Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto. However, the OCs do belong to me.

"It cannot be seen, cannot be felt,

Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt,

It comes first and follows after,

Ends life, kills laughter."

J.R.R. Tolkien, There and Back Again

The pitter patter of the rain created a shield around me. The water never quite touched my skin, instantly repelled by my too-big, stolen yellow raincoat. I cupped my trembling hands together and caught the falling water, noting the faint presence of energy in it – natural energy, my mind supplied.

My gaze unwittingly strayed onto the tallest building at the center of the village, onto the grotesque humanoid face with long, jutting tongue that overlooked the village, where the chakra burnt the brightest, as vibrant as the morning sun.

A loud cough forced me out of my stupor, again. We had been at it for a while now – me, drowning inside my thoughts, whilst the man just stood there, staring at me, as if I was something that he couldn't comprehend – as if I was something awful.

I supposed I was.

"So..." I cleared my throat, "you're not a kidnapper, are you? I'm guessing we're related…? 'Cause I don't think my mum would've let me go otherwise."

When Mikoto, without even an ounce of thought, handed me to the infamous Uchiha, I did not bother to act surprised – I could not muster the will, actually. At the time I had failed to sense their presence, but the Tree could – more than that, it had managed to spy on their little conversation. To say that I was shocked by what I'd heard would be an understatement.

"Oh I am definitely kidnapping you. A friend of mine loves to eat naughty little monsters."

Heh. Monsters. Weren't they all?

My eyes roamed over the deserted park – a dark, lifeless nook that smelled unbearably like piss – a perfect place to commit something shady. It was tucked behind tall, concrete buildings that had so many pipes running on their walls they lost what little aesthetic value that they once might possess. Considering the village's extremely fudged up weather and lack of forestry, the excess rain water had to be diverted somewhere to avoid mass flooding and insect infestation – gutters and drains alone would not be enough – thus came the pipes, which seemed to directly channel the water into the large lake that surrounded the village.

The uncomfortably high humidity of the village left little to be desired. Not only did it increase the prevalence of many airborne allergens, it also increased the density of the air, thus creating more resistance to airflow in the airway, resulting in an increased work of breathing. I wondered if that was part of the reason why so many ninjas in this place wore rebreathers – besides the obvious dabbling with aerosol poisons. Shortness of breath could not be good for their profession, though it would be more ironic if their rebreathers were to malfunction and choke them with their own breath–

The masked man coughed, again.

I heaved an irritated sigh. "What are we doing in Ame, Mister? My brother said this place likes to be left alone. Someone might punish us for sneaking in."

The man shrugged. "My associates are the leader of this village, I'm sure they won't mind us. As for why we're here…" I watched as the man approached me with purposeful strides. My body went tense, arms ready to lash out even though any attempt of resistance would most likely be futile.

Curiously, instead of maiming me in fifty different ways, the man lifted me and deposited me on the park's rusty slide. He then crouched in front of me so that we were at the same eye level. "Your mother wants me to talk to you about your," the man made a vague gesture with his left hand, "upsetting behavior. That in itself is hypocritical, but who am I to judge, hmm? So, talk."

I plastered a plastic smile. "Sure, but you have to tell me who you are first. I'm not supposed to talk to strangers, you know," I gestured to his mask, "especially one that looks like a kidnapper."

I tightened my grip on my knees when the man's visible eye narrowed in mischief. With a dramatic gesture the rogue ninja unfastened part of his mask and revealed his scarred and bitter beyond words face.

Hypertrophic scars spanned horizontally over the visible side of his face, though the man did not seem to suffer from any facial nerve damage, since he was able to grin like a damn shark. I almost snorted, if the man expected me to be scared by such scars then he must have never seen teratoma with both eyes and teeth on it. That, was the real stuff of nightmare.

Histologically speaking, if I cut him up and inspected samples of his skin tissue under microscope, I would probably find a thicker than usual epidermal layer, with disarray of basal epidermal cells and thinner collagen fibers in the dermis.

I inwardly wondered if I could use yin release to rearrange his collagen bundles – and subsequently his epidermal layer – into something that was closer to normal tissue. Though if given the chance, I would have preferred to utilize treatment with mesenchymal stem cells instead, what with their ability to repair and replace cellular substrates, attenuate inflammation, increase angiogenesis, and enhance migration of reparative cells; just to see whether I could do it or not. Granted, both methods could backfire and develop into squamous cell carcinoma or something more malignant – certainly not a bad way to get rid of the older Uchiha. But for now…

Tentatively, I positioned my palms over his scarred skin and palpated his temporalis and masseter muscles. Those muscles relaxed as the man's grin loosened, replaced instead by barely concealed confusion. There was no deviation on his lower jaw, I noted.

"Mister, do you experience hearing loss?" A history of conductive hearing loss might reflect Eustachian tube dysfunction from weakness of the tensor veli palatini muscle, which was innervated by a branch of mandibular nerve – the nerve which I currently inspected.

The man stared, perplexed, but he humored me anyway. "I don't believe so…"

"Any dry eyes? Maybe visual blurring in cold places…?" Cold temperature, e.g. cool wind, might trigger episodic visual blurring from corneal edema in the eye, suggesting an underlying trigeminal neuropathy.

He blinked, unconsciously wetting his eye. "Not really."

I hummed. "How about diminishing taste, any difficulty in chewing?"

"None."

I removed my hand from his temple and trailed my other hand from his jaw into his forehead, my touch feather-light. I then dug my currently uncut nail into his skin at a random interval, though the man did not even flinch. I was not sure if it were due to sensory loss or due to the fact that I was pathetically weak.

"Have you experienced…" What was the Japanese equivalent for that word again? I shrugged and continued in English. "Recurrent, intense, sharp, stabbing sensation on your face?"

The man did not deign me with any verbal answer, but the fact that he looked like he wanted to squeeze me like a bug told me enough – that, and the minute twitching on the skin around his eye, cheekbone and jaw.

Brief trigeminal neuralgia attacks could be triggered by talking, chewing, teeth brushing, shaving, a light touch, or even a cool breeze. The pain itself could be quite severe – a patient once described that it felt like electrical shocks – but judging by the man's track record (just look at his face, duh), I doubted that he would seek proper medical help. It was either that or the man simply dismissed his pain as a result of his traumatic injury.

I was not sure why I did it, but without a word I turned my back on him and climbed onto the top of the slide. I huddled into myself there, where the playground's faded canopy could shield me from the rain.

I cupped my hand together and held them out, gathering the falling water. Taking into account what I had unknowingly created whilst under duress, what I was about to create should be pretty doable. Nature had already provided everything I needed: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen.

I closed my eyes and pictured what I wanted to create, its chemical bonds and orientation, atoms and molecular formula, its weight. Unlike the last time when I tried to fix my glasses, when my desperation got the best of me and clouded my focus, this time I centered my mind towards the process – channeling specific intent, step by step – rather than simply imagining the end result, lest I vomited another freaky creation.

I held the water close to my chest and felt my spiritual energy shifted into my palms, pushing and folding. With full concentration, the idea, the power, rose almost unbidden in my mind. I grasped it and it felt right, it was something like walking or breathing. I simply had to reach out and–

There.

I released a shaky breath when matters transmuted and crystallized on my palms. My eyes widened and stared in wonder as round, sturdy tablets slowly materialized. Their solid weight felt light as a feather but also terribly heavy at the same time, because that… that evidence on my palms changed everything. It opened so many cans of possibility and–

"What are you doing?"

I exhaled slowly to calm my suddenly racing heart. "Nothing."

I carefully balanced the tablets in one hand whilst my other hand grabbed my now-empty vial from my pocket. I cleaned it with the rain water, acknowledging – but uncaring – of the fact that it was no longer sterile, trusting the man's gastric acid to do its job, before dumping the medicine inside. Chances were the man would discard them into the nearest trash bin anyway, so not really my lost.

I carefully slid down the metal slide, coming face to face with a glimmering mangekyō. I fought down the violent urge to flinch.

"What's that?" The man gestured towards the vial.

"Umm... I guess it's a gift...? Like candy." I trailed off. How was I supposed to make the dangerous missing-nin leave me alone otherwise? "These are carbamazepine," I continued in English, "an effective drug to treat your condition. You know, to achieve freedom from pain."

The man flicked my nose – which I only now realized was bleeding – though his eye was bright with interest. "What do you want in exchange?"

I tried to act nonchalant, though we both knew it fooled no one. "I don't know. For you to leave me alone, maybe?"

The masked man tilted his head in mock contemplation. "Oh?" I could almost feel his grin from beneath his mask. "Why should I?"

"Because strangers make me nervous. And when I'm nervous, terrible things happen..."

"Terrible things, huh? Did you mean like what you did to your brother's teammate?" The elder Uchiha chuckled at my confused expression, his tone reeked of something awful.

"Let's see…" The man held up three gloved fingers. "The one who's impaled through the stomach was Yūgao Uzuki, the one who no longer has a head was Kō, and the one who's obliterated beyond repair was Yōji Aburame – Sugaru, if you ask Danzō. All of them are, were part of Team Ro, Konoha ANBU unit, the same unit that your brother's in. Congratulations! You might've just become one of the most disturbed children in the history of our clan."

I smoothly averted my eyes away, like a child who was caught stealing from a cookie jar but did feel bad about it. Not really an apt comparison, since what I had done was essentially abandoning those shinobi into the mercy of Shinju – which was nonexistent, not when it was hungry – and only feeling the slightest bit of remorse about it.

I glanced down on my fingers, onto the white, unmarred skin. They used to be dipped in red before the rain washed all the blood away. After I sacrificed my blood, tendrils of wood had emerged from the ground within seconds and I barely had any time to drag Sasuke to flee and force him into sleep – sparing him from unnecessary trauma – let alone to run before the tree started slaughtering the intruders like cattle.

I knew I acknowledged people – barring my relatives – as nothing more than drawings, thus indifference was a given; but to knowingly cause their painful demise… that was a whole new level of low for me.

It was strange, really. I had thought that I would be more disgusted with myself. Despite my earlier resolve and decision to get rid of the intruders, I had always clung to my moral principle. A lifetime ago, I had given my oath to do no harm and had held onto it until my demise. But now… now it seemed I was determined to break it every chance I got.

I did not know what it was about this place that made me so terrible. Perhaps it was not even this place, perhaps it was me, wholly me – perhaps vileness coursed through my blood and was encoded in my very gene. Perhaps the old part of me truly died the second time I met my demise, leaving only a cowardly shell that not even the Death God had managed to salvage.

I never deluded myself into thinking that I was a saint, that I was good; but I had thought that I would be somewhat decent – certainly better than all the people that I claimed to loathe so much.

It was ironic. Every day I had spent my new life being terrified of everyone and everything around me when in reality I was capable of doing as much damage – as much atrocities – if not more.

"So what?" I asked, "I don't care who they are – I never did. Their presence made me feel threatened, so I took care of it. It's nothing personal."

Obito shook his head morosely, his amusement evident. "Such a coldhearted boy!" he mockingly chided. He looked almost proud, and I inwardly wondered what it was that I had missed. To my surprise, the man abruptly clasped his hand with mine, the one that was holding the vial. "As you wish then, Hideyo-chan."

A vortex rippled into existence and the man disappeared into his right eye, abandoning me alone in the middle of a foreign country, chilled to the bone. "See ya!"

I closed my eyes and for a minute simply stood there, shoulder hunched, beneath the weeping sky; as if the heavy downpour could cleanse me off of my sins.

"I hate that guy…"

Well... Obito would return, sooner or later. At least I hoped so.. Mikoto could be quite terrifying when it concerned her children.

"I could devour him if you want, Sir," suggested the voice inside my head.

No, you can't, I wanted to say. Not yet.

I patted the small tree branch in my pocket with a bland smile. "No need, my friend. We might as well make the most of it." Amegakure was located between three of the Five Great Shinobi Countries and had frequently served as a battleground during various ninja wars. Its ground was saturated with blood and its atmosphere was rich with natural energy – a perfect habitat for my hematophagy plant.

I might just forgive Sasuke for smothering me to death if he continued to supply me with such useful knowledge.

"Very well, Sir. What shall I do with the branches in the compound then?"

"For now, let's just stick around the Naka River." If I recall correctly from Sasuke's history essay, a deep ravine near the river was used as a corpse disposal site during the Third War. "We'll figure things out when I get back."

I clasped my hands together. "Shall we? We have a land to devour."

Walking was Nagato's new favorite pastime activity – well, hobbling. Walking implied the ability to walk at a steady speed, and Nagato was not there yet. Healing his damaged legs was not his current priority. He was still recovering from malnutrition after having his life force drained by the Demonic Statue for years.

He could still feel the phantom pain on his back, from where the black receivers had pierced him. He knew that he was resilient, the Uzumaki in him made sure of that, but he did not really know how he could withstand the torture for almost a decade. One thing that he knew for sure was that he did not miss being emaciated. Konan never said anything, but Nagato knew he looked terrible – frail, gaunt, all skin and bones. He had almost forgotten how good it felt to move on his own, to not have to depend on others' assistance for simple tasks such as eating and urinating.

Nagato missed the feeling of being free.

He hobbled slowly, but steadily. The crutches dug into his armpits, but it was no longer as unpleasant as it had been last month now that he had gained some meat. He stuck close to the walls. Nagato ignored the vacant looks of his currently decommissioned Paths, especially his Deva path. It felt good to travel and see the world through their eyes, but it was not as good the feeling of the ground beneath his own feet – which were numb due to destroyed nerves.

Exhaustion settled deep into his bone. He had been hobbling for hours and his arms were getting tired of supporting his useless legs, thus it did not come as a surprise when his body tilted over and hit the cold, polished floor. Nagato did not use his control over gravity to soften the blow. He simply lied there, breathing heavily. His knees would bruise, he knew, but the pain he felt was nothing new. Pain was an old friend, something that he welcomed, it showed that he was still alive – he looked down at his numb legs – well, half alive.

Nagato felt Konan's presence before he saw her. She slipped her manicured hands beneath his arms and lifted him with practiced ease. Her hands were getting tanner, he noted.

"How's your travel?"

"Productive," she said. "We now have the famed Sasori of the Red Sand among our rank. He and Orochimaru seem to be getting along."

Nagato snorted at the sarcasm.

Konan strode across the large room and gently deposited him on a well-worn couch. She had tried to convince him to replace it with something better, but the thought of lavishing himself with wealth when many people were barely able to make ends meet simply felt wrong – Nagato had lived in poverty in his younger days, thus continuing the frugal lifestyle suited him just fine.

"You're heavier," Konan remarked with a pleased smile. "That's good."

Nagato hummed his assent. He still had a long way to go before he reached his healthy weight.

Konan conjured a paper chair and sat in front of him. She then handed him a bento and folded her arms over her chest, her eyes were expecting. "Go on, ask."

Nagato murmured a quick thanks and broke his chopsticks. He took a small bite before he faced his second-in-command – or was it leader now? – again. "How's the Uchiha boy?"

When one talked about Uchiha scion, one would immediately think of the Uchiha heir, believed to be one of the best shinobi that the clan had ever produced. His younger brother was also a very promising young man, though his potential was shadowed by his brother's accomplishments, who was a prodigy even among prodigies. One would rarely – if ever – think about the youngest son. Few knew of his existence, including him, and those who knew thought that he was dead, for he scarcely left his house. Hospital records showed that he was a sickly child, born with a strange illness that left him desperately weak. The boy was guaranteed a short existence.

But one day Madara brought his wayward niece – cousin? – who had commendably – if rather foolishly – reverse engineered an Uzumaki seal and made a deal with the Death God for her child's life, and their lives were tilted sideways.

Nagato was not one to pass up an opportunity, he knew that Uchiha Mikoto would be a valuable ally. He had the King of Hell under his control and the Shinigami Mask that Madara had scourged from the woman's belongings, reviving her was easy. At the time he still thought nothing of the child, Konan took care of him whilst Nagato did his job. He then had sent Mikoto and his son away – through his Deva Path, of course – with a stern reminder for the woman to get herself in shape.

Nagato then had drifted to sleep – summoning the King of Hell had always made him sleepy – and was startled into awareness when the black receivers on his back slid off of his flesh and fell into the floor with loud clangs. It took him a few moments to gather his bearing and summon the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path.

It never came.

He almost tried again, but the absence of exhaustion, the absence of the seemingly never-ending engulfment of his life force stopped him. Nagato was not sure what came over him, but a single thought struck him: he did not want the Demon Statue back.

Up until that day, he had spent his entire life placing the needs of others before his own. He became a ninja so that he could protect Yahiko and Konan; he joined Akatsuki as a powerful tool meant to help Yahiko bring peace to their country; after Yahiko's passing, he became its leader because it was his responsibility – his destiny – as the bearer of Rinnegan to save the world from itself, to inflict pains of such magnitude that nobody would ever harm anyone else ever again. But for once in his life he wanted to do something for himself. He wanted to walk, to run, to climb – everything that he was unable to do ever since he became a cripple. He longed the feeling of not being helpless.

Konan, for the first time since Yahiko's death, looked genuinely happy with his decision and assisted him in his recovery. She also assisted him in his duties; namely, leading Akatsuki, and of course, searching for the missing Demonic Statue (he might not keen on using it anytime soon, but their plan of world peace should not be tossed aside for the sake of his personal happiness), and logical deduction had led her to their main suspect: the youngest Uchiha scion.

Nagato did not know if Konan was the crazy one for suggesting the notion of if he was the deranged one for entertaining it. But there was simply no other possibility left.

"Last week," Konan began, "barring hospital visits, was possibly the first time the boy ever stepped foot outside of his house. He looked sick – anxious, but there were no black receivers in sight." Konan held up her hand before Nagato could interrupt her. "I took a liberty to put him in a life threatening situation, to see if he would summon the statue – he didn't. So, I healed him and waited."

Nagato narrowed his ringed eyes when his partner's face scrunched into something unreadable.

"When he woke up, he went into the woods, for some reason. I'm not sure what happened there, but by the time I noticed anything the man that I had sent after him was already dead – hanged on a tree. I don't know how he got there. I knew he walked into the forest, dazed, after he somehow freed himself from my illusion, but he was walking into a completely different direction. Even ignoring all the inconsistencies, there's something that's just…" Konan grimaced, "wrong about the whole situation. Then the boy found him and started sprouting gibberish towards the tree. I thought they meant nothing, but then I listened – truly listened – and I realized that it was a language."

Nagato remained silent. He did not think he had ever seen his normally calm and composed teammate look so confused.

"There's something about that boy that is more than meets the eye."

"Perhaps," Nagato said neutrally.

Konan raised her brow knowingly. "I know you don't believe me, Nagato. I didn't believe me."

Nagato paused his chopsticks. "Didn't?"

"I was trying to heal these lacerations on the boy's neck, and you know that in order to use healing techniques we have to convert our chakra ratio to imitate that of the recipient to stimulate the healing process. It's difficult for me to do that, considering the boy's condition and my Yang affinity, so his system rejects me, but not in the typical way. His spiritual energy surged, almost forming a Yin Release, and I saw these…"

They were glitches of reality, flickering back and forth between nothingness and existence. Konan could vaguely make out a physical form behind the translucent fume, but it was like trying to peer through raw sewage. She could barely get any details through the haze of absolute wrongness that surrounded the things. They were something like porcupines, though they had no spines; they reminded Konan of octopuses, though they had no tentacles; they seemed similar to vultures – preying on energies and minds. Starving.

Konan shook her head, "I don't know… floating things… held by a cord on his navel."

"What…?"

Nagato's hands twitched, the movement did not escape Konan's watchful eye. They both knew if it wouldn't inevitably kill her, he would have already used the Ningendō.

Konan stared into a distance, lost in thoughts. "That boy is not like us, Nagato, not really… human. Say what you want, but I know, I know… I have held him in my arms, I have felt his energies. I know he looks like us, behaves like us… but don't be fooled by his appearance. He might look frail, as if a simple gust of wind could send him sprawling, but on the inside…

"He's something out of this world."

"I take it you're a defector now."

Konoha betrayed us first, she wanted to say. "I suppose I technically am."

Mikoto dragged the edge of the blanket and tucked it into Sasuke's chin. It was almost like nothing terrible had happened, considering how peaceful he looked.

"You seem happier."

"I am."

"You've been sober."

"For the past six months, yes."

"Good," Fugaku brushed stray hairs from Sasuke's face, "Inoichi has been asking around, so I have to start a rumor that you're seeing someone else."

"It's fine," Mikoto said. "I'm sorry I'm rarely home."

Fugaku shrugged. Mikoto followed him outside and quietly closed the door behind her.

"We manage."

They stopped by the front porch, where Mikoto watched with morbid fascination as the Tree engulfed the mangled bodies on its trunk and shrunk into itself before it disappeared into the ground, as if it were never there.

She looked at her husband. "Do you know about this?"

Fugaku walked away and dutifully grabbed a garden hose from a neighbor's house and started spraying high-pressured water to clean the blood and dead insects. "I know that he has this small plant that he likes to talk to when he doesn't think there's anyone around. I asked Sasuke to bring him to the park once, but that's obviously a disaster, and Sasuke reported that he doesn't really want to interact with other children. He likes being alone, so I turn a blind eye towards what he's doing. He appreciates it."

"Is he happy?"

"The happiest that I have seen in a long time, certainly less depressed. He has this spark of curiosity, as if he's truly seeing the world for the first time."

Mikoto felt her eyes teared up. "Good," she echoed.

Fugaku pressed a comforting peck to her temple. "He'll live a happy life, we'll make sure of it, even if only from the distance."

Mikoto walked into the space where the Tree used to stand, holding a garbage bag as she collected fallen teeth, weapons, and other knick knacks of the now dead shinobi. She burnt organic tissues and everything else that she could not scrub away to cinder. Fugaku followed suit.

Mikoto surveyed the clearing, hands on her hips. "If anyone asks, Sasuke was practicing Great Fireball Technique and accidentally set things on fire."

Fugaku chuckled. "Agreed."

"Well…" Mikoto wrapped her arm around her husband's side. "You should probably go back to the meeting, before your clone implodes itself. You know how annoying our relatives are these days."

"Those fools are contemplating a rebellion." Fugaku rested his chin besides Mikoto's head. "I personally think it will be less risky to simply move away." That was, if they ignored the fact that the village would sooner slaughter them all rather than letting them go – the loss of valuable manpower and the possible leak of the village's secrets were reason enough. "The Will of Fire, putting the village before our family… it doesn't really suit us anyway. We put our family first, first and foremost."

"I'm thinking of a lake house," Mikoto said. "Hideyo could plant anything he wanted, Sasuke could practice Great Fireball Technique whenever he wanted to, and Itachi…"

"Itachi could retire," Fugaku said. "He's a pacifist and the things that he has to do here clearly make him miserable. I think he would rather be a scholar... Lake house sounds perfect."

Mikoto smiled, bittersweet. It felt nice – somewhat – imagining what they could have become, even if it were never meant to be. "Agreed."

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