Every day, Kakashi took a few minutes to look out his windows and watch the continuing reconstruction of Konoha. He was pleased at the pace of improvement, and the view from his office seemed to change every single week. The power lines had been restored, and the nearby power plant had been fully upgraded. New street lamps would go in across the village, and he would no longer have to worry about the shadows of Konoha's deep nights.

His next task was to consider the many roads around the city. His shinobi were constantly bringing back reports of how treacherous the paths were. Some were still overtaken by downed trees and overgrowth, and maintenance was a pressing issue. Others, however, were plagued by plunderers and robbers, a common outcome for land wracked by the destructive desolation of war. If Konoha were to thrive, he'd have to address the safety of trade routes.

The thought of Seika passed through his mind. He hadn't seen her since their first meeting, but her presence was felt throughout the village. Disguised as Sukea, he had inquired after her, only to be told by some that she was probably on a supply run. Still others thought she was in the village, because their normal deliveries of food and medicine were still being met. He finally got the real answer out of Tsunade.

"Every year she takes a trip to Kirigakure," she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. "She has personal business there."

Later, as Kakashi, he had asked Tsunade about her, too. The answer was the same.

"You're taking an interest in Seika?" Tsunade wondered aloud, giving him an imperceptible look.

"Wasn't she an active kunoichi while you were Hokage?" he asked.

"She was, and a damn good one, too. She's more adept than many jōnin in our village."

"I'm surprised…she and I never crossed paths."

"You wouldn't have. I hardly saw her. She stayed out of sight and was often on long-term missions away from Konoha. She came here, looking for refuge from Yagura, the Fourth Mizukage. In exchange for intel on Kirigakure, Hiruzen gave her refuge. After Yagura passed, she acted as an ambassador between our two villages and played a key role in brokering peace."

Kakashi nodded. This made sense, given everything Seika had told him thus far.

"Hiruzen trusted her, and I came to trust her as well. We fought side-by-side. She risked her life for this village and its people."

Loyal to Konoha, he thought. It sounded like her character fit right in with the rest of the shinobi in his hometown. He had seen enough of the world to know it wasn't just his bias that made the Hidden Leaf the best place to live.

"You think her skills are wasted, being the village's lackey?" he asked.

Tsunade gave him a blank stare, and then burst into laughter. "Kakashi, you're so naive. It's actually rather cute. Her service to the villagers is invaluable, and her skills are being used appropriately."

"I'm not so sure," he muttered, sullen at Tsunade's laughter and her affront.

"Are you, by chance, interested in her?" came Tsunade's next question along with a hearty cackle.

"Of course not," Kakashi retorted, lying. "I'm just curious why someone like her is doing D-level tasks."

"You don't know her as well as I do," Tsunade said, sighing and wiping a tear from her eye.

Not yet… he thought. But I will.

Annoyingly, Kakashi found he was impatient to see her. Their day together was still fresh in his mind, and he had a number of other questions he wanted to ask her. In her absence, he had taken the time to develop his photographs, and he quite liked the way her face turned out in pictures. Quietly, he hoped she'd be pleased about the village's progress when she returned. He wanted to prove to her that the Hokage was not the idle, lazy man she thought he was.

A trio of knocks on the window pulled his attention away from Seika, and he knew what it meant: Wolf was back from her mission.

He opened the window for her and moved aside so that she could enter.

"You shouldn't tell them not to call me 'comrade-killer,' she said gruffly.

Apparently she had been to the barracks first.

"And why is that?" he probed.

"Because it's what I am."

He took in her appearance. Despite not knowing what her face looked like, the way she held her body made her appear haggard. Her flak jacket was torn and there was a bloodstain on it. A new hairline fracture spread its way down her mask. She hadn't repaired it yet. He decided it was best not to push her nickname at the moment.

"How was the mission?"
"Successful," she said, reaching in her pocket and pulling out a necklace, tossing it to him. It was a locket. On one side, it bore the face of Danzō, and on the other, the image of a sharingan. Seeing the red eye made Kakashi feel the absence of his own.

"Our 'he' was a 'she' though. Turns out our original target's wife was really the one calling all the shots." Wolf shook her head slowly. "With so much left unsettled after the war, many think that their own ideas for the future are the best paths forward. They're so quick to grasp power that they don't consider how better progress can be made."

"Care to explain?" Kakashi prompted, vaguely curious to know more about Wolf's thoughts on the matter. She obviously had thoughts.

"I mean, Root's ideals weren't necessarily evil in and of themselves. But the way Danzō tried to implement them… You can't build a solid structure if it's resting on rotten soil. The structure will begin to rot eventually."

"How long were you watching the target?" he wondered. How long was she mulling over these ideas on her own?

"I don't know, weeks."

She could have completed this mission much faster than that, he thought. "Did she have to die?"

Wolf paused for a long time, considering. This was the same question he had asked her about Owl. Did the target have to die?

"Yes," she finally said. "She had too much influence that she was wielding for the wrong reasons, but it would have been impossible to imprison her, especially because she was operating from the shadows. She would never have been caught in the nefarious business that she ultimately directed."

Kakashi was once again impressed by the intelligence of this Anbu. "You think the organization will survive without her?"

"There's always someone to pick up the mantle," Wolf replied quickly. "I confirmed our last two targets while I was there…they'll be on the move soon. We should take them out before Root's ideology spreads further."

"You look terrible," he told her. "I'm giving you a few months off."

"What?" she asked, incredulous. Had he not heard what she just said?

"You're right. Root's ideals will spread, regardless of whether these two targets are alive. In this world, there will always be those who dream of power and who will do whatever it takes to achieve it."

"Hmfph," she grunted.

"I'll have a few others shadow them. They'll tell us if we need to act more quickly. If you want to stay on duty, you'll just do patrols. I also want to see you in my office every two weeks."

These orders were met with silence. Finally, she asked, "Am I being punished?"

"On the contrary, you've just been on a month-long mission alone. I think you deserve the rest."

In reality, while Kakashi wanted Wolf to recover, he was troubled by the continued rumors in the Anbu headquarters. The constant grumbling by the other Anbu had grown louder in Wolf's absence, and he wanted to reduce her exposure to their vitriol, if he could. Repairing that team couldn't be harder than what he had gone through with Team Seven.

"I don't think–" she started, but he cut her off.

"It's not a suggestion. It's an order."

About a week later, Kakashi was telling Rin his plan for Wolf and the Anbu when he finally saw Seika. She was walking through the graveyard with another woman - he recognized her as Owl's widow. The woman, no longer pregnant, held a baby in her arms. When he lifted his hand in greeting, Owl's wife responded with a smile and a wave, but Seika didn't acknowledge him.

"What am I doing, Rin?" he questioned the headstone. "Somehow the fact that she hates me only makes me want to know her more."

He impatiently sat through the rest of his morning meetings before turning into Sukea and setting out with his camera. It took a while to track her down, but he finally found her going about her typical errands. Now, in close proximity, he noted a bandage on her cheek.

"Seika! Long time no see," he said. "Tsunade told me you were in the Hidden Mist?"

Her blue eyes, unwavering, landed on him. "You asked about me?"

Kakashi had the decency to blush. "I was worried when I didn't see you after..." he trailed off.

"I see," she said, looking away. "Then you'll be glad to know Nakaya-san had her baby. A healthy boy."

He was aware. He had visited Owl's widow as Hokage, checking in after Wolf left for the Sand. "I took photographs for them," he said.

"You did?" This news pleasantly surprised her, and she finally smiled at him.

"What happened…?" he asked, pointing to his own cheek.

"Raiders," she said simply. "The paths aren't so safe these days."

Raiders. Dare he approach the subject? "I heard that's the next task the Hokage wants to address."

"Good."

That's it? She doesn't sound impressed. "A lot has changed since you left. The power plant got a significant update, and the whole town has electricity now."

He waited expectantly for her to answer. "That's a good thing, right?" he prompted.

"If you're trying to get me to acknowledge what the Hokage has done, I'll acknowledge it. But anyone can see that power to the village was the next obvious step in reconstructing. Next will come road safety, established trade routes, reclaiming and revitalizing farmland, and then figuring out how to address the impending housing crisis."

"Housing crisis?" he asked, frowning. To his knowledge, there weren't many in Konoha without homes.

"Konoha is recovering more quickly than the surrounding towns, and even the other hidden villages. I can tell you that other villages are lagging behind our progress…many people are having a hard time even finding food. If the trend continues, I have a feeling we'll start to see new faces here. Konoha has to be prepared for an influx of people and all that this means."

Wow. This woman knew better than he what was coming. "You should be Hokage," he said with a laugh.

"I wouldn't be a good Hokage," she said. "I can anticipate change, but I'm not good at leading. He's better suited for that."

This was the first compliment that Seika had given Kakashi. "You think he's a good leader?"

"He commands respect."

"What about yours?"

Seika's eyes darkened, and he regretted asking. What is it with her?

An awkward silence settled over them, but Kakashi was not ready to say goodbye. "Can you tell me about your trip?" he asked.

"You…want to hear about my trip?"

"I feel like this has a story," he said, pointing back to his cheek. "I'd like to hear it."

Seika looked into the sky, assessing the sun. "I have one more stop, and then I'll tell you about my trip over lunch."

An hour later, they settled into a restaurant and placed their orders. While they were waiting for food, Seika started in on her tale.

"Lady Tsunade wasn't quite correct. Every year I go to the Land of Waves, not the Hidden Mist, to pay respects at the grave of my mentor. Although we grew up in Kiri, the Land of Waves is where he died.

"I stay with one of the families there. Tazuna, who built the Great Naruto Bridge, and his daughter and grandson."

"He's well renowned," Kakashi said. "I heard he designed an airship."

"His grandson is especially good at coming up with new contraptions," she agreed. "They've finished repairs on the bridge, so those trade routes are open again."

"I've traveled over that bridge many times," Kakashi reminisced. "I remember when it was built."

"Me, too. But it always brings up hard memories."

"Why?"

"You remember I told you that my mentor died taking a job he shouldn't have taken?"

Kakashi nodded. He had a feeling he knew where this was going.

"He was trying to assassinate Tazuna."

Kakashi let that sink in. "Your mentor was Zabuza."

"Demon of the Hidden Mist," Seika said carefully. "His sword, Kubikiribōchō, gave me this, as a parting gift." She took her fingers and ran it across the scar on her jawline.

Kakashi could only stare at her. He was trying to put the pieces together in his head.

Seika gave a small laugh at his reaction. "Surprising, isn't it? When he was still a Hidden Mist shinobi, before he received his sword, he and I met. I wasn't much younger than him, but I was an orphan, and we both experienced firsthand the corruption of the Fourth Mizukage's reign. I was training in the Academy, but he saw a better use for my skills and took me under his wing."

She smiled wistfully. "Those years, when I was young, are some of my favorite memories. The Hidden Mist was a hard place to live, but Zabuza, a strong leader and untouchable by anything, trained me, took care of me, and gave me hope. When I got older, after he became one of the seven swordsmen, he and I used to talk about our dreams for the Mist secretly… our shared vision of the future. He was vulnerable back then. However vicious he was on the outside, there was a part of him that desired peace and flourishing for our village, and he would do whatever he could to achieve it.

"He had an apprentice, Haku, who he dedicated his life to training. He believed that Haku's kekkei genkai would be key to taking down the Mizukage."

"He organized the coup, yes?" Kakashi broke in.

Seika gave a dry laugh. "The coup. Yes. That's where it all fell apart. By that time he had many followers, but he and I had been together since I was a child, nearly fifteen years. He trusted me, and with good reason. He knew I loved him, and he used that to his advantage, even though he did not return my feelings in the same way.

"I was tasked with shadowing the Mizukage, of knowing when to strike, but watching someone for that long tells you more about them than you desire to know.

"I learned that the Mizukage was plagued…his fits of rage were not normal, nor was his power anything I had experienced before. I said as much to Zabuza, but he did not want to see what I saw. He didn't think the Mizukage was any more of a demon than he was, but he was wrong. We began to disagree over the coup, because I thought there could be another way.

"In the end, the coup failed because of me. I fed false information to the group. Zabuza thought it was because I had become too empathetic towards the Mizukage, but in reality it was because I knew he would die if they faced off against one another.

"Afterwards, Zabuza rejected me and fled the village with Haku. The others demanded my death, and rightly so. I was a traitor. As the leader of the group, it was Zabuza's responsibility to kill me, but instead he spared my life and left this scar, a reminder of my own failure to love him.

"I found out later that he and Haku had been killed, trying to earn money for a second coup attempt. He accepted a job from a gangster and was ultimately killed in an altercation with Kakashi and Team Seven."

By this time in her story, their food had been delivered to the table, but it remained untouched.

And this is why she hates me so much… Kakashi realized. She thinks I killed Zabuza, and she watched me defeat him the second time.

Seika stared at her meal. She was fighting back tears. "I'm sorry…I don't know why I shared all that…it's not a story I share very often."

"Do you still love him?" he asked gently.

Seika's eyes met Sukea's, her blue irises swimming in tears like great blue moons over a storming sea. A tear escaped them, and she quickly wiped it away. "We should eat before it gets cold," she deflected.

She still loves him.

The rest of their meal, they conversed about other things. Seika told him about being ambushed on the way back to Konoha and the rogue shuriken that cut across her cheek. She was confident it wouldn't scar. Not like her jawline.

He tried to make her laugh while they ate, keeping the hard memories of her past with Zabuza at bay. While he enjoyed the sound of her laughter ringing throughout the restaurant, a shadow was now present over both of them.

When they parted ways, he wondered if he would ever get to see her fight. A shinobi trained by Zabuza was no average ninja. He filled in parts of her story with what Tsunade told him, and later, back in his office, he dug out her file to see what, exactly, she had done as a Kiri-Konoha ambassador. What he found impressed him.

Seika worked diligently with Yagura's successor, the Fifth Mizukage Mei Terumī, to implement changes in Kiri that had succeeded in Konoha. Seika had been in Kiri aiding Mei during the Konoha chūnin exams…the same ones that ended in the separation of his own team. She returned to Konoha upon hearing the news of Hiruzen's death, allying herself with Tsunade and continuing to broker peace between the two villages. Her mission list after this point was long and contained many redacted details…if he wanted to know more he'd have to request the unredacted version from Konoha's vaulted archives.

He flipped the page, scanning through her skillset, which was equally accomplished. As he discovered more about her, his curiosity and infatuation only grew.

He closed the folder, deep in thought. For someone who was so close to Zabuza, she had a widely different path in life than he did, and yet the shadow of his death still lingered.

Kakashi wanted to know why she gave up her life as a kunoichi after the war. He disagreed with Tsunade on that front…while she was doing important work in the village, her skills could be better utilized for Konoha. Vaguely, he also wondered if he could ever change her mind about himself. She didn't know the whole story about Zabuza's death, but Sukea wasn't the one who could tell her that truth.

More reasons to seek her out.

A/N: Thanks to those who have followed and favorited! More to come about Seika's backstory with Zabuza in future chapters.