Fuyu had started out on our genin team deliberately trying to keep his teammates' contact with the Uchiha minimal, contact with his Aunt Kuro in particular. That had only lasted as long as Natsuki had let it, and by now I was a familiar enough sight at the Uchiha district that the gate guards did not bother with us. You could tell you were getting close to Uchiha Kuro's home because the density per square of cats began to increase exponentially- and there were already a lot of cats around the Uchiha district.
Fuyu opened the door and called out softly, "We're home," as he slipped out of his sandals and into house shoes. I was a step behind him, picking my way in between cats.
"Come to the kitchen," called his aunt, and it was the only room in the house that had lights on, yellow through the haze of smoke that drifted along the ceiling.
Uchiha Kuro was the elder holder of the cat contract; a full jounin and a lady made of cold iron. She was still as intimidating as the first day I'd met her, sitting poised at the kitchen table with a thin trail of smoke drifting up from her kiseru pipe, surrounded by cats on every available surface. Her attention on you also came with the attention of several dozen cats, eyes in every corner of the room.
She was not a tall woman, shorter than me even, though it was something you could readily forget until she stood up. Shining black hair in a neat angled bob, not a single strand out of place. She would have to be approaching middle-aged, for a kunoichi, but it did not show in her face, only in the depth of her dark hooded eyes and some faint lining around them, creases filled with eyeliner black and sharp as the void. She wore a fluttery silk robe for around the house, bright colors and butterflies, snug detachable sleeves that looped around her middle fingers underneath it.
I had never had outright confirmation that she had the second, secret, evolved form of the Sharingan, but I kept an edge of caution around her as though she had. Her original team, fantastically, was all still intact- but Fuyu's parents were both dead.
Yes, I'm aware that I know far more about the Uchiha dojutsu than I ought. Don't tell Fugaku and we'll all be fine.
I bowed as low as I could and still reasonably expect to straighten back up under my own power. She nodded, as though granting me audience.
"I apologize for my forgetfulness, and for my lateness, Kuro-sama," I said, staring her in the nose. Not quite brave enough to look her in the eye, like I would her nephew. "I have no excuses, except that I have had… a day. Thank you for extending your hospitality, even knowing that I am a terrible houseguest."
She almost smiled, that face on her that Uchiha make when they are trying not to be entertained by something. "So I've heard," she said. "You make lots of ripples, Haruka-chan, for such a small stone."
"All in a day's work, ma'am," was out of my mouth before I could really think about it. Behind me, Fuyu, in the process of unboxing and reheating leftovers, fumbled a dish with a clatter.
"At least you're consistent," said Kuro, with an actual grin this time, pointy and unsettling. "No pall of the grave about you, now that you've seen the other side? No reconsidering of your life's choices, no fresh perspective to sober your outlook?"
"...Fresh perspective, certainly," I said. "Gobs, in fact. I think it's only making me worse."
"She's not wrong," muttered Fuyu, leaning against the kitchen counter. "...Haru-kun, have a seat, please."
I did as I was told, sliding into the nook across from Aunt Kuro, pulling the cat that had previously occupied the seat into my lap. I crinkled my nose. "...How come I'm only just Haruka with you when we're alone, or I'm in trouble?" I got to see Fuyu turn red again, for my effort.
"It gets your attention," he mumbled, bringing bowls to the table and taking his seat. "...but I don't like the way I get looked at when I just use your name."
"...That's fair," I said, picking up my chopsticks. Miso and seafood broth, the nicest thing I'd eaten so far this week, and mild enough that I'd probably keep it down. "People can be stupid, about that sort of thing."
"Can't they just," said Kuro, setting her pipe down to pick the fish out of her soup to eat first. "You're both not too young for a betrothal contract, mind."
"Auntie!" said Fuyu, coughing.
"I don't expect many offers," I said, dryly. "Not with a three-generation pedigree of poor health, Kurama or not. And don't Uchiha usually marry within the clan?"
"Fuyu-chan can marry anyone he wants," said Kuro, not unkindly. "I could really care less about ensuring my grand-nieces and nephews have the right bloodlimit- I could have gotten married myself, if it mattered that much to me."
"These things don't even cross my mind," said Fuyu. "I thought we'd all agreed we were focussing on our careers."
"There is that," I said, blinking. "Speaking of, how's life down at the police station?"
He brightened, with something he could answer that wouldn't mortify him, and we passed the rest of the meal in idle chatter about work. After dinner Fuyu picked up my carpetbag, and headed for his room.
"Ask if she wants the guest bedroom, Fuyu-chan," Kuro called after him. "You're not children anymore."
He turned red, his hand on his bedroom door, me right behind him, and I felt an irreversible pang. Sleeping over at each others' houses as genin, Fuyu, Natsuki and I had always liked to stay in the same room, the three of us rolled up on the floor together, the better to whisper secrets and hatch conspiracies. Nobody had ever said a word about it before.
"Maybe tomorrow night," I murmured. "Tonight let's- like when we were kids." I reached for my bag, taking it from his hand. "But I think first I'm going to spend…the next, hm, hour, hour and a half? In the bath. If nobody minds." I'd been sink-washing while in the hospital, and I ached in body and soul. It was time.
"It's all yours, Haruka-chan," Kuro called from the kitchen, where she had resumed her pipe.
I flashed a thumbs-up that she couldn't see and darted away, closing the bathroom door behind me.
I had the bugout bag sensei had brought me, and I had the bugout bag tucked in the back of Aunt Kuro's linen closet, and I had my own toiletries case in the drawer here, so I did not want for things, not even my own things. Vindication at last- It wasn't paranoia; I wasn't overprepared. I was only just prepared enough.
I took deep satisfaction in clipping the hospital bracelet off my wrist with a pair of nail shears before getting in the bath.
I felt much, much better when I came out of the bathroom again, clean and damp and pink and dressed in my own pajamas. Fuyu was in his room, with the light on, and I slipped in quietly.
Later, in the dark, a cat between us and one in a crescent over my head trying to steal pillows, we lay face to face on the same futon, whispering to each other like we had when we were children.
...Well, perhaps not quite.
"The Uchiha police have been issued a moratorium on investigating the Kyuubi attack," Fuyu whispered to me, quiet but with a sort of high-key intensity. I felt suddenly wide awake.
"Why," I whispered back. They were not perfect, the Uchiha police force, but they were good at this. I liked working with them, as I liked working with Fuyu.
...I didn't say earlier, did I? We were an investigative specialty team, at least on paper. Mystery, betrayal, murder most foul. For this reason, we'd always been quite close to the Uchiha police, even before Fuyu had started working for them.
"...Some eyewitnesses reported... the Kyuubi's eyes were masked by a strange pattern, like a dojutsu. Black on red, like a Sharingan, but not one… the general public would recognize," he said, only just barely, like if he spoke it aloud it would curse it true.
"...The Mangek-" I began, and he muffled me with his hand.
"Don't say it," he hissed. "You're not even supposed to know."
"I know," I said, and waited for him to go on.
"Nobody left the Uchiha district that night," he said, his eyes bright points in the dark even though they remained solid black. "Nobody. Not when the village lit up, not even when the calls went out. I don't know who organized- it was like a coincidence at the time, but it must have been orders. I woke up at three thirty-three in the morning on the dot, like-"
"Genjutsu?" I whispered, and he nodded, a flash of raw fear crossing his face. My spine tingled in response.
"I think so," he said.
"...Nobody but another Sharingan could put that many Uchiha under," I said, as quietly as possible.
"I know," said Fuyu, barely a whisper.
"Who-" I started.
"I don't know," he whispered, distress in his voice. "I haven't been allowed to clan meetings before, but now that these-" his eyes flickered glowing red for a moment, three tomoe in each, "-I'm allowed in."
"...Surely it's not…" I tucked my chin, thinking, furiously. An Uchiha to hypnotize the Kyuubi, an Uchiha to put their clan to sleep… simplicity principle, assume it's the same Uchiha. Not necessarily working alone, but start from the premise that the same pair of eyes had committed the act.
...Pair? An unfounded assumption. Sharingan transplant is impossible outside of the clan, they'd thought, but then Obito and Kakashi and...Rin, had proved that essentially false. So, our profile: any person with at least one single operational Mangekyo Sharingan. ...Really narrowed it down, there.
"...They're all unique, aren't they?" I murmured. "The- the second level eyes."
"...Now we're on to things I'm not supposed to know," he muttered. "But. Um. Yes. They don't all have the same powers with them, either."
"Is there a record of the patterns? A database of known Mangek- second-level eyes?" I asked.
"No!" he said, swallowing a yelp, but the deeply worried furrow to his forehead said yes. "...Maybe. Deep, deep in the clan library. I think."
"It would be a useful thing," I said, "a dangerous, incriminating, compromising thing-"
"But that's most clan secrets," sighed Fuyu.
"If we could compare the shape of the eye spotted on the fox to such a database-" I started.
"Ah yes," said Fuyu, glumly. "But the Uchiha Police have been taken off the investigation."
"I'm not Uchiha Police," I said, with a grin. "I am an independent investigator."
"You're one evaluation away from a permanent medical retirement," said Fuyu.
"Humor me," I ground out. He fell quiet, for a long minute.
"...Sorry," he whispered, and I felt the tension in my spine evaporate.
"...Quite." I chewed the corner of a fingernail, still thinking. "Consider: if not the Uchiha Police, who then will be conducting the investigation?"
"ANBU," he answered immediately. "Oh. Of course."
"We ought to coordinate with Ox," I said, and he nodded.
"...I'll find a way to compare the eye pattern," he whispered.
"Good," I whispered back.
We said nothing more for a good few minutes, neither of us quite ready to sleep, but with no more conspiracies to plan tonight.
"I'm glad you're back, Haruka," Fuyu whispered into the dark. He had rolled onto his back, the comforter pulled up over his nose. The cat curled up between us shifted. "I feel better, with a plan."
"Good," I said, rolling over so I could rest my back against him for the warmth. "So do I."
I dreamed of a path in the night sky, all made of starlight. I dreamed of a bright line in the dark, like the light from another room shining in from under a door. I dreamed of doorknobs, unyielding to my hand.
I dreamed of watching the sunset of a dying world, until I found myself shaken awake. Fuyu loomed over me, his face in shadow. It was still late, not yet early, the gray of dawn not yet showing through the curtains.
"You weren't breathing," he whispered, at my confused squint. "It woke me up."
"...Sorry," I mumbled, and closed my eyes again. "...Thank you." I did not remember any more dreams, but when I awoke the second time, naturally, and to four cats next to me where my teammate had been, the second half of one of those koans had come to me.
A still more glorious dawn awaits, not a sunrise, but a galaxy-rise
...There was more to it, I could taste the next line's cadence on the back of my tongue, but I had yet to root it out.
The house was golden with light in the morning, but empty and a little cold. Fuyu and Aunt Kuro had work to do, and I had not expected them to wait around for me and my lopsided invalid sleep schedule. I was glad Fuyu had let me sleep instead of getting me up for breakfast. I could still tell I needed the rest.
Dying takes a whole lot out of a body. Who knew.
I had tea for breakfast, and decided to spend my day around the Uchiha compound. Solidarity or laziness - why not both?
I made it to the mid-morning senior citizen's Tai Chi group in one of the district's training grounds. I had to get back into condition somehow, and this was about the lowest-energy exercise I could perform. Nobody looked at me sideways when I joined, but I felt a great deal of attention on me nonetheless. Even more, when I didn't last the entire half-hour, bowing out when a sickly sheen of sweat had crept into my hair.
Utterly pathetic! I was sure that crop of children at the edge of the park thought so too. I stuck my tongue out at one sprog in a wide-collared shirt, who was watching a little bit spacily, and didn't slow down to see if it made him blush.
Back at Fuyu's house I re-fried rice balls for lunch, showered, and settled in to a window seat with eleven cats, to take a serious whack at meditation. I got… farther. Knowing that I had been there before, so to speak, made progression easier.
I was still walking a path in the dark, however. I had not found the light coming in under the door- I had not found any doors at all. I had not found the road of starlight or the stairs that came after. I could go far enough along that I heard my footsteps on the fabric of my own consciousness, but it was only that, for a long long time.
I had more luck sorting through the memories of past lives, at least. I could spin them apart and sort them into boxes, so to speak, containing all the content of that particular lifetime. It was not in order, and trying to put them together in sequence was a daunting task. I focussed more on sorting, reviewing things so that they had less of a chance at popping out at me at inopportune times - or at least if they did, I'd be somewhat prepared.
I suspected, however, that I would not be able to review any of them extensively or at my own leisure, until I found the doors they had come through. Or until I achieved access to my Akashic record, which… I had my suspicions was one and the same.
I had the closest thing in existence to a roadmap to enlightenment. I supposed I couldn't exactly complain that it wasn't very straightforward.
Otherwise… I found some interesting content, in my past lives.
For one, the nekomata had not been lying. I had always been sick. I often died quite young, railing against the end the whole way. The taste of despair and lung-blood was a familiar one. I tried to avoid scenes of my death. Later, for that. If ever.
But the shadow of my own demise had prompted heights of desperation that I had yet to experience- or perhaps that I was only just beginning to. Stealing a boat and running away to die on the ocean was a common thread. Throwing myself into the work until it burnt my candle was another.
I had almost always been a physician of some kind, it seemed. That drive to solve puzzles, that drive to save myself. The underlying desire to be god. These things about myself, that never seemed to change, no matter the circumstances.
It was comforting, somewhat. To know what parts of me went all the way down to my soul. Not nurture, but nature, incontrovertible and essential. Undying.
I had failed to set myself a timer before I started my meditation, so I was brought out of it by a set of sharp claws digging into my calf. It brought me out of it all a jumble, the black cat in my lap watching coolly while I flailed.
"Just wanted to let you know," said the cat, in a higher voice than I expected. "Fuyu-chan says dinner tonight, 1800 hours. The hot pot place is still standing."
"Thank you," I said, and the cat went back to extravagantly licking himself while in my lap.
I sighed, and gently relocated the cat to take my place in the window seat. I had plenty of time to get myself out of the house and to the Akimichi restaurant our team favored in fall and winter, so if I started now I might have a minute to stop by the shinobi library. That had been my original plan today, but I had been so tired, and it was just so easy to not leave the Uchiha district, once you were there.
Now there was a thought - the Uchiha clan library. Was I persuasive enough to obtain permission, even restricted permission, to access it? I sure would like to. It surely couldn't hurt to ask.
I filed that for later, and got ready to go out. My hair had stiff waves in it, the consequence of braiding it last night while wet, and then going to sleep on it. I combed them out into softer waves, and tied my hair into a low ponytail with a green cotton ribbon. The hair around my face was shorter, and I let it escape the hair tie and wisp about my face fetchingly. I had a long, angular face, my puppy fat had vanished before I'd even made genin, and puberty hadn't really given any of it back. I had hips, more or less, but the upper levels had only grown in negligibly. My mother said I would likely have to wait a few years more to see if they indeed would.
As such, I didn't mind in the least. Secondary sexual characteristics were only ever inconvenient, in combat, and while it might theoretically help no kunoichi had ever needed tits to bait a honeypot. I affected an androgynous style of dress, lots of layers and draping, maxi skirts or hakama, cardigans and turtlenecks. I had often thought that if I'd been healthy, I would have learned kenjutsu and gone full for the samurai aesthetic. In the memories I had reviewed so far, my past lives had been overwhelmingly majority male, and this actually surprised me not at all. Surely souls themselves were neither one nor the other, but it couldn't all be coin flip. The revelation certainly didn't trouble me.
Gender roles were only limitedly useful, after all. I adopted mannerisms that were useful to me from anywhere I could, discard the rest regardless of the stereotypes of kunoichi and shinobi technique. Natsuki had always understood this principle at least as well as I did, Fuyu not so much. Sensei had only ever wanted us, whatever route we took, to be logical and well-researched, and think very carefully about how we were perceived. Anything could be a weapon, after all. Anything at all.
Like Natsuki-chan's perfect, perky ass in skin-tight lycra, for instance.
I didn't have much in the way of libido (chronic illness will do that to you!) but I still found myself rather abstractly sad sometimes that Natsuki played for the other team. I could only imagine what he did to genuine red-blooded homosexuals.
On my way down the steps from Fuyu's house I was assaulted quite suddenly, a long black cat leaping off the railing to perch on my shoulders. Dear reader, I wobbled. From a cat.
"I'm to make sure you get there safely," chirped the cat.
"...I'm not an invalid," I said, irritably, already very aware that there is little on this earth more futile than arguing with a cat.
"Dissociative episodes," said the cat, cheerfully.
"That's not- that's not a pattern," I ground out. "The one time."
"It's not the one time, though, is it?" said the cat, and I looked sideways at him sharply. I had an impression of large yellow eyes, bristling black whiskers.
"What do you know about it?" I asked, and the cat settled around my shoulders like a fluffy wrap. ...Well, at least it was a warm babysitting accessory.
"Lots," he said. "We've been here the whole time, remember? I've, you know, met you."
I sighed. ...Hm. I wonder.
"...Does the cat contract encompass nekomata?" I asked.
"Literally every cat," he said. "It's a big contract."
There was a thought, then. With enough chakra on the summoning, with the right intent behind it, would Fuyu- or Aunt Kuro, perhaps, as the older summoner- be able to pull up my feline kunoichi friend, all the way from the realm of the waiting dead?
A completely irrelevant hypothetical, of course. I had no intention of disclosing the details of that encounter.
I tried to turn my steps towards the shinobi library, but my furry little passenger dug in his claws, and whispered in my ear.
"You won't make it with enough time," he said, whiskers tickling the side of my neck. "Not at the rate you're going."
I clenched my fists. He was right, damn his eyes. I was already sweating, and a little dizzy. I hated every single thing about it, but there it was. I'd always been sick, mind, always a little more easily tired, always a little behind. But there had always been chakra to compensate, chakra to lean on where my limits would have otherwise been reached.
Without that crutch, I was almost worse than useless.
I concentrated on making it to the restaurant without seeming out of breath, which involved a few rest stops on the way, and if this frustrated me right down to the marrows I tried not to let it show in the smile I used to greet my friends. Natsuki and Fuyu were loitering under the awning in front of the restaurant when I rolled up, and Natsuki lit up like a summer bonfire when he spotted me, waving exaggeratedly.
"Sensei's already inside," said Natsuki, pulling me into a hug as soon as I was close enough. The cat on my shoulders leapt off without preamble, displeased with the potential to be squished between us. "But don't worry! You're not late. I've only just been here a minute myself."
"Thank you, Ari," Fuyu was telling the cat, who had leapt directly into his arms. The cat nodded once, formally, and then poofed into smoke.
"He's not staying for dinner?" I asked, raising an eyebrow at Fuyu. "You made him walk with me all that way for nothing?"
"It wasn't for nothing," said Fuyu, a little sharply, but then he sniffed, and it was only his usual pompousness again, compelling him to adjust his glasses as he spoke. "And you know as well as I do those cats are on an elaborate, specific diet."
"I think anybody who's ever been to your house at mealtimes knows those cats have never been fed, ever," said Natsuki, grinning. "So they tell me, anyway."
"Cats are the biggest liars in the entire animal kingdom," said Fuyu, brushing aside the curtain to head inside. It was a traditional-style restaurant, paper walls between the raised platforms, and it was busier than I'd expected. ...No, it made sense, on reflection. With so much of the village damaged, so much reconstruction underway, everybody working long hours as a consequence- of course people were eating out, at the places still open.
Sensei had picked a back corner booth, and if it had been anyone but sensei I'd have thought he'd had to fight someone to get it. But sensei, a Hyuuga jounin built like a concrete slab, well in excess of six feet tall, could have whatever booth he liked.
It hadn't been until he'd taken us for students that he'd ever started using his intimidating nature for anything so petty. We were a terrible influence, clearly.
"Aki-sensei," I greeted him, sliding in next to him with my legs curled underneath me, leaving Fuyu and Natsuki to sit on the other side of the burner. I leaned in so that my shoulder rested against sensei's bicep, and smiled up at him. I caught him with the Byakugan out to look me up and down again, before the veins at the sides of his eyes desisted and he frowned down at me.
"Isn't that rude, Aki-sensei?" chirped Natsuki, enjoying the way Aki's feathers ruffled at the accusation. "Peeking at Haru-kun's chakra like that."
"Is it doing anything interesting?" I asked, resting my chin on my hand for show. His frown deepened, minutely.
"I have every confidence in the expertise of the medics who cleared you for release from the hospital," he said, and I winced. Fuyu in particular looked like he'd bitten a lemon.
"Sensei," he said, reproachfully. "She's sensitive right now. Be kind."
"I am not sensitive," I griped, even though I absolutely was. Symptomatically enough that Fuyu could tell, where usually emotional nuance was Natsuki's wheelhouse. "...I'm perfectly aware of my condition. I don't need to be reminded more."
"He's just worried about you," said Natsuki, his head on one side. "Truly, we all are. It's been a wild ride? Since the tenth."
Since the tenth. Gods, I was tiring of euphemisms.
"We're in uncharted waters," I said, my eyebrows lifting. "Truthfully I'm surprised I haven't been whisked away by T&I yet. Or even better- spirited away by Orochimaru-sama." Now there was a thought. His interest in immortality-related kinjutsu was probably technically a secret, but…
"Well, we are awfully busy right now," said Natsuki, with one of those sunny smiles. "You know. And you haven't been whisked away because you're the kind of person we can just put on the schedule for an appointment and have show up."
"Ah," I said. Looked a little bit sharper, at Natsuki. "...Do you know who's doing the interview, then?"
"One of my uncles, I think," said Natsuki, suddenly looking away, biting a thumbnail. "But since- well, you're- actually, I requested it, but it was only approved because they thought it was a good idea too-" oh god, spit it out, Natsuki, "...I'm going to be the one doing the mindwalk. If that's all right with you! I know it's not… I know you don't like the idea at all, but I thought… you'd hate it less, if it were me."
I quickly schooled my expression, but the face Natsuki made before I managed it told me I must have looked like I was up against a firing squad. I swallowed.
"If it has to be done, I'd rather it were you," I said, meeting his eyes briefly.
"I think it's mad that they're insisting on it at all," said Fuyu, pushing his glasses up his nose. "Mindwalk is for enemies, not citizens."
"...Well," I said, slowly. "I did leave the village without authorization, so to speak, during a crisis, and returned under unexplained circumstances." My eyes crept back towards Natsuki. "...Maybe they're hoping for an explanation, and don't trust me to volunteer it."
"We just want to make sure you're not… compromised," said Natsuki, his smile painfully apologetic. "An enemy agent infiltrating the village inside your skin."
"...That's a thing that can happen, is it?" I said, a little bit of fry to my voice.
"Yup!" chirped Natsuki. "...You have no idea." Times like this I was rather starkly reminded that he had been working at T&I since we'd made chuunin. It didn't often show, but when it did, it gave me a feeling like someone was trying to move my seat cushion while I was still sitting on it.
"It is doubtless more of a formality at this point," said sensei, evenly. "Or they would not allow you free range of the village. Further; this hypothetical enemy agent had many corpses to choose from, and it is unlikely that they would have picked a specimen in such a state as our Haru-kun."
I clapped a hand to my chest like I'd been stabbed in the heart, and slumped gently to one side. "Sensei!" scolded Natsuki, reaching across the table to grab him by the cheek. He disengaged immediately, with a twisting open-handed block, but if he'd really wanted to he could have avoided being pinched in the first place.
"I am only saying," he said, with that almost-invisible twist to the corner of his mouth that was our sensei's smile, fending off Natsuki one-handed and easily. "You have nothing to worry about, Haru-kun."
I sighed. "All hail the king of backhanded reassurances," I said. "...Thanks, sensei."
The waitress showed then, to turn up the burner and reveal our pot, and for a while it was all small talk and snacking. I ate more broth than vegetables, and hardly any meat, and my whole team noticed, but nobody said a word about it, bless them. Much as we loved to tease each other, I didn't think they liked the reminder that I had been well and truly invalided this time any more than I did.
We'd almost been a fractured team. By the skin of our teeth and my own improbable luck, we'd avoided it. Even if there was little chance of us having a mission as a whole team ever again, we were all here. We were all alive. I think we were all feeling it, and trying to avoid poking the bruise. Even though this dinner was ostensibly to celebrate our wholeness.
"Are you sure your mom's okay staying with the Kurama?" asked Natsuki, with a gleam in his eye that told me he'd already heard the whole story and all of the rumors, too. "They're kind of… hm. Well, you know more than most."
"My mother is no doubt flourishing," I said. "Granddaddy Kurama is an ass's hat, but the war left him somewhat low on extended family, and very low indeed on active shinobi. That he even extended a hand to me at all is very telling."
"I ran into your cousin? At Hokage Tower, earlier," said Fuyu, as he waited for the mushroom in his chopsticks to cool. "...one of them, anyway. He said to say hello. You didn't tell him you were staying with me, did you?"
"I did not," I said. "My mother mentioned it." Aunt Kuro liked to keep her in the loop. "But it's not a secret that you're my teammates."
"He seemed... all right," said Fuyu, even though his frown was suspicious. "He would talk to me, at least. There isn't really a rivalry, exactly, with the Kurama." Of course not, because who could rival the Uchiha clan? "But. You know. Genjutsu types and dojutsu users."
"Oil and water," I agreed. "That one's name's Tenki. He seems all right." But I wasn't exactly interested in reconnecting. Maybe later, when the spite in me had time to settle. "I'm still not moving in with them. The house will be rebuilt eventually, I'm certain my mother intends to leave then too."
"Right! Oh, that shouldn't take too long," said Natsuki. "Everyone's so hard at work. But just in case, you know, we've worked out a rotating schedule, so nobody has to put up with you for too long." A cheerful smile, which I stuck a tongue out at.
"Two weeks with me, first," said Fuyu, meeting my eye briefly. Enough to get a start on our personal investigation, at least. "Then two weeks with Natsuki, and then two weeks with sensei…?"
"Yes," agreed sensei. "That will be acceptable. A measure of time to remind you how one behaves, when a guest of a clan, before coming to me."
"I behave exactly the way clans expect me to," I said, a little more hotly than I actually felt. "What is even Hiashi's problem. The Uchiha love me, you know."
"That may indeed be the problem," said Fuyu, drolly. "We're not actually popular, Haru-kun. If you're not careful, it'll rub off on you."
"If I'm only disliked for the company I keep and not for anything I'm doing, I've gone very wrong somewhere along the course of my life," I told him. "Sensei, don't give me that look, only my best behavior for the Hyuuga."
"That doesn't worry him less," Natsuki said with a snort. "Your best behavior is another man's diplomatic incident."
"I'm diplomatic as fuck! The Tea Country mission went great!"
The very faintest shadow of a plot appears on the horizon... but don't worry, if it seems like Haruka has the resources to figure things out too easily! the great thing about the background mystery plots of Naruto is that they're so completely batshit that even if you DID have all of the relevant information needed to figure it out you still wouldn't, because you'd have to be fucking nuts. Haruka tries, perhaps to her detriment in this particular universe, to be a logical sort of person...
HEY look more OCs... Uchiha Kuro is, like every other OC in this story, a character I've used a long time in original stories, reskinned to fit the Naruto universe. I don't actually know where the concept of the Uchiha holding the cat contract came from, if it's in the anime I haven't got there yet, but as soon as I came across it in fanfiction I knew I wanted to use it. I love cats, they're bastards, and it serves the Uchiha right.
Haruka's Chronic Illness Experience is loosely based on my own, so be nice about it? However she does not have a real-world condition. It's magic tuberculosis. I might be writing a doctor character but that doesn't mean I want to try to practice IRL medicine in a fanfic about magic bullshit people. They're wizards, they catch wizard colds.