Yuki was engaging like clockwork. She would hear a cry or see a crowd of people, dive in, scaffold debris with ice, pull out bodies, and disengage. At first, she had registered familiar faces: a woman she bought from at the market, a guard she saw on patrol all the time, some of her daughter's friends. After the fourth or fifth building, it all began to blur. She got accustomed to stepping over lifeless bodies. Before she had found Beki, Yuki had checked every face to make sure her daughter wasn't amongst the dead. After that, Yuki figured there would be plenty of time to grieve the fallen. The living needed her attention.

That was, of course, until the swaying hair of a collapsed body briefly caught her eye. "Kakashi!" Yuki cried, much louder than she intended. He was upright, submerged in concrete up to his shoulders. Rebar stuck out from the ruin almost protectively from his limp frame. Yuki could see dried blood caked on his face, his eyes closed against the murky sky. Yuki scrambled over the destroyed landscape until she reached him, repeatedly calling his name.

Yuki, for the most part, was completely immune to cold. It was a natural adaptation, all part of the parcel of the Yukionna. The sensation of being chilled was completely foreign to her, so when her hair stood on end and she shivered, it was as disorienting as the scenery. "Kakashi, can you hear me?" Yuki's voice was practically a whisper, as if she were afraid to wake him from a pleasant nap. In fact, he looked the same way he did when he was asleep. His expression was peaceful and his body relaxed, as if that concrete cage were the softest down in the world. Yuki reached through the gaps in the rebar and touched his face. His skin was going cold. He's going into shock, Yuki told herself. The explosion and dust had dried the air out, so with no moisture in the environment to pull from, Yuki tapped into her own stores of chakra to free him. Her hair turned white. She wrapped her hands around the rebar and tugged hard. It crystallized at the touch and snapped away like dry twigs. Next, she encased one of the concrete slabs in ice, carefully avoiding anywhere it touched Kakashi's body, and tugged it away in one solid piece. Having lost one of its walls, the whole structure began to collapse. As quickly as it had come, the Yukionna subsided and Yuki leapt forward to pull Kakashi clear of the wreck. She wrapped her arms around him and instantly knew the truth. Yukihana had handled enough corpses to know dead weight, the feeling of a stiffening body in her hands.

Gently, the way she would have with a baby, she laid Kakashi down. There's still a chance, she lied to herself. Yuki touched his neck, holding her fingers against his blood caked skin, praying to feel a beat. With her other hand, she dropped the temperature just above his face so low even the ghost of a breath would fog it. There was nothing. The profound sense of loss Yukihana had spent the last year beating back kicked down the flimsy barrier, the walls Kakashi had helped her prop up, completely submerging her in despair. There was a small part of her that was at peace with the loss. The detached priestess she had been raised to become told her that her daughter had been spared, so cosmically it had to come at a cost. As Yuki ran her fingers through Kakashi's hair, so grimy it was more gray than its usual shining silver, she couldn't give a damn about balance.

In some ways this was far worse than losing her husband. Yuki had been lucky enough to find out about his death after the fact, not like now where she had stumbled across Kakashi's body trussed up like a turkey. That was a separate trauma all its own but not the most offensive aspect of the event. With Seiichiro's death, the more Yuki learned about the man he had become, the less it seemed like her husband that had died and the more that it was some distant relative she owed a great debt. He was almost a stranger by the end of it. That loss felt like an old wound or an opportunity missed; a train she had never taken and was left wondering what could have been. This loss was being robbed at the point of a knife. Something pricelessly valuable, a thing that Yuki had worked and suffered to earn and had just purchased being violently torn away from her. The worst part was that Yuki was helpless to stop it. Yuki had managed to defy everything she encountered in her life: powerful shinobi, nature, time itself. But here was death, laughing in her face, reminding her that she was still mortal after all. Reminding her that she could be wounded, first by threatening her daughter and now taking away the man she had fallen in love with.

There was a battle off in the distance; Yuki could hear it faintly. Her instincts were still sharp despite her emotional distress. That wasn't of concern to her now. All Yuki could think about was how she would never hear his voice again. She would never get to play with him or to feel the exciting rush at his slightest touch. Before Yuki had met Kakashi, she had been completely isolated from the world. All her ties to the past had been severed, both in terms of the people she had known and being set adrift in a strange and unfamiliar time. It was in that painful and confusing void that Kakashi had simply stepped into her life as if he had always belonged there. Kakashi had rescued her like a stray dog and she was in love with him for it. Shit, the dogs, she sniffled. I'm going to have to find a way to break the news to them, unless somehow they already know.

Yuki knew she was being selfish as the tears fell, that she had been lucky to find two perfect men in one lifetime. How awful a person she was to be crying and feeling sorry for herself that she had a chance at happiness and lost it. Others would live and die without ever experiencing a drop of the joy she had felt. Loss makes us all selfish, she thought. Yukihana was exhausted both physically and emotionally. The realization had struck Yuki that she would be sleeping by herself from now on, probably for the rest of her life. War blurred lines and made strange behavior acceptable, which was why Yuki didn't give it a second though when she laid down beside Kakashi. She draped an arm across his stomach and laid her head on his chest, pulling his arm up and around her shoulders. The gesture brought her only a small measure of comfort. It hadn't been the cadaver in her arms that had made her feel safe, it was the soul that used to be inside it.

There were other people that could be using her help. Every moment she was here people would be dying. Yuki figured she had helped enough to earn a break. She wasn't ready to let Kakashi go, to face a life twice as bleak as it had been before him. Besides, Yuki hated looking weak and while she was here with her face pressed to his chest, no one could see her cry.

…

The jounin at the entrance looked furious. Before he opened his mouth, Konohamaru already knew he was in for it.

"What are you doing here?!" He hissed.

Konohamaru gestured at Beki. "She took a hit on the head really hard. I didn't feel okay leaving her by herself."

The jounin looked Beki over. She was an imposing figure in her armor, but any physical intimidation she may usually have was overridden by the fact that a tween was leading her along.

"This location is a village secret, Konohamaru, and you brought a foreign shinobi here!" Before the guard finished speaking, Beki doubled over and threw up in a bush.

"You okay, Beki?" Konohamaru called over his shoulder.

"Yeah Dad, I'm fine," Beki's voice was casual. When she looked up at them, there was a foggy, faraway look in her eyes. "I said, I'm fine Dad. Just let the kid handle it."

The jounin gave Konohamaru an incredulous look. "You expect me to let her in acting like that?"

Konohamaru gave a sheepish smile. "I can always leave her out here with you."

The guard sighed and opened the secret entrance that led inside the Hokage monument. "It's on you, kid."

"Come on, Beki." Konohamaru pulled her along inside, pausing to let their eyes adjust to the dim lighting. The academy students had all been evacuated inside, their teachers standing protectively over them. They gave Konohamaru a cursory glance and then did a double take. "She hit her head really bad and I uh…" He looked at the kids, scared and confused. He opted not to mention that the hospital had been blown up. "This was the nearest safe place I could bring her."

There were a few frustrated groans but they left the pair alone. Konohamaru helped Beki down onto the earthen floor and sat down beside her. Beki had pulled her knees up, dropped her head between them, and draped her elbows over her knees. She was filthy, her body still coated in plaster and rubble. Somehow Beki didn't seem as big as she used to. Konohamaru had always thought of her the way kids always did about their heroes. Beki had been larger than life, always impossibly strong both physically and emotionally. He remembered when he was younger, how she had stood up to the older shinobi all by herself to protect him. The way their faces had changed at the sight of her, the fear she had stirred in killers, had seemed like the feat of a champion. Not to mention how just now Beki had picked Konohamaru up and tossed him like a sack of potatoes instead of trying to save herself. Looking at her now Beki was a girl. A normal girl that was neither incredibly strong or fearless, just an exceptionally good person.

Seeing Beki swallowed by the blast, the desperate fear clinging to his gut while he was looking for her, had brought things into perspective. When Konohamaru had found her and seen that she was pinned he was put in the same position as Beki. Except instead of saving Beki the way she had always saved him, Konohamaru wasn't strong enough. He had to go find someone else. Beki would have died if Yukihana hadn't literally run into him when she did. Sitting beside Beki, Konohamaru couldn't help but notice they were almost the same height now. He was almost as big as she was but Beki still had to protect him. The thought was almost enough to bring tears in his eyes but he swallowed them back. This just meant he needed to train harder and become a better shinobi. That way, next time, he would be the one saving her.

While he was wrapped in his thoughts, Beki had slowly lolled to the side. Konohamaru was pulled out of his planning by the feeling of her head dropping onto his shoulder. He looked down at her face, inches from his own, a flush coming into his cheeks. "Don't let me fall asleep," Beki slurred.

"Okay." Konohamaru adjusted so she wasn't crushing his arm. "Talk to me. I'll know if you drift off if you stop."

Beki closed her eyes and sighed. "Your grandpa was the Third Hokage, right?"

Konohamaru nodded. "Yeah. I want to be Hokage, too. After Naruto."

"You've got a good shot; elected or not, the job runs in the family in a lot of villages." Beki reached out and took Konohamaru's hand, laced her fingers through his, and gave it a squeeze. "You're a good kid, Konohamaru."

Konohamaru swallowed hard but didn't protest that her hand lingered in his. He gave a timid squeeze back.

"Well, future Hokage, you showed me a village secret so I should tell you one of Getsu's," Beki's voice was soft as she spoke, blending well with the low chatter of the academy students and teachers. "Well, at least, it's a secret from the town I was born in. There's a shrine there, to what it was originally dedicated no one knows for sure. An Old God, a tengu, a forest spirit...it's anyone's guess. A few hundred years ago, though, the head priestess and two others were killed defending the shrine, or a spirit, or a lost object. Again, the stories change. It's a place out of time, an ancient thing set way up deep in the mountains. The air is thin and it's no matter the season, it's bone-chilling cold there. The sky above is always gray unless a smoky gold haze sets in. The trees are thin and white like bones, the leaves are drops of scarlet blood on fresh fallen snow."

As she talked, her tone took on a soothing, storybook quality. The words were no longer her own, it was a recording surfacing from the back of her mind, and both of them were just along for the ride.

"No matter how bright it is outside, no matter how many candles you light, the inside of the shrine is dark. An eerie silence covers the place in a blanket, like a sick person is sleeping in the next room and nobody wants to wake them up. Ren and I used to run around and play in those empty rooms, the long echoing halls, the spooky, haunted-looking grounds. But there were places that neither of us played. No one told us not to go there, we could just feel it in our bones not to linger."

"One day, we were coming back from playing in the woods when we found a door set in the side of the mountain. It was old and weathered to the same white gray of the stone around it. We both looked at each other and knew we should run away. There was something about that door, though. So out of place in the middle of nowhere and none of the grownups had ever told us about it. Nothing is more enticing than a closed door to a kid. It isn't till you get older you learn to just leave some things shut tight."

"The door was locked, of course, a giant, complicated padlock and chain secured it. The lock was in surprisingly good shape considering how old it looked. We were ready to give up and head home, to hit the archives and look for an answer, but then Ren noticed the hinges. They were rusted out, brittle with age. We were kids but it only took a couple of hits with a big rock to break them off. Dad always made me carry a long knife on me, just in case, when we went out in the woods. I used it to pry the door open..."

Beki's voice trailed off and Konohamaru gave her a gentle shake. "What was inside, Beki?"

Beki blinked a few times and shook her head. She adjusted, sitting up a little more. "There was this blast of hot air. It whipped our hair around our faces and kicked up the leaves at our feet. It was black as pitch and smelled like Sulphur. Ren and I thought we found the entrance to hell."

Konohamaru swallowed uncomfortably. He was beginning to wonder how much of this story was true and how much was delirious imaginings.

"I wanted to run back. Something wasn't right in there and I knew it. Shrines...shrines sometimes have bad secrets, Konohamaru. They're holy places, right? Places you go to feel closer to God, to help the hurting and comfort the tormented. But sometimes they're there to seal something evil, to placate angry spirits, that sort of thing. Finding an old door in the woods the grownups never told us about and no one really knowing what the shrine was for in the first place...I thought there was a demon down there."

"So, did you run back?" Konohamaru asked. He wished she would take off her armor, or her pauldrons at least. It made it hard to get a good snuggle with Beki when she was wearing a stiff cage.

"No," Beki laughed uncomfortably. "I didn't say anything at the time but when we talked later Ren said the same thing had been happening to her. Something started pulling me forward, like I was wearing an invisible rope wrapped around my waist and someone started tugging on it. I stumbled into the darkness and it led down a steep incline, the stone hewn walls barely wide enough for us to go down side by side. It went on forever, and once the light from the door was gone Ren pulled out a lighter and flicked it on." Beki waved her hand in the air as if seeing it all again. "There were words carved in the walls, old tiny writings. They were too worn to read, too fine a hand for a person to have made with ancient tools. Again, we were weirded out but couldn't stop walking forward."

"After what seemed like forever, which since we were about nine was probably only a few minutes, the path opened up to a gaping void of space. The roof was so high it swallowed up the light. Things crunched under our feet as we walked, like tiny dried out bones or eggshells. We didn't dare look down to see what it was. Finally, we reached the other side of the cavern. Set into the walls were three alcoves, each one with a casket. The creepy thing about them was the caskets were made of glass, or a translucent stone. Each one was roped into the alcove by a garland of sealing tags. Ren and I could see the bodies in them."

"We stopped in the middle of the room and held each other's hands. But our feet dragged us closer. For a moment we thought they were statues because the bodies were so perfectly preserved. The first body was a woman bound in ropes and her face covered with bandages. In fact, she wasn't wearing any clothes in her coffin, just ropes everywhere. Her hair was black and hung down to her waist. Her nails were almost three inches long and filed to points. The second body was dressed but what was strange about her was she was suspended in liquid. Her black hair filled the whole container like a frame, so Ren and I could only make out some of her features. She was pale, and her lips were impossibly red, like she was still wearing lipstick. There was a rag gagging her, too."

"Then there was the last one…" Beki shuddered. "It was full of tar. You could smell it, like it was hot and fresh in there. Before we could get close to that one I started to feel sick. It was like a suddenly came down with a fever. My head swam, my heart was racing, and I broke out in a cold sweat. My legs gave out and I collapsed on the floor. The light from Ren's lighter gave out and I heard the thud of her hitting the ground, too."

Beki's voice dropped a little more. "Then the whispering started. It was like the tiny little flicker of light from Ren's lighter had been warding something off. The darkness swallowed us up, moved back into its domain, and went about its business. The voices were raspy, dry and old, just soft enough you couldn't make out what they were saying. I was trying as hard as I could to move, to do anything, but it was like my body had turned to lead. I called out Ren's name, tried to reach out to her. Without the light, she could have been anywhere in that void. The harder I struggled, the stronger the voices became."

"That's really creepy, Beki." Konohamaru interjected. He was pretty sure Beki was telling him a ghost story. Any second she was going to use some cliché line and try to spook him. Maybe he could steal her thunder and avoid the whole awkward situation.

"It wasn't just creepy, Konohamaru. It was like we were under a spell." Beki explained. "Have you ever been under a genjutsu? How you're trapped in a reality that isn't your own, you're forced to do things you don't want to do, or your body is under someone else's control? It's terrifying. I think… I think what Ren and I found were the real Three Maidens. For them to have that much power, that much presence even after death...it kind of makes me wonder. Why would the three families develop counter styles? Why, if the Maidens were good and just would they have been locked up in some forgotten cavern, covered with protective sealing wards like demons?" Beki's eyes got a faraway look and she grimaced. "Were they even dead when they put them in there? Were they even dead when we found them?"

"Maybe it wasn't the Three Maidens. Maybe it was three bad people. Why else would they lock them up like that?" Konohamaru answered.

Beki shook her head. "I don't know. Every so often I have nightmares about that day. I don't even know what happened after I collapsed. I stayed conscious for a little while, I think, but then after that Ren and I woke up in the shrine. My dad said he had found us out in the woods, babbling to ourselves. Our fevers didn't break for three days. It creeped my dad out because we wouldn't stop talking about 'mother'."

Konohamaru screwed up his face. "How is that creepy?"

"Ren's mom died in childbirth. By that point, my mother had been dead to me for four years. Ren talking about her mother, a woman she never met and no one around her had ever really knew, was strange by itself. As for me, I never called my parents 'mother' and 'father'. They were 'mama' and 'papa'." Beki shook her head. "It probably sounds stupid from the outside but just talking about it raises my bile."

"Did you ever go look for that place again?" Konohamaru was looking to debunk the story. It sounded to him like the two girls had just gotten sick and hallucinated the whole thing. He had been sure he'd seen monsters in his room when he was sick as a kid.

Beki bit her lip and paused, as if fighting with herself on how to respond. After a moment, she exhaled. "Yes. I went back. I've literally never told anyone this Konohamaru, but you have to believe me. All the stuff Ren and I had on us that day, my knife, Ren's bow- we must have left it behind. I really liked that knife and Ren's bow was an heirloom, so a few summers later I worked up the guts to go back. I thought we were just kids and it was all in our imagination. When I found the door again, there were brand new hinges on it and protective seals across the seams between the door and the rock. As I got closer to check it out, I started to hear the whispering again. I was twelve and healthy. I had gotten plenty of sleep, eaten a good breakfast, and had a nice hot cup of caffeinated tea before I went out. It wasn't the whispering of the trees, it was voices, and the closer I got the louder they grew. Right in front of the door, the voices fell absolutely silent. That pull was there again, whatever that power was took over for a moment and I was doing everything I possibly could to get that door open. I beat on the lock, the hinges, tried to pry it open. It made me desperately want to get in there. After a few minutes, my hands were scraped and bloody enough that the pain snapped me out of it. Once I realized what was happening, it scared the crap out of me but I didn't want to let whatever it was know I was afraid. There's really wicked stuff in the world that feeds of people's fear."

A lull had fallen in the conversation from the academy students, their silence punctuating Beki's story. "As I turned and walked away, I felt like something was standing right behind me. The hair on my neck stood up, I could feel someone breathing on me. Then this horrible, raspy voice, right in my ear whispers my name. My real name, which I never use. Before I could even turn around my hair had turned black. There was nothing there, Konohamaru. No footprints behind me, no rustle of the underbrush, but my body reacts to danger on its own. Whatever that thing was, it was evil enough that my body was ready to fight or flee." Beki shook her head and fell silent. Konohamaru was surprised. There was no punchline, no cheap scare to startle him. He had been convinced that this was her big sister way to try to distract him. Beki was exactly the kind of person to tell a kid a scary story to keep his mind off the situation outside. The longer the silence stretched, the surer Konohamaru became that Beki had been telling the truth. That realization raised more questions than it answered. Soon the quiet and the darkness of the cavern became oppressive and he had to speak to chase away some of the anxiety.

"What...what are you trying to tell me, Beki?" Konohamaru asked.

Beki shook her head. "I guess the moral of the story is…" She thought for a moment before continuing. "Konoha is young. Most of the big villages are young. When you're out there in the world, Konohamaru, you're going to find places that are old. Old places have secrets that died and were buried there. I guess I'm trying to tell you not to go digging them up."

...

Yuki had no idea how much time had passed. It could have been hours, days, years. It was like being in the ice again; the whole world around her was blurry and sounded like was underwater. The arm she was laying on had gone numb and so had her mind. That's why when she adjusted and the body let out a small wheeze, Yuki dismissed it. She had also been against Kakashi's corpse so long that her body heat was raising his temperature. There was a small movement above her and Yuki figured that his head had rolled to the side because of the uneven terrain. She nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard her name.

"Yuki?" The word was slurred but the voice was distinct. She leapt up, convinced she was hearing things, but her gaze was met by Kakashi's. He had raised his head and was blinking confusedly. "How long was I out?"

Yuki slid closer and took his face in her hands, convinced she was hallucinating. She raised Kakashi's chin, his bright clear eyes searching hers. "How much of all that did I imagine? I was fighting this redheaded Akatsuki member. Maybe I just hit my head really hard and-."

"You were dead." The words came out raspy and flat, her tone matter of fact, even though Yuki was so overwhelmed with emotion she thought she would faint. Perhaps all the sobbing had worn out her throat.

Kakashi shook his head. "I'm sure it looked bad and you were in distress, but I was knocked out and maybe on the brink of death for a little while there."

"Kakashi, one of my duties as a priestess was performing final rites for the dead and dying. I know how to check vitals. You had no pulse, you weren't breathing, and your body was going cold." Yuki scowled.

"If that's true, then I didn't imagine the conversation with my dad in purgatory." Kakashi sat up further, wincing. "I feel like I was hit by a train." He looked up at Yuki for a reply only to see the flash of her arms as the wrapped around the back of his head and slammed it down onto her shoulder. She embraced him nearly to the point of causing physical pain. Kakashi mustered his strength and reached up, holding the back of her head as she shook.

"If you ever scare me like that again, I'm going to break your legs," Yuki's threat lost most of its umph through her tears.

"Yuki," Kakashi pat her back. "I'm sorry if I-"

"Starting with your toes, one by one, then both of your lower leg bones, then your thigh bone. And if you don't learn your lesson, I'm going to do the same thing with your arms, starting with the fingers and working my way up so you're a complete vegetable." Yuki sniffled.

"That's harsh, Yuki." Kakashi chuckled weakly, which turned into a rasping coughing fit. "I may need medical attention." Yuki squeezed him harder. "Okay, okay. We can stay here for a bit. You are going to have to let go of me eventually, though. Yuki?"

She said nothing. Yuki was too busy crying soundlessly, giving a prayer of thanks that despite the impossible somehow she had cheated death of its prize. Anything was possible for her, nothing was out of reach. Not even happiness.

"Are we safe? Did we win?" Kakashi tried to turn to look around but she snapped his face back in place. He let out a frustrated sigh and pulled her into his lap. "I guess it doesn't matter. I don't think I would have anything left if we were attacked, anyway."

"If he isn't dead already," Yuki's head had leveled, and the crying had finally subsided. Having run out of emotions like joy and grief, Yuki was left with stone cold, single minded determination. "I'm going to kill him. I'm going to freeze him slowly, from the bottom up, so he can feel his cells screaming as they die. Then I'm going to shatter him into a billion pieces so he blows away in the wind like the trash he is."

"Okay, Yuki," Kakashi found the strength to wrap his arms around her, half restraint and half embrace. "Let's just stay here then."

Yuki looked up at him, the trauma forcing her to write every detail about him into her memory, just in case. "You're creeping me out with all this staring. And the physical affection." Kakashi ruffled her hair. "It's like you save everything up and dump it all out at once instead of spreading it around like a normal person." She reached up to his face and went to take down the mask. Kakashi reached up and stopped her hand. "What? Worried my beauty was marred?"

"No, moron, I wanted to kiss you." Yuki redoubled her effort but Kakashi resisted as she tugged it down to his chin.

"Yuki, my mouth is full of dried blood," He paused and tasted his mouth consciously. "And maybe a little vomit."

Yuki kissed him long and hard on the mouth, grateful to have another chance. She pulled away with a sour expression and he raised a questioning eyebrow.

"Yeah. There was definitely vomit."

"The blood you didn't mind?" Kakashi chuckled.

"Blood is fine. It tastes like iron. Vomit is way grosser." Yuki pulled his mask back up and settled against him, as if they were about to watch some fireworks or a spectacular sunset.

"I don't want to hear about what's gross from a woman who just kissed a 'dead' man." Kakashi pet her affectionately. "Don't think I didn't notice how I woke up. What else did you do to me while I was vulnerable?"

"You'll probably be a father in about nine months." Yuki said humorlessly but her grin gave her away.

"You would assault my unconscious body, you creep." Kakashi kissed the top of her head. "My creep."