"Cheer up Kakashi-san, we made it."
"Finally."
By the time he and Kisame arrived at the-place-between-the-rocks, it was a ghost town. Its main attraction had disappeared overnight and the few straggler drew back in unease at the sweep of red clouds, their eyes downcast and shadowed.
"If you're looking for the Seifuujin, you are too late." The barkeep said matter-of-fact when they stopped by the only building left standing for a chance to wet their lips. She bustled as she poured them a draft of cloudy liquid, at a discount for all new visitors, she said lying through her teeth, and a tincture of viscous, red syrup Kakashi suspected was actually poison.
Kisame happily knocked his drink back and Kakashi slid his glass towards his companion.
"We're traveling pilgrims." Kakashi explained. "We were really hoping to see them."
"Can't help you." The barkeep said, snatching the glasses back as soon as they were empty and packing them away on top of boxes which were on top of boxes, paying a laborer with a bag of clinking coins for his troubles. "They didn't exactly leave a calling card, or summons." She crossed her arms beneath her breasts and said thoughtfully, "They went east I think."
A moment passed. "I think Lady Maya was talking about the Dark Continent."
"Brave woman." Kisame praised, bringing the tincture to his mouth. The man grimaced at the smell. His serrated teeth clamped closed. "What is this?"
"It's a house specialty. Try." The barkeep cooed.
Sighing, Kakashi pushed a thousand ryo across the scratched counter.
It was amazing how fast the piece of paper disappeared under the barkeep's collar. The Puppet Brigade of Suna could have learned a thing or two from her sleight of hand.
"You could talk to Sora." The barkeep offered as though the press of a thousand ryo on her skin had jogged her memories. "He's a practitioner who stayed behind to take care of the gravesite. I'm sure he would help you if you asked and..." She made a ring with her thumb and her index finger, laying it flat against the top of her left breast.
"Ahhh." Kakashi said thoughtfully. "Thank you for your counsel."
"Of course." The barkeep said cheerily. The rest of the bar and board had cleared out during their conversation. Yet somehow, instead of feeling empty, the entire room seemed to shrink in on them. Kakashi hadn't had a single drop of drink and a quick glance at Kisame showed that he too felt the charged air.
He eyed their host. Perhaps they had overstayed their welcome. They were in the Land of Earth. Close to the boarder to Fire and even closer to Iwa.
They had to watch themselves; Iwa was unkind to outsiders. Kakashi had to watch himself. He wasn't sure he could hold himself back if he saw another forehead protector with the symbol for Iwa carved in the middle.
As they left, the barkeep curtsied and said, "Please, do come again."
+++++10+++++
"A grave site." Kakashi said flatly, looking up in the general direction of where they were supposed to go. It was hard to miss a giant flower carved into the side of a mountain. He always thought that the Hokage monument was hubris. But the Seifuujin might as well have painted a giant arrow on top of their temple and laid out a yellow brick road for their visitors to follow.
"At least we won't get lost." Kisame hummed.
"Stay alert." A gut feeling told him to stay put. To turn around and never come back. The gut feeling was never wrong. So he ignored it because he had a job to do.
Halfway up the plateau, they caught up with a disgruntled young man hauling buckets of water across his narrow back. He looked comically dwarfed by the heavy yoke and Kisame, being a bleeding heart that he was, took it with one hand and slung it on top of his left shoulder, careful not to splash Samehada which was slumbering in its sheath.
"Maa," Kakashi greeted cheerily. "Are you going to get your fortune told too?"
"Visitors?" The young man's eyes glittered like ground glass. He was closer to Kakashi's age than Kisame's, not that he had asked the missing-nin for his age, with delicate features and a pouting mouth that placed him far from home. But he had training. Kakashi could see when the young man came to the same conclusion. "The main family has moved on. You should head west."
"Odd, we heard that Lady Maya was thinking of going to the Dark Continent."
"Yachi." The young man muttered under his breath.
Kakashi nodded in agreement.
"The lady was kind enough to direct us to, Sora was it?"
The young man curled his mouth into a sneer and denied, "He can't help you."
"Now, now." Kakashi said calmly, weighing his chances with a kunai. He had been hoping for a bath at least before a confrontation. He popped open the buttons to his red-and-black cloak and flashed his wallet, fat from kicking bandits up and down Taki territory. "We have money."
"Err, Kakashi-san... that is."
"Whoops." Kakashi said, not missing a beat.
He had pulled out his battered copy of Icha Icha Paradise by accident. The young man had gone crimson at the there-and-gone glimpse of the cover art. A glaring weakness in his training if he was being honest.
Kakashi held up his actual wallet and the young man rocked back on his feet, tempted by easy, easy money.
Easy.
He looked at them up and down. As though he had a chance in taking them both. Inwardly, Kakashi smiled.
To Kisame, the young man ordered, "Do not spill a drop of that water."
"Scout's honor." Kisame agreed,
"And you are?"
"Kyou." Kyou said shortly. No last name given. He didn't ask for Kakashi's name or Kisame's. Though he had a drop of divination in him, he wouldn't have needed to.
"Aa. Pleased to meet you."
They walked up the mountain in silence, punctuated by the rustling wind and the sense of foreboding that snapped tighter and tighter around their ribs. After what seemed like ten thousand steps, they set foot on the plateau where an entire side of a mountain had been carved to resemble an opening lotus.
"Over here." Kyou jerked his head, directing Kisame to a small well that was much diminished. It was not an ideal place to build a home. It would be difficult to carry anything up the steps in winter. But Kyou did not seem to mind the task as he bullied Kisame into emptying the buckets in order.
After exchanging discreet glances with his partner, Kakashi slipped off to the side. It was easy enough to walk past the open doors.
Despite the temple's size, there was no one in attendance. He wandered across the empty courtyard, in front of great lion dog statutes that bore his fangs at him, the sunlit hallways and a koi pond with red-and-black fish the length of his arm.
Kakashi had been to the Uchiha compound. He had his own house to compare it with in his head. The main hall stuck out to him. Centered but off to the side, at an angle where it would be illuminated every solstice. Inside, candle wax lined all four walls, dripping down panels of dark wood like honey off a hive. The flames closest to the door threatened to blow out at his passing and traced the red and white clouds with movement, rippling across his cloak.
"Sora I take it, I've been looking for you."
A man stood in the middle of the hall which was meant to house an entire clan, a family, a congregation or even a cult. Kakashi hummed thoughtfully even as his hair rose on end, stomach folding itself in half.
It was a closed space. There was only one entrance. Light barely penetrated the lotus-patterned slats of the ceiling. The perfect place for a murder, he thought.
Sora raised an eyebrow and asked, "Do I know you shinobi-san?"
The onmyouji looked like a Bunraku doll[1]. He wore layers of furisode meant for a woman, each more outlandish than the last. The topmost layer was of a deep, violet silk, almost black, spangled with silver-pointed stars.
Kakashi saw that his eyes, slanted in the candlelight, were an uncanny blue. The kind of blue he might find in an autumn sky, fathomless and deep. Blue eyes were rare in Konoha. Minato had been an exception. But Minato's eyes were flawed, dark in places, pale near the cornea. His eyes did not have the arresting effect of someone who'd been touched by a spirit. Someone who'd laid their soul bare on purpose to let the power in.
When he was young, Sakumo—his father—took him to a priestess for blessings. The woman had read fortune off the callouses in his palms and promised him a destiny, tying his boy-thin wrists with a red cord and forcing him to drink wine she had spat in three times.
The woman probably had been a fraud.
So Kakashi knew things. He had been taught many things; he learned things that they did not teach at the Academy, before and after his father passed. When he was trying to make sense of funeral arrangements with no family plot to bury a body, only a memorial tablet and urns that held dusty remains of ancestors and a mother he didn't remember. At Shisui's feet when he had all but begged the young Uchiha to help him set things right. When Kisame told him that Kiri followed the old ways, the ways before the idea of heaven and Pure Land permeated the minds of believers.
"By that definition," He had said. "All of us will be worm food in the next life."
And Kisame had replied cheerfully, "It would be a simpler life."
"You have something I need." Kakashi told Sora.
The practitioners of the Seifuujin Clan had a reputation. They could talk to ghosts, read stars and suborn demons to their whims. If half the fantastic things he had heard about them were true, he should have walked the other way, to Kumo and their tame, tailed beasts when Orochimaru first broached the subject.
"I'm afraid I cannot help you." Sora demurred. "I am simply a custodian, tasked with the duty of caring for this place."
"If it's money you want."
A pause.
"I don't do that anymore." Sora's voice curdled into one of resentment and Kakashi couldn't figure out why.
His heart began to race.
"Your kind told fortunes for the biggest wallets in the past. What is one more?"
"One more death for Konoha?" Sora suggested flatly. "After all, the hidden villages are among our best customers."
"I'm not from Konoha."
"Aren't you?" Sora turned away in dismissal. "People do strange things in desperate situations."
"That's right." The tips of his fingers whitened and peeled back as he pulled chakra into his arm. He didn't need the Sharingan to kill a civilian. "And if you won't give me an answer, I take it from you."
Sora asked, "If I won't?"
On cue, Kyou flew through the wall. Kakashi looked over his shoulders as the dust settled, the hulking figure of Kisame peering timidly through the new doorway, looking worried that he had broken something.
"Shall we?" He prompted when his partner took too long to go around to open the actual doors.
"This is why we can't have nice things." Kisame said depreciatingly.
"We'll leave extra at the next temple." Kakashi soothed.
Three shinobi stood from the ceiling, watching the exchange. The one at the center had blue eyes, clear and deep like Sora's. A cousin maybe. The two looked nothing alike. And as though he had read his thoughts, Souken smiled.
The shinobi to his left dropped at once, landing on top of Samehada which was still in its sheath. Though very unhappy about fighting in a holy place, Kisame was a good partner. He backed Kakashi's play, pulling back the cloth bindings to reveal his sentient sword.
Gin dissolved into pale foam as Samehada swung through his torso.
"Oh shit." The man said as he reappeared a few feet away. "That's Samehada—He's one of the Seven."
"Hozuki." Kisame growled, recognizing the bloodline technique.
"We're in the presence of a legend." The third shinobi, Kuroi, commented.
Kakashi swallowed and fought to keep his hands from the borrowed eye.
How did he know their names?
He had never met them before; he had never seen their faces drawn inside a bingo book. He wracked his brain for an answer and quipped, "You know, it's awfully rude not to introduce yourselves."
"Bro, you just said you were going to take the information from us." Hozuki Gin pointed out.
"Just him." Kakashi jerked a thumb in Sora's direction who said, "Be careful with the floor, I just finished mopping."
"Quit your bellyaching bro. Kyou, you dead or what?"
"Tch." Kyou got to his feet, nose broken but none worse for wear. Picking the splinters from his forehead, he declared, "The big one is mine."
"Tag." Hozuki agreed. His left hand folded from dragon to dog. "Suiton: Mizudeppo!"
Kakashi ducked under a barrage of water and watched the chakra dissipate harmlessly off the stone walls instead of punching through. A barrier, he realized grimly. A quick glance at Sora showed the man with his hands clasped in concentration, index fingers and thumbs forming a diamond in front of his chest.
"Eyes on target kid."
Hozuki swiped at his throat, missed, but the chakra-infused kunai ripped through his face mask. Kakashi tore the shredded fabric from his chin and threw it on the ground, just as the man tapped his index fingers together and shouted, "Suiton: Teppodama!"
"Kisame." Kakashi grunted, rolling to a stop. It would be a waste of chakra to block or parry Hozuki's attacks. "Ideas?"
Kisame put Kyou down a second time and stomped him flat to keep him in place.
"He's vulnerable to raiton."
Hozuki Gin didn't become a vassal of the Seifuujin clan without a few tricks up his sleeve. Kakashi's hands flowed from ox-rabbit-monkey. He growled, "Chidori—"
The man's yellow eyes lit up in glee.
"Ranton—!"
Kakashi pulled back his forehead protector.
The commas in his eye whirled. Their palms connected in the reversed claws of boar and hinged on the fingers to form a triangle. Hozuki stared at him, astonished. Kakashi sneered, "Raiunkuha."
Storm chakra surged between them. The arcs of pale lightning made it impossible for Hozuki to use the hydrification technique. But for Kakashi, long used to pulling lightning chakra like sleeves, it barely tickled. And the black thunderclouds gave him the cover to draw a plain dagger from his boot, intended for Hozuki's head.
The dagger shattered against chakra-edged steel. The sound resonated and at once, the candles were put out as though doused in rain. The room plunged into darkness and Kakashi crouched low, arms in front of him at a defensive stance. The Iwa-nin were still there, out of reach. He could smell them and he could hear them.
He thought he could hear them.
Because from the shadows, a figure emerged, footsteps as light as autumn leaves. His ears picked up the sound of flint on steel. The man swore when the candles did not catch flame.
Kakashi found himself taking a step forward, fingers itching to take the fire striker and the piece of flint.
"Come on dad." Kakashi complained. "Like this!"
Sakumo looked fondly down at his son and ruffled his hair. He should have been worried that his precocious three-year-old was literally playing with fire but that's what the buckets of sand was for and it wasn't like he could do more damage to the scorched floor panels.
"Good job Kakashi, you've saved dinner."
"Dad," Kakashi whined, grabbing hold of Sakumo's hand. "I showed you last time. Did you forget?"
"Oh I remember," Sakumo assured him. "It's just hard for me sometimes to strike a match."
"Are you hurt?" Kakashi asked anxiously.
"No." Sakumo said thoughtfully. "You know how I can use lightning chakra?"
"For the chakra blade!" Kakashi answered, no volume control at three-years-old.
"Yes." Sakumo praised. "Lightning chakra wears on you after a while. I can't feel a thing with my fingertips."
"No?" Kakashi asked, eyes wide. "Not even needles?" Because needles were his biggest fear as a three-year-old.
"Not even needles." Sakumo replied.
In the present, Kakashi shuddered as he found himself halfway between where he had been and where he had seen his father.
Despite the fact that Obito sucked balls at illusionary techniques, Minato had drilled his team with defensive tactics because Obito was Uchiha. Uchiha were illusionists. He remembered taking turns being placed under a trance. Rin had been the best out of the three of them.
He blinked, his mouth dry.
What was the first rule of being caught in an illusion?—the first rule was to acknowledge that he was in an illusion.
He calmed down.
Out of the corner of his left eye, a watery vision of Obito asked him, "And the second?"
"Kai."
Nothing happened. The darkness did not dispel itself. He remained caught in the Seifuujin's thrall.
He tugged at his chakra coils. Nothing.
It was Kisame who broke first.
He dropped heavy on his knees and slammed his forehead against the floor.
"I yield."
Samehada was laid at his fingertips, shivering its scales lightly.
"Ah, that was pretty quick." Sora said.
Kakashi was startled to find the man standing beside him, striking a match to light a cigarette tucked in the corner of his mouth. The man smiled winningly. "And you shinobi-san?"
Sweat drenched his spine. His father was gone. Obito was gone.
"What did you do?"
After the Honorable Tosogare's death, the Seifuujin moved on from the-place-between-the-rocks. Lord Tegaki could not stay in a place where his beloved died, where his sister-wife died, where his brother died. They left Yamagaze Sora and his attendants as caretakers in perpetuity, an exile, in a place that barely warranted a name.
And Kakashi knew this as though someone had told him, feeding the knowledge word by word into his ears.
It had been too easy to get in. The temple was never meant to keep things out. It was designed to keep things in.
"Careful," Souken warned as he swaggered up to them, an empty sleeve swinging by his side. Close up, his eyes were even more disturbing. Unlike Sora, Souken was supposed to be shinobi.
"Souken-sama." Kuroi said irritably, plucking the tanto from his hand. "Please don't do that again."
Souken laughed.
"Sorry, my body just moved."
"Yeah I bet it did." Kuroi muttered under his breath.
"I appreciate your concern." Souken said gently.
Rebuked, Kuroi lowered his head.
"Hai, Souken-sama."
Kakashi hitched his breath. The lack of his face mask meant that he could smell everything. Souken smelled like blood and it made him small, young—only fourteen. It made him afraid.
Souken smelled like death.
Kisame was still on the ground, kissing the floor in supplication. Kakashi couldn't blame him. He didn't know what to do.
"Who are you?"
But his question went ignored. Hozuki leaned over him, amber eyes staring into his own.
"Oy, oy Souken, he doesn't look like an Uchiha. How come he has that swirly eye?"
"He probably stole it." Kuroi disparaged. "Does it matter?"
"You dare!" Kakashi hissed, stopped when a sword-point kissed his throat.
"Yes." Souken said evenly. "Because we can."
"Kakashi-san." Kisame pleaded. "Please don't."
Souken looked sideways, his eyes off to the side and unfocused, to where Obito had been standing.
"I wonder." He said. "The Honorable Tosogare was many things. Predictable... was not one of them."
"Aah," Sora made a small noise of agreement as he too looked to the space between them.
And there was, must have been, something there, something intangible, out of grasp and out of reach. Like smoke but not the trail of ashes that lit Sora's cigarette. A there-and-gone sensation of being caught in a paralytic dream.
Kakashi was cold. Sora did not look so insane anymore. The layers of silk, with their long sleeves and womanly patterns, was like an armor. Kakashi was shinobi; he was supposed to look beneath the underneath.
"It's not sporting of you to impose yourself like this Obito-kun."
Kakashi froze.
"What did you say?"
Sora looked amused. He placed a hand on Kakashi's chest. Where Obito's forehead protector had been sewn inside his shirt.
The man asked, "Shall I tell you about the boy who wore that hai-tai?"
Only Kuroi kept him from lunging at Sora.
"There is nothing you can tell me about him." Kakashi said fiercely. "He's dead." He turned to the Iwa-nin. "You killed him."
"Then I will show you."
Sora's eyes were the color of an autumn sky, fathomless and deep—inhuman. They were the kind of color that left bruises when worn and stains when touched. Through Sora's eyes, Kakashi saw what his eyes could not alone. What Obito's sharingan could not perceive by itself.
Ghosts, ghosts who were ghosts even to other ghosts, stood roped around the main hall.
And Obito was its center, squeezed between him and Sora, Kuroi's tanto going through the hollow point of his throat, arms outstretched as though he could keep the Iwa at bay. He was whole. Not the broken thing he saw every time he returned to Orochimaru's lair. Obito was thirteen. He would always be thirteen. And Kakashi realized with a start, when he straightened himself, he was taller. Not towering, but taller.
Obito would always be the boy who told him that his father was a hero, the boy who saved his life and told him under no circumstances, what was expected of him as a teammate.
Kakashi's voice cracked.
"Obito?"
Obito turned, surprised.
"Eh... Kakashi?"
"Obito!"
"Kakashi."
The repetition could have gone on forever but Obito broke the tie by shouting, "What the hell Baka-kakashi!"
Dumbfounded, Kakashi could only say, "You're... here."
"Of course I'm here!" Obito exploded. "I'm always here! You don't listen! You never listen! No one ever listens!"
"You're not supposed to be here." Kakashi said.
"You're not supposed to be here!" Obito parroted. "You're so stupid!"
"Shut up dead-last." Kakashi countered automatically, unfairly maligned, and asked in a more timid voice, "...You can see me?"
"OF COURSE I CAN SEE YOU!"
Kakashi had forgotten how loud Obito could be.
"What are you even doing here? There are ghosts here. It's really creepy! Go home Kakashi please? You're supposed to be in Konoha. You're supposed to be with Rin."
"I can't." Kakashi winced. "I left the village without permission. I'm a traitor—Rin. Minato. Sensei. This... This is the only way. He said..."
Obito looked crushed.
"Sensei is wrong."
Obito's ghost flickered at the edges and suddenly, Kakashi was struck with the sense of fear that if he let him, if he let his friend go, he may never see him again. Kakashi reached out but his fingers went aimlessly through Obito's arms, like he was trying to grasp snowflakes with bare hands. Obito was dead. There was no turning back the lost time.
Quietly, Kakashi bent his knees and pressed his palms against the wood grain.
"I yield."
"Kakashi. What the hell. Get up!"
Kakashi shook his head as Obito passed through him.
"No, no." Because no matter what Obito thought, Kakashi wasn't an idiot. He had a plan. He bowed his head towards the onmyouji. "Please, help me."
Sora blew out a breath. "He's a taishiki. Do you even know what that is?"
Kakashi did not. He was not about to admit that.
"He's my friend."
In the background, Kisame choked. He thought that Obito looked slightly pleased. It didn't stop the boy ghost from plunging his hands, up to his elbows, into his back and sending chills up his spine.
"Stop it alright?" Kakashi snapped. "For once in your life, accept that you lost. I made a promise, I intend to keep it."
"I made a promise too!" Obito roared, refusing to give way. "I'm supposed to see the future with you! I can't see the future with you if you're dead!"
"But you are!" Kakashi allowed himself a small smile when Obito fell quiet. "And that's on me. It's my fault."
Obito shook his head.
"You couldn't have known. You wouldn't. It wasn't your fault."
"We should have gone back for you." Kakashi confessed. "Some teammates we are. We left you there and you."
"I died." Obito finished softly.
"I did the math. Three months... with Orochimaru."
Obito looked stricken. He turned his gaze to Sora, to Souken and their attendants. Even Kyou who had gotten to his feet and stood wiping his bruised mouth.
Sora held a finger to his lips. Kakashi did not understand. He continued, "I keep thinking, what would Obito—what would you do? What would you have done? You would have never left me."
"You don't know that."
"I do." Kakashi said firmly. "Because I left you and you were right. Those who break the rules are trash. But those who abandon their comrades are worse than trash."
"Well said."
The Honorable Tosogare was beautiful. There was no other way to describe him. He smiled, eyes creased into crow's feet at the corners. Sora and the others immediately bowed in deference to the former head of the Seifuujin clan. "It is good to see you again Uchiha-san."
Obito seemed startled at being addressed directly. It put Kakashi on edge. Obito had never been gifted with caution, had never known a confrontation he could walk away from. The Honorable Tosogare, the ghost of him, with his dark honey eyes and ivory skin, hair that flowed like a river and hakama of violet silk trimmed with silver stars, was dangerous.
Kakashi had seen his portrait once. The portrait had been of a sickly woman. In death, the Honorable Tosogare regained his youth and vitality. This was what the man could have been.
"It's alright." The Honorable Tosogare assured him. "No harm will come to you in this hall."
Kakashi's teeth cut his face like a grin.
"And outside?"
The Onmyouji made a pleased sort of noise, a light hum at the back of his throat. His hands caressed Kakashi's face and it felt like butterflies tracking across his brow.
"I'm sorry." Obito blurted out. When all eyes turned to him, he explained. "I didn't know. I didn't know you were sick."
"I was sick." The Honorable Tosogare agreed, releasing Kakashi. "It's alright. It does not hurt anymore."
"They burned your body." Obito swallowed. The Uchiha also burned their dead.
"Yes."
Obito bit his lips.
"I won't leave them."
The Honorable Tosogare laughed.
"Have I asked you to do different?"
"Can you bring him back?" Kakashi interrupted.
Kyou hissed. Kuroi growled, "Blaspheme."
But neither Sora nor Souken seemed affected by Kakashi's demand. If he didn't know any better, he would have said Sora looked amused.
"What a curious question." The Honorable Tosogare commented. "During the First Shinobi War, Senju Tobirama created a technique that threatened to destroy the very concept of your afterlife. All for the glory of Konoha. No child, what is dead is dead. I cannot bring the dead back to life."
Hozuki made a sign to ward off evil.
"The world needs people like him."
"Kakashi—" Obito hissed. "Shut up."
The onmyouji turned to Sora and his men.
"Souken," he said, singling out whom Kakashi now knew to be Sora's twin brother. "You are unwell."
"I am merely awed by your presence Tosogare-sama."
"Flatterer." Souken pressed his cheeks against the Honorable Tosogare's palms, disappointed when the hand eventually came to a rest over his empty sleeve.
"It was a small price to pay." Souken said gently.
Beside him, without raising his head, Sora asked, "And my petition Honorable Tosogare-sama?"
It gave the Honorable Tosogare a pause. After a moment he said, "Go find your brother Sora. Tell Tegaki I've allowed it."
Sora shivered.
The Honorable Tosogare's eyes swept over Kakashi and Obito and what he saw, he must have been satisfied. He said, "Good luck Uchiha-san, Hatake-san."
The Honorable Tosogare disappeared. The other ghosts disappeared. And Obito disappeared.
"Wait." He tried to meet Sora's eyes once more. Certain that if he did, he could see the ghosts again. Sora stared back at him baldly but the ghosts did not return. He was rewarded with a face full of smoke. "Teach me how to see him."
Sora chewed around the cigarette butt.
"No."
"Why not?"
"This isn't something that can be taught."
"I have the sharingan." Kakashi countered. "And Souken can see."
Because he had been watching the one-armed man. The way he talked and the way he moved. All of the Iwa shinobi saw to an extent, touched by a power beyond reckoning. But Souken with his clear blue eyes saw.
"I said no."
"But—" Kakashi protested.
"It's because I died." As soon as Souken opened his mouth, it was as though all movement stopped. "A temporary death, but it was enough. The dead follow a different set of rules. They are not bound by morals or laws or physics or chakra. And some days, I feel reckless." He clutched at his empty sleeve. "There are times I have to stop myself from doing things my body won't survive. Reckless." Souken repeated.
His men stirred uneasily.
"So no, you don't want to do that Hatake."
"Can you stop death?"
"You deaf bro?" Hozuki was semi-liquid once more. "Stop asking the same question over and over."
"But he did it. He lived." He said, jerking his head towards Souken. "And we all know that the onmyouji can accomplish the impossible."
"Go home Hatake." Sora said, smoke curling around his chin. "Ask your Kage what the shinobi can do that the onmyouji will not. Orochimaru can find his answers somewhere else."
The butt of his cigarette disintegrated into cinders. And with it, the candles were relit all around the hall. Kakashi knew when he had been beaten. He was a veteran of the Third Shinobi War. Kisame was one of the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist. He did not think he could win.
"Sorry we ruined the floor." He muttered.
Sora tilted his head.
"It's been a pleasure. Please, do come again."
+++++10+++++
Outside, it was still daylight.
It felt like they had been inside for hours.
Kyou did not hold grudges for the cracked ribs and the broken nose. He tossed them provisions and kicked them out, closing the heavy gates by himself.
Kakashi looked at Kisame.
He didn't trust Kisame but the man was the closest thing he had to a friend within Akatsuki. Kisame had doubts about Orochimaru's plan.
Kisame knew about Obito.
"We don't need to talk about this do we?"
They were partners. He trusted Kisame; he trusted Kisame's belief in the natural order.
It was enough.
Kisame took a deep breath.
"No we don't."
[1] Bunraku doll - form of traditional Japanese puppet theater.
