ii.
Chapter Forty-Six: The Ants Go Marching
This chapter has been Beta-ed by the fantabulous: Wistfuldaydream
"You echo from side to side, pacing in your clumsy balet. Based on the clothes and the books on the floor I don't think this is even your place." - Modest Mouse
Kakashi watched Sasuke's eyes roll into the back of his head in a sudden bout of unconsciousness; the Jounin-sensei couldn't say he blamed the boy.
The kid looked like absolute shit.
Orochimaru, or what Kakashi's clone had actually managed to recover and seal, looked a lot worse.
The girl, so much smaller than any genin, clung tightly to the young Uchiha as if her little life depended on it. Sasuke seemed to return the embrace, even if it was with one arm. A strange, outlandish gesture from the Uchiha Clan Avenger.
Kakashi, for all that he was a grown ass man, felt an irrational flare of hatred for the child. Who was she to meddle with his student. Who was she to accomplish what he had tried so hard to bring about in the boy for years?
Sasuke, for as long as anyone had known him, had never displayed a shred of empathy for anyone since the day his family had been buried. Then along comes this child who's entire existence seems to be a contradiction; juxtaposed to shinobi life. It irritated him. It raked at his nerves because Kakashi was a smart man, and he didn't like this unfamiliar feeling of not understanding.
His teeth fit together with a grinding motion as his jaw reflexively clenched and then relaxed behind his mask.
A blink, and the feeling was gone.
What was done was done, Kakashi couldn't change the past, (his failures) no matter how heavy the guilt that weighed his shoulders down became.
Not that it mattered now anyways.
He moved quickly, gathered the small child to his chest, and turned to leave. Her chakra core weakly flickered; the unknown seal burning red hot against the skin of her soot-caked neck. He could feel the unnatural heat of her through his gloves. He didn't need any medic training to recognize the fever that dusted across her face and caused her breath to come in shallow little pants. Her eyes roved franticly behind closed lids.
He left Sasuke there against that tree, because it wasn't his orders to capture the deserter. (It wasn't in Kakashi to bring him home kicking and screaming like Naruto insisted. As far as Kakashi was concerned, the boy had burned his bridges.)
Today, Sasuke was not his problem.
"There is no point in bringing him home if he's just going to leave again," Tsunade's resigned grumblings echoed in his head. "It's a waste of resources, doujutsu or not."
Kakashi had to agree; it was a waste of manpower.
For now.
He turned his back, eyes forward on the path that would eventually bring him home.
He needed to hurry. The girl was in critical condition and in need of a medic-nin. If he had the luxury of time, he might stop and attempt to unravel the seal on her neck, but as it was he knew his shadow clone would only fool the two Akatsuki for so long.
It was likely the two had already discovered his ruse. He could only hope Naruto, Shikamaru, and Asuma had managed enough destruction to buy him time.
That and he prayed Naruto hadn't decided to be a knucklehead and throw the "flee at the signal" plan to the wind and keep fighting anyways. Knowing Naruto, it could be either. The boy was nothing if not unpredictable. The Kyuubi chakra cloak didn't help one lick either, and without Tenzo readily available to keep Naruto in check, it was anyone's best guess how that confrontation would turn out.
But Kakashi had his orders, and he had to trust his comrades to flee - even if Asuma had to knock Naruto out to do it.
Two klicks closer to Konoha had him pulling a kunai from his pouch, flicking it behind him on reflex and regaining his hold on the child before she even began to fall.
It thunked heavily into a tree, and Kakashi's brain caught up with his reflexes as his eye snagged on the sight of the last thing he expected to see.
Sasuke leaned heavily against the same tree, filthy and panting for breath. His eye was weeping fresh blood and his free arm was hugging his middle, like the effort alone could hold what Kakashi knew must be broken ribs in place.
Kakashi said nothing, waiting for the boy to speak - to explain himself.
"You can't take her," the Uchiha huffed between breaths. Petulant and demanding to the last.
Kakashi's brow rose as the wings of surprise fluttered in his belly once again at the out of character display.
"I don't think you're really in any state to stop me Sasuke-kun," he said gently, trapping the desperate why behind mental walls. Now wasn't the time. He absently adjusted the girls bulk in his arms, and didn't miss the way Sasuke's attention snapped to her. The strangest look crossing over his swollen, abused features.
(To Kakashi, world weary and wise despite his demeanor, it looked as if it might have been of concern, but that couldn't possibly be correct.)
If Sasuke had been himself, the self that Kakashi knew him to be, that statement would have invoked anger and hatred.
"Don't treat me like a child!" a twelve year-olds voice rang through his mind. An echo of a time long past.
Instead, Sasuke's features slackened with resignation; displaying a heretofore unseen capacity for acceptance, and dare he say - patience?
Kakashi's brain floundered, unsure how to respond to the boy who was clearly not in his right state of mind. (He wasn't sure yet if this was a good change, or why it had even come about.)
"Then I'm coming too."
Kakashi felt his entire worldview tilt at the declaration.
"Okay," he head himself say.
Because - what the fuck?
Normally when she woke, Nanami experienced a soft sort of shifting as her mind slowly rose to the surface. She could see familiar chakra moving all around her long before she opened her eyes. Some dreaming, some occupied in their own matters, others mixing together as they interacted, but it was always there. Familiar, serene, comforting. (Violent, abrasive, incorrigible.)
Her world, these men, confirmed all around her before her eyes even opened.
For the first time in her young life, Nanami awoke with a sensation like getting punched in the gut full force by an angry Oceans. There was no soft shift, no familiar chakra. (or any at all..?) It was sudden, jarring and painful.
She groaned, ash caking her eyelashes, her skin on fire and body slathered in sweat.
The world exploded before her in colours and sounds; nothing fit as it should as her eyes opened and she saw but did not see.
Someone was carrying her, (and she didn't know who because all she had were her eyes and she hated it.) a smooth steady gait that glided more than walked, one arm under her curled legs and another around her back.
Her arms were numb, itching with pins and needles from the lack of blood flow.
Her head was pounding.
Everything hurt.
"Bitter Wings?" she murmured, and even that took great effort.
"Hm," was the response, but the sound wasn't right at all. Her brows furrowed and she spent a great deal of energy to lift an arm and grasp for a chest clad in a flowing cloak.
Her finger met fabric that was all wrong, a smattering of zippers and pockets and a rough texture that spoke of function and use for repeated wear.
What little of her thoughts she managed to drum up slammed to a halt long before she managed to actually turn her head and look at the mystery person.
Everything was all wrong.
Sunlight glinted off a sideways Konoha headband, rough from use and scratched. A shock of white-grey hair defying gravity's pull rose in careless spikes.
The man's one visible lazy eye curved in a weird sort of smile even though she could see the shadow of lips in a hard line beneath a skin tight black mask.
"Put me down." she demanded weakly before her brain could catch up with her mouth.
Kakashi stopped walking, and even that small shift of momentum had burning discomfort rippling down her spine like fire.
"As you wish." his tone of voice was cordial, pleasant even.
And he dropped her, literally.
She hit the ground with a hard thud and a scream of agony.
"Although I can't imagine why you'd want me to." he continued, casual as you please as she curled tight around herself in a ball of shivering pain, tucking in limbs and squeezing eyes shut.
The world blacked out the moment her eyes closed, and she found herself opening them back up as wide as she could. (Eye closed, there was no light, there was no chakra; life was chakra and if there is no chakra then that meant she was-)
A warm hand curled over her shoulder and wild eyes found the familiar shape of Bitter Wings. Something undefinable loosened inside her at the sight of him. He was just as dirty as she was; his other arm fisted tightly into the exposed flesh of his side that mottled an angry blue and purple across the exposed stretch of skin.
One side of his face was badly swollen. Dried blood flaking from the mess of his eye.
"Nanami," he murmured her name, a soft sound.
Something in her mind clicked back into place beyond the panic and loss of one of her most heavily relied upon senses.
She breathed raggedly, coming back together to assess what was clearly a captive situation.
Sasuke's good eye darkened, lips quirking ever so slightly at one corner as if he could hear her thoughts.
She supposed that even if she couldn't feel the link between them, the look on his face told her it must still be there.
It made her feel marginally better.
Kakashi's shinobi sandal clad foot gently toed at her arm.
Sasuke held her gaze for a moment longer with a barely perceptible nod.
Izumo was having a terrible day. First, his alarm hadn't gone off in time, and then he'd spilled his coffee all over his band new sandals. The lovely blue fabric was forever stained with the remnants of what would go down as The Day of Hell.
The coffee maker in the break room was empty, the can of grounds that always sat beside it suspiciously missing; an extra ten minute detour wasted. He knew he should have just stopped and bought some.
He sat down under the gate kiosk with a huff, wallowing in self pity another ten minutes later.
Kotetsu, who had probably arrived at their assigned post hours ago gave him a peeved look.
"Don't ask," Izumo pleaded.
Kotetsu opened his mouth, ready to let fly some sarcastic quip. Izumo was sure that it would have been a scathing one if it hadn't been for the little dog summon that went flying through the gate at a speed that screamed emergency!
"Isn't that Hatake-senpai's summon?" Kotetsu murmured instead, dark eyes following after the little pug as it made a beeline for the Hokage tower.
"He didn't sign in," Izumo said absently, but regretted the words the moment they left his mouth. Everyone was required to sign in. Shinobi, summons, civilians and their cattle. Everyone.
Kotetsu folded his arms over his chest and leaned further back into his seat. "I got here on time." He deadpanned, making a statement without actually saying what he meant, as was the man's way.
"Fine." Izumo all but whined, getting up from the chair he had only just sat down in to follow after the dog.
The moment he got up to the Hokage's waiting room he could hear her indefinable screaming from inside, and he knew his day was about to go from bad to worse. He hadn't even had any coffee yet.
The door slammed open, making the young secretary at the sign-in desk jump. Izumo could see the pug panting on the floor behind Tsunade as it caught its breath.
Her imposing form took up the archway, eyes scanning the room before alighting on him.
Fuck.
"Get over here Kamizuki, I've got a lot of paperwork and not a lot of patience." He bowed his head in acceptance as she turned to her secretary.
The man's pen stilled under her scrutiny.
"Get Morino Ibiki up here now, and I mean an hour ago!" she barked causing the man to jump to his feet and begin gathering papers on his desk in a flurry of motion.
"Leave it!" the Hokage snapped again in irritation and papers rained from the secretary's arms in a flutter of mess to layer across the floor.
He turned and ran for the door.
"Hoshi-san." Tsunade's posture shifted subtly as she called for what Izumo could only assume was the secretary's name. The man paused at the outer door confirming it.
"Yes ma'am?" he said hesitantly.
"Best bring up Akimichi Chouza and Yamanaka Inoichi while you're at it." her tone of voice marginally softer, tinged with something Izumo didn't want to examine too closely.
As a daily gate guard, he was all too aware that the children of both men were out on a mission. Although Inoichi did work in the T&I department with Ibiki, somehow he doubted that was the reason for the call.
Hoshi-san hesitated a moment too long. "Should I get a medic?" he warbled slowly, and Izumo had to force himself not a face palm.
"I am a fucking medic!" Tsunade screeched, her face turning a shade of red that usually only appeared when she was beyond sloshed.
The man was out the door and tripping down the stairs beyond before Izumo could even blink.
And so began The Day of Hell.
Kakashi did his best not to think about the weight of the girl lying limp on his back. Small, fragile and burning hot enough to make his own skin sweat despite the crispness to the air.
It was stretching into late afternoon, the sun high above the canopies that served as their highway, and not a single sign of Akatsuki had reared its head. Kakashi wondered where the stroke of luck had come from, but couldn't help feeling wary of it.
Beside him, Sasuke stumbled for the umteenth time. A grunt of exhaustion leaving his lips as sweat dotted his brow and mixed with flakes of dried blood as it rolled down his face.
And still the boy persisted.
"Bitter Wings," the child on his back murmured. An involuntary spasm rolled between his shoulders at the sound of her voice.
Too many emotions rolled into that sound. Something desperate, something worried, angry, hopeful, and far too mature for her lips. Kakashi knew something about mature children, having been one himself. This girl however, threw him through a loop. Something off about her carriage, the expressions he'd seen on her face, her tone of voice. There was something entirely… unnatural about her.
"What?" Sasuke grunted, his tone prickly and curt. Kakashi was surprised he'd bothered to acknowledge the strange name regardless.
Bitter Wings? Perhaps it was oddly appropriate in a grossly poetic sort of way.
"I can't see." The girl muttered into his vest clad shoulder. Sasuke seemed to hear her fine, his one good eye flicking to her face, searching.
His feet landed on the next branch in time with Kakashi's pace.
There was a moment of internal stillness, a moment where Kakashi waited to see if Nanami would explain the statement further. The less he interjected between them, the more likely they would be to continue a conversation.
"I know," Sasuke replied, expression soft for the barest of seconds. "We'll get it figured out." Kakashi's brow furrowed at his phrasing. Confused by the dynamic between the Unknown and the Deserter, and not enjoying it at all.
Talking seemed to exhaust Sasuke further, and the Jounin wondered not for the first time why he was even bothering to begin with.
"You shouldn't come," her voice came like a breath of air. "It's too soon. Everything is too soon." he strained to hear the last part as her voice trailed into nothing.
"Shut up Nanami," Sasuke murmured back, far to gently, "I do what I want."
Kakashi questioned that too.
There were a lot of things Sasuke had considered happening, a few more he considered that probably wouldn't. Yet in all his musing about his return to Konoha, never had he imagined himself walking through the front gates of his own free will at his former sensei's side.
A small voice in the back of his head was struggling, screaming in panic and agitation.
The rest of him was determined to stay with Nanami. As much as he would like to blame it entirely on her strange chakra's influence over his psyche, he knew a conscious part of him needed to be near her too.
He felt put together around her. Perhaps not put together in a shape he quite recognized, something malformed and lumpy, but at least the hallucinations had been chased away; at least he had a grasp on his emotions (and reality) for the time being.
Sasuke was desperate to be in control of himself once more. He didn't think he could stand to have a repeat of the last time they had parted. He wasn't even sure how much time had passed between then and now, his awareness a complete disaster. He felt truly awake for the first time in what felt like a very long time.
He'd stick by Nanami to hold onto that, even if it meant following her into the bowels of his once home. (However reluctantly on the inside.)
There was only one gate guard underneath the sign-in kiosk, and Sasuke noted the man seemed too stunned to stop them when Kakashi just shifted Nanami's weight across his back and walked right past without bothering to register. It seemed to him as if the crunch of their sandals on the gravel path was the loudest thing he'd ever heard.
One entire side of his face was throbbing; his eye socket was a constant irritation and the plip plip of blood mixed with sweat off his chin was an unwanted distraction.
Sasuke ambled after; he was beyond tired and falling to pieces as the minutes ticked by. Only Nanami's bleary, soft brown gaze kept him following after. The chakra tether between them shifting from taunt to slack with no rhyme or reason, her emotions a swirl often too fast for him to follow. Above all, exhaustion reigned supreme between the two of them.
Nanami's cheek pressed into Kakashi's shoulder, neck boneless and limp, a blush high on the bridge of her nose and a sigh of discontent on her lips.
Still, she watched him.
Sasuke didn't need to see her face to know how she felt. He could feel it thrumming through their link, her chakra wild and uncontrolled as it flailed blindly. Panic, desperation, fear, and some god forsaken feeling that Sasuke had no name for but recognized anyways. Like a child reaching for a parent; a gaping maw of emptiness that craved reassurances.
Her mind clung to his like a drowning man to driftwood in the sea.
His gaze snagged on hers for the millionth time as they trudged through familiar streets.
Masked ANBU silently flickering to their sides like dark shadowy escorts in the late afternoon haze.
Kakashi hummed under his breath, Nanami's fingers curled harder into his flack jacket and Sasuke shifted closer to his… (Friend? Ward? Mental Captor?)
Whatever she was to him.
The civilians they passed openly stared, stopping in their daily tasks to whisper to one another as they trudged by. The Konoha shinobi tried a little harder to seem subtle about the openly curious gazes, but only marginally.
Sasuke thought he might have heard a few gasps of recognition, but he only had eyes for the little girl laid across his former sensei's shoulder. His world, his awareness, and his sanity breathing her in with great gasps of air.
An odd role reversal had him trying to reach out to calm the panic that didn't show on her features. Her face smooth and blank; eyes hazy. (He'd seen the look before, so well-practiced on the face of his elder brother.) Her chakra was out of control, or at least what was left of it after Orochimaru had run the both of them into the ground. Sasuke wasn't entirely sure what was wrong, but he could read context clues well enough.
She couldn't feel any chakra, probably even her own. Her eyes constantly on him in a way he had previously felt her chakra- reassuring herself that he was there, but without her sensor abilities that sight was lost and her control and emotions along with it.
Sasuke ached, his ribs burned, their combined chakra depletion dragging at him with the claws of impending unconsciousness, and still his determination to stick by her side pressed at him with an iron will.
An ANBU was nice enough to hold the door to the Hokage tower open for the impromptu entourage; admitting what had once been three but had grown to eight.
Sasuke was aware of someone sliding his sword from his belt as they ascended the staircase in a neat, orderly fashion. Glances were exchanged when he made no outward protest with the exception of a clenched jaw.
It felt like hours before they stood in a disgustingly familiar office, a large mahogany desk piled with papers and one blond Hokage perched atop it.
Sasuke was aware that the room was full of people, all clamoring loudly. He didn't look at any of them. It was bothersome. He was tired. Nanami was tired.
Tsunade sat with legs crossed, arms folded beneath her bust, and a nasty scowl writ across her face like the front line of a war party.
Kakashi and Sasuke stood amidst the chaos; the eye of the storm, the silent party waiting for a verdict. Nanami lay pliant at Kakashi's back, one hand curled tightly into his vest with a vise grip and the other hanging limp. Kakashi had one arm tucked under her legs to hold her, the other palmed the pocket that Sasuke knew held a little orange book.
Nanami's eyes watered, tear tracks cutting a path through the soot on her face to plip softly onto Kakashi's green vest.
Her fingers twitched, and Sasuke found himself responding to the unasked plea before his own thoughts could catch up. He stepped forward, ignoring the immediate ripple of aggression in the room. Kakashi watched him from his peripheral over the top of Nanami's singed, soot-caked hair. An unnatural stillness fell over his person as Sasuke caught Nanami's little hand in his own and held it.
A heavy silence fell over the room, but all Sasuke cared about was the quieting of the link between himself and the hurting child before him.
Her eyes rolled into the back of her head, the link muting suddenly, harshly, like a slamming door. His awareness of her plunging into the depths of the ocean. Murky and indistinct. The burning red of the seal etched into her skin cooling to a solid black almost immediately.
Sasuke crumpled to the floor, following her into oblivion not a moment later.
"Someone prep a secure room at the hospital." Tsunade grumbled, eyeing the broken form of the last Uchiha who'd just cracked his head on her floor; like the kid wasn't bleeding enough as is. She turned on Kakashi then, hopping off her desk to click high heels across her office with a firm stride.
Kakashi just stood there, one eye lazy and uncaring. His head listed to the side to allow more space for the unconscious child on his shoulder.
Movement burst from the back of the room. Shizune, bless her, gathered up half filled out paperwork and made for the door to no doubt follow her orders.
"Why'd you bring the Uchiha, Hatake?" Tsunade was not in a forgiving mood at the moment. All the liquor bottles under her desk were already empty.
"I didn't bring him," the man grumbled, finally bring one grey eye up to meet her own squarely. "He followed us here."
A clamor rose again, Yamanaka Inoichi stepping forward with a heavy scowl and red, tired eyes. "That doesn't fit his psych eval," he contested. Kakashi just shrugged, uncaring. Sasuke's Psych evaluation wasn't his problem.
Tsunade swept a glowing green hand over the small child's forehead and neck, tutting at what she found there. "She needs surgery, get her to the hospital I'll be right behind." The Hokage didn't offer further reasonings to the room, too many prying ears and too many unmade plans. Kakashi turned, stooping to pick up Uchiha Sasuke by the thick purple rope looped around the boy's middle with his free hand and drag him out of the room.
For the moment, Tsunade tuned out the group of shinobi in her office.
First, she needed to make sure the kids actually lived.
Then shed pry all the information she needed from their heads with every available tool in her arsenal.
The conversion from hospital room to prison cell hadn't taken long, a simple enclosed space with no windows on one of the lower levels. The walls were a stark white, the hum of the halogens on the ceiling a familiar sound in the hospital.
Two twin beds took up the majority of the room; the now clean and treated prisoners tucked beneath thin white sheets. Inoichi walked past the last Uchiha, not terribly concerned with the boy for the moment. (He couldn't help but notice that half the boys face was mummified in bandages.)
The girl however…
Tsunade's heels clicked on tile behind him, the door sealing shut in their wake.
"It's not perfect," she murmured, inspecting the seals etched into the cuffs that held Uchiha Sasuke to the railings of his bed. "But it'll do in a pinch."
The small girl had a very similar set up. Her hair had been trimmed, the singed ends removed and washed with the standard abrasive disinfectant soap used for hair and skin. She looked… young. Small and fragile laying with eyelashes fanned against her cheeks. An IV drip line trailed from an upturned wrist tipped with blue fingers up onto the hook that held the saline bag.
She looked underfed; bone thin, with stress lines beneath her eyes. Inoichi knew chronic insomnia when he saw it. The kid couldn't have been any older than an academy student. How she'd even come to be mixed up with such an abhorrent group of S-class missing-nin he wasn't sure; but he hoped to find out by the end of this.
"How long will they be out for?" Inoichi did his best to calculate average interrogation times, distracted as he was.
Tsunade made her way to the girl's bedside, pushing her face to the left so she could once more inspect the now dormant seal inked into her neck.
"As long as you need." was the clipped reply.
Inoichi folded his hands in front of him, and then moved them to his sides when that didn't feel right. His Hokage look up at him from the corner of her eye, a piercing look that peeled him apart. She stood to her full height, hand on one hip.
"Can you handle this, Yamanaka-san?"
Inoichi did his best not to bristle at what felt like an insult to his abilities as a Jounin, but even he had to admit he felt compromised in this situation. So instead he took a deep breath; in and out, in a calming movement and did his best to compartmentalize the grief that threatened to overwhelm him.
Later.
Later, when he buried his daughter.
For now, he had a job to do.
He nodded, and voiced his assent, "Yes Ma'am."
Tsunade's eyes narrowed, mouth twisting at the side in a way he recognized on her features. There was a long moment where she held his eyes, before her gaze dropped and swung towards the door.
"I'm aware that the mind walk can be difficult when children are involved."
Inoichi remained silent, hands lax at his sides. What could he say after all? He wouldn't refuse this job even if it was true. He needed to do this. It had to be him.
"I understand it can be more difficult to keep a lid on your own emotions when using this technique on children." she continued, and his heart thumped loudly in his chest with surprise. That was not common knowledge. The Yamanaka clan, like many others, usually kept the weaknesses of their techniques to themselves. Bleed through was not an uncommon situation when in the mind of an adolescent.
Regardless of how Tsunade had discovered this tidbit, it didn't seem like she'd be volunteering her source any time soon so Inoichi let it go.
Silence stretched between them, the Yamanaka clan head counting his breaths like he had so often done as a younger man.
"Just get the job done, Inoichi-san," Tsunade said, tone soft this time. He swept his gaze away, refusing to find the pity in her eyes that he knew was there. His hands clenched into fists, nails biting crescents into his palms.
"Yes, ma'am."
He just needed to hold it together for a while longer.
AN: Hello everyone, as always I love you all and thank you for taking the time to review. I hope you are enjoying the story so far. The turn out for my last chapter left me breathless!
I'm so excited about the next couple of chapters! I'm already knee-deep into them which is a huge relief for me, you guys have no idea how good it feels to get back into the swing of things.
I've gotten a lot of requests for something a little more light hearted so I'm working on it, but again please everyone be aware that this is not a happy fic, I don't write lighthearted very well.
No sign of the Leaf-nin and the Zombi-Combo this chapter and I'm sad to say maybe not the next one either- but I won't leave you guys hanging forever I promise.
As always, the continued legibility of the fiction is brought to you by my Beta, Wistfuldaydream.
Special Thanks to DominoDuh for being a good friend.
Chapter Forty-Seven: Descent (Rewind)
Preview:
The next room found her trotting quietly towards a sleeping Burning Earth.
The man was all gangly limbs and wild blonde hair in his sleep. Arms that were carelessly thrown over the side of his matress were returned to their rightful place, and hair ties were gently pulled from knotted hair.
He politely pretended to sleep during her careful ministrations, but the shine of humored blue irises gave him away when he rolled over and kicked at the blanket she had just put over him. She smiled fondly at his stubbornness.
For all that Burning Earth seemed an adult, he was really just a teenager himself.
Not that this world saw teenagers as children.
"That's an interesting concept." A man with a long blonde ponytail murmured quietly at her side.
She looked at him askance.
"It's rude to interrupt." She admonished the stranger gently, quiet despite the fact that had he truly been here her brothers would have reacted to him by now.