Kakashi broadened his vision as far as it would go, and lost control of himself briefly. A full ocean of dazzling lights, attractive lights, beautiful seductive little soul lights danced before him. He had to narrow his view again. This was a very, very bad idea.

What the hell had he been thinking? Kakashi tried to restrain his fear, move that portion of his soul to the inside so it would not be visible to reality, and think. It was hard to do when most of him had already been contaminated with fear. Uh oh.

Dammit, how do I do this? Kakashi retreated to the tangle. It was unnatural, scary, impervious to his vision, and yet oddly comforting. At least he knew where it was. Presumably, he also could not be seen in this position. Kakashi decided to take a risk and, extending a portion of his soul, loop it around the most prominent spike he could find. Now he was tethered to the tangle. Not a good position to be in, but there were more important things to worry about.

Having secured himself, Kakashi closed down all of his senses and focused inward, looking only at himself. The fear had spread, so that he could no longer quarantine himself entirely. How the hell did one go about physically wrangling their emotions? Kakashi tried to spread and stretch the one part of his soul that was relatively fear-free to cover the rest. It almost worked. He was this close to having the fearful parts all wrapped up like a balloon when he gasped, and his adrenaline spiked. The fear escaped and showed signs of turning to panic.

Kakashi swore to himself. He didn't know enough of the demonic arts to handle that! He was just going to have to deal with it the human way. He knew the human way. Breathe. Focus. Concentrate on something calming. Methodical. Work step by step. He would conquer fear with logical, rational thinking.

This is not my fault. I do not deserve to be yelled at by myself, he thought. He had found through experience that thinking logically about where blame fell was a good first place to start. He could really get his attention focused on that, even at times where anything else would be too boring and slip out of his grasp. I am not to blame. How do I know this?

Because the current situation appears paradoxical. The paradox is that one of my dark clones cannot have just disappeared. Yet, that is the case. It can't be a true paradox; there must be something I'm missing, some piece of information that can explain it. But I don't have that information, so how could I have known I would be lost up here?

Admittedly, there were a few flaws with my plan. It didn't do to hype himself in either direction. Once I reached my seafaring clone and absorbed him, I would have been in the situation I am in now. But my reasons are still valid: I can't have any other clones out because they will interfere with his signal. I would have had to get lost no matter what. I can't rely on my clones as landmarks. I need to learn to navigate this view.

So that was it. Kakashi's current situation was not unexpected, or even impossible. It was inevitable. Navigating without using clones as landmarks was a skill he needed to learn, and he had simply found himself in the kind of situation that demonstrated why he needed to learn it. He was in the deep end; that was all. No worse than getting involved in battle as a shinobi and suddenly realizing that the perfect jutsu to use is the one you haven't tested and have barely finished. Shinobi were supposed to always plan and train in advance, to always be prepared, but sometimes even Kakashi had gotten caught with his pants down. This was no worse than that. A comrade was currently waiting an unknown distance away, holding down fortifications against possible hostiles until he could arrive. Kakashi needed to apply his navigating skills to unfamiliar territory in order to get there in time. It was just like being a shinobi.

Kakashi opened his eyes. Babbling, incoherent currents washed him from side to side, but thanks to his tether he did not lose his place. Souls glowed in his vision everywhere. How could he find two souls side by side in all this mess, without any distinguishing characteristics?

Well, he had one landmark to start from. Kakashi carefully (very carefully) removed any portion of his soul from direct contact with the tangle, and circled around it, looking for distinctive features. No two thorns or ripples in it were the same, and he had taken a close look at one or two individual thorns before, so if he could just find them…

Ah, there! That one piece of tangle that didn't really look like a thorn at all was familiar. Kakashi turned to face away from that. Now all he had to do was trust that he could remember the route he had followed back to their base, back when he had followed the echoes of clones. Gods above, I hope I was paying enough attention to remember.

Kakashi cursed to himself again. If only he was not a demon, or if only demons didn't have this weakness, finding his way back could be very easy. The snake goddess was only present where Orochimaru was. If he could just look for her, it would all be simple. But her soul, or essence, or whatever she had, was not present in his view. If he looked at the space she should occupy, his demon vision would see only normal reality. This had to be done the hard way.

Kakashi ventured confidently out, the way he would have before, and began to follow passing currents. He remembered a lot about them, including which currents to take and even how far to travel, which was good. But he didn't remember all of them, which was bad. Kakashi exerted all of his power to simply remain still and not move. Now, all he could do was look for and try to spot them. Two souls, directly next to each other, one still in disarray but mostly healed. He could do this.

After what felt like much too long, he saw them. Two souls, one of them so familiar, the other in disarray. Kakashi drifted forward gratefully.

A faint echo washed across him as he did so.

Kakashi stopped and looked. After that, he looked again. The echo did not recur. It was as if they were being muffled, like there was a thick curtain drawn tight around his clone, and the curtain had wavered just now to let a brief glimpse through. The curtain itself had to be invisible, of course.

Kakashi used the needle-point technique to cross the short distance between himself and Orochimaru. His sense of urgency was alive and running again, dragging the rest of him behind it.

.

Kakashi opened his normal human eyes beside the two snakes. "Enemy action?"

"Not here. I see no sign of my Earth Clones having engaged either," Orochimaru answered. "Yours?"

"Most likely aboard one of the mystery ships."

The wind stopped blowing. Some birds in the distance fell silent. Orochimaru froze. Kakashi himself froze at the audacity of saying those words aloud. Was he getting his hopes too high, again?

Slowly, the snake turned. Without saying anything, he just looked at Kakashi, in a way that made the demon want to confess everything at once. But he couldn't. A matter this important… He had to know. Kakashi looked away, just enough that he could only see Orochimaru's look out of the corner of his eye. He had to be sure.

"Is this worth it?" Orochimaru whispered. Every syllable slid smoothly between his tongue and the rest of his mouth, softly hissing.

"If I'm right," Kakashi whispered back. "Sending another clone right away."

Another dark clone was swiftly dispatched to the bayside town. Kakashi finally got around to unwrapping his received memories and went through them as the clone traveled. He sent some memories to the new clone so it would take the form the monster clone had used as a disguise. Then Kakashi leaped down from the guard post, plummeting into the trees, until he turned and plummeted sideways in less than the blink of an eye.

Kakashi spread all of his senses, and located the Earth Clones almost instantly. He stopped at the side of each of them to let them know they were no longer needed. Each clone nodded and turned to dust, reflecting the dry mountainous terrain they had been formed from. Kakashi circled the area again, and ventured out for a quick visit near their previous base. As expected, the enemy shinobi were there. Kakashi took the opportunity to look at their gear and headbands, and finally identify which village these people were from. He would have sworn up and down that Konoha had done the best job it could of sending only the best ANBU agents to search and lock down Orochimaru's bases once he was confirmed dead, but the village had also been preparing to deal with Akatsuki at the time. It was possible information had leaked.

Kumo? Interesting… Kakashi briefly wondered how relations with Kumo were, now that Konoha's jinchuuriki was best friends with theirs, and theirs was the brother of the Raikage. That had to have done something to intervillage relations. I wonder how Naruto is doing…

Kakashi hoped his most accomplished student was safe. So Naruto had directly faced the most powerful people the shinobi world had ever seen...so what? As Kakashi had spent the last several months learning, there was a lot more to this world than shinobi. What if he had the misfortune to meet a demon? All the chakra in all the tailed beasts could do nothing against a demon shielded by chakra-destroying darkness. Kakashi resolved to check up on Naruto at some point. He wouldn't enjoy being looked at like a traitor by his cherished students, but he would enjoy the news of their deaths even less.

.

Meanwhile, a certain clone donned the disguise of his predecessor and peered out from between tiny houses. The last relevant memories of his predecessor clone were of sitting on the edge of the town's small dock, swinging his legs and fishing while the more responsible clone was interrogated by enemy shinobi. There was nobody at the docks now. The new clone stole out from between the houses, making up a cover story as he went. In keeping with his predecessor's tradition of being as creepy and weird as possible, he would pretend not to know what they were talking about if asked, and put on a dazed look while he did so. As if the mysterious "call" was an ancient and evil possession.

As a nice touch, he dove in to the water and retrieved the dropped rod. It was a high-quality rod. Costing such a small town this fine thing would be needlessly cruel. He rose from the water, rod in hand and hair dripping, and clambered up onto the dock. As he walked toward the base of the dock and searched his memories for where the rod had been rented from, a shrill sound pierced the air.

Looking up, he saw the high cliff the witches had practiced from. The sound was ringing down from there. It sounded like a large bell. The clone sent a request for the yellow clone's memories, then looked around. Should he hide? That sound was sure to be a summons of some sort.

Nah; that wasn't how the crazy rogue monster-hunting clone did things. The new clone discreetly passed his hand over the rod while he waited, using his darkness to remove most of the water from it. Besides that, he simply sat on a log pole and waited.

The first to come were children, screaming. It was hard to tell, but the clone thought they were excited screams. That ruled out the sound of the bell being a warning of a far-off storm, or raiders, or something like that. The clone swung his legs and bounced in place, as visibly excited as the first children to pass him by. "Hey!" he called. "What's the good news?"

"That bell rings when the nice ghosts come!" a young girl exclaimed. "Yay!" She ran up to him and gave him one of the small flowers she had tucked into her braided hair, on a whim. He laughed back at her, and accepted it. A fearful-sounding adult called the girl away, back to her group of friends, but the little girl spared him a backward glance as she went. He waved. By far, the monster clone had been the most popular with the children of this town. There were several kids here that all versions of Kakashi were going to miss once they got the memories.

At last! At last! The ghosts! The clone shot to his feet, soul lit up with joy, and looked around for something to do instead of chew his arms off in anticipation. All around him, children were gathering by the water and starting little games to pass the time. Rings of girls and boys surrounded individual performers trying their best to impress others with gymnastic skills, for example. Meanwhile, a larger ring of protective adults surrounded all of the children's games, watching them and moving entire groups out of the way of other adults occasionally. The other adults, those not watching the kids, were busy bringing things down to the bayside. Some brought decorations, or the materials for them. Others passed through and around the increasing crowd, before disappearing up into town. The clone guessed they were cooks preparing food for the occasion. Little knots of young men in laborer's clothes stacked boxes here and there, and older men with harpoons set up stations not very far from these stacks. The clone used his demon vision to look inside the boxes. Whatever was in there must be the best and brightest, if they wanted to have such a head start on trading it! It was a bright day, so he had difficulty seeing that far, but what he did see was tantalizing. The clone was very, very happy he got to be here.

Only then did he remember that there were other versions of himself that wanted to see this. He raised his hands in front of his chest and interlaced the fingers, forming a cupped space to hide the little frame he was generating. He kept his hands cupped this way even after sending it off, because fun! Yes! Yiii! He hopped up and down, beginning what in another world was called the "Tobi dance."

Laughing, the new rogue clone skipped down the beach to join a game.

.

Kakashi and Orochimaru, in disguise, slipped their way into the crowds. They streamed toward the beach, knowing exactly what was happening and why they were here. Kakashi giggled and indicated the few people in the crowd who did not seem as knowledgeable, although they did a good job walking the same direction as everyone else. "Definitely not top-tier shinobi," Kakashi agreed.

"I have seen few places so efficient in setting up festivals," Orochimaru said admiringly. She clutched his arm, just another admirer of the decorations already completed. She was in generic form this time, not disguised as Tsukina. That would have caused far too much trouble.

Kakashi bit his lip almost hard enough to bleed from the excitement in the air. Perhaps it was his senses, or perhaps it was contagious. He was beginning to swear he could see soul-lights overlaid on top of the people he saw. To tell, or not to tell?

The bell tolled again. Kakashi looked around, searching for someone in particular. He followed a steam of people down to the bayside and saw a head of hair he recognized flipping in a somersault in the middle of a ring of admiring children. He and Orochimaru made their way over.

"Brother!" Kakashi called out.

The rogue clone barked out a laugh, and somersaulted again over the nearest child. "You!" They embraced, a brief greeting in perfect character for their assumed identities as long separated family. Neither of them had planned this beforehand, but it was very easy to intuitively fall in sync when they were the same person. Orochimaru greeted Kakashi's "brother" politely when they separated.

A chorus of "Ooh!" came from the pack of children that immediately surrounded the three of them. Kakashi raised an eyebrow. "More young admirers?"

"I'm a child magnet! Like one freak, like another! These little freaks know how to talk about what lurks in the night and leaves footprints in the sand!" The clone made his voice extra dramatic for the last sentence, before giggling. He fistbumped one of the children. "Just kidding; they're not freaks. They're normal. It's their parents who are weird."

Orochimaru smiled sweetly and twirled her kimono just a little. "This is such a fun party, isn't it?"

"Yes!" Kakashi agreed with a grin. Then he let his face drop into more relaxed happiness and asked the question he was really here to ask. "The bell tolled again just now. I'm afraid I've forgotten exactly what that means; would you tell me?"

"In sight distance!" all the children yelled.

"You see the light first, then the sight, then the wood, then the good, and the party starts on fire!" a boy recited. (Or words to that effect.)

A little girl with a very serious face pulled on Orochimaru's sleeve. "He means the people on the cliff can see the ship," she said proudly. "They see a light first, then the ship, an' then everyone else sees the ship, and then it lands and the nice people get off."

"Not people! Ghosts!"

"Hey," Kakashi admonished. "Ghosts can be very nice people too!"

"I certainly think so!" Orochimaru agreed. "All this noise! Let's find somewhere quieter, right?"

"Have fun with your little admirers, and don't scare their parents too badly!" Kakashi waved as he and Orochimaru turned to go.

"No promises!" the clone called back. "Now which one of you had the shell? We can't go until someone blows on the shell twice!"

Kakashi made it halfway up the beach before he burst. The excitement was just too much! "Angels!" he exclaimed.

Orochimaru did a complete 360 series of glances to secure their surroundings. "What?"

"I thought they sounded more like angels than ghosts, and I didn't say anything because I didn't want you to be scared for me again, but now they're almost here and I am not scared, I am very excited, because…" Kakashi stopped there, not finding any words grand enough to express the unutterable joy he felt at the idea of beings like himself. "Because!" he finished with a grin.

He continued to grin all the way up the beach, until Orochimaru pulled him over to the short series of steps in front of one of the tiny houses. Only then was he able to push the mood aside enough to make room for his own mind, his own thoughts. First among those thoughts was concern for what his companion thought.

Orochimaru sat down next to him. There were still people running up and down between the town and the beach, but there was more privacy here than on the beach itself. "Angels? As in, beings that are very dangerous to you?" She did not sound hurt, only confused. Kakashi wondered if his obvious joy had been enough to defuse her concerns before they started.

"Yes."

She looked directly at him then, and Kakashi saw something unexpected: the beginnings of understanding. "Why?' she asked.

It was as if the outside world ceased to exist. For a crucial moment, all the activity around was nothing but a blur. Held in the center of this blur were Kakashi, and Orochimaru, and understanding. "Because they are the only ones like me."

Orochimaru drummed her fingers on the wooden step. Kakashi sat silently, getting his feelings under control. Finally he waited. This is a lot of news. Not only information, but also a whole part of my feelings, of my life, that was not shared before. Is it acceptable? Will he react badly at the implication that his company, as nice as it is, isn't enough? That I still desire more company? I shouldn't have said "only," or I should have added a modifier. Damn. I don't share my honest feelings enough to have great skill at this…

Orochimaru slapped her palm down on the step, ending both of their thoughts. She looked at Kakashi critically, as he had expected. Was this the normal look, or did it genuinely mean she was angry? He tried to plead his case one last time with his eyes.

There was no change of expression on Orochimaru's face. Had the pleading worked or not? She opened her mouth, and Kakashi involuntarily glanced away. I didn't mean to say that you weren't enough. I didn't mean… What did I mean?

"If you had told me about this, the last two weeks would have been much more pleasant and bearable," she said. "I could have researched the attributes and abilities of angels, if possible. Instead we are here: bored, crazed from confinement, and underinformed. How very helpful."

"You said not to tell you about worrisome things you can't do anything about," Kakashi replied. He found his fingers curling uncontrollably, and hoped against hope that this was not going to turn into an argument. Is nothing I do satisfying? Ah, dammit, I'm getting defensive. This is not good. Kakashi hoped the brewing argument would be mild. "My lack of company and desire to be with angels is not something you can help with, you couldn't have changed my mind, and after what happened with the portal I wasn't going to tell you I wanted to put myself in harm's way yet again."

"You decide what will and will not frighten me now?" Orochimaru's eyes narrowed. Kakashi felt her soul go very still, very closed off, and realized he had made a mistake. Crap. He wasn't genuinely angry before, but now he is. "As if I am something to be protected?"

Kakashi heard the words as if they were whispered into his ear. He is never going to make the mistake of looking vulnerable around me again. The idea made him feel cold. What had he done?

"Yes." The only way out of this conversational maze was blind flailing. The gods knew all his previous attempts at carefully planning what move he should make had not worked. "Yes, you are someone to be protected." Kakashi looked at her with confusion. "To care for someone means to want to protect them. Do you think I don't care?" Lecturing him on what caring means and accusing him of thinking such a thing is probably not the wisest move. Mah, but who cares about wisdom? Blind flailing it is.

"I do not need protecting." Orochimaru turned so she was only looking at him from the corner of her eye. "And if you must satiate this urge somehow, can you find an outlet that does not involve restricting how much I know?! Your misguided attempts at helping might as well be enemy action, for all the good they do. I don't appreciate being lied to."

"You asked me to, though." Kakashi sighed and slumped. "Or at least I thought you did. You asked me not to tell you anything that was both worrisome and too much to handle. I thought this situation matched that definition." He turned away so that he could only see her out of the corner of his eyes. "Just what am I expected to do? Tell you, or not tell you? What you've told me so far is confusing, and I can't ask for clarification because that would involve telling you. I do not know what I am supposed to be telling you or not telling you."

Silence. For several long seconds, silence. Then -

"I don't know what you're supposed to do either," Orochimaru admitted quietly.

An epiphany made Kakashi's eyes fly open wide. So that's what it is. How did I not realize? "This just now is the same," he murmured. "You want to help me, but can't. That's why you'd rather not even know if I need help. However, this telling me to not tell you things...is itself a form of trying to help me, which you can't do."

More silence. Kakashi looked farther away, so that he could no longer see her. That helplessness must be terrible. It must be horrible, as bad or worse than the feeling of being prey. For someone who desires power, this must be torture. He can't simply do whatever he wants with regards to me, can't make my difficulties simply vanish. It hurts. Once again, Kakashi had to wonder where the line was between his demon powers and his humanity. Was this ache inside normal empathy, or was it an imitation of Orochimaru's soul? Perhaps it was both.

"That was a good idea," Orochimaru muttered sullenly.

"What was?"

"Creating a garden, as a way of making my dreams go away." Orochimaru stood up. "But I doubt it'll work. Even if it makes the gardening dream go away… As long as you are here, I will continue to have dreams where something steals from me every time my back is turned."

Helplessness. That is a dream of helplessness. Kakashi closed his eyes briefly and cursed himself. And I thought it expressed a hidden desire for caretaking. I cannot listen, can I? I couldn't hear that in his description. I should have.

The background noise of voices and laughter rose in pitch and volume, and the air rang with shrill bell sounds. The third bell. That meant the ship full of angels was within sight of the beach.

Such happy sounds would have made Kakashi feel even worse, at any other time. But on this occasion, they released him from gloom instead. Angels. Where there were angels, there was hope. He stood and met Orochimaru's eyes. "Well, there is no need to worry about information anymore. All the information we could ever want is right out there, waiting."

Orochimaru's soul remained wrapped in layer after layer of protective mistrust. But slowly, she nodded.

.

A/N: Finally, plot threads start to coalesce. Congeal. Turn into something halfway recognizable.

I was reading a book on communication just before writing most of the scene where they talk on the steps. It's probably obvious. I think I have a better idea what to do with that now.

And of course the child's made-up rhyme probably did not have that exact wording, because different languages don't have the same rhymes and all. But that's the basic gist of what it sounded like.