I stopped by the Uchiha Police Station on my way home to get that library pass Fugaku had promised me, because it had seemed like a good use of my time. I had to sit around for a bit before he even showed up - when I arrived there was nobody in the office but the chuunin at the front desk, her arm in an immobilization cast with pins sticking out of it. I made myself useful by helping her with the filing while I waited, which in hindsight is probably why I wasn't immediately thrown out on my ear when Fugaku did turn up. Apparently last night had been busy for the cops.
Sorry, not sorry. Anyway, it hadn't just been us cutting loose, apparently. See, Sarutobi, this is what happens when you leave these things up to the individual.
But apparently nobody had fingered me as the ringleader, or involved in organization at all, and the noise complaint at Shin's had been about 2am howling, so being that I did not have a nindog I wasn't an obvious suspect for that, either. Couldn't exactly say I'd gotten away scott free, but pretty goddamn close.
Anyway, I'm sure he noticed the part where I was hung over, and hadn't made it back to the Uchiha district last night, but that wasn't enough evidence to convict, and I left the police station with extremely specific library pass in hand. And also with the papers terming me from my responsibilities at the station morgue. Apparently all forensic autopsies were going to go through ANBU, from now until perdition.
Didn't much like that. Didn't know what I could do about it, either, so I just stewed on it.
Vital shinobi services compromised by natural/unnatural disaster? Just shove it on ANBU, right? That's what they're there for. Except, no, it's not. ANBU is there for the things that villages can't cop to while staying above water on all our treaty agreements.
Forensic autopsies and disaster investigations in particular ought to be conducted by public sector divisions with oversight. If you make things like forensic investigations secret operations suddenly all accountability blows away like dandelion fluff and who fucking knows if they're actually working on it, it's a secret. Is it actually being worked on or is it being memory-holed? No one will ever know.
Also, basic police work is a ridiculous misuse of our wetworks people. God almighty, the pay difference alone.
It's two Uchiha I don't recognize on gate duty today, but they let me through with the absolute minimal acknowledgement. Nobody was home at Fuyu's but the cats, which was perfectly all right with me. Time to get in some meditating, possibly fail at it upwards into a nap.
"You look awfully cozy," was what Fuyu chose to open with when he poked me awake in the window seat I'd set up in, surrounded by comfortable, napping cats. It was violet-dark outside, not quite nightfall but almost.
"Haven't found the right door yet," I mumbled, still half dreaming. A raggedy, lightweight seal-point cat had settled in on the very peak of my shoulder where I'd slumped over on my side, like a gargoyle. Drooling, also, like a gargoyle. My sleeve was nice and damp at the seam.
"Just keep opening them indiscriminately," said Fuyu, picking up the big white tailless cat next to me and moving him to his lap when he sat down. "That's your learning style, right? What are you even talking about."
"Meditating," I said, and the seal-point cat leapt off me before I had to decide what to do about her, leaving me able to sit up. It felt like there were fabric creases in my cheek when I rubbed at it.
"Oh," said Fuyu. "I saw the library pass." I'd left it on the kitchen table. "He actually gave it to you, after everything last night?"
"Nobody snitched, you can't prove anything," I said with confidence. Leveled him a look. "You didn't even snitch."
"I have it from a reliable source that snitches get stitches," said Fuyu, gravely serious. "Anyway, I left before things got out of hand. All the Uchiha did."
"You always were smarter than me," I said, the fry creeping back into my voice. "If anybody asks, that ANBU who always turns up around us took care of me, and I hardly remember any of it."
"The one with the ox mask?" asked Fuyu, his tone light. "I think he must have a crush on you, with all the personal favors he likes to do you."
I frowned at him, despite being terribly relieved that Fuyu hadn't decided to hold last night against me. And then, because what he'd just implied was incredibly gross, I picked up the cat out of his lap, settled him on mine, and shoved Fuyu off the windowseat.
That was where Aunt Kuro found us, yelling at each other good-naturedly and surrounded by cats. She immediately barked at Fuyu to take a lap if he still had that much energy, and me to set the table for the takeout she'd brought home for dinner. Surprise, the meal involved fish.
And so it went that I settled into life at the Uchiha compound, pushing at the edges of my physical endurance day by day with chores and little errands and time spent at the Uchiha Library. The buzz of a new project wore off in the slog of invisible progress, and I had to remind myself that recovery is just time spent on the work. It takes as long as it takes and not a minute less. This, I had to remind myself a lot. It's one of those things that's easy to intellectualize and really fucking hard to know.
Anyway, since my physical condition was still dogshit, I spent a lot of time meditating. And there was progress to be made there, even if it left me an unique kind of exhausted at the end of the day. Reading up at the Uchiha Library allowed me to even pick out why- meditation generated spiritual chakra, but attempting higher meditation techniques also used it up. I needed to extend my lead-in times of normal, centering meditation exercises before fucking around in my Akashic records, or I'd start cutting very close to falling into spiritual chakra debt. Which, though it usually wasn't, might be fatal in my condition. So add to the list of things that could probably kill me: meditating too hard.
The realization fucked me up enough that the guy in charge of the Uchiha archives, a gentleman my father's age with a single tomoe in each eye, actually noticed my upset. Uchiha Takeshi didn't notice much that wasn't contained in a library scroll, so I was probably being pretty fucking dramatic about it.
"Get out," he said as he chivvied me out the door. "Go outside and stay outside until you can stop generating such a miasma. I can't get anything done like this." And then he locked me out.
Well I never.
It was a beautiful autumn day in the Uchiha district, cold and clear and sunny, the leaves bright in yellow and gold. A perfect day for wandering around outside, taking a long peaceful walk by the river. I tried not to resent it; wasn't the weather's fault I'd hit a wall.
I was shuffling my way through the common-space training ground the senior citizens used for morning Tai Chi sessions, aiming to find a nice tree to sit under and sulk, when a throat cleared behind me.
"Haruka-san," a child's voice called for me, and I turned with resignation to see Uchiha Shisui. He was holding the hand of an even smaller child, solemn little textbook Uchiha phenotype in a wide-collared shirt, chubby cheeks and wide black eyes.
"Uchiha-san," I said, smiling at him all customer service. His face immediately fell, but just for a moment, before he was smiling back at me, equally blandly.
"Haruka-san, nobody calls anyone 'Uchiha-san' while we're in the district," he said. "Everyone here is Uchiha-san. I'm Shisui, remember?"
"It's almost as though I've been in close contact with your clan since I made genin," I said, a hand on my chin, "and said what I said on purpose to annoy you. But nice parry, anyway, explaining it to me like I'm stupid. What's up, kid?"
His smile brightened at that, to something a little more genuine and a lot shittier, and I remembered why I'd let him stay at the party last week.
"You looked upset about something," he said guilelessly. "I'm just here babysitting Itachi-chama-" he squeezed the little boy's hand, prompting the child to shrink even deeper into his wide collar, "and I know you never really have anything to do around here, so I thought we'd come say hi."
"Hi," I said, mildly, tilting my head to pay more attention to the Littlest Uchiha. "Itachi? You got a wind nature? Gonna learn to use scythes?"
Shisui, gods bless him, looked to Itachi curiously instead of answering for him, but it was a minute before any noise came out of him.
"No?" said Itachi, a furrow in his tiny brow. "Father is teaching me shurikenjutsu." He was incredibly coherent for being like four.
"Why would you name a shinobi clan child Itachi and not tell him all about the kamaitachi?" I asked Shisui. Shisui looked up at me and beamed.
"I think that's your job," he said, and I rolled my eyes and started explaining about kamaitachi anyway. Either the youkai spirits of weasels, or the youkai spirits of abandoned gardening tools, depending on the region you got your lore out of. They tear around in horrible biting winds, slicing at the ankle tendons of anyone in their way with their sharp little weasel sickles. Itachi absorbed my storytelling with absolute concentration. Which was adorable, but also a little bit made me want to pull Fugaku's ear. He's four, Tono.
We'd wandered through the training ground and were now picking our way through the wooded bank of the Naka, just three kids having a leisurely screw-around session, talking about hamstringing peasants. Fun stuff. The kids had lots of questions, some of them about me in general. Shisui as a person was heavily tactless, and I was starting to like him genuinely for it.
"You're water natured, aren't you," he commented over the sound of the river.
"Yes," I said, not that I could prove it at the moment. I narrowed my eyes at him. "Lucky guess?"
"Every time I see you you're just so damp," said Shisui, with a shrug and what he probably imagined to be an innocent expression. I rubbed a hand over my face to hide my ugly grin.
"Making fun of the homeless doesn't set a good example for Itachi-chama," I said, nodding to the child, my expression recovered.
"Are you really," said Shisui, and I did laugh at that. His sheer levels of distrust for everything I said!
"I suppose, technically," I said, in the driest of tones, "since there's still a single wall standing, with help from the winter ivy, my home isn't completely demolished. It's undergoing renovations, technically. Indefinite renovations, that may include the remaining wall being knocked down to the foundations for rebuilding."
"Ah," said Shisui, unapologetically. "Still, with one whole wall up, why aren't you there?"
"Believe me, I've thought about it," I said grimly, my smile a thin line. "Unfortunately, my teammates like knowing where I am at all times."
"Because you were their medic," said Shisui, nodding. "Old habits, right?"
"Well, that too," I said. "But yes. Old habits. We did make it outside on missions for a while, before I had to go full-time at the hospital. Sensei had to be out of contact with us for five whole days in the second part of the chuunin exams at Kiri. We very nearly started a union." Kiri had been very mad about that. They'd expected us to go into that sealed house with our competitors and kill and torture each other creatively. Instead, we'd organized.
"What's a union?" asked Shisui, of course. I raised a finger, opened my mouth, and then closed it.
"I will literally be black-bagged if I explain it to you," I said. "More promptly than anything else I could get black-bagged for explaining to you. It started as a civilian thing, the Daimyo wants it stamped out."
"Oh," said Shisui, his eyebrows climbing. "I guess if I were your team I'd be worried about leaving you alone too, even if you can't use jutsu."
"The strongest and most dangerous things in the world aren't jutsu," I said. "They're ideas."
"Huh," said Shisui, and to his credit, he actually seemed to be thinking about it.
"Anyway, that's why next week I'll be going to stay with Natsuki at the Yamanaka estates," I said. "The team planned it out, so I'll always have a place to stay without wearing out my welcome."
"I don't think you've worn out your welcome," said Shisui, quietly.
"You're not Fugaku-dono. Or Aunt Kuro," I said with a toothy little grin. We'd reached a flat part of the river, down from the cliffs, deep water with a strong current underneath. It was glassy smooth on the surface, however, perfect for skipping stones. I bent to search for one on the bank. Itachi helped me look, very seriously.
"I heard about you calling him Tono," said Shisui, far too cheerfully. "I didn't think you were stupid enough to do it twice."
"I'll look even stupider if I don't commit," I said, straightening up with a flat, almost perfectly disc-shaped stone. "That's admitting it was an accident. There's a very fine line between pretending to be an idiot and actually being one, if people think I'm running my mouth on purpose..."
"If it's on purpose, you're running some kind of an op," said Shisui, nodding, as I took my time to center myself before throwing the rock. "If it was an accident, then you really are an idiot."
"And no one can ever know that I really am an idiot," I said, and skipped the stone. Shisui whistled, and I beamed. Still got it.
"I lost count at fifteen," said Shisui, and he looked genuinely impressed.
"Twenty-six skips," I said, with deep satisfaction. "Woulda been more if the river were wider here. I have the best throwing skills on my team. If it weren't for Fuyu's eyes, I'd have the best aim, too."
There was an insistent little tug on my hakama, and I looked down.
"Teach me," said Itachi, frowning up at me, holding a rock.
So that's how I spent the rest of my afternoon. That's the nice thing about skipping stones, it's almost all technique. Power doesn't matter. The chakra loss that had my kunai and shuriken skills looking really pathetic right now didn't affect my technique, just my range.
Takeshi let me back into the library the next day without comment. Guess my miasma problem resolved by itself.
I had my next follow-up at the hospital, in the usual room at the usual time. But when I barged my way into the office, it was not my usual doctor behind the desk.
My usual doctor did not wear an ANBU mask. This person- well, the build was slight enough to be Kawara-sensei, but the uniform was wrong. Shit, the uniform was wrong. This agent was wearing some kind of shapeless robe, both shoulders covered, the hood up to conceal their hair. The mask itself did not correspond to any call sign I was familiar with, and while that in itself wasn't impossible, I knew a lot of ANBU for someone wholly outside of the organization. In combination, it added up to an instant full-body flop sweat.
"Hullo," I said, already on my heel to turn to leave. "Sorry, I thought- I'm here for an appointment, must have got the times mixed up."
"Haruka-san?" the ANBU asked, voice distorted, and the door closed behind me. I turned sharply to look, because I hadn't closed it. Orochimaru no fucking Sannin was standing there, a hand on the doorknob. He smiled at me, politely.
Gulp.
"Am I in some kind of trouble? I'm supposed to see Kawara-sensei," I said, looking from the snake sannin, to the anonymous blackops fellow, and back again. I was absolutely in some kind of trouble.
"No, not at all," said Orochimaru, peeling himself off the wall and pulling out one of the chairs in front of the desk to sit down in. He filled up the room the same way Jiraiya did, his presence alone making the space feel suddenly claustrophobic. He gave me a smile that made me want to shower immediately. "Your file was merely reassigned. Hospital resources must be very carefully allocated, in the wake of the Kyuubi. I requested to be allowed to consult on the matter of your condition. As you've observed, it may be relevant to my interests."
I'm going to die. In small pieces, individually labeled in jars.
"Thank you," I said, instead of screaming. I pulled out the other chair, and sank into it slowly. "I'm extremely lucky to have such an expert in his field to assist in my recovery. Um, pardon me-" I turned to the ANBU behind the desk. "We haven't been introduced? You're-"
"Handling your file with regards to Orochimaru-sama," said the agent, and I valiantly fought the urge to throw up. "I am a medic. I've been assigned your case, you will be seeing me for the most part, Orochimaru-sama is far too busy to come to all of your follow-ups."
"Right," I said. "Good. Well. I'm- Himitsu Haruka, you probably have that in my file." Oh gods, was there a secret evil medic corps to go along with Orochimaru's secret evil medical research? Of course there was, in retrospect it was obvious, there had to be. You couldn't run a level 4 lab all by yourself, even if you were one of the legendary sannin. I tried to picture Orochimaru running the autoclave on his own and just couldn't do it.
"I've reviewed your file," said Orochimaru, leaning back in his seat and crossing his legs, lacing his fingers around the uppermost knee. "Of course, it gets the most interesting after the tenth. I have Kawara-sensei's analysis, but they seem to have hesitated in putting forth any hypothesis as to how or why you returned to life."
"Yeah," I said, glad I was sitting down, because I was feeling awfully dizzy. There was another man sitting in Orochimaru's chair, just as tall and thin and intimidating, he came in and out of focus inside my head.
("Aren't you just full of secrets, young Spring."
I didn't try to be. It just happened to shake out that way. I avoided meeting scarlet eyes with art and grace, and shrugged uncouthly.
It was just like being in jail. You didn't have to beat anyone up on your first day. You just had to be the guy who knew how to make pruno. You don't have to be strong you just have to be useful. you have to be interesting
but not too interesting)
I blinked rapid-fire to clear the cobwebs in my head. "We had avoided hypothesizing before we had more data," I said. "I've been testing my limits within reason, and discovered that while all of my physical chakra is being immediately and comprehensively coopted as soon as I make it just to keep me alive, I can accumulate spiritual chakra, and use it, limitedly. But if I guess wrong and bottom out on it that'll kill me too."
"Fascinating," said Orochimaru, and saints all help me he really did look fascinated. "What an excruciatingly backwards way to bring a person back to life. And you don't remember anything about the process, you've said?"
My mouth was so dry it took me a minute to say anything. "I mean, I was very much dead," I said. "I've read the report and everything. I have no knowledge of any… jutsu or procedure, that might have taken place. On my end, it was... I think I might have dreamed. I remember… thinking I was on a beach, with the fog rolling in, so thick you couldn't see your own hands. There was sand under my feet."
I knew in my heart of hearts, in my very soul, that this beach had been a real place. The shores of Lethe, the echoes in my head told me. Drink from it's waters and forget your mortal life. I certainly hadn't. It was possible my soul never had in a thousand lifetimes, and that was why my head was a riot of past life memories now.
"Did you see anyone else, in this place? On this beach?" I met Orochimaru's golden cat eyes, so much like the shinigami I'd met there. I wondered if he knew, if he'd heard the same account of a foggy shore from others who'd died and come back again.
"There was a girl," I said, slowly. "With cat ears. I think, she had spider lilies on her kimono?" It wasn't a detail I had noticed when I was there, but when I pictured her now it was clear in my mind's eye. Meditation practice had put a very sharp focus on my ability to recall detail in memories. "Can bakeneko be the shinigami? She must have been a shinigami. She pushed me and I woke up. I was missing twelve hours and the tag on my boot said I was dead."
"And you remember no bargain?" asked Orochimaru. "The shinigami was indeed in Konoha on the night of the tenth. Did you agree to anything, some task or orders, to be sent back?"
I shook my head slowly, my heart rate speeding up even more. Yeah, that was suspicious, wasn't it? With the other documented appearance of a shinigami that evening having, you know, cost the Yondaime his life. "Not that I remember," I said. "I'm on the books for a mindwalk, next week. You know, just in case. I'm sure you'll get the report."
"Yes, just in case," repeated Orochimaru. "Of course. I'll look forward to reviewing it with you."
"If you're not too busy, of course," I said demurely, looking at the offbrand ANBU. The mask remained implacable.
"Of course," agreed Orochimaru. Was this how it felt to go insane? It was all so polite, when I really just wanted to be screaming. Without pause or end.
"Forgive me, Haruka-san," said the mask, glancing down at my file open on the desk. "But your father was Kurama Iwashi before he married, correct? You were trained outside of the Kurama clan, of course, but were you ever tested for their particular kekkei genkai?"
That was a little out of left field. "Yes," I said. "I never showed much talent in genjutsu, but of course they wanted… anyway, no, I don't have the Kurama bloodlimit, we checked."
"What about a variation of the bloodlimit?" asked Orochimaru, and I was halfway to saying of course not when I froze. Now that I thought about it… oh, but how would I know?
"Well," I croaked, swallowing futilely. "That's, that's the thing about non-standard variations on known kekkei genkai. How do you find out you have them?"
"Situations of extreme stress are the most common circumstances," supplied Orochimaru, a calculating look in his eye.
"Like dying?" I asked, unable to help myself. I pressed my haori sleeve to my mouth. "But how did it activate if I was dead?" I mumbled into my hand.
I couldn't believe I was actually considering it. No, no, that couldn't be the whole story. I was still looking at outside help. Even if somehow there was a fucked-up variant of the Kurama bloodlimit hiding in my genome, that instead of a genjutsu so real it'll kill you in real life, it was a genjutsu that tricked your organs into being alive.
That was so useless. If I could hypnotize myself into not being dead, why couldn't I have ever, oh, gosh, I dunno, hypnotized myself into not being sick? Had the shinigami picked me out because of some genetic potential, had she been able to send me back because of it?
"Something to consider," said Orochimaru, sounding satisfied. He looked up from his notes. "Next time?"
His smile chased me out of the room, my brain still going off a hundred miles a minute. That was… a lot to chew. I had ramifications to think about, and it was only a hypothesis. The snake sannin's interest in me seemed a more manageable problem in the shadow of it.
...What a life I was leading these days.
As luck would have it, as I was winding my way out of the hospital, I caught sight of Dr Kawara coming out of an exam room. I put on speed and waved effusively.
"Suzume-senpai!" I enthused, sweeping up behind them and linking arms aggressively. "Have you got a minute? I'd like to consult you on something real quick."
"Haru-kun-" they started, and I jerked us into a hard right into a supply closet.
"Just a moment in my office, all's I ask" I said, shutting the door behind us and flipping on the light. Privacy seal please, I signed. Suzume sighed, and pulled a slip of paper from their pocket, sticking it up by the door.
"Look, I'm sorry," they said immediately as the seal activated. "I didn't have a choice, that order came from way up the chain."
"Suzu, I'm gonna fucking lose it. They're gonna dissect me for a bloodlimit I might not even have," I said, threading my hand into my braid and clutching it. "Is this normal? Nobody ever pulled a patient out from under me while I worked here, does this happen a lot?"
"It happens enough," said Suzume, suddenly looking as tired as I'd ever seen them. They always had shadows under their hazel-green eyes, but today they were more like bags. "Less since the war. Nobody has time to pay attention to weird transfers that happen during periods of chaos and high pressure."
"That makes sense," I said, fighting with the nausea that burned in my stomach. At least there were plenty of buckets in here if I lost. "Is there any way I can contest it? Can I get transferred back to you?"
"I tried to fight it, I've been your doctor for years," said Suzume, shaking their head. "A transfer at this stage didn't make any sense to me no matter who it was going to. You're lucky your file hasn't been fully classified, I can still read your reports and keep you up to date on what they're saying, at least."
"Thank you," I said, hollow. "...I don't want to be vivisected, senpai. I don't want to die."
"You've died three times just this month," said Suzume, unsympathetic. "You don't want to disappear, is what you mean. Update your deadman's, pass your psych eval, and go to work in the Hokage tower. Be visible and easily missed."
I swallowed, around a throat that was still so dry. "You're clearing me to go back to work?" I said, choosing to latch on to that part of the instructions.
"Conditionally," said Suzume, their mouth tight. "Desk chuunin stuff only. No chakra work. Get your heart rate down before you come out into the hallway again, if you collapse in the hospital again your clearance will get vetoed no matter what I put in the report."
"I don't know what to say," I admitted, leaning hard on the industrial shelving.
"Say you won't blow it," said Suzume, and passed me on their way out. The privacy seal stayed up, and I stared at it while trying not to think about drinking cleaning solution.
I stayed in the supply closet about another half an hour, taking advantage of the sound blocking to have a much-needed meltdown, wailing until I coughed, and then coughing until there was blood. When I finally left the hospital, there was no trace of any of those things, on my face or on the floor, which was what made supply closets such an absolutely peak place for messy breakdowns.
So, okay, my to-do list had gotten longer and more convoluted. I had more deaths than the one waiting in my lungs to worry about, going forward.
Maybe I did want the door in my head to lead somewhere out. Maybe the solution to external problems was, as usual, internal.
Or maybe I just need to talk to my fucking team! They'd have my back, that was what they were for. I'd only get into yet more trouble if I tried to work this out on my own. Four heads were better than one, after all.
and with this we're caught up to my backlog. the first 100 pages! poor haruka, I hope the -next- two weeks of her life don't take 2 years to post.