Suiren watched the lotus flowers with a half thought forming while the form before her slept and breathed steadily. She didn't know when he'd awaken, but she'd only been able to take a few moments throughout the day to come watch over him. At first she hadn't had any time at all, but she wasn't thinking about those hardships.

Of what was happening to the Uchiha. Of what was supposed to happen. What her hand in things were.

Instead her eyes were captivated at the interesting duplicity of the situation.

The lotus flower had always been a symbol of rebirth. She'd remembered reading an article about cultures in that far away world that they'd buried their dead loved ones with a lotus to welcome them into their new life. Because reincarnation had been something some had believed in. There was a word for it, she thought.

Lotus-born.

Shisui was similar to her in that way, despite them never really crossing paths before.

He had drowned.

She had drowned.

She'd been born from that chaos, her death spurred on to give her life in a new world. Like the lotus flower born from water. She supposed she was more alike him than anyone else she knew, and that was saying something.

If—no, when—he woke up, he'd have been born for a second time. This time he'd be granted something she'd gifted to him, although she wasn't sure if it was that. What if she'd ended up ruining the plot? Ruining the reality of her world and changing a happy end to a sad end. What if she already had.

She looked at his eyelashes, and felt a strange feeling take place. It wasn't quite hate . . . it was dislike.

For his eyes. For the Uchiha. For her inability to leave well enough alone. For her stupidity. For her weaknesses.

It's those damn eyes, she thought. She hated the position she was in, that her friend was gone and somewhere no one could reach him. That she had a hand, no matter how small, in allowing murder to take place under everyone's noses. At the hands of someone so innocent. She realized something else. Itachi had been born through liquid a second time, too.

Warmth slipped down her cheeks, and she rubbed at the wetted flesh there, still soft and untouched by the scales that were continuing to form around her body like armoured plates. They weren't as hideous as she'd thought they'd be, but neither could she imagine anyone being attracted to them. She was still soft despite them, but she was also hard now. But that didn't matter seeing as she couldn't change it.

And yet, she'd managed to change everything.

The koi jumped and jumped, and though a few gave up in the end to swim back and join the others who inevitably failed, a few stayed. A few kept at it. Their bodies glistening in the dying day, and even when the night was darkest they kept their bodies moving. Under the moonlight they looked like stars.

To him, the sight gave him courage for himself. For even if he didn't have the same amount of persistence and bravery as his treasured koi, and though there sat demons high above the water fall, and around the lake to laugh at their efforts, he felt no sense of unease. The oni smiled, and watched them a little longer. He had faith.

Even when the other demons took to heightening the waterfall, making it fall larger and more hazardous, he wanted to see the koi be victorious.

So he played a few tricks of his own.

Shisui woke slowly, and thoughts filtered themselves even slower, but he knew one thing.

Is this death? He questioned, and when he received no certain answer he opened his eyes, expecting the absolute darkness of being blind, what he saw instead confounded him.

Perhaps he was in heaven.

A surprised feeling surfaced within him when he spotted an angel not far his side, her body slumped in sleep, but he couldn't mistake that inhuman beauty of hers. The skin and hair of snow and clouds, he wasn't sure if all angels looked like blank easels, but he didn't mind if they were.

His breath was locked in his chest just at the sight of her.

But she was also a child, at least three years younger than him. But then again she was an angel, and appeared ageless in her appearance. She shifted in her seat, and blinked in further surprise when her eyes batted open to reveal the eyes of something feline in nature. She seemed to stop breathing herself when they caught eyes, and her lips parted in surprise.

Something about her reminded him of someone he knew in life. Someone he'd grown up watching with Itachi, the two prodigies of their generation. Her genius was lesser than his dearest friend, but he'd remembered her quick movements during her chuunin exams, when she'd unleashed hell on her opponent in the form of explosive seals and cunning intelligence.

But this wasn't her. That girl hadn't had the eyes of a cat, nor was pigment-less. She'd had color to her skin, a slight tan that came to most who worked like them. That and she'd always been quick to blush. He couldn't imagine this look-a-like blushing. He also shouldn't be surprised it was Suiren's likeness the angel had; she had a reputation that made her a girl others not likely to forget, although she hadn't been spotted in recent times. He frowned. People really hadn't seen her in the last few years aside from an incident with T&I, one he'd been apart of. He'd nearly forgotten his hand in that.

Shisui had to shake his head of the thought. He didn't know why he kept thinking of her when he was in the presence of someone clearly entirely different.

"You're finally awake," she murmured, and he shrugged. Wasn't he dead or something? "Shisui—god this is awkward."

He frowned. Something was feeling increasingly off. Did angels talk like that?

"Is this heaven?" he asked, and looked around while he did so. It had to be. The venue was so beautiful he could cry, and he could also see here. He'd been blind right before he'd died, not having any eyes, and now he saw better than he'd ever had. If that didn't mean he was dead, he didn't know what did. It wasn't like it was possible to regenerate limbs or something.

He looked at the water he was seated in, and felt himself cringe. Drowning had not been pleasant, that much he could attest. But here he was, in a body of water, that glowed green and held lily pads and lotus flowers twirling around.

"No?" the girl squeaked, and his gaze snapped to her. "No," she repeated, this time more sure.

"Then where is this?" He suddenly felt a wave of apprehension. If this wasn't heaven then where was he?

"Uzushio, which by the way, I have things to tell you, important ones that might change everything." Her voice was a whisper at the end.

"So I'm alive, and not dead, and I'm in Uzushio?"

His head hurt, but not in the painful way where it actually hurt, he felt like he couldn't even feel an ounce of the pain he should've been feeling. Instead his mind was boggling and shaking trying to comprehend how he could end up in one situation and then suddenly in another, completely different one.

"Are you crazy? Or am I?" The latter was certainly possible.

He thought she was going to tell him something equally outlandish. Instead, she spoke words he dreaded to hear. She told him things he refused to believe, and about things he couldn't fathom.

Shisui felt empty listening.

Suiren had prepared a room for him in advance inside one of the buildings inside Niwa, and told him things she herself had been told she could tell him. Things like this being a summons village, and all the fishes around them were her contractors. Or something.

Shisui had been surprisingly quiet at her news, and she wasn't sure if he believed her at all. She could see how someone in his situation would just shut down, but she hadn't expected that from Shisui. He'd always seemed the go-getter type, but maybe even those kinds of people had a breaking point. It made her feel nervous, not that she hadn't been feeling like that from the moment he'd set eyes on her.

And he'd had eyes! Both of them. It confused her.

Itachi was supposed to have one of his eyes, and so did Danzo. At least that's what it'd been like originally. That's what it should've been like now, except maybe the spring did more than mend broken bones. Maybe it did things Naruto had done at the end and could probably still do and gave him back his eyes. She knew it was that the moment she looked within herself and found the spring still churning with the green chakra of medicine.

Her eyes widened a fraction. That shit was potent. Her mouth went dry.

"I'm not sure if you should come back just yet," she murmured. "I'm already in deep shit as it is."

He looked at her oddly. "You would take me back to Konoha?"

"S-sure," she said and almost immediately regretted it when his eyes shined brightly. That had done it to rev his engines just a bit. "But not right now." She didn't want to die so soon in this life.

But maybe the Uchiha clan wouldn't be so pissed with her if she brought back Shisui. She was still in her kind of asylum with nature or whatever, learning what it meant to be the Koi Sage. Really she'd become close to her fish in the time she'd been there. Three years was a long time, and though she visited her home often, and she was getting better at staying farther and farther away from the spring with no ill-effects, she somehow felt adrift when not close enough. It was a disconcerting feeling.

"What's your name, by the way," he cocked her a look and she frowned.

"You know me." At least she had thought they'd seen each other a few times through her formative years. He'd hung with Itachi and so had she from time to time, although they'd never been together as a group of three. It was more she was Itachi's go to friend when Shisui had been busy and she'd been free. All they'd do then would be to train. She wondered what fun between Itachi and Shisui was but couldn't imagine them getting up to mischief, not that she and Itachi did either.

He blinked, regarding her with newer eyes, "Suiren?"

She nodded, and was surprised to see the blush reddening his cheeks. She had to admit he looked handsome while doing it, but she shook her head of those thoughts immediately.

"You look different."

As always when confronted with this, she rolled her eyes, "Yeah, I know. Man have I not kept in touch with people or what." The thought caused her to laugh, and she smiled. Maybe she was a bit crazy now that she thought about it. Throughout the years following her run in with T&I, she'd taken to visiting only a few people when she'd had time to when she wasn't training.

It was almost like a passing dream, the way it happened right before the nightmare it came.

"If your curious as to why I'm like this, it's because I'm a sage now." Not that she wasn't just a bit embarrassed about it though. She knew she looked strange, and most likely not in the good way, if there ever was a good way. "Like my father, although I'm Sage Mode all the time rather than only sometimes. Makes me look funny, I know, but it's whatever."

She wondered why she was telling him all this, but for some reason she felt like she could tell him all her secrets, and that had her stopping right there.

Just because he was in a similar situation as her didn't mean they should automatically be best buds. She wasn't usually this quick to trusting. Mostly it would be easier pulling teeth. She shook her head inwardly. It was hormones, surely. Place any other handsome boy in front of her and she'd feel those teenage hormones kick in and make her go crazy. She'd been through this before in her past life.

That's what it was.

"That's . . . " he didn't seem to know how to finish that sentence. She wasn't sure either.

"I'll take you back tomorrow. For now, I need rest as it's been a long day, so goodnight."

With that, she left him in his temporary room and headed to her own.

Unedited and Posted: (11/29/2017)

A/N: I'm baaaaacccckkkk!

Hi, this was a long time coming, hmmmmm. I really need to rewrite the eleventh chapter, it was so rushed, at least I remember that much when writing. Only points I forgot to stress when it came to kidnapping the two ninja she had gotten a hand on, besides her friends, was that Suiren has no coils, she literally took them by surprise and knocked them out the way any good ol fashioned person does, straight to the noggin. Because people can't sense her unless they know how to sense nature chakra. I think that's it, also I was kidding about her arm you guys. I wouldn't do that (okay I so would).