Rin rolled over in bed.

Outside, the sky was inky blue. Just beginning to curl yellow at the edges. She had woken to a birdsong. A little warbler announcing its plans to fly south for the coming winter. She couldn't wait for the first frost. When no birds sang in the morning and trees were empty, branched black against heavy clouds. Drowsy, she curled against the warm body beside her, close enough to taste the salt off his skin.

She thought, exploding tags were overkill. But maybe it didn't have to explode. There were other elemental chakra she could brush onto the thin paper strip. What if it let off a cloud of dust? A stream of water. Or electricity. Like chidori.

Sleep fled her mind.

She sat up to her companion's disgruntled moan. Her bedmate stretched and scratched at his family jewels. Charming—she grimaced as she slipped out of bed, gathering articles of clothing strewn across the room. But he had been very good looking in bar light. She tugged her leggings on and reconsidered. With liberal application of alcohol perhaps.

The important thing was that he was the mayor's son and had money to spend whereas she wanted to save up for a new whetting stone. A fair trade all things considered. Not everyone could afford the price of companionship. Tying her hair into a loose ponytail, she closed the door behind her with a silent click.

Time, she thought without irony, passed by very quickly. She knew she was lucky. She was alive, whole, all four limbs, two eyes, and hair. Many died during the Third Shinobi War. More in the fallout. Half her year mates were gone, disfigured or retired. Obito was dead. Kakashi defected. Anko alone. Ibiki tortured.

The ninja she knew counted their age through scars, knowledge, lore, technique and a body count. Rin counted hers through a series of letters, messages she never answered nor written back. There were only a handful of ways to reliably send a message. None that were available to her short of delivering it herself in person. But that would have defeated the purpose of her pilgrimage. She could not prevent her messages from being intercepted; she would not send them.

It was a hard life. It was a lonely life. Her life was not of material things. Her mentor was not a material man. As his student, she followed his teachings. Trusting that it would keep her alive.

But she kept things. Like the talisman around her neck. Or the forehead protector for Konoha stitched under her shirt. She had her scalpels and needles. She had the name of the Kamizuru chunin she slew when she was thirteen.

She knew that Kakashi was alive. She even knew what he wasn't a traitor and that he lied to her and left her.

The whispers of a pale-haired death underground—she didn't know how much of it was true. What was real and what was not and which part she had a hand in setting loose on an unsuspecting gossipmonger. Sometimes she wondered if the mystique that made up the missing-nin Hatake Kakashi was more hers than his.

He sent messages as well. Sometimes. Damn him. A flea-bitten mutt that yawned wide and had to be bribed with meat even though all the notes ever said was tell her to pack up and go home. But she couldn't go home. She didn't dare. Rin made a promise to both of them. She would do whatever it took to bring them both home.

It was early enough in the morning that the public baths were open and left unmolested by a certain, aging pervert with a weakness for purple prose. There were a few day laborers passed out in a loose ring. Empty sake bottles underfoot and a plate of fish jerky feeding a family of flies. But the women at the bathhouse were already hard at work, tubs emptied and refilled with newly drawn water.

Hot water and no sages hoping for a glimpse of a bare ankle or a breast. It was almost too perfect.

Rin stuffed her belongings in a floating basket and held herself underwater. She emerged moments later, face pulled tight and her skin scalded a glorious pink.

"I don't like birds." She said out loud.

A wood dove chirped at her sweetly, as out of place as Jiraiya at a monastery. But it carried the unmistakable symbol of onmyodo around its neck. Rin hadn't run into one of those in a while. Hadn't been able to ever since Jiraiya caught whiff of protection that Obito placed on her when he died and the price that was paid to make sure that it would not hurt her.

She would never be the one to spit in the face of protection. But she knew deep in her bones, past the lessons about chakra and coils and history and legends, Obito would not have hurt her. It was money wasted. A life wasted. Every practitioner had shunned their footsteps since.

The Seifuujin had not fared well since Tosogare's death. Like the wandering monks of old, they had moved on from the-place-between-the-rocks and scattered in the wind. By choice or something else, she did not know. The Honorable Tosogare's dance had made her a marked woman. She did not know what it meant. There was no one she could talk to that would tell her what it meant. Not even Jiraiya who had studied onmyodo extensively.

The bird waited until she got out of her well-deserved bath and led her to a stock room built into the side of the bathhouse. A closet refitted into a shrine. A stone Buddha sat at the center, surrounded by candles that were barely cool. She was surprised to see a familiar figure and a lit cigarette clenched between a grin.

"It's good to see you again Nohara-san."

Yamagaze Sora no longer wore the extravagant robes that befitted his station. He was in a plain, navy yukata with a soft, wave pattern trimming the hems. He was older now, his back bowed and face piled with shadows.

"You are alone." She observed. She shouldn't have bothered. It was hardly worth mentioning. The room was small. Just enough for them to stand comfortably face-to-face. She nearly stubbed her toes against an offering table when she tried to step forward. They were at a stalemate.

"You know better than most that we are never truly alone."

He had a scar from his lip to jaw. It was scabbed over and new. Perhaps a failed attempt at an assassination. Someone who had gotten close enough despite Kuroi's protection.

Already, Rin was playing with the scalpels in her sleeves. Sora wasn't a fighter and the town wasn't a place where someone like him could reach unmolested. They straddled the border between Water Country and Lightning country. It was a boomtown, preying on travelers who were in desperate need of supplies. There were no gods here. The local priest was a drunk and a letch who abandoned his post as soon as he found out Jiraiya was in town.

"Where are your men?"

"Gone." Sora replied as an afterthought. "They were needed elsewhere."

"Your brothers?"

She remembered Yamagaze Souken, the middle brother, the Anbu operative willing to trade a name for a running start.

The shadows in Sora's face deepened.

"Souken passed three years ago."

"My condolences." She said automatically because it was the polite thing to do. One did not make ready enemies with the onmyouji if they wanted to have a long life.

"Don't be." Sora replied. "It was a good death for him. A worthier death. One should be so lucky." She backed away as he leaned close, smoke shifting in his wake. She thought. It was early. She was seeing things. She thought. She thought that the smoke might have been coming from him instead.

"Lucky." She echoed. Yamagaze Souken had been in the prime of his life when they first met. But that was nearly ten years ago. She would have to write to her contacts in Iwa if they had heard anything. Ninja from Iwa tended to run as hardy as the rocks they were named for. Yamagaze Souken would not have gone down easy. "Why are you here?"

Sora made a noise of concern.

"You know, it's quite strange. I'm not quite sure myself. I could be anywhere else. In Iwa I suppose, it was where I was born. Or in Kumo as my brother's vassal. Yet I find myself here, with you."

Hair rose on the back of her neck. It was dark inside the little shrine. Predawn light was slow to seep through the cracks in the wall. The black wicks were dim. She could barely make out the severe face of the stone Buddha and the line of candles. The offering table and the rattle of many plates heaped on its bowed legs. Yamagaze Sora and his white teeth, the cherry on his cigarette outlining the bottom half of his face.

But his eyes, they were extraordinary. They glittered like fistfuls of jade and turquoise. In the darkness, they took on a life of their own.

Rin swallowed the lump in her throat and gestured towards the candles.

"May I?"

"You may." Sora said agreeably.

She didn't remember taking her scalpels out but she hastily stuffed them back up her sleeves. A matchbox had been left at the foot of the stone Buddha and she took it. And as she lit the candles one by one, Sora continued.

"Family is messy business Nohara-san. I never wanted this for myself, do you understand?"

"By this, I assume you mean your gift for divination."

Sora laughed.

"A gift, yes. I suppose you could call it that."

"You said that the women inherited the power."

As could the men. But the power wore on men. Like it wore on Tosogare.

"Yes." Sora sounded pleased that he didn't have to explain. "My brother Sousuke was his father's only true heir. No chance to produce a girl I'm afraid. The power nonetheless passes on from the mother to her children. So our mother had me and Souken and Sousuke was married off to a girl from a good family, hoping to produce a girl. We're always praying for a girl."

"But you inherited the power."

"Yes." Sora drew on his cigarette at the unasked question. "Me and Souken are twins. Born ten minutes apart. I failed the genin corps. I'm afraid I never had the knack for it. I was always better at getting into trouble than out. But Souken took to the army life like a duck to water. I drowned my brother as a chunin gift."

Rin could not help the small gasp that escaped her lips. Sora stared at her knowingly, smoke encircling his neck like a pet viper. "Kuroi never forgave me for it. I kept Souken's soul bound to his body for ten minutes before I felt the power find me. Death is better. I could not let Souken become what Sousuke had been before he was married off. There are other ways of course. Darker ways." And Rin remembered that those who held power had to be chaste. They were virgins.

"But I am responsible for my own. I wanted to take control of our destiny and remind our mother that we were more than vessels for the way. There was a time when the old religion ruled. When people respected wu zhong liuxing zhi qi[1] and flocked to us for more than simple readings. The Honorable Tosogare could raise demons, did you know?"

Sora knelt in front of the offering table, letting his fingers walk past the apples with their tops cut off, the yellow pears and strips of dried fish. He hovered over a plate of wrinkled dates and the white mooncakes, the cuts of salted pork and the bowl of uncooked rice like she had imagined an ancestral spirit might have, back when she was young and saw her parents more and her great-grandmother was disagreeable less. Back when the old woman filled her head with fantastic monsters, ghosts in the water, things that lived inside riverbeds and breathed silt. Religion older than the words 'Pure Land' and the concept of an honorable death.

He bit into an apple. An ugly thing. A stunted thing, now that she looked at it, with bruised skin. Sora the blasphemer, Sora the peacock, took another bite and let the juice dribble down his chin and dot his throat like stars. "That time is gone now." He said and she winced at the wrongness of the scene. She tightened her grip around her talisman and his eyes did not miss her movement. "I have been remiss in my duties." He said solemnly, lips shiny. "I am here to make amends."

She noticed that his cigarette had been put out against a yellow pear, leaving a round scorch mark, black and obvious against the skin.

Sora stood up and mopped his chest with wave-patterned sleeves. "I wanted to tell you about your friend. He came to me years ago, not long after you and your mentor were chased into the grass. When Souken brought me the name of a slain child and went forth to discover his remains in the earth."

"You don't mean..."

"No." And the answer was immediate. Curt. "Not that one." One would have to be very foolish indeed to invite a taishiki unbound."

"His name is Uchiha Obito." She said, voice flat. "He would never hurt me."

"Not you perhaps. But others? Uchiha Obito may have loved you but he is dead." Rin flinched. "Uchiha Obito may have loved you but he is no longer of the living. That means that the same rules do not apply to him. There will be no chakra exhaustion to prove a saving grace. No knives nor blade nor technique can slay him. He is a spirit now. They are not hindered by physical limitations. Yet they love still and anger and hate."

Sora took another bite of the apple. "The taishiki—your friend," Sora amended when he saw that Rin was about to interrupt again. "Wasn't dangerous because he was an Uchiha or because he was your friend. He was dangerous simply for being himself. I doubt even the Honorable Tosogare knew until the end. But I glimpsed it, he was a soul descended from an age when the name of the Sage of the Six Paths was new. Had he lived, you would not be standing where you are now."

She blinked. Sora let out a soft chuckle. "My apologies. I have lost you. The mind wanders. Old age you know."

At the corner of her eyes, she saw a candle, far left of the Buddha, flicker once and die.

"But it was the other one." Sora said. "The one who slew Kamizuru Kuroishi."

"Kakashi came to you?" She was surprised. And then was ashamed at her surprise. She did not know much about Kakashi after all. Kakashi had been as much a stranger as Obito had been in the end. Filled with rituals and clan secrets that a civilian could only dare to try and understand.

"Is that so strange?" He closed his teeth over the apple core. It was morning. She could tell that the sun was up and light was finally slanting through the wooden roof. And yet, Sora remained shrouded in a cloud of smoke much thicker than it should have been. "The Hatake Clan followed the old ways once. I believe your friend is something of an atheist though I may be mistaken. But he did not seek spiritual counseling from me."

"What did he want?"

"Immortality."

Orochimaru, Rin thought. It had to be.

"What did you tell him?"

"Nothing." His chewing was obnoxiously loud. She could barely make out the words. "One life is long enough. And Hatake Kakashi has promised to bear witness to a future."

Rin held her breath. She didn't know if Sora knew the significance of the words. If he knew for certain that they had been spoken between friends a long time ago.

She calmed herself.

"And what did you want to tell me?"

Sora sighed. Another candle was put out. A scalpel slid down into the center of her palms. Thrown, she was sure she could strike the man between the eyes. If the blade was turned the opposite way, against the flesh, she could summon Jiraiya in a pinch.

"In death, the Honorable Tosogare asked your friend to remember who he had been and who he was."

Rin did not trust her voice. But she had to ask.

"Is he still here?"

Sora shook his head.

"I no longer have the sight. It passed at last onto my niece who was safely delivered three years ago after a string of boys. But I know enough, is he worth it?"

Later, she would wonder whom he had meant—Obito or Kakashi. But in that moment, in a shrine hidden in a public bathhouse for those who believed in the old gods, the onmyouji and spirits, she said "Yes, he is worth it."

"I'm glad." Sora smiled. "Then this journey has not been a waste. Perhaps you know what this means—I am watching you. I am always watching you."

The scalpel fell out of her nerveless fingers and clattered on the floor. She held her hands to her mouth, holding back a scream.

"And this," Sora said. "Is my promise to you. You will keep your word."

The candles went out.

"Farewell Nohara-san, we will not meet again."

"But."

She swore as she accidentally kicked the table over. Food spilled on to the floor. She fell to her knees, trying to stack it back before the stone Buddha and his solemn face. By the time she looked up, Sora was gone.

+++++11+++++

On the other side of the map, somewhere in the Wind Country, Yamagaze Sora wheezed as blood sprayed across the dunes. Lightning punctured his lungs as he was caught at last. And when his killer tried to withdraw his hand, Sora twisted a fist in the red clouds and held firm.

"You had a wish." He said steadily. Souken was dead three years. Dead for a girl born in the blood. One last sacrifice for their family. It was done. Sousuke was safe like their mother wanted. "I will help you."

The second man, a defector from Kiri, held back, spooked into stillness as a trout might when an eagle's shadow passes overhead.

Hatake's face twisted in frustration.

"Live long and gloriously."

+++++11+++++

She found Jiraiya yawning like a battered tomcat in a rare drop of sunlight, waiting for food to be brought out to him to break his fast. Yet, his eyes were kunai-sharp and weary. There were new faces in town. She had seen them as well. Not Kuroi or any of the Seifuujin though it could have been a clever disguise. But she believed Sora when he said that his men, his family, were gone.

Rin wondered if she would ever understand the clan mindset.

"Time to go home, old man." She announced, thieving a dumpling off his plate.

"So early!" Jiraiya complained, picking up a pair of chopsticks and rolling them between his palms. "We just got here."

She shrugged.

"No time like the present."

"And just like that?" He asked stabbing the chopsticks in her direction. "You, who tore up the invitation for Naruto's first birthday, Minato and Kushina's wedding—and by the way, they still blame me for that—"

"I saw Yamagaze Sora at the bathhouse." She interrupted and Jiraiya hunched over with a hangdog expression.

"Er, I don't suppose he was taking in the sights and having a nice, long soak."

She flashed a quick grin at her mentor.

"No such luck."

"The Uchiha again, Rin?"

"Obito." Rin corrected. "And only partially."

Jiraiya thanked the woman who brought him a bowl of broth and noodles.

"Ah Rin, they still hate us for Tosogare."

"They hate you." She snorted. "I paid my dues and they let us go."

"Only because there is nothing to be gained by setting us against the Iwa. Their discontent is long."

"Why yes I did notice the old woman stomping on your shadow."

Rin decided that she was hungry after all and asked for a second bowl of noodles on Jiraiya's tab. Jiraiya squinted at her, shook his head and began slurping down his food.

"My point is that the onmyouji are no allies of ours."

"So you would ignore their warnings?"

"You didn't tell me that there was one." Jiraiya pointed out.

"Half of it is personal." Rin admitted and that was about all she could say regarding the matter. Her mentor just had to trust her, that was all. But when Jiraiya seemed more interested in picking the last bits of noodles out from the hearty pork broth than listen to her, Rin said, "I need a teacher."

"I'm busy." The response was automatic, ready-made. It meant that Jiraiya had no leads. He was sitting idle. Penning a few paragraphs here and there. His newest title was called Icha Icha Tactics and it promised to be his next best seller.

"Orochimaru was looking for ways to claim immortality."

"I know." After a pause, Jiraiya grumbled, "Goddammit."

Rin's noodles arrived. She stirred the bowl once and poured generous amounts of soy sauce in the broth.

"I'll need help." She coaxed. "I still don't know how to be a good teacher."

"No," Jiraiya snorted. "I guess I never taught you how."

Denial was on the tip of her tongue. But instead, she said, "You taught me how to survive."

The man crossed his thick arms with a fond sigh.

"And look at you now. Everyone's been asking where I found you. Well almost everyone. Kushina's been threatening to castrate me if I didn't bring you back."

A warm glow tickled her stomach.

"Oh?"

"You're a ghost." Jiraiya speared a dumpling and swallowed it. "Half my contacts don't think that you exist. In our line of work, there is no greater skill than anonymity."

It also helped that she pinned most of her jobs on her erstwhile teammate. Because only the strong had the right to a name. Only the strong could flaunt their allegiances and wear a belt of reward around their necks.

"So you're coming? Minato can't save you forever."

"Fine, fine. I need to promote my books anyway."

"Good." Rin said. Pleased with herself.

She picked up her chopsticks and tapped it three times on the table.

Obito would have been 25 if he had lived.

+++++11+++++

[1] Wu zhong liuxing zhi qi – Wuxing, one of the basis for onmyoudo