#leewrites

In the dreams that you don’t breathe a word of to anyone, he still lays down beside you, his head in your lap, eyes closed and mouth pulled into a serene smile. 

In the nightmares that they turn into, he’s soaked with river water and gore, and he bleeds out onto you from the missing fragment in his fractured skull. 

You had only been several years old when you’d first met the man who would martyr himself to save Konohagakure, and it hadn’t been a kind meeting. Insults had been exchanged – the sort that only children in competition with one another could come up with – and the mutual ire had only grown when you’d been assigned to same genin team with one of his friends. Both your stubborn pride and the rules kept you from begging your instructor to allow you to switch places with someone else – anyone else – if it meant avoiding the jerk who had taunted you every day in your shared Academy classes. 

Mulishness defined your early teamwork, poor Kiuchi caught in the middle of your arguments and often suffering for them the most. The first of the D- and C-rank missions you’d been assigned to in the initial year of existing as Taiyo-sensei’s Team Three had been mostly manageable between each of your team member’s skillsets. However, the cracks in your patchwork mockery of cooperation began to show themselves by the time you were assigned your first B-rank mission. 

Two years and almost four months to the day that you’d been assigned together as a team and suddenly you were separated from both Taiyo-sensei and Kiuchi, dizzy from blood loss and erring too close to enemy territory to go unnoticed. The wound in your arm just wouldn’t stop bleeding where a Kumo nin had torn through the muscle of your bicep with her tantō, no matter how hard you tried to staunch the blood. You had been certain your chakra was beginning to dance out of your control. 

And then a trio of Kumo nin had found you. 

They’d made a game of sinking shuriken after shuriken into your belly and back as you tried to run from them, using your body as a target and your heart as a bullseye. When they’d run out of shuriken, they’d started throwing kunai, and they’d won their first scream from you. One of their blades passed had too closely to your face, raking a line of blood through your eyebrow, across your cheek, and over the side of your neck. You’d nearly lost your right eye then, and the fear you’d already been overwhelmed with turned into wild terror.  

And then Shisui had found you. 

He’d shouted your name and you’d begun to cry when you saw him drop out of the treetops and throw a strafing of kunai with deadly accuracy at your pursuers. You’d run to him without hesitation and when he’d closed his arms around you and yanked you through space with the shunshin technique he’d only managed to learn a week ago, it had been the first time you were sincerely grateful for him. 

Taiyo-sensei had only mastered a rudimentary form of iryō-ninjutsu, so he’d at least closed your wound before you lost consciousness and had to be carried back to Konohagakure. When you’d woken up, it had been in the village hospital. Shisui had been sitting in the chair next to your bedside. 

You’d noticed the taped bandage over the crook in his left arm before he’d opened his eyes and you’d seen the tell-tale glow of his clan’s notorious kekkei genkai. Except – 

“Your Sharingan?” you’d asked in a confused whisper, probably not the best way to start a conversation with the boy who’d saved your life after spending years as your personal rival. 

He’d ignored the unspoken question in your words that night. But years later, on a night not unlike that one when you two stood together in same hospital’s morgue over Kiuchi’s desecrated corpse, he’d whisper the truth of the Sharingan’s first awakening. Yours was the first face he’d memorized, bloodied and desperate while you ran for your life, and then when Kiuchi had taken the death blow meant for Shisui, his face had been the first thing he’d seen with the Mangekyō. 

That night though, Shisui had sat with you in the quiet of the hospital room while the air conditioner filled the room with something other than white noise. You’d thought at the time that maybe…just maybe, the two of you could be friends. 

After that, you and Shisui were anything but friends. 

You gravitated toward him, unable to help yourself from falling further toward his inner singularity with every shared moment that passed between you. You had entered his orbit, and he yours, like a pair of collapsed stars that had been ensnared by the gravity of one another’s event horizon. 

Your teamwork improved enormously as the two of you finally synchronized. You rose through the ranks together with Kiuchi at your side, until the day that the three of you were promoted directly from genin to jōnin via letter while on the eastern front of the war. Taiyo had teased the three of you relentlessly, refusing to answer to ‘sensei’ any longer. 

When a Kirigakure invasion force had killed him only two days later, you had only called him by his name once. 

The Third Great War had taken Taiyo and Kiuchi, and then it was just you and Shisui. 

And then it was you, Shisui, and Itachi. 

The change had been subtle, but as you grew to know Shisui’s idiosyncrasies and misleading expressionisms, you learned how to read between the lines of his and the clan heir’s words. He’d tried so, so hard to keep you at an arm’s length, trying to bend the gravity between you to his will, but the two of you were destined to face calamity together; he could no easier push you away than he could ignore the consequential pull toward you. 

The months leading up to his death had been deceptively tranquil. He’d even lured you into a false sense of security with all the ways that he distracted you from his clan, from Itachi, from the chaos in his thoughts. 

He lived in your chest, within your heart, and he lived in your apartment, sharing with you what part of his life that was his to freely give. His shirts emblazoned with a red and white uchiwa fan hung beside your own emblemless clothes, and your laundry was mixed together. He wore your socks and you wore his shirts. He shared your bed and your toothbrushes were set next to each other on the bathroom counter. His shoes had their place beside yours at the front door. 

You loved him, and he loved you, and it was something you knew without having to tell one another. 

You knew that he hadn’t planned his death. He couldn’t have known when Danzō would finally make his move. It didn’t stop you from being furious about it and so many other things after you’d heard the news. His encouragement to take the week-long mission that took you as far as the daimyo’s palace was only one more thing that you raged at him for. 

Itachi had come to you before you’d even taken two steps into the village. When he’d reached for your arm – the same one that was scarred from the B-rank mission Shisui had saved your life on – you’d known resisting was futile. He’d taken you back outside of the village in a shunshin, and you’d stood in a dead silence warded by S-rank privacy fūinjutsu formulas while he told you the news that would inevitably uproar around you the moment any of your friends or the hokage saw you. 

Shisui was your heart, and anyone with eyes had known that. Danzō had known that. 

And then Itachi had asked for your trust. The same kind of trust that you had put into Shisui all those years ago when you’d run into his arms without a second thought, trusting him to save you. To protect you. 

“Do not forget him,” Itachi had told you, his grip a vice around your forearm in rare expression of his emotions. You could practically taste the fury and desperation in his chakra signature as it permeated the empty air around you. “Do not forget what he loved – who he loved, (Y/N).” 

At the time, you hadn’t seen the future in Itachi’s words. You’d only known grief. It had only been due to both Itachi’s warning and your own instincts as a shinobi that you sealed the sliver of truth that you knew from the village around you. 

Shisui is dead, they told you. He killed himself. 

No one knows why, some would say. He seemed happy. 

Such a waste of a life, others commented. 

Your apartment became a mausoleum, haunted by the ghost of the boy you’d loved and the memories that you’d shared. Hours were wasted in solitude as you sat on the floor of your bedroom or on the couch in the living room or on the shower floor while scalding water rained down over you. You stared at nothing nothing nothing, wishing that you could see him there in that emptiness instead.

Come back safe to me, he’d told you the day you left for your mission – the last words he’d spoken to you and the last day you’d seen him alive. 

“Come back to me,” you’d whisper to the air. “Come back.” 

You chased his memory in your sleep, but only nightmares met you there. You woke yourself with your own screaming night after night, and yet still forced yourself to sleep again. Even if it meant you could only see him in during the scenes you’d imagined of his death over and over again. 

Blood – there was always so much blood, and a river that churned and consumed him. The Naka River threw his body against the rocks at its deepest depths, breaking him apart and turning the waters red with his sacrifice. 

You were under watch constantly, be it by the friends you’d made over the years or by the same shadows that had forced Shisui over the cliff at the river’s edge. Grief hid your anger well, but you shut all of them out when the second shoe fell and Itachi tore his clan apart in a single night. 

A crow brought two envelopes to you that night, and your knees had given out from under you as you read the first one, your name written in Itachi’s fine hand. In it, he told you nothing but his sole desire for Sasuke’s protection to be ensured. 

See to his safety as Shisui saw to yours, he’d written.  

The second envelope had been unmarked, but you had recognized Shisui’s scrawling penmanship as well as you knew your own. The letter wasn’t addressed to you, but to Itachi, and it wasn’t until the end of the short missive that you understood his reason in giving it to you. 

I have loved her since we were children, Itachi. Protect her when I am gone, please. 

The screams that your nightmares pulled from you that night took from you little parts of your sanity. 

He had loved you and you had loved him and now he was gone, and he would always be gone. And you would only have his echoes. 

There were no words to describe the grief that had swallowed you, your serenity just as much a victim of the river as he was. He had gone over the event horizon without you, repelling you from his orbit and projecting you into the fathomless darkness of the unknown beyond the space that the two of you had always occupied together. There was nothing but emptiness now. And silence. 

His ghost haunted you for years as you tried and failed again and again to protect Sasuke, to protect the village, and to protect yourself. What he loved – who he loved…they slipped through your fingers like grains of sand in the wind. 

And then the day came when Sasuke murdered Danzō. 

Rather, the day that you and Kakashi tracked the young Uchiha boy to the dam between Fire and Iron Countries. There hadn’t been anything either of you could do to help Sasuke. Any distraction would have risked the precious focus he needed to have to parry the ROOT leader’s blows and strike at him with his own. Kakashi’s white-knuckled grip on your forearm when Danzō nearly pierced Sasuke through the heart had terrified you. And then the old man had revealed the stolen Sharingan embedded into his body. 

Kakashi’s grip had been the only thing keeping you from launching yourself off the side of the cliff cleaving the man’s head from his shoulders when he revealed Shisui’s Sharingan as his second eye. Even after a decade had passed and your memories had become hazy around the edges, you recognized the black pin wheel pattern that belonged to the man you loved. 

“He took his eye,” you hissed, a rage you hadn’t felt since the day Shisui died burning through you with near-blinding intensity. You were trembling with fury, your hand squeezed so tightly around the hilt of your katana that your knuckles popped. Itachi hadn’t told you this – did he know? Or had he gone to his death ignorant of the crime Danzō had committed? 

“We can’t interfere,” Kakashi reminded you, though it almost sounded like a plea. “(Y/N) – we can’t. Not yet.” 

Kakashi’s insistence lasted as long as Danzō fought Sasuke alone. An argument had not even formed in your throat when the war dog suddenly threw from his sleeve a packet of papers. It was only when the pages hit the ground and the ink on them began to glow did you recognize the stolen transportation jutsu. A dozen chakra spikes flared in your senses as ROOT operatives sprang from Lord Fourth’s seals, and Kakashi vaulted over the cliff wall onto the dam crest before you even realized he’d let go of you. 

Lightning erupted where the jōnin landed, but if Sasuke had noticed his sensei enter the fight, the boy was too preoccupied with Danzō to indicate it. There was nothing for it then; you followed Kakashi into the fight. 

Immediately, a female ROOT op attempted to sever your arm with a cutting fūton jutsu. You blocked it, the wind rebounding off of your katana and gouging the stone causeway. What knowledge you had of ROOT was limited since undoing the forbidden seal that bound both Yamato and Sai’s knowledge of the organization was an ongoing project. Any kekkei genkai or serviceable intel that would indicate the strength of the group was the largest, most glaring unknown outside of knowing just how many nins had been indentured to Danzō’s perverted cause. 

Twelve were here though. Twelve against you and Kakashi certainly weren’t the best odds, but they weren’t the worst odds you’d been up against either. 

It was that thought that nearly became your last when another ROOT op swung for your unprotected flank. Their ninjatō reflected the light of the sun whilst you blocked with both hands the pair of tantō a different nin bore down on you with. There was no room for you to sidestep the blow – not without walking directly into a raging katon blast directed at Kakashi – and nowhere for you dodge that you wouldn’t immediately find someone else’s blade buried in you. 

You braced yourself, gritting your teeth while you pushed the weight of one nin off of your katana and then – 

And then there was a kunai buried in the neck of the nin with the ninjatō. His weapon clattered on the cobblestone when it slid from his slack grip. There was no time to look for whoever else had entered the fight or even process the fact whoever had, had just saved your life. 

The ROOTS ops swarmed you and Kakashi, forcing the two of you to exchange opponents over and over again if only to whittle away at their numbers. Someone managed to strike you across the forearm and blood welled from the wound as you ensnared three unlucky ops in a Water Prison jutsu. 

They fought and kicked against the water, but their bodies were lifeless when you dropped them into the ravine on the opposite side of the dam. 

A sudden pulse of chakra temporarily distracted you, your head snapping in the direction of Sasuke’s fight with Danzō, no – just near it – 

“(Y/N)!” Kakashi warned. 

A strafe of shuriken caught you in the torso and you hissed as you instinctively dropped to your haunches. And lucky you had, because the ROOT op who vaulted for you with their tantō drawn stumbled over your crouched form and had your katana sprouting from their chest for their effort. 

There were three ROOT nin left when Sasuke killed Danzō. 

They all froze, dropping to their knees and reaching for their mouths and their throats as the tang of burning skin filled the air. Then, they bent over and vomited on the ground. An oily, black substance stained the stone, the acrid scent of rot somehow even more pungent than the charred flesh smell. The tang of bile in the back of your own throat surprised you. You barely suppressed the urge to cover your nose as you kneeled in front of the nearest op – a woman. 

“Let me see,” you ordered, grabbing her by the chin. She allowed you, not that you thought she could put up much of a fight anyway. Her chakra signature and those of her compatriots were steeped with agony. Only when you compressed her tongue did she recoil – just to list to the side and collapse on the ground. Unconscious, but alive. 

You stood. “The seal is gone,” you told Kakashi, running your hand over your pants to wipe off the tar-like vomit from the woman’s mouth. The two other ROOT ops had also passed out. 

He tilted his head and just as he began to speak, the hairs on the back of your neck stood up. 

Sasuke had pushed Danzō’s limp body off of his blade, and while you’d been examining the ROOT nin, he’d advanced on you and Kakashi with a sneer on his face. 

“I should kill you both!” he snarled at you, raising his katana. “This was my fight!” 

He looked so much like Itachi and so much like a stranger in the same way. How many times had you carried that boy from the graveyard even after Lord Third had forbid you from speaking to him? It had killed you every single fucking time to set him back in his own bed, in his empty home, in an empty compound, and carefully detangle his tiny, grasping fingers from your shirt. 

See to his safety as Shisui saw to yours, Itachi had asked of you. How spectacularly you had failed him. 

Sasuke was as much a ghost to you as his brother was though, and that was especially apparent when he launched himself at you. 

Kakashi lurched into his student’s path, kunai drawn, but Sasuke was different. Stronger. He carved a line across Kakashi’s chest as he repelled his former sensei and the boy bore down on you within seconds. 

Kurenai had always asked you what you would do if the day came when Sasuke Uchiha attacked you – when the last living connection to the person you loved, to the past you’d shared, finally saw you as the enemy. Your answer was the same then as it was even now: you dropped your blade. 

You didn’t close your eyes to it, to Sasuke’s wrath. Not when you’d seen the same crimson eyes of his kinsmen embedded into the flesh of a man who had been responsible but never charged for so, so many crimes. Sasuke’s blood-streaked blade glinted in the hot sun, but all you remembered was the day Shisui saved you from the Kumo nin. 

You could see the spinning pattern of a Mangekyō Sharingan in Sasuke’s eyes, the tinge of blood along his lashes and – 

A blur of brown and black moved across you, and the sound of steel against steel rang through the canyon, echoing off the sheer rock walls. 

You could see the expression on Kakashi’s face as he blinked and then shook his head. Once. Twice. As though he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. 

“Now, now, cousin,” a voice drawled. “With a temper like that, maybe you deserve a little beating.” 

You stiffened, eyes widening as you stared at the back of the man that had leapt in front of you. 

When the man turned his face to you, as though to peer at you over his shoulder, you felt the ground shift out from under you. He wore a blindfold that covered both of his eyes and was tied in a knot hidden by his dark curls, but you would have recognized him by less. 

“Shisui,” you breathed, suddenly lightheaded. It was indeed a day for ghosts. 

Sasuke jumped back, sneering at his cousin but looking just as stunned as you felt. His face had paled significantly. 

“You’re dead!” Sasuke snapped. 

Shisui’s head tilted in the hauntingly familiar way it always did whenever he was about to tease you. He sheathed his katana blade in the nondescript saya at his waist. 

“And you’re a rebellious little punk,” Shisui countered, a smirk tugging the corner of his mouth up. It dented his cheek, and you felt yourself struggle to remain upright.

“Kakashi,” you called out warily. “Is this – is this real?” 

Both of his eyes were trained on Shisui and he nodded to you. 

“I’m real,” Shisui said to you, his head turning toward you again. “Real as you.” 

“You’re supposed to be dead!” Sasuke shouted. “Itachi said – Itachi said you jumped off a cliff after Danzō stole your eye!” 

Shisui’s expression twisted into a grimace. “Yes. That.” You had the uncanny sense that he was glaring in the direction of Danzō’s corpse. 

“How?” Kakashi demanded. Sasuke had taken a position somewhat behind his old sensei, and a distant part of you wondered if it had been his instinct to drop back behind his teacher. “They searched the river for weeks when you died. All of the reports said you were gone.” 

Shisui’s smile was rueful. “It’s not difficult to fake your death when you have help, Hatake-san.” 

“Itachi,” you realized, numbly shaking your head. “Itachi – but he saw –” 

“His Mangekyō awakened because you died!” Sasuke shouted. “I have his memories! He saw you fall! And he saw her –” He gestured indignantly toward you with his katana, “– grieve!” 

“Point your blade at her again and I will break it over your head,” Shisui bit at his cousin. His chakra signature flared as it unwound from him, spearing towards Sasuke in furious warning. Sasuke recoiled, letting his katana fall back to his side. You tensed when Shisui’s chakra brushed against yours before it fully receded once again. It was Shisui – you had sensed him during the fight. 

“You realize we will have to report this to the hokage, Uchiha-san,” Kakashi announced carefully. 

“The only reason I have for stopping you is dead,” Shisui deadpanned. “If Sasuke hadn’t managed to kick the viper’s nest hard enough to get Danzō to come out to deal with him himself –” Shisui shrugged. “You have no idea what a headache it’s been trying to deal with him these last few years.” 

Your chest constricted and you exhaled a stilted, humorless laugh. 

“‘The headache it’s been’?” you parroted, a shrill disbelief in your voice. You shook your head as Shisui turned towards you again. “You have no idea what it’s been like these last few years while you’ve been dealing with your headache!”

Shisui cringed, raising one of his hands in acquiesce. “You’re right, I –” 

“No!” You held a finger up, stopping the words before they could even leave his mouth – before he could potentially inspire your anger to reach even greater heights. “No! You have been dead for ten years! Ten years, and now you’re here – alive – and you have the fucking audacity to make a joke of it?!” 

Both Sasuke and Kakashi took several steps away from the scene. 

Shisui started, “I’m not –”

“You were dead!” you shouted, and the grief raked through you anew. “You told me come back safe but you knew you were going to die!” 

“I didn’t know!” Shisui argued. “I didn’t know it would happen that soon or that fast, but when it did there was nothing I could do!” 

“You could’ve told me!” You could feel the pricking in your eyes that told you of the tears that were beginning to limn your lashes. “Ten years, Shisui! Ten! Why – why couldn’t you tell me?” 

You choked. Even with the blindfold, you could see the hurt in his expression. 

“(Y/N) –” Shisui tried again. “(Y/N), I have so much to tell you and explain and I know I –”

You shook your head, fury in your footsteps as you closed the distance between you. “I don’t care.” 

Shisui gaped at you. “You don’t – you don’t care?” 

“I don’t care,” you said again and – maybe it was because he let you or because he truly didn’t anticipate it – you slapped him. Your palm stung from the impact and Shisui hissed as he raised a shocked hand to the side of his face, but then you lunged for him. 

It had been ten years. Ten long, dark years since you had last seen Shisui; since you had last hugged him; since you had last held him. Ten years since you had walked out of the village, waving to him at the gate, and never saw him again. Until now. Until today. 

The dams and stop gaps you had built around your grief broke and overflowed when Shisui dropped his arms around you, enveloping you in the warmth of him. You clung to him, fingernails digging into the rough fabric of his coat as he bent his head into your neck. You cried, your body shaking as he held you to him. 

“I’m sorry,” he was saying. “I’m sorry, (Y/N). I’m so, so sorry.” 

You felt one of his hands run over your hair. His name was a broken gasp as you struggled to keep a firm grip on him. 

“I’m here,” Shisui mumbled into your neck. “I’m here now. I’m not leaving.” 

When he tried to pull back, to lift your chin as though he might meet your gaze, the vision of him and his blindfold made the sobs come harder. Danzō had stolen so much that night, more than you had known. 

But when Shisui kissed you, the years and the nightmares and the grief ebbed, as if swept away by the current of the Naka River instead. The force of gravity replaced it, and you gasped against his mouth as that event horizon found you across all the space of ten years. Shisui crashed into you with all the same intensity he once had, the sidereal force that had always bound you together before finally allowed to do so once again. 

He kissed you again, softer this time. Twice, and then set his forehead against yours. He smelled of the earth and wood, like a bonfire at the height of summer; you hadn’t realized you’d forgotten until you remembered. 

“I – I love you,” Shisui said quietly, a crack in his voice breaking up the words. “I…I never told you, but I loved you then and I love you now.” 

His admission inspired a wet, wry laugh from you as you shook your head and pulled away. You held both sides of his face, thumbs brushing over his cheeks. His tears – yet another thing Danzō had taken from him. 

“You never had to say it,” you answered. “I knew it.” 

The corners of Shisui’s lips pulled into a tender, remorseful smile. He turned his head right before someone cleared their throat. 

Kakashi.

“Sasuke, er, took his leave,” the nin reported. Heat rose in your face as your comrade pointedly avoided looking at the blind Uchiha. “Considering the circumstances, I think letting him go this time was the last favor I can do for him.” You could tell Kakashi was feigning lightheartedness since you weren’t ignorant to the fact that he hadn’t recovered his own Sharingan under his hitai-ate. 

You nodded, but Shisui said, “I have intel about his activities that the hokage will want to hear about.” Both you and Kakashi looked questioningly at him, but Shisui just shook his head. “Not here.” 

“He left –” Kakashi paused, and you followed his backward glance to Danzō’s corpse. “He destroyed the others, but he left your eye.” 

“Good,” Shisui chuffed. “I’ll be needing that back.” 

You exchanged a look with Kakashi, and the nin raised an eyebrow at you. Well, at least now you knew which of the two of you would be presenting the miracle of Shisui Uchiha still being alive to Tsunade-sama. 

But Shisui slipped his hand into yours before you could begin to imagine all the bottles of shochu the Godaime Hokage might throw at you. It startled you, and you looked up at Shisui’s grin as he explained, “I am blind, after all.” 

Your gaze drifted toward the body of the ROOT op with a kunai still buried in his neck. 

“Blind as a bat, apparently,” you countered dryly. 

Shisui smirked and pointed toward the trees that crowded the edges of the ravine. An enormous black bird was perched in a low-hanging branch. “Or a crow.” 

And wasn’t it a crow that you recognized. Something like anger or grief tightened in your chest again as Raban leapt from the branch and wheeled over your heads before plunging down towards the dam. The summons struck at Danzō’s face, deftly stealing back what belonged to its master, and shot off into the sky again.  

“The surprises just keep coming,” Kakashi muttered. 

Shisui grinned again. “You have no idea.” 

When he turned his head to you again though, his smile softened. His fingers clumsily tangled with your hair and bumped your chin as he reached for your cheek, inspiring a soft laugh from you. 

“Can I come home now?” he asked. 

“Yes,” you answered. You held his hand tighter in yours. “Always.” 

it was still for several long moments, in the bare hotel room with peeling yellow walls and a thin bed. the only light was tinged an ominous orange from the lightbulb's rust and neglect. this place was not a hospital. this place had no crib nor midwife, but it would not require them.

it finally coughed violently, its large body jolting and its long beak clacking with the force, clearing its airway. its long, feathered neck stretched to its full length and its eyes blearily opened, and it looked around its place of rebirth. it looked down at the floor, at the remains of its blood and skin and meat shell (the hundredth, the thousandth? it didn't remember), and nudged the remains of the (its former) face, almost with a sense of sadness, a sense of loss, with a pale, disfigured, blood-drenched limb.

it trilled something deep in its chest, quietly, and blessed the fallen body; he (it) made it to twenty-three this time around. he (it) had destroyed his (its) own life from selfish whims and cruel acts. and it was disgusted with his (its own) cruelties, but it still loved him (itself). it always did.

it rose to its full height, head pressed against the ceiling and shoulders following; long legs flicked to get off the remains of its former vessel, trying to get some semblance of clean. pale flesh looked sickly in the lamplight, blood that was its own and yet not was darkening, and black feathers shimmered like pools of oil; an incomprehensible amount of feathered and bald and balding wings spread from its back best they could in the small space, and it sighed from relief from the ache in its bones. its finned tail swept behind it, knocking over a dingy hotel phone, and it rang a tone as it hung from the hook. it was paid no mind.

its head held new memories, new understanding for these creatures it had watched and counseled; its little trip into understanding them was now over.

it would employ its understanding in a place in-between and nowhere, with a tea table and a kettle and a sugar pot and a pitcher of milk and two cups facing each-other, one for it and one for a guest. it would return to its home to counsel the most fascinating creatures. it would one day inhabit a new flesh, perhaps. but that is a story for another day.

its maw opened up, showing its thousands of tiny, sharpened teeth, and it labored in a heavy breath, and it roared.

the light flickered, and it was gone.

cath, she stands with a well-intentioned man / but she can't relax with his hand on the small of her back

It hadn’t been intentional. 

Of course, not everything always was – intentional, as it were. Certainly, you had intended to study and train in the first organized shinobi force in history. And you had intended to earn the experience that would award you the title of a jōnin. And you had intended to make a life for yourself in the newly established village that your clan had agreed to be a part of. 

Your ambitions had fit well within the hopes both Hashirama Senju and Madara Uchiha had for their burgeoning community. When they had decided to institute the shinobi ranking system in an effort to assess the village’s strength and plan for exams to educate potential future nins, you had leapt at the chance to be involved. That, you belatedly realized, had been the first step down the path you found yourself now walking on in the dark. 

Of all the things you had intended to be involved with, he wasn’t one of them. 

But Hashirama Senju had assigned you specifically to the task of assisting his brother in exchange for lessons in the art of fūinjutsu. It was supposed to be a mutualistic trade: Tobirama was forced to delegate his responsibilities and consider alternative perspectives, and you were able to advance your own education while learning from him. The Senju heir could not have appeared more vexed if he’d tried when Hashirama had tugged you across the village and flung open the doors to Tobirama’s private lab near their family’s compound to announce the situation. 

Before then, you’d rarely crossed paths with the heir and hadn’t exchanged more than greetings with him. 

After, however…after the hours spent pouring over historic scrolls together and bickering about sealing formulas and chakra theories, a quiet and naïve part of you thought you might know him better than even his own brother did. 

And now, standing at the edge of the room, watching him share genial smiles with strangers, you wondered if you were the only person who knew his amiability was a farce. It was in the tight lines near his mouth that only appeared otherwise when he was frowning, and the way his eyes never moved from the person he was speaking to, not even while he chuckled or smiled. 

“You’re lucky, you know.” You blinked and glanced up at the Uchiha heir as he joined you in leaning against the wall. He was dressed in nondescript clothes, but between his reputation and resemblance he bore to his brother, Izuna didn’t need any clan insignia to identify him. 

You exhaled, feeling as though you were breathing through concrete. “Yeah? Why is that?” 

“His betrothed only has eyes for him.” Izuna nodded towards the young woman. She was beautiful and that was all that you had wanted to know about her. That desire had gone out the gods-forsaken window, however when the conditions of her clan’s treaty with the Konohagakure were made public. In exchange for what connections that the Shimizu Clan had with the daimyo and the other coastal clans in addition to their sorely-needed wealth, the clan leader had requested a demonstration of loyalty. He wanted to proof of Konohagakure’s commitment to bettering the shinobi world and had suggested no other way than a marriage. Takeru Shimizu was clever, but he had tried to bend the wills of the wrong men. 

Misaki Shimizu, in that sense, was the lucky one. Hashirama and Madara had been prepared to refuse the treaty outright because, according to Izuna, neither of them intended to bind themselves or their brothers into a commitment they didn’t want. You had spent weeks wondering what would have happened if Tobirama had not heard of their decision to reject the Shimizu Clan’s terms. 

“Of course she does,” you replied. Misaki was grinning at Tobirama as he bowed his head in greeting to her father as the clan leader joined him in conversation. The dangling parts of the metal kanzashi in her hair spun and caught the evening sunrays that illuminated the room as she spoke animatedly to Tobirama. 

“If she or her father noticed the way you stare at the white-haired bastard…” Izuna trailed off. He frowned at you when you didn’t react. 

“He’s lucky then that they don’t notice how uncomfortable he is,” you said, finally looking away from the Shimizu heiress. 

One of Izuna’s eyebrows rose and he looked back at Tobirama. “He looks uncomfortable to you?” 

Hashirama’s peal of laughter temporarily filled the room and when Tobirama turned his head, looking for his brother, his gaze tangled with yours. The forced smile faded and some of the tension in his posture receded. Then, his jaw tightened and – 

And you forced yourself to look away. 

cath, it seems you live in someone else's dream / where things that could have been are repressed

You had avoided the lab for as long as you reasonably could, but there were only so many other things that you could fill your time with. Since Tobirama’s engagement had been announced, you had taken on more missions that saw you out of the village for longer periods. Missives that could have been sent by bird were instead carried by you to the daimyo’s palace in the north. You arranged the transport of harvested crops from the fields to the village, safeguarding the traveling farmers. You’d braved the southern swamps and the packs of blood-sucking mosquitoes to deliver priests from one temple to another to another. 

The only reason you weren’t currently narrowing avoiding tripping over cypress roots and trying to keep alligators from taking bites out of priests was because of Hashirama. 

“(Y/N),” the Senju Clan leader said, “I can’t help but feel as though there is something going on that might inspire you to suddenly be taking so much time away from the village.” 

Tobirama, luckily, wasn’t in the office. Madara and Izuna, however, were, and you deftly avoided making eye contact with either one of them. 

“I thought I should try to help take care of some of the more urgent missions before the monsoon season starts,” you replied. 

Hashirama frowned and you had the distinct feeling that it was the limited sense of propriety that the man possessed kept him from flat out interrogating you. 

“I have to insist that you take a break,” Hashirama said with all the subtlety he seemed able. A glance at Madara’s crossed arms told you there was no arguing with the either village leader. And you already knew better than to look to Izuna for assist. 

You made your excuses and, already sensing that encroaching swell of dread that rose whenever you were left too long with your thoughts, you went to the lab. You doubted Tobirama would be there, with all the new responsibilities and obligations he had with the Shimizu Clan and its heiress, so you took solace when you unlocked the seal on the lab door and slipped into the dim room. 

Even in the dark, you could see the desks covered in old tomes. They were held together by fraying cords of linen and gravity keeping the pages from spilling across the floor. Some of them you’d managed to save from altogether falling apart, but most had been painstakingly examined and then copied onto parchment. Tobirama kept the copies in one of his desk drawers, your combined works waiting to be bound together between the covers of a new book. 

An uninhibited smile tugged at the corner of your lips. You remembered when you had first started the copying, how Tobirama had hovered at the edge of the desk, watching every brush stroke as you carefully wrote out the formula to a particularly dangerous seal. The seal – if copied wrong – had the potential to explode so spectacularly, all that would be left of you and the Senju heir would be memories. Why he had let you be the one to write it, you hadn’t the slightest clue. Except maybe that had been the first sign that he trusted you. 

I can’t imagine myself doing anything else but this, he’d admitted to you one day. Ink had darkened his fingertips and there was a smudge of stain across his cheek, overlapping the slim line of a childhood scar. I don’t want to do anything other than this. 

You’d stared at him from where you sat a few feet away at your own desk, surprised by his candor and the suddenness of it. 

Then don’t, you finally answered. 

He’d stared at you for several seconds. His brow had furrowed and then he exhaled a quiet, humored breath. A smile had started to pull across his face, denting the streak of ink, but he’d lowered his head back to his work. 

You had returned to your work too. But a moment later, when you had glanced at him and found him already looking at you with that same expression on his face, something inside of you had warmed. 

You trailed past the books and scrolls, staring at the desks where that memory had been made. Once, you’d set up your things across the room. Over the course of the year though, your journals and notes had migrated closer to his, until only a few months ago, when the two of you began to work side by side. You found his neatly penned notes in the margins of your observations of the experiments you worked on. Your journals were filling with his thoughts in addition to your own, questions and answers written back and forth to each other. 

I don’t want to do anything other than this, he’d said to you. You wondered if the lie had tasted bitter.  

but you said your vows, and you closed the door / on so many men who would have loved you more

“You don’t have to be here,” Izuna said quietly to you. 

You dug your fingernails into the wood railing around the courtyard for the umpteenth time that evening. The Senju Main House was extraordinarily ornate, and the teitaku had been picked to be the site of both the marriage ceremony and now the reception. Tobirama and Misaki had exchanged their vows beneath the cherry trees that Hashirama grown in the center courtyard. The sight of pearlescent sakura flowers wheeling in the air around them would forever haunt you. 

“If I left now, we both know that would make a scene,” you answered, digging your nails even further into the railing of the engawa. You wouldn’t put it past Izuna to forcibly drag you from the Senju compound if he were so inclined, propriety be damned. 

You could see Izuna frowning at you in your periphery. He leaned over the railing, his elbows propped to support his weight. “Just because you care –” 

“I am not here to support him,” you interjected, the harshness in your voice surprising even you. “I don’t support any of this. I hate all of this. I hate it so much that I wish I didn’t hate it so I could tolerate it more. But if I leave, Izuna,” you cut him a look as he straightened, “it will look suspicious and I don’t think his marriage should start his wife asking him why his research partner left their reception early.” 

Izuna met your gaze and you watched him glance towards where Tobirama stood in his black kuromontsuki. The stark white Senju vajra that were stitched into his haori seemed to glare at you from across the courtyard. They just barely distracted you from the silk shiromuku that peeked out from beneath the crimson irouchikake Misaki wore, or the golden and jewel-encrusted band around her ring finger that gleamed whenever she gestured while she spoke. 

“At least you’re not still staring at him,” Izuna muttered. 

You closed your eyes, clenching your jaw against the roiling in your stomach that threatened to climb your throat. 

“I hate this,” you whispered. 

You sensed Izuna shift closer before he quietly offered, “I’ll go with you.” 

“You’re the Uchiha heir, ‘zuna,” you answered lamely. “If you left, that’d be even more troubling.” 

“But not surprising,” he countered. “The groom, after all, did nearly kill me barely three years ago. Who says I have yet forgiven the attempt?” 

You opened your eyes to the rare sight of Izuna’s concern. His mouth flattened into a line when a tear began to trace down the side of your face. 

“(Y/N)…”

You furtively swiped at the tears as they began to fall, trying and failing to keep your breaths even. 

“I still don’t understand why,” you choked. “Why did he do this when – when –” 

“When it was clear to everyone that you’re in love with him?” Izuna interrupted and you shuddered. He shook his head and cast a backwards glance towards the crowd gathered around the couple. “The only thing about Tobirama Senju that I understand is his battle instinct. Everything else –” He rolled his shoulders. “I would’ve guessed that you knew him better than anyone else.” 

You dropped your chin, tears leaving hot trails down your cheeks. 

“I don’t think I ever really knew him,” you said, shaking your head. “The man I thought I knew, he – he wouldn’t have done this.” 

“I know,” Izuna placated and glanced around. “But if want to have this conversation now, (Y/N), we should find somewhere quieter to do so. Preferably at that yatai near the Akimichi compound. With the dango.” 

The deadpan expression on your face made Izuna wince. 

“Well, I tried,” he puffed and then suddenly reached for your face. You stiffened, but he wiped your tears just as someone stepped up to you. The glint of gold from the kanzashi in her ebony hair and the crimson glare of her wedding robe made you flinch. 

“(Y/N)-san!” Misaki beamed at you. Izuna’s arm fell behind your shoulders, his attempt at solidarity lending you support as you immediately began to look for a way to escape the bride’s attention. The other woman’s brow delicate brow furrowed and she cocked her head at you. “(Y/N)-san, are you alright? You look as though you’ve been crying!” 

“It’s a very emotional day, is all,” Izuna intervened, that ridiculous aristocratic drawl of his saturating his voice. “Tobirama is a very dear friend to (Y/N), with so much of their time spent these years working on their research together.” 

You barely suppressed the urge to slam the heel of your foot down on Izuna’s shoe. 

Misaki gave you a sympathetic smile that made you want to throw yourself over the other side of the railing and hope to hit your head on a decorative rock. “I understand,” she said, and you sincerely doubted she did. “But once he’s settled into married life –” her cheeks darkened and the tang of bile spread across your tongue – “he can help you out in the lab again! Maybe you can convince him to actually show it to me sometime!” She winked at you, as though you might be convinced to be a co-conspirator. 

You managed to smile and hoped it didn’t look like you were grimacing. “Of course,” you answered weakly. 

Misaki’s smiled broadened and then she craned her head, as though searching for – 

“My apologies,” you spoke quickly when Misaki began to frown. “You’ve just reminded me that there’s actually something in the lab that I have to attend to,” you told the woman and shifted away from Izuna. The heir reached for your arm, but you pulled it away as you began to make your exit. 

Only, you collided with the groom. 

Tobirama’s arms rose around you, his hands on your arms steadying you before you could topple over in your haste to escape his bride. The scent of him immediately enveloped you, cedar and jasmine and like every night that you’d spent together with your arms and thighs pressed against one another while your legs dangled off the ledge of the lab’s roof. The memory of his face illuminated by moonlight as he listened to you point out constellations leapt to the forefront of your mind unbidden, and your throat constricted. 

The pressure in your chest cracked and you felt it as tears began to slide down your face anew. Tobirama’s grasp on your arms briefly tightened, but then he clenched his jaw and let go of you. He stepped back, towards his bride, and you felt the crack inside of you further splinter. 

Tobirama cleared his throat, “My apolo–”

Izuna was there in an instant, his arm around your back and the other holding your elbow as though he expected you might fall. You let him lead you away as the conversations in the courtyard became a ringing din in your ears. Your tears blurred your vision as you struggled to not sob outright, hands fisted in the fabric of Izuna’s haori as he led you through the Senju house and down the front steps. 

He was muttering, his curses as colorful as ever, but when you stumbled over your own feet for the third time, he halted. 

“(Y/N) –” Izuna began only to cut himself off with another curse as he snarled over your head, “Go back to your wife, Tobirama.” 

You turned to the sight of him, in his formal black robes with the Senju vajra stitched on both sides of his chest. That he wasn’t glaring at Izuna for the spiteful comment hardly shocked you as much as the fact that he had followed after you. He stared at you and you stared at him. 

Izuna said to you, “Whatever he is about to say, I promise you, you don’t want to hear it.” 

You swallowed thickly and Tobirama took a step forward. 

“(Y/N) –” the Senju heir started. 

“Why?” you asked, your voice splintering around the word as you tried to not react to the sound of your name as he spoke it. “Why, Tobirama?” 

He stared at you and then he looked at Izuna and finally back at you. He clenched his jaw, a breeze curling through his hair and stirring the hem of his robes. Something within you ached, a deluge of memories of every time he’d tugged on the strands of your hair only to tuck them behind your ears again spilling out of your heart like blood from a wound. 

“(Y/N),” Izuna tried again, “We should go.” 

“You don’t understand my responsibilities,” Tobirama said. You tensed, brow furrowing as you automatically began to shake your head. “You don’t –” He exhaled a sharp breath through his teeth. “I have responsibilities to my brother. To my village. No matter what I –” Tobirama pursed his lips. “They come before me. Before everything. Even before you.” 

Only your grip on Izuna’s haori kept you on your feet. 

“You don’t understand,” Tobirama repeated, as though it were that simple. As though he were trying to convince himself as much as you. “And you should have.” 

A breathy, strained laugh escaped the constriction of your chest, having forced its way through the shards of your heart and the tightness in your throat. Tobirama stiffened at the sound of it, and Izuna’s gaze snapped down to you. 

“I think you’re the one who doesn’t understand,” you countered sharply, tears heavy on your lashes. “I don’t think you’ve ever understood anything, and that’s why you research and experiment and then you pretend and you lie and you hide when you something threatens the way you think you understand because it’s different but it’s important and impossible to ignore.” The nights with the starry skies above your heads; the private, shared smiles even among others; the wordless knowing. “Because you’re scared,” you spit out. “And pretending that you understand your responsibilities is better than admitting you don’t know anything about what you’re feeling and facing it and actually fucking trying to understand something new and better and different!” Your breaths were coming faster as you hurled the thoughts that had been forged from months of anger, bitterness, and despair at him. 

“You might not have lied to me about your feelings,” you said, “but you lied to yourself. And now we both get to live with the consequences.” 

Tobirama flinched. He flinched, and you shut your mouth with a humorless laugh. 

Hashirama appeared on the teitaku’s porch and, behind him, Misaki stood in the threshold. You briefly met the clan leader’s gaze and saw the despondent expression on his face when he looked to his brother. 

Responsibilities. You could’ve laughed. 

“Well wishes to your marriage, Tobirama,” you told him dully. Truthfully. “And to your new responsibilities.”

You let Izuna pull you away, turning your back to the Senju heir and his wife. Only when he had cleared the preventive seals around the teitaku did Izuna shunshin both of you out of the compound. You barely registered the receiving hall in the Uchiha Main House before you sank to your knees on the wood and cried. 

and soon everybody will ask what became of you / 'cause your heart was dying fast, and you didn't know what to do

You had just handed off your mission statement and had begun to turn on your heel when Hashirama called after you. 

You paused, turning back to the clan leader, and tipped your head in wordless question.

“Are you –” Hashirama started and then paused, frowning. Madara wasn’t in the village, so the stack of paperwork that was usually divided between their desks had been left in a single pile on the Senju leader’s desk. It appeared only one wrongly-aimed sigh away from scattering all over the floor. Izuna, miraculously, had avoided being shunted into doing his brother’s paperwork himself with the flimsy excuse that, in Madara’s absence, it was his duty as heir to watch over the clan. In reality, he was hiding from the trio of genin that had recently been assigned to him and cursing you at every opportunity for helping to invent this new circle of Hell. 

“I realize you might find this inappropriate for me of all people to ask, (Y/N)-san, but are you alright?” 

It had only been a few months since his brother’s marriage, but you had barely spent any of that time in the village. Hashirama had lifted his bar on your assignments the day after the ceremony, out of pity or mercy, you didn’t care as long as you were able to put as many miles as possible between you and the village.  

“I’m getting by, Hashirama-sama,” you answered honestly. 

The Senju clan leader regarded for you a moment and then stood from his chair. You watched as he crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the sill behind his desk, glancing down through the open windows at the street below. 

Then, he said to you, “He…he loves you, you know.” Hashirama shook his head. “He never told me and he’ll never admit it now but – but it’s clear, after seeing him with you, and then…now. He hides it well, but he can’t hide everything.” He cast you a contrite look. “Not from me, at least.” 

You stared at Hashirama. The man had never quite been your friend – not as Izuna was – but you had come to respect him as you worked both for and with him on the projects the Founders proposed to shape Konohagakure. You remembered how he had looked at Tobirama that day from the porch like he hadn’t known how to reconcile his frustration with his concern for his brother’s best interests. And, you supposed, he still hadn’t. 

“I love him too,” you admitted softly. “I still do. I know I always will. But.” You shook your head and shrugged weakly. “But he made his choice, and we both have to live with it. I just hope that whatever his reasons were, he can find happiness. Find his…” you swallowed, “find his serenity, I guess, in the chaos he’s made.”

Hashirama’s brow furrowed. “Serenity…that’s an odd thing to hope for someone. Especially after all the reasons he’s given you to wish the opposite.” 

You smiled, but it was thin and fragile. “He spent his entire life at war, in one way or another. He’s built his life around believing he has to first serve responsibilities to you, to the village, to keeping the peace. But he’s not really a soldier or a fighter. He’s great at it – at defending and protecting, but he’s better at asking questions and searching for answers.” You exhaled a long breath. “It’s why he asked you to build him a lab. And why he wanted to start the Academy program. So more than happiness, I wish him serenity. But that’s all I can give him. He made it clear that he doesn’t want anything else from me.” 

Hashirama tilted his head at you. “You truly love him.” 

“Not that it matters,” you replied against the familiar ache in your chest. 

“It matters,” Hashirama countered gently. He added, at length, “I wonder what my brother’s happiness could have looked like if he had let his serenity include you.” 

Your line of sight drifted past Hashirama to the open windows behind him. A breeze pushed through the branches of the oak trees that grew around the building you were in, the leaves rustling in the summer heat. It reminded you of another time, when the sun bathed you in warmth and a free man traced patterns on your skin while he narrated a story of his youth to you. 

A soft, rueful smile tugged at the corner of your mouth. “I can’t say, Hashirama-sama.” 

Hashirama nodded his head and sighed. “I should let you go on, (Y/N)-san. You must be exhausted. The daimyo’s palace is not a quick trip.” 

You nodded, made your polite excuse, and exited the office. 

The lobby was quiet, a few shinobi milling around as they went to their own appointments with the clan leaders that kept offices in the village’s central building. You nodded to several as you passed, and they returned the greeting. Outside, there were more civilians ambling about, some with grocery baskets as they made their way to and from the market. A couple leaned on each other, their hands entwined until they sat down at a table in front of a yatai. You looked away, your chest tight. 

You would have to sleuth out Izuna this evening if, in his vain attempts to hide from his genin, he had forgotten you were due back in the village today. You doubted he had though, if the crow that was glaring at you from the ledge of a rooftop was any indication of the Uchiha heir’s longsuffering indignation. 

You smiled slightly to yourself, recalling the look on Izuna’s face when you had presented him with the certificate that had consecrated him as an Academy instructor. It had even been signed by Hashirama and Madara, much to his increasing horror. Your friend had been powerless to do anything except accept his fate and the trio of rowdy genin that had since granted him no measure of peace. 

It was only when you turned down one of the streets in the direction of your clan’s compound that the hairs on the back of your neck prickled and you paused. You searched the area around you, brow furrowed as you reached with your chakra to sense for the shinobi who you had detected. 

“Everything alright, shinobi-san?” 

You glanced in the direction of the older woman who had called out to you. She stood in the narrow yard in front of her machiya, a child on her hip and a watering can held in her free hand. At her feet, a second child sat in the dirt next to a bed of vibrant marigolds. The toddler had her hand fisted around several stalks, the orange bulbs bobbing as she waved the flowers at you. 

You blinked and looked back up at the mother. She raised an eyebrow at you. 

“I…” You closed your mouth and glanced at the flowers again. “They’re beautiful.” 

The woman began to smile and nodded her head. “I should hope so! Took a while to get them to grow with all the packed soil here, but –” She shrugged. “It was worth it.” 

You smiled and agreed, “All great things are.” 

She nodded approvingly and then returned her attention to her flowers. The child waved the flowers at you again, and you forced yourself to resume your walk. 

Your gaze snagged on the setting sun when Izuna’s crow soared over your head, casting its long shadow over the ground. 

“Yeah, yeah, okay,” you told it with a huff. “Tell him I’ll be there soon.” 

The crow squawked at you and then banked to the west, towards the Uchiha Compound. 

Without Izuna’s summons watching over you, you paused again at the entrance to your clan’s compound. Despite yourself – and despite the tightening in your chest – you let yourself look for him. You let yourself see him in the setting sun that cast the street in golden rays; in the gilding on the verdant leaves of the oak and maple trees that lined the walkways; in the chips of mica that glimmered in the creek that flowed beneath the bridge separating your compound from the street. A few cherry trees dotted the street as well, though their pink blossoms were not quite pale enough to remind you of the jagged crack within you. 

Serenity. How curious that was all he had left you with.