Tandoki woke a few hours after Kame did, at which point most of the freed legal shinobi had left. Kame was secretly glad that Miriki had been the one to break to them the news of Orochimaru's poisonous grasp over them, and apparently the Kosuki had done an admirable job of delivering that bad news; twenty or so shinobi from undeterminable villages were in various positions sitting or standing around their sheltered camp in a cave.

This is still bad, Kame reminded himself, forcing down the rising hopefulness and taking a deep look into the whole situation. Miriki said that fifteen of them left, but I have the instructions for a cure. We can't hunt them all down in fourteen days- we only have thirteen days left to destroy the bases in the lands of Lightning, Water, Whirlpool, Fire, and Sound. Can we really even spend any more time here? If we just leave the scroll with the instructions of fixing it and…

"Comma?"

Damn, he thought. Tandoki was standing there beside him, tugging on a sleeve and turning her pleading eyes on him. When she saw that she had his attention, she continued in a trembling tone that reminded him too much of the one she'd carried when they'd first rescued her. "Is Haku gonna be okay?"

"She's gonna be fine," Kame said with forced confidence. "She's just sleeping right now."

"Mmkay." Tandoki nodded, then turned to look at Miriki when his hands came down on her shoulders.

He smiled at her and said, "Can you let me and Comma have a little talk? Alone?" When she scampered off over to Haku, he continued in a more serious tone: "Okay, I spoke with the freed prisoners, and most of them agreed to a plan to take the cure to the Hidden Star. They'll wait there until they can get someone skilled enough to deliver the cure, and the village can protect them."

Kame opened his mouth to reprimand Miriki for the stupid plan, but found himself unable to find any flaws in it. Huh, he considered, for once I guess he actually got serious. "Okay, so what about Tandoki? Are we sending her along?"

"Yeah, that was the plan," Miriki shrugged. "She almost died three times yesterday, we can't keep her with us."

"I agree." It was surprising how much he didn't want to see her go, but the same affection causing that desire to keep her with him also fueled a desire to keep her safe; as strong as he might have been, those two clashed with each other and ultimately his rational thoughts of the strategic weaknesses he brought were what broke the tie. "Are you… are you sure we can trust them all?"

Miriki crossed his arms, getting a little more mischievous in tone. "All of them? Nah, but we can absolutely trust most of them. There isn't anyone from the Whirlpool, so no progress on finding Tandoki's home, but besides that there's a pretty even mix out there. I-" he suddenly stopped talking, glancing off to the side, and then grinned with altogether too many teeth and took off.

Kame struggled onto his feet, feeling awfully sore in his muscles but surprisingly unhurt in his calf. Looking down, he saw that someone had bandaged (and presumably healed) the wound from the day before. Unfortunately, none of that helped his taxed body and chakra network, and fixing those would take gradual use for hours, starting now.

When he stepped out of the cave, he saw what his flippant teammate had been so distracted by: a teenage girl in a Hidden Mist headband with long green hair and eyes, looking appraisingly at Miriki as he approached. Another few awkward steps brought Kame close enough to hear what his friend was saying with absolute confidence: "So, besides my skills at prison breaking, what brings you here?"

"You're gonna have t' go first," she replied, coming across more playful than defensive with a thick drawl that was mildly familiar to Kame.

"Oh, I'm on an assignment from the Shinobi Union to eliminate Orochimaru's entire empire," he said deftly, stating it like a fact in order to sound humble while still touting himself. "I'm the leader, and then there's Haku and Kame, my henchmen. We- or, should I say, I already took down five bases pretty much on my own; six if you count my crow army getting rid of the scum keeping you prisoner."

"Wasn't there only… one crow?"

Miriki shook his head gravely. "That's what they thought, too. The invisible crow army gets 'em every time." She giggled, and he kept it up: "You can't fight what you can't see. Actually, little-known fact here; if the crows had been summonable during the Fourth Ninja War, Madara Uchiha would have almost immediately been pecked to death by invisible crows and everybody would have called it a day."

The girl's eyes widened in surprise, either mock or real. "Wow… and where're ya going now?"

"Off to Orochimaru's next base, and then the next," Miriki declared. "I'm gonna destroy his entire empire single-handedly."

Kame interjected himself there. "'Single-handedly? Really?"

"Oh, you're walking around already." Miriki sounded less than ecstatic. "Great, then Kame, please meet Awadatsu. Awadatsu, say hi to Kame."

"Hi!" She waved at him, voice chipper and smiling like an old friend, then offering a hand to him. "I'm Awadatsu- oh, oops; Miriki already told ya that, huh? Anyway, it's great t' meet ya. Miriki told me all about you!"

Kame tried to muster that same blind joy in his reply, but failed to find it. "Oh. I'm Kame… nice to meet you too, I guess."

"See? He's lost when it comes to talking to other people, like I said." Miriki was smug enough to once again annoy Kame into speaking up more.

"Hey!" He turned to Awadatsu, finding a little bit of more mundane dread replace the existential stuff that had been plaguing him recently. "What else did he say about me?"

"Well…" Awadatsu looked upwards as if trying to remember something, then straight-facedly began recounting: "He said you're his sidekick who follows him around on his ninja adventures, he said he rescued ya from Orochimaru just like he rescued me… let's see, what else? Oh right, he also said ya-"

"Hey, let's not tell him about that part, okay?" Miriki interjected, placing a hand on her shoulder and turning her to look at him. "How about we skip to the part where I explain the situation to Kame, alright?"

"So now you want to- you know what? Forget it," Kame said. "But Awadatsu, I'm not his sidekick and he didn't save me from Orochimaru… Awadatsu?" She didn't seem to be paying attention to him, staring at Miriki unabashedly with a slight smile on her face, so he trailed off awkwardly and then coughed his way into a new subject. "Okay, nevermind on that. Miriki, we only have thirteen days to bring down five bases. We head out right… now…"

No, he reminded himself, we can't. Haku. A glance towards her lying there unconscious sent a surprising amount of awful memories through his head. How many times has it been? It never, ever gets any better, does it? Is this really a shinobi's life, watching their friends in pain?

The sounds of Awadatsu's happy clap sent his mind back to the present, where she was smiling even more than she had been before. "I'm gonna come with ya guys!"

"What? No!" Kame said, just as Miriki took a very different track.

"Sure!" The Kosuki grinned and high-fived her, apparently acting like Kame hadn't even opened his mouth. "Awadatsu, welcome to the Miriki force- now twice as attractive on average!"

Kame winced at that one, but she seemed to eat it right up. He thought Haku was significantly prettier; in fact, there was something that he just couldn't put his finger on about Awadatsu that repulsed him a little bit. The more he looked at her, the more it irked him…

"We're leaving now," said one of the older ninja still lingering in and around their camp, now gathered at the cave entrance. "Miriki, thank you for all you and you team have done for us."

"We're not-" Kame tamed his annoyance once again, realizing what this meant. He turned towards Tandoki, who was kneeling next to Haku and playing with something in her hands. When he approached her, his heart sank- it was the little blue flower he'd folded for her days ago, now looking significantly worse for the wear and putting a lump in his throat. "I… Tandoki…"

"Yeah, Comma?" She fell on her back to lie there and look at him upside down.

"We need to…" He bit his lip. "Tandoki, I think it's time that…" Those damn eyes, wide open with confusion and innocence, made the lump in his throat grow until it refused the passage of any more words.

"Huh?"

"I… we have to say goodbye now, okay?"

Tandoki misunderstood, simply nodding and saying, "Bye!" but making no move to leave or show signs of sorrow. Kame half-glanced around for assistance but got himself back on track with a solid reminder that this was his job and no one else's.

"I'm really happy that I got to spend some time with you, but you need to find your mom and dad, and I… we… can't take you there." She widened her eyes and mouth a little more, the first little hints of sadness creeping into her confused expression. "It's time to say goodbye, Tandoki-" she made a small sobbing noise, but he kept going. "Hey, hey, it's okay, you can go with your parents, right? Don't you want to see your mom and dad?"

"No!" She spun to face his leg and grabbed his pant with balled fists, sounding a lot more afraid than anything else. "No, no, no… I don't wanna…"

"Why not?" Kame hoped, somewhat unrealistically, that maybe he could reason with her by bringing up the two people she definitely loved more than the three ninja who'd picked her up.

"'Cause… 'cause… I don't wanna go back…"

Kame began to sense something awry, but he couldn't put his finger on it. "Back where?"

"They stopped… they told me to run, 'cause the monsters came, an' then they didn't run…" She wiped a tear out of her eye. "An' then I hided, an' then the monsters still came."

"I… uh…" Kame sat down heavily. "What… are your parents dea-"

"Tandoki, don't think about that," Miriki interjected from the cave mouth, striding in quickly and gently turning Tandoki to face him. "I promise we won't leave you, but we have to go stop the monsters now… we have to protect you, okay?"

"But mommy an' daddy tried to-"

"Tandoki," Miriki said, his eyes meeting hers and his expression caring. "I promise that we're gonna come back, and I promise that if you stay strong and quiet, you can spend as much time with us as you want, but you have to be brave."

"I…" She seemed to be out of danger for throwing a tantrum, but her rapid blinking suggested quieter and calmer tears incoming.

"Wakara is gonna watch you for a little while, okay?" A kind-looking woman in a civilian's dress but a Hidden Star headband approached with open arms, and Tandoki didn't resist getting pulled up and walking off hand in hand with her new guardian.

Surprisingly, Tandoki turned with tear-streaked eyes and smiled back at them, offering one last "I love you, Meeky, Comma, Haku!"

"I… love you too," Kame responded with more sincerity than he thought.

( ) - ( ) - ( ) - ( ) - ( ) - ( ) - ( )

It was nightfall by the time Haku woke up, and Kame had been practicing with Emperor a safe distance away from her and Miriki, but the instant he heard her quick inhalation and shift to a sitting upright position in her bedroll, he was dismissing the puppet and bolting over to her. He landed on his knees beside her and opened his mouth to speak, but the hundred questions and reassurances and declarations jumbling around in his head all tried to come out at once and ended up jamming and letting out only a quiet squeak.

She didn't notice the noise or even Kame himself, and her eyes simply gazed forward with extreme distress towards the treeline. Confused, he followed her gaze and found nothing but the same trees, only to be all but tackled from the side by Haku, who was now quietly crying with two arms wrapped around him. His mind went out of panic mode almost immediately at her familiar smell and pressure, leaving him to hug her back from his lying position on the ground and wonder, is it wrong that some part of me enjoys this…?

In time, the tears subsided and the sobs grew weaker and weaker until she pulled back and wiped her face with a coat sleeve. Their eyes met and his approaching torrent of questions froze up once again, which meant that the silence went on for several long seconds. I need to learn how to-

"God, finally, that was forever without even making it to first base," Miriki complained loudly. "If you two are just about finished with your sort-of-but-not-quite flirting, can we actually talk about what happened?"

Once again, he displayed that uncanny knack to annoy the living daylights out of Kame and then follow it up with a transition that rendered all that rage impotent. At the mention of the prior events, he lost the heart to rip into his Kosuki teammate and instead glanced back at Haku, who looked completely lost as to what to say.

"Haku, you can't blame yourself for what happened, okay? You did what you had to to save my life." Kame did his best to channel as much forgiveness and reassurance into those two sentences as possible.

"I'm so, so sorry, I almost…" Haku bit her lip and then changed angles. "I don't think I'm ever going to be able to control it…" she said, which put off Kame a bit- Why is that what she's worried about?

"Of course you can't; it's pure evil, nobody could. I'm amazed that you can even keep it inside you all the time," Kame said, choosing his words carefully to cast no blame or guilt on her.

"But I… you almost died, and it saved you- I could save you, when I used it." Kame saw now the dangerous path her mind was taking, but didn't have the faintest clue how to stop it. "I have to learn how to keep it under control-"

"No!" Kame snapped, before continuing on with a softer tone. "No, you can't… it's evil, and if you mess up one time then it could cost everything."

"But the Tanikage, and Orochimaru, and even the other Kage," she protested faintly, almost seeming to argue against herself rather than Kame. "They want us dead, and we can't stop them without-"

"That monster wants us dead, too!" Kame regretted the harsh words, but the thought of that evil presence and what it had almost done to him kept the words coming. "We have to think of other ways, ways that don't involve trying to control something you obviously can't!"

"What other way?" Haku's retort was angry, angrier than she's ever been towards him. "How? Are you going to fight them all off by yourself? You can't protect me from everything, Kame!"

The words were factually true, but that didn't make them any less immediately impactful to Kame's mental state. "If you let that monster out," he seethed, "Then you're exactly the monster that the Kage wanted to execute."

Kame caught the briefest look at her face, which wore absolute betrayal that pierced his angry bubble, but then she disappeared in a blur of purple towards the trees. Miriki, for once, had no smart comment or anything at all to say, which left Kame with nothing to think about but the rapidly blooming regret in his heart. "Haku, I…"

But she was gone.

( ) - ( ) - ( ) - ( ) - ( ) - ( ) - ( )

That night was the longest one Kame could remember, most likely because he spent the entire time awake and hoping that Haku would come back. At first, he wanted to apologize, but more thinking time let him convince himself that he actually just needed to explain how she'd misunderstood and what he'd said wasn't actually that bad. In the middle of the night, further overthinking led to the conclusion that it was actually all Miriki's fault, but when the first cracks of dawn began to peek out over the trees and the pile of paper shuriken in his lap began to spill out onto the ground, he finally came full circle and yearned more than anything to the chance to saw he was sorry.

It was much later in the morning that she returned, looking about as awful as he assumed he did and refusing to meet his eyes. Miriki and Awadatsu remained fast asleep, so this time when she sat down facing him, there was nothing to break the ensuing silence.

Just do it, he thought. Say you're sorry! However, his voice would not obey him, trapped behind some combination of stubbornness, regret, and simple, irrational fear that saying it out loud would bring all that terrible conflict back. Instead, he studied her face and found hints of the same emotions in her expression, as well as a whole lot of the betrayal. We're not in the same boat, he reminded himself, because I'm not as alone as her. I have a family back in the Sand, I had friends… she had Gaara, then no one, and then me.

He tried and failed to imagine what it would be like if the only person he had a bond with had called him a monster just like everyone else. God, I'm a shit person, aren't I?

"Haku, I'm sorry. I'm…" The words that had remained unspoken for so long were difficult to force out, but ultimately out they came. "I'm afraid of so much, so many people who want to hurt me and you, and I'm afraid of the tentails inside you… When you let it out, I…" His voice broke. "I don't want to be afraid of you, too"

Haku blinked a few times, and then looked at the ground. "I'm sorry that you had to give up so much for me, I'm sorry that you have to be afraid… I'm not worth-"

"No." Kame's instincts brought his hand to her chin, tipping her face up so he could meet her eyes. "You're worth more."

Surprise met with gratitude met with… something else… in her eyes, and that same instinct, giving him enough bravery to work around the crippling indecision that typically swamped him. His lips parted slightly and he leaned forwards, his heartbeat filling his ears until it was almost deafening, and-

"Pay up." The whisper came from off to his left, in the voice of an apparently not asleep Miriki. Kame and Haku both whipped their heads to the side and tensed up, only to see Miriki still fast asleep. What the hell? Wait, was I about to-

"Heh, guess you're the one payin' me, right?" Awadatsu's voice came alongside Miriki's, yet she was also still apparently asleep in her bedroll. Is this…

"Genjutsu Release," Kame hissed, his immediate embarrassment translating into annoyance. Just as he'd suspected, the sleeping Miriki and Awadatsu disappeared from his vision, and the real ones were revealed standing in the treeline with quickly stifled smiles. God damn it, Kame cursed in his head, I'm not sure whether I'm more relieved or angry- no, no, I'm definitely angry.

"How long?"

Miriki's grin didn't waver at all. "How long was I doing what?"

"How. Long. Were. You. Watching. Us?" Kame enunciated each syllable with as much threat as he could muster up, but he was sure that the intended graveness was most likely undercut by the growing blush he could feel heating his cheeks.

"Don't worry about that, just do what you were gonna do," Miriki responded, a little more tensely now.

"What…" Kame's eyes flickered back over to Haku but returned almost immediately to Miriki. "What are you doing?"

"I'm-" Miriki paused, and then sighed. "Guess it's not happening. Damn it. Awadatsu, you win."

"Told ya he was too shy," Awadatsu chided, before turning over to her belongings and starting to pack them up. "Anyway, didn't y'all say we only had thirteen days?"

"Uh, twelve now, actually." Kame's eyes widened when he realized that. "Shit. Shit! We have twelve days to hunt down five bases!" He began urgently stuffing everything into his backpack, cursing mentally. "Guys, we have to go!"

"Chill," Miriki said, but he grudgingly began packing as well. It only took perhaps ten minutes to get everything ready and then they were off towards the bordering land of Lightning. Is was only hours later, as they walked down the road, that something occurred to Kame. "Miriki, can you engage your Hatogan?"

Miriki winced. "I don't think that's a great idea right now."

That confirmed it. In the morning, Kame had thought that his teammate's eyes had only contained four spokes, so the hesitance when he'd never before been cautious about using them was out of character. "How did it happen?"

"I don't think we should do this right now, Kame." Miriki's tone was one of warning, cautioning him not to question further, but Kame figured the Kosuki's ego could take a little bruising.

"How did you lose a point?" Kame pushed the subject, stating his theory so Miriki would have to answer.

Miriki's expression went to glaring for an instant, and then to his usual impassiveness. "Well, I pushed it pretty hard to stop the tentails, and it got close enough to me to do a little damage. My best guess is it destroyed the chakra points of my eyes that were trapping it first, but didn't finish the job, so now I'm… well, whatever. It doesn't matter."

Kame realized that Miriki had dodged the subject because it would hurt Haku, not out of egotism, and internally cursed himself for being so blind. Haku bit her lip and looked saddened, but remained silent, giving Kame nothing to deny or reassure her about. He could only walk in silence with her, rejoining the conversation when the subject changed, but somehow feeling like something was different now.

For some reason, his thoughts kept drifting to that moment when he'd subconsciously been moving to kiss her, unable now to decide whether he wished he had or not. No matter how hard he racked his brain, overanalyzing their conversation to the extreme, the little details that he usually held tight to were for once slipping his mind. Was she moving to kiss me back? Was she scared, or…?

With a mild amount of surprise, he realized that somewhere along the line he'd taken his desire to kiss her for granted. It was now a given that he'd want to do such a thing, but he couldn't quite put his finger on when or how such a huge paradigm shift had occurred. Shouldn't I remember something that important? He asked himself, taking a moment to look over at her unsuspecting face and actually considering what he felt at the sight of it. Just when did I fall in love with her?