally accidental suicide attempt.  My knee-jerk reaction to being told that if I attempted to mold chakra consciously I would die , apparently, is to immediately test it .  

It wasn’t like they were letting me go back to work in any capacity without an extensive psychological evaluation anyway.  I’d been on a watch list of some sort or another my entire career, what’s one more?  But at least now I had a diagnosis, a plan of action, and a tentative release date.  Sure, the diagnosis was a handicap that would put an end to my medical career, indeed any career outside of administrative, but ah!  That had been hanging over me my whole life one way or another anyway.  

To pare down a somewhat complex diagnosis, I had come back from the void with not a drop of organic self-produced life energy in me.  Wherever that came from, whatever generated it, I’d broken it.  I could still produce chakra , mind, the stuff that comes from the coils, but.  Every ounce I was capable of actively producing was being conscripted to keep me alive, performing the necessary electrical functions and chemical reactions that should have been the responsibility of my baseline life force.  If I tried to draw from it, this somewhat important function would be disrupted, and I would die, again, lungs-first into the void.  

I was a chakra puppet, holding my own strings.  A chakra zombie , even, care of a catgirl necromancer from another dimension.  Suzume-senpai had no idea how , but didn’t seem to consider it out of the realm of possibility either.  They seemed to think that, given time, there was a chance I might recover the ability to produce my own life energy, but until then, my chakra functioned as life support, and could be used for nothing else. 

Interestingly, while my combined chakra stores were completely occupied, I had a sudden mysterious excess of spiritual chakra, that I would… presumably need to find something to do with.  I had a hunch about where it had come from, at least.  A trip across the veil and back.  All those memories of past lives, swimming about in my head.  I had knowledge of things I wasn’t meant to, now, in a way simultaneously more concrete and metaphysical than ever before.  

The fuck I was supposed to do with that, still escaped me.  ...Higher-level meditation techniques, perhaps.  I’d have to see my way to the library, when I got out of here.  Which would be soon- tomorrow or the next day.  Not much time to put together a plan for the rest of my life out of rubble and nothing.

In the meantime, while I was awaiting discharge, my team came to see me.

Uchiha Fuyu already had, of course, been here to see me checked in.  I had no doubt he was being run ragged, between disaster cleanup and the Uchiha Police.  Same went for my other teammates in their respective positions, though Natsuki-chan and Aki-sensei had perfect hair as always.  

Yamanaka Natsuki, golden-haired and ordinarily full of smiles, took one look at me and burst into tears.  I found myself with my arms full of him, and a highly uncomfortable Fuyu and sensei looking on.  Natsuki, for all that he did his best to appear as bubble-headed as the hair color suggested, did not wear his heart on his sleeve for just anyone.  

“Good to see you, too,” I said, softly, to avoid sounding choked up.  Natsuki’s grip around my shoulders loosened, and then I found myself subjected to a double-handed cheek pinch.  

“Don’t do that to me ever again!” he snuffled, releasing me with an audible slap.  “As if the tenth wasn’t already bad enough-!”

“I’ll try my best,” I said, cooling my now-warm cheeks with my hands.  I probably deserved that.  “I didn’t mean to, you know.”

“That’s the trouble, you never do,” said Natsuki, with a sniff.  “Unbelievable!  None of the rest of us were even hurt .”  And it was true, I’d found out - among his other very last actions, Namikaze Minato had trapped every ninja under the age of 17 behind a barrier while he fought the Kyuubi, irrespective of rank.  

Clown that I am, I’d managed to die anyway just from pure traumatic corrosive chakra exposure, before the barrier even went up.  At a distance of like five miles.

I did not quite meet Natsuki’s eyes, green-gold with those peculiar Yamanaka pupils, instead resting my gaze on his golden-tan nose, and the light dusting of freckles there.  What does it say about me that I’m more afraid of eye contact with my Yamanaka teammate than my active-Sharingan Uchiha teammate?  I’m sure my psych eval will tell me.

“I’m amazed you all got to come see me together,” I said.  “Reconstruction has to have everyone hopping.”

“Yamanaka-san insisted,” said my sensei, reminding me that he was in the room.  Not that I could forget , readily.  Hyuuga Aki was very tall, even for a Hyuuga, a bloodline which ran very tall indeed.  An imposing man, built like a brick outhouse, a stern and impassive face as befitted a proper member of the branch house, silky blue-black hair all the way down to his waist, bound back loosely.  He did not smile at me, as he never did, but I saw the veins that indicated an active Byakugan, and though it was difficult at the best of times to tell which direction he was looking, I knew it was focused on me and my fucked-up chakra system.  

“I know what it’s like when Natsuki insists,” I said with a tiny grin, and the veins at the corners of my sensei’s eyes desisted.  

“Fuyu told us about your house ,” said Natsuki, biting his knuckles.  “About- everything, actually.”  

“Have you a place to stay?” asked Aki-sensei.  I shrugged, my mouth thinning.  

“Nothing lined up,” I said.  “This is your chance to offer.”

“You’re always welcome in the Uchiha compound,” said Fuyu, quietly.  “Auntie won’t mind, either.”

“Of course you can stay with me!” said Natsuki, almost overlapping him.  “Don’t worry about a thing.”

“I will secure permission if you wish to stay with me, at my home,” said Aki-sensei, and boy did that make my pulse spike.  My teammates graciously ignored the ping of not quite killing intent that overcame me when the Hyuuga’s inner workings cast its long, long shadow.  A grown-ass man and jounin, having to ask permission from his masters to allow his newly-homeless student to sleep on his couch.  

The Hyuuga elders were going to be the first ones up against the wall when revolution came, even if I had to make it happen all by myself.  

“I am blessed,” I said, with my most saintly smile.  “From no home to three offers, cold.  Perhaps I’ll take all of you up at different times, so I don’t wear out any one welcome.”  

“Good!  I’ll draw up a timetable,” said Natsuki, with a smile to match my wattage (and every bit as sincere).  “So you don’t slither out on anyone, though I don’t know why you would!”

“Why does Haru-kun ever do anything,” muttered Fuyu, distracted by the open window.  Contemplating the big mysteries, what.

“I’ll be discharged in the next couple of days,” I said, my smile turning genuine and fond.  “Scope out what restaurants are back up and running, we’ll all go out together.”  A celebration seemed in order.  Team Four had come out more or less unbroken, yet again.  

An achievement that felt more brittle the longer it lasted.

We went back and forth for another half an hour, the four of us, even Aki-sensei.  Before the nurse shooed them out Fuyu set my headband, polished to a like-new shine and riveted to a fresh Konoha-blue cloth, on the bedside table.  Natsuki set a square travel case about the size of a hatbox next to it, with a wink that Aki-sensei studiously ignored.  Aki himself slid an ugly carpetbag under my bed- I recognized it as one of my bugout bags.  

I had to take a moment to compose myself, once they were gone.  Gods, it was good to have friends.  

Wearing a grin that wouldn’t go away, I unlatched the box Natsuki had left me, revealing my very own portable gramophone.  It was hand-crank and collapsable, suitable for taking on a picnic- or a mission.  A small collection of records fit into a pocket on the lid- I had a greater collection, but ahh… who knows how much was left of that.  Natsuki had been borrowing the box itself when my house was destroyed, which was a tremendous windfall.  I was very happy for it to have survived.  

I selected a vinyl, a grandiose orchestral piece suitable for grandstands and sitting alone in the dark of your empty mansion watching black and white silent films.  Wound up the gramophone, and set the needle.  

Pure sound, loud and immediate and almost physical .  There was just something about the quality of music from these old gramophones- undiluted soundwaves, straight from the disc to the air.  There was no volume control whatsoever; any semblance was achieved by stuffing a scarf in the speaker.  I leaned back, and let myself simply be awash in it.  

It was not long at all before the curtain between myself and my roommate was peeled back, slowly and deliberately, offering me a clear view of Hatake, his expression a complete null, the hot pink of complimentary hospital earplugs showing through his hair.  He said something, that between the hospital mask and the music, I did not quite catch.  The content was nonetheless obvious.

“I know, isn’t it wonderful?” I said, pitching my voice higher to be heard over the sound without straining myself.  His expression, if anything, got flatter.

“Makes it bloody hard to think doesn’t it?” I went on, cheerful and bright.  If I hadn’t been looking for it, I might not have spotted it- but his lone visible eye widened, just ever so, and his grip on the bed curtain loosened.  He didn’t pull the curtain to again, and I leaned back against my pillows to enjoy the music once more.  

Lots of things are better with company.  Even things I preferred to enjoy alone.

I was discharged the following afternoon, under the condition that I made all of my follow-up visits, and especially the psychological evaluation.  Yes, Suzume-senpai, it really was an accident, I promise.  Yes, Suzume-senpai, I really am that stupid, I don’t know why anybody ever thinks otherwise.  

I was returned to my room to finish up discharge paperwork, and change, and collect my things.  My roommate was missing.  Hm.  

A short-lived mystery, as it turned out.  I could still see him out the window, back in his flak jacket and blues, leaning ever so casually against a tree with his back towards the hospital.  He’d gotten, hm, maybe fifty yards?  

It was almost endearing.  I took my time changing clothes, and on my way out, collected a second set of discharge paperwork.  Rather than go out the window (no using chakra!  might actually die!) I took the long way around.  Hatake was still where I’d spotted him, fifteen minutes earlier.  I strolled up next to him at a leisurely pace, using my gramophone box as a portable desk, still finishing up my paperwork.  He did not acknowledge my approach, right up to the point where I started talking.  

“I’ve got some of your basics filled out, but you’ll still have to sign and initial everything,” I said, pitching right into it, shuffling the paperwork on my makeshift desk.  “I’d do that, too, but I don’t like forging signatures without a sample.  It’s not that I can’t, I would just prefer not to, and you are right here, after all.”

He stared at me like a dead fish.  I nudged his shoulder with my shoulder, and frowned.  He was taller than me, something that had been lost in the hospital bed.  I rather didn’t like this discovery, but unfortunately, quite a lot of people are taller than me.

“Anyway, we’re not required to report to head office until after the memorial service, which is Sunday… which gives us the rest of today, and tomorrow, to square things away.  Shan’t be any trouble at all, I’ll just send the paperwork back when we’re done by hawk or summons… Natsuki-chan lets me borrow his, I don’t have a contract of my own.  Where were you headed, then?  I have something of an open schedule-”

“Stop,” he said, and I turned sharply to look at him, to let him know he had my attention.  Had it the whole time, actually.  “...just.  Stop.”

“Okay,” I said, and leaned against the tree with my back to his, to continue filling out paperwork.  I felt him tense up all over, and stay that way.  

“Why-” he started, before he quite had what he was going to ask.  “Why are you like this,” he settled on.  I snorted.  

“Opening with the classics, I see,” I said.  “...There’s a longer answer, but I won’t trouble you with it.  Short version: I’m freshly unemployed and very, very easily bored.”

He made a small noise of frustration.  “So I’m… a new hobby?  ...Don’t you have friends?”

“Gobs,” I said, my eyebrows jumping, not that he could see.  “Family, too, though I’m aiming for less of that by the end of today.  I don’t see how that’s relevant.  I’m here, now.”  I was here, and he needed help that he wouldn’t ask for, that I could provide.  What else was I supposed to do?  

I’m a bit of a socialist at heart, you know.

( Pale morning light filtering through the gaps in a straw-thatched roof, dust motes dancing suspended in air.  A dark man with yards of silken black hair, stretched out on the bed I kept for overnight patients.  Bandaged from the waist down, and half the rest of his body.  Staring at me, out of golden eyes, like a man at sea.  Lost.  Befuddled.

(have I seen that look on Fuyu, maybe?  once or twice, from sensei, I’m sure)

someone else’s blood up to my elbows.  a familiar pain in my chest.  the sure knowledge that it had all been worth it, that I was still riding the tail ends of it, the thrill of saving a man’s life with my own two hands, a headier high than any dragon I’d ever chased- 

and he had the temerity to ask why?

if I wanted to chase the feeling of being god all the way to my dying breath just let me)

He moved away from the tree, while I was dealing with the intense flash of past life memories that had called up, walking off like he hadn’t just been non-optionally resting.  I was relatively quick to follow.  Had to trot a bit, to catch him on those stupid long legs of his.  

“I’m not some pity project,” he snapped, when I drew level.  

“Well, that’s good,” I said, the very beginnings of annoyed.  “Considering I’m not looking for one.  If you want to assign unflattering ulterior motives to me, that’s fine, but it doesn’t change the part where I need you to sign and initial here , if you don’t want me hunting up a handwriting sample.”  There was a deep crease between his eyebrows, when he looked down at me, the crinkle around his lone visible eye one of malice.  

“I’ll do it, too,” I said, eyeballing him.  “You have no idea the kinds of things you can find yourself anonymously signed up for in this village.”

He took the box from me, and the pen, and tried to ignore the part where he had to lean rather heavily on me to keep walking.  Neat little scribbles, where I’d x’d, and he handed me back the paperwork.  

“Have to change my handwriting, then,” he said, sounding deliberately more bored than angry.  

“Good,” I said, with a smile that had sharp edges.  “Adapt, and so shall I also.”

I went back to quietly filling out the remainder, the two of us leaning against one another to maintain upright and forward motion, Hatake trying not to need it and radiating frustration that he truly actually did.  ...Neither of us truly should have been out of the hospital yet, but.  Such was the state of things.  

The village was… depressing to be out in.  Nobody was out of uniform, no civilians were on the streets.  The district around the hospital had not quite been reached, but there were still piles of rubble and rocks, the skyline a distant view of half-destroyed buildings.  We had to alter our route twice, to avoid great chasms rent through the streets.  I deduced our destination after the second course correction.  

“...Memorial stone?” I said, my paperwork now closed up in my gramophone case, tucked under the same arm that held my carpetbag.  I took that silence as confirmation.  “...It might be busy.”

“...Be busier after the new engravings,” he said, very quietly.  “Sunday, you said.”

“Right.  Damn…” I swore, a hand on my chin.  “...Can’t be helped.”

But there was no one there when we reached it- everyone able-bodied still working disaster recovery, no doubt.  Hatake was already far away, by the time I looked up at the stone.  At all those names.  Soon to be yet more names.  

If I’d stayed dead, mine likely wouldn’t have been added.  I had not been killed in action.  Dad, though…

I couldn’t hang around all day.  I had other things to do, even if my schedule was rather loose at the moment.  I did not have time to stand in front of a giant rock, dissociating.  Even if that was what some people did for fun.

“Don’t stay out here all day,” I said, softly, entirely expecting to be ignored.  “I’ve got to go… stir some pots.  No pot left unstirred.”  

No response.  At least I had the excuse of the things I was flashing back to being entirely new material.  I stepped away from him, and he remained standing, with only a little wobble.  

...I really did hate to leave, but the world spins on.  

Chapter Text

A very tall ANBU fell into step next to me as I made my way, very slowly, up the hill to the nicest part of town, great clan mansions with spectacular views.  Clans that were dwindling, but still disgustingly wealthy.  I looked up and saw a mask with stylized horns, and a nose ring like an oni.  

“Ox,” I greeted, leaving off the -sensei just this once, since we were out in public.  “Hatake Kakashi’s house, where is it?”

“That’s classified,” the ANBU answered smoothly.  

“It’s in the ANBU district, isn’t it?  It wasn’t hit,” I went on. 

“...It wasn’t,” said Ox, his broad shoulders slumping the very tiniest bit.  

“Hey, stick around a second,” I said, bending to crack open my gramophone case and extract the paperwork.  “If you have a minute, run this back to the hospital for me?”

“ANBU only accepts missions directly from the Hokage,” said Ox, patiently, but he took the sheaf of paper anyway.  I smiled, and it felt tired.

“Don’t worry, I’ll backdate everything when I get the hat,” I said.  “I’ll see you tonight?”  Phrased as a question, since the final plan hadn’t actually made it back to me yet.

“You are expected at the Uchiha compound,” said Ox, and then he was gone.  I let my posture relax.  

Sensei back in ANBU.  Two new tomoe in Fuyu’s eyes.  

Well, nothing for it.  One foot in front of the other.  No way back, better go forward.  

The gates of the Kurama estate loomed in front of me.  I took a moment to stand in front of it, gathering my anger around me like a cloak.  The armor of the righteous man, what.

One of my cousins, a tall broad lad with almost-ginger hair, stopped me as I went to open the gates, scowling.  I interrupted him before he could speak.

“Himitsu Haruka,” I said.  “My mother, Himitsu Moriko, is staying here.  I believe grandfather is expecting me, too.”  And that was apparently all true, as my cousin’s forehead unfurrowed, and he let me in with a nod.  

“Moriko-san is in a guest cottage,” he told me, leading me back through the grounds.  Very beautiful, well-landscaped; as expected for a clan centered on genjutsu and the arts.  “Instructions are to take you before grandfather first and foremost.”

“Absolutely not,” I said, and stopped walking.  My cousin stopped too, less gracefully, and turned back to look at me, his eyes wide.  Apparently, he hadn’t expected me to go off-script.

“I’m going to visit my mother, first,” I told him.  “If you don’t want me to just start opening doors and having a look around, you’ll take me to her.”

“You can’t,” said my cousin, floundering.

Grandfather’s house was a great big one, situated fatly in the middle of the compound, a traditional-style mansion.  A woman, dark-haired, was watching from an upper level- no, she was pulling away the small child who had been watching out the window.  Another little cousin I’d never met.  

So they knew I was here, then.  That was fine.

“I’m visiting my mother first,” I said, adamant.  “While I remain unacknowledged, she’s the only family I have here.  So it’s not actually a snub.  It’s just respectful.”

It was absolutely a snub.  My cousin didn’t look convinced, either.  I continued to scan the compound, trying to guess which cottage they’d installed my mother in.  Being ignored seemed to do the trick, finally- my cousin sighed, his shoulders slumping.  Got ‘im.  

“I’ll be in trouble if we’re seen,” he said as a last effort, frowning at me.  I stared at him as blandly as I could manage.

“ Are you a genjutsu type?” I asked, very mild.  He turned a bit red, and flashed through a series of hand signs.  Cloaking us, I assume, because he then turned towards one of the smaller, traditional houses.  One with a garden around it.  I smiled, a bit wanly.  

My mother was in the front room, sitting seiza very properly at the low table, which was absolutely covered in paperwork.  The floor around it was likewise strewn, and Himitsu Moriko wore the same sort of look she had when tax season rolled around at home.  She looked up with a frown when the door opened, and then when my cousin dropped the genjutsu her expression cleared immediately.

“Haruka,” she said, getting to her feet to pull me into a hug.  I returned it tightly.  She held me out with her hands on my upper arms, to look at me.  “You look terrible.”

“Thanks,” I said, smiling lopsidedly.  “Hospital food, hospital beds.  You know.  They wanted me to go see granddad first , you know.  Granddad can go jump.”

“So you blackmailed Tenki-san to bring you here first instead?” she said, her smile very knowing.  Tenki- I guess that was my cousin’s name, I hadn’t asked- looked suitably embarrassed.  

“I’ve never blackmailed anybody in my entire life,” I said, drawing myself up with a huff.  “I convinced him, that’s all.”

“Of course, Haruka,” said my mother, still smiling that fond little smile.  “Tenki-san, will you go make tea?  I want to talk to my daughter.”

“In your- ?  I mean, yes ma’am,” said Tenki, who slid through a paper door still looking uncomfortable and bamboozled.  

“You look like you’re managing,” I told my mother.  She snorted, and we sat down at the low table together, her in seiza and me crosslegged.  “Are they putting you to work, or did you request this?”  I waved at the landscape, ankle-deep in scrolls.

“A little of both,” said my mother.  “Some of this is our accounts, actually.  Insurance.  Compensations.  I wanted to have it all settled before you got out of the hospital, but I suppose there’s not really so much rush.  With all the chaos, nothing’s going to get done quickly in this village for a while, I think.”

“It looks rough out there,” I said, my hands tucked under my thighs for warmth, a genuinely very unladylike position.  “I haven’t seen much of the village yet, but- it’s rough.”

“We’re doing our part, Haruka,” said my mother, and I looked up at her gratefully.  Mostly she picked on me, but sometimes she did use her powers for good.  Moriko looked down a moment.  “The Kurama took extensive losses in the war, right up until the end.  There hasn’t been time or personnel to go over all the clan paperwork, so that’s what I’m doing.”

“I still think it’s shameless,” I said, softly.  

“Ninja clans don’t have shame ,” she said with a sniff, just in time for Tenki to come back in with a tea tray.  He looked helplessly at the table, with nowhere to set it down.  I would have just let him dither, but my mom combined several stacks of paper with swift efficiency to clear a place.  “No, dear, sit with us,” she said, when he tried to stand up again.  

“You’re part of the conspiracy now,” I told him with a grin.  “Whether or not you wanted to be.”

“Be nice, Haruka,” my mother admonished, in the tone that said she didn’t actually care if I was.

“They’re planning on messing with me, in the big house,” I said, cocking an eyebrow at him as I lifted my teacup.  “Absolutely no other reason to insist on me seeing granddad first.”

“Not the only reason,” said my mother, humming.  “He likes things just so, my father-in-law.  He wants his clan to be strong.  If these two things are incompatible, he becomes upset, useless as it might be.  He has his sights set on rebuilding, and a vision of how it should go.”

“So to make me line up with the plan, they’re going to mess with me,” I said.  My mother sighed, but didn’t contradict me again.  “...They couldn’t possibly have my hospital records…?”  Containing the information that if I so much as attempted kai to break out of a genjutsu (nevermind that the best Kurama genjutsu were supposed to be both stronger and more involved than the sort that could be countered simply by cycling chakra) I would die.  That would call any bluff I cared to make before I even got off the ground.

“No!” said Tenki, his eyebrows high.  “If you were clan already, maybe, but…” he looked sideways at my mother.  “I mean, that’s what you’re here to work out.”

“Hm.  Well, he can try to get her to change her name,” said Moriko, mildly.  “But Haruka is a Himitsu to the bones.  She doesn’t even look like a Kurama.  Her instructors all through the academy kept trying to test her for the kekkei genkai- she doesn’t have it.  I could have told them that, but they lived in hope.”  She cocked an eyebrow at Tenki, who was frowning curiously.  

“The Himitsu weren’t always a civilian family,” I said, for his benefit.  “Just mostly civilian, progressively more so since the founding of Konoha.  I’m the only ninja to come out of us for a few generations.”

“Your great-aunt was the last, before you decided to be one,” said my mother.  “It’s too bad you didn’t get to know her.  I know you met her when you were very little.  She lived to be a hundred and eight, but she died before you even entered the Academy.”

“I didn’t know that,” said Tenki.  “The way Uncle talks- I thought you really were a civilian clan.”

“He’s the sort of person who thinks it makes a difference,” said my mother, serenely.  “Of course he would like to diminish my clan’s achievements, it doesn’t fit his narrative.”  I watched that one land, fascinated.  Tenki actually flinched.  

“Well,” I said, looking down at the dregs in my teacup, swirling it counterclockwise to see if I could make pictures.  “I feel better, now.  Mom?”

“Don’t worry about me,” she said, with a small tight smile.  “You’re staying with Uchiha Kuro first, right?”  Her smile widened, at my expression.  “She sent me a message as soon as your team worked things out.  Just come visit me as much as you can, and I’ll be fine.”  Slide that guilt trip right in there with the rest of it, thanks.

“As much as I can,” I agreed, and looked to Tenki as I got to my feet.  He looked down at his cup, and then scrambled to get up in my wake, setting it down on the counter.  Looked then to my mom, for a cue. 

God, she’d be running the whole clan within a week, if this was how all the junior members responded to her.  Well, time to see what kind of snake pit I was getting into. 

Tenki ran through another series of handseals as we went out the door, and I followed him through a side path, a garden path to the big house.  I felt genjutsu pass over my skin, whatever he was doing- I hadn’t before, but then again I really wasn’t much of a sensor.  I always got better at sensing a single person’s chakra the more I was exposed to it, though.  I maybe didn’t like the idea of getting used to my cousin’s chakra.

I was led into the house, and on to the formal receiving parlor, where my grandfather was sitting seiza at the back of the room, flanked by who I guessed were my uncles, like we were the goddamned Yakuza.  A few other cousins stood around, and my mother was amongst them, her hands folded up in her kimono sleeves and her expression serene, with just the barest hint of smug.  

Ah.  So that’s how we’re doing this.

I felt the cloak of my anger settle about my shoulders again, felt a spark in my chest and grasped it, twisting it down and inward where I could use it.  Hopefully, in that half-second I’d been caught left-footed, killing intent hadn’t been spilling out the top of my head like a fountain.  

The genjutsu was very good, possibly even perfect, though I’m no expert.  Kurenai probably would have had something to critique about it, but to my eyes… if I hadn’t just left Himitsu Moriko, sitting peacefully with a cup of tea, pouring over these assholes’ accounts, I might have even been fooled.

Behind me, before he slid the paper door closed, I heard my cousin swallow.  It was the loudest sound in the room.  Maybe I had leaked a little killing intent.  Whoops.  

I looked perfunctorily over the rest of the gathered family, and went to greet the simulacra of my mother first.  If they thought that just because she wasn’t real I wouldn’t use her to continue to snub my relatives, they were stupid.

Don’t give me props if you don’t want me to use them.

“Hi mom,” I said, as we hugged.  She was warm, and if I hadn’t known- well, since I did know, it was easy to pick up the strange offness of it.  I wondered how many of the other people in the room were fake, too. “Holding up?  How’re they treating you?”

“I’m fine, sweetheart,” she said, with a little rub to my shoulder as we pulled apart.  “Don’t worry about me.  Go and greet your grandfather.”  Which was incredibly respectful, for my mother.  Swing and a miss, guys.

“Oh, but-” I looked half over my shoulder, and gave a pained, sheepish smile.  “We’ve never actually been introduced.”

“Himitsu Haruka,” said my grandfather, not taking his eyes off me, as I watched my mother’s image cover her mouth with a hand, like she was scandalized.  “It is not lightly that we extend this hand of kinship to you, and to your mother, but it is in the greater interest of the clan and the village that we protect even the very least of us.  You are family, whatever differences of opinion your father might have held.  This is important, to me.”

I stared at him, trying very hard not to leak hostile intent while surrounded by itchy shinobi.  I turned to face my grandfather fully.  

“Not important enough to reconcile while dad was still alive, though,” I said.  “...Of course, dad didn’t want to reconcile.  Nothing’s changed here, why should he?”

“Iwashi was a stubborn fool,” said my uncle.  I gave him the coldest look I could make, which was very cold indeed.

“Must run in the family,” I said, before returning my attention to my grandfather.  

“Come back to us, Haruka,” said my grandfather, who had absolutely no right to use my name without honorific.  “Live with your mother here; take the Kurama name.  I will open every door that has been closed to you.”

And that phrasing triggered a memory, from the miasma of my past lives, bright and encompassing.  A sunset, bright and red and orange- no, must be a sunrise, because the light only got bigger, and more golden.  But it wasn’t the beginning of the day, wasn’t the beginning of anything.  I was watching the world end, in a blaze of light, and I was strangely calm to see it.  There was nowhere to run- nothing to be done.  Not externally.

I closed my eyes in the dream, the feeling much like meditating- like the first layer of a lucid dream.  There were doors there, in the back of my head, ever so many doors.  I only had to find the right one, and this time instead of merely opening it, step through .

The only doors I need opened are the ones inside my head .

My vision cleared, and I was relieved to find that I had not moved in real life, hadn’t even closed my eyes.  

“No,” I said.  “No, I will not be your good granddaughter, and no, I will not take the name Kurama.  I think, perhaps, you are under several misapprehensions about me, first and foremost being the idea that I need help .  No,” I went on, over the rising protest of both of my uncles.  “No, you should be worried that I’m going to start closing doors on you .”

“Haruka,” said my grandfather, sternly, and in that moment I knew exactly how my father had felt when he left.  “See reason.”

The golden light of the end of the world was infringing on the edges of my vision.  The genjutsu of my mother, out of the corner of my eye, was fading into it, like everything else unreal in the room.

I turned on my heel without bowing, intent to see myself out, and found the door missing.  Ah.

I turned back around slowly, and found the room empty of everyone but my grandfather and two uncles.  The edges of the room were darkening, but in the back of my head the end of the world was still shining, the last golden moment of an entire universe.  

“I don’t have the kekkei genkai,” I said, the words feeling strange for how long it had been since I’d had to say them.  “Genjutsu is not even my specialty.”  All the same, the rosy gold of a dying world was starting to creep in at the edges of the room, chasing away the miasma.  “But consider: no kunoichi has ever needed a genjutsu to kill a man in real life.”

“For such disrespect, while you are under my power, I should stop your heart,” said my grandfather, quietly.  “It would be an illusion, but your body would think it was real.”

“I mean, have you ever tested that on someone who’s already been dead?” I said, in a slightly manic burst of inspiration.  “Perhaps it’s like an inoculation.  I’ve tasted the real thing, granddad.  My heart’s going to know when it’s fake.”

I turned around again, and marched straight towards that empty wall where the door ought to be.  When I put my foot forward, where it ought to have punched through a paper wall, I felt something stretch and then snap, like a rubber band, and then everything went dark. 

I opened my eyes to a view of the sky over the courtyard, my cousin the gate-guard leaning over me, looking like he’d seen a ghost.  I stared back, and then shot out a fist in a rabbit punch to his solar plexus.  He whuffed, and rolled to one side, leaving me enough room to sit up, disoriented and mad as a wet cat.  

“There was no chakra behind that whatsoever,” I told my cousin.  

“There’s no- hff- conditioning-  haaa- the solar plexus,” he wheezed.  Against my will, the corner of my mouth turned up.  

“What happened?” I asked.  “Last I remember, I was under genjutsu, having a friendly discussion with grandfather.”

“You walked out of the meeting room straight through the paper,” said Tenki, still watching me like a wild animal that might have distemper.  “I followed you out here, and then you just kind of collapsed.  Your eyes were still open when you fell over.”

I scratched the back of my neck, frowning.  “...Neat,” I said.  Tenki was still staring at me like he worried I might be mad.

“What did you do ?” he asked, as I climbed to my feet with effort, finding it thankfully no more difficult than usual.  

“Either broke out of the genjutsu solely with yin chakra, or broke out of the genjutsu by dying,” I said, still frowning.  “Couldn’t tell you which from here.”

“That doesn’t explain anything,” said Tenki, looking uneasily over his shoulder, at the big house, even as I reached over to take my carpetbag and gramophone case back from him.  He let me have them, unyielding.  

“I’ll see you around the Tower,” I told him, and made a line for the gate.  

Not my problem anymore.  Not my problem ever again, unless they tried to stop me seeing my mother, and honestly I’d like to see them try.  

I ended up wandering a bit, once I was out on the streets again, letting myself have a bit of a fugue.  My head was distracted, and I found myself wandering the demolished part of town, already a hive of construction activity.  Civilian engineers and ninja superpowers, everyone doing their own part.  The streets were clearer than they had been, but they would all need repaving, between the initial destruction and all the heavy equipment running over them afterwards.  

The stretch of road that ran by my house had needed repaving for about six years, actually.  It was good that it would finally get done.  

My house was… the sight of it was like a physical blow, the ghost of the punch to the solar plexus I’d delivered not half an hour ago.  The upper floor was entirely knocked down, the rubble fallen into the lower floor, from an impact that looked like a bomb had been dropped on it.  One window frame was intact; the one laced up with climbing ivy.  Ivy still clung to the siding where the house had fallen in, like it was trying to hold the ruin together, spiderwebbed marks in the larger chunks of rubble where runners had been ripped away.  Mother’s roses were gone, buried under concrete.  The bougainvillea still stood against the south fence, defiantly hot pink and supporting a chunk of large masonry that had not come from our house.  There was a criss-cross of red tape over the half-fallen doorway, just to hammer the point home, I guess. 

I sat down on an untouched portion of our front garden wall, out of the way of the reconstruction crews, and tried not to look at the light from the end of some other world shining just behind the ruin of my house.  It was still there, though, when I closed my eyes.

Gods help me, I needed to get that fixed.  

...I would like to be able to say that I buckled down then, and started to meditate, to experience and catalogue and file away my past lives, find out what they contained so that they would no longer catch me unawares.  I would very much like to say that I did that.

( A still more glorious dawn awaits)

Instead I just sat there, lost in myself, ruminating on the end of the world.  I had past-life memories of beating it- not just once , as the trickle of information refused to slow or organize itself.  But this one man, the edition of myself born into a reality that had collapsed in on itself, had found a way past it.  It was a wild cluster of memories, from that lifetime- passing through the gate between worlds had given that incarnation of me past-life memories as well, and trying to pick at memories from that lifetime was a dizzying example of true recursion.  Everything you’ve ever thought has more thoughts attached to it, memories and sensations and rabbit trails.  This was that, but with layers .

But I remained fixed on him all the same.  A lonely man, ragged and at the end of his rope, already dying ( that pinch in my lower left lung when I breathed ) but clinging on to hope ( it springs eternal, don’t you know? ) had taken nothing but a working knowledge of a handful of familiar concepts - astral projection, chaos theory, the Akashic record- and spun them all together to make a way out .

Not a way out of the death in his lungs, but a way out of the death of his universe.  

It seemed so… within reach .

If a chronically ill civilian with a handful of library books on metaphysical concepts and a couple of koans ( if you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe ) could crack interdimensional doorways, what excuse did I have?  

...Not that I wanted to leave Konoha.  This was my home , and if this world was ending I would be fighting .  But the practical applications- the practical applications were the stuff of bloodlimits.  The sort of thing the very maddest of Uzumaki seal-masters would seek to replicate in fuinjutsu.  

Tomorrow I’d go to the shinobi library and check out the entire collection on higher meditation techniques.  Today…

Today, the real sun was setting behind my house, and the light of the end of the world was fading, the fugue of that golden epiphany fading with it.  I was stiff, and my tailbone ached.  A faint chill was seeping into the air with the veil of twilight.  I still didn’t… find it in myself to move.

“Haruka.”

My name echoed in the dark, bouncing off the empty street.  Civilian construction crews had gone home with the sunset.  A flickering sodium streetlamp painted Uchiha Fuyu in a chiaroscuro of orange and black.  I blinked at him foggily for a moment, before giving a chagrined little gasp.

“Oh, gods, I’ve been here hours,” I said, clapping my hands to my cheeks.  Fuyu gave a tiny little snort, and stepped out of the streetlight to hold out a hand to me.  I needed it, to stand up again after that long.  Not being able to cycle chakra to keep from getting stiff was absolute balls .

“Auntie expected you for dinner,” said Fuyu, graciously offering his arm for me to latch on to as we walked, carrying my carpetbag in his other hand.  I winced.

“I shall grovel,” I said.  “...How did you find me?”

“Natsuki-chan said you’d either be here, or at the memorial stone,” he said.  My cheeks tingled.  Of course, Natsuki-chan.  “I got lucky, I came here first.”

“Thank you,” I said, a bit short, because I was genuinely embarrassed .  And grateful.  Very .  “I’m glad at least you two can still be trusted.”  Since clearly, I couldn’t be.

Fuyu actually laughed, at that, a sputtering little chuckle, and gave me a genuine smirk.  “I’ve already heard all about your altercation with the Kurama,” he said, and I felt myself grimace.  “It’s the talk of the Tower.  How you’re immune to their signature genjutsu.”

“...He didn’t actually use it ,” I said, irritably.  “I was just bullshitting.”  Bluffing people far bigger than me, recreationally.  You know, for fun .

“If it didn’t work, how would you know ?” said Fuyu, still with that smirk.  “He wouldn’t admit to trying it, not if it didn’t.”

“I think I’d know,” I said, looking slowly up at the sky, starry between the trees.  “Ah.  Oh .  Can we take a detour?”  I tugged on his arm to change directions without waiting for an answer.  

“You’re keeping Auntie waiting,” said Fuyu, but did not resist the course correction.  Instead, he put his thumb to his teeth and drew enough blood to call a summons, which popped out of the ground with a puff of smoke.  A stub-tailed calico cat with one green eye and one orange blinked up at us, unimpressed.

I stared, not at the cat, but at Fuyu.  He shifted and turned ever so slightly pink, but addressed the cat before speaking to me.

“Tell Auntie I found her,” he told the cat.  “...We’re still going to be a bit later.”  The cat blinked at him, giving no sign she had understood, and disappeared again in a puff of smoke.  

“Since when have you been on the cat contract?” I asked him, and Fuyu gave an embarrassed little huff.

“About two days,” he said.  “Auntie said… now that my eyes have come in all the way, there was no point in waiting.”

I nodded, taking that in.  Privately, we’d been convinced Uchiha Kuro wouldn’t ever consider Fuyu up to her standards enough to sign the contract.  It felt like a sea change, that she had.

The moon was rising as we reached the memorial stone.  A lone figure still stood in front of it.  Fuyu stopped when he recognized who it was, stubbornly refusing my insistent tug.  

“Haruka,” he whispered.  “I’m not supposed to talk to him.  I’m- you’re probably not supposed to talk to him, if you’re spending the night at my house.”

“Do you hear yourself?” I whispered back.  “You sound like a Hyuuga.”  I didn’t see him turn red, but I could tell it was happening from the way he puffed.  For all the proud Uchiha insistence that there was no rivalry between them and the Hyuuga, there was no faster way to get one twisted than making the comparison.

Especially Fuyu, and especially considering our sensei.  Low blow?  Almost definitely.  Hi, I’m a ninja, how are you?

“Hey,” I said, slipping into place next to Hatake.  He made not a twitch.  “Hey.  You’ve been out here all day.”

No response.  I slapped my hands to my face haphazardly, dragging them down it.  

“...I should have come by here sooner,” I said, peeking up at the stone between my fingers.  “I had this feeling you’d just spend the rest of your day standing here dissociating.  ...But then I couldn’t come find you any earlier, because I’ve spent most of the day dissociating in front of my old house.”  I had to laugh, but kept it quick.  “...Neither of us should have been out of the hospital yet, not really, but here we are.  Please go home, Hatake.  Will you go home on your own, or do I call ANBU?”

“Haruka,” said Fuyu, his arms folded, still standing two yards from us like a disapproving chaperone, but I ignored him, because I had Hatake’s attention.  He was looking at me like he wasn’t sure what I was or where I’d come from, but that was still improvement.

“...Ah, it’s late, isn’t it?” said Kakashi, looking up at the moon overhead.  

“We missed dinner,” I said.  His eye slid down to find me, and held for a long moment.  And then, in the fraction of a second that it took for me to tense in preparation for saying something else, he was gone.  Shunshinned away in a swirl of leaves.  

I let the squareness run out of my shoulders, and let out a breath.  Fuyu drew up level with me again.  

“People like that…” he said, giving the drifting puff of leaves a hairy look.

“If you finish that sentence, we aren’t friends anymore,” I told him, enunciating each word very clearly.  He sighed, instead of protesting, and we started the now slightly longer walk to the Uchiha compound.

“...I’d like to be able to say you’ve been acting strange, since the 10th,” he said, eventually.  “But you haven’t, not really.  You’ve been acting more yourself than ever.”

“...I am more myself than ever,” I said.  It was about the truest thing I’d ever said, in a twisted-up way.  

“It might not be a good thing,” said Fuyu.  I nodded.  I kind of agreed, actually.

But I could only work with what I had- and what I had right now was an awful lot of myself.

Chapter Text

Fuyu had started out on our genin team deliberately trying to keep his teammates’ contact with the Uchiha minimal, contact with his Aunt Kuro in particular.  That had only lasted as long as Natsuki had let it, and by now I was a familiar enough sight at the Uchiha district that the gate guards did not bother with us.  You could tell you were getting close to Uchiha Kuro’s home because the density per square of cats began to increase exponentially- and there were already a lot of cats around the Uchiha district.

Fuyu opened the door and called out softly, “We’re home,” as he slipped out of his sandals and into house shoes.  I was a step behind him, picking my way in between cats.

“Come to the kitchen,” called his aunt, and it was the only room in the house that had lights on, yellow through the haze of smoke that drifted along the ceiling.

Uchiha Kuro was the elder holder of the cat contract; a full jounin and a lady made of cold iron.  She was still as intimidating as the first day I’d met her, sitting poised at the kitchen table with a thin trail of smoke drifting up from her kiseru pipe, surrounded by cats on every available surface.  Her attention on you also came with the attention of several dozen cats, eyes in every corner of the room.  

She was not a tall woman, shorter than me even, though it was something you could readily forget until she stood up.  Shining black hair in a neat angled bob, not a single strand out of place.  She would have to be approaching middle-aged, for a kunoichi, but it did not show in her face, only in the depth of her dark hooded eyes and some faint lining around them, creases filled with eyeliner black and sharp as the void.  She wore a fluttery silk robe for around the house, bright colors and butterflies, snug detachable sleeves that looped around her middle fingers underneath it.  

I had never had outright confirmation that she had the second, secret, evolved form of the Sharingan, but I kept an edge of caution around her as though she had .  Her original team, fantastically, was all still intact - but Fuyu’s parents were both dead.

Yes, I’m aware that I know far more about the Uchiha dojutsu than I ought.  Don’t tell Fugaku and we’ll all be fine .

I bowed as low as I could and still reasonably expect to straighten back up under my own power.  She nodded, as though granting me audience.

“I apologize for my forgetfulness, and for my lateness, Kuro-sama,” I said, staring her in the nose.  Not quite brave enough to look her in the eye , like I would her nephew.  “I have no excuses, except that I have had… a day.  Thank you for extending your hospitality, even knowing that I am a terrible houseguest.”

She almost smiled, that face on her that Uchiha make when they are trying not to be entertained by something.  “So I’ve heard,” she said.  “You make lots of ripples, Haruka-chan, for such a small stone.”

“All in a day’s work, ma’am,” was out of my mouth before I could really think about it.  Behind me, Fuyu, in the process of unboxing and reheating leftovers, fumbled a dish with a clatter.  

“At least you’re consistent,” said Kuro, with an actual grin this time, pointy and unsettling.  “No pall of the grave about you, now that you’ve seen the other side?  No reconsidering of your life’s choices, no fresh perspective to sober your outlook?”

“...Fresh perspective, certainly,” I said.  “Gobs, in fact.  I think it’s only making me worse.”

“She’s not wrong,” muttered Fuyu, leaning against the kitchen counter.  “...Haru-kun, have a seat, please.”

I did as I was told, sliding into the nook across from Aunt Kuro, pulling the cat that had previously occupied the seat into my lap.  I crinkled my nose.  “...How come I’m only just Haruka with you when we’re alone, or I’m in trouble?”  I got to see Fuyu turn red again, for my effort.

“It gets your attention,” he mumbled, bringing bowls to the table and taking his seat.  “...but I don’t like the way I get looked at when I just use your name.”

“...That’s fair,” I said, picking up my chopsticks.  Miso and seafood broth, the nicest thing I’d eaten so far this week, and mild enough that I’d probably keep it down.  “People can be stupid, about that sort of thing.”  

“Can’t they just,” said Kuro, setting her pipe down to pick the fish out of her soup to eat first.  “You’re both not too young for a betrothal contract, mind.”

“Auntie!” said Fuyu, coughing.  

“I don’t expect many offers,” I said, dryly.  “Not with a three-generation pedigree of poor health, Kurama or not .  And don’t Uchiha usually marry within the clan?”

“Fuyu-chan can marry anyone he wants,” said Kuro, not unkindly.  “I could really care less about ensuring my grand-nieces and nephews have the right bloodlimit- I could have gotten married myself, if it mattered that much to me.”  

“These things don’t even cross my mind ,” said Fuyu.  “I thought we’d all agreed we were focussing on our careers.”

“There is that,” I said, blinking.  “Speaking of, how’s life down at the police station?”

He brightened, with something he could answer that wouldn’t mortify him, and we passed the rest of the meal in idle chatter about work.  After dinner Fuyu picked up my carpetbag, and headed for his room.

“Ask if she wants the guest bedroom, Fuyu-chan,” Kuro called after him.  “You’re not children anymore.”

He turned red, his hand on his bedroom door, me right behind him, and I felt an irreversible pang.  Sleeping over at each others’ houses as genin, Fuyu, Natsuki and I had always liked to stay in the same room, the three of us rolled up on the floor together, the better to whisper secrets and hatch conspiracies.  Nobody had ever said a word about it before.

“Maybe tomorrow night,” I murmured.  “Tonight let’s- like when we were kids.”  I reached for my bag, taking it from his hand.  “But I think first I’m going to spend…the next, hm, hour, hour and a half?  In the bath.  If nobody minds.”  I’d been sink-washing while in the hospital, and I ached in body and soul.  It was time .

“It’s all yours, Haruka-chan,” Kuro called from the kitchen, where she had resumed her pipe.

I flashed a thumbs-up that she couldn’t see and darted away, closing the bathroom door behind me.

I had the bugout bag sensei had brought me, and I had the bugout bag tucked in the back of Aunt Kuro’s linen closet, and I had my own toiletries case in the drawer here, so I did not want for things, not even my own things.  Vindication at last- It wasn’t paranoia; I wasn’t overprepared.  I was only just prepared enough.  

I took deep satisfaction in clipping the hospital bracelet off my wrist with a pair of nail shears before getting in the bath.

I felt much, much better when I came out of the bathroom again, clean and damp and pink and dressed in my own pajamas.  Fuyu was in his room, with the light on, and I slipped in quietly.  

Later, in the dark, a cat between us and one in a crescent over my head trying to steal pillow space, we lay face to face on the same futon, whispering to each other like we had when we were children.

...Well, perhaps not quite.

“The Uchiha police have been issued a moratorium on investigating the Kyuubi attack,” Fuyu whispered to me, quiet but with a sort of high-key intensity.  I felt suddenly wide awake.

“ Why ,” I whispered back.  They were not perfect, the Uchiha police force, but they were good at this.  I liked working with them, as I liked working with Fuyu.

...I didn’t say earlier, did I?  We were an investigative specialty team, at least on paper.  Mystery, betrayal, murder most foul.  For this reason, we’d always been quite close to the Uchiha police, even before Fuyu had started working for them.

“...Some eyewitnesses reported... the Kyuubi’s eyes were masked by a strange pattern, like a dojutsu.  Black on red, like a Sharingan, but not one… the general public would recognize,” he said, only just barely, like if he spoke it aloud it would curse it true.

“...The Mangek-” I began, and he muffled me with his hand. 

“Don’t say it,” he hissed.  “You’re not even supposed to know .”

“I know,” I said, and waited for him to go on.

“Nobody left the Uchiha district that night,” he said, his eyes bright points in the dark even though they remained solid black.  “ Nobody .  Not when the village lit up, not even when the calls went out.  I don’t know who organized- it was like a coincidence at the time, but it must have been orders .  I woke up at three thirty-three in the morning on the dot, like-”

“Genjutsu?” I whispered, and he nodded, a flash of raw fear crossing his face.  My spine tingled in response.

“I think so,” he said.  

“...Nobody but another Sharingan could put that many Uchiha under,” I said, as quietly as possible.  

“I know,” said Fuyu, barely a whisper.

“ Who- ” I started.

“I don’t know,” he whispered, distress in his voice.  “I haven’t been allowed to clan meetings before, but now that these-” his eyes flickered glowing red for a moment, three tomoe in each, “-I’m allowed in.”

“...Surely it’s not…” I tucked my chin, thinking, furiously.  An Uchiha to hypnotize the Kyuubi, an Uchiha to put their clan to sleep… simplicity principle, assume it’s the same Uchiha.  Not necessarily working alone , but start from the premise that the same pair of eyes had committed the act.

...Pair?  An unfounded assumption.  Sharingan transplant is impossible outside of the clan, they’d thought , but then Obito and Kakashi and...Rin, had proved that essentially false.  So, our profile: any person with at least one single operational Mangekyo Sharingan.  ...Really narrowed it down, there.

“...They’re all unique, aren’t they?” I murmured.  “The- the second level eyes.”  

“...Now we’re on to things I’m not supposed to know,” he muttered.  “But.  Um.  Yes.  They don’t all have the same powers with them, either.”

“Is there a record of the patterns?  A database of known Mangek- second-level eyes?” I asked.  

“No!” he said, swallowing a yelp, but the deeply worried furrow to his forehead said yes .  “...Maybe.  Deep, deep in the clan library.  I think .”

“It would be a useful thing,” I said, “a dangerous, incriminating, compromising thing-”

“But that’s most clan secrets,” sighed Fuyu.  

“If we could compare the shape of the eye spotted on the fox to such a database-” I started.

“Ah yes,” said Fuyu, glumly.  “But the Uchiha Police have been taken off the investigation.”

“ I’m not Uchiha Police,” I said, with a grin.  “I am an independent investigator.”

“You’re one evaluation away from a permanent medical retirement,” said Fuyu.  

“ Humor me ,” I ground out.  He fell quiet, for a long minute.

“...Sorry,” he whispered, and I felt the tension in my spine evaporate.  

“...Quite.”  I chewed the corner of a fingernail, still thinking.  “Consider: if not the Uchiha Police, who then will be conducting the investigation?”

“ANBU,” he answered immediately.  “Oh.  Of course.”

“We ought to coordinate with Ox,” I said, and he nodded.  

“...I’ll find a way to compare the eye pattern,” he whispered.

“Good,” I whispered back.  

We said nothing more for a good few minutes, neither of us quite ready to sleep, but with no more conspiracies to plan tonight.

“I’m glad you’re back, Haruka,” Fuyu whispered into the dark.  He had rolled onto his back, the comforter pulled up over his nose. The cat curled up between us shifted.   “I feel better, with a plan.”

“Good,” I said, rolling over so I could rest my back against him for the warmth.  “So do I.”

*

I dreamed of a path in the night sky, all made of starlight.   I dreamed of a bright line in the dark, like the light from another room shining in from under a door.  I dreamed of doorknobs, unyielding to my hand.  

I dreamed of watching the sunset of a dying world, until I found myself shaken awake.  Fuyu loomed over me, his face in shadow.  It was still late, not yet early, the gray of dawn not yet showing through the curtains.  

“You weren’t breathing,” he whispered, at my confused squint.  “It woke me up.”

“...Sorry,” I mumbled, and closed my eyes again.  “...Thank you.”  I did not remember any more dreams, but when I awoke the second time, naturally, and to four cats next to me where my teammate had been, the second half of one of those koans had come to me.

A still more glorious dawn awaits, not a sunrise, but a galaxy-rise

...There was more to it, I could taste the next line’s cadence on the back of my tongue, but I had yet to root it out.  

The house was golden with light in the morning, but empty and a little cold.  Fuyu and Aunt Kuro had work to do, and I had not expected them to wait around for me and my lopsided invalid sleep schedule.  I was glad Fuyu had let me sleep instead of getting me up for breakfast.  I could still tell I needed the rest.

Dying takes a whole lot out of a body.  Who knew.

I had tea for breakfast, and decided to spend my day around the Uchiha compound.  Solidarity or laziness - why not both?

I made it to the mid-morning senior citizen’s Tai Chi group in one of the district’s training grounds.  I had to get back into condition somehow , and this was about the lowest-energy exercise I could perform.  Nobody looked at me sideways when I joined, but I felt a great deal of attention on me nonetheless.  Even more, when I didn’t last the entire half-hour, bowing out when a sickly sheen of sweat had crept into my hair.  

Utterly pathetic!  I was sure that crop of children at the edge of the park thought so too.  I stuck my tongue out at one sprog in a wide-collared shirt, who was watching a little bit spacily, and didn’t slow down to see if it made him blush.

Back at Fuyu’s house I re-fried rice balls for lunch, showered, and settled in to a window seat with eleven cats, to take a serious whack at meditation.  I got… farther.  Knowing that I had been there before, so to speak, made progression easier.

I was still walking a path in the dark, however.  I had not found the light coming in under the door- I had not found any doors at all.  I had not found the road of starlight or the stairs that came after.  I could go far enough along that I heard my footsteps on the fabric of my own consciousness, but it was only that, for a long long time.

I had more luck sorting through the memories of past lives, at least.  I could spin them apart and sort them into boxes, so to speak, containing all the content of that particular lifetime.  It was not in order, and trying to put them together in sequence was a daunting task.  I focussed more on sorting, reviewing things so that they had less of a chance at popping out at me at inopportune times - or at least if they did, I’d be somewhat prepared.

I suspected, however, that I would not be able to review any of them extensively or at my own leisure, until I found the doors they had come through.  Or until I achieved access to my Akashic record, which… I had my suspicions was one and the same.  

I had the closest thing in existence to a roadmap to enlightenment .  I supposed I couldn’t exactly complain that it wasn’t very straightforward.

Otherwise… I found some interesting content, in my past lives.  

For one, the nekomata had not been lying.  I had always been sick .  I often died quite young, railing against the end the whole way.  The taste of despair and lung-blood was a familiar one.  I tried to avoid scenes of my death.  Later , for that.  If ever.

But the shadow of my own demise had prompted heights of desperation that I had yet to experience- or perhaps that I was only just beginning to.  Stealing a boat and running away to die on the ocean was a common thread.  Throwing myself into the work until it burnt my candle was another.  

I had almost always been a physician of some kind, it seemed.  That drive to solve puzzles, that drive to save myself.  The underlying desire to be god .  These things about myself, that never seemed to change, no matter the circumstances.  

It was comforting, somewhat.  To know what parts of me went all the way down to my soul .  Not nurture, but nature, incontrovertible and essential.  Undying.  

I had failed to set myself a timer before I started my meditation, so I was brought out of it by a set of sharp claws digging into my calf.  It brought me out of it all a jumble, the black cat in my lap watching coolly while I flailed.

“Just wanted to let you know,” said the cat, in a higher voice than I expected.  “Fuyu-chan says dinner tonight, 1800 hours.  The hot pot place is still standing.”

“Thank you,” I said, and the cat went back to extravagantly licking himself while in my lap.

I sighed, and gently relocated the cat to take my place in the window seat.  I had plenty of time to get myself out of the house and to the Akimichi restaurant our team favored in fall and winter, so if I started now I might have a minute to stop by the shinobi library.  That had been my original plan today, but I had been so tired, and it was just so easy to not leave the Uchiha district, once you were there.

Now there was a thought - the Uchiha clan library.  Was I persuasive enough to obtain permission, even restricted permission, to access it?  I sure would like to.  It surely couldn’t hurt to ask .

I filed that for later, and got ready to go out.  My hair had stiff waves in it, the consequence of braiding it last night while wet, and then going to sleep on it.  I combed them out into softer waves, and tied my hair into a low ponytail with a green cotton ribbon.  The hair around my face was shorter, and I let it escape the hair tie and wisp about my face fetchingly.  I had a long, angular face, my puppy fat had vanished before I’d even made genin, and puberty hadn’t really given any of it back.  I had hips, more or less, but the upper levels had only grown in negligibly.  My mother said I would likely have to wait a few years more to see if they indeed would.  

As such, I didn’t mind in the least.  Secondary sexual characteristics were only ever inconvenient, in combat, and while it might theoretically help no kunoichi had ever needed tits to bait a honeypot.  I affected an androgynous style of dress, lots of layers and draping, maxi skirts or hakama, cardigans and turtlenecks.  I had often thought that if I’d been healthy, I would have learned kenjutsu and gone full for the samurai aesthetic.  In the memories I had reviewed so far, my past lives had been overwhelmingly majority male , and this actually surprised me not at all.  Surely souls themselves were neither one nor the other, but it couldn’t all be coin flip.  The revelation certainly didn’t trouble me.

Gender roles were only limitedly useful, after all.  I adopted mannerisms that were useful to me from anywhere I could, discard the rest regardless of the stereotypes of kunoichi and shinobi technique.  Natsuki had always understood this principle at least as well as I did, Fuyu not so much.  Sensei had only ever wanted us, whatever route we took, to be logical and well-researched, and think very carefully about how we were perceived.  Anything could be a weapon, after all.  Anything at all.  

Like Natsuki-chan’s perfect, perky ass in skin-tight lycra, for instance.  

I didn’t have much in the way of libido (chronic illness will do that to you!) but I still found myself rather abstractly sad sometimes that Natsuki played for the other team.  I could only imagine what he did to genuine red-blooded homosexuals.

On my way down the steps from Fuyu’s house I was assaulted quite suddenly, a long black cat leaping off the railing to perch on my shoulders.  Dear reader, I wobbled.  From a cat.

“I’m to make sure you get there safely,” chirped the cat.  

“...I’m not an invalid,” I said, irritably, already very aware that there is little on this earth more futile than arguing with a cat.  

“Dissociative episodes,” said the cat, cheerfully.

“That’s not-  that’s not a pattern ,” I ground out.  “The one time.”

“It’s not the one time, though, is it?” said the cat, and I looked sideways at him sharply.  I had an impression of large yellow eyes, bristling black whiskers.  

“What do you know about it?” I asked, and the cat settled around my shoulders like a fluffy wrap.  ...Well, at least it was a warm babysitting accessory.

“Lots,” he said.  “We’ve been here the whole time, remember?  I’ve, you know, met you.”

I sighed.  ...Hm.  I wonder.

“...Does the cat contract encompass nekomata?” I asked.

“Literally every cat,” he said.  “It’s a big contract.”

There was a thought, then.  With enough chakra on the summoning, with the right intent behind it, would Fuyu- or Aunt Kuro, perhaps, as the older summoner- be able to pull up my feline kunoichi friend, all the way from the realm of the waiting dead?  

A completely irrelevant hypothetical, of course.  I had no intention of disclosing the details of that encounter at this time.

I tried to turn my steps towards the shinobi library, but my furry little passenger dug in his claws, and whispered in my ear.

“You won’t make it with enough time,” he said, whiskers tickling the side of my neck.  “Not at the rate you’re going.”

I clenched my fists.  He was right, damn his eyes.  I was already sweating, and a little dizzy.  I hated every single thing about it, but there it was.  I’d always been sick , mind, always a little more easily tired, always a little behind .  But there had always been chakra to compensate, chakra to lean on where my limits would have otherwise been reached.  

Without that crutch, I was almost worse than useless.

I concentrated on making it to the restaurant without seeming out of breath, which involved a few rest stops on the way, and if this frustrated me right down to the marrows I tried not to let it show in the smile I used to greet my friends.  Natsuki and Fuyu were loitering under the awning in front of the restaurant when I rolled up, and Natsuki lit up like a summer bonfire when he spotted me, waving exaggeratedly.

“Sensei’s already inside,” said Natsuki, pulling me into a hug as soon as I was close enough.  The cat on my shoulders leapt off without preamble, displeased with the potential to be squished between us.  “But don’t worry!  You’re not late.  I’ve only just been here a minute myself.”

“Thank you, Ari,” Fuyu was telling the cat, who had leapt directly into his arms.  The cat nodded once, formally, and then poofed into smoke.  

“He’s not staying for dinner?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at Fuyu.  “You made him walk with me all that way for nothing?”

“It wasn’t for nothing ,” said Fuyu, a little sharply, but then he sniffed, and it was only his usual pompousness again, compelling him to adjust his glasses as he spoke.  “And you know as well as I do those cats are on an elaborate, specific diet.”

“I think anybody who’s ever been to your house at mealtimes knows those cats have never been fed, ever ,” said Natsuki, grinning.  “So they tell me, anyway.”

“Cats are the biggest liars in the entire animal kingdom,” said Fuyu, brushing aside the curtain to head inside.  It was a traditional-style restaurant, paper walls between the raised platforms, and it was busier than I’d expected.  ...No, it made sense, on reflection.  With so much of the village damaged, so much reconstruction underway, everybody working long hours as a consequence- of course people were eating out, at the places still open.  

Sensei had picked a back corner booth, and if it had been anyone but sensei I’d have thought he’d had to fight someone to get it.  But sensei, a Hyuuga jounin built like a concrete slab, well in excess of six feet tall, could have whatever booth he liked .  

It hadn’t been until he’d taken us for students that he’d ever started using his intimidating nature for anything so petty.  We were a terrible influence, clearly. 

“Aki-sensei,” I greeted him, sliding in next to him with my legs curled underneath me, leaving Fuyu and Natsuki to sit on the other side of the burner.  I leaned in so that my shoulder rested against sensei’s bicep, and smiled up at him.  I caught him with the Byakugan out to look me up and down again, before the veins at the sides of his eyes desisted and he frowned down at me.

“Isn’t that rude, Aki-sensei?” chirped Natsuki, enjoying the way Aki’s feathers ruffled at the accusation.  “Peeking at Haru-kun’s chakra like that.”

“Is it doing anything interesting?” I asked, resting my chin on my hand for show.  His frown deepened, minutely.

“I have every confidence in the expertise of the medics who cleared you for release from the hospital,” he said, and I winced.  Fuyu in particular looked like he’d bitten a lemon.

“Sensei,” he said, reproachfully.  “She’s sensitive right now.  Be kind.”

“I am not sensitive ,” I griped, even though I absolutely was .  Symptomatically enough that Fuyu could tell, where usually emotional nuance was Natsuki’s wheelhouse.  “...I’m perfectly aware of my condition.  I don’t need to be reminded more .”

“He’s just worried about you,” said Natsuki, his head on one side.  “Truly, we all are.  It’s been a wild ride?  Since the tenth.”

Since the tenth .  Gods, I was tiring of euphemisms. 

“We’re in uncharted waters,” I said, my eyebrows lifting.  “Truthfully I’m surprised I haven’t been whisked away by T&I yet.  Or even better- spirited away by Orochimaru-sama.”  Now there was a thought.  His interest in immortality-related kinjutsu was probably technically a secret , but…

“Well, we are awfully busy right now,” said Natsuki, with one of those sunny smiles.  “ You know.  And you haven’t been whisked away because you’re the kind of person we can just put on the schedule for an appointment and have show up.”

“Ah,” I said.  Looked a little bit sharper, at Natsuki.  “...Do you know who’s doing the interview, then?”

“One of my uncles, I think ,” said Natsuki, suddenly looking away, biting a thumbnail.  “But since- well, you’re- actually, I requested it, but it was only approved because they thought it was a good idea too-”  oh god, spit it out , Natsuki,  “...I’m going to be the one doing the mindwalk.  If that’s all right with you!  I know it’s not… I know you don’t like the idea at all , but I thought… you’d hate it less, if it were me.”

I quickly schooled my expression, but the face Natsuki made before I managed it told me I must have looked like I was up against a firing squad.  I swallowed.

“If it has to be done, I’d rather it were you,” I said, meeting his eyes briefly.  

“I think it’s mad that they’re insisting on it at all,” said Fuyu, pushing his glasses up his nose.  “Mindwalk is for enemies, not citizens .”

“...Well,” I said, slowly.  “I did leave the village without authorization, so to speak, during a crisis, and returned under unexplained circumstances.”  My eyes crept back towards Natsuki.  “...Maybe they’re hoping for an explanation, and don’t trust me to volunteer it.”

“We just want to make sure you’re not… compromised,” said Natsuki, his smile painfully apologetic.  “An enemy agent infiltrating the village inside your skin.”

“...That’s a thing that can happen, is it?” I said, a little bit of fry to my voice.  

“Yup!” chirped Natsuki.  “...You have no idea.”  Times like this I was rather starkly reminded that he had been working at T&I since we’d made chuunin.  It didn’t often show, but when it did, it gave me a feeling like someone was trying to move my seat cushion while I was still sitting on it.  

“It is doubtless more of a formality at this point,” said sensei, evenly.  “Or they would not allow you free range of the village.  Further; this hypothetical enemy agent had many corpses to choose from, and it is unlikely that they would have picked a specimen in such a state as our Haru-kun.”

I clapped a hand to my chest like I’d been stabbed in the heart, and slumped gently to one side.  “Sensei!” scolded Natsuki, reaching across the table to grab him by the cheek.  He disengaged immediately, with a twisting open-handed block, but if he’d really wanted to he could have avoided being pinched in the first place.  

“I am only saying,” he said, with that almost-invisible twist to the corner of his mouth that was our sensei’s smile, fending off Natsuki one-handed and easily.  “You have nothing to worry about, Haru-kun.”

I sighed.  “All hail the king of backhanded reassurances,” I said.  “...Thanks, sensei.”

The waitress showed then, to turn up the burner and reveal our pot, and for a while it was all small talk and snacking.  I ate more broth than vegetables, and hardly any meat, and my whole team noticed, but nobody said a word about it, bless them.  Much as we loved to tease each other, I didn’t think they liked the reminder that I had been well and truly invalided this time any more than I did.  

We’d almost been a fractured team.  By the skin of our teeth and my own improbable luck, we’d avoided it.  Even if there was little chance of us having a mission as a whole team ever again, we were all here.  We were all alive.  I think we were all feeling it, and trying to avoid poking the bruise.  Even though this dinner was ostensibly to celebrate our wholeness.  

“Are you sure your mom’s okay staying with the Kurama?” asked Natsuki, with a gleam in his eye that told me he’d already heard the whole story and all of the rumors, too.  “They’re kind of… hm.  Well, you know more than most.”

“My mother is no doubt flourishing,” I said.  “Granddaddy Kurama is an ass’s hat, but the war left him somewhat low on extended family, and very low indeed on active shinobi.  That he even extended a hand to me at all is very telling.”

“I ran into your cousin?  At Hokage Tower, earlier,” said Fuyu, as he waited for the mushroom in his chopsticks to cool.  “...one of them, anyway.  He said to say hello.  You didn’t tell him you were staying with me, did you?”

“I did not,” I said.  “My mother mentioned it.”  Aunt Kuro liked to keep her in the loop.  “But it’s not a secret that you’re my teammates.”

“He seemed... all right,” said Fuyu, even though his frown was suspicious.  “He would talk to me, at least.  There isn’t really a rivalry , exactly, with the Kurama.”  Of course not, because who could rival the Uchiha clan?  “But.  You know.  Genjutsu types and dojutsu users.”

“Oil and water,” I agreed.  “That one’s name’s Tenki.  He seems all right.”  But I wasn’t exactly interested in reconnecting.  Maybe later, when the spite in me had time to settle.  “I’m still not moving in with them.  The house will be rebuilt eventually, I’m certain my mother intends to leave then too.”

“Right!  Oh, that shouldn’t take too long,” said Natsuki.  “Everyone’s so hard at work.  But just in case, you know, we’ve worked out a rotating schedule, so nobody has to put up with you for too long.”  A cheerful smile, which I stuck a tongue out at.  

“Two weeks with me, first,” said Fuyu, meeting my eye briefly.  Enough to get a start on our personal investigation, at least.  “Then two weeks with Natsuki, and then two weeks with sensei…?”

“Yes,” agreed sensei.  “That will be acceptable.  A measure of time to remind you how one behaves, when a guest of a clan, before coming to me.”

“I behave exactly the way clans expect me to,” I said, a little more hotly than I actually felt.  “What is even Hiashi’s problem .  The Uchiha love me, you know.”

“That may indeed be the problem,” said Fuyu, drolly.  “We’re not actually popular, Haru-kun.  If you’re not careful, it’ll rub off on you.”

“If I’m only disliked for the company I keep and not for anything I’m doing, I’ve gone very wrong somewhere along the course of my life,” I told him.  “Sensei, don’t give me that look, only my best behavior for the Hyuuga.”

“That doesn’t worry him less ,” Natsuki said with a snort.  “Your best behavior is another man’s diplomatic incident.”

“I’m diplomatic as fuck!  The Tea Country mission went great !” 

Chapter Text

The moon was up, when Fuyu and I made it back to his home.  We were engaged in our usual back-and-forth, until we spotted a new and foreign pair of shoes in the entryway, and Fuyu immediately shut up.

Aunt Kuro was at the kitchen table, smoking her kiseru, and sitting diagonally across from her at it was Uchiha Fugaku, the clan head, and chief of police.  Fuyu’s boss.

“Fugaku-sama,” said Fuyu, breathless and bowing lower than I would have.  

“Tono,” came out of my mouth, and Fuyu stood on my foot as I was bowing.  And that’s the story of why I insist on close-toed boots.

The face Fugaku made wasn’t upset, though.  It wasn’t much of anything, as usual, but there was a twitch in his cheek muscle.  Got ‘im .  I clamped down on an irresponsibly large grin.

“Fuyu-chan, Haruka-chan,” Kuro welcomed us with a serene smile of her own.  “Did you have fun?  Come in, sit down.”

Fuyu did as she asked furtively, moving a cat to take a chair.  I slid into the nook again, budging up a few cats myself.  

“I suppose that means it’s time to take my leave,” said Fugaku, with a nod.  I cleared my throat, before he could finish standing up.

“Actually, Fugaku-sama, before you go,” I said, and felt the full attention of everyone at the table and a couple dozen cats upon me.  “...It’s good timing, actually, I had a small request to make.”

Fugaku raised a single eyebrow.  Kuro looked like someone was dangling a bit of feather on a string for her, same as the cats.  “How small?” asked Fugaku.

“I’d like to request access to a section of the Uchiha clan library while I’m staying here,” I said.  Kuro’s eyes widened.  You could have heard a pin drop.

“...Which section,” asked Fugaku, the air like a knife’s edge.  It wasn’t quite killing intent, but just plain intent could be focussed like a blade.  I should know; it was a technique in my arsenal too.

“Anything pertaining to higher meditation techniques,” I said.  

Fugaku blinked, and the tense feeling in the air dissipated.  Whatever he’d been expecting me to ask for, it hadn’t been that .  

“I am completely restricted from any use of chakra indefinitely,” I said, taking his nonplussed silence as indication that I should continue.  “However the medics diagnosed an excess of unintegrated spiritual energy, so I am looking for… uses to put it to, I suppose.  I understand if the Uchiha collection doesn’t have much on the subject, but at this point I’m looking into everything.”

Something minute passed through his expression- pity, maybe, or a revelation.  “You may not find what you’re looking for in our collection,” he said.  “But I...suppose, I see no reason not to grant you access, limited to what we do have under that subject, of course.”

Aunt Kuro gave me a look that was limitedly readable, and calculating.  “...You’re determined to find some way back into service, aren’t you,” was what she said, though, and it was a bit kinder than I had expected.  I lifted my chin.  

“It is my dearest hope to be able to continue working,” I said, trying to inject my words with the Will of Fire.  “I’m not quitting unless they make me.”  And probably not even then, even if I had to join the Fire Temple as a monk.

“That is admirable,” said Fugaku, and I swear Fuyu almost choked.  “Come by the precinct on Monday, to fill out the paperwork necessary to your request.  But I really must take my leave.  Kuro-sama.”  He bowed to her as he stood.

“Fugaku-chama,” she said, and that muscle in his cheek twitched again.  “Good talk.  Don’t be a stranger.”

Fuyu waited until he heard the click of the front door before he lunged, grabbing me by both of my cheeks.  The sudden attack unbalanced me, and we both went over the edge of my chair in a heap, him pinning me by the face.  

“That’s my boss, Haruka!” he was saying, but I couldn’t catch my breath for laughing.  “My boss, and my clan head!  And you just- Tono?  Tono??!   What is wrong with you?”

“She called him -chama !” I protested, pointing at Aunt Kuro, who had to look away, covering her mouth with her sleeve.  

“She gets to, Haruka!  She’s his clan elder!  You’re not either of those things!” I twisted out of his grip finally, the layers I wore making it easier to worm away even without the help of chakra.  “When you asked for access to the archives I thought he was going to kill you!  Right there in front of me!”

“A murder not worthy of his skills,” I said, muffled.  I’d gotten away, only for him to wrap his arms around me again, digging his knuckles into my scalp.  “Fuyu, what do I have to lose , really?  He tells me to take a hike?  He throws me out and I wind up at Natsuki’s a little early?  Think!”

“You might not, but I still have a career to think about!” he snapped, and that took the air out of whatever I’d been ready to say next.  I went limp on him, and he huffed with the sudden increase of weight in his arms.  

“Sabotage my nephew, because his cute little teammate got cheeky at him?  Fugaku wouldn’t dare,” said Kuro, but I wasn’t in the mood for it anymore.  

It wasn’t so much a sore spot as it was an open wound, I was coming to realize.  Even in trying not to harp on it, my team couldn’t avoid jabbing into it.  I might never work again.  I had always been sick, but now I was over .  Write myself off and get out of my teammates’ way.  

“You’ve always been like this,” said Fuyu, letting go of me at last.  I sank to the floor, listlessly.  “Like you don’t understand why anyone would want to live like they have something to lose.  You always do this!  Since we were genin!  Both my eyes are your fault , Haruka.  Every tomoe.”

Yes, thank you, keep dropping bricks.  I’m already down, what’s a few more?

“Fuyu-chan,” said Kuro, and it cut like a knife, Fuyu freezing in place with a shiver.  I took the moment to move, getting to my feet faster than I’d been moving since I’d pulled Hatake out of the ceiling in the hospital.  I made straight for the guest bedroom, and as soon as I closed the door heard the muffled sounds of an argument from the kitchen.

I didn’t try eavesdropping.  I didn’t even sit down.  I went straight for the window and out.

I didn’t run; I couldn’t.  I went as fast as the pinch in my left lung would let me, through streets and yards rather than rooftops.  I might never roof-run again.  But whatever.  What was one more brick.  

Nothing I had felt over the past week had been unbearable; until suddenly, now, it was.  Nothing had really changed, not outwardly.  It wasn’t even as though I had been avoiding thinking about things- it was practically all that occupied my head.  But I had been able to keep it all at arm’s length.  Now-

Now I could feel the weight , the individual load of every single brick in the village bearing down on me.  It was heaviest over my chest.  It always was, really- but usually there were other things in the way, between me and the sensation of it.  Even now, there was the flickering overlay of some past life, clouding the street with the haze of an opium den, the smooth pavement with old-fashioned cobbles.  Bleeding through with strong emotions.

...I had felt like this before, then.  In some other lifetime.  That was… not comforting, per say.  But it let me know that I wasn’t the first, or the only.  This nadir was not uncharted territory, I was not the only Himitsu Haruka to reach it.

The knowledge did not equate to a lessening of the pressure on my chest, or an easing of the emotion choking my throat.  I didn’t want to be alone; I didn’t want company.

Apparently my first best instinct is a very dramatic one, and I found myself in front of the memorial stone.  Of all the places I’d been, this one didn’t flicker.  There was no vision of another world sliding over the image of it, despite my inner turmoil.  I felt something settle inside me for it.  A place that belonged to this edition of myself and no other- fucked up as that was .  

And then I chanced to look to one side, and choked on a curse when I saw who was there.  Hatake Kakashi, again, looking at me like I was a space alien, again.  I drew breath to speak but started coughing instead, turning away and directing it into the crook of my arm.

“We’re going to have to put together a rotation schedule,” I said, muffled by my sleeve, peeking at him from the corner of my eye.  He hadn’t left while I was indisposed, like I’d half expected.  “Fucken.  Like a timeshare.”

“...It’s late,” he said, and I clapped a hand to my cheek.

“So you can tell time,” I said, wide-eyed and breathless.  The joke fell flat, fluttering to the ground between us in the silence afterwards.  I didn’t bother picking it up again.  

“I thought I’d have it to myself,” he said, a slight edge to the words.  I stared at him for a long moment, my eyebrows high.

“You know, I don’t actually think this is healthy,” I said, as sincere as I come.  He didn’t move, but the air around us got a little colder.  I held my breath for a heartbeat, and then extended a hand to him.  

“...For either of us.  Let’s split a bottle of sake and look at the moon,” was what fell out of my mouth, instead of whatever I’d been planning.  It hadn’t been what either of us had expected me to say, if the nonexpression on him was any indication.  

“I don’t drink,” he said, flatly, and did not take my hand.  I could feel him sliding away from me, and this time, even though I’d expected it, the rejection hurt a little.  

“It doesn’t have to be a habit ,” I said.  “That’s not healthy either.  I was right about the gramophone, wasn’t I?”  ...If I’d had it with me, it would have been part of the experience.  Loud music and drinks and a late night under the moon.  Things the soul needs sometimes.

The thing was, I didn’t think he’d do it , even if he wanted to.  Especially if he wanted to.  Survivor’s guilt was a hell of a drug.  Gods, I’d know .  I was trying to move past it, thumbhandedly and with limited results, but I was still trying.  I was looking forward, even though I didn’t really like what I was looking at.  

Maybe it was just… too soon.  I started to let my hand fall, rolling back my expression until it was blank again, packing up the feelings I’d let onto it.

“It doesn’t have to mean we’re friends,” I said.  “It’s not a commitment.  I’m not trying to...bully you.”

His hand moved, twitched, and I held my breath.  My eyes met his- both of us a little wild, and his hand lifted- and then he was gone, in a puff of wind and a swirl of leaves.  I huffed a sigh, and sat down in a pile, feeling like someone had cut the string that was holding me taut.

Like making friends with a feral cat.  I’d pushed for too much without building up the groundwork of trust, I supposed.  Impatient of me.  Ill-considered.  It was about what I deserved for it.

I wasn’t in much condition to rehab a feral stray at the moment anyway.  

I wasn’t alone for very long, but it was long enough.  ANBU Ox shunshinned in next to me in a quiet rustle of leaves and displaced air, sitting beside me like he’d always been there.  His mask faced away, but I could tell he was still looking at me.

“Does Aunt Kuro have your direct line?” I asked, tiredly.

“Uchiha Kuro has a lot of direct lines,” said Ox, his voice artificially distorted, rumbling and deep.  

“Cats,” I agreed.

“But that wasn’t actually why I was out here,” Ox went on.  “...I’m expecting a new addition to my team in the coming weeks.”

My eyes slid sideways towards him, and narrowed a fraction.

“I thought Hound was already an ANBU captain,” I said.  Ox sighed lightly, the sound echoing through his mask.  

“You’re not cleared to know anything about the internal structure of ANBU,” he said.  “I have no idea why you expect your information to be anything but out of date.”

That was sensei.  Take away with one hand and give with another.  “Maybe I should look into expanding my clearance,” I said, thoughtfully, as Ox muffled another sigh.  “...Ah, of course.  There would have to be some internal rearrangement in light of… current events.”  ANBU certainly hadn’t gone without casualties.  That was how it was, in ANBU.  “Both due to personnel losses and… reassessment of capacity for command.”

Hatake would probably be upset about it, I reflected, even if it was objectively the correct call.  Upset and depressed, but that seemed to just be the way he went through life these days.  

“I’m going to recommend you be reinstated in Intel,” said Ox.  I huffed.

“Yes, but I want a higher security clearance than you get on desk Intel,” I said.  Ox shook his head ever so little.  

“Like it’s ever mattered to you anyway,” he said.  “Makes a body wonder what’s the point of all the cloak-and-dagger play.”

“Aesthetic,” I said.  “You know.  For fun.”

Ox was quiet, for a bit, and I may or may not have slumped sideways a little, so my shoulder touched his.  It was just as solid as it had been in the restaurant, when he was sensei.  

“Your value has never been in your command of jutsu,” Ox said, and the suddenness of it made my breath hitch.  I stared at him.  “That was never what made you an important part of your team, not really.  Any number of other nin could have filled the skill set you brought in.”  He was looking back at me now, through the bottomless holes of his mask.  

“You have a way with people, Haru-kun,” he said, and I suppressed a snort.  “...Do you know how many genin teams fail initial placement because they can’t get over interpersonal problems?  It’s… about a third.”  I was silent, then, watching the edges the moon etched over his mask.  “You never even gave your team a chance to,” and I could hear the smile even in his distorted voice, even as small as sensei made them.  “I have often wished I could work with ANBU teams with even a fraction of your determination to get along .”

I laughed then, soft and wheezy.  “I’ve been told that’s one of my more obnoxious traits,” I said.  

“Don’t listen to ‘em,” said Ox.  

“...So you’ve been shadowing Hound, not me, then,” I said, tilting my head.  “Worried already, about the new addition to your team?”

“Deeply,” he said, tucking his chin.  “Without Minato’s positive influence he’s going to be a menace, and he’ll resent me on principle if I try to fill those shoes.  I can only do so much.”

“But I’m in his age group, with intelligence scores in the same vicinity, we know each others’ tragic backstories, and there’s no shoes for me to be stepping into, not overtly,” I said, thinking, in spite of myself, about Nohara Rin.  Because I was absolutely not Nohara Rin!  “You’re hoping I’m going to ease your team’s interpersonal problems.”  I tried not to sound too accusatory.  

“He needs friends among his peers,” said Ox, nodding.  “You and Natsuki-chan have about equally high emotional intelligence, but, well.  Perhaps we’ll bring Natsuki-chan in on it later, after you’ve softened him up.”

“Natsuki-chan’s a bit much for first contact,” I agreed.  “So Aunt Kuro didn’t tip you off to come find me?”

“I never said that,” said Ox.  I sighed.

“...I’m being extra, aren’t I,” I said.  

“Haru-kun,” said Ox, gently.  “Get your head out of your ass.”

I let that sit with me, eyes turned sheepishly down at my lap.  Harsh, but fair.  The warm feeling in my chest wasn’t embarrassment.  

“Ox-tan always knows the right thing to say,” I mumbled, lacing my fingers.  

“That’s Ox- taicho , if it’s anything,” he said, leaning forward to dislodge me from him.  

“Suppose I’d better go back and face the music,” I said, looking up at him with a sigh.  “Give me a ride?”

“ANBU is not your personal taxi service,” said Ox, getting to his feet and briskly dusting off the back of his uniform.  He held a hand out to me anyway.  

“Like I keep saying, it’ll all get backdated when I’m Hokage,” I told him, putting my hand in his so he could pull me to my feet.  His enormous, deeply warm hands, big enough to vanish mine.  

“If you’re counting on me losing track in the time it takes you to get there, don’t,” said Ox, and I found myself tossed over his shoulder like a sack of grain.  I squeaked, but didn’t try to get myself resituated.  He couldn’t exactly carry me quickly any other way, except on his back, and jounin of a certain age got unilaterally twitchy about arms around their neck from behind.

We stopped outside the gates to the Uchiha district, and Ox set me down.

“Not going all the way in?” I murmured, looking up at him through my lashes.

“They’re so much twitchier since the tenth,” Ox muttered back.  “The paperwork that says I’m supposed to be here is hypothetical.”

“It might already exist,” I corrected him, just to be that guy.  “If I’ve cracked time travel by the time I’m Hokage.”  His hand lit for just a moment on the small of my back, pushing enough that I stumbled forward.  The movement attracted the attention of both Uchiha on gate duty, but before they looked over, he was already gone.  

I recognized one of the kids on gate duty, Uchiha Tonbo from my own age group, though not the same graduating class of genin.  She had the sleek, almost-purple type Uchiha hair, not that you could tell in the orange glare of sodium lights, and she was squinting at me like she knew who I was even before her sharingan turned on, briefly.  The other kid on the gate I didn’t recognize- he was young, possibly a brand new genin, his hair a spiky mop, but the eyes he turned on me were already red.

“Hi, sorry,” I said, shuffling up to the gate, keenly aware that I was puffy-faced and wearing house shoes.  “I’m Himitsu Haruka, I’m staying with Uchiha Kuro this week.”

“Oh right,” said Tonbo, her forehead clearing.  “You’re Fuyu-kun’s teammate.”  

“That’s me,” I said, trying not to sound as tired as I felt.  “Tonbo-kun, right?”  My eyes flicked over her again, lighting on her vest.  “You made chuunin since I saw you last, I think.”

“Last exams,” she said, straightening up a little, proud of herself.  “Have I really not seen you since then?”

“I’ve been almost exclusively on hospital shifts since I made chuunin,” I said, with a lopsided smile.  “I’m very happy to have not seen much of you in the course of my day to day.”

“There is that,” said Tonbo, with a smile of her own.  “I guess I must be doing something right, if the medics don’t see me often.”  Her smile faded, a little, the longer she looked at me.  “...Is everything all right?”

I took a minute, to decide what to say.  “...It’s been a week,” I settled on, tucking my hands up inside my haori sleeves so I could cross them over my stomach.

Tonbo took a deep breath, and let it out in a puff.  “It sure has,” she said, her tone dull.  I felt a pang of disappointment, that I’d made her remember to sound like that.  

“Sorry,” I said.  “Yeah.”

“What’s wrong with your chakra?” said the second gate guard, who now that I looked back at him hadn’t ever turned off his sharingan.  

I scowled at him.  “Turn those off,” I said, instead of answering the question.  “That’s super rude, you know.  We’re not even introduced.”

The kid smiled at me, and in his defense, he was very cute, in a bratty way.  He tilted his head, charmingly.  “Of course we are.  You’re Himitsu Haruka, chuunin medic.”

“That’s Shisui,” said Tonbo, indicating him with a sigh and a lazy turn of her wrist.  “His team is literally just back from the front, he hasn’t remembered how to act yet.”

“You didn’t answer me,” said Shisui, undeterred.

“Are you a medic?” I asked.  His forehead furrowed.

“No, but-”

“Then don’t ask medical questions,” I said, waspishly.  

“I’m guarding the Uchiha district,” said the kid.  “I can ask any questions I want pertaining to the safety of the citizens inside.”

“In no universe does that entitle you to my personal medical information!” I barked back, the increase in volume making my chest rattle a little.  

“Shisui, she’s cleared with Fugaku-sama,” said Tonbo, uncomfortably.  “ And Kuro-sama.  Whatever’s wrong, they know about it, and they’re okay with her being here anyway.”

“Your eyes are not better than Uchiha Kuro’s,” I told the kid, and he had the audacity to actually look doubtful .  “...I’m telling her you said that,” I went on.

“I haven’t said anything,” with a widening smile that didn’t make him look cute or innocent at all .  

“Wearing your sharingan and still having the audacity to insist body language doesn’t count ,” I said, clucking sadly.  “Hypocrisy is only a useful deflection if you can’t be immediately called on it, you know?”

“Go on in,” said Tonbo, who had gone from uncomfortable to trying not to laugh.  At which one of us, I couldn’t tell, but it didn’t exactly matter, either.  “Take care, Haruka-kun.”

“You too,” I said, waving as I moved past them through the gate.  

The house was dark, quiet but full of movement, the comings and goings of cats.  I left my ruined house shoes in the entryway, and continued inside without turning on a light.  Aunt Kuro was not at the kitchen table, though the smoke still hanging near the ceiling told me she had been not long ago.  I picked up a cat from my usual window seat and sat down in it, the cat in my lap.  It was an elderly one, white and longhaired, no tail to speak of and a great cobby head and a purr that started up as soon as I touched it’s ears.

I sat there, for a long few minutes, in the dark and surrounded by cats.  It did help, actually.

Fuyu didn’t so much as twitch when I slid open the door to his room, his back to me where he lay on the futon.  Made neither sound nor movement as I took my time exchanging my clothes for pajamas- he hadn’t moved my stuff to the guest room.  I slid into bed next to him, my back square up against his for warmth.  

I felt him let out a sigh, and relax behind me.

Neither of us said anything.  I fell asleep.

Chapter Text

The day of the memorial services, and Fuyu shook me awake when he got up.  Services weren’t that early, but I took a while to get moving in the mornings.  Breakfast was quiet, Fuyu and I moving around each other in sequence, like teammates.  The air between us wasn’t quite cleared , but.  Good enough.  I didn’t have the energy to hash it out the rest of the way right now, I and I had a feeling neither did anybody else.

Aunt Kuro pulled me aside after breakfast, to find me something to wear.  I had no idea where my mourning clothes were- blown up with my house, probably.  And evidently past me had not squirreled away a set in any of my bugout bags to date.  Optimism, possibly, but it was more likely that I’d simply forgot.  I like being prepared for every ridiculous circumstance possible, but needing to attend a memorial while living out of a suitcase apparently hadn’t rated.  

Fortunately, Aunt Kuro had sworn she had a set Fuyu had outgrown, that should fit me exactly.  So I stood in her room, my hands folded, not touching anything, feeling slightly rude and guilty for having to look somewhere while I was there.  It was a cozy room, red silk drapings and a bead curtain and a smoke layer near the ceiling and a shrine in the corner, cats curled up purring and lazy on her bed.  I think, in a past life, I’ve had a room like this.  No visions spilled over, but something about the hazy red light felt intimately, painfully familiar.  

Her closet was almost as big as the rest of the room.  I’d always assumed she did a lot of espionage, but she might just like dressing up.  

Come to think on it, it’s probably both.

The half-wistful look Aunt Kuro gave me as she passed over formal kimono with the Uchiha fans emblazoned gave my stomach an odd little twist. 

“I hope I haven’t ruined your matchmaking plans,” I joked halfheartedly, taking the folded pile of blacks she’d put in my hands.  

“Not at all,” said Kuro, with a hum.  “I don’t know if you remember, but when you were first assigned your team you two fought all the time .  You were meaner, when you were nine.  Fuyu-chan came home complaining every night for a month.”

“No, I remember,” I murmured, looking away at the little round window, half-draped in saffron sheer.  It wasn’t quite the golden light of the end of the universe.  “...I got nicer ?”  Sounds fake.

“You have so much more patience now, than you did,” said Kuro.  “I suppose... how you cultivated it was rather unfair to you, yes.  But that’s not my point at all.”  She smiled, and cupped my cheek briefly.  Her hand was cool, and I went very still in reflex from having a jounin kunoichi’s fingernails that close to my eyes.  “The point is, you’re still both children.  You have so much farther to go, and you’ll be different people all over again at the end of it.”

“You talk like we really do have the time,” I said, very quiet.  

“It’s a better way to live,” she said, simply.  I bit the inside of my cheek, and avoided her eyes.  

She moved away while I was recovering from that one, and came back with a man’s haori in her hands.  Formal, black, with five crests.  The spiny rosette of the Himitsu clan’s houseleek.

“You think your mother and I don’t coordinate?” was all she had to say when I shot her a watery glare.  It was too big around the shoulders for me, easy to hide my hands in the sleeves.  Just the way I like it.  

“The reach of your cabal is infamous,” I said, when I could sound a little less choked.  Aunt Kuro just laughed, and smoothed the way the coat lay on my shoulders.  

She shooed me out so we could both dress, and once I’d changed I decided to stand to wait, rather than sit down and be immediately covered in cat fur.  Fuyu was already out at the kitchen table, dressed in black, his face pink like he’d washed it twice.  He looked at me over the tops of his glasses, and looked like he wanted to say something.

“Aunt Kuro told me off,” I opened with.  Fuyu’s mouth quirked into a knowing expression.  

“Me too,” he said.  

“You weren’t wrong, but it was mean,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said, looking appropriately sheepish, and more than a little relieved.  “Sorry about the delivery.”

“Sorry for being a dork in front of your boss,” I told him, and he lowered his head until his forehead touched the table with a gentle bonk .

“I’m noticing you haven’t promised not to do it again,” he said, muffled.  

“I don’t like promising things,” I said, which was true.  He looked up to send me a glare that indicated he somewhat doubted my sincerity.  Can’t imagine why.

Aunt Kuro joined us a few minutes later.  We left the house together.  We were not the only family doing so, and the streets of the Uchiha district slowly filled up with shuffling groups in mourning clothes.    

Ninja society is, however you want to slice it, highly stratified.  But you wouldn’t know it, to see the procession.  Everyone in the same undecorated black suit.  It was symbolic, and also it was necessary.  Whatever goes on during life, everyone is equal in death.

Anyway, this wasn’t actually a funeral .  There were no bodies being buried; whoever was doing the autopsy work (T&I?  ANBU?  Nobody’d handed me a file) had yet to release any corpses back to the families.  No, the real funerals would be staggered as the month wore on and the machinery of bureaucracy allowed.  This was the memorial - an acknowledgement, nothing more.  Had to get it out of the way now, so everybody could go back to work without it hanging overhead.  Which I respected, I guess, at least the not fucking around about it part.

We trickled out the gate, casually staggered so it didn’t look like a parade.  I spotted Tonbo, and we nodded to each other.  And I saw Fugaku’s tall head through the crowd, and the smaller woman next to him.  His wife, with a baby in a sling, and another somber little child holding her hand.  She was facing away from me, but the line of her shoulders was bowed.

...Uchiha Mikoto had been friends with the Yondaime’s wife, hadn’t she?  I didn’t know her well.  She’d worked T&I mostly, before she went on leave to have little Uchiha heirs.  So I had Natsuki-chan gossip to work with, mostly, but I remembered.  She and Uzumaki Kushina had been close.

Fuyu noticed me trying to walk like I hadn’t had a brick dropped on me, and offered me his arm like a gentleman.  

At the ceremony, the flame monument at the cemetery as overbearing and garish as ever, I broke away from Fuyu and Aunt Kuro, and went to find my mother.  She was standing near the Kurama, but not with them, wearing full mourning kimono and every feeling she owned on her face.  Her eyes were red, and her face scrunched up when she saw me there, in my dad’s haori.  Even though she’d engineered it to happen.

I folded my arm around her shoulders, she tucked hers around my waist.  I leaned on her a little more than I should have, and watched Sarutobi Hiruzen, looking like he’d aged another fifteen years in the past week, take the podium to say a few words.  I tuned him out instinctively.  I’d gotten tired of Sarutobi’s speeches when I was about four.  

Never understood my coworkers who thought he was a great orator.  Privately it’s long been my opinion that he wouldn’t know the Will of Fire if it smothered him in his sleep.  

( a dark parlour, the upper third of the room thick with smoke.  the embers of an umber-brown cigarette between my fingers; the smell rising with the smoke is not tobacco.  a small round table covered in a floor-length lace drape, an old wooden-paneled radio sitting on it.  the speech crackles through the air, tinny but unmistakable, and the burning in my chest grows with every word I hear)

None of that, please.

(there is no crowd, for this funeral.  the priest, and the deceased’s mother, a handful of her friends.  i am by the kirkyard gate, leaning against a pointed iron railing.  the roses on the casket are white.  The sky is the same color, a blinding sort of gloom that makes my eyes water.  the burning in my throat is not my illness.  neither is it the same emotion as sadness.  it is not even in the same postal code.

the priest closes his book, and lifts his head.  there are not enough able-bodied mourners to lower the casket, it will be up to the mortuary laborers.  i drift over without thinking much of it, join them on the ropes.  my whole shoulder girdle screams and my hands have my own blood in them.

it is not the first time.  it might not be the last time.  

there is revenge burning in my throat and murder in my heart)

None of that , either, thanks.  Yikes!

Much gratitude to my mother, who I was leaning on more than I should, to weather the fugue and stay upright.  At least dissociative episodes killed time.  Sarutobi was done speaking, the candles were lit, the heads around me were bowed.  Behind the long table with the incense, next to the lists of the dead, someone had propped up the official Hokage portrait of Namikaze Minato.  The one my dad had painted.  I looked away quickly.

Break it up, back to work.  I sighed.  Time to mingle?  I guess?  My mother’s hand in the small of my back was steering me away from the Kurama, thankfully, and towards Aunt Kuro.  Time to slip the lead, I think.  

“Back to work,” i murmured, kissing her temple before we disengaged entirely.  The look she gave me was sharp, but she let me go.  I had familiar faces to look for, in the crowd.  Some of them were already missing.  More missing jounin than chuunin, and more missing chuunin than genin.  There was a big list up front at the shrine.  I hadn’t read it.  

Sarutobi’s guard was his old guard, not the Yondaime’s.  So they would be-

Masked and shelved, unless I missed my guess, which I never do.  Or maybe masked and doing something important?  ANBU was awfully busy.  Busy and shorthanded.

My crowd-picking skills hadn’t diminished, thankfully.  There were Genma and Raido, lurking near Kurenai and Asuma, all standing close together in solidarity, whatever their current relationship statuses were.  Asuma looked bleak, all in black.  Gai- usually you could hear him before you saw him, but he was still as a stone, reading the lists.  Hayate and Ibiki, both looking tired and surly- talking to Natsuki, friends with Ibiki by way of T&I.  Aki-sensei was with the Hyuuga, fading into the background best he could at that height.

A baby wailed, the cry piercing before it was hushed.  I looked for the culprit, and found quite a lot of suspects.  Seems like this was a year for popping off baby clan heirs.  Babies from the end of the war.  Babies from celebrating Minato taking the hat.  

Another baby started wailing, this one from the back of the crowd, echoing in a way that told me someone was lurking up behind the flame monument.  I stilled, and relaxed my eyes to make more use of my peripheral vision.  The best way to spot ANBU who didn’t want to be seen was out of the corner of your eye.  A flicker of a mask, to hand off a wriggly bundle to a second, smaller mask, who hushed the baby quickly.  My mouth stretched in a tired smile.  

I half wanted to go say hi.  ANBU that weren’t Ox-taichou hated that.  I’d turned, even, when a shadow fell across me and as it turns out, my crowd-picking skills aren’t sannin-proof.

“Haruka-chan,” said Orochimaru of the sannin, and my stomach dropped all the way to my feet.  

“Erk,” I said, looking up a touch wildly.  No mistaking him, was there?  That coldly effete beauty, the long dark hair, those golden, cat-slit eyes, the chakra presence like an unwelcome hand on the back of your neck.  No, wait, that was his actual hand, unwelcome on the back of my neck.

“It’s not often that a name on the first drafts of a list of the dead no longer appears on subsequent revisions,” he said, and I swallowed, dryly.  

I was very familiar with Orochimaru’s research, it had been particularly medically useful when he’d had Tsunade to work with.  Since she’d been gone, it was still medically useful, but I was a very critical reader of scientific reports.  The research available to chuunin-level medics was on the very cutting edge of what was ethical, which meant that the shit above my clearance level had to be absolutely off the fucking rails.  

Orochimaru of the sannin was into some weird shit .  

“I got better,” fell out of my mouth before I could rethink being glib to one of the sannin .  A crease appeared between his eyebrows, like he didn’t quite know what to do with that.  Probably it had been an incredibly long time since anyone who wasn’t Sarutobi or Jiraiya had given him cheek .  That’s me, pushing the boundries of good sense.

“I’ve put in a requisition to have you as a lab assistant,” he said, his mouth growing in what was probably supposed to be a smirk.  

“Provided I’m cleared to go back to work,” I said, weakly.  The frown line between his eyebrows deepened.  I felt compelled to continue.  “You’ve read my medical file, yes?  I may very well have been forcibly desk-chuunin’d.”

I looked around, and made the very conscious effort to step closer to him.  His slit pupils widened a very little bit.  “I don’t want to tell you about it somewhere we can be overheard,” I said, quietly.  “But fair warning, I might turn out incredibly useless to your purposes.”  If one were, say, chasing a practical way to reanimate the dead, the end result of what had happened to me would be spectacularly useless.  Sure, bring back a shinobi with full free will and no access to chakra!  If you could figure it out without divine intervention, even.

I made myself smile, and thanked past me for establishing that even my most sincere expressions looked fake, because oof, there was not a lot in it here.

Appallingly, Orochimaru mirrored my smile.  The grip on my C6 eased a little.  

“Very interesting,” he said, and my stomach did a flip.  “We’ll talk later, then.”

And then he left me to finish having a heart attack in peace.

“ Jesus wept ,” I said, the foreign words coming straight from whatever hind-brain I was keeping my past-life memories in.  I needed to talk to Natsuki, urgently .

He was still talking to the little knot of our peers, in that involved, animated way of his, but brightened like a summer day when he saw me.  

“Haru-kun!” he said, dragging me into the circle.  “Where were you?  You look a touch peaked, are you quite all right?”

“Weird day,” I said, a bit helplessly.  “Why, what’re we doing that I needed to be here?”

“Oh, come on ,” said Genma, leaning in, that senbon still forever between his teeth.  “Everyone here thought you were dead.”

“I swear to you, the record was corrected within a day ,” I said, feeling a bit ragged.  “How did any of you manage to read anything that quickly.”

“News travels fast,” said Genma, his knuckles braced on his hip all casual-like, as though that wasn’t very explicitly his fault.  

“What happened with you at the Kurama estate, anyway?” asked Aoba, like he wasn’t already full of six different versions of it (none of them true).

“Just some words,” I said.  “Probably genjutsu doesn’t work on people who’re already organically hallucinating, Kurenai would know.”

She heard her name, and looked over at me, flatly.  The whole thing felt flat, honestly.  Everybody was trying, with the banter, to start feeling a little bit more normal.  Because we all had to go back to work, because everything was all still terrible.  But it was… visibly hard.  Fucksake, we’d all made it through the war and then- 

We did have the whole day off, though.

It occurred to me, suddenly and quite sharply, that I was not making best use of all the resources I had at hand.

“So where are we all going after this?” I asked Natsuki, who looked blank for about four seconds, and then the ball started rolling.

Several restaurants, dive bars, izakaya and a movie theater were suggested in quick succession, and the discussion began in earnest.  The movie theater was dismissed immediately (“what about the drinky theater?” “it got stepped on”) and the rest of the list gone through in exhaustive detail.  Lovely thing about shinobi, though I’m sure it would drive a certain kind of person nuts.

Eventually, eventually , everyone settled on an izakaya a little ways up the hill called Shin’s.  It was out of the path of destruction, and our information network said that none of the other groups were planning on using it for their wake, and it had a shadowed little courtyard, and it wouldn’t break anybody’s budget.  Some of us still had other obligations, and some of us still had people we wanted to invite, so we decided to meet up there at six, to give enough time for word to filter out.  And since wakes were supposed to last all night, it wasn’t a great idea to start too early, either.  

“So what’s the cutoff?” Genma wanted to know.  “You guys are all about the same age, but we’re not all chuunin anymore, you know.”

There was a long beat of silence, as every soul present tried to not be the one to have to say everyone who was behind the barrier.   

“Don’t trust anyone over 30,” I said, mostly as a knee-jerk, but it got Asuma to snort anyway.  Not a whole laugh, but.  It was probably too soon for that.  He’d lost his mother, and his remaining parent wasn’t even as emotionally available as mine was.  Natsuki fluttered a hand.

“Well, genin plus, obviously,” said Natsuki.  “Nobody who can’t drink, that just feels bad, you know?”  Not that we had many academy student friends.  Genin could buy alcohol, even when they turned them out at 9 and 10, during wartime.  Old enough to die for your village, old enough to drink in it.  

“No jounin-senseis,” I said.  “No parents.  I don’t wanna be supervised , yeah?  And the Jounin Corps probably have their own plans, anyway.”  If they didn’t, that was just sad.  ANBU probably also had their own plans, but they were secret, and none of us were supposed to know that we were scooping multiple ANBU for our get-together anyway.  If Genma and Raido didn’t show up, well, we knew which social group they liked better, then.

“If they don’t, that’s just sad,” said Genma, echoing my thoughts.  

“Just, everybody use your best judgement,” said Hayate, rubbing one eye tiredly.  “...You guys all have that, don’t you?  Saving it up for special occasions?”

“I dunno,” said Asuma, very dry.  

“We leave it up to that, there’s gonna be a donkey show,” I muttered, rubbing a thumb along my eyebrow, prodding the sharp pain that had taken up residence behind it.  “Midgets.  Strippers.  Clowns ….”

“Isn’t that actually a thing, in like, Water Country?” said Genma, with faux innocence.  “Funeral strippers?”  Ebisu, who had looked unduly interested already, adjusted his glasses furiously to keep them from fogging.  

“It is,” I said.  “I’m literally the one who told you about that.”

“Oh yeah,” said Aoba, straightening up.  “Your pen pal .”  He said it with the inflection that I’m pretty sure they taught specifically when you started working in Intel.  It had layers.  “You haven’t had a letter from Kirigakure in some months, I’ve noticed.”  And, well, he’d know, considering the administrative kerfuffle every time I received one.  

“Oh yes!  How is Mikan?” asked Natsuki.  “I don’t feel shy about telling you, I’ve been hearing some strange things about Kiri, lately.”

I sighed, heavily.  “Guess it’s time to write another letter,” I said.  I had a couple things to tell him, probably.

“Wait, how’d you two make friends with someone in Kirigakure ?” asked Raido.  “Is it a ninja?”

“Of course,” said Natsuki, cheerfully.  “That’s where we passed the chuunin exams, you know?  We made a few friends, while we were there.”

“We sent people to a foreign chuunin exam during the war,” said Kurenai, extremely unimpressed.  

“Oh, it was only a very small delegation,” Natsuki demurred.  “And technically the war had just ended , by then…”

“It was an op, obviously ,” I said, a bit exasperated with being derailed.  “We even send delegations to the exams in Kumo and Iwa sometimes, if the Hokage feels we have a team or two expendable enough to make the information gathering potential worth it.”

Wording it like that made the group wince, in particular Asuma.  He knew which Hokage I was talking about.  Namikaze Minato hadn’t even had the hat long enough to preside over a chuunin exam, between this and that and the end of the war, which.  Oof .

...The thought hovered over the gathering, for a moment.  The bitter taste of maybe, things might have been different .  But Minato didn’t have the hat long enough to even begin to change status quo.  

“I thought you all were supposed to be gossips ,” said Ibiki, derisively.  “But only about useless things like funeral strippers, apparently.”

“Definitely not useless,” countered Genma, side-eying Ebisu’s frantic spectacle-adjusting.  

“Well, we’ll have a chance to get caught up tonight,” I said, looking over my shoulder a little.  “Anyway.  I should… team meeting.”  I extracted myself from the group with a wave, and Natsuki followed me out.

“You’re going to tell me what’s actually going on, I hope?” said Natsuki, linking arms with me.  

“Not in public, I’m not,” I said, and Natsuki nodded, the set of his eyebrows firming.  

I only sagged a little, as we wandered away into the milling crowd.  Thinner, now.  People were going back to their day.  I tugged Natsuki towards the last place I’d seen the Uchiha.  My mother was talking to Aunt Kuro, and I felt a little thrill of terror shiver through me.  

“It’s what you get for leaving her alone at her husband’s memorial service,” Natsuki whispered to me when I tightened up.

“Like I’m the only one here doing networking,” I muttered, scowling.  I wiped the sullen expression off my face and smiled tiredly, for my mother.  

An absolutely excruciating twenty minutes later, Natsuki and I had made our excuses,  good-byes, and penances, and extracted Fuyu successfully for a long-overdue team meeting.  We looked for sensei, but the entire contingent of Hyuuga had already filtered out, and with the way things were lately Aki-sensei was probably already wearing the Ox mask again.

...Which meant that he’d catch up with us later.

It might surprise you to learn this, but it actually is possible to have a private conversation in a ninja village.  Well, I mean, there’s no such thing as a guarantee, and ANBU really are always listening.  But consider also: the sheer degree of paranoia baked into ninja villages on a foundational level.  

Officially, there was no such thing as the Listening Trees.  It was only a happy coincidence that a handful of strategically positioned Hashirama trees throughout the village were placed in such a way within their groves that they funneled sound only one way.  Sounds from inside the trees did not make it out, from inside you could hear the whole neighborhood.  Sensei had showed us as many as he could.  

We picked the one near the old Senju compound, because it was almost always vacant.  There was nobody in the Senju estate to watch anymore, except for the old civilian caretaker.  Well, I say ‘civilian’.  Not even I know every long-term ANBU plant in the village, so I can only speculate.  

The crown of the tree was constructed so that there was a little hollow just below the leaves, hidden from view and secure to eavesdropping.  I hitched a ride up on Fuyu’s back, unable to walk myself without chakra.  We didn’t all fit in the tree as easily as we had when we were nine, but it was still as comfortable as a bolt hole could be.  Our knees touched.  Natsuki fixed me with a very intent sort of look.

“So what is this about?” he asked.  Fuyu looked to me, a touch uneasily, and Natsuki pounced on that brief gesture.  “You two have been making plans without me, while you’re sleeping over.”  He pouted. 

“With every intention of reading you into the op,” I said, apologetically.  “It’s been, ah.  Nuts?  Fucking bonkers?  It’s been a week.”

“And that’s even without the part where we’re organizing a conspiracy to investigate a different conspiracy,” said Fuyu with a sigh, rubbing the space between his eyebrows.  “But that’s not what got you all flustered at the memorial, is it?”

“Well, depends on when you’re talking about,” I said, frowning.  “During the speech I was dissociating heavily, it’s been kind of a thing since I came back from the dead, don’t worry about that, I’m working on it.  But afterwards was because I got buttonholed by Orochimaru no fucking Sannin while I was peoplewatching.”

“You what ,” said Fuyu, choking on absolutely nothing.  Natsuki gasped so sharply it sounded like a hiccup.  

“He said he’s requisitioned me as a lab assistant,” I said, grinning absolutely mirthlessly.  “Provided I’m cleared to work at all.  Speaking of, Natsuki?  How hard would it be for me to get permanently termed upon failing a psych eval?”

“Incredibly easy,” said Natsuki, on reflex, and then he paled.  “But you don’t want that!  Haruka, if you don’t find work of some kind you will spin yourself all the way to the center of the earth and never find your way back again.”

“I know ,” I said, tangling my fingers in the hair near my temple and just holding them there.  “But I also don’t want to be dissected in the name of science!  I genuinely do not know the actual mechanism by which I came back to life and that is not an answer Orochimaru will take .  He’ll pull me apart to get at the truth, and I don’t even know if he’d find it.”

“But you put him off, right?” said Natsuki.  “What did you tell him?”

“That I’m useless, basically,” I said, loosening my fingers enough to scratch at my head.  “Which, I mean, I truly don’t think this resurrection method is what he’s after.  I came back with no life energy, if I use chakra for anything but basic metabolic functions I will literally die, and on top of that I’ve still got free will.  But even if he believes me, that’s no guarantee he won’t pull me apart anyway just for funsies.”

“We won’t let him!” said Natsuki, worry and warmth and determination all swimming through his eyes, and for a moment I saw another man where he was sitting- golden-haired and skinned, golden eyes behind gold-rimmed glasses, wearing Natsuki’s same expression.  “Haruka, we’ll think of something .  In the meantime, collect competing job offers and reasons you suck.  But not interesting reasons you suck, boring reasons.  You have to be very boring.”

That got me to laugh, hoarsely.  The vision had dispelled.  “Right.  Propegate both my CV and my anti-CV.”

“I wonder, though,” said Fuyu, still frowning, his glasses in his hands, where he was ostensibly cleaning them.  But he’d told me in confidence that sometimes it was just easier to think when he couldn’t see anyone’s expression.  “Natsuki, have you been hearing the rumor that command is considering giving Orochimaru a genin team?”

“It’s been a rumor for ages ,” said Natsuki.  “I don’t know why it’d bear fruit now.”

“I mean, why not?  That would be literally perfect,” I said, slowly.  “Konoha needs to be seen rebuilding.  I’d be surprised if Jiraya didn’t bounce immediately after the memorial service, Tsunade is eminently AWOL, Orochimaru is our very last in-house Sannin.  Having him take a genin team, staying prominently in Konoha to teach the next generation, a beacon of hope in these trying times…”

“Send in an application to the PR department,” advised Natsuki.

“And a genin team would take up a lot of his attention,” said Fuyu.  “Attention that couldn’t be focussed on dissecting Haruka.”

“No guarantee, but I’d call it worth a shot,” I said, starting to feel a little less clammy, finally.  A plan of action, even one as stupid as this one, always helped.  “Right.  Nominate Orochimaru no Sannin for jounin instructor.  I’ll just… slide that into the to-do list.”

“What else have you got on there, Haru-kun?” said Natsuki, whose tone was light and teasing while his eyes were very serious.  I grinned, all hollow and mischief, and met Fuyu’s frown with a nod.  He cleared his throat, replaced his glasses on his nose, folded his arms very serious-like, and took the cue.  

“The Uchiha Police have been issued a moratorium on investigating the Kyuubi attack,” he started, front-loading, and went on to explain the plan he and I had hatched in the dark in his room.  Natsuki was appropriately and immediately unsettled.

“I’m more glad than ever it’s me doing your mindwalk,” he said to me, with a little hum.  “This is really almost treason!  Treason light, perhaps!”

“I will backdate everything when I have the hat,” I said, my mouth a thin line.  “Doing what’s best for the village can’t be treason, not ever.  If it is, what’s even the fucking point?  Of the entire exercise?”

“If it’s treason to want to see the Uchiha cleared of an obvious and ham-handed frame-up, nail me to the wall, I guess,” said Fuyu, aggressively adjusting his glasses.  “Not that any of my family would appreciate what I’m doing just now.”

“Speaking of, how goes your arm of the investigation?  Find the secret Uchiha eyeball registrar yet?” I asked.  

“No.  Sort of.  There’s no such thing,” said Fuyu, lowering his eyebrows at me.  “I mean, there is, kind of , but it’s… immediately and obviously out of date or otherwise incomplete.  Record of Uchiha who’ve gotten the… second level eyes, relies on self-reporting.  If you don’t want anyone to know you have it…”

“You just don’t volunteer the information,” I said, nodding.  

“There are some records, and I have seen them,” confirmed Fuyu.  “But yes.  It’s patchy.  Fugaku-sama’s eyes are on record.  Aunt Kuro’s aren’t.  And none of the eyes on record match what was masking the Kyuubi’s.  Not even missing-nin.”

“Because the Uchiha have so many of those!  Good to know it’s not Uchiha Madara back from the dead to terrorize us, anyway,” said Natsuki, with a smile that had nervous edges. “But that doesn’t exactly give us any leads.”

It’s true; without a seal on their forehead to protect their dojutsu and subvert their free will, the Uchiha were very conscientious about retrieving MIA, POW and AWOL clansmen, to the point of sometimes paying the village for missions of body recovery.  The last genuine confirmed missing-nin to come out of the Uchiha was Madara.  

And now, come to think of it... I couldn’t recall, had anybody retrieved Uchiha Obito’s body after his last mission?  Or had they seen Hatake Kakashi’s new eye and thought, good enough?  ...Ah, one more thing for the list.

“Even worse,” said Fuyu, continuing, “apparently sometimes the same person can have a different pattern in each eye.  Different abilities in the right than the left.”

“Have I mentioned lately that your dojutsu is some kind of bullshit?” I said, more casually than the actual speed of my thoughts.  

“I am keenly aware,” said Fuyu.  

“Well,” said Natsuki, lacing his fingers together to crack the knuckles.  “We all have our work cut out for us, that’s certain.  Have you talked to sensei on any of this?”

“Haven’t had the chance to catch him up all the way,” I said, and Fuyu nodded.  He hadn’t either.  “I’m sure he knows we’re up to something, but…yeah.  Now that all of us are on the same page, the next time any one of us catches a minute with him can read him in.”

“Which will probably be you, you know,” said Natsuki.  “He doesn’t show it like a normal person, but you do have sensei awfully worried.”

“I know,” I said with a sigh.  “He’s not normal, but neither is he subtle.”

Natsuki reached over open-handed to swat at me.  Fuyu sighed.  

“I don’t like that he’s reactivated in ANBU,” said Fuyu, quiet and just a touch sullen.  That hit a note, apparently, because all Natsuki and I could do was exchange a look in solidarity.  

“We knew it was only a matter of time, once we all made chuunin,” said Natsuki, trying to sound upbeat.  

“...It wasn’t inevitable,” I said, my mouth thinning again.  “He liked teaching us so much I half thought he’d request another genin team.”  Not really a done thing, for some reason?  Granted, not many jounin instructors seemed to love it the way sensei did.  I supposed if you discovered a passion for teaching early enough in your career you wound up teaching at the Academy, rather than making it all the way to combat jounin.  

“I don’t know,” said Natsuki, a bit forlornly.  “I never could figure out if it was teaching he liked, or teaching us .  Remember how he’d always complain, early on, about having to do remedial training to fill skill gaps in his old squad?  Before we figured out he meant ANBU squad?”  

“Which is why he enjoyed teaching so much, he could fill those gaps before they turned into a problem for someone else,” I said, looking down at my laced fingers.  “I wonder if we disappointed him, none of us going into ANBU.”  Watched my teammates’ reaction to that out of my peripheral vision.  They both made faces, but not the kind of faces they’d make if I’d just inadvertantly told a lie about them.  

(not that I thought either of them had landed in ANBU without my knowing.  Fuyu had only ever wanted to be Uchiha Police, and he was.  Natsuki’s shirts were almost all sleeveless)

“I doubt that,” said Fuyu, steadily.  “Sensei wants what’s best for us.”  

“I just wish he’d want what’s best for him sometimes,” said Natsuki, resting his cheek on his closed fist.  “I don’t know why he won’t push back.”

“Yeah you do,” I said, roughly, trying to not let my blood pressure spike too high, the way it did when we got to talking about the Hyuuga.  Fuyu shifted, tapped the side of my boot with his, and smiled ever so small.

“So where’s that fit in on your to-do list?” he asked.  

“Modify, reform or otherwise remodel the Hyuuga’s entire clan structure?  Above ‘end feudalism,’ little below ‘become Hokage’,” I hummed.  “Don’t worry, I’ll get there.”

“We weren’t worried,” said Natsuki.

Chapter Text

By the time evening rolled around, I’d gotten the word out to everyone I hoped personally would show up.  The rest would be down to general information dissemination.  I had a feeling it was going to be a crowd.  Even people who didn’t go in for any excuse to party had agreed to show up, one way or another everyone in the village was in need of an outlet.  

I arrived with Fuyu, having split up with Natsuki for the afternoon to change clothes and cause trouble at our respective clan compounds.  I still wore my dad’s formal haori, Fuyu wore an armband.  Dad’s haori might just end up part of my wardrobe from now on, I liked it that much.  Anyway, we were on time, but when we made it to the izakaya the party was already going.  

“Harukaaaaaa!” wailed Maito Gai, seizing me in a hug immediately as I came through the door.  I was spun around and deposited in front of Genma, who handed me a sake cup.  I shot it back as soon as I was sure I wouldn’t fall over immedately.  What hit my throat was not sake.  

“Oh wow,” I said, trying to catch my breath.  “So that’s how it is.”  Shochu, and not the low-end shit you could get in a plastic 2-liter at the convenience store, either.  The kind that might evaporate out of your throat before you got a chance to swallow it.  The dangerous kind, because really good shochu doesn’t taste like anything at all .

Genma flashed me a thumb’s up, and took my cup back to fill it up again.  “Good start!” he said.  “Keep going.”  

“Sir yes sir,” I said, and ferried my cup carefully to the booth where Natsuki was waving at me.  He had sat next to Ibiki, and he might also have been waving over Gai.  Sitting down with my cup that full might have spilled some shochu, so I downed it first, slamming the cup into one of several empty boxes on the table before I took my seat.  Gekko Hayate was already in the booth, draped in the corner with darker shadows than usual under his eyes.  He lifted a hand to me, and I returned the nod of pulmonary-unit-patient solidarity.

Natsuki rounded on me immediately, shoving a finger in my face.  I flinched back, and discovered that somehow, I’d lost Fuyu, just between here and the door.  

“I know I’m sitting here with work friends, but no talking shop!  I’m getting refills,” he said, and picked up a pair of already-emptied sake carafes and disappeared with them over the back of the booth, so as not to make Ibiki get up to let him out.  I had been here five minutes, I was already two drinks in, and was starting to feel the sort of wonderful that comes from standing in the eye of a storm of your own making.  

“So how long has this been going?” I asked Ibiki, who was watching me with his usual smirk.  

“I think Team Choza got here as soon as the memorial ended,” he said.  “Kind of thought you’d be here earlier, since this was your idea.”

“It was everybody’s idea,” I said, my eyebrows high.  “I just threw the first rock.  This would have happened without me.”

“Sure,” said Ibiki, lightly, and I frowned.  A dark thought crept in around the bright blurry edges of my psyche; in the next timeline over where I’d died on the 10th and stayed dead, would there have been a wake?

I didn’t have to justify myself any further, with Aoba sliding into the seat next to me and Natsuki vaulting back into his seat next to Ibiki, both with more sake and cups.  The chaos of pouring drinks, all the way up to the rim of the glass and over, into the bamboo boxes there for that exact purpose, crashed around me for a while.  

“So, is it just Kiri, where you have a pen pal?” asked Aoba, over his glass, “or do you have contacts in other villages, too?”

“I’m working on it,” I said.  “I was looking forward to cranking on some of the delegates when we started the treaty process this year, but who knows when that’s starting up again now .”

“Guess it’s hard to build an information network when you’re not cleared to leave the village,” said Aoba, crinkling his nose.  “...Also kind of redundant, because Jiraiya.”

“Jiraiya can’t know everyone ,” I said, airily.  “Everybody’s information network has gaps .”

“We were having such a time of it in Kiri,” said Natsuki, his chin on his hand.  “Other villages are so- so hard , you know?  And everybody knew Konoha’s presence there was just optics, they weren’t even going to send the Kage even if any of us did make it to finals, so no one would talk to us!  But then in the tournament qualifying rounds there’s Haruka up against this kid from Kiri, a foot and a half taller than her and skinny as a rake-”

I ducked down, my face in my hands, trying not to listen.  Natsuki ploughed on, enjoying my embarrassment.  “And you know how they make them in Kiri, all fierce and faceless with those rebreathers, it looked like it was going to be a massacre , but then!  Then Haruka punches him once , in the chest , and he goes down just immediately , like someone cut his strings!  And then she yells for the medic, decides they’re not getting there fast enough, and sits down to heal him herself!  Tearing a strip off the ref for letting this poor lad compete with pneumonia, as she’s reinflating the lung she just collapsed.  And then the kid’s sensei gets there, and she tears a strip off him , too!”

It hadn’t just been the pneumonia, Mikan was also, as Natsuki had said, a tall, skinny, young man, the exact demographic that’s prone to spontaneous pneumothorax.  I’d barely had to use chakra.  I’d found out later on top of that he had chronic respiratory compromise from smoking, and not just tobacco cigarettes.  Hidden villages are legendarily draconian about recreational drug use, so the amount of weed Mikan smoked (and I, by extension, smoked when around him) was more than one kind of impressive .

But that’s neither here nor there.

I shrugged, a bit helplessly, my head still down.  “You don’t understand,” I said, muffled.  “ They kept talking shit about medics .”

“Ah,” said Aoba, like I’ve just made something line up for him.  “So that’s why all the proposals from Kiri have them requesting medic training packets as part of the deal.”

“They were very impressed!” said Natsuki, absolutely enjoying this.  “Very mad, but impressed.”

“Fortunately, we were there to impress them,” I said, lifting my head with a wan smile.  “Course, then I had to actually go fight in the third section of the exam, stay in stupid Kiri a whole ‘nother month.”  

“But you made friends ,” said Natsuki, like that had made it all right.  Which, honesly, yes.  It had.  I would do it over again exactly the same in a heartbeat, and not just because of the weed hookup.  It was just extremely unfortunate that not six months later Kiri had a new and improved, even yet more insane Kage, and I did not forsee another in-person visit with Mikan and my other Mist-nin friends anytime soon.  

Ah well.  At least we could still be pen pals.  It was a great intellectual exercise, writing letters to someone in a hostile village.  What got [REDACTED] and by which village’s intel screening was the most interesting part.  

“I made friends,” I agreed, and raised my glass in a toast.  Several others joined me with a clink.  This time around it wasn’t shochu, but pleasantly hot sake.  

The conversation turned, ebbing away from me and around again, friends chatting together and gossiping about other friends.  The clink of glasses and the noise of the crowd washed over me in a way that tingled, and when frames of other lifetimes imposed themselves over this one I hardly even minded.  I couldn’t stay like this forever, but these moments insulated in the warm loud heart of a party full of friends were the most anything had felt like home since the tenth.  

People around me got up, and exchanged places, and vanished to be replaced entirely.  I had a long lively discussion about shitty family patriarchs with Kurenai; we were pulled out of it by Fuyu, who wanted my help with something.  I had to get up for that, going over the back of the booth easily.  Help turned out to be shitass little Shisui from the Uchiha gate guard duty, who had turned up trailing Tonbo (who we’d actually invited.)

“I don’t care he’s genin,” Fuyu was saying, steering me by the elbow to the bar where Shisui was perched.  “He’s too young for this party!  He’s Fugaku’s nephew for pity’s sake-”

I stared the kid down, met with an implacable close-eyed smile.  After a moment I gave a snort, and wormed out of Fuyu’s grip on me.  

“What does it matter whose nephew he is, if he’s not a snitch?” I said, grinning.  “You’re not, are you, kid?  A snitch ?”

“I would never!” he said with a gasp.  

“Good!” I said.  Fuyu opened his mouth a second time, and I cut him off with a shout.

“Oh my god, underage partying!  Call the cops!” as loudly and sarcastically as I could, which was very, indeed.  Got some laughs.

“Fuyu,” said Natsuki, very firmly, materializing out of the crowd and sliding an arm over Fuyu’s shoulder.  “The only policeman here is you .”

I laughed, again, at that, and clapped Shisui on the shoulder.  I scooped a sake jug and cups off the bar and made to leave.  “I’m going out back for a smoke,” I said, the rasp in my voice making it seem like I wasn’t lying.  

“Can I come?” said Shisui, hopping off the barstool.  

“Sure,” I said, and we threaded through the crowd.

The little walled garden out back of the izakaya was lit with warm hanging lanterns, the bamboo fences and lattice overhead all overgrown with vines; sunset-pink trumpets and pale gold honeysuckle.  Not enough to make the smell overpowering but enough to color the atmosphere, mingling with the scent of liquor and the hot little charcoal fire in the brazier that sat in the middle of the space.  There were fewer people out here.  Asuma was by the fire, having that cigarette.  Gai was standing on a bench, haranguing Hatake Kakashi.

“Oh that’s new,” I said, sliding up beside Asuma, who was watching Gai’s somewhat onesided comedy routine across from Kakashi.  Something about who could do the most pull-ups?  Kakashi was leaning against one of the vine-covered lattice support pillars, slumped in a boneless sort of protest.

“It isn’t,” said Asuma, lit cigarette dangling from his lip.  He wasn’t even coughing on it, which I took to mean he’d been practicing.  He probably had a lot more chances, now that his mother was too dead to disapprove.

I suppressed a flinch.  Oh, oof.  I’d knocked that one down on myself, I didn’t even have a good excuse.  We’d both lost parents.  That didn’t mean I wanted to get maudlin at the wake.

“They’ve done this before?” I asked, fishing the sake gourd out of my sleeve and pouring myself a cup.  I had more than one sake cup in my sleeves, but I very specifically did not offer one to Shisui.  Just because I’d stood up for him didn’t mean he wasn’t on thin fucking ice.

“Oh, regularly,” said Asuma.  “They’re eternal rivals, you know.”

“I did not know,” I said.  Kakashi certainly hadn’t mentioned it, among the eight or nine words he’d ever spoken to me.  “...I didn’t think Hatake would show up.  When did he get here?”   

“Dunno,” said Asuma, looking lazily up at the rectangle of starry sky above us.  “Ten, fifteen minutes?  Some ANBU came in over the fence with him, told him not to leave until he’d made a friend, and vanished again.”

“Are you sure that was a real ANBU?” said Shisui, as I started laughing.  Fucksake, sensei .

“What, are special ops guys gonna somehow be less weird?” said Asuma, through a plume of smoke, as my laughter metastasized into a coughing fit.  

“Well… no,” said Shisui, watching me with something like perturbation.  I thought I saw his eyes flash red, but as quick as that they were black again.  

“Ox-t-taicho,” I wheezed out, remembering at the very last second not to call him -tan in mixed company.  “Gods bless.  Ah.”  I wiped my face dry with my sleeve, and with one last giggle crossed the courtyard to Hatake and Gai.

I mean, I practically had orders .

Hatake actually looked at me when I came over, wonder of wonders.  Gai looked at me too, immediately derailing himself, as he’s prone to do.  

“Haruka!” he declared, flinging his arms wide, avoiding backhanding Kakashi by like an inch .  “The flush of your cheeks, the vigor of your movements!  Basking in the warm light of companionship with our comrades has restored your health!”  

I grinned, I couldn’t help it.  Gai does that to me.  “Ha!” I said.  “That’s the shochu.  I’ll be back to looking like death in the morning.”

“Surely, if you drink enough water tonight you will be spared in the morning!” said Gai, presenting me with an undimmed thumb’s up.  “As I do not drink alcohol, I have been matching shots with water!  Five times the water, to make it more fair!”

My eyes slid over to Hatake, who miraculously had not used the opportunity to bail.  

“How many times has he had to leave for the restroom so far?” I asked, directing the question at Kakashi.  I was rewarded with a half shrug.  Asuma had said he’d only been there about fifteen minutes.  

“Say, do the two of you know each other?” said Gai, with poorly concealed excitement, even as I saw him start to fidget.  Don’t think about waterfalls, Gai.  “Kakashi you dog, you never said!  Keeping your cool about this Delightful Lady of Springtime!”  

Gai loves my name, you might have guessed.  He likes the puns.  I liked the puns too, secretly.

“Eh,” I said, cheerfully.  “We met in hospital.”

“Of course!  Exactly so.  Why, that’s where I met our dear Haruka!” declared Gai.  I could practically see the high water line in his eyes.  He was starting to do a jig.  

“Weird place to meet a medic,” said Hatake, with a completely flat affect.  I giggled.  Gai bellowed out a laugh, and then turned white.  

“I will be right back!” he yelled as he vanished at top speed.  Behind me, I could hear Asuma busting a gut.  

“Bless his heart ,” I said with feeling.  And then, before Hatake could get any bright ideas about disappearing, I held up the sake jug and waggled it.  “Help me kill this while we look at the moon?”

He didn’t exactly look amused at the repeat of my suggestion from last night, but he didn’t immediately vanish, either.  And I had an advantage this time, I actually had the sake.  He looked up, lazily, at the patch of sky above us in the courtyard.

“Can’t see the moon here,” he said.  My pulse spiked in excitement.  He was actually thinking about it .

I grinned full of mischief.  “You can up there,” I said, pointing at the izakaya roof.

There was a long moment, where I could see him considering it.  I held my breath, and in the very next moment there was a rush of wind and he was gone, snatching the sake jug out of my hand.  I gasped indignantly, and whirled around in time to see spiky silver hair outlined in moonglow, disappearing onto the roof.

“ Together!” I hollered after him.  “I meant- god dammit! ”  No response, but a few other shinobi besides Asuma and Shisui had turned to look at this act of the show.  I rounded on Asuma, who had started coughing on his cigarette after all.

“I can’t use chakra or I’ll die immediately,” I said, without preface.  “Asuma, can you-” I cupped my hands, and mimed the action I was requesting.  “Gimme a boost?”  I pointed, somewhat needlessly, up at the roof.

“You can’t use chakra or you’ll what? ” said Shisui, who I had plum clean forgot about.  His eyes were red again, the little shit.  

“Turn those off,” I said, as Asuma shrugged and bent down with hands cupped into a stirrup shape.  “It’s rude and you’ll get cancer.”

“Listen to the lady, she’s a medic,” Asuma told him, muffled as I braced myself on his shoulders to get a leg up.  As soon as he felt my weight center on his hands he stood up and launched me, which I was only about half ready for.  I caught the eaves with both arms and my stomach, scrambled to get my boot into the gutter.  Boy, it’s a good thing I’m a ninja, or that would have been really ungraceful.

I tuned out the laughter from behind and below me as I scrabbled up the tiles and got my butt planted safely on the roof.  Asuma, Shisui, and every other goddamn person in the courtyard were watching, so I waved and flashed a thumb’s up.  I didn’t wait around to see if that got them to stop paying attention to me, but had a feeling it had.  We were at the part of the evening where dumbass stunts didn’t get much attention unless you ate shit really hard as a result.  

Kakashi was on the flat square in the middle of the roof, sitting on the rounded ridge there.  The sake jug was uncorked, and there was a darker blotch on his mask where his mouth ought to be.  He didn’t move when I sat down, but he didn’t resist when I grabbed back the jug to pour myself what really probably ought to be my very last drink.  I was ahead of him, it was only fair.  He had to catch up now.

“It’s still hot,” he said, watching the steam waft off the cup I’d produced from my sleeve.  I looked out the corner of my eye at the wet spot in his mask.  Found that out the hard way, didn’t ya.

“Course,” I said, lifting up the jug and tilting it to show off the spiralling seal on the bottom.  “What else’s fuinjutsu good for?”

He didn’t seem to have an answer for that, but took back the sake jug and accepted the cup I offered him.  It wasn’t the warmest night, but I was too drunk to really tell, and the breeze that ruffled the treetops felt incredible.  We could still hear the party from here, but it was muted and the volume changed with the direction of the wind.  It smelled like grilled leeks and beer miasma.

I slid down a little on the slope of the roof so I could lay back, and amused myself by reaching up and trying to pinch the moon between my thumb and forefinger.  Game’s more fun when you’re pretending to squish someone’s head.  A delicate huff of almost laughter from just overhead told me I’d narrated that bit aloud.  

“This is all Genma’s fault,” I said, deliberately this time.  “He made sure I opened with shochu.”

“I’ve never had shochu,” said Kakashi.  That bashed through some of my loopiness, because this asshole had already been orphaned and in the field for years before I even made genin, and in all that time nobody’d ever bought him a hard drink?

“...I said that out loud too,” I said, after that resulted in a somewhat frosty silence.  I looked up, just to make sure he hadn’t vanished again .

“It’s against the rules,” he said, and his voice was very quiet, but he was still drinking sake.

“Oh fuck that!” I burst out, and startled laughter from the courtyard told me how loud I’d been.  “Rules, are made to serve people , not the other way around.  It’s not an end unto itself, civilization exists to support the people inside of it!  Otherwise what’s the fucking point!”

And then just like that we were arguing , with Hatake Kakashi pouring straight lines from the Ninja Handbook down my throat and me not sober enough to ignore him.  About if there’s no rules, how would anybody know what’s the right thing to do?  By using their best judgement, that’s how, and then I was arguing around the inherent basic goodness or badness of humanity, which I considered largely irrelevant to the discussion but somehow always came up anyway.

People aren’t basically bad or good, Kakashi, they just are .  They have the capacity to change and make changes and wherever they stand on your moral fucking continuum they are important .  Which is why a society that fails to serve the people that make it up has failed , no matter how you want to measure the reasoning behind it.  If the rules we’re living by are failing us, they should change.

“You sound just like ANBU Ox,” said Kakashi, crossly.  At some point we had become surrounded by dogs, and the littlest one was sitting curled up in the lap formed by my folded legs.  

“I hope not!” I said with a choking laugh.  “He’ll get sent up for sedition.”

“What is he to you?” asked Kakashi, unwavering.  The sake jug was empty, and there was a second one sitting next to us.  I think that was why there were dogs, we’d needed someone to get us a refill.  

“Ox-taicho,” I said with a snort that was mostly a hiccup.  “Like I’m going to just verbally confirm I’m compromising an ANBU identity.  Look, I know I’m shit at infosec, but so’s everybody else in this stupid village!”

Kakashi only frowned a little more, from where he was sprawled on the roof tiles, running his fingers through a large dog’s fluff.  “He’s always comparing his team to his students ,” he said.  “We don’t measure up.”

I cracked a grin at that, and the dog who was licking my cheek got a swipe on my teeth.  “Aw,” I said, and he gave me an unfocused, one-eyed glare.  “He just wants you to be your best.  When’s the last time you took advice someone presented to you nicely ?”

“I am the best,” he said, and he was definitely whining now.  “Since I was three .”

“Only compared to other people,” I said, and I could see the spark from that catch in his eye, but before he could start arguing there was a shout from below- the front of the Izakaya this time, not the courtyard.

“Haruka!”  That was Fuyu’s voice.  I delicately relocated the pug in my lap and slid my way to the edge of the roof.  Yep, Fuyu, down in the street below with Shisui snagged by the collar, flanked by Tonbo and a couple other Uchiha faces I probably would have recognized if I hadn’t very thoroughly pickled myself.  “We’re going home now, you have to come down!”

“No!” I said, before I even thought it through.  “I’m not done yet.”

“You’re as done as I’ve ever seen you,” called Fuyu, very patiently.  

“We’re howling at the moon!” I said, pointing.  Immediately having to adjust where I was pointing, because between now and when last I’d checked the goddamn thing had moved.

“Haruka,” Fuyu began, and the rest of what he was going to say was drowned out as I started to howl.  One by one, every single dog on the roof joined me, enough cacophony to make some of the dark upstairs windows on the street around us light up again.  I saw Fuyu out of the corner of my eye, throw his hands up dramatically and turn to go, letting Shisui slip his lead in the process.  

They were gone, but we were still howling.  A mid-sized dog with very short fur was critiquing my technique.  The big one was giving me pointers.  I’d had to lie down again, which made it hard to project.  The moon went down.  Reality and flashbacks blurred together into meaninglessness.  The taste on my teeth was not sake.  It was victory.

Chapter Text

Somewhere above me, birds were singing.  The noise made me want to be dead.

So did the dull pounding behind my eyes, and the firey pain in my stomach.  My head felt crunchy , like someone had filled it up with glass recycling, and the light filtering through my eyelids was already too much.  I burrowed my head deeper into the pillow, which smelled like hospital-grade antiseptic and dog.

An indefinite amount of time spent wishing I didn’t exist later, I began to be able wonder what that meant .

I was still very tired, and I am always very stupid, but these qualities were currently exacerbated by the monster hangover.  I didn’t want to think about why I was in a modern-style bed in a wood frame, instead of a futon on the floor.  I didn’t want to think about why I was sleeping back to back with someone who logically could not be Fuyu or Natsuki.  I had this feeling that when I figured it out I was going to be yet more deeply annoyed.

I remembered most of the party.  After a point it started to get jumbled, with things just happening and the context missing.  Some moments I could picture clearly, like a tableau.  Kurenai gutless with laughter.  Natsuki suggesting a dice game.  The courtyard, fragrant with flowering vines.  How many drinks did I have?  I’d gotten up on the roof, somehow.  

That part, I knew with complete certainty, had been Hatake Kakashi’s fault, but unfortunately by that point I had been extremely intoxicated.  I remembered getting into a fundamental ethics argument with him.  I remembered howling at the moon.  I did not remember why I’d been howling at the moon, except that there were so many dogs it must have made sense at the time.  Then.…?

Flashes of Ox-taicho’s mask.  I’d called him Ox-tan, I was pretty sure.  The impression of arguing with him somewhat histrionically, and then just nothing.  Genuine blackout.

Nice of sensei to save me from myself, I guess, but where had he stashed me?  Not Aunt Kuro’s, not Natsuki’s, and not his own home in the Hyuuga complex.  All three of those were traditional houses with traditional futon beds, and none of them owned dogs.  I wondered if sensei had his own ANBU apartment.  

(like I said, I am... very stupid.  not just sometimes.  all the times.)

“gfuck,” I said, without opening my eyes.  The person I was sleeping back to back with stirred very slightly.  It was a single bed, definitely not big enough to support two people with fidgeting included.  We must have been sleeping like a pile of bricks, to stay in that position.

I flung an arm off the side of the bed, step one in beginning to get up.  Might take a while.  My fingers touched fur, and I cracked open one eye to blurrily take in my surroundings.  It was, yes, one of those postage-stamp single-ninja bedsits, I could see the front door from here.  There were dogs just everywhere, on the sofa, the floor, assorted rugs and dog beds, like the bizarro universe version of Aunt Kuro’s house.  

We’d all been introduced, last night, but I didn’t actually remember anyone’s name.  Kakashi’s summons pack.  That would make this his house, then.  I probably ought to be embarrassed, but that was an emotion for after you’ve recovered from the hangover.  Headaches leave no room for shame.  Mostly I was just… tired.  The thought of having to explain… this, whatever this was, made me tired.  

It took a while of lying there, lazily petting a dog off the edge of the bed, gathering up the motivation to keep moving, before I remembered.  I don’t have to explain anything I’m not ordered to.  People could think whatever they wanted and I could confirm nothing and it would be frustrating for them and that was really just too bad.

A lot of people, I’ve noticed, spin themselves really badly thinking they’ve got to justify everything they do somehow.  The idea that you’ve got to have an explanation for your behavior no matter what, even if no one’s asking.  But you don’t!  You don’t even have to explain your own actions to yourself .  And just because someone asks doesn’t mean it’s any of their business, actually.  

I made it out of bed, but only by sliding to the floor, the hound next to the bed sitting up to accommodate me.  The littlest dog, the pug, looked at me very gravely from a dog bed resting on the abbreviated kitchen table.  

“You look rough, kiddo,” he said, and that was still not the voice I expected to come out of him.  I rolled my eyes, found out that hurt , and dropped my head to cradle it gently in my hands.

“Shut up,” I said, like five minutes later.  The dog laughed.

“Shouldn’t drink so much, then,” he said, smugly.  

“...Y’r just jealous,” I said, muffled.  “The gods gave me the ability to recreationally poison myself, not you.”  

“Yeah,” said the dog, watching me feel the room spin.  “ So jealous.”

I thought wistfully of my time in Kiri, letting myself fantasize about getting Mikan to roll me a great fat joint to wake up with in the morning.  It wasn’t a hangover cure , but it was a great step one.  Regular pharmaceuticals weren’t always easy on the stomach first thing in the morning, and as far as I knew nobody had figured out how to smoke NSAIDs yet.  ...Bet you could do it in a nebulizer, actually.  Shit, I could probably get a prescription for a nebulizer, with my medical history.

Let’s table that for later, I’m getting off track.  Ugh.

I lifted my head to take in the room again, this time with an eye for strategy.  Had to plan my moves out well ahead of time, with the amount of effort doing small things like turn head and pat dog was taking.  It took a lot of willpower and centering myself, but I did make it to my feet, and from there the electric kettle.  While water was boiling, I could locate the tea.

Pakkun (he reintroduced himself, and I reminded him my name wasn’t “kid”) watched me discover how fucking subfunctional Kakashi’s apartment was with increasing levels of entertainment.  I knew at least there was an ANBU cafeteria, or I would have been genuinely concerned.

“Does he eat dog food too?” I asked, opening the fourth cabinet full of kibble with something like defeat.  

“Sometimes,” said Pakkun, and god, they really were exactly the bizarro universe version of Aunt Kuro’s cats.  And here I’d thought that attitude was exclusive to cat summons.  Natsuki’s rats were all so sweet and unassuming!  Clearly I had just been missing data.

There was exactly one cabinet in Kakashi’s kitchenette that contained human food, and I use the term very lightly.  It was mostly seasoning packets, instant ramen and instant coffee, a bag of rice and thankfully, blessedly, cheap bagged tea.  He had exactly two mugs.

“You know, the guy that dropped you off last night left a bag by the door for you,” said Pakkun, but he’d waited until I’d gotten all the way comfortable, sitting at the table with my head cradled in my hands directly over the warm steam from my tea.  I sighed heavily, and decided that starting to cry wouldn’t do anybody any good at all.

“I’m going to cry,” I announced anyway, dry-eyed.  

“No you’re not,” said Pakkun with a snort, and before I could tell him he was acting exactly like some cats I knew there was an intolerably loud and sudden knock at the door.  Hatake Kakashi shot bolt upright in bed, his mask dangerously askew and his single visible eye open so wide it was almost perfectly round, like a cartoon.  

We stared at each other like that, frozen for a long moment.  None of the dogs said a word, damn them, until another loud knock made us all jump as a unit.  When I looked back at Kakashi, he was standing beside his bed and his mask was fixed, but his eye had gotten somehow impossibly bigger.  

“I can’t answer,” I said helplessly, looking at him and not the door.  “It’s your house.”

“Hey, kid, are you in there?” called the man outside, whose voice I failed to recognize.  The sound of it made Kakashi sigh with his entire body, though, so I assume he did .  He trudged past me, moving only slightly better than I felt.  I reached back and switched the electric kettle on again.  He’d want a cuppa before this was over, I had a feeling.

“Jiraiya,” said Kakashi, opening the door, and this time I really was going to cry, because there the man was, enormously tall, white-haired and dressed like a kabuki character.  Oh my god, that’s two sannin in two days .  

“Woah, hey, did I wake you up?” said Jiraiya no sannin , a hand behind his head sheepishly.  “I’d heard you were out last night but I didn’t think-” 

I didn’t want to look, but the way he’d cut off told me I probably needed to.  I turned my head ever so little and ah, yep, he’d spotted me.  I really, definitely, one hundred thousand percent should have stayed dead the first time around.  I clearly did not know what was good for me.

“ Kashi , you dog!” crowed Jiraiya, cackling obscenely.  “Here I was worried about you, I didn’t know you had it in ya!”  He’d knuckled Kakashi in the arm, and we both winced.  

“Not so loud,” Kakashi begged, a fry in his voice.  Gods, me too .  At least Jiraiya seemed to get it , coming over sheepish again with a subvocal oops .  

“Sorry,” he said, letting himself inside.  Kakashi closed the door behind him, and the apartment was suddenly extremely small, in a way it wasn’t when it was just two teenagers and eight or nine dogs.  “I guess you really did tear it up last night?  Hee hee…”  

“...We got into a philosophical debate,” I said, and took a very slow sip of my tea, when it became apparent that Kakashi was not going to volunteer for this conversation, even though it was his house .  I had a hand over my eyes, both because of the headache and the not wanting to look at anyone.

“Is that what they’re calling it these days?” said Jiraiya, his eyebrows waggling.  

“Why are you here, Jiraiya?” said Kakashi, cutting through the atmosphere.  He’d straightened up, and there was neither light nor life in his eye, once more.  The mirth bled slowly out of Jiraiya’s expression, until he was regarding the young man before him with pinched regret.

“I’m leaving town again today,” he said, in a different tone entirely than he’d been using to insinuate .  “I wanted to catch you before I left and see if-” he glanced aside at me, and seemed to actually take me in this time, see me as more than a physical comedy prop.  

“Well, I just wanted to see how you were doing,” he finished, his hand behind his head again, and an extremely fake smile on his face.  “And, you know.  See if you need anything.”

Somehow that didn’t make it much less frosty in the room.  I heard the kettle boil behind me, and turned to switch it off.  When I looked up from pouring Kakashi a cup of tea, he met my eyes, and instead of that flat deadness there was just the tiniest bit of- of something .  There was just so damned little of his face to read .  

“I’m fine,” said Kakashi, and sat down at the table, with Pakkun at his elbow.

“It’s not like we’re unchaperoned,” I said, looking at the dog, and then Jiraiya.  “The pack was here the whole time.”  I was rewarded with the visible amount of effort it took him not to say “ kinky ”.

“ANBU Ox brought us back here,” said Kakashi, holding his mug up to the side of his face for the warmth.  “Take it up with him.”

“I might just ,” said Jiraiya, with a frown that told me he recognized that call sign.  Ah, shit.  Why does the spymaster sannin know your ANBU handle, sensei?

“Say, Jiraiya,” I said, deliberately with no honorific.  “Is it true that when you were an Academy student you once took a summer off to live in the hills and wrestle bigfoot?”  Even if I hadn’t been trying to distract him, the look on his face was worth it.

God I love the unclassified records library.  Really.  It’s like reading the Personal ads in the newspaper, ninety percent dead boring but brother, that other ten percent .

“That’s classified,” said Jiraiya, when he’d scraped the astonished reaction off his face.  

“Hate to be the bearer of bad news, it’s absolutely not,” I said, taking another sip.  Physically, I didn’t actually feel any better, but psychologically, the benefits of trolling a sannin, however mildly, could not be overstated.

“They’re not bigfoot ,” said Jiraiya, and looked like he was about to continue elaborating when what he’d just admitted caught up to him, and he sighed.  Somehow, without any actual change in facial expression or posture, Kakashi’s aura had gone from frosty to smug .  I had a feeling that this was not their usual dynamic, which was a shame.

“It’s ok,” I told him, gently condescending.  “Terrible infosec is practically the official Konoha brand.”

“I actually take deep and complete offense to that,” said Jiraiya, his hands on his hips, but before we could get into an argument Kakashi actually decided to participate.  

“Jiraiya-san,” he said, still not actually looking at the sannin.  “This is Himitsu Haruka-san.  Please stop taking her bait, it’s very annoying.”

“Fun police,” I snorted.  Jiraiya had a face on like he understood less the more he saw us interact.  “He made it weird, so I get to pull his pigtails.”

Kakashi squinted, an operation that was definitely not an eye smile, but somewhere in the vicinity.  Jiraiya slid back from the table and stood up quietly.  

“If you’re just going to bully me, I’m clearly not needed here,” he said with an overdramatic sigh.  “Just- I’m going to be at Hokage Tower the rest of the day, until I head out again.  If you want to say hi.”

“Hi,” said Kakashi, and it was my turn to squint like I was trying not to laugh.  

“You’re a bad influence on him,” Jiraiya told me, on his way out the door.  I smiled humorlessly.   Someone ought to be.  Sure seemed like all the ‘good’ influences in his life hadn’t done much for his mental health.

The apartment seemed to expand again, with the sannin’s enormous presence gone, and I felt like I could breathe again.  

“Well, that was deeply awkward,” I said briskly, when the atmosphere had gotten thick.  “He drop in on you like that a lot?”

“Only when he’s in town,” said Kakashi, staring down into his half-finished tea.  “So.  No.  Not a lot.”

“How do you feel about eating something?” I said, glancing back at the kitchen cabinets.  Kakashi looked up at me, the skin around his eye pinched.  I winced.  “No, no.  Just, like, rice.  Rice won’t smell like anything until it’s almost done and it’s so hard to throw it up.”

He still looked queasy, so I shook my head.  “Ok.  I’ll take my shower first, and then start the rice cooking when you’re taking yours.  That way you don’t have to smell it cooking.”

That woke him up some, and he sent a slightly wild look at the door to the bathroom.  I was just glad he was in one of the actual apartments, instead of one of the ANBU bunks that had communal facilities.  As far as walks of shame went, this one could definitely have been worse.  

“Y...sure,” he said, his eye darting around the room.  While before, the mortification had been at being caught left-footed by Jiraiya no Sannin, now it was starting to evolve, as he started to actually think about the situation we were in.  I wondered if he’d ever had a girl in his apartment before.  Probably not.  Boys are weird about that kind of thing sometimes.

“Ox-taicho left me an overnight bag,” I said, thumbing at the ugly rucksack sitting by the door, next to my boots.  “I won’t even have to use your soap.”

The tips of his ears reddened.  Scent politics were a whole ballgame I’d never had to deal with much, none of my teammates coming from clans with enhanced olfactory senses, but it had been gone over in detail in kunoichi classes.  And in some of the spicier romance novels Natsuki liked to read.  I wondered if Kakashi had ever read any of those, or if the idea of a girl smelling like his soap really was organically that interesting of a thought.  

“Good,” said Kakashi, his tone barely even strained.  “Don’t need to make this more weird.”

“Exactly,” I said, standing up.  I would like to say that I stood up briskly, but I didn’t.  I was still moving like I needed a cane, and the world was still wobbling a little at the edges.  I shuffled over to my bag, thankful for the itty bittyness of Kakashi’s apartment, and then shuffled into the bathroom.  I pretended not to notice the eruption of conversation that started outside the door as soon as I started running the water.

Twenty minutes later, washed and dressed in clean clothes, I felt almost fully human again.  My head still hurt, but not so much that I caught myself wishing I was a jellyfish.  Jellyfish don’t have brains, the lucky bastards, they can’t get headaches.

Kakashi, Pakkun and the rest of the dogs didn’t look like I’d interrupted a conversation when I came out, so it must have petered out naturally while I was in the shower.  Good.  He did look marginally more lively, though, and went straight into the bathroom as soon as I’d cleared out.

I shuffled over to start the rice cooker going, absentmindedly drying my hair as I did.  Gods, I knew there was no point in keeping lots of perishables in the house if you expected to disappear on lengthy missions at literally any time, but there was so much you could still do.  I caught myself making a shopping list in my head in spite of myself.  Not that I really expected to be invited back here, even if we did seem to be getting along fairly well considering.  

I turned on the electric kettle again, and leaned back against the counter to wait for it, a dog curling up on my feet as I stood there.  I’d like to say that meant his summons pack liked me, but I couldn’t be sure.  Aunt Kuro’s cats piled on top of me all the time, and I still to this day could not tell you how they felt about me.

I stayed very firmly in reality the whole time, which was a nice change.  Last night had been swimming in flashbacks, much as I’d been doing my heartiest to ignore it.  This morning it was all quiet, nothing but my very immediate personal misery.  I was still working on tracking the patterns, what triggered it and what didn’t.  This week I really would have to buckle down and do some hard meditating.  I’d have the time, while I waited for my evaluation appointments to roll around.

“I still can’t figure you out, kid,” said Pakkun, and I blinked my way out of ruminating.  

“That’s fine,” I said.  “I’d hate for someone else to figure me out before I do.”

The pug dog snorted.  “Fair enough.  You don’t feel like someone with bad intentions.”

“Intent is only ever like a third of it,” I said, shaking my head.  “I’m just trying to glue myself back together in the right order.  We all are, I think.  Nobody ever said it’d be neat and clean.  Or fun.”

“But you tried anyway, right?  Interesting custom, throwing a wake.  It’s not really a Konoha tradition, but maybe it oughtta be.”  Pakkun licked his right paw, delicately, as I frowned at the sudden squirming in my stomach.  

… It’s… really not, is it?  Not the way we did it.  A wake in Konoha, when one is held, is more a vigil overnight with the body.  Not a collective party.  Not when the coroners haven’t even started to release shinobi bodies back to their families.  But it’d just…felt shitty.  To hold services and then go back to work, with no release, no catharsis.  To experience death and loss on a scale like that and then just go back to the grind.  

Had the idea bled through from my library of past lives, felt so organic in my head that I hadn’t even realized where it had come from?  Kind of a spooky thought, even though it had worked out well this time.

“I’m a big believer in cultural exchange,” I said, palming it off for now.  “Speaking of, are you friends with any cat summons?”

“No!” barked Pakkun, looking outraged.  

“Well, you act just like the ones I know,” I said with a shrug.  I poured myself a cup of tea, the better to ignore him barking at me.  

“Stop trolling my ninken,” said Kakashi, when he came out of the shower, a towel around his neck placed to keep his wet hair off the back of his mask.  

“They should stop acting like cats, then,” I said, unrepentant.  He snorted, less offended than Pakkun had been.

“Right,” he said.  “You’ve been staying with the cat contract Uchiha.  You poor thing.”  Sarcasm, he really must be feeling better.

“It’s a trial and a burden,” I said with exaggerated stoicism.  The rice cooker beeped, and I turned it off and reached up to take down a couple of bowls.  Kakashi didn’t turn any paler at the smell of fresh cooked rice, so I heaped us both a portion and dug in, turning obliquely so he could futz with the mask in privacy.  

“What are you going tell them about where you spent the night?” he asked, sounding very carefully calm.  Couldn’t blame him, I was kind of on thin ice just by being here.  

“Absolutely fucking nothing,” I said, and had the satsifaction of hearing him choke a little.  “Ox-taicho took care of me, all’s they need to know.”

“You’re really going to let the Uchiha think you did the walk of shame back from the Hyuuga compound?” he said, and then it was my turn to choke a little.  

“Who said Ox-taicho is an Hyuuga?” I said, a little spikily.  “I’m doing the walk of shame back from the ANBU district .  The best lies are the ones that are completely true, you know.”

“Obviously,” he said, dropping his empty bowl and chopsticks in the sink with a clatter.  I was not yet halfway done with mine.  

“It’s not healthy to bolt your food,” I told him, and he gave me an extremely dry look, adjusting his mask.

“I’ll cope,” he said.  It felt kinda bad, knowing that I was making a man uncomfortable in his own home, but then that had just been this morning all over. 

“I’d better get out of your hair,” I said, leaving my bowl in the sink too when I was done.  

“ Not out the front door ,” Kakashi hissed, catching me by the haori sleeve as I made to leave, rucksack over my shoulder.  He pulled me to the back of the apartment, where the window opened right over his bed.  

“I can’t use chakra to stick to things,” I reminded him as he slid up the sash and climbed out on the sill.  I followed him up anyway- I am a ninja, and it’s not like you need chakra to climb out a third storey window.  Sure helps, though.  

Right outside the window, however, was an enormous healthy tree, one of the broad sturdy branches growing just below Kakashi’s windowsill.  It was worn flat and a bit smooth with use, and looking at the rest of the building, his window wasn’t the only one extremely handy for the tree.  Almost looked like it had been built that way specifically, around the tree- but in Konoha, who knew which had really come first.

“Will you really die if you try molding chakra?” asked Kakashi, waiting for me to join him on the branch.  He didn’t hold out a hand or anything, and I didn’t need assistance, but I appreciated him waiting around.  

“Almost immediately,” I said, with resignation.  “I tested it out in the hospital.  Luckily, it was right in front of the doctor.”

He started tree-walking down the trunk, leaving me to follow the old-fashioned way, but not before he gave me a skeptical look.  “Your doctor told you that you’d die if you tried to use chakra, so you thought you’d test it out?”

“What, do you just believe everything a medic tells you?” I shot back, maybe a little defensive.

“Wh- well, no,” he said, staring back at me from below me on the trunk, standing there as casually as could be.  “But…”

“I’m a medic,” I said.  “I know exactly how much lying to patients we do.”

“But it really was fatal…?” he said.  

“I wasn’t going to just take senpai’s word for it,” I said.  Honestly, I didn’t know why I was defending myself, it had been pretty indefensible.  But the alternative was not arguing with Kakashi, and that was apparently a no-sell.

I took my time getting to the bottom of the tree.  There were plenty of good handholds in the bark, but while holding up my own weight has never been exactly challenging with as little of it as there is, I still felt sweaty and limp when I hit the bottom.  

“...You just say things to wind people up,” said Kakashi, who had waited for me.  I was kind of touched.  He could have disappeared at any time, and left me to wander my way out of the ANBU district alone.  Which was probably a security risk, which meant that he wasn’t being nice so much as doing his job, but still.  

“Sometimes,” I admitted.  “...Ok, a lot of the time.”

“That’s valid technique, out in the field,” said Kakashi, still waiting for me to finish breathing heavily and pick myself up from the base of the tree.  “But you shouldn’t use it so much on allies and coworkers.”

“A completely fair complaint,” I said, nodding.

“You didn’t promise not to do it anymore,” he said, once we’d gotten on our way again.

“I don’t like making promises,” I said.  He nodded like that was fair. 

He led me through the streets of the quiet little residential neighborhood that looked nothing like I’d expect ANBU housing to be.  I suppose that was the point, it wouldn’t be a very good secret special ops housing district if it looked much different from the rest of Konoha.  

“Are you this slow on purpose?” he asked me, from several feet ahead, his hands indolently in his pockets.  I gritted my teeth.

“I was supplementing with chakra, before,” I said, trying not to clench my jaw.  “More than I’d actively realized I was doing.  Now I can’t, and if you think you’re annoyed by it, multiply that by like eighty and you’re about where I’m at.”

He still sighed like I was doing it on purpose, and I was about to tell him to just grab me and side-along shunshin us to the tower when I looked up and suddenly I knew where exactly in town where we were.

“Hey, that konbini has great iced coffee,” I said, but there was no longer anyone there to speak to.  Just a limp breeze kicking a swirl of leaves across the street.  I stood there and made a face.

He’d just escorted me out of the ANBU neighborhood and bailed.  Figures.  But on the other hand… I was right outside the ANBU neighborhood, by a landmark I recognized, something not even sensei had tipped me off to.  It was probably heavily genjutsu trapped, to get back in, but still .  

I still had to get back to the Uchiha district on my own power, but if I was doing it on my own time that was fine.  I went into the konbini for that iced coffee.  Might as well.

Chapter Text

I stopped by the Uchiha Police Station on my way home to get that library pass Fugaku had promised me, because it had seemed like a good use of my time. I had to sit around for a bit before he even showed up - when I arrived there was nobody in the office but the chuunin at the front desk, her arm in an immobilization cast with pins sticking out of it. I made myself useful by helping her with the filing while I waited, which in hindsight is probably why I wasn’t immediately thrown out on my ear when Fugaku did turn up. Apparently last night had been busy for the cops.

Sorry, not sorry. Anyway, it hadn’t just been us cutting loose, apparently. See, Sarutobi, this is what happens when you leave these things up to the individual.

But apparently nobody had fingered me as the ringleader, or involved in organization at all, and the noise complaint at Shin’s had been about 2am howling, so being that I did not have a nindog I wasn’t an obvious suspect for that, either. Couldn’t exactly say I’d gotten away scott free, but pretty goddamn close.

Anyway, I’m sure he noticed the part where I was hung over, and hadn’t made it back to the Uchiha district last night, but that wasn’t enough evidence to convict, and I left the police station with extremely specific library pass in hand. And also with the papers terming me from my responsibilities at the station morgue. Apparently all forensic autopsies were going to go through ANBU, from now until perdition.

Didn’t much like that. Didn’t know what I could do about it, either, so I just stewed on it.

Vital shinobi services compromised by natural/unnatural disaster? Just shove it on ANBU, right? That’s what they’re there for. Except, no, it’s not. ANBU is there for the things that villages can’t cop to while staying above water on all our treaty agreements.

Forensic autopsies and disaster investigations in particular ought to be conducted by public sector divisions with oversight. If you make things like forensic investigations secret operations suddenly all accountability blows away like dandelion fluff and who fucking knows if they’re actually working on it, it’s a secret. Is it actually being worked on or is it being memory-holed? No one will ever know.

Also, basic police work is a ridiculous misuse of our wetworks people. Jesus haitch, the pay difference alone.

It’s two Uchiha I don’t recognize on gate duty today, but they let me through with the absolute minimal acknowledgement. Nobody was home at Fuyu’s but the cats, which was perfectly all right with me. Time to get in some meditating, possibly fail at it upwards into a nap.

“You look awfully cozy,” was what Fuyu chose to open with when he poked me awake in the window seat I’d set up in, surrounded by comfortable, napping cats. It was violet-dark outside, not quite nightfall but almost.

“Haven’t found the right door yet,” I mumbled, still half dreaming. A raggedy, lightweight seal-point cat had settled in on the very peak of my shoulder where I’d slumped over on my side, like a gargoyle. Drooling, also, like a gargoyle. My sleeve was nice and damp at the seam.

“Just keep opening them indiscriminately,” said Fuyu, picking up the big white tailless cat next to me and moving him to his lap when he sat down. “That’s your learning style, right? What are you even talking about.”

“Meditating,” I said, and the seal-point cat leapt off me before I had to decide what to do about her, leaving me able to sit up. It felt like there were fabric creases in my cheek when I rubbed at it.

“Oh,” said Fuyu. “I saw the library pass.” I’d left it on the kitchen table. “He actually gave it to you, after everything last night?”

“Nobody snitched, you can’t prove anything,” I said with confidence. Leveled him a look. “You didn’t even snitch.”

“I have it from a reliable source that snitches get stitches,” said Fuyu, gravely serious. “Anyway, I left before things got out of hand. All the Uchiha did.”

“You always were smarter than me,” I said, the fry creeping back into my voice. “If anybody asks, that ANBU who always turns up around us took care of me, and I hardly remember any of it.”

“The one with the ox mask?” asked Fuyu, his tone light. “I think he must have a crush on you, with all the personal favors he likes to do you.”

I frowned at him, despite being incredibly relieved that Fuyu hadn’t decided to hold last night against me. And then, because what he’d just implied was incredibly gross, I picked up the cat out of his lap, settled him on mine, and shoved Fuyu off the windowseat.

That was where Aunt Kuro found us, yelling at each other good-naturedly and surrounded by cats. She immediately barked at Fuyu to take a lap if he still had that much energy, and me to set the table for the takeout she’d brought home for dinner. Surprise, the meal involved fish.

And so it went that I settled into life at the Uchiha compound, pushing at the edges of my physical endurance day by day with chores and little errands and time spent at the Uchiha Library. The buzz of a new project wore off in the slog of invisible progress, and I had to remind myself that recovery is just time spent on the work. It takes as long as it takes and not a minute less. This, I had to remind myself a lot. It’s one of those things that’s easy to intellectualize and really fucking hard to know.

Anyway, since my physical condition was still dogshit, I spent a lot of time meditating. And there was progress to be made there, even if it left me an unique kind of exhausted at the end of the day. Reading up at the Uchiha Library allowed me to even pick out why- meditation generated spiritual chakra, but attempting higher meditation techniques also used it up. I needed to extend my lead-in times of normal, centering meditation exercises before fucking around in my Akashic records, or I’d start cutting very close to falling into spiritual chakra debt. Which, though it usually wasn’t, might be fatal in my condition. So add to the list of things that could probably kill me: meditating too hard.

The realization fucked me up enough that the guy in charge of the Uchiha archives, a gentleman my father’s age with a single tomoe in each eye, actually noticed my upset. Uchiha Takeshi didn’t notice much that wasn’t contained in a library scroll, so I was probably being pretty fucking dramatic about it.

“Get out,” he said as he chivvied me out the door. “Go outside and stay outside until you can stop generating such a miasma. I can’t get anything done like this.” And then he locked me out.

Well I never.

It was a beautiful autumn day in the Uchiha district, cold and clear and sunny, the leaves bright in yellow and gold. A perfect day for wandering around outside, taking a long peaceful walk by the river. I tried not to resent it; wasn’t the weather’s fault I’d hit a wall.

I was shuffling my way through the common-space training ground the senior citizens used for morning Tai Chi sessions, aiming to find a nice tree to sit under and sulk, when a throat cleared behind me.

“Haruka-san,” a child’s voice called for me, and I turned with resignation to see Uchiha Shisui. He was holding the hand of an even smaller child, solemn little textbook Uchiha phenotype in a wide-collared shirt, chubby cheeks and wide black eyes.

“Uchiha-san,” I said, smiling at him all customer service. His face immediately fell, but just for a moment, before he was smiling back at me, equally blandly.

“Haruka-san, nobody calls anyone ‘Uchiha-san’ while we’re in the district,” he said. “Everyone here is Uchiha-san. I’m Shisui, remember?”

“It’s almost as though I’ve been in close contact with your clan since I made genin,” I said, a hand on my chin, “and said what I said on purpose to annoy you. But nice parry, anyway, explaining it to me like I’m stupid. What’s up, kid?”

His smile brightened at that, to something a little more genuine and a lot shittier, and I remembered why I’d let him stay at the party last week.

“You looked upset about something,” he said guilelessly. “I’m just here babysitting Itachi-chama-” he squeezed the little boy’s hand, prompting the child to shrink even deeper into his wide collar, “and I know you never really have anything to do around here, so I thought we’d come say hi.”

“Hi,” I said, mildly, tilting my head to pay more attention to the Littlest Uchiha. “Itachi? You got a wind nature? Gonna learn to use scythes?”

Shisui, gods bless him, looked to Itachi curiously instead of answering for him, but it was a minute before any noise came out of him.

“No?” said Itachi, a furrow in his tiny brow. “Father is teaching me shurikenjutsu.” He was incredibly coherent for being like four.

“Why would you name a shinobi clan child Itachi and not tell him all about the kamaitachi?” I asked Shisui. Shisui looked up at me and beamed.

“I think that’s your job,” he said, and I rolled my eyes and started explaining about kamaitachi anyway. Either the youkai spirits of weasels, or the youkai spirits of abandoned gardening tools, depending on the region you got your lore out of. They tear around in horrible biting winds, slicing at the ankle tendons of anyone in their way with their sharp little weasel sickles. Itachi absorbed my storytelling with absolute concentration. Which was adorable, but also a little bit made me want to pull Fugaku’s ear. He’s four, Tono.

We’d wandered through the training ground and were now picking our way through the wooded bank of the Naka, just three kids having a leisurely screw-around session, talking about hamstringing peasants. Fun stuff. The kids had lots of questions, some of them about me in general. Shisui as a person was heavily tactless, and I was starting to like him genuinely for it.

“You’re water natured, aren’t you,” he commented over the sound of the river.

“Yes,” I said, not that I could prove it at the moment. I narrowed my eyes at him. “Lucky guess?”

“Every time I see you you’re just so damp,” said Shisui, with a shrug and what he probably imagined to be an innocent expression. I rubbed a hand over my face to hide my ugly grin.

“Making fun of the homeless doesn’t set a good example for Itachi-chama,” I said, nodding to the child, my expression recovered.

“Are you really,” said Shisui, and I did laugh at that. His sheer levels of distrust for everything I said!

“I suppose, technically,” I said, in the driest of tones, “since there’s still a single wall standing, with help from the winter ivy, my home isn’t completely demolished. It’s undergoing renovations, technically. Indefinite renovations, that may include the remaining wall being knocked down to the foundations for rebuilding.”

“Ah,” said Shisui, unapologetically. “Still, with one whole wall up, why aren’t you there?”

“Believe me, I’ve thought about it,” I said grimly, my smile a thin line. “Unfortunately, my teammates like knowing where I am at all times.”

“Because you were their medic,” said Shisui, nodding. “Old habits, right?”

“Well, that too,” I said. “But yes. Old habits. We did make it outside on missions for a while, before I had to go full-time at the hospital. Sensei had to be out of contact with us for five whole days in the second part of the chuunin exams at Kiri. We very nearly started a union.” Kiri had been very mad about that. They’d expected us to go into that sealed house with our competitors and kill and torture each other creatively. Instead, we’d organized.

“What’s a union?” asked Shisui, of course. I raised a finger, opened my mouth, and then closed it.

“I will literally be black-bagged if I explain it to you,” I said. “More promptly than anything else I could get black-bagged for explaining to you. It started as a civilian thing, the Daimyo wants it stamped out.”

“Oh,” said Shisui, his eyebrows climbing. “I guess if I were your team I’d be worried about leaving you alone too, even if you can’t use jutsu.”

“The strongest and most dangerous things in the world aren’t jutsu,” I said. “They’re ideas.”

“Huh,” said Shisui, and to his credit, he actually seemed to be thinking about it.

“Anyway, that’s why next week I’ll be going to stay with Natsuki at the Yamanaka estates,” I said. “The team planned it out, so I’ll always have a place to stay without wearing out my welcome.”

“I don’t think you’ve worn out your welcome,” said Shisui, quietly.

“You’re not Fugaku-dono. Or Aunt Kuro,” I said with a toothy little grin. We’d reached a flat part of the river, down from the cliffs, deep water with a strong current underneath. It was glassy smooth on the surface, however, perfect for skipping stones. I bent to search for one on the bank. Itachi helped me look, very seriously.

“I heard about you calling him Tono,” said Shisui, far too cheerfully. “I didn’t think you were stupid enough to do it twice.”

“I’ll look even stupider if I don’t commit,” I said, straightening up with a flat, almost perfectly disc-shaped stone. “That’s admitting it was an accident. There’s a very fine line between pretending to be an idiot and actually being one, if people think I’m running my mouth on purpose...”

“If it’s on purpose, you’re running some kind of an op,” said Shisui, nodding, as I took my time to center myself before throwing the rock. “If it was an accident, then you really are an idiot.”

“And no one can ever know that I really am an idiot,” I said, and skipped the stone. Shisui whistled, and I beamed. Still got it.

“I lost count at fifteen,” said Shisui, and he looked genuinely impressed.

“Twenty-six skips,” I said, with deep satisfaction. “Woulda been more if the river were wider here. I have the best throwing skills on my team. If it weren’t for Fuyu’s eyes, I’d have the best aim, too.”

There was an insistent little tug on my hakama, and I looked down.

“Teach me,” said Itachi, frowning up at me, holding a rock.

So that’s how I spent the rest of my afternoon. That’s the nice thing about skipping stones, it’s almost all technique. Power doesn’t matter. The chakra loss that had my kunai and shuriken skills looking really pathetic right now didn’t affect my technique, just my range.

Takeshi let me back into the library the next day without comment. Guess my miasma problem resolved by itself.

*
I had my next follow-up at the hospital, in the usual room at the usual time. But when I barged my way into the office, it was not my usual doctor behind the desk.

My usual doctor did not wear an ANBU mask. This person- well, the build was slight enough to be Kawara-sensei, but the uniform was wrong. Shit, the uniform was wrong. This agent was wearing some kind of shapeless robe, both shoulders covered, the hood up to conceal their hair. The mask itself did not correspond to any call sign I was familiar with, and while that in itself wasn’t impossible, I knew a lot of ANBU for someone wholly outside of the organization. In combination, it added up to an instant full-body flop sweat.

“Hullo,” I said, already on my heel to turn to leave. “Sorry, I thought- I’m here for an appointment, must have got the times mixed up.”

“Haruka-san?” the ANBU asked, voice distorted, and the door closed behind me. I turned sharply to look, because I hadn’t closed it. Orochimaru no fucking Sannin was standing there, a hand on the doorknob. He smiled at me, politely.

Gulp.

“Am I in some kind of trouble? I’m supposed to see Kawara-sensei,” I said, looking from the snake sannin, to the anonymous blackops fellow, and back again. I was absolutely in some kind of trouble.

“No, not at all,” said Orochimaru, peeling himself off the wall and pulling out one of the chairs in front of the desk to sit down in. He filled up the room the same way Jiraiya did, his presence alone making the space feel suddenly claustrophobic. He gave me a smile that made me want to shower immediately. “Your file was merely reassigned. Hospital resources must be very carefully allocated, in the wake of the Kyuubi. I requested to be allowed to consult on the matter of your condition. As you’ve observed, it may be relevant to my interests.”

I’m going to die. In small pieces, individually labeled in jars.

“Thank you,” I said, instead of screaming. I pulled out the other chair, and sank into it slowly. “I’m extremely lucky to have such an expert in his field to assist in my recovery. Um, pardon me-” I turned to the ANBU behind the desk. “We haven’t been introduced? You’re-”

“Handling your file with regards to Orochimaru-sama,” said the agent, and I valiantly fought the urge to throw up. “I am a medic. I’ve been assigned your case, you will be seeing me for the most part, Orochimaru-sama is far too busy to come to all of your follow-ups.”

“Right,” I said. “Good. Well. I’m- Himitsu Haruka, you probably have that in my file.” Oh gods, was there a secret evil medic corps to go along with Orochimaru’s secret evil medical research? Of course there was, in retrospect it was obvious, there had to be. You couldn’t run a level 4 lab all by yourself, even if you were one of the legendary sannin. I tried to picture Orochimaru running the autoclave on his own and just couldn’t do it.

“I’ve reviewed your file,” said Orochimaru, leaning back in his seat and crossing his legs, lacing his fingers around the uppermost knee. “Of course, it gets the most interesting after the tenth. I have Kawara-sensei’s analysis, but they seem to have hesitated in putting forth any hypothesis as to how or why you returned to life.”

“Yeah,” I said, glad I was sitting down, because I was feeling awfully dizzy. There was another man sitting in Orochimaru’s chair, just as tall and thin and intimidating, he came in and out of focus inside my head.

(“Aren’t you just full of secrets, young Spring.”

I didn’t try to be. It just happened to shake out that way. I avoided meeting scarlet eyes with art and grace, and shrugged uncouthly.

It was just like being in jail. You didn’t have to beat anyone up on your first day. You just had to be the guy who knew how to make pruno. You don’t have to be strong you just have to be useful. you have to be interesting

but not too interesting)

I blinked rapid-fire to clear the cobwebs in my head. “We had avoided hypothesizing before we had more data,” I said. “I’ve been testing my limits within reason, and discovered that while all of my physical chakra is being immediately and comprehensively coopted as soon as I make it just to keep me alive, I can accumulate spiritual chakra, and use it, limitedly. But if I guess wrong and bottom out on it that’ll kill me too.”

“Fascinating,” said Orochimaru, and saints all help me he really did look fascinated. “What an excruciatingly backwards way to bring a person back to life. And you don’t remember anything about the process, you’ve said?”

My mouth was so dry it took me a minute to say anything. “I mean, I was very much dead,” I said. “I’ve read the report and everything. I have no knowledge of any… jutsu or procedure, that might have taken place. On my end, it was... I think I might have dreamed. I remember… thinking I was on a beach, with the fog rolling in, so thick you couldn’t see your own hands. There was sand under my feet.”

I knew in my heart of hearts, in my very soul, that this beach had been a real place. The shores of Lethe, the echoes in my head told me. Drink from it’s waters and forget your mortal life. I certainly hadn’t. It was possible my soul never had in a thousand lifetimes, and that was why my head was a riot of past life memories now.

“Did you see anyone else, in this place? On this beach?” I met Orochimaru’s golden cat eyes, so much like the shinigami I’d met there. I wondered if he knew, if he’d heard the same account of a foggy shore from others who’d died and come back again.

“There was a girl,” I said, slowly. “With cat ears. I think, she had spider lilies on her kimono?” It wasn’t a detail I had noticed when I was there, but when I pictured her now it was clear in my mind’s eye. Meditation practice had put a very sharp focus on my ability to recall detail in memories. “Can bakeneko be the shinigami? She must have been a shinigami. She pushed me and I woke up. I was missing twelve hours and the tag on my boot said I was dead.”

“And you remember no bargain?” asked Orochimaru. “The shinigami was indeed in Konoha on the night of the tenth. Did you agree to anything, some task or orders, to be sent back?”

I shook my head slowly, my heart rate speeding up even more. Yeah, that was suspicious, wasn’t it? With the other documented appearance of a shinigami that evening having, you know, cost the Yondaime his life. “Not that I remember,” I said. “I’m on the books for a mindwalk, next week. You know, just in case. I’m sure you’ll get the report.”

“Yes, just in case,” repeated Orochimaru. “Of course. I’ll look forward to reviewing it with you.”

“If you’re not too busy, of course,” I said demurely, looking at the offbrand ANBU. The mask remained implacable.

“Of course,” agreed Orochimaru. Was this how it felt to go insane? It was all so polite, when I really just wanted to be screaming. Without pause or end.

“Forgive me, Haruka-san,” said the mask, glancing down at my file open on the desk. “But your father was Kurama Iwashi before he married, correct? You were trained outside of the Kurama clan, of course, but were you ever tested for their particular kekkei genkai?”

That was a little out of left field. “Yes,” I said. “I never showed much talent in genjutsu, but of course they wanted… anyway, no, I don’t have the Kurama bloodlimit, we checked.”

“What about a variation of the bloodlimit?” asked Orochimaru, and I was halfway to saying of course not when I froze. Now that I thought about it… oh, but how would I know?

“Well,” I croaked, swallowing futilely. “That’s, that’s the thing about non-standard variations on known kekkei genkai. How do you find out you have them?”

“Situations of extreme stress are the most common circumstances,” supplied Orochimaru, a calculating look in his eye.

“Like dying?” I asked, unable to help myself. I pressed my haori sleeve to my mouth. “But how did it activate if I was dead?” I mumbled into my hand.

I couldn’t believe I was actually considering it. No, no, that couldn’t be the whole story. I was still looking at outside help. Even if somehow there was a fucked-up variant of the Kurama bloodlimit hiding in my genome, that instead of a genjutsu so real it’ll kill you in real life, it was a genjutsu that tricked your organs into being alive.

That was so useless. If I could hypnotize myself into not being dead, why couldn’t I have ever, oh, gosh, I dunno, hypnotized myself into not being sick? Had the shinigami picked me out because of some genetic potential, had she been able to send me back because of it?

“Something to consider,” said Orochimaru, sounding satisfied. He looked up from his notes. “Next time?”

His smile chased me out of the room, my brain still going off a hundred miles a minute. That was… a lot to chew. I had ramifications to think about, and it was only a hypothesis. The snake sannin’s interest in me seemed a more manageable problem in the shadow of it.

...What a life I was leading these days.

As luck would have it, as I was winding my way out of the hospital, I caught sight of Dr Kawara coming out of an exam room. I put on speed and waved effusively.

“Suzume-senpai!” I enthused, sweeping up behind them and linking arms aggressively. “Have you got a minute? I’d like to consult you on something real quick.”

“Haru-kun-” they started, and I jerked us into a hard right into a supply closet.

“Just a moment in my office, all’s I ask” I said, shutting the door behind us and flipping on the light. Privacy seal please, I signed. Suzume sighed, and pulled a slip of paper from their pocket, sticking it up by the door.

“Look, I’m sorry,” they said immediately as the seal activated. “I didn’t have a choice, that order came from way up the chain.”

“Suzu, I’m gonna fucking lose it. They’re gonna dissect me for a bloodlimit I might not even have,” I said, threading my hand into my braid and clutching it. “Is this normal? Nobody ever pulled a patient out from under me while I worked here, does this happen a lot?”

“It happens enough,” said Suzume, suddenly looking as tired as I’d ever seen them. They always had shadows under their hazel-green eyes, but today they were more like bags. “Less since the war. Nobody has time to pay attention to weird transfers that happen during periods of chaos and high pressure.”

“That makes sense,” I said, fighting with the nausea that burned in my stomach. At least there were plenty of buckets in here if I lost. “Is there any way I can contest it? Can I get transferred back to you?”

“I tried to fight it, I’ve been your doctor for years,” said Suzume, shaking their head. “A transfer at this stage didn’t make any sense to me no matter who it was going to. You’re lucky your file hasn’t been fully classified, I can still read your reports and keep you up to date on what they’re saying, at least.”

“Thank you,” I said, hollow. “...I don’t want to be vivisected, senpai. I don’t want to die.”

“You’ve died like three times just this month,” said Suzume, unsympathetic. “You don’t want to disappear, is what you mean. Update your deadman’s, pass your psych eval, and go to work in the Hokage tower. Be visible and easily missed.”

I swallowed, around a throat that was still so dry. “You’re clearing me to go back to work?” I said, choosing to latch on to that part of the instructions.

“Conditionally,” said Suzume, their mouth tight. “Desk chuunin stuff only. No chakra work. Get your heart rate down before you come out into the hallway again, if you collapse in the hospital again your clearance will get vetoed no matter what I put in the report.”

"I don’t know what to say,” I admitted, leaning hard on the industrial shelving.

“Say you won’t blow it,” said Suzume, and passed me on their way out. The privacy seal stayed up, and I stared at it while trying not to think about drinking cleaning solution.

I stayed in the supply closet about another half an hour, taking advantage of the sound blocking to have a meltdown, wailing until I coughed, and then coughing until there was blood. When I finally left the hospital, there was no trace of any of those things, on my face or on the floor, which was what made supply closets such an absolutely peak place for messy breakdowns.

So, okay, my to-do list had gotten longer and more convoluted. I had more deaths than the one waiting in my lungs to worry about, going forward.

Maybe I did want the door in my head to lead somewhere out. Maybe the solution to external problems was, as usual, internal.

Or maybe I just need to talk to my fucking team! They’d have my back, that was what they were for. I’d only get into yet more trouble if I tried to work this out on my own. Four heads were better than one, after all.