DO NOT READ!

by Arashi Kaoru

THIS IS FOR MY EYES ONLY. DO NOT READ THIS. I DO NOT INTEND TO STEAL ANY WORK OF OTHER WRITERS. I JUST WANTED TO USE THE AUTO-READ FEATURE OF THIS APP AND AFTER FINISHING ALL CHAPTERS, I INTEND TO DELETE THIS, DO NOT READ!

37. Chapter 37

Minato had never intended for the limiters to be permanent.

Kushina had designed them carefully, to hold firm but also to dissolve as gently as they were applied, to be removed like a pair of old gloves when they were no longer of use, as soon as Kakashi no longer needed them to rein in the deadly manifestation of his grief.

But Kakashi had never really managed to control the power that rose so sharply in the wake of his pain, and by the time he'd even recovered enough to really try, Kushina was dead.

So the limiters had stayed. Kakashi had never needed much chakra to be deadly– even with the limiters and the constant drain of Obito's sharingan, he still had more than enough to be very, very dangerous.

And after Rin, and Minato, and Kushina, there had been no point in taking it farther than that.

The soft curls of ancient script remain, as familiar as his own flesh and bone, nestled into his chakra coils like old friends. They're a piece of Kushina, in a way, and still feel like her intent; kind and indomitable, like a hug so tight with emotion it's painful. It had been the only thing that made it bearable in the darkness following her loss, the idea that some part of her was still right there, still protecting him, still protecting others from him.

The idea of letting that go hurts like a thorn driven deep into the fleshy base of his heart.

But there's something else living in his heart now too; subtle power strong enough to move mountains and memories, strong enough to unearth old demons from their resting places, strong enough to resurrect the pieces of him they'd consumed.

He can feel it, sweeping and resonant, a great force that tugs, gentle and constant, at the deepest desires in his graveyard heart, at the oldest strengths buried beneath his heaviest griefs.

He'd never imagined before this, that these kids could have such power hidden in their marrow, such devotion and compassion and strength, never imagined that they could pull the same out of him with such ferocity that he's not even sure who he is anymore. Parts of him he thought dead and buried are surfacing at an alarming rate; intensity and razor focus, drive and vulnerability, the will to do more, to be more. It's a desire he hasn't felt since he was a child, since the first time he'd looked up at Minato, at his power and his gentleness and his unfettered love and thought; I want to be strong like that .

I want to be strong enough to be kind.

His whole life had taught him that this kind of love is weak, that vulnerability is sacrilege, that loving something is the equivalent of signing its death warrant. But Minato's love had only made him stronger, his gentle heart had only made him a better leader and teacher, and for a second Kakashi had thought; Maybe.

Maybe, if I could be like him, if I could be as strong as him, it would be okay to love something more than my village.

His death had left Kakashi with little doubt that such an idea was nothing more than naive fantasy, the wishful thinking of a child in mourning.

Until now.

The Hatake Vault is dark as pitch. The chakra lanterns on the walls no longer seem to function, leaving the interior thick with soupy shadows that seem to crawl up from someplace further down. Dust motes hang in the stale air, catching on flickers of sparse light refracting from the upstairs hall. A heavy hum trembles through the space– almost too low for even his ears– that sets his skin to restless crawling. Pakkun curls a bit further into his chest, rumbling nervously.

"On second thought, boss, maybe I should wait up here."

Kakashi looks down at him with a wry smile, an eyebrow raising. "Scared?"

"Absolutely."

Kakashi's eyes soften. "You know I won't let anything hurt you."

Pakkun huffs. "It's not that."

Kakashi pauses, considering. "Do you want to wait with the cubs?" He asks, serious.

Pakkun rumbles discontentedly, changes his answer. "No. Someone's gotta go down there with you. Doesn't mean I gotta be happy about it."

"You don't have to."

"I really do."

Kakashi huffs a whisper of a laugh. "Stubborn."

"That's my name." Pakkun barks dryly. "Don't wear it out."

Kakashi nods, takes a breath, and steps inside.

The darkness is cloying and soft, and there's a charge to the air that makes all the fine hairs on the back of his neck bristle. The thin, soft layer of stone dust beneath his bare feet makes him feel like a trespasser, and he can't shake the sudden feeling of eyes on him. One of the chakra lamps sparks unexpectedly as he passes, a sharp flash of light that skitters warped shadows against the walls. Pakkun jolts, curling tighter in Kakashi's arms.

The hum grows louder.

Just inside is a small table, a sculpture carved from a single chunk of granite once polished to shine. Each of its three legs is a carefully styled wolf, their heads thrown back in an eternal howl, one of the three core Hatake foundation values etched into each of their proud chests.

Loyalty. Savagery. Spirit.

They support a circular top that he knows, underneath the dust, is engraved with his clan symbol. Two items rest atop it. One is the first thing he came here for– a small scroll, plain white and only about as long as his hand, sealed shut with a small locking tag pressed along the seam. Overtop it is a note, ink faded with age, and even though Kakashi can't quite make it out in this dark, he knows the words by heart.

For whenever you're ready, twerp.

Love and noogies,

Kushina

Kakashi had never known his blood mother; she'd died when he was born, but Kushina had been more than just a mother to him– she'd been a friend, a confidant, a place to go when Minato was being an idiot or after a fight with Obito had rubbed his skin the wrong way and left his heart bruised. She'd feed him and spar with him and coax him to laugh, she'd help him with his equipment and expense reports and clean his wounds after missions. He misses her with a force that still aches, misses her hair and her easy smile and too-tight hugs. He wonders if she'd still hug him that hard at twenty-seven, full grown and still such a disaster, and knows the answer is yes.

He retrieves the scroll with reverent fingers, tucking the note into his shirt as his eyes track to the outline of the second object on the table, somehow still reflective in the practically nonexistent light.

A pair of orange goggles, dark blue band grey with dust, surface scratched from wear, a thin, almost imperceivable crack along the upper left corner.

Kakashi's breath balls hard in his throat like it's turned to lead, and the wide empty ache under his ribs throbs like torn stitches in a raw wound. His hand rises almost without his permission, pressing hard over the orbit of his covered eye, into the sore echoing pulse surfacing in Obito's gift, in the only real piece of him Kakashi has left.

The goggles had been Rin's at first.

She'd taken them after Obito's funeral, before the Uchiha had come to collect his things. They were a memory of the boy she knew; too loud, too curious, too kind, too much . They'd meant a lot to her, and when she was gone, they'd fallen to Kakashi.

But what they'd meant to Rin and what they mean to him are two very different things, and to Kakashi, they had always been a false front.

When he looks at the burnt orange glass and battered frame, he doesn't see Obito ; he sees the chakra suppressors on the inside edges, the subtle foggy distortion of the lense, the sense dampeners hidden in the lining of the ear covers.

He'd known after one long look what Rin and Minato and Kushina never had– that Obito's sharingan had been powerful enough to overwhelm his senses even before it fully surfaced.

The goggles only represented a pattern Kakashi had been seeing pieces of since they first graduated from the academy– Obito was clumsy and flatfooted in training, flailed and spilled things when they were out to eat– but then Kakashi would spy him later outside the complex, goggles off, overshirt gone, moving with fluid grace through the same katas he'd tripped over in practice hours ago.

He doesn't hate the goggles, that's too strong a word, but he dislikes the reminder that he never got the chance to know Obito for who he was rather than who he pretended to be. He wonders often, in the cool heavy moments right after the sun sets or just before it rises, if things would have been different if he'd only looked a little closer, seen a little sooner.

He leaves the momento where it is, and as he turns away, he leaves a small fraction of his regrets with it.

The remainder of the room is wide and bare, a scattering of old and valuable furnishings, aged wall scrolls bleached white, nothing else.

Nothing to distract from the gaping void of blackness at the back of the room.

The scattered light stops at the ancient doorway as though existence itself is hindered at the threshold. The black torii gate, hewn right out of smooth dark stone, is plastered with sealing tags from crest to base. At the center of the gate's top beam is a beautiful carving, a spindly spider lily dyed with blood red lacquer. A warning.

Kakashi walks right up to it, less than half a meter from crossing through into the solid darkness, and sits down. He sets Pakkun down in his lap, and the pug sits between his legs, droopy eyes keen.

"Last chance, friend." Kakashi says, voice barely above a whisper. "Not too late to wait outside."

Pakkun groans and lets out a rough bark. "Don't be stupid."

Some of Kakashi's concerns must show on his face because Pakkun barks again, irritated. " Stop ." He rears up, placing his paws on Kakashi's chest so he can talk right in his face. "We're household summons, boss. We're best at scouting and home protection and that kinda shit– not full combat. You need full combat. You know that. We've always known that. So stop making that face, dammit."

Kakashi smiles reflexively, wry and surprised. "You can't see my face."

"I can see enough of it, asshole." Pakkun growls. "Stop."

Kakashi hugs the pug to his chest suddenly, earning a startled wuff from his oldests summons, from his partner of more than twenty years, from his oldest friend . "Alright Pak."

Pakkun rumbles. "Still such a pup."

When Kakashi stands a few minutes later, he's steady on his feet. Pakkun elects to walk this time, but reserves the right to dive back into Kakashi's arms if things get dicey.

The second he passes under the dark, ancient gate, the strange humming stops.

The sudden silence is deafening, and Kakashi again feels as though he's left the world as he knows it behind at the threshold, crossed into a different realm entirely. He feels as though he should be cold but isn't, and it's only by feel that he can traverse the jagged stairs that coil down, so complete is the darkness surrounding him.

Pakkun keeps one flank pressed against his calf, and carefully they move downwards, step by step, moment by moment.

The descent takes ages.

Time feels muddled here, and even though he's using his breath to keep track of the minutes, he still feels the seconds stretch like taffy, pulling longer and longer with each step he takes.

He begins to think there might be no end to it– maybe there is no final step in this staircase, maybe the dark is bottomless, maybe his ancestors were mad liars after all.

But Pakkun rumbles, after an eon, "I see something ahead."

Just as he says it Kakashi begins to make out a pale flickering beneath him in the dark, a fluttering glow like firelight. They're getting close.

He allows himself a hard swallow. He knows what's down here in theory , his father had openly told him as much, but that information had been given as a deterrent, a warning against indulging any vague childhood curiosity.

And ending up dead for it.

But Kakashi is not a child anymore. His inheritance is no longer a shadowy monster of anger and savagery– only more ghosts.

And it's been a long time since Kakashi was afraid of ghosts.

When he steps from the darkness at the end of the stairs, long tongues of shadow lapping at his feet, he finds himself filled with something much stranger than fear.

"Um, Boss?" Pakkun growls nervously, inching back behind Kakashi's heels.

"As you'll recall, Pak…" Kakashi drawls. "I did tell you to wait upstairs."

"We're lost."

"We are not lost, you little shit. I know exactly where we are."

"So that's not the same grove of pines we passed a half-hour ago?"

"No. This is fire country. There are trees everywhere . It's the Village Hidden in the Leaves for fuck's sake."

"So… That's not my Kunai mark in the fir there? See it? Right there under the–"

"Shut up."

"..."

"..."

"...Shall I take the map then?"

"Shut up ."

"..."

"..."

"You know…"

" What ."

"It's been almost two weeks since we left. That burn miss Mei left you with is almost gon–"

"Oh my gods just take it you fucking yoaki. "

"Thank you master~"

"Yuki-onna."

"Shark-face."

It's almost four in the morning, and Hinata is not in her room.

Neji was half hoping he could use the excuse of letting her rest to avoid this conversation, to avoid the topic that sent his wandering feet down the hall at the small hours of the morning in the first place, but he has no such luck tonight.

Hard truth is not something that Neji has ever been afraid of. The truths of clan, of duty, of tragedy, of loss. He is struggling now with truths made soft, truths he thought were solid and imobile, that he now knows are incomplete.

Uncertainty has always felt too close to weakness for his comfort, and he is unused to being wrong.

Hinata is not in any of her rooms, nor is she in the dojo, the kitchens, or the front garden. Neji is hesitant to use any chakra to find her– his uncle is a light sleeper, and Neji would rather spend the night in the Forest of Death than have a conversation with him right now.

Normally Hinata trains when she can't sleep, but her usual haunts are vacant and Neji's at a bit of a loss. He starts to search odd places, like side gardens and unoccupied wings, until he finds himself in a low trafficked area of the green behind the main house, filled with towering bamboo. The stalks jut from the edges of a stream that winds along the pale gravel, one of many that feed into the Hyuuga's expansive breeding ponds. He's never been back here before– koi cultivation and pond maintenance are much more the hobbies of the elder Hyuuga and not something he has ever found terribly compelling– though there is a certain peace here, something reminiscent of Hinata's behavior lately– the soft draw of a path seldom traveled.

He follows along the creek with her in mind, mulling over the changes in her that have built slowly and firmly over the course of the last year. Neji had mistaken them initially as something fragile– a teenage rebellion of some kind incited by her new friends– but it seems he has been wrong about a great deal as of late.

Hinata's newfound strength is no soft pliable thing, nor was it built in a day. It is rooted in an old belief, a belief backed by a new, ferrous courage that she is no longer afraid to voice aloud. She's gained stability, ardence that had not existed in her prior. The air about her charges with it whenever she steps on Hyuuga grounds, as though daring their clan to question her actions, to give her a reason for confrontation. She's always been stubborn, but the nerve in it is new, and so is the threat.

The threat to every code and tradition to which the elders of their clan uphold.

The threat of the avant garde .

Neji can no longer deny the strength and seriousness of her will any more than he can deny the strength of the Genin that had beaten him– and everything he was so sure of– into the ground of the testing arena; the original springboard of Hinata's new and defiant brand of courage.

He needs to speak with her. His beliefs have been made soft, and he must find solid ground again.

Hinata's chakra is running so low that Neji nearly walks right past her.

She's sitting at the edge of one of the smallest of the koi ponds, tucked mostly out of sight of any obvious paths or viewing groves. The stone walk that leads to it looks as though it hasn't been swept or weeded in years, scattered with layers of bamboo leaf and draped in crawlvine. But as he approaches the pond propper, he finds that the green around it shows signs of regular maintenance. The rippling water is free of litter and scum, and the stone edge has been brushed clean of dirt and vegetation.

When his eyes finally track to Hinata, sitting sideways on the pond's stone lip, his blood runs cold.

Her left eye is bruised black and swollen, the bluish cracks of chakra burns crawling up along her cheek and back into her hair. Her right sleeve has been torn free of her robes completely– her whole forearm from wrist to elbow is a molted mess of yellowing bruises dotted with pinpricks of red.

For a moment Neji is so furious he can't even breathe – a flash of protective feeling so fierce that it bypasses his emotional barricades before he even really registers what's happening.

" Hinata. "

The word is hushed and horrified, rough like a punch to the gut had forced it up his throat. Because the shape of this burn might as well be a signature , the azure hue and crinkling edge might as well be a name written in ink.

She turns to him slowly, and Neji doesn't expect her eyes to look so much like victory ; bright and firm and shining like demon fire. She looks anything but defeated– her shoulders are back, her spine straight and proud, and when she locks eyes with him, moonstone and pearl, chills chase down his spine.

"It's okay, Nii-san ."

She speaks summer-breeze gently, as though Neji is the one in need of soothing, in need of comfort.

His hands are shaking as he sinks down beside her, because as bitter as he has always been about the difference in their stations, as frustrated and resentful as his duty has made him, she is family . Hinata, with her clumsy kindness and outstanding courage, with her enormous tender heart, did not deserve this.

"What–" Neji cuts himself off, reaching up to trail his fingers just shy of the burns, and he can feel the radiation of chakra still trailing from the wound, pale and cold. "How could he… "

Hinata reaches for his hand before he can finish the thought, curling her unbruised fingers around his and pulling his hand down slowly into her lap. She wraps her palm around the top of his and squeezes once, hard enough to ache. Hard enough to offer grounding.

"It's okay , Neji." She repeats, her tone firm this time, and when his eyes return to hers he finds they are still violently ablaze. "I won. "

Neji's eyes blow wide as tea saucers with shock, followed quickly by confusion chased down with disbelief. He swallows harshly, throat bobbing with the motion. There is no lie in her eyes, no room in the fire for doubt.

"You're telling me…" Neji swallows again, a vain attempt to even out his voice, "You're telling me you won a duel of worth with elder Hachimaru ?"

She shakes her head, and even with the grisly swath of burns she somehow manages to look regal, to look every bit as worthy as a true Hyuuga matriarch, despite what elder Hachimaru has clearly tried to force upon her. To aim for the face- for another Hyuuga's eyes - in a duel of worth is to inflict shame . It's a public strike against the honor of the recipient, reserved for the most serious of transgressions and the greatest of arrogance.

"A challenge of worth." Hinata corrects him, with a close-eyed smile made lopsided by her wounds– but genuine all the same. "Against elder Hachimaru." She says the word elder like it's some kind of unrefined curse that doesn't fit well in her mouth– like she hasn't said it with reverence and respect a thousand times before. "And as much as 'honoured' grandfather may wish otherwise, he must accept defeat by his own rules."

Fresh and powerful horror washes through Neji's veins at the mere implication, at the very idea. "Are you out of your mind, Hinata?!" He hisses, dread forcing his heart into a gallop that far exceeds his normally carefully controlled resting rate. "He could have killed you. He could have made an example out of you and tradition would have let him! Tradition would have demanded it!"

Hinata's eyes snap to diamond hardness so fast Neji would have flinched back if his training were anything less than perfect . Suddenly the kunoichi before him is no longer the same little girl that used to follow at his heels when they were small, clinging to his robes and looking up at him with the world in her eyes, with all of its hope and none of the hurt.

Her jaw sets. Her chin lifts. Her uninjured eye narrows.

Neji looks into her eyes and sees a feral tigress looking back– a creature of power and nobility and fury bearing the scars of her hunt with pride, her razor teeth honed sharp on worthy prey.

She has changed far more than Neji could have possibly believed, and still wouldn't believe if the evidence were not staring him right in the face. Somehow, in the short breadth of a year, she has gained some kind of implausible strength, something beyond defiance or outrage or even courage.

Resolve .

"I am not afraid of old men in high towers, Neji." she intones, with a heavy rasp close enough to a growl that the hairs on Neji's arms stand up. "A clan is supposed to be a family, Neji-nii. What kind of family forces siblings to fight each other for a place in it, then forces the 'weak' in line with cruelty and cage bars, and dismisses their suffering as duty ?" Hinata's voice is very calm, very clear, and very certain. She speaks slowly and with undeniable purpose– this is not something she is admitting in the heat of a moment, under the duress of circumstance. This is something she's practiced , something she has turned over and over in her head countless times, until the idea was as polished as a river stone.

This is something she has wanted to say to him, to Neji , for a very long time.

She still hasn't released his hand, held fast beneath her own since this began, and now she turns it over, slotting their palms together and gripping tight.

Neji's world feels like it's crumbling at the edges, torn between his belief and the polarizing magnetism of hers; between the cold resignation of duty he's clung to for so long, and this fragile new idea that there might be more to it after all– more than pain and subservience and the bitterness of being born lesser.

He makes an effort to control his breathing, tries to reign in his unwieldy emotions and repair the frozen fortress he's built firmly around his heart. It's inexcusable for him to even think these things, disgraceful to entertain the idea of being anything other than what he is.

But to add insult to injury Hinata smiles at him again, the same way she used to; with the world in her eyes. There's pain in them too now– sadness, regret– and she reaches up with her battered hand while he's still stunned and scrambling.

He doesn't see what she's doing until it's too late.

The band of fabric that conceals his curse mark comes free with a soft flutter, revealing the disgrace of his birth– the proof of both his weakness and his cage.

"You hate me Neji." She breathes, and for the first time her voice cracks on the word, glistening tears forming in the corners of her eyes like beads of glass. "And not because of anything I did, or anything I am, or anything you are, but because your father was a little bit weaker than mine." She reaches with her injured hand, flicking the budding tears from her eyes before they can drip down her cheeks. Her eyes swim now, fire and water, no less fierce for the overflow of emotion. "I will not fight my sister." she tells him. "She's already so angry , Neji. I refuse to force Hanabi to struggle and hate because the only other option is being branded disposable ."

The last word strikes Neji like a blow, and his jaw locks against the force of it.

He knows, somewhere in the back on his mind, that this has been coming. That doesn't make the old hurt any easier to swallow, though this time he does try .

Neji hasn't thought about that night– about the last time he saw his father– for years. He'd iced the memory over with purpose, numbing himself with layer upon layer of apathy until he could look at it with no more attachment or emotion than one might regard a picture of a stranger.

But Hinata's words leave no room for apathy. Her passion melts through his indifference with each minute he sits here, listening, watching dumbly as she gets in close and aims hard for the chinks in his armor.

Because it's true. The branch family is disposable. It is the duty of every member to lay down their lives for the main family, without question, hesitation, or grievance. They're substitutes. Distractions. Ready-made sacrifices.

Neji's father had been no different.

They hadn't even let him see more than a glimpse of his body. And when Neji had foolishly resisted, their grandfather had responded with the same punishment he would have granted any branch member. Pain.

Neji had learned two things that night; that emotion was nothing but a weakness to be exploited, and that as terrible as any pain might be, there is always greater pain waiting in the wings for those who defy the first. It is the way of his life, his fate, his role, and there is nothing else. Endure or be sacrificed; that is his destiny. It is the truth he holds to.

A truth made soft.

By Hinata, and by Naruto, and now by Hinata again.

"I won't let them force either of us into the branches." Hinata continues, another blow to his belief, and this time the look in her eyes is playful, almost daring– maybe even a little bit smug. "And if honoured grandfather wants to regain his right to force the issue, he's welcome to challenge me whenever he likes."

His truth must be very thin indeed, because here sits Hinata– small, shy, kind, naive, an absolute crybaby– battered and bruised and victorious, with proof that if you fight hard enough, long enough, fierce enough– there's always option number three.

No .

Hinata is quiet for a long moment. She seems to be giving Neji a reprieve in order to process what he's hearing.

He… appreciates that.

Neji swallows hard, trying to regain some semblance of his flawless composure. He feels gutted, like his insides have been strewn in front of him for the world to see, and Hinata hasn't even said very much. Only what she believes, and what she is willing to do for it.

Neji's not sure what to believe.

In any other circumstance he'd declare Hinata's reckless attempt at change doomed to failure, but the Duels of Worth –and by extension Challenges of Worth– are some of the most sacred tenants in Hyuuga tradition, as core to their functions as the eight trigrams are to Hyuuga Jutsu.

"All worthiness, to lead or to serve, to carry forward or hold fast, to cast judgment or give mercy, is granted by measure of the mastery of the eight. Any challenge of worth must be met by worthy mastery, or worth is forfeit. Any victory in challenge is the victory of a master, and is of the higher worth."

The irony is almost comical; the Script of Worth is one of the cornerstone supports for the Hyuuga branch system, and yet it's also the doctrine responsible for Hinata's newfound freedom of choice. Status quo and cultivated social reverence means that no one has ever worked up the nerve to challenge any Hyuuga elder, let alone the master of the main family.

Not only did Hinata have the nerve to demand it, but she'd scraped together the power, skill, and tenacity needed to actually win against a man with more years on the field than Hinata's been alive.

The more Neji thinks about it the more he understands; her strategy is too perfect for this to be an act of true recklessness. The Hyuuga tenants themselves, the very scripts that each of the elders are sworn to uphold, ensure that elder Hachimaru has no choice but to either allow Hinata her freedom, or publicly forsake his own beliefs.

"You were waiting for this." Neji accuses, though a sudden breathlessness takes the bite out of his voice. "For him to be angry enough to confront you."

Hinata shrugs, as though the detail matters little. "Well, yes. I honestly wasn't expecting it to happen this fast, though. For a man revered for his 'patience', grandfather has a quicker temper than a forest crow."

"Hinata…"

" Neji. "

His name is a fond chastisement in her mouth, like she thinks he's being obtuse. Or childish .

Neji bites down against the argument his pride tries to demand, and considers his position. Once again Hinata leaves him to think, turning again to the pond. The koi seem to respond to her attention, and several swim closer to the surface, flitting through the water in dramatic curls and figure eights, perhaps in a bid for treats. They're mismatched– some are molted with odd patches of white and yellow, some are tencho whose forehead spots look like careless blotches of red ink, and some are solid colored but for disruptive birthmarks on their tails or fins. Suddenly Neji knows what this pond is, what it's for, and why it's so far out of the way.

It's a quarantine pond, only this one isn't used for fish who've gotten sick; it's for misfits and outcasts, fish whose colours weren't bright enough or uniform enough to conform to the Hyuuga's strict breeding standards. So here they live; forgotten and undervalued, overlooked by all.

All but one.

Neji breathes deep again, one last attempt to steady his nerves, and this time it does the trick. His breath evens out at last, his heart rate dropping back into a more manageable range, and while he might not be calm exactly, he does find it easier to focus.

The fact of the matter is this; Neji's truths are soft, and he has a choice to make.

Option one; he can hold fast to his ideals and his duty, and remain in his place. He can try to convince Hinata to abandon this crusade, to forsake her bright, foolish ideas and dangerous revolution.

His chances of doing so are slim to none. They are both stubborn, but Hinata is more than just stubborn in this, she's resolute , and Neji now lacks the solid surety he'd need to be convincing.

Option two; continue as they are. Hinata would advance her social coup, and Neji would field the fallout as best he could between her and her father, but for the most part stay out of it.

Option three is the choice that terrifies him. Hinata's choice.

Refusal. Freedom. Change.

Staring down centuries of tradition and duty and status quo and telling it not one more day .

Neji does not know what the right answer is– if there even is one– but there is something he wants to clear up.

"I don't hate you, Hinata." he murmurs.

She gives a wry smile, but it doesn't reach her eyes and she doesn't meet his gaze. "I don't blame you for it Neji-nii."

She doesn't believe me. He realizes.

And why should she? He has done nothing to prove to her otherwise.

Maybe I should. He thinks, swallowing hard, throat working against the knot forming at the top of his sternum. Maybe I should prove it.

Could it be that simple? Is it his choice to make? Does he have any right? Dare he take this risk on the chance she might be right about everything ?

Beneath all the questions and doubts swimming through his head, a different kind of fear rises to the surface, profound and raw, a counterpoint stark and sharp enough to drown out all the rest.

Dare I not?

"I don't hate you." He repeats, and the sureness of his voice surprises him and Hinata both. The words taste like truth.

A voice reverberates in his head– soft as a whisper, sure as a sunrise– echoing his own thoughts back at him.

Maybe you should prove it.

"I don't know if this is the right thing." He says slowly, but his words are clear, true . He squeezes Hinata's hand in return the same way she squeezed his, and the show of solidarity, of something close to emotion , actually makes Hinata start in surprise. She turns her whole body towards him, eyes alert. "I don't know if challenging traditions that have kept us strong for hundreds of years is the answer." he continues, and pauses, waiting for her to counter him or argue back. She does neither.

"But?" She prompts instead.

"But... I will think on it." he agrees haltingly. "And in the meantime, I will help you."

This time it is Hinata's eyes that go wide. "What ? "

Neji huffs in exasperation, but something about the breath feels easier , something about the declaration feels right . "Exactly what I said." he says firmly, reaching up to brush some healing chakra over the burns on Hinata's temple. He doesn't know much medical jutsu, but he understands the concept enough to wash the external chakra from the wound and augment her natural healing. Neji thanks whatever gods are watching over her that the byakugan eye itself doesn't seem to be damaged. "I'm in no position to do much, but I will do what I can."

Hinata shakes her head, looking suddenly just as overwhelmed as Neji felt mere minutes ago. "You don't have to." She assures, sliding closer to him on the lip of the pond until their thighs are touching. "I'm the one who picked this fight. I'll finish it."

Neji flicks her in the forehead, suddenly irritated, and Hinata yelps. "Yes I am quite aware just what kind of fight you've picked." he mutters, and pinches the bridge of his nose in frustration. "I'm still having trouble believing it, however."

Hinata smiles, unrepentant. "I knew what I was doing."

"That doesn't make it any less irresponsible."

"I know." She switches subjects. "What changed your mind?"

Neji remembers the start of the chunin exams, Hinata stripping out of her Hyuuga robes to fight clanless. He remembers Uzumaki Naruto, bloody and beaten and yet still standing over him, victorious. He remembers the voice of Nara Shikamaru, smooth and infuriating and heavy with gravity.

"That tunnel vision is gonna get you killed…"

"Several things." Neji admits. "But one thing we can agree on, is that whatever the answer is, the branch system isn't it." He meets her eyes, allowing a small smile to crack through the facade, just a little. "I refuse to let you go into this without a safety net. So whatever you have planned, I had better know what it is."

The hug Hinata tackles him with is her only response to that. Neji falls backwards into the thick grass with an oof, Hiniata's tight embrace squeezing out what little oxygen he has left in his lungs.

Lee must really be getting to me. He thinks, because instead of squirming away across the green as he might have once, he makes only a token noise of objection and allows her to hold him there, with her strong arms tight around his shoulders and her head tucked safely beneath his chin.

"Thank you, Neji-nii." She whispers.

"Hm." he grunts, reaching up to pat her shoulder blades. Neji has never been one for overt displays of emotion, probably never will be, but even he can admit this feels… nice. "Just promise you'll warn me the next you decide to pick a fight with 'old men in high towers'."

She nods against his collarbone, and Neji can feel her smile. "I promise."

Later, as the two of them wander back towards the interior of the complex, Neji surveys the damage to Hinata's arm more closely. The bruising is even more extensive than he thought, and the red pinpricks turn out to be burst blood vessels consistent with overloaded tenketsu. It has to be recent– the bruising is too fresh to be more than a few hours old– which still leaves several long hours of Hinata's night unaccounted for. He wants to ask– to press her about what she could have possibly been doing that required the cover of midnight, but he's uncertain whether or not he's regained the right.

"What exactly happened?" he demands instead, taking hold of her arm and turning it to see the underside. Sure enough, the damage is more concentrated at the cluster of tenketsu around her wrist.

Hinata's smile is nervous enough to be considered sheepish. "So you know that jutsu you were helping me develop? The lion one?"

Neji stops dead in his tracks. "Hinata you didn't ."

The Hyuuga heiress rubs at the back of her head with her uninjured hand. "I totally did."

The first thing Kakashi sees in the inky darkness is fire.

It surrounds him, eerie and flickering, pale as the light off a low moon.

He has a sudden, bone deep feeling that he shouldn't be here. That no one should ever be here.

Before him lies a forest of gravestones in a cavernous space that might have once been hewn from stone. The boundaries of the room are hazy like fog, inconsistent, it's very existence hesitant. Each gravemark sticks up from it's own mound of strange, damp earth as black as tar and as sucking as marshland. They march in perfect offset rows, overrun by strange bluish-green moss and flanked by thousands upon thousands of crimson spider lilies.

The flowers drip and flow between the tomb markers like fresh blood, pouring over each other right up to the edge of the staircase, lapping at Kakashi's feet. A single, solitary path cuts through the blanket of red, hewn from the same black rock as the torii gate. Like the gate, the pathway is lined on both sides with hundreds of overlapping paper seals, their ink thin and ingrained like old tattoos on pale skin.

The spindly lilies lean away from the ancient strips of inked paper, as though afraid.

"Don't stray from the path." Kakashi mutters, remembering the eerie warning from his father's old stories. He hadn't expected the instruction to be so literal.

"Geez, you think?" Pakkun grumps, but stays very close to Kakashi's ankles anyway.

Over his head, dozens of bizarre floating fires flit this way and that– balls of eerie blue flame that send long sinister shadows dancing off the gravestones. Most move in unnerving starts and stops, jerking unpredictably and without warning, sometimes jumping whole meters at a time. Others seem to blink in and out of existence like a bad radio signal, gone for a fraction of a second only too reappear again not far off. A few don't move at all, not even to flicker, as if frozen somewhere outside of time.

The odd floating torches aren't the only fire; some of the graves themselves are ablaze with a different kind of flame, a steady, rust-orange flare that engulfs two headstones in every ten.

As Kakashi takes his first few steps onto the path one of the orbs streaks right by him, skipping past like a stone over water and narrowly missing the tip of his left ear. Pakkun jumps a whole ten centimeters off the ground and scrambles to the other side of his leg, tail tucked.

"What the hell are those things?" He growls.

" Kosenjobi. " Kakashi murmurs, tracking the sphere's movement carefully and eyeing the others nearby as he leans down to rub a hand soothingly over Pakkun's back. "A kind of Onibi usually born on battlefields. Demon Fire. Don't touch."

The pug rumbles nervously and wedges himself between Kakashi's legs as he starts to walk again. "Don't gotta tell me twice."

The path, like the staircase, seems to go on forever. The bloody flowers around him flutter with each step he takes, their trailing stems ripping outward in waves. There is no wind.

Kakashi tries not to think about it.

"What even is this place?" Pakkun asks after a while, eyeing the lilies warily. "It's...wrong. How do you have flowers with no rain or sun?"

"Do you know why shinobi burn most of their dead, Pak?" Kakashi asks, keeping his voice mellow despite the fact that every nerve in his body is screaming at him to turn around and go back the way he came.

"Sure." The ninken yips readily. "So enemy ninja can't steal techniques or secrets from their bodies, can't use the corpses against you, that kinda thing."

"That's one reason, yeah." Kakashi agrees. He stops as another onibi wrenches past him, blinking spasmodically. "Another is to avoid creating places like this."

Pakkun looks around with wide eyes. "Your old man said this place was a crypt."

Kakashi shrugs, continuing carefully down the dark stone path. "And I'm sure it was once." The field of flowers ripples again, a tide of fluttering crimson moving in and out, in and out. Like breathing. "But the real problem with burying shinobi, is that their chakra doesn't always die when they do."

Pakkun stops, staring out at the hundreds, potentially thousands of gravestones marching into the distance, dozens of generations of dead. "You're shitting me right now."

Kakashi shakes his head, nudging the pug softly to keep up. He doesn't want to be here any longer than he has to. "Even bloodstains left by powerful shinobi can still carry enough chakra to be dangerous. Modern clan sepulchers have safeguards against it, and the Konoha cemetery is close enough to Ground 44 that the Forest of Death absorbs the runoff." He explains, voice low enough it's almost a whisper. He dares not raise it. "But leave too many shinobi dead in the same spot– old cemeteries, battlefields, mass graves– and you get this;" He takes a spare practice shuriken from one of his pockets– blunted round at the ends so that it smarts instead of maims– and flicks it into the sea of red around them.

The mass undulates like it's alive, the flowers skittering back like startled animals to reveal a quick glimpse of the oozing blackness beneath. Kakashi continues after a long breath, tone deep and ominous, his eyes fixed on the ring of darkness left by the eerie flowers; "Places where the natural gravity of death and old chakra thin out the veil between seki and ikai ; between the world we know, and the world out of sight just beyond it."

Pakkun's normally impassive expression reads plainly with disgust as the shuriken vanishes into the muck, slurped up by the hungry supernatural tar. "That's just messed up." he growls. "Why the hell would your ancestors leave something so important down here in this pit ?"

"Because, strategically, there's no safer place on earth." Kakashi answers readily, and then sighs as Pakkun startles again, skittering away from an onibi that darts too close again. He scoops the ninken up before he can wander near the edge of the path, ducking as the same ball of blue fire snaps back the way it came. "Come on , Pak."

Pakkun huffs but relaxes, clearly feeling far safer in Kakashi's arms than down on the narrow walkway. "Sorry, boss." he mutters. "Thanks."

Kakashi nods.

"How is this place safe ?" The pug asks, matching Kakashi's volume now that he's closer.

"Depends on the context." Kakashi murmurs. "That gate we passed through was a kekkeimon . It's bound to my bloodline, so I'm the only person on earth left it will open for."

Pakkun nods with a low grumble of agreement. "Makes sense. I'd wondered why you weren't worried about the kids stumblin' over it remodeling the vault. But then how am I here jus' fine?"

"You're my summons." Kakashi says firmly. "We're bound together by a contract of blood. The gate reads you as an extension of myself, like an arm or a leg."

"Convenient." Pakkun rumbles, looking out at the lines of graves from the vantage point of Kakashi's shoulder. "They're really all down here?"

"Every recoverable Hatake corpse since the clan's formation." Kakashi confirms.

All but one. He doesn't say.

Sakumo is buried in the Konoha shinobi cemetery. Kakashi had been too young and too devastated to know what was expected of him when he died, and if he's honest he doesn't remember much about the days following. Just Minato.

Kakashi had only been on his team for a few months when it happened, and he hadn't yet figured out just who Minato really was . He had been angry and cold, judgmental and uncooperative and incapable of separating the man from the myth– the master from the moron.

Not that his attitude had mattered to Namikaze Minato; to the kindest soul Kakashi ever knew.

His brave, brilliant, dumbass sensei had taken care of everything; the clan rights, the funeral, the property claims, the expenses. He'd bought Kakashi a new apartment that very day– a small spartan space in the shinobi district south of the hokage tower– a space Kakashi called home for nearly two decades.

Until one year ago, when three cosmic disasters disguised as children crashed into his life with the force of falling stars.

Kakashi breathes in deep, eyes forward and chin down. Because they are why he is here.

He is here for three supernova souls with hearts on fire. For the love of a family he thought he'd never have again. For a trio of powerful, foolish young miracles.

He would walk through all nine hells for them. This place is nothing .

Finally the end of the path comes into view before him, looming like an ill omen, and there lies what he came here for. His birthright. His inheritance.

The scroll is a massive sharp thing wrought in cracked obsidian and rusted steel. It's easily as long as he is tall, and bears no stand or locked case. Instead it lies precariously on its side atop a massive bloodstained boulder, balanced perfectly straight on the rugged top as if hung in thin air, over the only protection it could ever need.

"Oh no..." Pakkun breathes, eyes fixed on the broad stone that holds the scroll aloft. "Tell me that's not what I think it is."

Kakashi tries to smile, but it twists into something closer to a grimace. "Sorry Pak. It's exactly what you think it is."

The stone is mostly round in shape, white and porous like old bone, save for where bloodstains dye it a blackish red. It's taller than Kakashi by a half, and bears a cord of rope bound around its middle, as thick as his arm and hung with heavy seal tags every twenty centimeters. A sessho seki .

A Killing Stone.

"Your ancestors really weren't kidding around, huh?" Pakkun complains. "How are we supposed to get that thing down?"

Kakashi shakes his head. " We're not."

" What? "

Kakashi turns around, pointedly putting his back to the sacrificial object. He can still feel it's presence behind him, unnatural and ominous, but he ignores the dread threatening to crawl down his spine and into his stomach, kneeling to place Pakkun back on the path.

He looks his oldest summons straight in the eye, sharp silver into loyal, droopy brown. "Thank you," he breathes sincerely, "For coming with me this far."

Pakkun shakes his head, trotting anxiously in place. " No way, " he snarls. "In for a penny in for a pound, asshole. If you think I'm running home with my tail between my legs you've got another thing coming."

Kakashi smiles reflexively, and this time the expression reaches his eyes. This small pug has always been a steadfast soul at his side, a giant force of grounding crammed into a tiny body. "I appreciate the thought, Pak, but that's not what this is about."

He stands slowly, straightening his spine, and Pakkun must see something in his eyes because he stills, mouth slightly open around an argument that doesn't come. Kakashi's eyes never leave his summons, because while the dread sinking into his gut may be strong, his resolve in this is stronger still. His voice, calm and unwavering, leaves no room for doubt. "I have to do this part on my own."

Pakkun can only nod, struck dumb.

Because Kakashi's eyes are shining in a way they never have before, as sharp and bright as the glint of sunlight off steel. They glow from within– one platinum and the other coppery– as if filled with some kind of chakra, but Pakkun has never seen chakra that looks like that , like something furious and electric, as though this man's gaze is a weapon all its own.

Kakashi himself doesn't even seem to notice. His eyes just curve warmly as he turns to leave, his smile reassuring beneath his mask. "Check on the kids, will you?" He asks over his shoulder, "I won't be long."

This time, Pakkun is inclined to believe him.

Kakashi waits until he can no longer hear Pakkun's pawsteps before stepping up to face the Killing Stone.

His proximity triggers some unseen response, a ripple of awareness, and the seal tags around the stone begin to flutter, set aloft by an invisible force. He takes another step, drawing steadily closer, knowing full well that even the most glancing touch of smooth stone would kill him instantly.

The atmosphere pulses with intent again, stronger this time, and Kakashi feels something itching at the back of his mind, like a fingernail scraping at a closed door. It reminds him of the humming resonance he felt in the room above just before he descended– a nameless, uncanny power.

Kakashi's father had assumed the Killing Stone was some kind of deadly last resort, a warning against the use of forbidden arts in battle and a way to keep a great evil sealed shut for good. But Sakumo spent a long time dulling his fangs to suit the expectations of others, and Kakashi knows better.

The ancient Hatake were warmongers, loyal machines of blood and savagery, the vanguard in a series of never-ending wars. They would never keep any instrument of power unless it was meant to be used .

The Killing Stone is not a warning. It's a test .

The Hatake's greatest weapon lies there, cradled just out of reach, waiting for someone crazy or desperate enough to work up the nerve.

Kakashi is neither crazy nor desperate.

He has come here to repossess.

He stands alone at the end of a legacy older than any village, forged in a time where waging war was as fundamental as breathing air. All shinobi are bred for conflict, but the Hatake were born for the kind of battles that raged like calamities , the kind that turned entire landscapes unrecognizable with the force of them.

That is his birthright.

That is what he's come here to claim, after so long ignoring the truth of his heritage.

He is the last Hatake, and whatever strength his ancestors have left behind is his .

One more step will put him directly within the sphere of the Killing Stone's influence, in range of it's bottomless, hungry energy. Seisshou seki may require contact to slay someone outright, but some of the older, better fed stones have the strength to sap vitality from a distance of nearly a meter. This stone is as old as the Hatake clan itself, and if Kakashi's deepening sense of dread is any indication, it's been very well fed; gorged full on the blood of criminals and traitors over the span of centuries, and its time in this dark place has only made it stronger.

But Kakashi is stronger now than he's ever been, in ways he never even thought possible, so if this homicidal hunk of rock thinks it's found itself another easy meal, it is dead wrong. Anything after Kakashi's life force now is in for one hell of a fight.

He crosses that unseen boundary in one smooth stride.

The effect is immediate. Something pulls at him, like fishhooks tucked under his every rib, and the pain of it is blinding , a wrenching ache that almost sends him crashing to his knees.

His teeth gnash together, jaw locking against a scream. He stumbles, breathing hard against the pain, but he manages to right himself, keeping his feet planted firmly beneath him. That scratching in the back of his mind becomes the savage rake of claws, digging hard into his mind with a grating roar that echoes through his head, forming words.

[W...h...o d...a...r...e...s?]

Kakashi raises his head, agony warping his vision like bad sake. He breathes with force, in and out in counts of three the way he learned in Anbu– a countermeasure against torture. It forces the sucking pain back enough to clear his head, allowing him to think a fraction around the agony.

By the tenth breath he can isolate the pain. By the fourteenth he can feel the mechanics of it. By the eighteenth he understands it.

By the twenty-first, he can use it.

With a bone deep breath and a deeper draw of will, Kakashi musters together all of his desire to live, every reason why he is here, and pulls back .

The force jerks reflexively and stutters as if surprised– like it hadn't expected to be caught so suddenly in a vicious tug-of-war with Kakashi's life-force as the rope.

In those few vital seconds of uncertainty, Kakashi gains precious ground.

The pain lessens second by second, his breath comes easier with each inhale, and by the time the Stone manages to steady itself enough to resist, Kakashi has already won.

The force holding onto Kakashi's life force slips, losing its grip, and his strength snaps back to him like a broken rubber band. He gasps, chakra flooding back through his chest where it had been forced out, feeling returning to fingertips he hadn't realized were numb.

" I. ..Dare." he bites breathlessly.

The clawing roar in the back of his mind goes quiet.

Kakashi uses the moment to do an internal inventory, every muscle in his body tensed for a second onslaught of torment.

None comes.

The grating roar rumbles to life again after a moment, softer than before.

[W...h...o d...a...r...e...s?] It repeats, though this time there is an actual question in the sound.

Kakashi figures he might as well be straightforward. "Hatake Kakashi."

[S...c...a...r...e...c...r...o...w.] The Stone rumbles knowingly. [Y...o...u a...r...e t...h...e l...a...s...t.]

"Yes." he answers, feeling as though he should be more surprised than he is that a sessho seki can possess some kind of sentience– enough to remember the name of a man it's never met.

[Y...o...u a...r...e f...a...m...i...l...i...a...r w...i...t...h p...a...i...n.] It acknowledges, like an observation.

"We're old friends." Kakashi coughs, voice rough from agony and forced breathing, even though it's not really a question.

There's a gravelly hum, an odd noise of contemplation.

[Y...o...u h...a...v...e k...n...o...w...n W...r...a...t...h.] It observes again.

Kakashi's eyes close, memories rising unbidden behind the lids as if summoned by the word. Kakashi remembers every moment in which his rage overcame him; in death, in war, in duty... in grief left unchecked, and they all reel through him in a torrent as uncontrolled as the emotion itself.

"Intimately." he breathes.

[Y...o...u h...a...v...e k...n...o...w...n P...e...a...c...e.]

Kakashi smiles without thought as the memories shift, turning warm. Peace is a newer thing to him, and comes in many forms; in long nights and early mornings, in arguments too fond to hold reproach, in good food and better company. In learning to hope again.

"Without measure." he agrees.

[W...h...y a...r...e y...o...u h...e...r...e, S...c...a...r...e...c...r...o...w?]

This answer comes the easiest, more so than all the rest, and he opens his eyes, his voice as smooth and steady as the rotation of the earth. "To protect them."

He doesn't need to elaborate who.

The rumble that follows is different, heavy with something strange, with a hint of what might be approval.

[Y...e...s.]

The energy in the air transforms sharply and without warning, filling with a dark, rumbling static, and the scroll atop the stone begins to vibrate, glowing hot with jagged chakra.

[T...h...e...y c...h...o...s...e y...o...u l...o...n...g a...g...o, S...k...y...b...r...e...a...k...e...r.] The Stone rumbles heavily. To Kakashi's alarm, one by one the seals around the Stone's center begin to shrivel and fall, fluttering to the ground like turning autumn leaves.

[Y...o...u a...r...e s...i...m...p...l...y t...h...e l...a...s...t t...o k...n...o...w i...t.]

With a massive deafening CRACK that echoes in the transient space like a clap of thunder, the Killing Stone splits straight down the middle with such startling force that it sends the ancient scroll at it's crest arcing high through the air, a steak of silver and black that holds within it the only real thing the ancient Hatake saw fit to leave behind.

Kakashi snatches it out of the air without thought for its sharp edges and weight, gripping tight against the sudden slickness of his own blood when the razor curves of the casing bite deep into his palms.

For a long heartbeat he simply stares at it.

He's never seen a treasure in his life quite so beautifully hostile – the curling spikes of pitch obsidian currently carving into his skin are actually teeth , sharp canine fangs with serrated edges, arcing protectively over the inner casing of the scroll– a dense, silvery-dark metal that Kakashi can now identify as vein steel; a weapon metal so rare and difficult to work that there isn't a shinobi smith still alive today capable of shaping it. It pulses in his hands, remarkably warm in for something that's spent a small eternity in a place so supernaturally cold. Kakashi shakes his head to himself, disbelieving, eyes fixed on the gorgeous manifestation of the Hatake's greatest asset– the holiest relic of a people to whom war was their religion.

It can't be that easy.

"What do you mean, they chose me?" Kakashi questions roughly, turning the unwieldy treasure in his hands to examine its every angle, red now dripping in a soft tandem from his wrists and fingers with a quiet tic… tic… tic … that is wholly ignored in favor of the scroll now draped in ribbons of his blood. "I've never even been here before." He reminds the Stone, once he manages to lift his gaze to it again. "It doesn't make any sense."

[T...h...e R...a...i...j...u a...r...e b...o...u...n...d i...n H...a...t...a...k...e b...l...o...o...d.] The broken Stone drawls, and its strange rumbling voice grows quieter with each word, softer with every syllable. Something seeps and runs from the seams of the great fissure, thick and oozing; something dark and coagulated.

[Y...o...u d...o n...o...t n...e...e...d t...o k...n...o...w t...h...e...m, f...o...r t...h...e...m t...o k...n...o...w y...o...u.]

Kakashi blinks down in sharp surprise as the metal and crystal of the scroll's casing begins to warm further under his hands, from the idle temperature of an unsheathed sword left out in the sun to something different entirely– a rich seeping warmth like living skin, like the rising internal heat of muscle and sinew and blood.

Blood that Kakashi can now see draining from his hands, the tic tic tic of overflowing drops having slowed to a stop. He can see it being drawn from him by the angry curls of crystal, can see them absorbing his lifeblood with an almost human tremble of hunger– drop by crimson drop.

The sharp juts of obsidian begin to pull inward towards the scroll's center as they drink, slow and swollen with his blood, shifting like mercury and growing wide like unfurling leaves. Kakashi shifts his grip to allow the motion, spilling even more scarlet over it's curling insides when he does. The scroll absorbs it readily, sucking it in like dry, droughted earth drinks in fresh rain.

The shards enlarge and curl tighter, melding into one another where they touch, sliding together in unison and transforming from many razor-edged arcs into a single solid outer shell; glass-smooth and reflective.

For a moment nothing else happens– the outer case ceases it's liquid motion and rests, pleasantly warm and pressed flush against Kakashi's stinging palms. But then the warmth changes, the shimmering crystal heats once more, and it goes from a mammalian warmth to a painful sear in less than a second.

Kakashi's reflexes trigger like a shot, honed to protect the delicate nerves of his hands from damage– from the dangerous scroll glowing blue-white and hot as a flaming coal– but when he tries to drop superheated object he finds that he can't – that even raising the outside edge if a fingertip is impossible , as though the scroll has fused to his hands, some unseen force welding crystal to flesh. The pain ratchets higher, snatching a sharp gasp from deep behind Kakashi's sore ribs as the heat drives impossibly upward, climbing to a degree Kakashi is certain will burn him to the bone.

But then the heat is gone– and with it the pain– just as suddenly as it began.

With a wrenching jerk and painful pull of skin, Kakashi finally pries a hand free of the treacherous outer shell– leaving behind, as he does, something startling.

Sunken into the glittering obsidian crystal, pressed like a stone seal into soft wax, is a perfect cast of Kakashi's hand print.

It's absolutely flawless, a perfect impression all the way down to the tiniest and most minute of details; the thinnest lines of scars hidden in the bends of his knuckles, the most minute curls and ridges of his fingerprints, even the decade old evidence of a needlepoint syringe hidden under the edge of his thumbnail. When he peels his other hand back he finds the same perfect indentation of his left hand as he did his right, another cast of his fingertips and palm pressed into the glassy crystal with remarkable detail.

When he glances down at his own hands in bewilderment he finds them smooth and bloodless, the deep flaying wounds in his palms and fingers gone like they were never there at all; burned away by the same process that left his identity carved and pressed into the scroll's outer surface.

An Imprint. Kakashi realizes. The damn thing just Imprinted me.

It's one of the two most vital steps in contract summoning– the other being Blooding; the initial sacrifice of lifeblood and chakra responsible for both forming the initial connection with the summoned species and giving that connection power. Unlike Blooding, which must be repeated each time a summoner chooses to access their bond, Imprinting is only ever done once– at the time the bond is first forged. It's responsible for providing the summoned species with the unique physical trait necessary to anchor a new bond, and also serves as proof of a summoner's identity should the original scroll be lost or destroyed, at which point an archived imprint can be used, in conjunction with a chakric signature, to reaffirm a dormant bond or even a broken one. It's a failsafe, a lifeline designed long ago to ensure that a bonded ninja with the means and desire could always reach their summons.

In modern-day summoning scrolls this process is streamlined; Blooding and Imprinting are done simultaneously, using a combination of blood scribing and a chakra infused paper embedded with tuned lattice seals. It smoothes out the initial binding process, significantly reducing the amount of blood required to form the bond in the first place. It's an advancement made possible by the seal masters of Uzushio, and has been so widely adopted over the last fifty years that summoners are commonplace now– an average sight within any shinobi populace.

But it wasn't always that way.

It wasn't always that simple, or easy, or without cost.

That's what most ninja don't remember– what the Uzumaki gave them the luxury to forget; the fact that summoning was once spoken in the same breath as kinjutsu , and that the art of the contract has its roots in a much older practice, one as ancient and bloody as the Nine Beasts themselves. Covenants .

As far as Kakashi is aware, there are only six ninja left in the elemental countries that still know what it really means to be a summoner. The Legendary Sanin are three. Old Sarutobi is a fourth. Kakashi knows, but only secondhand– a knowledge drawn from the myriad of his father's warnings.

The only thing scarcer than that knowledge are the summoning scrolls themselves – the ones dark enough and ancient enough to still abide by old ways and ancient rules.

Scrolls like the one Kakashi is currently holding.

There's a high, sudden sound, brief and quiet like the crinkling of ice sheet under the weight of a footstep, and tiny cracks begin to form in the shell of the Hatake scroll, branching like lightning and creeping like spiderwebs until crackling becomes crunching becomes shattering and the protective casing disintegrates right in Kakashi's fingers, crumbling into a fine black powder that tumbles over his hands, forming piles on the floor like sand spilling from a broken hourglass.

When the last of the shimmering dust is scattered at his feet Kakashi is left clutching an object less than a seventh its original unwieldy size. The heavy outer casing has fallen away entirely, leaving only the slim inner case of solid veinsteel– the case that holds the scroll itself.

Kakashi had… expected more of a fight on his part, honestly. More of a sacrifice. More of something at least; legends of this scroll had spoken of genocides , of impossible sacrificial tolls, of mad Hatake spilling entire villages worth of blood in desperate attempts to appease or control the forces resting within.

But this scroll is clearly and obviously content with what blood has been spilled already; it's skin-warm and humming once more, like some great purring beast after a full meal, and Kakashi feels like he hardly lost a pint in the process.

Despite it's more reasonable size the scroll is still remarkably heavy, clean now of rust and tarnish as though freshly polished, its glistening surface reflecting the light of the kosenjobi above in hypnotic fractals.

Holding the scroll without it's shell feels… odd. Different. The artifact is bizarrely at home in his grasp, right in the same way gripping the hilt of a favorite sword is right; easy, comfortable– as reliable as his own limbs. It's… familiar somehow, like an old friend whose name he'd long forgotten, or the feel of the room he used to sleep in as a child. The odd sensation spreads through him, something unerringly symbiotic in a way that is just as comforting as it is strange; like being welcomed home to a place he knows he's never been, but is home all the same.

He knows it now like he knows his own breath, by way of an intent so potent and kin that he can feel its will, their will, welling up inside him. This scroll, this power, is his now– or maybe it has always been his– something so innate to Kakashi that was never really lost, only waiting.

Kakashi grips the scroll tighter, tracing his attention back to the Stone once more."Thank you." he murmurs to it, perhaps unnecessarily.

The Killing Stone's hum is faint now, barely a whisper.

[T...a...k...e i...t, S...k...y...b...r...e...a...k...e...r.] It hisses, it's last words rattling like a death rasp.

[A...n...d n...e...v...e...r t...r...e...s...p...a...s...s h...e...r...e a...g...a...i...n.]

"Not even when I die?" Kakashi queries, unable to help the flicker of dark sarcasm in his voice.

The Stone doesn't answer.

At first Kakashi thinks it must simply be gone now– dead and faded after fulfilling an age-old purpose for a final time, but as he turns away, prize in hand, he hears the faintest scrape in the back of his mind, the barest hint of a voice.

[T...h...i...s i...s a p...l...a...c...e o...f b...i...t...t...e...r e...n...d...s a...n...d o...l...d p...a...i...n.]

It breathes, as faint as a whisper in a stormwind.

[T...h...i...s p...l...a...c...e i...s n...o...t f...o...r y...o...u.]

The moment Kakashi passes back through the torii gate, it closes shut behind him.

The vibration in the air cuts out completely, and the only thing to be seen through the opening is the dusty surface of the wall behind it.

Looks like I've been disinherited . He thinks, amused by the idea that a very large rock had just kicked him out of his family burial site and told him not to come back.

He can't say he's terribly broken up about it.

He is, however, exhausted.

He feels like a cheap oil rag that's been rung too many times, stretched thin and in tatters, and his entire torso throbs with pain as soon as he allows himself to feel it.

That's enough brushes with death for one evening, I think.

He holds out his spoils, and the scroll glitters despite the lack of ambient light, casting starshards of silver across the dark fabric of his shirt.

I hope you were worth the effort.

The scroll almost seems to rumble in response to the thought and his attention; a thrumming chakric purr of satisfaction and challenge so much like a reply Kakashi can almost hear the words in his head: Why don't you find out?

Kakashi stares at it in silence for a moment, blinks once, and then shoves the scroll into his pants pocket. He's too tired for this shit right now.

He has what he came here for. The Hatake scroll is safely in his possession, the sealing key for his limiters is tucked securely inside his shirt, and both can wait until after he's slept for a few hours.

He leaves the room on sluggish feet, sealing the false wall shut behind him before trudging up the stairs. He wonders if Pakkun has checked on the cubs yet.

As he turns the corner out of the vault, it takes him a few hazy seconds to register the small form sitting curled against the wall at the mouth of the hallway.

Kakashi pauses half a meter away, blinking down at unkempt blond hair. "Naruto? What are you doing awake?"

The boy's eyelashes flutter slightly as he looks up, and his gaze is clouded with fatigue. "Oh. Hey, sensei." he says at hushed length. "Pakkun said to wait for you here."

Kakashi instantly looks Naruto over for any sign of injury or distress, but the young ninja only seems tired, perhaps a touch frustrated.

Kakashi kneels down in front of him, head tilted softly. "Is something wrong?"

Naruto cants his head back and forth uncertainly, chewing his lip. "I don't think so? I...I think I summoned in my sleep."

Kakashi breathes an audible sigh of relief, allowing the tension to bleed from his shoulders. "Is that all?" He crosses his legs, tiredness forgotten, and settles in on the floor with his student, his purpose, one of his young miracles. Naruto's eyes are bright despite his exhaustion, and they make Kakashi feel bright in spite of his own.

Naruto looks to him in search of guidance now, as a source of surety and knowledge when uncertainty comes knocking, and he is so terribly proud to be worthy of that.

"That kind of thing happens all the time." Kakashi soothes. "It's nothing to be embarrassed about." He casts his gaze around briefly, but finds no sign of Naruto's shining pair of kitsune summons. "Did you dismiss them already?"

Naruto shakes his head, looking lost. "That's the thing though, sensei– I didn't summon Kuran or Renge." The boy lifts up the bunched hem of his shirt, and it's only then that Kakashi recognises that there is something cradled there, tiny and dark like a smudge of soot.

It's a fox , Kakashi realizes, with big gold eyes and a white spot on it's chest, the length of his pinky finger from nose to tail. There's a flash of recognition in the back of Kakashi's consciousness, of a decade-and-a-half old memory of similar golden eyes peering at him from over the edge of a pillowcase.

What are the odds– tonight of all nights.

"Thats a kudagitsune ." Kakashi breathes, like a revelation.

Naruto blinks rapidly, hands curled protectively around the tiny beast nestled in the folded fabric. "A what?"

Kakashi swallows and takes a steadying breath against both the memory and the unexpected flood of emotion that sneaks in on it's heels. "A pipe fox. They were... uh," Kakashi has to pause his explanation to swallow again, exhaustion making the raw emotion in voice obvious. "They were Kushina's summons." he finishes gently, words barely steady. "Your mother's."

Naruto looks sharply down at the diminutive creature, awe widening his eyes. The fox just stares right back, wise golden eyes serene and unblinking.

Naruto is quiet for a long, stretching moment, just staring and staring. His expressive eyes swim with something richer and more complicated than sadness, an emotion that makes his eyes gleam like warm seawater. When he finally speaks the words skip over each other, tumbling out like stones down a slope.

"But–but it's so tiny … where would you put them? What could they do when they're so, so little ?" Naruto's fingers curl in further, forming a protective cage around the summon and pulling it closer against his chest. "They'd get hurt or–or crushed so easy …"

Kakashi wraps a steadying hand around the edge of the young Uzumaki's shoulder and squeezes. Naruto's eyes jump back to him.

"They were not combat summons, Naruto." he assures. His smile curves up to one side beneath his mask, nostalgic and wry. "Kushina never needed any help wrecking a battlefield."

Naruto breathes out in a rush of relief.

It's strange; Kakashi's little golden powerhouse isn't normally this easy to work up– which leads him to believe that Naruto might be unsettled by something else entirely– something more unnerving than summoning an unfamiliar creature in his sleep.

"They were household support summons." Kakashi explains. "Kushina used them to help smooth out chakra or amplify it, usually when she was testing new seals or jutsu. They're called 'pipe foxes' because they're small enough to fit comfortably in bamboo pipes, or even matchboxes."

It surprises Kakashi how easy the words form, despite the loaded emotion that always comes with thinking of Kushina, or Minato, or anyone he loved as fiercely as he loved her and lost. Something feels different about the emotion now, something feels changed – like some hole inside him has finally begun to heal over, a hollow agony overcome by something new and tender.

Naruto listens attentively. He splits his attention between Kakashi and the coal coloured pipe fox as he talks, brave enough now to start stroking down the creature's back with one finger, which invokes a high, trilling purr.

He's on Kakashi with questions as soon as he stops for breath, his usual exuberance held in check only by the lateness of the hour.

"Are they all this small? I mean, it did make me feel more… settled, I think? Like all floaty. Are they all like that? And how did I summon it? Is it like a bloodline thing or like, a Kurama thing? Can I summon one just because it's a fox? Could mom summon them because they were foxes?" Naruto's questions are a flood-water torrent, and there's a rampant curiosity to him that goes undulled by exhaustion or sorrow, and it brings out a teacher in Kakashi Iruka would be proud of.

"Yes, this one is about average size. Feeling floaty is normal, they have a natural calming effect on most shinobi, like a mellow sedative. Yes, they all do it, as far as I know. I imagine it's more a Kurama thing, since pipe foxes are a type of kitsune , but summons have been known to run in bloodlines, so that could factor. It's possible that Kushina could summon them because of Kurama, but that's not a question I ever thought to ask her, so I can't be sure." He answers each question in order and to the best of his knowledge, and Naruto nods along, scratching carefully under the pipe fox's chin with the edge of one nail, coaxing it to purr even louder.

"Okay, okay, but then why didn't I just summon Renge, or something?" Naruto asks, which is a good question.

Kakashi rubs the hinge of his jaw as he thinks, and again remembers serene yellow eyes in a dark face, arrow-like nose peering over his pillow at him as he blinked awake.

"Did you have a nightmare?" he asks quietly.

Naruto stills, eyes widening a fraction, and Kakashi knows he's right. "How did you–"

" Kudagitsune ward off nightmares." he interrupts gently. "And dreams are the most common cause of sleep summoning. It came because you needed it."

Naruto swallows hard and stares intently at his toes. He says nothing.

Stubborn. Kakashi thinks. Just like his mother .

Shifting his weight, Kakashi turns and slides into a lean against the wall beside his cub. The scroll in his pocket scrapes loudly across the floor as he moves, but he ignores it, and while Naruto looks down at it briefly, he doesn't ask.

Instead he mimics Kakashi, listing sideways down the wall until his head rests against Kakashi's shoulder. "It's stupid." he grumbles.

"There's a fox the size of a field mouse on your lap that says otherwise."

Naruto pouts at that, but the pipe fox blinks its big golden eyes as if in agreement. Pipe foxes don't talk– at least not in the traditional sense– but they listen, and watch, and understand more than most.

"It was about Gaara." Naruto admits eventually.

Kakashi nods, unsurprised.

The information about Sabaku no Gaara's status as a jinchuuriki is technically classified, but between Naruto's senses and Sasuke's up close experience with the boy's chakra, it was only a matter of time before all three of them knew.

Naruto nods, gilded hair brushing against the underside of Kakashi's jaw. It's thick like Kushina's was, yet fine enough to tickle his skin through the fabric of his mask– a trait reminiscent of Minato's. "I dreamed that Kurama and I became like that." Naruto admits. "That I made a mistake trying to save him and all the wrong things got mixed together."

"Is that why you didn't ask him about your little friend?" Kakashi gestures at the pipe fox, and it nips playfully at his fingers when he gets too close.

"Mhm."

"Have you been having them often? These dreams?"

Naruto shakes his head. "Just tonight."

Kakashi lets his head fall back against the plaster, lets his eyes close in a rare moment of vulnerability. "I used to have them every night, you know. Nightmares." he admits, "Right up until a red-haired menace started leaving tiny foxes in my pillowcase."

The admission has the desired effect– Naruto snorts out a surprised laugh, and when Kakashi opens his eyes he finds the young Uzumaki curled forward off the wall, fist pressed to his mouth to stifle giggles.

Kakashi chest feels light at the sound, and he can't help but curl an arm around Naruto's shoulders, reaching up with long warscored fingers to ruffle soft blonde hair, hair that– despite being the product of two people he cared for deeply– is dearer to him now than the memory of either of them.

"Come on." He urges, nudging Naruto to stand with him. " Kudagitsune are a little different than most summons. They require a tribute before they can be dismissed."

"Tribute?" Naruto wonders, cupping the pipe fox carefully in the open cradle of his palms as he stands. "What kind of tribute?"

"Food, usually." Kakashi recalls warmly. "Kushina's were always fond of rice crackers."

" Rice crackers?" Naruto squawks, eyeing the pipe fox with disbelief before turning his skeptical gaze on Kakashi. "It's barely big enough to fit on a rice cracker, let alone eat one," he argues.

Kakashi laughs softly, recalling a particularly memorable moment more than a decade prior; the first and last time he ever failed to give a kudagitsune it's due. It had ended with him opening his pantry the following morning, only to find that it had been surgically and systematically stripped of anything edible, leaving only a single, tiny, smug-as-hell pipe fox, sitting defiantly atop an empty ration box.

"You know you should never judge a summons by appearance alone." Kakashi reminds him, tone lightly chastising. "The most important thing one must be aware of with a kudagitsune isn't their abilities. It's their appetites ."

Kakashi expects the statement to be met by further skepticism– Kakashi certainly hadn't believed it when Kushina first warned him, hadn't right up until one stripped him of two paychecks worth of groceries in the time it took him to run to the corner store.

But that's… not what happens. Instead of opening his mouth to refute him, Naruto looks down at the pipe fox in his hands with a genuine wide-eyed surprise as they walk in the direction of the kitchen, an expression that morphs into some kind of curious respect. No doubt, no cynicism, just a thoughtless acceptance of the warning as truth.

Kakashi's chest restricts, sharp and sudden, at the implication.

Maybe it's the raw tenderness of emotion he isn't used to, or the looming weight of his actions earlier tonight; but as he watches Naruto's eyes shift– tracking the understanding and acceptance and interest as it moves through the boy's expression– a moment of clarity strikes Kakashi like a blow to the head.

He forgets sometimes that Naruto's faith isn't loud .

It doesn't show itself in grand gestures or outward displays, nor is it reliant on the favors or transactions of mutual trust usually required to build the loyalty necessary for ninja to rely on each other. It is not anything so obvious or mundane as that, and it is not so shallow as to require it's existence be proved.

It's part of what makes Naruto himself so terribly miraculous– the sheer unmoving surety with which he chooses to believe in those he loves. It's simple and straightforward and so much a part of him that Naruto himself doesn't even need to think about it– there's nothing grey to it, no uncertainty or half-measure that might require complex judgment or thought; either he believes in you, or he does not.

Any doubts, preconceived ideas, or observed conclusions of Naruto's own hadn't mattered– Kakashi implied that a mammal the size of a bell flower could eat him out of house and home, and Naruto believed him.

It's such a mundane thing, a process of thought easily overlooked from one moment to the next, and yet it holds a kind of meaning that blindsides Kakashi as he stands there in the kitchen, one hand on the cabinet door, eyes fixed on Naruto's ducked head. It's simple heartwrenching proof, a firm and unexpected reminder, that Kakashi numbers among a very select few– a spare handful of people around which Naruto defines his entire world .

Even as Kakashi reels silently, frozen by a realization made obvious by its everyday and unthinking nature, the last Uzumaki just looks up at him, meets his eyes with a perfect unassuming seriousness in both his face and his voice, and asks if he should grab one whole box of crackers or two.

Because of course Naruto would be oblivious to Kakashi's revelation, to the flood of emotion and understanding currently cascading through his chest– of course he would; in Naruto's mind there's nothing odd at all about that particular display of trust. It's not new to Naruto, it's not strange . It's not even recent – just because it took Kakashi this long to realize it doesn't mean it wasn't true well before that, or that proof didn't always exist in some subtle way; not when Naruto's faith in his precious people underpins everything he ever does, not when his desire to protect them drives every choice he ever makes.

And Kakashi is one of them. Kakashi is precious to this half-pint Uzumaki miracle, the same way Iruka and Sakura and Kurama are precious– like limbs or bones or internal organs– like pieces of himself he can't live without.

"Naruto?" Kakashi asks quietly, his voice steady somehow, his fingers curling against the wood of the cabinet under his hand. There's a heavy quality to the air that reminds him of a moment like this one– days ago and with a different kid; a moment of vulnerability and courage, of innocent questions rigged with emotional landmines, of putting words to a nameless hope.

"Hm?" Naruto returns, guileless and unbothered by Kakashi's failure to answer his earlier question. He just waits, reaching for a box of rice crackers once Kakashi regains enough self awareness to open the cabinet instead of just leaning on it.

"How long would you say we've been family?" Kakashi asks, heavily loaded and entirely without context.

Naruto doesn't even look surprised by the question.

He tilts his head as he considers his answer, a display of the more animalistic brand of body language that Naruto has always found more natural to him than the human variety. "I dunno." he admits vaguely. "A while? Since sometime after Wave, at least. Probably since around the time we moved here." He speculates, digging around one-handed in the mostly empty box of rice crackers balanced on his knee in a vain search for anything more substantial than crumbs. Jiraiya's doing, undoubtedly.

"That long?" Kakashi wonders aloud, reaching to grab the bottom of the box so Naruto will have an easier time with it. That is… significantly longer than Kakashi would have guessed. Months longer.

"Well, yeah." Naruto affirms, attention still focused on cracker retrieval. "That's what I thought, anyway." He hedges, and Kakashi feels particularly dense.

The kid finally manages to scrounge up a full half a cracker, offering it to the tiny pipe fox still curled in his other hand. He looks nervous suddenly as the fox starts to nibble, and meets Kakashi's eyes anxiously. "I could be wrong, though. I don't exactly have much experience with… you know. 'Family'."

Kakashi manages an amused smile, watching as the kudagitsune works its way through the rice cracker like a caterpillar through a green leaf. "I don't know about that." Kakashi disagrees. "I think you have a better grasp on it than most, actually." he says, which is the truth.

Naruto's head snaps up in surprise. "Wait, really? Why?"

Kakashi shrugs, stretching up to his full height in order to reach the back of the top shelf, feeling around for where he keeps Iruka's spare box of crackers and finding it on the second grab. "Because being 'blood' and being 'family' are two different things." Kakashi murmurs, tone light yet serious as he hands Naruto the fresh box. "And I'm starting to believe that one has very little to do with the other."

Later, when Naruto is asleep again at last and the house is quiet once more, Kakashi kneels on the back porch beneath the stars, looking out over the garden.

The sealing key and the Raijuu scroll lay before him, one a weapon, one a freedom. Both come with a choice Kakashi swore he'd never make, an action he swore he'd never take. To chance, to risk, to do more .

He is done running. He is done hiding. He is done pretending.

He is not his father. He will not clip his claws or calm his storm so people won't be afraid . What he has is too precious to be given anything less than everything .

His kids deserve more from him than a hollow shell given in to loss. They deserve more than the echoes of the determination and fire that tragedy and circumstance put out. They deserve more than the man he is, or even the man he never was– they deserve everything he can be, with all that he is, with all he has left.

He owes it to himself, to the people he loved and lost, to the people he still loves now, to be more. He knows now, after a little over a year teaching his team 7, that it is possible, that being a shinobi does not mean you can't still be human , that you can't still have heart .

Naruto is proof that you don't need to know compassion to be kind, that you don't need to be loved to bring out love in others, and that true strength is not selfish. Sasuke is proof that hate and grief can be beaten, and that tragedy and fear only define who you are if you give them the power to do so. Sakura is proof that it doesn't matter where you come from or where you started, you always have the power to change things for the better, and the one thing you can always change is yourself.

They're not there yet. They're strong, yes, but Kakashi knows that there are still forces in this world that are infinitely stronger, and while their potential is devastating they still need time . Time to grow, time to learn, time to become the forces of nature he knows they can be, to surmount the challenges and dangers he knows they'll face.

Until then, he will be their shield.

Because it was never a matter of if he could .

Temari wakes up angry, which at this point isn't new.

It is not morning. The light slinking in through the fire country canopy is washed out, grey, and about as strong as watered sake. Sunrise is a far away concept hours in the making, so calling this time of day 'morning' would be a mean fucking joke, and Temari sure as hell isn't laughing.

She rolls over on her thin fuuton, reaching behind her to shove hard at Kankuro's foot where it's planted in the small of her sweaty back. The little bastard doesn't even twitch, only flops sideways and snores louder, and Temari snarls her frustration into her pillow in an attempt to resist the urge to stab him.

Last night of all nights she'd needed sleep , something this humid hellhole of a village has gone out of it's way to refuse her. She glares sideways at Kankuro, who'd somehow managed to pass out in almost full gear, and makes a mental note to give him shit about the smeared mess of his face paint as soon as physically possible.

She entertains the concept of more sleep for about a third of a second, but she recognises an exercise in futility when she sees one and cross-kicks that idea right out the window. Instead, she shoves her tense, exhausted body into motion without mercy, forcing her stiff muscles into morning stretches.

It's only then that she notices Gaara.

He's perched on the edge of the windowsill behind her with his knees to his chest and his arms crossed overtop, so profoundly still it's like he's been carved right out of the wall. The wan, watery light casts his form in erie silhouette, his head bowed in so far that shadow smothers his face completely. It looks like he hasn't moved for hours.

Temari cannot sense his chakra. She can't even be entirely sure he's breathing .

"Gaara?"

His name draws through her voice so softly it barely qualifies as noise at all, but Gaara jerks like it's been screamed , his whole body spasming violently inward. His eyes lift slowly, out of time with the sinewy contraction of the rest of him, and Temari instantly feels like an absolute ingrate for complaining about her meagre sleep.

Gaara's eyes are feverish turquoise pearls in sunken pits of bruised shadow. His skin is sallow and papery, so thin that the bluish veins in his temples stand out like tender vine roots under a sheen of wax. He hasn't slept again tonight.

"Temari?"

Gaara's voice is rough and thick, clumsy around her name like he's forgotten how to use it.

Temari swallows hard, her heart aching, a low thread of fear humming in her blood. "Yeah, otouto, " she breathes, as softly as she breathed his name. "It's me."

Gaara blinks heavily a few times, like he's trying to clear something from his vision. A hallucination probably, or maybe phantom lights. "Did I wake you?"

Temari smiles and shakes her head, relief flooding headily through her chest. Gaara's eyes are exhausted but clear, free of the dangerous mania that too often consumes them. "Nah." she assures, stuffing her hands into the pockets of her shorts. She shuffles her feet a bit, wondering if he might feel stable enough to let her come closer, or maybe even sit by him, and Gaara notices.

Just as she's decided not to push her luck, he lifts his head, dropping one leg away from his chest to stretch out in front of him. He tilts his head gently, allowing it to rest against his remaining drawn knee like he can't be bothered to keep it up. He doesn't smile– Gaara hasn't smiled in more than a decade– but the look in his worn eyes gets close. "It's okay, Temari." he murmurs tiredly. "I'm… I'm alright, mostly."

The grin on Temari's face cannot be stopped no matter how much she tries to rearrange it.

She approaches slowly despite Gaara's assurances, unwilling to risk this rare moment of peace by stepping on any emotional landmines. She plops down on the opposite edge of the sill, hands splayed out behind her for support. "So… rough night, huh?"

Gaara's response is more an affirmative hum than an actual word, which is fine by Temari– she's been fluent in his mumbles since she was six.

"Nightmares?"

That earns her a headshake, his mahogany hair falling into his eyes with the motion. Temari wishes she could brush it.

But this is as close as she will ever get, and that's not his fault.

"Mother?" she tries, and this time Gaara nods.

Temari's not exactly sure what the difference is between the Ichibi and the entity Gaara has always referred to as 'Mother', but she knows there is one. Well, most of the time. Sometimes the two are interchangeable, sometimes Gaara can firmly determine which is which, and sometimes saying the wrong name triggers instant homicidal episodes. It really depends.

Temari's never really managed to work out which one is the truly violent one and which one is just batshit; all she really knows is the one solid thing they have in common, which happens to be the hysterical desire to reduce even the vaguest of threats to Gaara's person into a bloody mush the consistency of pudding.

Gaara looks to her slowly, gaze shifting in and out of focus a little before steadying somewhere past her left ear. "Restless. Furious. Envious." He says, gravely and slow, like each word takes effort. "She is too many things, too far down." He brings a dry hand up towards his face, fingernails jagged and bloody from gnawing, and rubs his palm into the corner of one eye. "The silence is deafening."

Temari blinks, alarmed. Gaara's more lucid complaints are always of noise , of a kind of neural static that drives his cycles of insomnia– an effort to hold back the darker delusions and bloody rages. He's never before complained to her of quiet.

"Is it the exams?" Temari guesses tentatively.

Gaara hesitates, giving a slow blink in thought, and then shakes his head minutely and breathes; "Fear."

A chill drops down Temari's spine much colder than the drops of sweat between her shoulder blades. "She's afraid?"

Gaara hums in agreement, his eyes dipping half-mast. "Yes."

"Of what?" she asks, trying to keep her tone as neutral as possible, her fingers curling in against the wood of the sill hard enough to press crescents into the grain.

Gaara looks her briefly in the eye– gaze filled with tired confusion and sharp anxiety– before closing his eyes fully, bruised lids pressing tightly, the skin around his temples creasing in concentration. "Gold and amber..." he mumbles senselessly. "The smell of rain on dry wind... The place where earth meets sky."

Temari shakes her head softly, scrambling to understand before Gaara slips away from her again. " Outoto, I don't–"

"A coming storm."

The voice comes from behind her, from the other side of the room, and when Temari turns she sees Kankuro sitting up, awake and alert, legs crossed over his fuuton. His hair and paint are comically askew and he's rubbing sleep from his eyes, but his gaze is as sharp and intelligent as ever. "He's talking about a coming storm."

Temari's eyes narrow at him as Gaara's finally begin to drift closed. "How do you figure?"

Kankuro shifts to stand and moves to kneel at Gaara's feet, expression gentle. Their baby brother; asleep for the first time in days. "I'm not sure about the first part, but the rest we've heard before."

Temari's nose scrunches in confusion. "Where? He's never said anything like that to me."

"Not Gaara." Kankuro counters. "Sensei."

Temari blinks. "Really?"

Kankuro nods, straightening an arm to rest an elbow on his raised knee. " 'The place where earth meets sky' is a Kamikaze – a typhoon. It was in that old old primer of war poems he used to read us, remember?"

Temari finds she does– the memory rises up easily now that she thinks of it, of the worn well-loved cover of a leather-bound tome, at home in the worn leathery skin of their teacher's hands, the low roughness of his voice in the lull moments of their first missions.

"'Wary is the wise soul of the fury of nature's breath, of the push and pull of her lungs, for no force of man could hope to match the place where earth meets sky.'" Temari recites. "Yeah, I remember."

Kankuro nods again. "Mhm. And 'the smell of rain on dry wind' ? That's how he first taught us to tell when a monsoon was coming."

Temari frowns, turning the information over in her head. "A coming storm, huh? That doesn't exactly sound good ."

Kankuro snorts. "No, not really."

For long still minutes they sit there in silence, in quiet vigil over a rare moment of rest. Gaara's breath is even, rustling his crimson hair on every exhale as dawn finally begins to crawl up through the trees, reaching fingers of light arcing through the window to kiss the too-sharp angles of his face.

"Hey, Tamari?" Kankuro whispers, something weighing ominously on his tone. "I have a bad feeling."

Temari can't help but huff at that. "About the exam? About the war, not-war? About the missing-nin that may or may not be wearing our father's skin like a meat suit?"

Kankuro swallows, letting loose a nervous laugh. "Let's go with all of the above."

Temari clasps his shoulder hard and gives him a companionable shake. "No use worrying about it now, bro. It is what it is. We'll come out on top somehow."

"I hope you're right, Temari. I really do." Kankuro sighs, a hand coming up to grip hers tight against his shoulder. "Because something tells me this whole day is gonna be a shitshow."

There are still several hours until the start of the final Chunin exam and the stadium is already becoming terribly crowded, filling fast with ninja and civilian spectators alike, all eager to get a glimpse of the semifinalists in action. Neji hovers just outside the west entrance, shielding Hinata from the crowd with his back while she readjusts her equipment. He's been hesitant to leave her side all morning, and not just because of the looming threat of Elder Hachimaru; something in the air feels off, like some kind of invisible, sourceless tension he can't seem to place.

"Are you sure you're going to be alright?" He asks, eyes catching on the still yellow bruising of Hinata's forearms when her sleeve rides up.

Hinata nods, favoring him with a kind smile as she tugs her sleeve back into place. "I think so. I'll just have to see if Sakura can patch me up before her match."

To say that Neji dislikes the idea of Hinata wandering around the stadium by herself right now– particularly injured– would be a gross exercise in understatement.

" I'll find her." He disagrees firmly, his tone leaving no room for argument. "Sit with your team and rest while you can. Do you know where she might be?"

Hinata looks both surprised by his offer and relieved by it at the same time, her pearlescent eyes lined and weary from battle and too little sleep. "Probably in one of the standby areas." She guesses. "There are less people down there."

Neji nods, casting his gaze around in an effort to locate one of the standby entrances– which he finds twenty meters down from the entrance they're at.

"Alright, where are you two meeting Shino?"

"Middle rows on the east side, towards the front." Hinata answers readily. "And… thanks Neji-nii. You didn't have to do this."

Neji huffs at that, running a hand through his loose hair and tucking a stray strand of Hinata's behind her ear. "You assume I'm doing this for you and not to soothe my own anxiety." He counters. "Besides, you would have come no matter how much I warned you not to. At least this way someone can be with you at all times."

Hinata grins at him goodnaturedly, unrepentant of her life choices. "True enough."

Her smile falls slightly however as she begins scanning the crowd, the veins around her byakugan eyes tightening reflexively. "Do you really think someone from the clan will try something?"

"I wouldn't put it past them." Neji mutters uncharitably, scanning the half of the crowd on Hinata's other side. "Nor would I put it past Elder Hachimaru to orchestrate something. Either way, it's not a chance we should be willing to take."

Neji continues flicking his eyes over the hundreds of passing heads, senses open and byakugan peeled for warm wild chakra and fluffy brown hair. In his concentration it takes him a moment to notice that Hinata has turned her whole torso toward him, and several moments more to realize that she's been staring at him unbroken for at least a full minute.

He blinks back at her when he notices, bewildered. "What?"

"You said 'we'."

It's not the accusation Neji expected by a long shot, and for a dragging second he actually has no idea what she's talking about, but then he rewinds, recalls his exact wording, and… yes. Yes he did say that.

Neji whips back around, embarrassed by the thoughtlessly familiar breach of his usually pristine etiquette. "Don't read too much into it." he mutters, but Hinata's giddy joy is undaunted by his attitude and she grabs at his hand with both of hers, warm fingers curling around his palm.

"Too late."

Neji's chest really shouldn't feel as warm as it does.

"HINATA! Hinata, over here!"

Both Hyuugas turn just in time to see Kiba shoving his way between two overweight civilians in an effort to break through the crowd, which he does only to lose his footing amongst the slow, heavy feet and come within three centimeters of kissing the concrete.

"Whoa…" Kiba gasps, face only a breath away from the pavement, Neji's hand fisted in the back of his hoodie. "Uh… thanks, man."

"Don't mention it." Neji drawls, hauling the Inuzuka back to his feet.

Kiba lets out a breath, brushing off his front and unzipping his hoodie to check on Akamaru, who seems to have gotten out of the experience unscathed. "Daaamn," Kiba laughs, hauty and good-natured. "I can't even remember the last time I ate shit on a flat surface. Can you?"

Akamaru barks what can only be an affirmative, and Kiba blows a raspberry at his dog like an academy student.

He turns back to Neji after a second, slipping his hands deep into his pockets. He gives the elder Hyuuga a long probing stare, lupine eyes surprisingly sharp, before he speaks."Seriously man, thanks." He intones, his reflective eyes genuinely warm. Something in his gaze is making Neji a little uncomfortable actually– it's more than just gratitude for a quick helping hand, it's like he's seeing something in Neji he's never seen before.

Neji finds he doesn't particularly enjoy that idea.

"Is there something on my face, Inuzuka?" Neji asks dryly, having had his fill of staring.

Kiba flushes a little and blinks rapidly, like he hadn't even noticed he was still looking. "Ah, sorry. I was just thinking you must have some killer reflexes, else I'd be eatin' my teeth right now."

Neji sighs, shifting restlessly. "Like I said, don't mention it." He repeats, which amounts to the extent of Neji's graciousness at the moment, considering the circumstances. Normally he wouldn't even bother but… well.

Kiba is important to Hinata. He can make an effort to be… somewhat civil.

Neji turns to his cousin now, eyes firm. "Stay together. I'll bring Haruno to you as soon as I can."

Hinata nods, hums an affirmative. "See you soon, Nii-san ."

Hinata was correct about there being less people down in standby– it's a ghost town compared to the writhing mass of humanity upstairs, populated only by the event staff and the occasional Chunin administrator. Neji's not the most familiar with Haruno Sakura's chakra, having only been in the same room as her a handful of times, but in the sparse energies of the standby zone it's the work of only a few minutes to find the signature that must be hers– a heady rush the colour of a woodland spring, flowing and strange, a weighty power reined back like a river behind a dam.

It's strange– now that he has wherewithal and inclination to look, he's finding that Hinata's friends aren't at all what they seem to be at first glance. His initial impression of Sakura doesn't seem to hold water now; that she was an intelligent yet insecure ninja following around in the footsteps of her betters.

Now just a taste of her energy proves how wrong his first impressions were; her chakra is a flash-flood of power under an iron fist of control Neji can't help but respect, a cool heavy strength like a mountain cascade; a cascade that can either hit you like a soft rain or like a ton of bricks, depending on where you're standing.

It's an ongoing theme with Hinata's friends– Neji hadn't just been wrong about Naruto, he'd been wrong about all of them; about Kiba, Sakura, Sasuke...Shikamaru. They all have the same uncanny strength in common, one he can now only assume is shared by all the 'Rookie 9'.

There must be something to it, some secret they've kept between them; how else could Kiba grow so much in only a year, to the point that Neji can feel hard muscle through his shirt with only the briefest of contact, where once there'd been only slim bone and baby fat? How else could Hinata have so swiftly become everything he never knew she could be?

When Neji turns the corner on what he can only assume is the room Haruno's chakra is coming from he slows, coming to a stop just short of the threshold. He can sense another chakra signature inside, far more subtle and soft than the hulking power he's looking for, and even more familiar.

Shikamaru's chakra signature is so subversive Neji can barely feel it, even with all of his sensory training and byakugan ability. It's as unobtrusive and sly as a stray shadow in a dark room, blending in seamlessly with the woven energies of the world around it. If it weren't for Neji's very personal experience with this chakra, he would never have noticed it at all.

Neji takes a slow step backward, holding close to the wall, and locks the veins around his eyes open.

His byakugan flare awake, flooding his vision a silvery-white and blowing it wider. The colour of the world bleeds away, leaving him with a panorama view awash in transparent grey-scale. Shadows mark the edges of the walls and floor, lining the frame of the door behind him, but the surfaces themselves are no longer an obstacle to his sight, bringing out the lines and angles of the internal supports and metal reinforcements of the building.

Only two points of colour remain in his vision; the first and most obvious is a rippling cyan, centered at a point some ways down the hall past the room in front of him– Haruno's chakra. The unusual stillness of her center and the consistency of its radiance leads Neji to believe she must be engrossed in some kind of meditation, or else asleep sitting up.

The second point is closer, only a few meters away, resting steadily against the far side of the room from where Neji's standing.

Shikamaru's chakra is the same opaque shade as he remembers from their battle at the start of the exams; a deep, rich black with subtle, lurking tones of gold and burnished brass, filtering through the velvety darkness like a metallic sheen. It drapes over him jealously, pulled so close to his skin that it outlines the whole of Shikamaru's body in silhouette; leaning with one shoulder pressed against the wall, his body angled towards the large east-facing window set into it that opens out onto the breadth of the exam arena. The shapes and edges of Shikamaru's body, cast in planes of light by Neji's byakugan, indicate the Nara is loose and relaxed, his eyes closed.

Rage and embarrassment pool unbidden in Neji's gut and begin to bleed up his throat, making his chest feel hot with unwelcome emotion. His fight with Naruto had been one thing; he'd lost because he'd underestimated his enemy, underestimated his power and his intelligence and his convictions all. He'd lost because Naruto had been far stronger than Neji had thought him capable of, and no amount of caution or tactics could have made up for that sheer difference in ability.

His fight with Shikamaru had been nothing short of a joke .

He'd felt like a mouse at the mercy of a bored tomcat, batted around for nothing more than idle amusement, and then, to add insult to injury, Shikamaru hadn't even allowed him the dignity of an actual loss – as though Neji wasn't even worth the effort it would have taken him to win.

It was a humiliation, plain and simple, followed by those damned words , burned into his consciousness like a brand; 'That tunnel vision is going to get you killed at some point.' he'd said, and Neji remembers the string of words with crystal clarity, down to the exact heaviness of his tone, the precise brand of odd softness in his voice. 'Might want to broaden your view before someone does it for you.'

Just two short sentences, spoken like afterthoughts, and they might as well have been prophetic.

First with Naruto, two weeks later.

And then again with Hinata, just last night.

Neji isn't sure what makes him angrier; the fact that a veritable stranger had somehow found the nerve to lecture him on matters that were none of his concern, or the fact that Nara Shikamaru, with all his glaring audacity and sharp intelligence, had been absolutely right .

He's startled out of his angry stupor by movement– Haruno's cyan rush of presence is awake and in motion, loping lazily down the hall towards the room outside which Neji is currently lurking. Her form comes into focus as she gets closer, outlining a colourless shape of defined shoulders and sure hands, a long torso and short hair tied back into a tail. Neji sees the figure of Haruno pause, halting a few meters down the hall, before her lazy jog turns abruptly into a full tilt sprint .

"SHIKA!" Haruno shouts brightly, loud enough to be heard by people upstairs , and launches herself at Nara Shikamaru's back, throwing her muscular arms around his neck.

What happens next can only be described as bizarre , and fits nowhere within Neji's image of Shikamaru– in the smug lazy arrogance and aloof distance he's come to associate with the shadow ninja.

The Nara only rocks softly despite the force of the Kunoichi's sudden embrace, a smooth motion that absorbs the impact with an easy grace that indicates not only is he unsurprised by her presence, but that this occurrence between them is a familiar one.

Shikamaru smiles softly, warm , his eyes still closed, and brings an arm up to curl around both of hers, squeezing once in return. "What's up, Haruno?" he asks, and his voice is something terribly soft , something gentle and amused that seems to warm the air itself around him. "Run out of mountains to beat barehanded?"

The rose-haired kunoichi just laughs, as bright as summer sun off water, and squeezes her arms around him tighter. "Ha ha, very funny." She mocks good-naturedly, but the faint flush to her face and the curve of her grin prove that she's pleased, as though he'd just paid her the highest of compliments. "How did last night go?"

Shikamaru hums, a low idle sound that's somehow still rich with affection. "More or less to plan." he answers easily. "You got to sleep in, didn't you?"

Neji's ears perk up at that– his mind immediately drawn to the several hours of last night between midnight and dawn where Hinata's whereabouts had been unaccounted for, but neither ninja offers any further detail. Haruno merely smiles broadly, showing off the white of her teeth and the sharp edge of one canine, and turns her embrace around Shikamaru into a boneless drape, her cheek pressed lazily into the meat of his shoulder. "Of course it went to plan." She says haughtily. "It's you."

Her voice is coloured through with pride, and the shadow-nin's mouth quirks up at the corner in a crooked, reflexive smile.

These two are… much closer than Neji would ever have thought, to be so familial only a few hours before they're meant to tear each other apart.

From someone like Shikamaru the sheer level of open affection is genuinely startling– even with the conservative nature of his mannerisms, it's glaringly apparent just how much he cares about Haruno– with a thoughtless degree of emotion Neji would never have expected from someone so obviously disenchanted with the world at large.

"So!" Haruno chirps brightly, arms still a snug band around Shikamaru's biceps. "How do you want to do this?" she asks, sending Neji's thoughts tumbling once more into confusion as to what she could possibly be talking about.

The Nara's eyes finally open at that, and he turns his head just enough to raise an eyebrow at her over his shoulder. "How do you think I want to do this?"

The kunoichi's smile drops immediately into a pout. "But Shikaaaaa…" she whines, high and childish, and the Nara's expressive mouth pulls into a scowl.

"Don't you 'but Shika' me. I happen to like my limbs attached to my body."

"But we never spar!" She complains, arcing her neck to turn the full force of her pout on Shikamaru, who only rolls his eyes.

"There's a reason for that, you cherry blossom monstrosity." he grumbles back, and it hits Neji all at once what they must be talking about.

The match.

Haruno Sakura and Nara Shikamaru are discussing rules of engagement for the semifinals of the Chunin Exams like someone might plan what to have for dinner.

"Aw, come on!" Haruno persists, like she's arguing for katsudon over ramen. "It's not like I'm asking for a death match."

Shikamaru snorts. "I saw your 'easy mode' against Kiba. No thanks."

Sakura shifts sideways, wrapping her arms around his elbow rather than his whole torso, and bonks their temples together, gently and insistently. "Please?"

"Ugh," Nara groans, but even though the sound is put-upon he doesn't lean his head away from the touch, allowing Sakura to keep their faces pressed together. He huffs a short sigh, rubbing at his other temple with the heel of his palm. "Where do you even get the energy?"

The question is obviously rhetorical, so Sakura only bats her eyelashes at him in what Neji can only assume must be a pleading manner. Shikamaru's dark gaze narrows, a twitch forming in the corner of his left eye as he holds her gaze coolly. A long moment passes, a silent contest of wills caught in a stalemate– which Shikamaru breaks with a harassed sigh.

"Four and a half minutes." he relents at last. "And you keep the disruptors to yourself."

"DEAL!" The kunoichi crows, throwing a fist into the air, and Shikamaru mumbles something to himself that Neji can't hear over her exuberance. The entire scene is surreal.

The Chunin Exams are a competition, a vicious display of battle prowess, a chance for ninja to prove their worth by whatever means necessary. It's supposed to teach young ninja about the true hardships of battle, to reinforce an idea crucial to the lifestyle of all shinobi– that the only person any ninja can truly rely on is themselves.

But Haruno Sakura and Nara Shikamaru have tossed that principle aside entirely, right here while Neji watched, tucked out of sight like a thief. They have taken all the innate animosity right out of the exam like it's easy, like it's something so simple as a choice .

How many of the other exams happened like this? Like friendly sparring matches instead of desperate battles for power and recognition? How can they be so confident they won't be betrayed?

They have to know somehow, because it's like the thought isn't even a glint in their eyes– like it's such a far-off concept that they don't even bother entertaining the possibility .

It's bizarre . The very concept is naive and unreasonable, the kind of confidence held by fools , and yet there's something profound about it, something familiar– something Neji has seen before.

Something like faith.

The same kind, perhaps, that had been in Hinata's eyes last night; after she'd bested Hachimaru at his own game, with his own rules. A faith in herself and in something far bigger.

It occurs to Neji suddenly that it's several minutes past when he promised to meet Hinata, so he shakes himself out of his thoughts and collects himself. The veins around his eyes smooth out as his byakugan deactivate, and Neji's world narrows, flooding once more with colour.

He lets his chakra out of his iron grip slowly– both so his presence won't be startling and so that his eavesdropping won't be obvious– before turning the corner and rapping his knuckles on the wall to announce himself.

The two ninja look up from where their heads had been bent together, faces tilted close in quiet conversation, half-spoken words stalling in their mouths. Neji clears his throat when their eyes meet his– a somewhat vain attempt to be polite despite feeling anything but cordial.

Though Sakura blinks at him in understandable surprise, Shikamaru doesn't react to the intrusion much at all– though his eyes do close off at the sight of him, their glittering warmth shuttered off by cool and flinty apathy.

"Neji?" Haruno calls, bemused. "What are you doing down here?"

"Looking for you, obviously." Neji replies blandly, his expression schooled carefully behind his usual icy mask. He doesn't miss the minute tightening of Shikamaru's expression at his tone, though it is a close thing. "For some reason Hinata is far more willing to see you than an actual hospital," he explains. "I've come to ask for assistance on her behalf."

Sakura's expression shifts rapidly from confusion to concern to determination so genuine it nearly throws Neji's equilibrium as she stalks right up to him, without any regard whatsoever for his personal space. "What happened?" She demands. "Where is she? Is she alright?"

"She is stable at the moment." Neji responds uncertainly as he takes a pointed half-step back, somewhat unnerved by the unblinking stare Shikamaru still has fixed on him. The Nara hasn't moved from his place beside the window and his expression hasn't changed, but something in the air feels charged regardless, something about his attention feels heavy. "There was a...confrontation at the compound." He informs Sakura. "She's burst several tenketsu in her arm."

"What kind of confrontation?" Shikamaru questions out of nowhere, drawing Neji's eye back towards him. His tone is perfectly neutral, but his gaze is anything but.

"I'm not sure how that's any of your business." Neji counters coldly, but upon turning to face the pointed concern and righteous fury in Sakura's aqueous eyes, he revises; "Hinata can tell you, If she's of a mind to. It's not my place to do so."

"Where is she?" Sakura demands again, digging through one of the packs on her hip for what Neji assumes are her medical supplies.

"I'll take you to her."

Haruno nods, throwing a look over her shoulder. "Coming, Shika?"

The Nara's gaze is strange, sharp and inwardly focused, and he shakes his head. "I'll catch up." he murmurs quietly.

For no reason Neji can determine, those words send a dark chill right down his spine.

Neji learns two things in the handful of hours after that.

One–Haruno Sakura truly is, at least where the rookie nine are concerned, far superior to a hospital for anything less severe than a severed limb.

A fact that she is happy to prove with aggressive competence.

Neji watches with carefully concealed awe as Hinata's injuries vanish under Sakura's honed and careful touch. Her quick fingers perform the delicate work of hours in a handful of minutes, reconstructing Hinata's broken vessels with the grace of an artist and the technical skill of an engineer.

Two–Nara Shikamaru had not, in fact, been joking about the time limit.

Which makes far more sense to Neji after spending twenty minutes watching Sakura move tissue and bone around like modeling clay.

So after exactly two hundred and seventy seconds of a dancing, fast-paced battle between Nara and Haruno, Shikamaru promptly stops dead in the middle of the arena, brushes a handful of rubble off his shirt with a careless hand, looks the examiner right in the eye, and forfeits the match.

"Ugh. I hate waiting around for shit to happen."

"It wouldn't be so difficult if you actually practiced any kind of patience. Ever."

"I'd be happy to practice something else on your face , bug brain."

"Knock it off , you guys. Please?"

Kiba mutters something unpleasant under his breath but obeys, and Shino too quiets at Hinata's bidding. Sasuke sits off to the side, watching them quietly, anticipation building uncomfortably in his gut.

It's just the seven of them now, occupying their own corner of space in the shinobi section of the stands. Ino and Choji, Hinata and Kiba and Shino, Sakura and himself. Naruto is on standby, waiting for his match with Gaara to finally start, and Shikamaru is...well.

Shikamaru is late, is what he is. And Sasuke can't fathom what he might be up to.

It had taken some time for Neji to leave, actually, which was strange. Sasuke's not quite sure what to make of the elder Hyuuga's new, overprotective disposition, nor does he necessarily trust him around Hinata any more than he used to, but Neji does seem… different now. Maybe even in a good way.

He hopes so at least, for Hinata's sake if nothing else.

Sakura is still fussing over her in the corner, and has been for hours . It's easily the longest, most incessant bout of mother-henning she's ever engaged in, broken up only by the handful of minutes it took her to hop into the arena and irritate Shikamaru into a forfeit.

" Honestly , Sakura." he groans, feeling the need to intervene– if only to save himself from further embarrassment by proxy. "She's fine . She's been fine for an hour now."

Sakura aims a glare at him and flicks a senbon at his head, which Sasuke dodges without looking. "Says you, jackass. I'm running tests!"

"You're hovering, is what you're doing."

"How would you know? You're not even looking!"

"Because you've been 'running tests' for thirty-nine minutes."

Sakura makes an inarticulate noise of frustration and grabs for a shuriken, but Hinata stops her with a tolerant smile and a pat to the arm as she shifts to sit up from where she'd been reclining against the rail.

"Sasuke's right, I really am fine." She assures, and Sakura deflates visibly.

She sighs heavily, shoving the shuriken back into her pouch with obvious reluctance. "I know, I know. I'm just nervous, I guess."

Sasuke snorts, unmoved. "Really? I couldn't tell."

Sakura pulls the shuriken back out. Hinata grabs her wrist.

"Why doesn't everyone just calm dooown~" She sing-songs, pulling Sakura's muscular arm back towards her lap with no small amount of effort. "We're all a little worked up, but there's no need to resort to violence just yet, okay? We all need to conserve our energy, remember?"

Sakura relents at that, and Sasuke agrees in the privacy of his own head.

Honestly, Sasuke understands Sakura's restless nerves more than he'd like to admit.

Something in the air just doesn't feel right. Despite the bright noise and excited energy of the crowds, there's an unmistakably tense quality to the atmosphere, and it's only been pulling tighter and tighter as the minutes tick by, inching up closer and closer on some unknown trigger like the fuse burning down on a bomb.

Naruto's absence isn't helping his nerves either, but that's not exactly new.

When he closes his eyes and concentrates, he can just feel Naruto's bright chakra at the edge of his senses, even and calm. There's no trace of the same nerves in him that Sasuke is experiencing– just the steady thrum of his storm-bright energy, the ebb and flow that marks the cadence of his breathing.

He's meditating; talking to Kurama, probably.

It's normal, familiar, and Sasuke uses that familiarity and the rhythm of Naruto's chakra to steady his own breathing, allowing it to soothe the anxiety attempting to build in his blood. It helps somewhat, but it's not quite enough to settle his unrest completely.

After a while he sits up, opening his eyes, and the movement draws Sakura's attention towards him.

She's moved since he last looked– munching on one of Choji's energy bars as she lounges in the stadium seat next to Shino– which means Sasuke's been checked out for longer than he thought.

He beckons her over, rubbing the heel of his palm into one eye, and Sakura hops up with an affirmative tilt of her head. She doesn't come over immediately though, instead circling around Ino and Kiba to give Choji a pat to the shoulder. She doesn't say anything, her energy bar still stuffed between her teeth, but Choji passess her another bar without pause, as easily as if she'd asked for it aloud.

She makes a muffled noise of gratitude around her mouthful, squeezing the Akamichi's shoulders in a quick half-hug before she jogs towards Sasuke, the bar held up in offering.

Sasuke gives her a brief but grateful smile and accepts it, peeling open the paper wrapper to chew idly on one corner. Choji's ration bars are without a doubt the best Sasuke has ever had or will ever have again; this one is sweet and salty, a flavor Sasuke recognises as being a variety of boost bar– one of several kinds of ration bars Choji whips up to help enhance chakra regeneration. The sweet syrup used to adhere the ingredients together is infused with a compound similar to the kind found in soldier pills, but is far easier on Sasuke's system than the real thing.

Truthfully he doesn't really need it; thanks to Naruto's perfected transfusion seals, in combination with the time he spent purifying in the gold room last night, Sasuke's chakra is running cleaner and higher than it has in weeks.

He eats half the bar anyway while Sakura finishes the one in her mouth, then laughs when she promptly pulls another out of a cargo pocket and polishes off that one too. She sticks her tongue out at him in retaliation when she's done, and Sasuke offers her his canteen.

"So, what's up?" she asks after a long swallow.

"How long until he starts?" Sasuke asks, wrapping up the remaining half of his ration bar and tucking it away for later, then doing the same with the canteen when Sakura hands it back.

"Half hour." Sakura answers, not needing to ask who he means. "Why?"

Sasuke cards a hand through his dark hair, letting the strands fall into his eyes. "Where's Kakashi-sensei?" he asks instead of answering, and Sakura's eyes narrow a little.

"In the Kage's box, I think. Sasuke?"

"Hn."

Sasuke's eyes are unfocused, deep in quiet thought, but Sakura doesn't press him a second time. Instead she just waits, bright eyes patient and curious, because she knows him, and she's perfect.

"You think Sarutobi'll give a shit?" he asks eventually.

Sakura understands what he means without asking and shrugs, a mischievous smile spreading across her face, because she is– as previously stated– perfect. "Not enough to do much about it. Bad feeling?" she asks, more a confirmation than an actual question.

"Bad feeling." Sasuke agrees.

This is the third time in the same hour that Kakashi has been forced to excuse himself from the Hokage's presence.

Kurenai has started sending him worried glances, and the Kumo instructors have begun to eye him with poorly concealed suspicion, but he has no choice. He has to keep up appearances, and part of keeping up appearances is not electrocuting any shinobi that happens to walk too close.

So he braces his back against a wall in the empty hallway outside the Hokage's box and does what he can to pull himself together.

Kakashi's wrists and forearms are still itchy and hot where his seals once were, like nerves gone too long without adequate blood flow. He has to resist the urge to scratch– it's a phantom pain, if a powerful one, and every motion Kakashi makes presses and tests the newfound limits of his restraint.

It's possible that he might have… underestimated just how much Kushina's seals were capable of holding back. His usually iron control is struggling to keep his chakra beneath the skin– his fingers twitching in aborted contractions like one stray motion might set free the jolts of electricity ricocheting in his blood, rippling through the muscles in his arms and arcing down every knob of bone in his spine. He'd thought the biggest obstacle would be the pain– but while the ache in his vessels is significant, it's not why he's struggling.

His chakra is a powerful racing surge now that he was never prepared for, a writhing sparotic force that slips between his fingers like an eel, unhindered by the rules and limits that should bind and govern it. It's had entire years to grow wild and vicious without him, untempered by his direction and restraint, and so it rebels – fighting him at every turn like a thing possessed.

He grips his right wrist in his opposite hand, twisting and rubbing hard enough to grind the bones together, but lightning still jumps between his fingertips unbidden, chaotic and wild. This is far different than it was when he was a child; he hadn't expected this chained power to keep up with him for fucks sake– how could he have known it would grow as he did, rise and rise and rise as Kakashi mastered his handicap, building behind the dam of Kushina's seal like the press of desert floodwaters.

And what a work of art her seal must have been to hold this back– this heady furious power that heeds no master, that refuses leash and rein, that rages like the kind of storms named after the tempers of gods.

He needs a grip on it, he needs control , he needs a weapon and not a calamity .

"Kakashi?"

His head snaps up at the sound of his name, disturbia flooding through his chest at his own surprise. Is his focus really so compromised that he can't even register a presence so close?

But his unease morphs quickly into relief at the sight of kind brown eyes and a familiar scared nose, a relief so potent he actually sighs with it.

"Iruka."

The Chunin teacher's eyes are pinched with confusion and warm with concern, and his presence is so familiar to Kakashi, so affirmative and non-threatening, that it's no surprise Kakashi's subconscious had dismissed it in favor of concentration.

"What are you doing out here?" Iruka questions, eyes scanning him up and down, clever gaze lingering on his hunched shoulders and the tight grip of Kakashi's fingers around his own wrist. "Are you alright?"

"Depends on your definition." Kakashi admits, because lying to Iruka is both pointless and unwise. "I just… needed a moment."

Iruka hesitates only a second before moving into his space, setting the folder in his arms down at his feet and reaching for the arm Kakashi has in a vice grip.

He jerks back reflexively before their skin can make contact– out of a perfectly reasonable fear of hurting one of the few people he can honestly call friend , but Iruka just arches an eyebrow like he's a misbehaving Gennin and reaches again, tugging his arm free for examination. Kakashi, against his better judgment, allows it.

He knows the contact must have shocked him, but no pain moves through Iruka's expression, only puzzled confusion as he glares down at the Jounin's wrist, tilting his hand side to side.

"Your skin feels like you spent the morning cuddling live-wires," Iruka accuses, deft fingers hunting for his pulse. "And blood is coming out of your heart too hard… what on earth–" he cuts himself off, fingers skating up to pause higher up his forearm, and then suddenly Iruka is pressing the back of his hand to Kakashi's left temple. "Do you have a fever? "

"Probably." Kakashi retorts, pressing his eyes shut against the pain that crackles up his arm from the skin under Iruka's grip. "Haven't stopped to check."

Iruka's eyebrows pinch together, his earthen eyes flashing, and he moves his hand down, from Kakashi's forehead to his carotid. He knows what Iruka must be measuring, but he can't imagine what his own chakra vessels must look like right now– overrun and in riot, damning proof that Kakashi's control is in tattered straws at best– but he can sense Iruka's eyes blowing wide, even with his own cinched shut.

"Kakashi." Iruka asks too quietly, his voice thin. "What have you done?"

That's a complicated question, even though Iruka doesn't know it, so he settles for the least complicated answer. "What I had to."

There's a long moment of quiet while Iruka processes that. The teacher's hands trail down again, palms sliding to press against the backs of Kakashi's, and his fingers uncurl at the unspoken request, allowing Iruka an unobstructed view of the chakra rippling and arcing from his hands like bolts off a faraday cage.

"I've never seen chakra with an output rate this high." Iruka says eventually. "Is it Kinjutsu?"

He asks the question with quiet seriousness, conspiratorial– loyal– , like the answer couldn't get them both arrested in a heartbeat, and Kakashi has never been so relieved to have found such a comrade in Iruka, such a friend . This Chuunin teacher's stout heart has proven invaluable again and again in preserving Kakashi's sanity, and his steady support remains utterly priceless.

"No." Kakashi assures. "It's mine. I'm just… out of practice with it."

If the implication of Kakashi's words rattle Iruka at all, he doesn't show it. He just stares down at Kakashi's palms for another long moment, deep in thoughts Kakashi can't parse out.

"If it's yours, then you just need to calm it down." Iruka surmises simply, and Kakashi snorts a laugh.

"Tried that. Hasn't been going so well, as you can see."

Iruka glares at him sharply, huffing an exasperated breath. "Your chakra is an extension of you, moron." he snaps. "Which means it's only riled up because you are."

Kakashi blinks his eyes open, irritation drawing through his gaze as he looks up. "I am perfectly calm, thank you."

"On the outside, maybe." Iruka counters, shaking his head, causing strands of his auburn hair to come loose from his tail to fall across his eyes. "But I know you. You're worried about your team and the other Genin, you're anxious about what might happen when Orochimaru finally shows his face, you're concerned about the consequences of Gaara discovering who and what Naruto really is." Iruka meets Kakashi single-eyed gaze and holds it unblinking despite the ticklish flutter of his bangs, ignoring them in favor of maintaining his grip on Kakashi's hands. "Just because you don't let them show on the surface doesn't mean those emotions aren't there."

Kakashi sighs. "That's never mattered before."

"You've never cared like this before." Iruka counters; which is a truth Kakashi finds hard to argue with.

The Chunin teacher huffs again at his silence, the breath sending his loose hair rustling. "Look. I don't know what changed, and I don't need to, but you were numb for a very long time, Kakashi. You're not used to your chakra responding to your emotions, and whatever you did has made it very responsive. You won't be able to control it the same way you always have."

"What exactly do you suggest I do, then?" Kakashi snaps, pain and frustration making him more brusque than necessary. "I'm open to ideas here."

Iruka rolls his eyes at Kakashi's attitude and squeezes his hands sharply in chastisement. "Well normally I'd make you do this the hard way– force you to actually process your emotions like a normal person– but I doubt we have time for that. Sarutobi has probably noticed your absence by now."

"Probably." Kakashi agrees.

Iruka's nod is followed by a low thoughtful hum. "Then we don't have long. The match is starting soon– if you're not back by then he'll send someone after you, and that would be..."

"Less than ideal." Kakashi finishes, which is a vast understatement. A lack of control on this scale isn't just a weakness– it's a liability , and Kakashi runs the risk of being banned from the exams and any upcoming operations should anyone discover his...condition.

Iruka nods again, though the motion seems more for his own benefit this time than for Kakashi's– as though he's made up his mind on some topic he hasn't voiced– and his eyes start to fill with a determination that makes them burn ochre.

"You do trust me, right Hatake?" he asks plainly, which must be the most unnecessary question Iruka has ever asked him.

"Of course I do." Kakashi confirms without a second thought, confusion drawing his eyebrows together, because Iruka knows that. He had to have known Kakashi's answer would be yes before he even asked the question. He supposes it's possible Iruka is confirming just to be polite; assuming possession of someone's trust in shinobi society without explicit vocal or physical proof of it is a gross display of poor professional conduct– not to mention bad manners. But even though Kakashi has never outwardly stated just how much of his fragile trust lies squarely in Iruka's palms, he has expressed it more times than he can count.

"You have to ask?"

Iruka shakes his head, a wry smile quirking briefly at his lips. "Not really, no." He admits. "Just have to be sure."

Iruka closes his eyes then, his grip on Kakashi's hands firming, and suddenly the skin where they touch begins to tingle and burn in a way very different from the prickling static that has ruled Kakashi's nerves until now.

Iruka's chakra is a warm thing, gentle, a force long familiar, but Kakashi has never felt it quite like this– as a radiant pulse that sweeps into him with unusual ease and single-minded focus.

Kakashi can only stand there, stunned, as the waves of Iruka's chakra begin to smooth through the angry crackle of his own– echoing up his arms and radiating, steady and soft, into the deepest corners of his chest.

A pleasant sense of peace washes over him, flooding even the sharpest of hollows in the most guarded compartments of his mind, and all at once Kakashi becomes filled with a kind of profound awareness– a sense of surety in himself and his abilities that normally takes him hours of meditation to achieve.

"Kyoukan no jutsu:" Iruka murmurs, his voice a faraway whisper, "Temari Mizu."

Empathic Art: Still Water.

Kakashi has never experienced any force quite like it. It's not a genjutsu; nothing about it feels unnatural or hypnotic, and it doesn't change what he's feeling exactly, more like it makes the emotions themselves less sharp, and his chakra less reactive to them. His new breadth of power is still potent enough to test the limits of his control, but the fight has gone out of it, and as a result, Kakashi's body holds it better.

Iruka releases him when he's finished, eyes fluttering open and Kakashi rubs his fingers together idly, chasing the odd sensation left by Iruka's jutsu.

"And here I thought I knew all your tricks." he rumbles, and Iruka's returning smile is practically mischievous.

"Not all." He says mildly, but his tone has a cryptic edge to it that implies Kakashi knows even less than he thinks he does. "Better?"

"Much." Kakashi breathes, bewildered by the fact. "I didn't know a jutsu like that existed."

Iruka shrugs, dipping down to scoop his folder up off the floor, and informs him, as casual as can be; "That's because I invented it."