"Rin, you need to get out of here alive."
His voice is weak, yet his grip on her is surprisingly firm.
"But-"
"Rin, go now."
His watch is sweet, innocent - her heart regrets the distance that will forcibly come between them.
And she lets the tears fall. The warmth of his hand and the smile that brings light to her world. Gone.
Then, the piercing scream transpires, and it is so loud, she is impaled by it.
Her mind wakes to the quietude that is reality.
It is dark in this forest, but the moon's feeble ray sheds light to her surroundings. It was just a dream.
Somewhere not far from her is the sound of Deidara's heinous snoring.
Quietly, she pads past her teammate and disappears for the forest. And she is walking, and walking, until her mind clears and her body is no longer sweating from the dream she can barely remember.
Then she sees him, by the riverbank with the light of a distant moon and the accumulation of a million stars. He is sitting relatively still and contemplating a smooth pebble in his hand.
She finds the sight surrealistically faultless. That is, the sweet perfection of his mysteriousness amidst the dead of the night.
"Hello Tobi," she says quietly.
He slowly turns and acknowledges her, then returns his gaze to the pebble between his fingers.
She stares with heated curiosity as he carelessly throws the stone into the gentle rush of water. It hits the river, bounces across in several skips and reaches the other side intact.
"Incredible," she whispers.
"You try," Tobi says softly.
He hands her another pebble from out of nowhere.
"I'm not sure, I don't know how to skip rocks," she says uncertainly.
"You can learn."
Then she tries, really tries to copy his movements, remember, imagine the way he did it. But it is harder than it looks and so it uselessly hits the water and drowns itself in the depths of the river.
"I'm so terrible," she mumbles sheepishly.
"You're not, you're learning," he says reassuringly.
Then he gives her another and he shows her how to angle the pebble properly, tells her the amount of force required, demonstrates to her again until she manages to skip it once before it sinks away.
"That's better," he says.
She smiles and he watches her for several long seconds before turning his gaze to the river.
He picks another pebble and throws it with much more force than necessary. But he is skilled and it skips several times and lands far, far on the other side.
Then, she notices his left sleeve.
"Your arm, how is it fairing?" She asks quietly.
"Good," he answers without looking at her.
She reaches out and places a hand on his arm. The action halts him mid-way from another pebble skipping moment.
"I can fix this for you," Rin says and she slides the sleeve of his cloak to reveal the torn fabric at the site of injury.
He does not reply so she takes it as a cue to continue.
From her medical kit, she extracts a thin silver threading needle and begins the process of re-threading the fabric.
And so they sit there without speaking, the night deafeningly silent, but sweetly unperturbed to the pureness of this situation.
"I'm not much of a sewer but I figured it should follow some basic rules as wound stitching," Rin says.
Tobi watches her in tense silence, as if she did something to disconcert him. But she cannot see his face, so she is unsure of her speculations.
Except, his chakra is soft, gentle and warm. She has never sense such a compassionate level of chakra coming from him before.
"Thank you," Tobi says, and he hands her another pebble, "I think it is your turn."
So they sit together for an indefinite amount of time, watching each other skip rocks and smiling when Rin makes a feeble attempt to distract his concentration.
Just like the light at the end of a tunnel, it really feels like home.