Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

Hideki Gou had seen a lot of things in his long life, from gruesome battles and pillages to murder and riots. But never, never has he witnessed a babe - one not even a year old by the looks of her - gaze into a person's eyes with the level of comprehension he would have expected to see from someone who was much older than a measly couple of months.

Watching the gray-haired child sleep soundly against his chest, directly over his heart beat, Gou gave a tired huff.

They had been searching through the village for survivors of the attack since daybreak and imagine his surprise when the wail of a child reached his ears and drew him to the sight of a tiny bundle cocooned in the arms of a corpse.

With cautious steps he moved towards the two bodies and carefully removed the child from the dead woman's grasp. Immediately upon transfer black eyes snapped open and snagged onto his and for a second Gou couldn't breath.

Spotting the fear in those wild, tearing eyes wasn't very difficult if one knew what to look for and it swam in her depths. It knocked the air out from his lungs with a silent whoosh, only releasing him when those lids lowered and the brawling resumed.

It had been brief but what he glimpsed in those eyes was more than enough. Bringing the young one to his shoulder he pulled his old paternal instincts out of its retirement and coddled her close.

If anyone had the will to live it was the child surrounded by death.

That much, he knew for sure.

She hadn't wanted to be a doctor for the reason most would think. Her inspiration wasn't money or for the self-fulfilling sensation of saving a life, it was simply for the pursuit of knowledge.

Her knowledge and that was that.

She had been sick, weak in a way that everyone knew would kill her. She had sat in her stark white hospital room for years watching her parents discuss her slowly rotting body like she had already died. She had sat in her paper thin gown for so long, while they brushed off her concerns about wanting to know what the doctor said - she never understood a single thing they talked about - before she decided she would learn what she needed to know.

She refused to let anyone leave her in the dark about her own death so she mustered up the remaining stubbornness festering at the base of her spine and told them just what she was going to do.

She would learn the human body and there was nothing that would change her mind.

She supposed seeing their normally frail and sagging daughter so set on something was what swayed them. That or it was the guilt they felt clawing at them for always holding her at a distance.

But really she didn't really blame them for doing so. After all she could have requested their presence more often than she had, but she had been thinking about them in the same retrospect.

The white walls and needles were her family, it was easier that way for everyone.

So they gave her books, they gave her articles, they gave her a teacher, and over the years they gave her the tools to understand.

The nurses often impeded her progress with a sigh about wearing herself out but with the flashlight hidden in her night drawer she eagerly overcame that obstacle.

So far gone in her thoughts about her illness and how it worked, she fancied herself to become a doctor - if only to understand a bit more on her own disease - even going as far as to quietly declared that to be her goal.

If she knew how to do something why not put it use? Especially since it seemed she was getting just a bit stronger everyday even if it was with the use of medications and extensive procedures.

And so life went on and so dwindled her time. Soon the pills and surgeries stopped working, soon the treatments and hopes ran out, and she knew what was next. Years of looking at the graphs the nurses were too careless with told her everything she needed to know. Besides who would worry about what the dying girl might have seen?

Mary Kiddo suffered severe heart palpitations and slide into cardiac arrest within a year of her proclamation. The flat line ringing distantly in her waterlogged ears, she had died before the nurses could even reach her room.

Darkness blanketed over her and she couldn't feel a thing.

But then everything shifted and pulled. One moment she was lowering her heavy lids and the next she was lifting them to stare into a pair of lifeless green eyes and red flames.

A frightened scream bubbled out of her mouth at the sight, sliding into the air with a piercing wail and in that instant she knew something had gone very wrong.

Apparently there was more to dying than what met the eye.

Edit: 12/16/15