Chapter 4

Someone was sitting on a low-hanging branch, a few feet above Sasuke's head. It was getting dark, and whoever it was had a hooded cloak on, so Sasuke could not identify her. Definitely a woman. A shinobi? His hand was already on Kusanagi's hilt. "Who are you?"

"I'm nobody you know," was the blunt reply. "So which is it? Lost or hunting?"

Sasuke watched her warily. The only visible parts of her were her arms that carried no weapon and her feet clad in what looked like leather boots. "The giant snake. Have you seen it?"

She tilted her head. "Don't tell me you're looking for it." She crossed her arms. "That snake is big."

"Someone needs to deal with it."

She snorted. The hood fluttered, but still kept her face hidden. "It hasn't harmed anything yet."

"Unlikely. It would have eaten half the forest by now. Won't take very long for it to start attacking people."

"Hah! Shows how much you know." She swung her feet carelessly. "You won't find the snake here. Not anymore."

Sasuke frowned. "How would you know?"

"Those tracks are days old." She stood up and slowly lowered herself onto the ground. She straightened and turned to him. "You don't look like you're from around here."

"Hn." Sasuke dropped his hand from where it rested on Kusanagi's hilt and turned away. He began to walk, following the direction of the snake tracks.

She followed him a few steps behind. "Why do you want to kill the snake so badly?"

If it's one of Orochimaru's experiments gone feral, he should destroy it. If it was a wild animal exposed to nature chakra, maybe Manda and the other nin-snakes could sort it out. "It's dangerous."

"So are you," she answered back, eyeing the sword strapped to his waist. "But nobody's trying to kill you."

Sasuke couldn't help scoffing. "Shows how much you know."

Sasuke couldn't see it, but she gaped at him at his use of her own words. Then she laughed. "Oh you're good! I like you."

The shinobi rolled his eyes. "That makes one of us."

"You're a brooder," she declared after a moment of silence. "I can tell."

"Hn."

"See?"

Silence. Sasuke decided he should ignore her. She barely had any chakra that he could sense, so she was most likely a civilian. Someone who lived near this forest, and knew this area well.

"Yep," she said. "Definitely a brooder. You probably like being alone as well, and thinks having friends is too much trouble. I bet you're a softie inside, but you don't know how to show it."

Sasuke stopped. He turned and narrowed his eyes at her. "Go away."

"I hit a nerve didn't I?"

I must not murder civilians. I am here to atone for my sins, not add to them. Calm, Sasuke.

Sasuke pinched the bridge of his nose. "No. But you are annoying. Leave."

"I could," she shrugged. "But I won't." She hummed, skipping along.

"Whatever." Sasuke returned to following the snake tracks.

"What's your name?"

"What's yours?" Was Sasuke's curt reply.

"I'm Hari."

Silence.

"It's only fair you tell me yours, you know," Hari prodded.

Sasuke grunted.

"Fine. I'll just call you Broody." She chuckled.

Sasuke could hear his teeth grinding together.

The forest around them grew steadily darker, until finally Sasuke stopped, then turned left, heading towards a copse of trees and a small clearing he spied a bit further in. Hari, still humming, followed him.

Sasuke ignored her. He gathered pieces of dead branches for kindling, then began to set up his camp. In a matter of minutes he had a fire going. His storage scroll was inside his hip pouch, so he took that out to retrieve his bed roll.

Hari was sitting on the grass near the fire. She still had not taken her cloak off.

"Why are you still here?" Sasuke asked as he settled by the fire, directly across from her.

"Waiting."

Sasuke frowned at her. "Waiting?"

"Yes."

"For what?"

Hari seemed to be looking at something over his shoulder. Sasuke fought the urge to look behind him and kept his dark eyes on this odd woman. "I'm waiting for an opportunity."

Sasuke scowled. "So you're a scavenger."

"Pardon?"

Sasuke scoffed. "You don't have to play games with me. You're waiting until I catch the snake then you'll poach it for its skin and fangs."

Hari shrugged. "Maybe."

Sasuke shook his head. He only needed to find the snake then assess the situation. If he needed to kill the snake, then he didn't care if somebody made use of its carcass or not. "Whatever. Just don't get in my way."

Hari hummed. "Sure."

Sasuke ignored her the rest of the night. He took out a wrapped onigiri from the scroll and did not offer Hari any, but a glance in her direction saw her already eating what looked like a sandwich wrapped in waxed paper. She gave him a little wave of her fingers and continued to eat. Sasuke rolled his eyes.

As he ate, he watched Hari discreetly. She took a flask from underneath her cloak and drank from it. The remains of her sandwich she wrapped carefully and stowed in her cloak, too. He still could not see any weapon on her person; it was probably attached to a hip pouch he could not see. Since she was traveling lightly, that meant her own camp was not too far away.

"Aren't you going back to your camp?"

"Camp? Oh. Well yeah."

Sasuke stared flatly at her.

"Oh! You want me to go then?"

"Obviously."

"And here I thought I was great company." He could tell she was pouting.

Sasuke raised an eyebrow at that.

"I won't bother you, I promise!" Hari raised a hand in a mock gesture.

Too late, woman. Sasuke shook his head, sighed then finally went to his bed roll. Before lying down he looked at her one last time. Pointedly. "Don't even try anything funny. I will know, and I won't hesitate to cut off any part of you that gets too close."

Hari nodded. "Good night Broody!" she said cheerfully. She watched Sasuke freeze a moment at his nickname, shoot her a glare, then turn around and settle in to sleep.

Hari waited a few moments before waving a hand in Sasuke's direction. The shinobi's stiff shoulders eased, now truly fast asleep. Hari sighed and shook her head. "A bit paranoid, isn't he?"

Her shadow, which stretched out into the forest, bubbled and churned until a dark, hooded shape rose from it. Death stepped out of her shadow, shifting shape until he took the appearance of a hunter Hari had seen yesterday. His eyes remained the same: dark and pupil-less. "With so many phantoms grabbing at him, it is only natural."

"Yeah, I guess," Hari remarked. She watched the phantoms flying over Sasuke's sleeping form, faceless gray wraiths with long, listless fingers that touched Sasuke every few moments. They hung around him like ephemeral curtains, so many of them that sometimes all Hari could see was a rough outline of Sasuke.

She had seen the phantoms haunting him ever since she first laid eyes on him, the moment he stepped into the forest earlier today.

"I thought you said it would be difficult to find Uchiha Sasuke," Hari accused Death.

Death shrugged, watching the phantoms with an unreadable face. "Your Potter luck seems to be going your way, today."

"Say what? That's an actual thing?" Hari was surprised.

"Your ancestors studied how luck affected your family. It comes and it goes and swings between good and bad so erratically that it served as an inspiration for the invention of Liquid Luck."

"Seriously?!"

Death looked at her with a deadpan look.

Hari shook her head. "Never mind. We'll get back to that some other time. So anyway – phantoms." She jerked a thumb in Sasuke's direction. "I need to banish them?"

"One of your many duties," Death nodded. They walked towards Sasuke, stopping a few feet from his prone form. The phantoms did not stop circling the sleeping shinobi.

Hari pulled away her hood. Bright emerald eyes studied Sasuke's frowning face. Everytime the phantoms reached out and touched him, Sasuke's eyebrow would twitch. "He is having a nightmare," Hari observed.

"He is reliving one."

A look of abject horror crossed Hari's face. "What?"

"His family has a unique ability passed down from parent to child, which allows them to create illusions so real that the mental and physical state of the target can be affected. They call this the Sharingan. Uchiha Sasuke had this ability used against him when he was little more than nine years old, then several times more over the course of his life. The first time, however, remains the most impressionable."

Hari was almost too afraid to ask. "What…what does he see?"

"Touch a phantom."

She did. And almost instantly pulled away, screaming. Sweat popped all over her forehead and blood drained on her face. She looked at Sasuke's sleeping face and wondered how he was not screaming himself hoarse. She wiped the sweat on her brow with a hand and looked at Death. It had only been a moment, but those images and those screams would give Hari nightmares if she didn't have a Calming Draught in her sling bag. Speaking of…she thrust an entire arm into the bag and took out a bottle, emptying the contents in one swallow.

"Who the hell would do that? To a child?"

"His older brother. Uchiha Itachi."

Hari scowled. "Tell me we're going to nail that bastard."

Death shook his head. "No need. He is already dead."

"Good."

Death glanced at her. "Sasuke would have dealt the killing blow if Uchiha Itachi's sickness had not taken his life."

Hari paled again. She wanted to vomit. "Sasuke would have killed his brother? For revenge?"

"Yes. A small mercy that he did not need to, in the end."

"Merlin. And I thought I had problems."

"You still do," Death said, "but you are healing."

Hari waved a hand in the air. "Compared to this guy, I'm perfectly fine!" She looked at the phantoms. "They look almost like dementors, but without the crippling cold bit. Maybe a Patronus is what I need?" She stretched out her right arm and flicked her wrist. The Elder wand sprang into her fingers with a sharp snick.

Death shook his head. "That would force the phantoms to leave, but they will come back."

"So what do I do?"

"The phantoms are not ghosts or spirits as you know them, although they look similar," Death explained. "They are the unsolved regrets of the dead, attached to the souls of those living, who are the focus of these regrets. They take a toll on the victim, slowly and surely, until the living is left as nothing but a shadow of its former self. Destroyed thus, it will seek its own demise."

Regrets of the dead? Hari at first did not understand. But something about what Death explained made sense. People who are severely depressed kill themselves, don't they? "You mean…these phantoms don't hurt the body, but the soul?"

"Yes."

"That's terrible."

"It destroys the balance," Death said. "All mortals are designed to live, then die. But only at the right time. Each mortal soul is given a set timeframe to live in the mortal realm before returning to the Cycle. If these phantoms are allowed to claim victims ahead of their set time, the balance is disrupted."

"Ah. So this is what you meant by 'restoring the balance'."

"One of many."

"One of…how many are we talking about?"

"How many worlds do you think there are in the multi-verse, Hari Potter?"

"Mu—multi-verse?!" Hari repeated, faintly. If she had to do this in all the worlds in all the universes, then that meant thousands, maybe even millions of years' worth of—"

"Which explains the immortality, and the agelessness," Death interrupted her thoughts.

"Stop doing that, it's creepy!"

"You and I are bound to each other, Mistress. I cannot help it if you project your thoughts so easily."

Hari growled under her breath. She screamed in her head the filthiest curse words she knew and mentally flung it at Death.

Death did not twitch, but he turned his head to her impassively. "I give you seven out of ten points for creativity, Mistress."

If Uchiha Sasuke had not been spelled asleep, he would have jumped in the air at Hari's scream of frustration.#

A/N: Feel free to review after reading! This story updates every Wednesday. At this point, I would like to thank everyone who has followed, reviewed, and made this story one of their favorites. It is always a joy for writers to know that their work is appreciated, and I am no different. Thank you all and I hope you keep safe!