The Honorable Tosogare was beautiful in a way hawks were beautiful, the way lightning-forged blades were beautiful and the way a flowering adder's root was beautiful.

Rin shivered at the way candlelight licked his waxy skin, illuminating features so fine they might as well have been etched on eggshells. Tosogare's hair had been shorn short, curling just past the ears as though he had recently been abed with fever. He cut a contrasting figure against Tegaki who stood and took his hand, black against white, dark where his brother Tegaki was fair, his coloring closer to white than Kakashi's which had always come off as someone gone prematurely grey but darker than Jiraiya whose hair had never worn any other color.

Tosogare smiled in satisfaction as they all averted their eyes and clasped his collar closed under his throat, hiding the flat expanse of his chest.

Staring down at her nails, Rin remembered that Lord Tegaki had a wife, a sister-wife. Yachi failed to mention that the Honorable Tosogare was a man.

She inwardly shrieked.

What was wrong with this family's men?

There was something painful about looking directly at the man they called Tegaki's wife. It wasn't that Tosogare was blinding though it would have surprised Rin if he was. Like Sora, Tosogare was tall and whip-thin, slender-necked with a carved chin. But his clothes hung loose in places where flesh should have been full. Where the breadth of his bones should have pressed the scarlet camellia into full bloom.

Tosogare was a sick man. He was a dying man and it terrified her.

"You." Jiraiya said in recognition, swallowing the dry lump in his throat.

Rin peeked around.

Jiraiya's face was clammy with sweat. Even when he had stood at Obito's grave, seen Obito's ghost and feared Obito's vengeance enough to have a summon raze the spot to the ground, the man had stood firm in his decision. But before the Honorable Tosogare, who was sickly and half-blind, swaying like he was a tree caught in the wind, Jiraiya had the haunted look of a cornered thing.

Tosogare turned his face in their direction.

"Ah Toad Sage Jiraiya. Still without manners." He said evenly. His attendants bristled at Jiraiya for speaking out of turn. "Was my reading satisfactory?"

"It is as you said." Jiraiya answered. "The war ended. But not without a cost."

"Nothing is free." Tosogare hummed. "Everything has its price."

Rin jumped when Jiraiya slammed a fist against the floor.

"Too high a price! You said...!" he was cut off when a piece of string closed off his throat.

"Know your place Jiraiya the Sannin."

The woman with red hair, the one that had filled Tegaki's pipe stood at the perceived impudence.

Her sleeve had unraveled to many strands. Though she did not lift a hand, neither Tosogare nor Tegaki lifted a hand, the Seifuujin were there. Rin and Jiraiya were surrounded. She could feel a weight press down between her shoulders. Candle smoke cut off midstream and knee height, blocked by something unseen.

Like when Sora had flattened a room just so he would not have to look at Obito.

Rin realized that the Seifuujin clan were not mere mediums. They were not individuals caring for rundown shrines. She recognized her own. The Seifuujin were a clan of killers.

Sweat beaded down the side of her face.

They had misstepped badly—Jiraiya believed that they were here for an exorcism. Rin wanted Obito's final resting place. But if the shrine priestess had been telling the truth, the Seifuujin could do more than that. If the Honorable Tosogare could divine the future, it stood to reason he could also change the course of history.

She wracked her brain for a way out. To buy time for Jiraiya to find a way out.

Blood gleamed from the strings tied around Jiraiya's throat. The string was very thin. She couldn't imagine the control it took to imbue the strings with enough chakra to use them as weapons.

"You know each other." Rin said after a pause.

The strings loosened enough for Jiraiya to talk.

"Go on," Tosogare allowed. "Tell her exactly how we know each other."

The woman released her strings enough for Jiraiya to talk.

"He was a prisoner of Uzushio during the Second Shinobi War." Jiraiya wheezed, looking passionately resentful. "It was only border skirmishes then. Before me and Tsunade and that bastard Orochimaru were sent out into the front lines. The Third wanted to be sure that there would be a war and he commissioned a reading from Uzushio. They brought us a boy from an unknown clan and told us that he could see the future. I was there when he foretold the end of Uzushio."

"Aye, I remember. I was very lucky to escape when I did. Not all of us were. I also remember seeing your future in the smoke, on the bones of the men you slew for the fox you worshiped as a god."

Jiraiya trembled.

"How dare you..."

"Jiraiya the Sannin, sage, murderer, kin-slayer." Tosogare rattled off the titles like they were mere observations and not epithets, each pulling the tension tighter and tighter until Rin felt she could cut it with a knife. "Shall I read for you again?"

Tosogare was playing with them.

"Stop." Rin interrupted. "That's not why we came. You said you could help my friend. Please, help."

Tosogare laughed.

"Of course I will help you."

Rin had not expected that answer. She was dumbstruck by the sheer gratitude that filled her. She had expected a fight. There was always a fight.

"Really?" She stammered.

"Rin." Jiraiya hissed.

"Ani-ue." Tegaki said, "This is beneath you."

Tosogare pushed his brother's face away.

"Tegaki, I am your wife, not your pet. I am doing this."

"They are shinobi." Came Tegaki's muffled response.

"I know."

To Rin, Tosogare said—"You were very brave to have come here."

"He was my friend. He was a good person." She said fiercely. "He didn't deserve to be left behind—I was wrong to leave him there."

"Ah, but you would not have liked the person he would have become had he lived." Tosogare said, almost like an afterthought.

Rin would never know if she would have liked the person Obito could have become. If he would have liked the person she had become. But they were shinobi. Their personal feelings came second to their duties. Shinobi were tools of war. If not in war, they would have fought battles elsewhere.

Maybe everything would have turned out the same. Kakashi might have turned traitor for a fallen comrade. She might have apprenticed herself to Jiraiya anyway. Maybe, Obito might have become the Hokage after Minato.

She would never know.

Obito was dead. Kakashi was gone. She had set aside her medical training.

Rin knew now that Jiraiya would not help her become a sage. His limitations were her own. Jiraiya's students had all been geniuses with monstrous stores of chakra. She was just herself. Ordinary Rin. She would have to find her own path. Her own way of taking control of destiny and bringing it to heel. To bring both Kakashi and Obito home. To make the world around her be right again. She had to try.

"I wonder if you know what you are asking." Tosogare said gently. "Did you mentor ever share knowledge worth a grain of salt or does he see you as another stepping stone in his quest to find the children of the prophesy?"

"The who?" Rin asked, bewildered.

"We are not the only ones who can dreamwalk or speak to dead things. I have ways. We all have ways. It's in your face, your actions, your voice. Sometimes, the wind whispers us things that are useful and at times painful to hear. I want you to stop here and think about what you are asking me. Your teacher wants you to stop here. What do you want Nohara-san?"

"I want you to help me find Uchiha Obito."

Tosogare spread a hand towards her.

"Come then. Help me prepare."

The red-haired woman, spinning thread back in to cloth, said bitterly, "Jiraiya, you are wrong. The war was won for a pittance."

+++++8+++++

Rin watched as Tosogare's head sank lower and lower under the weight of his crown. He let out a sigh and turned up his face for the grease paint, black coal around his eyes and red paint on his lips.

"How did Uzushio fall anyway?" Rin asked.

What she knew of Uzushio was in text books. She knew that Uzushio was a great village once. Its reigning clan, Uzumaki, was a distant relation to the Senju. The Uzumaki were envied for their sealing techniques. Somewhere along the line, jealousy became fear. Fear destroyed Uzushio, the Uzumaki, and the Senju.

Small weapons like the kunai were the easiest to seal. The more advanced techniques could conceal a corpse inside a scroll. Scrolls could summon contracted animals or people. Was that why the Uzumaki were wiped out?

"He lied." Jiraiya said flatly. "Uzushio fell but not in the way he said it would. He was... old enough to be difficult at that age. Old enough to know that the things he said would have gotten him killed."

She nodded. She imagined Fudou would have resorted to such measures if the war had not ended when it did.

"A person like that wouldn't have given you a reading." Rin pointed out.

"No. We had, hostages."

The sudden wave of killing intent had Rin groping for scalpels and Jiraiya's hand in the shape of an ox.

"Don't." The red-haired woman said, fingering the hem of her sleeve. "That is not a story for you to tell."

Rin shivered at the raw hatred in the woman's voice.

"Then why help? Why not sell us to the Iwa?"

"Guren, Rin." Tosogare called pleasantly. "Come sit with me. Tegaki is a terrible conversationalist."

Tegaki grumbled.

Guren bowed.

"As you wish, Tosogare-sama."

The killing intent dissipated.

Tosogare sat serene as he was draped in silks, richer and finer than anything she'd ever seen, inlaid with gold thread and mother-of-pearl. He smiled when Guren knelt at his side, twisting his bejeweled fingers into the chakra-heavy sleeves.

"So how do you know Jiraiya?" Rin asked carefully.

"Did Jiraiya not tell you?" Tosogare teased.

Rin shook her head.

"I want to hear your side of the story."

She thought Tosogare looked pleasantly surprised.

"My parents only had sons. Me, then Tegaki. Our gift cannot be passed down to men. Naturally, one of us had to be a woman."

Rin did not see anything natural about the logic but nodded along.

"So you became your brother's wife."

"That came after." Tosogare replied smoothly. "This gift chooses the strongest, only the strongest. And so I inherited my family's art and the consequences thereafter."

"But you survived. Because you're strong. Powerful. I wish I had power."

"Do you?" Tosogare asked in amusement. "I know many powerful people. Jiraiya is one of them. I cannot say that it has brought him much happiness."

"But if you have the power to do so, you can make your happiness and keep it. If you have the power, you can protect the things that you care about."

Guren still had both of her sleeves but Rin's throat felt tight.

"Last night," Rin said, "I think, no, I know I saw him. I think that, until that moment, I was hoping he was alive." She squeezed the heel of her palm against her left eye. Grief threatened to overwhelm her. It hadn't when Obito first died. When she had left her friend and teammate under a pile of rocks as a plaything for the people who came after. "I was so sorry."

She had only cried after. After when it was too late.

When it had been too late even for Obito and his clumsy apologies.

Rin fought in the Third Shinobi War. Konoha honored her as one of its heroes. She had seen people at the hospital like Kizaku who did not fight and Fudou who had feared being sent out repeatedly but could not help but fight.

She always thought that she had the nerves of steel. But when she saw Obito in the twilight, she was suddenly the thirteen-year-old who did not understand that her friend was gone forever. That she had lost a teammate.

"I know you are Nohara-san." Tosogare said gently. "You can tell him yourself."

"Is he... talking right now?"

"I can hardly get a word in edgewise."

It explained the pained expression on Tegaki's face.

"I must warn you, your friend is here. But so are the echoes of what he used to be."

"What do you mean?"

Konoha subscribed to the concept of a Pure Land. A place where souls went after death. Tegaki had implied earlier that the Pure Land was where Obito was supposed to be.

But according to her grandmother, sometimes, if a soul had unfinished business, they were reborn into a new body.

"Like to his great-grandfather or something?" She guessed. Konoha was found not even a century ago.

"No." And something in Tosogare's voice made her sit up and pay attention. "To the founding."

+++++8+++++

Everyone sat in a ring with their backs to the wall. Tegaki sat west, Jiraiya east, Guren south, Rin north, and Tosogare stood at the center.

"You have something in your pocket." Tosogare said suddenly. "May I?"

Rin's hands went to her pocket and drew out a roll of used bandages.

"This was his?"

She nodded, not trusting her voice.

As soon as the Honorable Tosogare touched it, the bandages withered to ash. She couldn't help but let out a short whimper which she smothered with her fist.

Someone began to chant in a high voice. It was no language she recognized. The words swelled upwards and down, queuing drums into a steady beat. Tosogare flicked open his war fans, spreading them like the wings on a bird. His shadow fell across the floor and transformed into the image of a dancing crane.

Chakra manipulation—she thought. As her eyes got used to the movements, she realized that they were like hand seals. A flow of snake-dragon-snake-rooster-rat. Subtle and complex. Pressure began to build around Tosogare. Rin felt as though the very air was closing down on her.

And there, at the periphery of her vision was Obito. One moment a chunin graduate, the other, a boy crushed under rocks. His eyes spun red into the dreaded sharingan. The three commas stretched until they joined into a spiral at the center of his eye, red-in-black.

Obito joined Tosogare at the center of the room, mimicking his movements. He was not the boy she remembered or the boy she mourned. His hair was slicked down like it was wet.

"Obito." She gasped and his gaze turned to her. Sharingan in his left eye socket, the void staring out from the right. "What happened to you?"

The first question fell from her lips without hesitation. She felt the sting of Jiraiya's stare on the side of her face but couldn't help herself. She wanted to know; she needed to know if she could have saved her friend.

"Rin? Rin! You're here!"

"Obito." Rin repeated. "What happened?"

"I... I was trapped under rocks. I saved you?" Obito groped his face with his crushed hand. Digging her nails into her thighs, Rin replied, "Yes, you saved me. You saved Kakashi. You saved us both."

Obito looked relieved. His words came fast. She had an impression that if she knew more, was paying attention, she could understand what he was saying. But she only heard her friend stumble over words, an explanation for which she had waited for more than two years.

"Someone found me. They kept me." The left side of his face was covered in blood. Her stomach churned at the sight. She could taste the iron in the air. "I.."

Tosogare's fan swept through him and as though startled, Obito joined him in the movement of tiger-ox-boar.

"I made a promise." He amended. "I think I made a promise."

The boar closed into a snake.

"The promise is binding." Tegaki muttered.

"Yes." Obito said breathlessly. "They kept my body but I made a promise. I gave him my word."

"Kakashi." Rin said.

"Yes. He is one of them." he turned to her. "He found me Rin."

+++++8+++++

"Something wrong?"

His new partner stared down at him with reserved politeness. He hadn't gone for his sword yet but it was a close thing. Kakashi could see his gill marks flutter nervously on his cheeks. They'd have to work on that. Later. Much later. When his head didn't feel like it was about to explode.

"No, it's." Kakashi ground the heel of his palm into his left eye, willing the images to go away. It meant nothing. He knew they weren't real. He just needed more sleep.

For a moment, he could have sworn he saw Rin.

He bit his tongue and let his hand fall at his side.

"Maa Kisame." He beamed. "You're so negative. Nothing is wrong.

Kakashi kicked his quarry on the side and turned it over.

"Let's proceed, shall we?"