Konoha's low-security prison was not in the village proper but instead a short walk upriver. The small complex of long barracks was surrounded by walls too high to easily jump and fortified by complex seal networks that nobody inside the walls either knew how, or cared enough, to unravel. None of it could stop someone truly determined to leave, but of course the occupants were not expected to try very hard.

Naruto was here to pick up a prisoner. His paperwork had finally been processed and he was officially the head—and only member—of the Uzumaki Clan. Clans had clan duties they had to fulfill, and prisoner repatriation was the only one that Naruto had both the interest and resources to do. Without more money or people, the only other job he could do was go bandit hunting, and like hell he was doing that. He killed plenty of people during normal missions and had no desire to do more of it.

"Yo."

Naruto watched Ebihara's head snap up. The missing-nin girl from Senfuku was sitting on a bench that appeared to double as her cot, with a scratchy-looking blanket neatly spread over the top and a few belongings slid underneath.

"Y-yes?" Ebihara asked warily. She didn't look too worse for wear. Maybe a little paler, maybe a little thinner, though it was hard to get still thinner than she had been in Senfuku. Now that he was looking, Naruto recognized the slightly-underfed lankiness—he'd been like that, was still kind of that way, his muscles not really filled all the way in from before he could really afford to get the food he needed.

And now he had a second mouth to keep fed. Jeez.

"You're being released on probation into the custody of the Uzumaki Clan," Naruto said. He held up a small scroll. "These are your papers. You ready to go?"

Ebihara visibly flinched, holding herself back from jerking forward to grab at the scroll. Her posture snapped rigid and formal before she forced herself to relax.

"I— thank you," she said very quietly. "I thought everyone had forgotten about me."

Naruto held back a wince. The truth was he had forgotten about her. If it wasn't for the fact that he needed to find something worthwhile as part of his clan duties to the village, he wouldn't have remembered that Ebihara had been taken prisoner in Senfuku.

"Uhh, well it's fine now I guess?"

"Yes," Ebihara said. She took a shaky breath, then swallowed and offered a tentative smile. "I'm glad to be getting out of here."

Naruto resolved to not actually say that he had forgotten about her. Hopefully it wouldn't come up at all.

There was only a little minor paperwork at the camp office and then Ebihara was, for not that many intents and purposes, a free girl again. Her movements would be monitored by Konoha's ANBU and Naruto was able to have her executed almost literally at will. But within the bounds of, you know, not pissing him off, Ebihara was able to do whatever she wanted.

It was a pretty raw deal. Naruto could understand why it existed — it probably made more sense when the enemy ninja was from Rock or Cloud and couldn't be trusted. But it sucked that Ebihara didn't get any slack.

They left the prison camp. Ebihara changed into a set of clothes Naruto had brought that, despite his best efforts, did not fit her properly. He couldn't afford a brand new set of clothes for her right now. Even so, it was better than forcing her to wear the prison set indefinitely, and changing out of them made the tension in Ebihara's frame ease in the sun outside the prison gates. Naruto watched as Ebihara took a moment to take in a deep breath, clutching the scroll detailing her rights and liberties close to her chest.

"So, uh, I'm thinking it probably makes the most sense for you to take my apartment for now," Naruto said. "I'm not really using it, and even though it's kinda small it's better than just a cot in a dorm."

Ebihara blinked at him in confusion. "You're giving me an entire apartment?"

"It's not that generous, it's basically just one room," Naruto said quickly. "It's not much, but it'll do for now. We can take a look at some estates together later after your in-village probation is over."

Ebihara's confusion grew. "I— why would I look at estates with you?"

Naruto wondered if he'd been too open about the situation. "I sort of just got registered as a clan," he admitted. "I was just living in my own apartment until now, but they give you some money for forming a clan and I think it might be enough to get one of those abandoned compounds outside the village. Like I said, we gotta wait for your probation to be over so you can tell me what you think about where you're gonna be living."

"I don't understand."

"I mean, you're not going to stay my prisoner forever," Naruto said. "We gotta, you know, plan ahead for this shit. So unless you wanna do something different, you'll have to live with me, and one bed's not gonna cut it right, so…"

Ebihara swallowed and nodded. "R-right, I guess that makes sense. So, er, I guess we should get going?"

Naruto nodded. "Yeah, uh, you can follow me I guess."

They went through the gates where Ebihara's paperwork was scrutinized, then took to the rooftops where Naruto led her towards the apartment that he still rented.

"I don't really have any security measures," Naruto said as he unlocked the door. He somehow hadn't remembered how tiny his apartment really was until he stepped inside to let Ebihara pass and they found themselves standing atop one another: Ebihara was too frightened to go any further and risk offense but Naruto had wanted her to take a look around. There was a second of awkwardness before Naruto shuffled further in and gestured vaguely at the walls. "Normally nobody really cares about me. But uh, for you, since you're a girl living alone and not everybody—I can get you something maybe?"

Ebihara bit her lip and bowed deeply at the waist. "I don't wish to impose. You've already been very generous."

Naruto closed his eyes and prayed for patience. He was sure he would be able to make it through to Ebihara sooner rather than later. "Yeah well, think of it as me being, uh, conscientious about my duties or something. Don't overthink this, okay? It's not some kind of weird thing."

Ebihara's eyebrows seemed to move unconsciously upwards. "Um."

"I dunno, I'm talking too much," Naruto said. He ran a hand through his hair. He realized that he also needed to introduce Ebihara to Kazuko, who really should have been here. It would have made the whole Kazuko-was-a-spirit-thing easier to get over. Maybe. Hopefully. Fuck.

It was honestly too much for him to be doing alone. He just had no experience with any of the things he needed to do for Ebihara. He'd been sure to make sure the basics were taken care of, but past that there were no actual guides on how to be a good host, what people normally did when repatriating prisoners, it was all "left to the clan's discretion". There were so many things he just hadn't known to worry about until nearly the last minute.

"Look uh. Look," he managed. "I'm going to go and get you some supplies. I haven't restocked the pantry or anything but there's some noodles and soup ingredients lying around. What do you like to eat? Do you want me to get you anything? Actually uhh, we could go together—"

"Noodles are fine," Ebihara said quickly. "I'm— really, I am very grateful for everything you've already done."

Naruto took a deep breath. "Okay. So first week I gotta follow you around but after that the terms are up to my discretion. I guess we'll figure something out then, but like—" He paused. There was a less shitty way to bring up her parents. "—I don't think you're a flight risk."

Ebihara blinked and looked down, then back up at him. She understood what he was trying to say, that he didn't want to keep following her around, so if she was on her best behavior and he could easily justify just leaving her be…

Ebihara nodded. "Okay."

The tree was an old, gnarled one torn at by the ravages of time. Kakashi squinted up the tall trunk into the twisted branches until he picked out the speck of blue hidden behind the screen of leaves.

Hm.

"Sayaka?" he called.

Silence.

"Sayaka, I'm coming up," Kakashi warned. More silence followed his pronouncement, and Kakashi took this as assent.

He made sure to climb very slowly, using his chakra to stick to the side of the tree and walk casually. Easily tracked by someone who needed to keep tabs on where he was. He climbed until he was several branches away but close enough to speak softly without his voice carrying. This was a private conversation.

"Hey there Sayaka," Kakashi said. He sighed and sat down on his tree branch, dangling his legs over the side and swinging them idly. Sayaka looked at him over arms crossed on top of her knees. She looked like she hadn't been sleeping, and her clothes were rumpled like she hadn't changed them in days. Soot was streaked across her cheeks, her hair was tied back in a sweaty mass, and there was a kunai nick that had dribbled blood across her fingers.

Kakashi knew the look. He'd worn it himself, the weeks after his father had committed suicide, and Kakashi had trained to the point of exhaustion every day until finally he had ended up in the hospital. It was amazing that he'd found her sitting in a tree—he had expected to find her in front of a training post.

"This is a pretty good tree," he said as he took out a book. Today's novel was titled Nikubuton. "I liked to go a few branches higher when I was younger. It's harder to see from the ground, but the branches get too thin."

Sayaka grunted.

"I talked to Kagami about your evaluation, after you got back," Kakashi said. He turned the page. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Sayaka grunted again. Kakashi took that as a no. That was probably not a good thing, even if he could understand where she was coming from. He stayed around and turned a page in his novel again. He even properly read it for once.

"He's going to come for you," Sayaka whispered. Her voice was hoarse—she was either sick, had been practicing far too much fire jutsu, or had cried recently. Based on experience, Kakashi suspected it was all three at once.

Kakashi nodded. "We've been expecting it."

"You are?"

Kakashi glanced up at her over the top of his novel. "Sayaka. I'm one of Konoha's most elite jounin. Even if I had no sense of self-preservation, the Hokage would be taking steps to at least make sure I got a warning before Itachi slit my throat."

Sayaka shuddered and she looked down at her lap again. "Oh."

"There are plans for Naruto and Hinata as well," said Kakashi, "and the rest of Konoha, generally. Ninja defense is thorough."

Sayaka swallowed. Kakashi could see the fear settle, smooth from jagged claws into something that could be dealt with.

"You can't secure a village, not against someone like Itachi, but you can stall him," Kakashi admitted, because he couldn't lie. It would leave Sayaka vulnerable. "At some point the Hokage himself will show up. It's a matter of escalating correctly, layered defenses. No security is impenetrable but what matters is—"

"—the cost to the attacker," Sayaka finished. It was a basic principle from the Academy. With enough time and determination any fortress could be destroyed. The problem was how much it cost you and whether you could afford it. For a ninja on a mission, knowing when to pull out, because the cost wasn't worth it, mattered.

"Itachi doesn't seem interested in tearing through all of Konoha just to torture you," Kakashi said quietly. "At least within the walls…"

"What about outside?" Sayaka asked, and Kakashi gripped his book a little tighter.

"Nobody can say for sure," Kakashi admitted again. "The odds of accidentally running across him are impossibly low. For Itachi to deliberately target someone requires him to have access to our mission schedule, which he'd have to get into the village to get, which runs into the previous problem. At that point the odds are about as good as a foreign village getting their hands on our mission schedule and targeting people which, well, we live with that every day already."

Sayaka sucked in a breath and closed her eyes.

"Every day is a bet," she said to herself. "You can't make it stop, you can't always make the odds better, you just have to keep going anyway."

Kakashi turned the page of his book. "Pretty much."

The tree was silent for an entire minute.

"I hate this," Sayaka said, pressing her hands against her eyes. "What do I do?"

"I see a therapist," Kakashi said. "If it gets bad enough, there's drugs for it too. They're not great, but it's better than nothing."

Sayaka swallowed. "I want to be better. I have to be better. I can't live in fear every day."

"Good," said Kakashi. "What do you want to do first?"

Sayaka shifted so that she was sitting sideways, with her legs dangling over the edge. "Barrier wards. Something that I can give Hiroyo and Kiba, in case something happens."

Kakashi flipped his book shut. "I can do that. Let's go."

In the grand scheme of things, Sayaka's worrying over the donation to the Fire Temple seemed meaningless compared to her brother's sudden reappearance in her life. It made it easier to endure the shame when she had to visit the Abbot again, pressing her forehead against the floor and begging his forgiveness, for she had broken the promise she had made to him through her own failing as clan head. It made it easier to overlook his quiet sigh and the way he looked at her as if, ah, of course, he could not truly expect much from a child.

Easier, but still difficult to endure. Perhaps, Sayaka hoped, that meant the therapy sessions with Kagami were actually working.

She had to be better. She had to keep fighting. She was a daughter of the Uchiha—she would get her revenge and she would rebuild her clan and fear would not stop her.

Sayaka's eyes snapped open in the darkness of her bedroom, a scream strangling itself in her throat, the world crystal-glass-sharp around her. She took a breath and blinked and turned her Sharingan off, then got out of bed.

She hated being like this, hated the nightmares, hated the way her hands shook as she turned on her desk lamp and pulled out her brushes and her stationery and dropped blood into her ink. Hated how she had to hold her breath as she wrote down the first character of the warding seal that Kakashi had taught her and Kagami had approved as a calming exercise.

She hated that she needed the exercise in the first place.

Black ink spread in sharp, precise strokes across the paper, the characters spinning out quickly beneath Sayaka's hand. Mentally she timed herself, made it a training exercise—

—thirty seconds. Not bad.

"Seal," Sayaka whispered to herself, sending a jolt of chakra through the characters and making them ripple, until the fully-formed warding sigil looked back at her from the page, promising no less than half a second's protection from Itachi's—

She set the paper aside and started again, writing quickly but cleanly, faster, faster—

—twenty-five seconds, but she could do better, another—

—Sayaka took a deep breath and put her brush down with a clack. She held the breath and counted to ten. Smoke curled slowly out of her nose as she let her breath back out again.

That had been another thing Kagami-sensei had told her to watch for. The anxious rush to make more. It negated the whole point of making the seal.

She breathed in again. Counted to ten again. Breathed out again. No smoke this time. She imagined a candle, imagined the steady, bright flame of that candle, and made herself as that flame. A steady light, not flaring but not going out.

Carefully, Sayaka picked up her brush and finished the seal.

"Fuck," Kiba said later that day. Sayaka was perched atop a training post with Kiba sitting at the base, leaning back on his hands to look up at her. She hadn't spoken to him since she had gotten back to Konoha, but she owed it to him to say something about the situation. Akamaru was off somewhere in the training field, keeping himself busy.

"Yeah," Sayaka replied quietly.

"Do you—" he began before grinding to a halt. What exactly could he possibly say. "Fuck."

Sayaka made a vague noise and fiddled with the envelope in her hands. All things considered, Kiba had taken being told about being targeted by Itachi very well.

"It's not much," she said eventually before tossing the envelope at him, "but Kakashi-sensei says that the seals there will give you a little time to run."

Kiba lifted the flap and looked at the seals inside. He laughed weakly. "Yeah. That's good I guess."

Sayaka pressed her ink-stained hands against her eyes. The seals were basically useless—Kiba wasn't fast enough to outrun Itachi. But—

"Kagami-sensei said it'd be a good exercise for me," she admitted quietly. "I know it won't save you, but making them helped a little."

Kiba picked up the envelope and turned it over in his hands. "Thanks."

"I— I'll probably make more. If I have nightmares. You know?"

Kiba nodded and slid the seals into his pocket. "Yeah, I get it. It's like meditation right?"

Sayaka laughed a little. "Kind of. Kagami-sensei says it's a subconscious thing. Even if it won't ever really help, making it makes me feel like I'm making progress. It's stupid that it works, but, you know—"

"—if it works it ain't stupid," Kiba finished with a nod and an encouraging smile.

Sayaka managed to smile back briefly before quickly looking away. She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. "You're pretty okay with all this."

Kiba shrugged. "Mom's got like seventeen bounties on her," he replied. "Same with Uncle Tanjiro. I'm literally one of the ten most likely people to be kidnapped by an enemy ninja in the Inuzuka clan. You get used to it."

Sayaka snorted. "Benefits of a clan childhood, I guess."

"You realize you're one of the most eligible girls to get kidnapped in the village right?" Kiba asked by way of reply. "Same with Hinata-san and her younger sister."

"Yeah, and?"

"I'm just saying," Kiba said, holding his hands out as if it would prove his point. "In fact, I bet that there are people who'd kidnap me to try and make you do something stupid so they can kidnap you, so actually nothing's changed and I'm just as screwed as I've always been."

Sayaka huffed. "I guess that's true."

"Of course it's true!" said Kiba confidently as if he had any actual experience on the matter. "That's why you picked me out of all the boys in our class, after all."

Sayaka laughed. "Something like that, yeah."

Kiba laughed back, and Sayaka had a disconcerting swell of affection for the boy. The moment turned into sudden nerves and she looked away.

"We're really going through with this?" Sayaka said, face impassive but stomach swirling. "The whole getting married thing."

"We better be, 'cause I'm ruined for marriage," Kiba joked. Sayaka didn't laugh and Kiba's face turned serious. "You're having second thoughts?"

Sayaka took a breath, then looked Kiba in the eye and shook her head. No. She had no second thoughts. "You?"

"No."

Sayaka's pulse quickened. She swallowed. "We… we need to get betrothal charms then. Even though we don't have a contract signed."

A uniquely Konoha tradition, at least among the shinobi, at least among the clans, betrothal charms were an undeniable signal of intent. The charms were made by tying intricate knots out of silk cord, reminiscent of the ornamental knots that adorned battle armor back during the Warring Clans era. Nowadays, the charms were more elaborate and featured beads of semiprecious stones and various metals, in accordance with both fashion and tradition. Wearing a matching set meant that, at worst, the formal announcement was just awaiting the last hurdles of the negotiation process. Most of the time, the marriage contract was already complete, and the two betrothed put them on as soon as the traditional gifts had been exchanged. But Sayaka and Kiba had unconventional circumstances.

Kiba tossed something up at her. Sayaka caught the charm and swallowed as she looked it over. It was made of black silk, the cord woven through with threads of red and white and knotted into a tightly-packed, five-petaled plum blossom the size of Sayaka's palm. A single pearl lay in line just above a single tiger's fang, its root capped with silver. The opposite side of the charm was tied to a short silver chain that ended in a hook that could be looped into her belt or removed in lieu of a hairpin.

"It's beautiful," Sayaka said quietly. She looked at Kiba's and saw the Uchiha fan made of ruby and mother of pearl hanging underneath the plum blossom.

"They're pretty good yeah?" Kiba replied. He stood and fiddled with the hook, hanging his charm off his right side, then looked up at Sayaka with a grin. "Mom had them made last week for the festival, but you know."

Sayaka jumped down to fit her own charm on, looking over at Kiba's waist where the Uchiha fan hung. A burst of possessiveness swirled in her chest, and before she could really think about it, she was pressing her lips against Kiba's, her hands tugging at the collar of his jacket. Kiba gasped in shock before Sayaka kissed him again.

Time seemed to stop briefly.

Sayaka pulled back. Time restarted.

"You're going to wear the Uchiha fan properly one day," Sayaka said, eyes whirling red as she stared into Kiba's eyes. "After we get married. Do you understand me?"

Kiba stuttered, unable to form coherent words before finally licking his lips and nodding. "Y-y-yeah. One day."

Sayaka grinned at him. "Good."