Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

The waning day was deeply overcast, the sky painted a dim gray, and thunder rolling far to the west. The half-deserted city was quiet now, where before there had been bustle and life.

There was a bite, a chill in the air; winter was coming, though still months away. The leaves were all gone from the trees.

Shizune had gotten into the habit of praying in front of the cenotaph, ever since the Leaf forces had started to thin and the Rock and Mist got closer and closer… It wasn't much comfort; no one ever answered when she prayed, and there were days when she wasn't even sure why she bothered.

Her hands were clasped together, her eyes closed; her legs were getting stiff. She had no idea how long she had been there, how long she had been praying to nobody; she lost track of time a lot these days, and there wasn't anyone to really come looking for her…

"I had a feeling you'd be here."

Well, maybe someone.

Shizune's eyes fluttered open at the familiar voice behind her; her breathing became slightly more shallow in earnest.

It was testament to how depleted, desperate and distracted the Konoha forces had become that when Kabuto had suddenly shown back up in Konoha a few weeks after the fall of Otogakure to a combined force of Rock and Mist forces, that there had hardly been a reaction at all.

The ANBU was all but decimated, the prison destroyed; no one could be spared to watch him, and he kept such a low profile that Shizune would be surprised if more than a handful of people were even aware that he was in the village. And Kabuto, it seemed, almost had a legal reason to be there: he counted as a refugee from a destroyed village. Refugees weren't officially allowed into hidden villages, especially not hidden villages with which they had been at war, but unofficially they came anyway; a prime example had been when refugees from Uzu no Kuni had flooded Konoha, and to a lesser extent Suna, after the country had been destroyed decades ago.

Trust him to find a loophole.

It was also a testament to how little Konoha cared anymore that nobody bothered to question why a man who had been part of a village intent on the Leaf's destruction had decided to return to Konoha after his village by defection had been destroyed.

It was a little strange to Shizune, treating Kabuto like an acquaintance with whom she had only ever had unpleasant encounters, and she supposed that it could only be because people really didn't care anymore that no one had questioned why two nin from different villages were so comfortable in each other's company.

She briefly looked back. Kabuto was standing under the oak tree; he was too far away, and the light was too dim, to really make out any sort of facial expression, and Shizune doubted she would have been able to make head or tail of him even if there was sufficient light.

"Did someone send for me?" Her voice was surprisingly rusty, or maybe not, considering how long she had been whispering in fruitless prayers. Another roll of thunder grumbled overhead, this time closer; a crow cawed somewhere to the north.

Shizune peered at the names on the memorial.

Rin

Umino Mitsunobu

Umino Suki

Uchiha Obito

On and on the names went as they got closer to the top, Shizune's dread mounting in her stomach as she read the small carved kanji, and when Shizune got to her uncle's name, she had to look away. So many lost… Not worth thinking about…

"No." Kabuto's calm, clear voice rang out over the otherwise heavily silent clearing. A few moments passed, the quiet resounding; Shizune wondered why he was there. "I wasn't aware you were particularly religious."

Shizune shivered as a sudden cold wind hit her; she pulled her black haori closer about her. "I'm not," she answered after a few moments of contemplation. For some reason, the matter of religion was suddenly very important to her; it had never really been a matter of urgent concern to her before. Shizune supposed Death staring in someone's face could do that to a person.

Shizune's mother had at one time attempted to teach her the importance of prayer, but it had been so long since she had last even heard her mother's words that the teachings were more than half-forgotten, and Shizune felt like her subdued prayers were merely half-baked grasps at the real thing, like a child practicing with shuriken when she didn't even know how to handle the deadly silver snowflakes, let alone wield them.

"You've been out here since mid-afternoon. That's a long time to be praying to nobody."

He's been there for four hours and I never noticed. Wonderful, I must be slipping…

The thunder came in even closer. A flock of birds erupted from a nearby tree; something had spooked them.

"The balloon's going up," Shizune murmured quietly, unable to keep her voice from falling to a record low. "The Rock and the Mist are practically on our doorstep. There's hardly any of us left—" she wondered how Kabuto privately reacted to being included in that "we"; he certainly didn't show any outward reaction "—and we're surrounded by our enemy. We could all be dead tomorrow."

An all-too-familiar, unpleasant laugh sounded. "Any regrets?"

Shizune flinched noticeably; she felt her eyes begin to sting. Why did you have to ask that? Isn't it obvious… Shizune wondered if striking in sensitive areas was just something that came as second nature to Kabuto now; if so, she wished he'd unlearn it. Just as ever, he had promptly taken a one hundred and eighty degree turn; civil to merciless in half a second.

But it was a question that deserved an answer. "Enough to fill a lifetime," she conceded quietly. Shizune wondered why she had gone to the cenotaph to "pray" instead of a shrine or a temple.

Soles of shoes hit the stone path, as thunder rolled even more clangorously and ominously overhead, and the sky darkened, and he was standing beside her. "Obviously, if you've been kneeling in front of the cenotaph for four hours."

He put a hand under the crook of her elbow, drawing her to her feet; Shizune started a little at the contact. Shizune and Kabuto looked each other in the eye for the first time that day, and the former saw a strange, subdued half-smile on the other's face.

"It's going to rain. Come inside."