So far away we wait for the day
For the lives all so wasted and gone
We feel the pain of a lifetime lost in a thousand days
Through the fire and the flames we carry on-Dragonforce
Certain incidents, important and otherwise, of Tsunade's life were not supposed to be told, or to be remembered, but for the fact that in getting into her "messes" and out of them again, she succeeded in drawing herself into the atmosphere of peculiar circumstances and strange happenings. She attracted to her supposedly short path the curious adventures of life as unfailingly as meat attracts flies, or as jam attracts wasps.
It was already after midnight, when she had already dozed off in that delicious glow that follows the removal of blood stained clothes and the immediate snuggling under warm blankets, when her consciousness, hovering on the borderland between sleep and waking, was vaguely troubled by a sound that rose indistinctly from the depths of her surroundings, and, between the gusts of wind and rain, reached her ears with an accompanying sense of uneasiness and discomfort.
It rose on the night air with some pretence of regularity, dying away again in the roar of the wind to reassert itself distantly in the deep, brief hushes of the storm. For a few minutes, the heiress' dreams were colored only—tinged, as it were, by this impression of fear approaching from somewhere insensibly upon her. Her consciousness, at first, refused to be drawn back from that enchanted region where it had wandered, and she did not immediately awaken.
But the nature of her dreams changed unpleasantly. The blonde shifted uneasily across the bed with something like a groan of distress. The next minute she awoke, and found herself sitting straight up in bed—listening to the noise of a storm. Was it a nightmare? Had she been dreaming evil dreams that her flesh crawled and the hair stirred on her head? The room was dark and silent, but outside the wind howled dismally and drove the rain with repeated assaults against the rattling windows.
"Are you all right?" Came a voice from the room. Kakashi was sitting upon a chair a few steps away from her. He never left during the nights but never wished to take the space away either, by lying beside the woman.
The utterance travelled to her ears and she instantly sought its source in the sullen darkness. Before she could have done anything about the blindness, the turning of the little paper lantern prevented her from any actions taken.
"Just…Just bad dreams, I guess." She replied whilst her deep golden eyes adjusted to the light, but remained faded with fatigue. Within the following moment, she endeavored to expunge all that was dismal and fearsome from her spirit, but once more found herself halted in completion of anything.
"Here." Kakashi crouched beside her and handed over a soft, white cotton cloth. He added, his voice tainted with ineffable disquietude; "Whatever you dreamt was not real."
The heiress took the cloth and wiped away the drops of perspiration from her bosom, neck and face. Accidents like these were slowly becoming more frequent as she advanced in the stages of carrying a child, let alone two. "Nothing seems real these days." She answered with a faint smile of irony.
"Well…" Kakashi paused to clear his throat and his demeanor slightly changed, although she was certain that he fought hard to keep his body relaxed and casual. Certainly, he was about to say something unusual to his character. "That may be true, but the fact that I love you is very real."
She looked at him queerly out of her faded eyes before she answered. "Why are you telling me this?" Her heart suddenly rushed with a speed of lightning and a heavy wave of sweat enveloped her. She lifted the cloth to her face and repeated her motions.
"Because as it seems, we do not have the luxury for conversing until our mouths run dry. And whenever a second is given to us to do so, we argue. I need you to know that I love you, Tsunade. I do not know how it happened, and when it happened but it is true and it is not going to change. I want you to know, Tsuna. I want you to remember that, especially when you feel lonely. You are not, and you will never be alone."
He spoke with firm conviction, while his gestures upon speaking were soft and light as feather. He was honest in every pore of his being, and for several moments, this kind of abrupt honesty rendered her powerless to any reaction. Ocean forces of the heart broke forth inside her, many which she endeavored to retain.
Love, to her, was not the key to the gates of Paradise; it was the ultimate weapon of suffering. It chained souls together merely to unbind them by the monstrous claws of Fate, tearing at the flesh until the blood dried out. He shouldn't declare her his vincibility; nay should he let anyone know such a horrible truth!
"You are a mad man, Kakashi."
The samurai was surprised at the success of enunciating that sentence, but at the same time he could have bitten his tongue off for having said it, considering the woman's answer. He cleared his throat as he asked; "What?"
"Don't…" She sighed and placed her hand upon his. "No one can know. Don't be vulnerable. You can't let anyone find a weak spot on you."
"You don't understand, Tsuna…" For some minutes he watched her face in silence, his eyes intent and features slightly twitching. He had approached the subject with awkwardness and without circumlocution, for it was something he dearly dreaded, not feeling sure whether it was of heaven or of hell. And now, it seemed, the reaction it evoked could not be worse.
"No, Kakashi. You don't understand." She emphasized the "you" part whilst giving a squeeze to his hand. Their eyes met while she spoke.
"I should have never said a thing…" He thought to himself and only to himself as something in his heart turned coward. Instead of insisting any further about his carelessly confessed feelings, —his nerves must have been too overwrought for that, he shrank back as closely as possible against the wall next to her and remained still as a doornail.
A considerable pause followed, during which the heiress' face flushed. Tears came into her eyes, then fled away quickly, lest they should fall from their softly colored nests. She lowered her voice a trifle as she added. "I love you too. I do."
And the way she said it—so quietly, the words touched somehow with a gentle though compassionate scorn, yet made golden by a burning love that filled her little person to the brim—robbed the samurai momentarily of all power of speech. He could only lean to her and put his arm around her and kiss her with the gentlest effort.
Slowly, and with reluctance, she broke the momentary heaven with words of worry surging from her soul; "I never imagined so much pain, Kakashi. I never imagined so much sacrifice."
"In all honesty, Tsuna, I did not have the slightest of idea that things would go this way. But now I'm glad about it." He replied in a quiet tone and placed his hands upon her cheeks. He loved when she looked at him and he would lose himself in the golden ocean of her eyes.
The bewilderment by his utterance shone evident upon her features. She was at first uncertain whether she heard what she presumed to be hearing, for the sound of the words seemed like some absurd slurring of a drunk man. "How can you say that?"
"We have been living in lies, for who knows how long! It's only a blessing that now I shan't die an ignoramus." He then added with a chuckle and caressed her skin with his thumb; "Now it makes me laugh when I think about how I used to be. Ridiculous. I don't ever want to live in a lie. It's ridiculous."
She thought about his answer and at length concluded; "Well…I guess…You are right." Before she could have said anything else, something outside detracted her attention. The lamp that usually stood all night in the hall had burned itself out, and someone appeared to be stumbling towards their room in the dark.
"Someone is coming." Upon uttering such obiter dictum, the heiress took Kakashi's hands into her own, planted a kiss upon them and slipped off the bed to grab a long necked China vase from the little table that stood in one extremity of the chamber. Kakashi nodded in acknowledgment of the present, and a small orb of lightning circled about his palm.
Whoever was approaching made considerable noise in doing so, but nobody, except them seemed to be disturbed by it. The whole Palace and its vicinity were utterly quiet, and probably everybody was deeply asleep. There were no lights under any of the doors. All was in darkness. It was after several minutes when the footsteps paused a moment before sliding the doors open.
"Holy Yomi, don't kill us!" Hisana screamed as the vase stopped inches away from her forehead.
"Hisa-chan?" The surprise on Kakashi's face must have asked the question, for he did not remember saying anything else.
"We did not want to alert anyone's attention outside, that's why we killed the lights." The Hatake sister replied apologetically.
"You couldn't have been louder, you two." Tsunade shook her head and pulled a long face.
"Well, not my fault Hisa is not quite familiar with the place." Asuma shrugged.
"You were the one bumping into that statue, Asuma." Hisana felt the urge to explain herself, whilst her cheeks were beginning to burn.
"Right." The Shinigami smirked and traveled his dark gaze at the blonde as she ventured to ask.
"Why are you here?" The heiress inquired.
"We uhm….Well, uhm, I wanted to know how uhm you know…" Hisana stuttered and another wave of nervousness reddened her face.
"Hisana was worried about both of you." Asuma confessed instead of the kunoichi, which she did not half like.
"Oh come on, you butthole!" The Hatake sister felt that her tongue was somehow slipping beyond the control of her brain. And she was on the verge of saying all manner of other things of the wildest description when the heiress endeavored to aid her out of the situation.
She did appreciate the girl's worry; it was good to know that people could still care about one another. "I guess we are okay…"
"That's good. Because we should get back to saving Konoha and well, somehow manage to stay alive while succeeding in that. To be honest, I am growing tired of almost losing everyone over and over. This is a nightmare."
"None of us planned it this way." Tsunade admitted, agreeing with her point of view.
"I know, Tsunade-san but it's just not enough anymore. Ojiisan is almost here, just a matter of days. Although you did a great deed ridding the world from Madara, we are still far behind in this fiendish competition."
"What do you suggest, Hisana-san?"
"We could sit down and figure out what the hell is really happening."
"Good idea. I'm getting some blankets, let's gather on the floor." Upon the articulation of those words, she hurried to her bed and grabbed every blanket on and around it.
Within a short minute, they were settled on the cozy ground in one extremity of the room, so that their backs could find support in the walls' cold surface.
"So…Where should we start?" Kakashi asked as he got comfortable beside the heiress.
"Let's see what we know so far." Hisana patted her chin as she was thinking. "King Madara is dead, and that is, I believe, great luck."
"It's not luck…" Tsuna furrowed her eyebrows as she was thinking and a shiver ran down her back as she sought the right words to utter. "I mean…His whole appearance was just so out of his character. He was mad, true, but…When he came…I barely remember a thing, but I do remember sensing his doubt. He was greatly confused and afraid, so he acted violent."
"So you are saying…?" Hisana urged, with decision but sympathy.
"Perhaps I am mistaken, but what if he was…Controlled?"
"Like a puppet?"
The heiress nodded. "Yes."
"You believe that someone else is beyond all of this?"
"Until now I was as certain as Yomi that this whole war was about king Madara. But yesterday…" she resumed calmly, but with calmness due to the terror that ate her very soul and swallowed up all minor emotions. "There is something really important we are missing."
The announcement gave everyone a thrill and a second of pause followed. The Shinigami was picking up on the line of thought. "We might be all just pieces on a chessboard."
"The question is: who is playing the game?"
The question seemed to pique everyone's utmost interest.
"For that, I think, we should find out first which pieces are we exactly?"
"I say Tsunade-san is the Queen." Hisana pondered.
"That makes Kakashi the King." Asuma added, agreeing with the one before him.
"I think that is…Where does Mifune-sama stand then? And Lord Danzo?"
"Well, from the way I see it, they both believe that this whole game is about them, but they are the black pieces against us, the white." Here, she paused and let the thought linger in everyone's head. "Makes sense, doesn't it? After all, they seem damn suspicious to me. Ojiisan is not how he used to be. His behavior is different."
"He has always been different, Hisa-chan. We never really knew him." Kakashi, who was until now a silent listener, at length joined the conversation.
"How can you say that?" His sister's confusion was evident on her face and nonetheless expected.
Kakashi's whole demeanor became graver and he turned with his torso towards Hisana. The tone of his voice betrayed the dreadful truth behind everything enunciated. "Did you know that Ojiisan had allied with Lord Danzo long before we were even born? That our father's sole purpose in life was supposed to be enveloping every village into the Land of Iron? Those bastards' craving for omnipotence has always been as instinctive and ancient as a wild beast longing for the taste of raw meat. Did you know that, Hisa-chan?"
She needed a moment to react. "Are you certain, oniisan?" She asked at length, weakly, and as though fear she longed to disown forced the question to her unwilling lips.
The samurai nodded and resumed. "Lord Danzo had admitted it to me. We are puppets to them, in this game we are playing."
A considerable pause followed, in which Hisana and Kakashi exchanged words of unuttered nature. Both read the faces of the other, as the change in ordinary features sometimes revealed more about the soul's true visions than of anything else.
Upon Hisana's face, it was first surprise that flashed across, followed by wrinkles drawn by the painful recognition of truth. Her eyes narrowed in building anger and at length, in order to maintain her calm, she grated her teeth to drown the unwholesome wrath that so swiftly accumulated within her.
"We'll stick together, Hisa-chan, eh? Blood does not always mean a thing, except with you, I've learnt that much, anyhow." The voice had something gentle and appealing in it, something her brother heard now for the first time. An elbow nudged into her side, and Hisana knew the gesture was not solely a sign of affection but grew partly also from the comfort born of physical contact when the heart is anxious. The touch, like the last words, conveyed an attempt for comfort. Hisana was so surprised he couldn't believe it quite. Kakashi was concerned about her.
The thought touched her, who knew her brother's character inside out, his courage, his presence of mind in danger, his resolution. Kakashi's affectionate worry seemed impossible, a contradiction in terms; he was the kind of man who did not care about the deadly outcomes of decisions, who shrank from nothing, whose spirits rose highest when things appeared most hopeless.
It was indeed, a terrible truth that could have spurred in him such emotion, and the situation in which they were currently in seemed to be no help at all. Hisana saw the signs and read them clearly. Explain them she could not, nor did she try. All she knew with certainty was that her brother, sitting now between her and the heiress, hid a secret terror in his heart, a terror of perhaps losing everyone he cared about. The thought that it could very well be true puzzled the Hatake kunoichi. If Kakashi was worried, there was no doubt it was due to something indescribable and unwholesome.
"We stick together." She replied, affection and tenderness just touching her voice and breaking through a natural reserve that was almost taciturnity. Her brother returned the look; and in that instant passed between the siblings, something of understanding that no words had hinted at, much less expressed. The tie was real, they loved each other, and they were loyal, true.
"So…" She endeavored to return to the moment of discussion. "…the two old men have their own little thoughts about how and who should be controlling the world. King Madara had his own idea about it as well."
"But now he is dead." Kakashi continued her line of thoughts. "I am not seeing the people in the Uchiha king's court rush back here, and I have a hunch that it is because they still have a leader."
"Who? Who can have such power? Or charisma? Or both?" Hisana was confused as she pondered.
"What worries me is that Jiraiya has not returned. If I can recall correctly, he is there too." Tsunade admitted and planted her palms on her growing stomach. In her mind, strange thoughts tore and raced, standing erect before her out of unbelievably immense depths of shadow. Affliction did not serve her in this state and fast were the consequences to manifest themselves. She hesitated an instant to continue and muffled a little groan of discomfort.
There was another long pause, while Asuma kept his eyes on the heiress steadily, though without a trace of expression in them a habit that the nature of a shinobi had taught him. Luckily to him, nobody quite noticed that he made no attempt to engage himself in the conversation. For a Shinigami, it would have been unheard of violation of the rules if he had wished to reveal anything of his knowledge. And by his nature, it was an indubitable fact that he knew almost everything. Shinigamis cleansed the soil drenched with ocean blood after a war. He was aware of the time his companions had left and with that same effortlessness could he predict the cause of them.
Except for one.
The Senju was different. A Shinigami did not see the time of the divine, therefore he could not predict the demise of the dragoness. In that moment of observation, he felt concerned. The heiress was in pain; it seemed to be a kind of uneasiness she had already grown used to, however, the Sarutobi felt perturbed by it. "Are you all right?"
"Yes, I am all right…" Involuntarily, Tsunade clutched Kakashi's arm for support and took a long, deep breath. "They are just a little more active during the night."
Asuma's gaze was fixed upon her face and his whole manner had suddenly become alert and concentrated. "We can continue tomorrow, if that is better."
"No, no…" She apologized and made an attempt to diminish the worry on everyone's face. "We need to figure out who is behind all of this. And also, who is the new leader in Madara's kingdom? What if it is the same person?"
"If that's so, it is not only us who are unprepared. Lord Danzo and Ojiisan seem to be blinded by the desire to force us to surrender, and thus to be completely unaware of a danger far greater than us." Kakashi said calmly, fighting a sudden inexplicable spasm in his heart. He could not take his eyes off the heiress. He should have noticed she was uneasy.
"There is so much we don't know." Hisana sighed and took a glance at Asuma who seemed to be looking out of the window.
"That is true, Hisa-chan. As for Jiraiya-sama," he began a new sentence and fixed his gaze upon the heiress as he spoke; "I remember him in the vault when Asuma and Kurenai were caught. He kept babbling about prophecies. If I am not mistaken, Madara had a scroll about the future, but…" He paused here as Orochimaru's words all came back to him in detail; "That's it! The Serpent has been creating false prophecies about the future! Perhaps Ojiisan has one too! That is why everyone is so obsessed with halting Fate!" The samurai stopped abruptly. Tsunade was conscious of a decided shiver. "They all believe in a forged paper!" The recognition seemed imminent.
A succession of horrible oaths drowned his sentence, and once the others' voice grew silent the samurai went on, in a voice vibrating with anger. "Asuma was taken to help in the summoning of the dead Uchiha army. Damn, how easily I forgot about that! It is not Mad Uchiha who needed it after all, it is the Serpent. He is behind all of this! He wanted us to stay alive, he is the player on his chessboard. And Ojiisan and the Elders have no idea about it. They think the Uchiha threat is over!"
The whole scene at the vault was unforgettably cinematographed on to his mind. None of the details were imagined or invented. And when he told the story with them all complete, the effect was undeniable. His appealing black eyes shone, and much of the charming personality, usually so carefully repressed, came forward and revealed itself. His modesty was always there, of course, but in the telling, he forgot the present and allowed himself to appear almost vividly as he lived again in the past of that day.
This discovery was no shock to her; indeed, she had almost expected it, and the blonde cut in. "This means that the children are safe for now…If Orochimaru needed either of them, including Shuya-kun, we would probably all be dead by now. Do you know what that means, Kakashi?" she said in a much lower and deeper voice than before;
The question shot into him like the thrust of a naked katana. "He needs them." he answered briefly.
"We can't…We can't let Orochimaru win! He must be stopped…" Her voice died away into a thin stream of sound that lost itself in the rustle of the roseleaves climbing in at the window above the group, for she turned her head away from them as she spoke. She looked out into the garden to hide the tears rolling down upon her cheeks.
"We are a step ahead of the Elders, now. We find a way to lower their suspicion and get them out of the picture before it is too late." He answered at length with the sole intention to comfort his beloved, when it was clear she had ceased speaking.
"How are we going to do that?" As she pondered, Hisana was becoming more skeptic and less optimistic. The news worried her as well.
"I do not yet know. Let's meet tomorrow night again. Hopefully, we will know more by then."
"I can start at the Library first thing in the morning." The Hatake sister offered. She was without further missions for now; it did not hurt reading some books, in the meanwhile. "And I can try and find information about the Serpent."
"That is a good idea." Kakashi nodded in apprehension. "Asuma, can you keep an eye on her for me while I go to get information out of the Elders?"
"Sure, Kashi." The Sarutobi nodded and the samurai's request was met with a superior shrug of the shoulders. "I cannot promise I won't get a good nap in the meanwhile, though."
"I don't need a babysitter." Tsunade began but was not allowed to finish.
"The Hell you don't. The Elders still believe we are the threat to stop. Who knows what stunt shall they pull next time? Weren't these past few days enough to you? You need to rest. Rest, just one day, okay? That's all I am asking."
His voice set pleasant waves of sound in motion towards her. The concern in each syllable was like an enchanting melody to her spirit. It did not take much longer to convince her, and she nodded in assent. "Alright."
"We will go now. The Sun is rising very soon." Asuma began and rose on his feet that grew a little numb. "We meet at the Hall after lunch, what do you say, Kashi?"
"Good. I'll gather some information until then." The samurai nodded and aided the heiress to stand up.
"I'll get here at the end of the day."
"11 pm?" Tsunade proposed on a voice weakened by fatigue.
"11 pm is good." Hisana replied and it seemed everyone agreed about the time.
The group of shinobi rapidly dissolved and within a minute or so the chamber regained its lovely silence.
Tsunade retired to her bed and lay down but did not make any motion, as though struck in the face. She was shivering gently. She kept silent and the silence seemed to the samurai long and curious. He heard her heart throbbing, the blood in her veins played strange tricks.
"Tsuna? Everything will be all right, you know that, right? At least now we know more…Everyone will be okay. I promise."
There was no answer.
All she noticed was that Kakashi had gone on talking. The voice, however, sounded far away and distant. It was all unreal, she felt, as she became a key participant in a war she did not see once coming, and fell in love, in a dangerous, insane love that is… Yes, Kakashi damned be his soul, had gone on talking. He had said kind, sincere things. Damned be his soul! His teeth should be smashed for that, for comforting her with so pure of a heart.
"Just stop." She muttered between her teeth and the accumulated anxiety, affliction, and wrath in her tensed every muscle within. "Hand me that—…" but the sentence was cut in half. In that very instant, the dragoness's body liberated itself from the unbearable tension by throwing up the soup of dinner.
"I'm sorry…" With hurried yet uncertain motions the heiress grabbed the reeking blanket and folded it tightly before Kakashi could have seen everything unwanted.
"Let me help you." Kakashi offered, but the woman's embarrassment was too great to accept it.
"I can manage." Tsunade stammered to the sliding doors and put the blanket into the laundry bin. Tomorrow the maids should take it early in the morning. "Could you get me—…" Upon attempting to speak, she needed a moment to take a deep breath. Another wave of nausea passed through her. "…some beetroot juice? I put it at the window to stay cold."
"Of course, Tsuna."
They both enjoyed the pause that followed. Tsunade tossed and turned a couple of times before she at length found a comfortable way to fall asleep, whilst Kakashi returned to his chair and read. Time to time he stopped to listen to the wailing, half-human cries of cats upon the tiles at night, rising and falling with weird intervals of sound. Soon they'd return to their nests made of cloths and sleep through the early hours of dawn.
Little later, for concentrate he could not on the book, the samurai left his chair and stood at the window, gazing around into the fading darkness. Dawn was at the door and the incumbent blackness was gradually dissipating. He lost himself again in the thoughts of the past.
The silence he enjoyed without surprise, but inside his soul was loud, restless. It was the pain and suffering in the other that occupied him. The dark rims beneath her heavy eyes, the evidence of sleepless nights, of long anxiety and ceaseless dread, all afflicted him. The man was overwhelmed with some great sorrow and he could have very well stayed there standing until morning if it depended on him. But it did not. And while he was engulfed in concern, having escaped into the depths of his consciousness, the woman noticed Kakashi's odd motionlessness.
After a few moments, Tsunade's lift parted for a whisper. She turned her head and looked at him through half-closed eyelids. "Why don't you come here? There is enough space…"
"Are you certain?" He uttered, barely audible to the woman.
"Yes." She nodded and lifted her head a little. "Come…"
Kakashi did as was offered and upon a reluctant moment or two, his body found peace beside the other. They passed into a deep slumber a moment later and the rest of the night was peaceful.
The weak sunshine grew to dazzling radiance and cast its bright warm rays upon them. The shadows paused in their dance upon the grass, deepened a moment, and then melted into air. The flowers of the fruit trees laughed with their little silvery laughter as the wind sighed over their radiant eyes.
Suddenly, the sliding doors opened and the Elder Council's messenger came in and the two sprang from the bed as if the bells of war were rung. "My deepest apologies, "Kakashi-sama, Tsunade-sama, but Lord Danzo sent me, he said it is urgent."
"What is urgent?" Tsunade groaned and gripped the samurai's shoulder for support. She needed a second or two to gain strength, and then gently fixed the kimono around her body.
"The heiress of Kirigakure has arrived. You are kindly requested to come with me, Kakashi-sama."
At the same time…
The scene, to her eyes, had not changed. The houses, the low shore, the land with abundant trees and forest life, the vast open sky above her head, all looked exactly the same as when she first entered Konohagakure 20 years ago, during an ordinary political conference or some sort, accompanying her father, the Mizukage. A child of three then, she was now a woman of 23, old for her years of fertility. Her beautiful face wore an anxious rather than a tender expression. The return was perhaps not quite as she had pictured it, for the motive behind it was unwholesome and cruel, no matter from which side she confronted the problem.
The smell of long-forgotten days came to her nose with its sweet, painful pang of youthful memories. But as she breathed them in, they burnt her lungs. Even the air disdained her presence and the admirable loveliness of the land now only aroused hate within her. How fine, she thought, could have been to return here, amidst the old familiar fields with sea and trees about her, and people smiling with those bright eyes and hearts, which she could so easily recall to her mind.
Those faces now were hateful to her, and as she walked, a shiver of agony ran over her. Across her mind, the closer she was guided to the Palace, detestable images flitted but she thrust those pictures back, deep down inside herself. There was no other way, her father told her loud and clear.
The self-control, the strong, even violent will that the face betrayed, came into operation instantly and she gulped the affliction down her throat. She had to marry the Lightning Prince and her land would never cease to bloom. The price of their freedom was her becoming a bird in a cage, living her life in a land she once loved and would soon grow to hate.
The Palace was filled with life when she entered. The hustle-bustle was sickening to her taste and she took another breath and began fidgeting with her fingers. She recognized the faces of the Elder Council, even noticed some of the maids who had aged with grace. Amidst those men of high class, there was that one making her teeth grate with anger; a man with those steady eyes, with that square jaw and determined mouth, certainly did keep all his threats.
"It is a pleasure to have you here, Lady Mei." Began Lord Danzo and stepped towards the woman.
Her eyes were fixed upon his own, but her face began to change with that instinctive anger she was fighting to retain. "Thank you, Lord Danzo." Was what she pronounced, but deep inside an irresistible desire came to her to question him, to threaten him back in an effort to retain the right to her normal life.
"How long was your ride here, again?"
"About 9 hours. One of the horses was lost when bandits attacked us."
"I am so sorry to hear that!" His words reeked with feigned compassion. "In this case, I believe it would be best if we discussed the details about our little contract later."
"Indeed, Lord Danzo." began the heiress, and then paused, evidently to choose her words with care. "I am very tired and all of my samurai need rest. Please send someone to show where they can clean themselves up and then rest a few hours." She sighed and her heart ached, so fiercely it did for her land. If this was the only way to help them survive, then be it so, she will be irresistible.
A curious expression now flickered over her weather-hardened face as she glanced about the mighty walls of the Palace. Before she could have recalled further bits of memories, hushed murmurs and unuttered sounds filled the air for a moment.
"He's coming…" She heard them say.
"Who's coming—?" She began sharply and then stopped as she perceived the footsteps of the figure of a man moving towards them upon the stairs. An uneasy light flashed for a moment in front of her eyes as the large doors slid open, and the eyes accustomed to the new sight. A slight shiver passed from her small person as she beheld the other. "Kakashi Hatake."