.0.

Exhaustion bore down on Itachi's shoulders, its heavy chains dragging at his feet. His warped armor dug into his cracked ribs. The sluggish drip down his leg had abated, leaving the dried blood on his pants crackling quietly with every step. He barely had any time to bind it in his two days of endless running.

He couldn't even limp. He didn't dare, not with Uchiha Madara mere feet in front of him, leading him further into the caverns of his new home.

"This will be our temporary base of operations," Madara said, sealing the entrance behind them. With a simple nudge of chakra, it was as if the opening in the rock had never been there. "Akatsuki's leader is preparing a better one as we speak."

"Aren't you Akatsuki's leader?" Itachi rasped. His eyes watered. The torchlight was bright compared to the utter darkness of the tunnels they'd passed through.

Amusement colored Madara's tone. "Not to everyone."

Of course. If Itachi hadn't been so exhausted, he'd berate himself for being so surprised. Shadow puppetry behind shadow puppetry. Madara would not have survived this long without miring himself in layers of deception.

Water dripped from the stalactites, pooling in the hollows of the limestone floor. The plink of every drop matched the cadence of their steps. There were no pipes for ventilation, but the torch's fire swayed in an unseen breeze. Itachi noted every turn they took, the chambers they passed, building a map of his new home in his head.

"They know me as Tobi, here," Madara continued. "Don't be surprised if I act differently around the others. As an Uchiha, I'm sure you understand the power of illusions."

"Who else knows?" Itachi asked, ignoring the mocking lilt. He would not flinch at his own clan's name.

The instructions and code to contact Jiraiya burned in the back of his mind. This was what he needed to focus on. Not the past. Not the blood, still clinging to his nails.

"I'll let you know when it becomes relevant," was Madara's answer. He flapped a lazy hand over his shoulder.

Not an unexpected reply. Isolate the pawns so none may incriminate the others, then. "Understood," Itachi said.

The line he walked was precariously thin. He had earned some measure of respect, and possibly fear, from this man, after following through with his end of their bargain. But it would take more than that for Itachi to cement his place in Madara's agenda. It would take more than that for him to gain information worth feeding back to Konoha. The Hokage could promise him a back way to visit Sasuke all he wanted; Itachi was under no illusions that he would have the chance anytime soon.

This would be his last memory of Sasuke: wild-eyed with genjutsu-enhanced terror, clutching Naruto's arm, his brand new tomoe spinning in a sea of red.

His mind drifted, exhaustion dragging it along the eddies of his thoughts. Who would hold Sasuke's First Tomoe ceremony now? Who would gift him handcrafted tokens and surround him with clan and family, so the distressing memory that usually heralded an awakened Sharingan could be overlaid with happier ones?

Surely, there were records of their traditions in the clan archives. Surely, someone would think to look there. Itachi had ripped everything away from Sasuke, but surely, surely, his little brother would still have that much of their clan left.

Perhaps Minako would know. Perhaps her foresight would tell her what Sasuke needs. They would hold the ceremony in their small apartment, with Minako making Sasuke her strange cake, and Naruto encouraging him with his usual mischief and cheer.

The image snaked around his heart, a vine with thorns scoring through sore flesh. The shock of his yearning ached more than any injury, any fatigue.

I wish—

"Oh? Who's this?"

Itachi paused. Hands loose, weight forward, ready to lash out at the first sign of aggression. To any seasoned shinobi, he might as well have screamed his surprise for the world to hear.

Beside him, Madara chuckled.

The path opened up to their left. Greenery spilled out of the cavern, blinding after nothing but shadows and pale rock. Leafless vines trailed over every nook and cranny, turning the space into an underground forest. Like veins to a heart, they converged in the center, connected to a thorny pod the size of a full-grown man.

Dark green spines peeled apart, a sinister flower blooming. Peering from within was a human face, if the human had been dipped in ink and left to fester.

Whatever this thing was, it did not feel human.

Slowly, the creature blinked. Its single visible eye was stark against the darkness, a near-bio-luminescent yellow. It bared its teeth in a rictus grin.

"Haven't seen you before," it rasped, its voice like dry leaves cracking underfoot.

Madara gestured towards Itachi. "This is Uchiha Itachi—"

The pod spasmed. Like an animal in a spiderweb, the creature thrashed, bulges growing and shrinking from the plant matter.

Itachi flinched. The creature's smile didn't change at all.

"—our newest recruit," Madara continued, just as unperturbed. "Itachi, meet Zetsu."

To say it was nice to meet it—him—would be a lie. Itachi pressed his lips together, fighting the nausea rising up his throat. Lucky for him, Zetsu's attention had moved on. He peered to his right, at something hidden within the spines of his cocoon.

"Oh," he crooned. "Does White Zetsu want to meet the rookie?"

The pod's spines parted further. The coloring arrested Itachi first—instead of black, like he expected, the rest of Zetsu was white, splitting him in half like a stitched-up doll. His right eye was black, pointed straight at Itachi while the yellow looked towards it in amusement. That rictus grin opened, the white parting reluctantly over his lips like putty—like webbing—

"Aa—aah!"

Zetsu moaned, his voice pitching higher. "Ahh!" Then, "Ooh, fiesty!" with a gleeful laugh, back to a lower register, a maddening harmony.

The pod thrashed again.

"Don't mind him."

Itachi jerked. His senses rushed back to him—pain, from his tightly-fisted hands, the roaring in his ears, his hammering heart. And Madara, that eye-searing, incomprehensible orange mask, glancing at him from the side.

"He just got a new host," he said. "It's taking him a while to acclimate."

"Host?" The pieces clicked into place. A pod, large enough to fit a full-grown man. Prey, thrashing in the spider's web.

"Zetsu is… special." Madara's lone eye glittered.

And just like that, Itachi remembered where he was. Deep in enemy territory. Surrounded. Alone.

Yet another test. Or a game, on Madara's end, playing with Itachi's puppet strings. The laughter in his eye was as loud as Zetsu's manic giggling.

Itachi shoved his horror down, down, trying to hide from Zetsu's cackles and the amused tilt to Madara's mask. It sat in his gut like a lead weight, even as Zetsu went back inside his cocoon, even as Madara led Itachi deeper into the tunnels.

Careless. He had no doubt that that would only be the first of many such games, where Madara would poke and prod for his every weakness while Itachi searched for his.

He had lost this time. Not again. If that subtle saunter meant Madara could read Itachi's frustration with himself, then, fine. He'll make it part of his act too. Stack layer upon layer of emotion behind a cold facade, until any meaning that could be read from it was just another illusion to hide behind. How had Madara put it?

As an Uchiha, he knew the power of illusions.

There was no turning back. Any path back to the children in his daydreams was gone, drowned in a flood of blood by his own hands. Itachi was alone, in a den full of masks and monsters. There was no point in wishing himself to a different time or place.

He was exactly where he belonged.

.1.

Kakashi didn't like gatherings. They tended to involve a lot of people, a smelly bar, and an unholy amount of noise. He was a veteran of the last war. He had been to battlefields. He couldn't say a party was worse than the screams and stench of desperate, dying men, but it was close. Yelling was yelling, whether it was to be heard over the blast of a katon jutsu or the thunder of a giant drum.

He propped his chin in one hand, sigh lost under Anko's raucous laugh. His nose was all but buried in his cup, if only so the scent enveloping him was mostly sake and not everyone who sat in this chair plus everything they ordered in the past four hours, including what is hopefully not puke.

It would be easy enough to throw off Gai's iron grip on his shoulder. Gai had disguised it as a friendly hand, which only meant it had more weaknesses than a proper hold. But it was Asuma's "welcome back" party, which had somehow become an excuse for their Academy batch to have a reunion of sorts. And Kakashi wasn't exactly aching to return to his apartment. So he stayed.

Yes, he was staying for an Academy batch reunion party. For a distraction.

He was pretty sure Obito was laughing at his misery.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, he thought towards the imaginary giggles. That anniversary was near, after all. The cloud of rage and sorrow hanging around his apartment wasn't going away anytime soon.

Unfortunately for him, Asuma also needed a distraction, especially from the drunken women gleefully gossiping to his left.

"Heard you got a kid, Kakashi," he said, grimacing. His free hand was busy keeping Kurenai from falling backwards onto his lap, without touching somewhere that would lead to an unfortunate outcome. For him, at least. "What's it like?"

Kakashi lowered his glass. His irritation bubbled over, eager for the offered outlet. "Like having a pet," he said.

Asuma stared at him.

"You know." He waved his hand. "You feed them, you house them, you let them out for walks…"

Asuma's grimace blunted the edge of the restlessness under Kakashi's skin. He beamed, just to be extra annoying.

"I was hoping for something more along the lines of how to gain their trust," Asuma said, as sour as his drink. His thumb dragged through the condensation on the side of his glass. "My nephew doesn't know who I am, and the only people he's been around is his nursemaid and his ANBU guards. He doesn't want to talk to me at all."

Kakashi's satisfaction died with all the nobility of a quiet fart. He dug his teeth into his lip, cursing silently. He should've remembered that Sarutobi Kenma had had a son, should've remembered that the Twelve Guardian ninja had disbanded years ago but Asuma had only chosen to come home now, after receiving news of his brother's funeral.

Kakashi had perfected the art of being a dick on purpose. He rarely enjoyed being one by accident.

He tried to change tack. "What makes you think I know anything about children?"

Asuma scowled. "You've had one for a year!"

Kakashi raised his eyebrow.

The horror was better than the bitterness from earlier. He had no idea what Asuma was imagining at the moment, but whatever it was, it did funny things to his eyebrows and pallor.

Beside Kakashi, Anko choked. "Someone get that poor kid away from him, before he traumatizes him even more," she said, cackling at her own joke.

Kakashi resisted the urge to say yes. Or maybe, please. You have no idea, might be more acceptable. Because no one did, not really. Not even Kakashi.

There were good days. He and Sasuke had settled onto some semblance of a routine over the past year. Both of them were invested in cleanliness, which meant Kakashi wasn't forced to draw a red line halfway through the apartment the Hokage had given them. Neither of them could cook anything beyond making things edible, but Kakashi had his ANBU savings, his jounin savings, the remains of the Hatake clan estates, and the fraction of the enormous Uchiha clan estates he had access to. So. If they wanted to eat out until Sasuke was a genin, they could.

It helped that Sasuke was independent enough. When he had to go on an inevitable mission, Kakashi only needed to leave a budget for a week, and the kid managed just fine on his own.

And when Kakashi found the time to train him? He was no Uchiha Itachi, sure. But the kid had talent. He could use jutsu Kakashi knew his Uchiha batchmates couldn't at that age. And what he couldn't achieve with that spark, he bulldozed through with sheer stubborn will.

But there was a ferocity in Sasuke's actions that Kakashi didn't know what to do with. More often than not, he had to stop him from training before he impeded his own growth. He never talked about school, never spoke about his classmates or his friends, even when prompted. Just the slightest mention of the twins would throw him into a rage, desperate, silent, and deep.

Kakashi could see it—a shadow of himself, eight years old and fighting all on his own. He knew where that had led. And he did not want Kannabi Bridge to happen again.

If only he knew how to stop it.

Get a kid to trust you? What a joke. Kakashi couldn't even be trusted to raise one. What did he know about children? Nothing. He wasn't Minato. Laughing and ruffling his hair didn't chase away the ghosts haunting Sasuke. Anko was right, they needed to take the kid from him, before Kakashi fucked this up again—

"Trust goes both ways!"

His hand twitched. Sake kissed the rim of his cup, before settling back into a little pool at the bottom. Gai gave him a concerned look, even as Kurenai gave Asuma's bicep a hearty slap. The poor man winced.

"You can't expect him to, to give and give, if you won't give him anything yourself!" The words slurred in her cherry-smeared lips. She jabbed her finger into Asuma's chest, making him yelp.

He shot Kakashi and Gai a pleading look, which only made Anko laugh harder. His ears were steadily turning redder and redder.

Kakashi took pity on him, even as his heart hammered in his chest. "I take it you've broken up with that chuunin from Intelligence," he said to Kurenai.

She slammed her cup on the table. "UGH, THAT BASTARD WAS SUCH A DICK!"

Asuma suddenly looked much happier to have an armful of drunken Kurenai.

The party devolved from there. Somehow, it turned into a bitching contest between Kurenai and Anko about their exes. The minute Gai jumped in and tried to expound on his many, many youthful conquests, Kakashi was out. He slipped out the window without anyone noticing, save perhaps for poor Asuma, who was too polite to leave his own party.

Wuss.

But Kurenai's words stuck. They dug deep into the vulnerable spots they had snagged on, niggling at Kakashi all the way home.

Trust goes both ways.

He shied away from the thought. To give something of himself was so antithetical to everything he was, Kakashi didn't even know where to start. Everything he shared with others had been picked and pulled out of him by his comrades (friends), by Tenzo's sharp eyes and Gai's unstoppable force of personality. What if it didn't even work? He had no assurances he could help Sasuke by—what? Talking? What could that even do?

"Don't be so cold to Rin-chan! She was just asking a question, you bastard!"

"Alright, alright," he muttered under his breath.

His insides still felt like a shriveled prune, his fists just shy of too-tight. But he had to try. He owed it to… well. To everyone. To Obito's little cousin, most of all.

The whining groan of rock against rock, threatening to come down on their heads, even as a weak voice said—

No. Kakashi couldn't let that happen again. Not to anyone else. Not to Sasuke.

So the next time the little brat blurted out, "Where are you going?" Kakashi didn't deflect. He faced that small, scrunched up face, and he… answered. For the first time in their acquaintance, an honest word left his lips.

"To the memorial," he said.

"The memorial?" Sasuke was so shocked by the blunt response that his ever-present scowl dropped. It left him looking painfully young, the distress in his dark eyes bared to the world.

Kakashi, choking on the anxiety of letting even that much out, simply nodded. And fled. Because that was enough feelings to last him the week, and even he was starting to think that the amount of pranks he'd been pulling on an eight year old was pathetic.

But later, when the sun had set, and he had lost himself in the rumble of falling rocks and lightning in the rain, a small body joined his. They stood in front of the giant obsidian kunai, silent in the darkness.

Sasuke smelled like the trees near the Uchiha compound—had he assumed Kakashi had gone there? It must have taken him hours to find his way here. Konoha had more than enough memorials. Had he searched every one?

Kakashi braced himself for the questions. He would rather pull out his own innards than talk about Obito and Rin, but if Sasuke asked, he would answer. Because trust goes both ways, right?

But Sasuke didn't ask. He just stood there, shifting restlessly, only moving when Kakashi turned to leave. His confused frown was louder than thunder. But he said nothing.

Something settled in Kakashi's chest, terrifyingly warm. He wanted to shove it back, to stick to the bitter carelessness he'd wrapped around himself for over a decade. But, once planted, the seed of hope was irrepressible.

Maybe, just maybe, they'll be all right.

.2.

The world rocked from side to side, a morose, gentle sway. The spring sun blanketed Naruto's back. He sat sideways on the swing, his forehead against its rope and his toes dragging against the grass. Sitting at the very end of the plank meant every kick was more likely to twist the swing on itself than send it into the air. Still, he kicked.

Tufts of green fluttered away from his toes. That kick was for Kiba, off to his appointment with his sister after class. That kick was for Shikamaru for being lazy, and that one for Chouji, who'd rather hang with him than play with Naruto. That was for Shino, who disappeared before he could even ask, and that one—

"Ugh!" Naruto stomped his foot. The world spun, rope twisting and twisting over his head. He tucked his feet in and leaned into it, letting the swing spin and the world twist into nothing.

But soon enough, the world was still. The swing rocked from side to side. And Naruto was left with nothing but the memory of Sasuke shoving him back, yelling, "I said, go away!"

He didn't know why it stood out, today of all days. It wasn't like it was the first time he'd tried to drag Sasuke into a game or spar, kicking and screaming. It wasn't the first time Sasuke had rejected him either.

Today was just a long day, in a series of long days. The longest.

He shook his head and jumped up. Now standing on the swing, he threw himself forward, flying higher and higher. He spoke out loud, so that his voice could drown out the weight lodged in his chest.

"Stupid Sasuke!" he said to the sky. "Training and training, always angry and never playing with anyone. I'll show him! I'll have so much fun playing, he'll get so jealous he'll beg to play with me again!"

The thought of Sasuke begging to be his friend again was enough to bring a smile to his face. He jumped off the swing, showing his fist to an imaginary Sasuke.

"I won't give up," he swore to himself. He tightened his grip, trying to hold on to the certainty bleeding from his fingers like sand. "I won't. Believe it!"

Naruto didn't give up. Because giving up meant accepting the way things were. It meant accepting the villagers would ignore him forever. It meant Sasuke would never play with him again.

So Naruto refused to give up. Because the alternative was worse than anything. Some days… some days, it was just harder. That's all.

"Just you wait, bastard," he said to the memory of hands shoving him away. "I'll kick your ass tomorrow, and then we'll play again! And we'll keep playing, and you'll stop looking const'pated all the time, and then everything will go back the way it was." He nodded. "Yeah."

Yelling always cheered him up. Shisui had taught him that. Sad times are the best times to laugh, he'd told him, over the smoke bombs they were filling with pink dye. No one will know you're sad, and soon, you won't too.

The memory tugged at the corners of his smile. But it was a good kind of tugging. A sadness that tasted sweet.

A loud thud snapped him out of his thoughts. The school doors burst open, releasing a group of girls who filled the air with their chatter. Their teacher called some last minute reminders after them, before disappearing back inside.

Naruto perked up. He stood on the swing, the better to wave at the redhead trailing behind the rest. "Hey, hey! Minako! Over here!"

Minako blinked. She turned to him half a second too late, like coming out of a haze. "Naruto?"

He jumped off the swing, then spread his arms. "Surprise!"

The other girls stared at him, whispering and giggling. He was used to it, so he ignored them.

Minako shot them a wary look, even as she walked up to meet him. "What are you doing here?" she asked. "Shouldn't you be playing with your friends?"

"They all went home early, so I decided to wait for you, dattebayo!" He gave her his biggest grin. Most days, it was enough to get her to smile back, even if it was weak. Today, she only made a half-hearted attempt at it, the corner of her lip stretching to the side, then sinking.

"Thanks." She turned towards the exit. "Let's go, then."

"Wait!" Naruto threw himself at her back. She stumbled a couple of steps, sputtering. "It's too early! Let's play a little. Pretty please?"

"Naruto…" Minako bit her lip. She looked over her shoulder, trying to catch his expression, so he made sure to open his eyes extra wide, with his bottom lip jutting out.

Minako never liked playing with other kids. Even during their orphanage days, she would rather sit at the side while Naruto ran around the play area. But ever since Sasuke's family had died, Minako had grown quieter and quieter. Some days, there was a storm in her eyes, held back only by the tick in her jaw. Other days, the storm simply drained out of her, taking everything with it.

It scared Naruto. It made that sadness in his gut churn and twist even more. He didn't know what to do. So whenever he saw her eyes glazing over, and her movements shrink and falter, he did what he did best—create a distraction.

He poured a little more effort into the puppy eyes. Relief jolted down his spine as her face grew helplessly soft. It wouldn't matter how much she tried to resist. Naruto had already won.

"Yes!" He jumped up with a cheer, before dragging her back towards the other girls. "C'mon! We can ask them to play Ninja!"

"Naruto," Minako tried, but could only sigh and hurry after him. It was that or end up flat on her face.

The school's front yard was already half empty. No one really liked lingering around school, especially those who didn't have to attend kunoichi class. Most girls their age weren't interested in playing either. The older they got, the more they seemed to prefer sitting to the side, talking and giggling. Naruto recognized a few who still played, though, so he headed straight for them.

"Hey, hey! Do you guys wanna play Ninja?" He waved at one in particular, a girl with long, straight blue hair. Tsukikawa? "We can pretend-shunshin off the swing!"

Tsukikawa eyed him speculatively. "The older kids aren't around," she said to her friend. "They can't shoo us away."

"Yeah!" Naruto nodded. To his surprise, Minako spoke up.

"I can push," she offered.

Naruto's grin could be seen from the moon.

A volunteer who wouldn't argue for their turn on the swing was enough to grab the interest of the other kids. A few began to put their heads together, trying to come up with the premise for today's game.

Then a voice piped up. "Ew! You're playing with them?"

Minako's head snapped up. Tsukikawa's face soured. "No one asked for your opinion, Ami," she said.

Naruto recognized Ami as one of the girls that preferred to sit to the side and giggle. Her deep purple hair would always stand out from the grass. Her friends huddled around her, whispering amongst themselves.

She propped her hands on her hips. "You don't have to listen," she said, in a slow voice that made Naruto's hackles rise. "Just don't come running to me when you catch their bad luck."

Tsukikawa rolled her eyes, but one of the other girls leaned forward. "Bad luck?"

"Wait," Minako said.

"Oh come on," Tsukikawa snapped. Ami puffed up in victory.

"My mom says they're bad luck," she said, chin raised with the confidence of someone who believed every word she was saying. "It's their fault the village has been in so much trouble the past few years."

"Hey!" Naruto stepped forward. "That's not true!"

But even Tsukikawa's friend was starting to listen. Her gaze flickered between Naruto and Minako. "Wait," she said. "Are you telling me… they're those twins?"

Naruto's heart sank. This wasn't the first time. This wasn't even a surprise. But Minako's face was closing off, his plan was falling apart, and—couldn't he just have this one fun time? This one game with his sister?

"We're not bad luck!" He jerked towards Ami, only to yelp and stumble back. Minako shook her head, pulling on his arm.

"Never mind. Let's just go."

He hated it. Hated the exhaustion bleeding into her face, her lowered eyes, the tightness to her jaw. He yanked his arm away. "No! It's not true! She shouldn't say things that aren't true!" He whirled on Ami. "Your mom is wrong, she's just being mean!"

Ami's face flushed red. "My mom's not wrong!"

Minako grabbed him again. "Naruto," she said, her voice hard. "C'mon. She's not worth it."

"You—you—!" Ami pointed at her, but couldn't even stammer out a word.

Fewer and fewer of the kids were looking convinced. Tsukikawa whispered to her friend behind her hand. They giggled. Ami's lower lip began to tremble.

"Hey, didn't they used to hang out with Sasuke-kun?" someone said.

"Yeah!" Ami jumped on that. "Yeah, you always used to hang around with Sasuke-kun, right? Look what happened to him! See?" She crossed her arms, eyes gleaming with vicious victory. "You are so bad luck! You're the reason his family is dead!"

The blood fled Minako's face. The other girls gasped, horrified. Some of them refused to meet Ami's eyes. Tsukikawa was yelling something. Naruto couldn't hear her through the roaring in his ears.

"Wh-what?" Ami searched for a sympathetic face, but found none. Her own friends crowded around her, but even they seemed to understand she'd crossed a line.

"Take it back."

Naruto's hands shook. Everything he'd tried to shove back came rushing through him, the sadness digging its claws into his gut, the pain weighing on his chest. That dark room, with the person he secretly wished he could call his mom lying in a pool of her own blood, at the feet of the person he wanted so badly to call "nii-san"—that would never go away. He could only drown it out.

"Take it back!" he yelled, striding towards her. "Itachi did that, not us! You take it back!"

Ami backpedaled. "No way!" she stammered. "It doesn't matter who did it! You're still bad luck, and my mom's still right!"

"No, she's not!" He glanced to the left, expecting Minako to step up and support him.

Minako, who was already several meters away, her scarlet ponytail swinging with every stride.

Something alien seized Naruto by the throat. It trapped his breath in his lungs, his heart hammering in his ears. He was running before he knew it, chasing after his sister's back.

The girls cried out in surprise, Ami in outrage. He ignored them. They might as well not have existed, for all he cared.

"Minako! Hey—hey!" He skidded to her side, almost tripping over his own feet in his efforts to slow down. "Why—why'd you go? Ami was going to apologize!"

Minako didn't turn. Her hands hung carefully loose at her sides, her gaze pointed straight ahead. There was no expression on her face. The only sign of her distress was the sickly pallor of her skin.

He grabbed her hand. "Don't listen to her," he said fiercely, desperately. Everything had been going so well. Minako had been about to play. She had been talking to the other girls. Why did everything have to go wrong? "She doesn't know anything. She wasn't there when—"

Minako snatched her hand back. Naruto froze. They stood at an impasse, Naruto too shocked to reach out and Minako refusing to look him in the eye.

This wasn't spacing out. There was nothing drifting away for Naruto to pin down. This was a door slamming closed, a ghost fleeing into the shadows. This was a boy baring his teeth at him and shoving him away.

She curled her fingers into her palm, one by one. "Just… forget it." She pulled on a weak smile, then turned and started walking again. "You should go play with them. I'll see you at home."

"But I don't want to play with them! I want to play with you!" He tried to run into her path, but she simply stepped around him.

"Some other time, okay?" she said, her voice tight. But Naruto didn't give up. He couldn't.

"She's wrong," he babbled. He didn't know what to do. What would Shisui say, if he was here? "It wasn't our fault. Itachi—Itachi's the one who did it. He's the reason Mikoto-baa-san's dead, and Sasuke's—"

"Enough!"

His mouth snapped shut. Somehow, Minako had gotten even paler, the hollows under her eyes purpling in the setting sun. She pressed her lips together so hard, the blood left her skin.

"Just… go." She turned away. "I'm… I'm going to make dinner."

"But—"

"I said, leave me alone!"

Naruto stood in the middle of the street, his gaze pinned to her back. Even when she disappeared around a corner, he couldn't move.

Why? Why did she keep pushing him away? It was always like this. She would fall silent, curl in on herself, snap at him, then run away. She would make ramen for dinner and guiltily put more noodles in his bowl. Then everything would be normal, then she'd fall silent, and it would start all over again.

"Fine," he said aloud. "Fine." He turned back. The girls would have already gone home, but he could always find other kids to play with, if he wandered far enough. "Fine."

He rubbed his eyes with his sleeve, swallowing around the knot in his throat. Minako could give up, but he wasn't. He was going to play with other kids, make Sasuke their friend again, and become an awesome ninja so no one could ignore them ever again. He'll show her. He'll show everyone. He won't give up.

Today was just harder. That's all.

.3.

Akimichi Chouza opened his eyes to the morning sun, its wide beams streaming through the windows of his home. Beside him, his wife stirred, curling further into his warmth. Birdsong and people's cheery greetings crept into the room, the village stirring to life.

He pressed a hand to his face. Memories of bright blue eyes and a quietly mischievous smile flashed through his self-made darkness.

"Oh, Minato," he whispered hoarsely. "What have we done?"

A/N: Hell yeah I'm retconning the fuck outta Zetsu. There will be no space aliens in this fic, no sir.

Writing Minako and Naruto's developing relationship is going to give me hives. On one hand, this needs to happen. On the other hand, I can't deal with conflict especially sibling conflict lksgjldfkjg I want siblings to get along all the time always T_T So hold on to your seatbelts! This is going to hurt but it'll be a hurt that heals because I'm not writing distant siblings dammit (one of the things that hurt me about DoS lmao :( the twins never got to fix their relationship)

If I don't reply to your review, please don't worry! I definitely read it, and I definitely appreciate it! There's just too many for me to reply to now. Thank you for all the support you've given me, and welcome to the new readers! ^_^

Ps. If you can guess why Chouza's suddenly plot relevant I'm giving you top bragging rights til the end of time (I unfortunately am too busy to offer prompt fills)