Little Rabbit knows the deer must be wise; their sharp paws skyboom through the underbrush when danger is close. In search for his snake, Little Rabbit finds a doe beside a puddle, wounded and weeping from eyes and haunch.

"You there, deer," says Little Rabbit. "Why so glum? Just look at the lovely puddle you've found."

The crying doe lifts up her head. "Oh, little rabbit?" she moans. "Are you my baby?"


The physical pain of his body is, perhaps, one of the more violent discoveries made that blurry morning; burning, broiling, near acidic. Pain delivered without consent feels more like a rape than a bludgeoning—everything they do to him does.

This time, the pain does not ground him.

This time, the heat and the itching and the aching and the tenderness, all of it has Sasuke's thoughts folding over themselves, dashed against the smooth inside of his skull into scattered pieces so small he doesn't bother trying to fix them.

No, there is no thinking to be done now.

His brain and his eyes and his entire body are a tender, pulsating bruise. All of him is screaming. It's impossible to hear anything else beyond how much it hurts, and Sasuke believes it's getting louder the longer he spends mapping out the entirety of the village, ragged and wounded in more ways than seven.

He's leaping over houses, banging across tin roofs, palms bruised and sliced by rough-cut shingles, swinging off rusted guardrails and bathing in the memory the pain elicits.

Running like—like Naruto, that fucking bastard.

Gods, can he not think about that worthless idiot for once? Were all those injections Orochimaru forced into him more memories to torture him with?

His sharingan answers with a rupture of images Sasuke has spent the better part three years burying because he hates them, and he hates his sharingan—himself for remembering the way Naruto—when Naruto—and the smoke went in his eyes and nose and—and he couldn't

A noise escapes him that sounds more like a snarl than the intended curse, landing in a crouch on some nobody's balcony as a wave of nausea crashes over him. Nobody moves inside the apartment. Everyone freezes the moment he's in sight. Sasuke hadn't thought it unwarranted at first, until he realizes the kid is crying and his sharingan pound like gongs. First it's guilt, then it's anger, then he's running away with a snort and a full curse and a double-fisted pound of his hands.

He can smell his stuffed dinosaur when something bad is about to—no thinking, you fucking idiot!

Just moving, and breathing, and throwing himself over apartment blocks, soaring alongside the birds. Memorizing every street and house and building and barn and pathway feeding off into the surrounding woodland, sharingan winking along a string of rasping pants.

Filling his lungs on the glide up, holding his breath while he feverishly scans, he exhales every doubt in his thundering head when he begins to fall. Watering from the wind, blurring with tears, Sasuke feels his eyes slip shut. Right as they roll backwards, humid chakra fans hot from his heels before he lands with a thud. Then he springs up, catlike and desperate, driven feral from their sight.

A herd of deer frozen in his circling shadow, the villagers glut the side alleys, hundreds of glass eyes watching him in loose sockets. Sasuke doesn't care. He can't, more honestly. He felt it the second he woke up.

He felt a crack somewhere.

Something inside him snapped. Something very, very familiar.

The same thing that snapped the night he made a decision between his living family and his dead one. The same crack that sent him scrambling into the abandoned compound wearing nothing but his late cousin's pajamas, back down the rotting garden walk, back down on his knees where mother lived as a faded stain.

Back to moan, and sob, and weep, and scream, and punch, and beg, and cry.

Please, please, you have to understand! Just listen to me, I have no fucking choice!

Curled up on her stain and pretended the dip was her lap; kissed his own blood off the floor and pretended the heat was hers; every hour of every moontime, Sasuke spent them with mother. Leaving her, leaving her stain—there isn't a pain in this world that compares, and Kakashi should have known that. Kakashi should have known.

I must disgrace our family in order to bring justice to our clan. And I'm. . . I. . . Mother—Mom, please. I'm sorry.

I know you hate me when I cry.

He's trying to focus, but all Sasuke sees is his chidori screeching past Kabuto's spine, replaying it over and over and hating himself more and more. His nose burns. His teeth grind. How could he have missed? Why do you always screw everything up?

Angrier, and angrier, and angrier; failing, and failing, and failing.

It shames me to say this decision. . .

I'm so scared. I don't know what—why I'm—I can't do it. I can't.

I know I'm humiliating. I've been a failure my whole life.

I don't deserve forgiveness, but I still love you.

Can she even see him? Do they even bother looking? It's a difficult distinction to be made: Is it worse to be forgotten, or watched? He doesn't want them to see him like this. He's not supposed to think. He hasn't thought about the last time he prayed in so long.

Why does it always come back? Feelings, and feelings, and feelings.

I know that until I bring Itachi's corpse back to this room, or a new lantern burns in Amaterasu's temple, you and father will never hear my prayers.

He flings himself upward off a guardrail, realizing he's been mimicking the rhythm of some invisible mother's arms when, for a brief moment, his eyes close and he's tired.

And that—that's—that's. . .

Forgive me, please, forgive me.

The air is cold, but the breaching sun is warm on his sweating back. Wingbeats burst past him and Sasuke seizes up, Totsuka biting through three crows, their spiraling halves condemned to earth. The villagers let out a noise and scatter—fucking rats, they are.

Uncaring, his sharingan pierces through the rain of feathers accompanied by a re-emerging migraine, scanning the forests and the mountains and the sodden valley between. Even if it's pointless. Even though Orochimaru isn't fucking here.

But I promise you, mother—

Wind whistles past his ears, hair blown up, feeling his insides float snug to his spine as he begins to fall, faster and faster and faster.

If he could just hit the ground.

If he could just let himself hit the ground.

I'll kill him.


"So. . . you are going with him?" The way she asks leaves a bitter taste on the tip of his tongue.

"For now, yes." Imina nods, head falling forward an inch or two. Looking pitiful enough to do something about it. Bitching be damned. "You'll still see me off and on. We have too much to do, he'll be concentrated on other things. I still have babysitting duty, remember?" Accentuated with a smile. "I have plenty of reasons to come around. Quit your moping."

Imina leers at him beneath the shade on her face, dark lashes kissing her brows. "Kabuto, you promised."

"I know." He makes a lot of those. She should know that by now. He should too. "I didn't forget." Imina snorts and rolls her head. "I didn't, honest."

"Whatever," she grizzles. "Do not be surprised when I am gone if you take too long."

". . . Your sepsis? It's progressed?" Not that he needs an answer. Her forehead is sweltering against the pads of his middle and forefinger, Imina's expression souring behind his wrist. She has a fever, but they all have a fever in that sewage tank they call a village—Orochimaru calls a village.

Scanning her circulatory system feels like cutting waist-deep through tepid sludge. It's all shit inside. Rotting, festering tissue and inflammation. It's a miracle for her that Orochimaru hasn't requested another dissection yet. But he will.

"It's progressed." The pound of another nail driven into her coffin.

Imina laughs. Scoffs, more like, but with enough frustrated amusement to flash those shaved incisors. She pounds a hand to her sternum, voice drumming out, "Forget this too?"

"No." Couldn't possibly forget the worst smell he's ever encountered in his whole damn life. Worse than Orochimaru's. Thinking of which, he leans forward. Imina's eyes snap up at a loud sniff. A warning. "This is serious. How bad is it?" Being the insufferably stubborn woman she is, of course she doesn't answer. Give her a moment to remedy that mistake. ". . . Imina, how bad has it gotten?"

Imina lays a hand on her abdomen, staring at the ground but obviously seeing past it, frame turning stiff. A rat caught in a fist it's too stunned to fight against. Too stunned by the initial terror to begin fathoming what horrors its capture prerequisites. The same fate of every rat that calls Orochimaru Lord.

"Imina."

The woman he saved two years ago looks out from the cage of a death-white fist.

". . . It. . . I think it fell out."


Sasuke had forgotten how easily he burns without sunscreen, having become so pale he can barely make out where his sleeves stop and his hands start. He's a winking ghost each time his reflection casts off a passing surface, a spindly moon in the blackness of the bunker revealed pink beneath the fluorescent lights of his bathroom mirror. There's a vindictive crack spidering out from the edge. His personal signature, one he's spent a lifetime associating himself with: I can break whatever I want whenever I want to.

Underneath the overhead, Sasuke stares at himself until the green veins of his underarms slap his jaw left, disgust repurposed into a shield against the dawning realization that he is beginning to look like Orochimaru; something he must come to terms with eventually, but not now.

When dead skin cracks on his shoulders and scales form, Sasuke uses his sword to gingerly scrape himself smooth, one knee tucked beneath his chin while the other dangles off the bathroom counter. He nicks himself twice. The task is made easier when carried out with a kunai, but of course he doesn't have any. There's nothing of use inside this fucking bunker.

There is but one room Sasuke has yet to tear apart and its contents are already known, the precise reason it remains untouched.

He busies himself with attempting to clean his yukata, dragging his knuckles against the washboard's ribs and using the pain to ignore his bruising, until the sound strikes a cord and Sasuke has to stop. Fifteen minutes of folding and unfolding his pants is enough to settle himself. He begins washing again. The cycle repeats.

Sasuke gives up when the blood refuses to scrub out, a familiar frustration now that his wardrobe consists of more whites than blacks. Why on earth Orochimaru prefers stark colors is beyond him; the sannin isn't stupid, so the decision must be more nuanced—too nuanced for him to waste time decoding. He concedes to himself that subtlety was never a strength of his.

Throwing his yukata away is a small, private victory. He will find something else to wear, and this time it will be black. Heading up through one of the many concrete tunnels feeding back to the surface, Sasuke pauses on the second floor by a door his hands refuse to open. He continues past it after several beats of strained silence, dragging his still-aching body away from further self ridicule.

The sunlight is blinding the second he steps foot out of the bunker, Sasuke slipping into a cloud of genjutsu—thick enough that even he is lightheaded—without so much as blinking.

It seems he's emerged further down the hillside in a damp, grass-laden burrow, squinting while his eyes adjust. Shimmering rice paddies bleed into focus the closer he reaches the tunnel's drooped mouth, billowing lush green and speckled with wide-brimmed hats. The irrigation channel running overhead drips water through the cracks in the concrete. Lingering hesitantly between the veils of genjutsu, Sasuke takes his time before fully emerging, chest tight. He takes a small breath and lets it out fast and hot.

He hates being seen.

He hates being around people, out in the open, nothing at his back to limit their avenues of approach. Being underground and isolated, while mentally exhaustive at first, has gradually become the preferred.

Underground, nobody watches him go about his business; nobody tries introducing pointless conversation; nobody tells him to stop. Nobody is around to interrupt him or criticize the decisions he's making. That's all anyone ever does; criticize and dissect and reject, whether it be him, or his goals, or how he achieves them. Nobody listens. Nobody understands.

You shouldn't act like that, Sasuke.

You shouldn't talk like that, Sasuke.

You shouldn't think like that, Sasuke.

Worthless drivel any moron with a mouth can come up with. He takes another breath and holds it in his chest, listening to the channel overhead with a mounting vehemence.

There is no one more worthy of his resentment than him. Every grievance he suffers is the fault of a single man, the rest be damned. Once Itachi is dead, everything else will become irrelevant. The choices and decisions he's made will no longer be wrong, because they will have worked, and Sasuke will finally be proven right

Something prods at his heart. It's not about you, it scolds. It never was.

A hundred pairs of red eyes bore into him; a hundred spectators watch his every move, surrounding him on all sides. A brooding jury that accompanies him wherever he goes. I know, Sasuke pleads with them. Water drips onto his head. He nearly flinches out of his skin. A hundred pairs of red eyes close shut.

He leaves the hollow and steps into the light, sharingan cutting through the outermost layer of genjutsu with the ease of turning an unlocked knob. Everyone is watching by the time he reaches the dirt footpath leading up to the village proper. Sasuke ignores them, but he can't stop his skin from becoming uncomfortably hot.

The village is as he left it, albeit livelier. The sound of civilian life carries through the narrow streets, washes over him in humid, sobering waves. Elephant ears flood his vision as he reaches the top of the hill, their waxy leaves as big as his torso and dripping in morning dew. Sasuke blinks when three pairs of eyes peer back at him from the undergrowth, three pairs of dirty kneecaps filling their place immediately. A clump of children spill out from the foliage into the road and shriek in unison.

Sasuke bites back a curse, unclenching his jaw, but it isn't necessary. The children bolt down the road and vanish into an alley, knocking over a trash can that hits the ground with a pitiful, loud dwunk. Having obviously been alerted to his arrival, a woman erupts from the left, her knees pounding dirt before she smacks the trash can's lid on and holds it down. Another woman rushes to help.

The scene is only a momentary bewilderment. Sasuke cuts a silent path through the crowd, surprised by how easily their attention has shifted, but nevertheless relieved.

It's congested like the first day he arrived, though thankfully there is no adoring onslaught. The villagers seem to congregate at any given locale, residential streets barely differentiable from storefronts. Smaller buildings are elevated with livestock roaming underneath. The chickens are a pleasant sight after so many years.

Apartment blocks look similar to the ones back in Konoha, but far more weathered and sun bleached. They have no decorations beyond outer electrical wiring. The clotheslines threaded between have more color hanging from them than the entire village combined. Small and unimportant, Sasuke can't help but continue to notice.

There isn't a single clan insignia in sight. Looking back, Sasuke can't recall Imina bearing anything resembling a family crest either.

The signs are written in a language he can't parse—one he has never seen before, his sharingan hungrily archiving its uniquities. He pauses. Every Sound nin he has come across could be spoken to, with or without their notoriously thick accents, but here they are completely silent.

No one talks to him—much like Leaf nin, to be fair. While he willingly creates space to begin with, these people do the work for him before Sasuke even has the chance, and better.

The moment Sasuke enters somewhere, everything falls quiet. Plastic clicks announce radios turned down. All discussions come to a screeching halt as if everyone needs all the silence there can be to listen for his movement.

He tries speaking to them. All they do is stare. Where are the people from the cave? Sasuke knows he looks like half-baked shit right now, maybe even a little intimidating to a civilian, but this is ridiculous. He is a shinobi, not a wild animal. They won't even lift their heads, bowing in some illusionary lineup, awaiting him to unsheathe his sword and behead them one by one.

It should upset him, but it doesn't. It should upset him to be painted in such a brutish light, but he feels nothing of the sort. In fact, it sort of feels. . .

Sasuke gives up. Trying to communicate is pointless. Imina will have to translate, he bitterly concedes to himself—if she's even still here.

To his relief, Imina is waiting for him in that disgusting alley much the same as yesterday, clad in a pair of monpe pants hiked halfway up her prickly shins, topless and mummified in bandages from the pits down. He hadn't bothered noticing before, but she is profoundly unattractive. She smells like Kabuto, in a way. When he approaches, Imina breathes in and draws her shoulders back, straightening up taller.

"You look like shit," she cheerily announces upon closer inspection, blueish pupils glossing down Sasuke's body. They snap back to his face. "Your priest didn't think to heal you before abandoning again?"

Sasuke cocks a thin brow. "What language do you speak?" he asks instead.

"Huh?" Imina's head tilts, squinting. She crosses her arms. "Why."

"Why not. None of you understand me."

"We don't want to talk to you."

"And I don't want to talk to you, so tell me what it is."

"So stop commanding me. I'm here to settle a debt, Uchiha." Sasuke gives a low noise. However Imina wants to frame this is no concern of his. "Who did you try to talk to?"

"I don't know."

"You don't—?" Imina blinks, furrows her brows, then frowns with a nasally exhale. "Show me. Then we are done here." She moves past him and pauses, gaze aimed at his welt-laden stomach, Sasuke having already turned to follow. Imina vaguely gestures at him. "Where is your silly shirt?"

The initial impulse is to bite, to tell her to shut up, but Sasuke yields and says nothing. It will prove more arduous dealing with her if she has further incentive to resist. Imina tosses a glance up, focusing intensely on his face. He knows it looks quite a bit as worse as the rest of him. Sasuke blinks, ignores the painful swelling in his right cheek, to signal his disinterest. Imina does not push.

The shop goes silent once again when they enter together, Imina announcing something while shaking her arms out. "Don't do anything," she tells him. She looks at the loom. "You need a shirt?" she asks.

Sasuke nods. "Black."

A moment is spared while she studies him. "Alright." She turns to speak with the shriveled woman perched on a stool beside the counter, their exchange fast but evidently respectful. A little girl is twisted up in the stool's legs with her fingers near her mouth, picking her teeth with a sewing needle whilst staring. His sharingan peeks open. The response is immediate.

The old woman stumbles off her stool and flattens against the wall, blubbering, edging toward the back room. The rest of the villagers scuttle, panic chumming the air sour. Imina whirls around on him, shocked—infuriated. "What did I say? What did I just say?"

Sasuke looks down his nose at her. "I'm learning your language. I'm not hurting anything."

The tension in her face lessens into muddled bewilderment. "Put it down," she orders. The old woman bleats and shrills. Imina visibly pales. "Down, Sasuke."

His hand snags hold of Totsuka's hilt. The little girl beneath the stool springs up, her own sword in hand, Sasuke catching the movement before it happens.

Imina throws herself between them, arms spread in a mock shield, eyes vicious and wide. "Don't."

He acknowledges her heroics with a scowl. She really thinks he would attack a child? Has he done anything remotely comparable? So much for accusing him of being soft. He isn't sure why being labeled the opposite proves equally as offensive.

"You're scaring them. Please. I'm sorry for what I said."

He allows a beat of tense silence to pass in his stead. Sasuke closes his sharingan and releases the grip he has on his sword. No one moves. Turning his head, he spots the other villagers, one slipping out the front door before Sasuke catches his eyes.

His stomach hurts.

"Fine," he agrees. Imina hesitates before shifting her focus elsewhere, returning to her discussion with whom Sasuke can only assume is the seamstress. The rest of the villagers quietly resume their steady retreat. He graces them with dignity by not looking. Their fear feeds a starved portion of himself that has been wasting away for—he shouldn't think about it. Stop thinking about it.

The seamstress, after a few minutes of what appear to be Imina pleading with her, takes his measurements with trembling hands, flinching back whenever Sasuke so much as breathes. He's patient despite it all, more so muzzled by latent nausea than anything else. Imina remains close by with her arms crossed, slouched forward where she sits on the owner's stool, the little girl taking back her perch below. Beneath the layers of bandages, Imina's stomach rises and falls. Sasuke wastes a few seconds pondering whatever ailment could have necessitated them. There's an odor to her that he can't fully identify, one that blends into Kabuto's stench too easily for it to be coincidence.

The strip of cotton measuring tape brushes over his collarbone and Sasuke swipes it away. The gesture earns a sharp inhale, the seamstress cowering.

Imina sits up. "Sasuke," she growls.

"Yeah." Dark eyes flicker over the seamstress' face, then he turns away, pretending she doesn't exist. Pretends he's no threat when he knows he could cut her down like wheat and roll her body in burlap. His stomach punches him. "Yeah." He isn't sure what he is agreeing to. The woman continues her work to the best of her abilities, her struggle doing little to aid his displeasure.

Sasuke slinks away the second the strip of measuring tape departs, retreating outside into the sunlit alley and waiting for Imina to join him. Three children lounging on the porch steps look up when he appears, all bereft of clan affiliation despite their age. They don't cower when Sasuke stares back, surprisingly, one lifting a cigarette to her mouth and lighting up the end with an inhale. Sasuke blows an indifferent snort and steps out of the stench, relocating to the opposite side of the porch without breaking eye contact.

"Alright," Imina calls when she reappears, stomping loudly down the steps, "come, Uchiha."

He frowns. "Where are we going?"

"Further out," she says, already traipsing down the walkway leading to the paddy fields, batting the elephant ears growing along the trim of the porch and speaking to the kids. They laugh. Smile fading fast, Imina spares a glance for him.

"What," grumbles Sasuke.

She rolls her head in a strange way and grumbles inside her throat, "Just follow."

It's a hesitant agreement at first, but her command is obeyed with haughty snort from Sasuke.


"—and you deliver them right to me! For no purpose beyond your own selfish exploits. For your Uchiha runt, who I've yet to even see with my own eyes."

Orochimaru's head dips, mouth set in its usual grin, vacant eyes fixated on something located seven feet before him. "I had no idea you wanted to see my Uchiha runt," he muses. Doesn't seem like he's really looking at anything, but his intensity hasn't changed. Probably something about Sasuke. The remnants of his stomach punch up. "All you had to do was ask. I would—"

"I did."

"—have arranged for you to meet months ago." Orochimaru looks up. "Did you?" His head tilts. "My sincerest apologies, Lord Oda. It must have slipped my mind."

Oda shoots up from his seat, red-faced and bulging-eyed, jewelry clanging. "And you've come to mock me under the guise of diplomacy. You vipers. Wanted to take my father's sacrifice for granted to my face?" He stops yelling. Oda continues in a low voice after running his hands up and down his sides. "I've no interest in seeing something else in your possession that will inevitably fall to ruin." He looks at him. Kabuto meets his glare with a small raise of his chin. "When did you plan on telling me this? Assumed Konoha's invasion a suitable enough reveal?" Oda stabs with an accusatory finger. "You knew all along his arms were gone."

"Mhm." Of course. What a pointless assertion. Oda knows exactly who he is.

"Kabuto does whatever I tell him to, Oda." Orochimaru saunters forward, enough to communicate his threat. Oda stops him with a livid expression. "Your qualms are with me, not him."

"You'd rather take credit for this instead, would you?"

"I'm being honest with you." The temperature drops. The lights flicker. The floorboards sink and moan under a building pressure. "As honest with you as you've been with me. Our agreement ended when you failed to lend support after Kabuto thanklessly supplied Rice's bukenin with intel they would have never acquired otherwise."

"Yes. Right after you sent hundreds of my civilians on a suicide mission that was doomed to fail from the start."

Orochimaru's eyes narrow a fraction of a second. "Then you failed to accurately weigh the cost of our agreement. Your hesitancy to supply remains the instigating event." A moment of violent hesitation from him. There's sweat crying from the base of his neck down his spine. Orochimaru's eye shine glints beneath his brow, maw suddenly peeled back to expose pink-white gums and thick fangs. "I owe you nothing."

The final word is an unseen torrent. The string of lanterns hemming the back wall are tossed, chasing shadows around the room, and then the light snuffs out.

Oda's blood-blushed face forms to shout before darkness swallows it whole.


When wind reaches him at the cusp of the hillside, Sasuke is met with the blinding mirrors of rice paddies and the rolling sea of sleeping mountains. The valley itself is without fog and he can see down to the very bottom from up high. The reeds stretch for what seems like miles behind the bends of the hill and likely further. Though Imina said the wet season brings it, that pocket of water beneath the cave hasn't left his mind completely. He can't remember if it smelled like anything. All he remembers smelling is stomach acid and char.

"You remembered where I live?" Imina asks, still facing forward, billowing her arms with her eyes down on her feet. An annoying sight, Sasuke ridicules her privately.

"Yes."

"Is that what you were doing yesterday?" She motions upward. "When you were?"

"Mmh."

A narrow eye hooks him just over her shoulder. "You scared us."

"I don't care."

Imina scoffs. "Back to normal?" When Sasuke doesn't respond, she adds, "Only come when you are told."

"To your home?" he asks. Imina nods. "We'll see."

"I agreed to train you. Nothing else."

"And you'll train me whenever I decide to show up." He nearly runs into her when she spins around, Imina skidding on loose gravel before she points a finger between his eyes.

"Stop. Bullying. Me." Every word carries weight, however unimpressive it may be. Sasuke eyes her dirty fingernail, then her, fluttering his lashes. Imina drops her hand back to her hip. "I am already helping you. Stop cracking your whip at me." Loudly clearing her throat, she spits between his sandals. Sasuke merely stares. "I am not like them and you will not treat me this way."

He hums. "We'll see."

A shout draws his attention elsewhere, a group having formed off the path further down, surrounding someone who has collapsed. Sasuke doesn't have a chance to see who it is before the crowd bunches and his view is blocked by scrambling legs. Imina mutters something under her breath with a dismissive wave.

"Come, Uchiha. We have a long walk."

He brushes her off and takes a step in their direction. From where he's standing, it seems whoever is on the ground is hurt. Another shout rings out, this one obviously pained, The bottom of Sasuke's lungs begins to warm. The rest of the villagers seem oblivious to the event.

"What are they doing?"

The crowd breaks again and a man spills out onto the grass followed by open-clawed hands. He's covering his head, staring out the shivering gap between his elbows, blood on his face. He looks absolutely terrified. A hand finds Sasuke's arm and grips him there, obviously belonging to Imina by the size of it.

"What's happening?" repeats Sasuke, firmer this time, turning his head to pin her with a stern look.

"They are family. Leave them be," Imina informs, saying it like he should know better. Before the man can roll himself to his hands and feet he is swallowed back up by the villagers, head sent back before he's splayed out on the ground. Sasuke surges out of Imina's grasp, storming across the irrigation channel and over the paddy field separating them.

She said they were family?

To her, or to the man they're currently mauling to death?

"Uchiha!" Imina calls, voice bouncing from what he assumes is her giving chase. Fingers brush his back. "Uchiha, leave th—"

"Shut up," he snarls, shoving against her sternum, sending her stumbling immediately backwards. She rasps out what can only be a curse, Sasuke turning away right as Imina lifts both hands to her chest, the sob she lets out only registered by the time he's nearly upon them.

The villagers are aware of him, heads lifting up one after another, staring. Totsuka rips from her scabbard. Some of them gasp. Some still clutch fistfuls of the battered man's shirt as he dangles limp. None of them move beneath his red glare. The grip on Totsuka tightens.

"Sasuke, stop! They don't understand!" Imina appears between him and the villagers, nostrils flaring when Sasuke aims his sharingan down at her instead. The men shout, this time at Imina, and she cranes her neck to snap back with equal ferocity. He has no idea who they are, but they certainly enjoy pointing at him with less than thankful expressions. There's a dull thud and they begin to disperse, leaving the bloody mess of a person behind in a forgotten pile—like trash.

She called this a family.

Four of them approach Imina, their argument continuing. The man furthest left has blood already in his throat. Without a clue of what they are saying, Sasuke struggles to gauge their threat, the only evidence of viciousness being the spit leaving Imina's lips. The villager she snaps at opens his mouth and Sasuke watches him freeze. He feels it then too. The hair on his arms stands up straight. Static nibbles the rims of his senses.

It does little in the way of harming him. The villagers, however, are all but seizing. The man closest to Imina isn't blinking anymore. It smells like something hot.

"Imina, enough," Sasuke orders. Her hair falls flat with a whirl of her head, white eyes narrowed. He nods at the staggered men. "Enough," he repeats. "I don't have time for this."

For a second, Imina looks ready to chew straight through him, unflinching even when the villagers scramble to their senses and begin whining under their breaths. She answers them with a single vowel and they mope their ways back up the hillside. Sasuke's eyes follow them shortly, sharingan fading to the backs of his eyes before returning at the sight of the beaten man. Is he even breathing?

"Do not interfere with my people." Imina's voice has him glancing forward. The edges of her mouth twitch down. She is soft but stern. "They are none of your business."

He properly gnaws her request for a moment or two, attention veering to the man. "Hm." Sasuke grunts. The man doesn't move. "Fine." They leave him there, Imina going so far as to step over his crumpled form on her way down. Sasuke walks around.

Traversing across the bottom of the valley is all silence and ripples, Imina glancing left and right often to aim an ear behind. It leaves him on edge. Disappearing under the canopy of tangled branches, Sasuke's red stare burrows deep into the space between her shoulder blades, four sets of arms concealing her body behind veils of ever changing predictions. It never ceases to overwhelm him outside of combat. I'm never outside.

Imina's spine bridges up beneath her bandaging four times over.

His sharingan burns.

If she tries to kill him, he will not miss this—

"Do you like animals?" Imina's voice breaks through and drags him back out of himself, Sasuke obliging to instead scowl at the back of her head. Imina tosses a curious glance his way. "Do you?"

Sasuke grinds his teeth when his tomoes loosen around his pupils. "Don't talk to me."

Imina cocks a condescending brow. "Don't talk to you?" she asks. He holds her gaze, glare unflinching. The side of her mouth curls up four times at once. Imina nods with a shit-eating grin. "Alright." She stops looking at him. "Do not let me lose you on the mountain. You would have to make noise to be found."

They walk a minute in silence.

"I don't get lost," Sasuke corrects her, aimlessly seeking something to shed his contempt on. A snort has his eyes touching their corners. Imina laughs to herself, doing the bare minimum to hide it. Her head falls forward with a soft breath.

His sharingan homes in on a knob of dark skin at the base of her neck.

"Don't get lost? Do you know this forest?" Milky eyes find him four times over. Sasuke returns to burning holes through her back. "Have you been here before, Uchiha?"

His tomoes uncoil further. "I'm from Konohagakure," he growls in the back of his mouth. "I know my way around forests." Imina doesn't answer, but neither does she turn away. She stops and faces him fully. "What?" His sharingan urges him to regain sight of her spine.

"Konohagakure?" Imina asks, head cocked. "Where is that?" Her lips form the question four agonizing times, four excruciating

". . . What?" Without fog, Sasuke's voice seems to echo out endlessly, no matter how gently it is used.

"Where did you come from?"

"I said Konoha."

"I know," defends Imina, brows dimpling in the middle. "I said where is it."

Wingbeats sound overhead. A red fist in the back of his hair, Sasuke's sharingan snaps up and his neck cranes for it, the canopy bathed in its infernal glow.

One, two, three, four, five,six,seveneightnineten—

"Oh, huh." Imina's chirp travels for miles. "I can use them instead."

Twenty eyes bore into him, hemming the knobby branches even-spaced, black and reflective and brooding and judging and unfair. Sasuke holds his breath.

One of the crows squawks.

His sharingan burns.

"Uchiha?" He hears his name. "Uchiha?" He shoves past her, refusing to run when the wingbeats follow. Footsteps plap behind. Static pops as a hand finds his bare shoulder and he yanks himself out from beneath it. "Uchi—Sasuke. Ignat, igna—" Imina cuts off with a gasp, the force of Sasuke's fist hitting her chest still traveling through his bicep by the time she hits the water.

"Stop touching me," he shouts, bent at the waist to howl it out, looming over her with a heartbeat in his throat and Totsuka's tooth at hers.

Slumped on the muddy riverbed, glowering behind wet bangs, Imina doesn't speak. His sharingan catches her blueish pupils darting back and forth. He waits for the drumbeat to die down.

". . . Alright," Imina eventually wheezes, beginning to pull herself free from the mud. "Fine." The birds are handled just as simply; a bark of hot flames sends them tearing out of the trees. Imina shields her face against the burst of heat with a dirty arm. "Stop. Do not take it out on them."

It's just as easily ignored. "Take me wherever you intend to go. Stop wasting my time."

She looks like she has something to say, but she chooses not to. Sasuke follows when she takes the lead again, the river shallowing enough for grass to resurface. Carved into the mountain's skirt is a wooden-stepped footpath dug into the dirt. The sheerness of the uphill has Imina approaching it like one would a ladder. She struggles to find the first foothold.

"The mountain paths are old and slippery," she explains between grunts, heaving herself up the first few steps with all four limbs. "Do not hurt yourself."

Stepping closer, Sasuke tests the slickness with the ribbed sole of his sandal, the rubber slipping off with an ear splitting squeak. "Why not use chakra?" Would make sense of why she's barefoot. "You should have worn proper shoes."

Imina gives him a strange look. "What do you mean?"

"Stick your feet to the ground like you do water," says Sasuke, already hiking past her with the help of the underbrush to grab hold of. "It's simple."

Imina huffs herself up a few more steps. "I can't." She shakes her head.

Sasuke crouches in a plumage of ivy to watch. "You can." He reaches his hand out. "You're taking too long." Her refusal is expected. His hand remains open. "Come on."

She glares at him over the lip of the next step with the ends of her muddy fingers going white. "It is flat up ahead," she assures, accepting his offer. Sasuke helps her up the sheerest portions, sharingan finding its way to her feet to curiously study her chakra network. For once, it seems he was wrong. While it passes through her soles on water and concentrates under the heel—almost expertly, he will admit—it seems trapped in her ankles now.

"You're bottlenecking too much at your joints. It feels more secure, but you wear yourself out like that."

Using her forearm to keep the branches away from her face, Imina's cold stare hits his face when a fan of leaves is swept aside. "Mmh," she hums lowly, eyes glued to him. Sasuke brushes the behavior off.

As Imina stated, the path flattens into curves after minutes of him hauling her up the steps. Her faltering causes only a few mishaps that are easily managed. When she doesn't let go of his hand after standing up straight, Sasuke tears away. Imina smirks, but doesn't mention it.

They pass three signs he can't read, cross a red-metal bridge over a deep stream, cut through a sea of green undergrowth teaming with swallows and field mice. The squawks of the crows are overshadowed by the songbirds' echoes.

It's a shame the sun is up. His sharingan recalls the shimmering moss from another forest months ago. Sasuke has to stop it from remembering any further.

"You wear a face when you think." Red eyes loll to the side to find Imina. A small grin sits at the corners of her mouth. "What are you thinking of?" she asks.

If she must ask questions, he wishes would at least be important. "None of your concern."

Her blunt hair whips with a throw of her head, chittering through her teeth. "Has he taken you to the shrine?"

Sasuke's eyes harden. "Why are you taking me to a shrine?"

"It is where I will train you," Imina teases. "Why else would we be going there?" He won't fall for that. "I already said this to you."

"Say it again."

Milky eyes burn him over her shoulder. "We cannot do that in the village. It is forbidden."

"That doesn't make sense."

"It does not have to," Imina bitterly remarks. ". . . So, you have not been to the shrine?"

"Take a guess."

"Huh." She pauses. Then she nods. "That is alright." The silence that falls over her bristles his skin with uncertainty. "That is fine, Uchiha."

They continue up the mountain without speaking again.


A rush of autumn wind whips his bangs from his eyes, the world fanning out in waves of misty mountains, Fire Country's forest-sewn border hidden far beyond.

Take a deep breath.

Smell the evergreens.

Now take a moment.

Orochimaru stands ahead at the cusp of the mountain path, hands clasped behind him, staring into the distance. The revealing of the stomach to raise higher the sword. He is completely at ease. He'll share his mind sooner or later. Always does. Kabuto's interested this time, at least. There are many things to be said about the daimyo, few of them kind. Most of them withering.

Orochimaru agrees. Though most describe it as something far removed, even he has a sense of humor. When he wants to have one, at least.

"So." The sannin's voice croons low and relaxed. Completely at ease. "What do you think?" Orochimaru turns his head and the lavender sickles of his eyes hook and reel him in.

Take a moment. "He's panicking." A measured sigh. "Not surprised."

Orochimaru looks at the ground, thoughtfully rolls his shoulders. His earrings glint. Yellow eyes find him again behind glossy, black bangs. He turns his back to the valley.

"Will Konoha make her move, you think?"

"No." Not unless they're absolutely, desperately stupid. "They still have a Jinchuuriki. Tsunade's at their head." And Jiraiya's on standby, it seems, though his cooperation is certainly temporary. He'd said as much. No need to bring it up. Orochimaru knows. "You're who they'll base their decision on. Not Sasuke." An Uchiha body in the hands of Orochimaru is still a death sentence. Tsunade probably lives in a bottle having to count down the years, every month that goes by.

What season will it be when Sasuke's soul winks out of existence?

"Ah," Orochimaru chides, "don't be so sure, not with Konoha." There's a thin shade of cruel darkening the sannin's face, enough to clench his newformed stomach up in beastly, agonizing knots. Orochimaru's brows furrow and he frowns. "Still?"

"It will for a while." He'll regret admitting that later. He just knows it. "You're right."

"I tend to be in most cases."

Well, now that the excitement of a new toy has worn off, yes. He is. With Sasuke gone, Orochimaru can regain his focus. The kid's too easy a target, to be fair. It's hard not to mess with him. He'll always be the new oddity to figure out. Won't be around long enough to get old.

"Oda's going to do whatever he can to flush me out at the cost of his position, which, as it stands, is more a figment of his imagination. The Leaf won't offer him a quick invasion. They'll devour Rice from the inside out the second they start to sweat."

"Tsunade's smart enough not to draw attention again this soon. She'll look like a warmonger. Anyone would have an excuse." Wait three beats. "He's still breaking contract."

"The contract is null and has been for some time. What's there left to barter for? Me?" Orochimaru smirks and holds out an up-turned palm. Skin is fresh and alive. Not any season soon, thankfully. "Me, the Sealless Sannin, who couldn't save him from the Leaf even if I wanted to? I'd have lost what little respect I have for Oda had he decided on appealing to my mercy."

"Whenever did you start respecting Oda of all things?"

Orochimaru laughs, crosses his arms, shakes his head. "Relax, Kabuto. My pride is unharmed."

It should be, but better that it's not. Defiance is an interesting thing like that. Contempt comes out however it can, even for cowards. Oda makes sense when given consideration.

"How's he going to react?"

Orochimaru offers a casual shrug, looking deceptively human. It's always so much easier to speak with him when there's room to flee. The sunlight on his skin will forever be haunting, of course.

"I've no way of knowing. By the time he makes his decision there will be no one left to punish. The Leaf will swarm the remains for any trace of me." Pale lips curl ruthlessly. "Sasuke's name will be tarnished along with whatever hope is left for him. They'll strike his name from their history books. He will be dead and gone."

"Might've already happened." Peek soft out the brush while the wolf passes over. "Haven't heard any mention of Leaf nin milling around lately."

The evergreens shift and whisper. Orochimaru admires them, quiet while he thinks. Or waits. Or mulls something over. Who really knows. Could just be smelling for any himself.

"Jiraiya took the Nine Tails under his wing for a reason. Not a trivial one, either." Yellow eyes harden in their sockets. "They're grooming him." With a guttural snort, Orochimaru whips his hair over his shoulder. "An inspired idea, I'm sure."

"I don't see that trajectory panning out as quickly as they hope." Naruto is a mere blur in the deep well of his memory. Everything sinks to the bottom eventually. It's to be expected. But he remembers he was nowhere near as efficient a student as Sasuke—if they'd give the little bitch another chance. His wounded belly tickles from the inside. Spare a second to entertain that charming fact. "What will Sasuke think?"

"You've spoken with him more than I have," Orochimaru purrs. "What do you think?"

Wait three joyous beats. "Well. . . Who knows." Try to curb that feral urge to smile. Try and fail. Doesn't matter. "I have my suspicions."

Orochimaru looks at him in the exact same way. "Do share."


He sees the glow before he reaches the bottom, Imina's bandaged spine melting into the darkness of the lower floor, then she's out of sight.

"Down here, Uchiha," her voice echoes.

His fingers brush either side of the stairwell on his descent. Though it burns from his resistance, Sasuke wills his eyes to remain low and to not scour the walls for paint snakes. The closer to the bottom he gets, the louder the humming becomes. It isn't natural. It sounds like a lamp buzzing, maybe a lightbulb. Imina moves inside the room and the noise rolls out in waves.

Her voice lingers between them. "Do not be scared."

He reaches the bottom and Imina is waiting for him beside a large, bright box. "Don't be scared," she repeats, the roundness of her face cast in a ghostly sheen. Her lips curve green. "He is only sleeping."

The body in the tank wears a white yukata.


AN: Hello. I'm still alive. Barely.

You can see this as an introduction to 'Act 2' of year one. I never intended on writing this plot as complicated as it's turning out, but here we are. Literally everything is going to tie up somehow, no matter how small. I've committed to making this a canon rewrite, as I've come up with way too much lore to give thought to making it align. Same things will happen. I just want them to make sense this time around. My initial outline has completely gotten away from me... Much better when I sit with my ideas and see where I'm fudging things. I'm sure I still am, but it's sort of fun working with the mess-ups.

So sorry for the wait. Been going through an absolute hell. This story never left my mind. I would like to finish it this year. I was reintroducing myself to Naruto during the first year back in the fandom, but I feel more comfortable now. I had to regain my footing in the setting a bit, and working on a fic centered outside the established Ninja System seemed the easiest route to achieving that. Thank you to anyone who has been waiting patiently. I had a lot of groundwork to seed into this chapter and still so much to get to. I am so excited to reach the climax! I have so much crazy wild shit that hopefully lands well enough, lmao.

BIG ass fight in the next chapter. Fight scenes are now one of my favorite thing to write, lol. (ALSO excuse me cleaning up the format for FF's postings... FF always looks nasty.)

Happy Year of the Rabbit! :) I hope reading this helped some time pass easier for you!