Wake the Dead

by OneSaltyLeo

How many times can a person die before they break? The death Ibiki will subject Ko to is the fourth he will have endured. He won't suffer a fifth.

6. Konoha Blues, Part Two

Spike Spiegel: "Look at my eyes, Faye. One of them is a fake because I lost it in an accident. Since then, I've been seeing the past in one eye and the present in the other. So, I thought I could only see patches of reality, never the whole picture."

Faye Valentine: "Don't tell me things like that. You never told me anything about yourself, so don't tell me now!"

Spike Spiegel: "I felt like I was watching a dream I could never wake up from. Before I knew it, the dream was over."

-Cowboy Bebop, The Real Folk Blues Part Two

We walked together, Rai and I, to where Haru waited, and then with my daughter's hand woven through mine we three wadded into the sea of my other children. At our approach they flowed out to meet us and around us like a strange, silent tide, unsure of Rai at first despite her medic's whites. But this only lasted until I told them she had been kind to me, had taken care of me. Then Rai found herself nearly overrun by a chattering band eager to learn her name and tell her theirs and pluck from her all that had happened between her and mother. Rai tried to take it well but I could see she became quickly flustered and uncertain under the unmeaning assault. Obviously unused to children. Or maybe just to so many clambering for her attention at once.

The fact rose something fond and sympathetic in me like a warm glow in my heart, and I moved to save her, rescuing the woman who had kept me alive and above water with a few soft words and motions of my hands, leading my brood to pull me into the gathering of Konoha medical-nin instead. There Rai seemed more on sturdy footing while my young ones showed me by turns the Iryō-nin who had cared for them the previous weeks.

I had an easier time learning the names of the Leaf nin than Rai had my children. What was more difficult was seeing the way these medics of the Land of Fire smiled and spoke with affection of my little ones. A possessive thing in me said they had no right, they had not spent months and years suffering with them. They had known my children for scant days. And yet my brood cooled this half frightened, defensive impulse as naturally as breathing. They spoke with absent difference with their assigned guardians but they clung on me, attaching themselves to my person in as clear a sign of possession as their constant affirmation I was mother. Their mother. However kind these strangers had been to them we still belonged together.

And yet… Somewhere deep in me some other part of my crumbled psyche, one buried and sad and serious, told me this was not well, my young ones should have proper families and homes, should have lives and security I could not offer them. I had been their defense and shelter in a time when we had been surrounded by enemies and suffering, but… in a place where we were offered kindness I had nothing to provide. Nothing to give. I too was broken and in need of mending. I was dead and had not found a way back to life. I was empty in the face of Konoha.

I knew it to be true but it broke my heart to pieces and brought stinging tears to my eyes because then what was to become of me? I would be alone again. Alone even while my family of choice grew up around me but apart from me. The knowledge left me slow and wane. Quiet. As I gently smiled at the medical-nin speaking to me. Listless.

Rai, my ever-present caregiver, noticed the mood creeping over me and the subtle changes in my features, noted the shine in my eyes, and turned a kind smile on me. "Hey, Ko, you okay?" she asked, knowing my tells now all too well. I passed my emotion off as weakness and weariness, something which was not entirely lie. I was tired. For months I'd been neglecting myself and my body felt the strain and the lack. Rai did not question this obvious fact. She and her fellow medics simply helped to herd my pack of younglings and the whole of us, of our strange, white-clad flock, walked away from the prison grounds and the Intelligence Division.

We did not have far to go. The Konohagakure Jōhōbu, the Hokage Tower, and the Tree Leaf Hospital were all within a short distance of each other at the center of Konoha, and the guiding Iryō-nin brought us through that inner-most part of the Village Hidden by Leaves to a barracks on the grounds of the Konoha Byōin. A place designed to house on-call medical-nin who did not wish to return to their homes further out in the sprawl of the village when they could be summoned to the Hospital at any time. Only the medics who usually occupied this space had been purposefully moved out to make way for twenty-one Ame-nin and their twenty-one Konoha counterparts.

At least for this day.

It was clear the arrangement had been designed to allow my children and I a calm and quiet reunion in a place we would equate with safety. Where there would be nothing to frighten or push us into stress. Where we could all easily be in one room and not feel crowded or confined. Perhaps this was especially true where I was concerned. I could see Rai attempting to ensure I did not feel cooped up again so soon after being freed.

And the barracks was a wide space. An open and nonthreatening space. It was long and wide and filled with shifting afternoon light sifting in from high windows left open to admit sweet air as much as permit that light to gild the smooth, age and use worn wood floors. This was a space that had not known grief or despair in the deep way other buildings had. It was not haunted by these lingering emotions as I had felt them in other structures. And it eased me. Looking down the length of the main room where all the bunks were empty and had been made up with fresh linens, I felt a hollowness akin to relief spread through me.

A thing accentuated by the Konoha medics themselves. The moment we entered this open construction of thick, but soaring beams and broad spaces cut through with knives of sun that set motes of dust spinning like bits of glitter, the Leaf shinobi turned away into another part of the barracks. A kitchen which had been stocked with food enough for twice our number. Sure sign these nin knew all too well what it meant to feed a brood of pre-teens who had been expanding chakra and energy running in the sun. Within minutes the lot of them were moving in a complex, seeming choreographed dance around each other, creating no small meal and filling the whole barracks with warmth and overlapping scents which blended into a wholesome completion.

Rai joined the laughing and gently chiding group, offering for me to do the same if I liked, but it was hardly more than an off-hand query and we both knew it. It was clear I did not want to be apart from my children any more than they were willing to part from me. As soon as the adults were occupied my little ones stripped the beds bare of blankets and pillows and made a nest of them in the center of the floor. Haru put me in the middle of it and the rest surrounded us, draping themselves over the two of us and each other in effort to be closer. And in whispers and small voices they prompted me to tell them everything that'd happened since the Ishi took me on patrol.

I told them everything, sparing very little, but Haru wouldn't be satisfied I hadn't been physically harmed until she had nearly stripped me and gone over my body with a fine inspection. Only when she found no evidence of new injury did she seem capable of relaxing with the rest of her siblings and joining them in the retelling of what had happened with them since I saw my precious ones last.

Despite everything it was a quiet and reserved tale. Most murmured or soft-spoke their parts so when Rai peeked into the room it must have seemed a cozy scene to see me buried under my pack of white-clad ten, eleven, and twelve-year-olds. But her wistful smile said she didn't understand the soft rumble of words we were saying to each other. Young or not we had learned how to be quiet in Ishi prisons.

My young ones had only come to the point where the Konoha ANBU had begun bringing them back to the Leaf village when our hosts completed their work and invited us to eat. It was a kind thing they did, not pressing us to eat at the long tables but allowing my children to take what they wanted and return to the nest they had made. It was still difficult for me to eat but with my children around me I found a better appetite. And when it was done and the light was slipping from the sky the Konoha-nin did not try to separate us, did not say reproachful things for the beds having been stripped. They just remade the bunks with spare linens, still laughing and gently talking together.

It was their quiet voices, chattering together, that lulled us to sleep little by little. The medics lay in the beds ruminating on past, shared experiences at the Hospital or on missions while I and my children lay a-sprawl in the tangle of blankets and limbs in the center of the floor. Too often we'd huddled for warmth and reassurance this way and now it was too hard to sleep any other way.

Rai watched us, little, unsure smile on her face until she started yawning and retired to the closest bed and slept. I did not want to sleep, did not want to waste the day, the time I'd been given to reacquaint myself with my family, but with Haru laying on my chest and the others breathing softly around me, some tucked under my arms, I found I could not keep awake and dropped off to oblivion with tears dampening my lashes.

The next day was more difficult, more worrisome and wearying. The Konoha-nin tried to make it not so. Under what I was sure was Rai's direction, they did their best to maintain an atmosphere of ease and lightness with nonsensical chatter and littering laughter. Smiling and speaking softly they roused me and my brood and provided me with clean, fresh attire, a pristine, white medical-nin uniform cut in the Leaf fashion, and when I was cared for they turned to the creation of another meal before we need begin the necessities of the day.

Because this day I and my children would need appear before the Sandaime Hokage and make our appeal for asylum. I attempted to hold on to calm, to keep my heart from stuttering, to not let my internal anxiety and fluttering unease show in my outward mannerisms because I did not want to spread my fear to my children, but it was impossible to keep my right hand from creeping to my left wrist and gripping it compulsively.

The walk away from the barracks and the grounds of the Tree Leaf Hospital did not help this despite the kind attentions of our watchful medics of the Land of Fire. We passed through the central portions of the Village Hidden in the Leaves and both the Leaf shinobi we crossed paths with and the very openness of the day and height of the sky were difficult to dear. After so many months within doors and enclosed spaces I felt exposed and vulnerable in the wide open air.

Passing into the walls of the structure they called the Hokage Tower should not have loosed a constriction on my lungs but it did and I found myself breathing freer. Yet this only made way for other fears to twist in that pit of my stomach and I could not keep my right hand from crawling up my left arm to my elbow again to grasp it in little, spasmodic bursts.

Rai noticed it. Her face and the lines around her eyes said she wanted to comfort me, but it was Haru who pressed herself to my side. Haru who wrapped my arm around her middle and looked up at me with sorrowful, placid, intent gray eyes. "It'll be alright, mother," she assured, and I offered her a broken smile, one of my few. My oldest daughter's sad, intelligent gaze said she hoped her own words were true. We both did.

But there was little we could do beyond entrust ourselves to the good graces of the Konoha medical-nin. And their Hokage.

I expected we would meet with the one they called the Third in his office, but this expectation was not met. We were brought to a conference hall near the inner most portion of the Tower. And perhaps this only made sense given our number. Doubtless Rai and the rest thought to give us space so that we, and me in particular, would not feel caught or confined in so small a room as an office.

Ultimately it did not matter.

Nor did my continual inability to predict what would come next. The Sandaime was also not as I would have imagined him if given more time to fret over our meeting. An old man in white that flowed around him and melded with his snowy hair. A quiet patriarch with deep eyes and subtle, studying air that spoke of calm and reserved thoughtfulness. Certainly he was strong, capable of battle and devastation on the field, his chakra, unhidden, moving through his Keirakukei like a flood, told of that. But he projected no threat or harmful intent. He merely sat, wreathed in a moving cloud of pipe smoke scented of cloves.

The smell lulled me. It was one which was familiar and dear to me. Associated with my most ingrained memories of security and safety. Though he had done so seldom Kazue had indulged himself with a clove cigarette on rainless evenings in Ame. Blending the sweet, stinging scent of spice with the cloying musk of damp earth and decomposing vegetation. The Hokage of Konoha and his long-stemmed pipe brought me back to sitting in the blue twilight and looking up as the constellation of the Hunter marched up the sky and Kazue told me the stars reminded him of me, and I sat still before the Third, looking at him with appraising, colorless eyes.

Hiruzen Sarutobi let me examine him for some time before he spoke, and when he did the man seemed to do all he could to not press me too hard or create the feeling he demanded anything.

Was I coming before him to ask asylum for myself and my children?

Yes, yes, I was.

He had made arrangements for us to remain with the medical-nin I had met over the preceding day while we assimilated into life in Konoha, was this acceptable?

Yes, yes, of course.

Perpetrations had been made for my children to join the Academy the following day so that they could continue their training as shinobi and Iryō-nin, or any other class of nin they should desire, was this well?

Yes…

Though it squeezed my heart and left me bent over my knees in pain with tears starting in my eyes, I could not take this from my children. They deserved to be given the chance to decide their own paths. I could not interfere.

It was several minutes before the man spoke again, but when he did it was all about me.

Rai had volunteered to see to my integration into Konoha, was this to my liking?

A pause, a glance to the woman who for once looked unsure with her lip between her teeth. Yes, yes, it was…

A nod, a gentle consideration. I was free to enter work at the Konoha Byōin, if and when I felt ready to do so, but would I consent to seeing a psychologist once a week? I had undergone much stress in the Intelligence Division when I had already suffered much, he would now help relieve my pains.

Yes…

I said it with my nails cutting into my palms. As faux-kind as the man was being I did not delude myself into thinking he fully trusted me. I had dared use threat against Ibiki Morino and he had taken it seriously. Broken, bound, chakra sealed behind barriers I could not breach, I'd shown him the thing I had hidden in me, let him look down into me, and whatever Ibiki had seen he'd warned the Hokage against. The Third's request was not to be denied.

Just as his next was mandate wrapped in curtesy.

Would I also consent to visit him once a month? He would see to my wellbeing.

Yes. Yes, of course. Whatever he wanted.

Whatever he wanted. If it would keep my children safe and free I would submit to anything.

Perhaps they saw that, perhaps they knew it was leverage against me, and yet they asked for nothing more than this.

Still I was tired and worn when it was done and we were freed to leave the Tower. Withdrawn and quiet, almost wandering, as I was led out. Exhaustion tears crawled out of my eyes and Haru's arm around my waist seemed to hold me up. Some part of me expected a separation then, a breaking up of my children back to their respected houses, but again Rai and her compatriots had seen to our care. To my care…

They brought us to a grassy place in the fading sun with the splash and rush of a river they called the Naka nearby. They let us rest there, laying in a fan on the ground with our heads together toward the sound of water and our feet toward our attending Konoha-nin. One more chance to be together and speak of our private, family things.

Laying there, listening to the remains of my children's tale, I became aware they had been debriefed, but kindly. In the Konoha Hospital with a medical-nin present. And Ibiki had used his subordinates, sending his most inoffensive and inconspicuous ones to speak to my children, guessing perhaps that if Sakumo had spoken of him to me, he might have done so to them as well and not wanting to frighten them. Only to Haru had Ibiki spoken in person, and she had recognized him at once and let him know it, refusing diplomatically to speak to him until he'd assured her I was alright and she would see me soon.

I had the impression, listening to her inflectionlessly speak, Haru harbored distaste bordering on abject disdain and disgust for the scarred man. She liked him to Sakumo and held against him the things he had done to me, not considering what he had refrained from doing.

"He told the ANBU to say I sent them to find you, and brought you back to me, Haru," I said, voice distant. Not sure why I was defending the man to her beyond the fact he had kept his word. Had told me the truth and reunited me with my children. What I had told him at our parting had been true, as well. I did not forgive him, but I understood.

Haru did not. Or chose to hold onto anger for the time being. But she did not contradict me. And in the end we only lay, dozing in each other's arms until it was evening and it was cool and it was time for my children to leave me.

One by one the guardians of my little ones smiled tiny pulls of their lips and said it was time to go. Heart clenching, I enfolded each child in a hug and said I would see them in the morning. They clung to me, fingers clutching my clothes and skin, and it was me who had to pry them away, had to turn them to their assigned medic and tell them to go. Light-headed and spinning with it all, on the verge of real tears though I was.

It was only Haru who had the presence of mind and stubborn will to resist. She turned her flinty eyes on her Iryō-nin, stolid and unflinching, and told him to wait. The poor man stood blinking confused eyes while my daughter wrapped her arms around me and pressed her cheek to mine. "It'll be alright, mother," she said again, and I could only burst out a hysterical, broken laugh, the tears coming out at last as I wound my arms around her.

"Yes, yes, it will," I agreed, and let her go.

My daughter's eyes didn't change as she turned to follow her guardian away. I imagined the man was already discovering her stubborn will and learning to dread it. That will had been forged in horror and wouldn't be broken by kindness. The shear fact of it made me laugh still more, half hiccupping with sobs. My child so like me.

When she had gone the others quickly followed, and soon it was only Rai and I left in the fading light. "Hey, Ko," my protector said, as she so often did, small, worried smile on her lips, "are you ready to go home?"

I wasn't, would never be, but could find no way to tell her that. I simply walked toward her extended hand, the one we both knew I wouldn't take, and allowed her to lead me through the deserted streets to her home.

It was small. No more than an apartment of someone who seldom spent time there. Cluttered, but comfortably so. Books strewn here and there, amid the bric-à-brac of life. Uniforms and kunai and discarded coffee cups, some part full. It had been so long since I'd been in such a place or imagined it I found it difficult to take it in or know what to do there. I found myself just standing in rooms, turning my head this way and that, watching Rai like a dog that'd been whipped once too often and now could only whine and slink away when spoken to.

Rai noticed my discomfort. There was no way not to. But her attempts to ease it did little to sooth me. Time, I needed time, and that was the hardest thing.

Somehow we made it through a meal I didn't remember and Rai talked of sleep. There was only one bed she told me I would have, but this didn't work out well. Doubtless Rai would have been fine on her couch, but I was not fine in her bed. I could not sleep, only toss and turn and struggle with the blankets. Not because the mattress was uncomfortable but because it was a torture to know my children were so close and not be able to be with them. We'd never been apart when so close together and it left me weeping.

Which of course brought Rai to her own bedroom door, asking if she could come in. A thing that made me laugh hysterically because of course she could! It was her house, she could do whatever she wanted. But she didn't. Rai lingered outside her own door until I invited her in. Then she made a nest of blankets on her floor and asked me if I wanted to sing. With nothing else to do, I agreed and we ran through songs until exhaustion finally claimed me and I fell asleep.

Waking was a little easier because I knew I would get to see my children. Or… waking was easier for me. Rai seemed to have a time of it and not because she'd slept on the floor. The woman just seemed a wreck, unable to focus or articulate coherent thoughts until after she got two cups of coffee in her. Then she seemed to perk up, snap back into her cheerful self as if she'd never been a bumbling, mumbling, sleep-addled thing, and asked if I was ready to go meet my children.

I was, I was, I truly was and it didn't take long for us to be on our way. The Academy was closer to the center of Konoha but not directly within it. There was a considerable amount of open space around it and sharp, clear voices rang out from it more frequently the closer we got to the structure. The clear calls of children engaged in activities and content to be so.

My own young ones were gathered outside the entranceway and murmured greetings when they found Rai and I among them. Though we were happy to be together our voices were muted and remained so through much of the day. The instructors were pleasant and kind and the Konoha pre-genin curious and inquisitive, but my children and I cautious. We stayed down, stayed quiet, stayed observant and watchful. Gauging each interaction for hidden meaning.

There was little to find, though. These Konoha-nin were little more than they showed us and soon my brood settled to try learning what they were taught.

It was not easy. The morning began with instruction in a typical classroom and despite how my children tried they struggled. They had had little chance for traditional learning in Ame, born civilians during a war, and less chance as prisoners forced into service in Ishi. I'd given them what I could, but the pre-genin of the Leaf had them outdone.

At least… until the instructors pulled the collection of children to the yard and gave them blunt kunai and mock targets to deal with. There my children exceled. Quick, efficient, brutal in the way only real life experience in a war can explain, all of my little ones completed their tasks before any of the Konoha children could begin. The Academy instructors seemed stunned, as did Rai.

But all of that fell away when a child dropped off a ledge she'd tried to leap to and failed to catch herself. Before any of the adults could react Haru was there, soothing and providing care to a shocked and teary-eyed soon-to-be-nin who hadn't properly worked her way up to crying yet. Haru examined her and mitered out care with the gentle firmness and bedside manner of any battlefield medic and soon the mostly uninjured per-genin was back on her feet and hotly declaring it was an unfair fall and she would succeed in the jump the next time.

The Konoha instructors' happy-relieved smiles and laughter were instant signs of their appreciation, and soon they were expressing gratitude and congratulations to Haru. A younger one, a man hardly older than me or Rai and obviously in his first year of teaching with a scar cutting the bridge of his nose said it was like having an entire brigade of Iryō-nin from the Hospital on staff, and wasn't that a relief? They'd been in need of that for ages.

Almost as if the incident was a catalyst something broke between my group and the inhabitance of the Leaf. With slow care my little ones appeared to take the notion of being a medical squad, assigned to the Academy, as seriously as any mission they'd served for Ishi. Soon they attached themselves to various, younger fellow students who showed signs of needing special care or attention and that was it. They'd found a better purpose than learning the skills of the Academy and launched themselves after it as I'd taught them. With brutal intensity and focus.

Standing off to one side in the gathering evening, watching them mix with their younger, Konoha counterparts I felt a growing sense of emptiness. But weightlessness. As if a burden I didn't know I'd been carrying was lifted away. It left me dizzy and I hardly noticed when Haru came up to my side, snuggled under my arm as she so often did in Ishi. I just glanced down at her, this girl only two or so years my junior, but already barely a head under my height and growing quickly, and glanced away again. We'd never really needed too many words, Haru and I. We understood each other.

And we just watched.

Happy laughter, unrestrained and mellow, moderated, carefully contained and thought-out bursts of mirth intermixing in the remains of the day. Leaf and Rain, playing together.

"I think we're going to be alright here, mother."

I glanced down at her again, then back up. "Yes. I think we might be." My voice was strained around the edges, but…

But it seemed Haru might be right as the days moved to something more and time carried on.

That day, that one day, was the only one we spent with my little ones in the Academy. The next, and all those that followed, Rai spent with me. Kindly smiling at me and prompting me to investigate her home, to cook with her, to read with her, to watch movies with her. And… little by little, to come out of the safety of her walls, the sanctuary of her small, vulgarly cluttered home and into the streets of Konoha.

I did it. I walked out of her reassuring, comforting enclosure and into the open even if the sky still felt too high above me and I shied away from anyone who passed too close. Skittered around them like a mouse across the floorboards. I ate noodles in savory broth with her at Ramen Ichiroku, I watched my feet in the dirt as we walked and she called greetings to those we passed, never chatting or attempting to engage in idle chatter, but kindly keeping her eyes on me. I did it all. And curled into an exhausted ball on her bed or her couch when it was done. Weeping softly.

I could tell Rai wanted to comfort me. Wanted to reach out and touch me while she crouched beside me and gently said my name. "Hey, Ko? How you doing?" But she never did and her presence eased me. Allowed me to rest.

As did the knowledge I would see my children every day. We may not have spent our days in the Academy with them, but every afternoon we would go to meet them as they left their studies and the Konoha-nin would let me forget myself and my fears with them. My dear ones… They would let us wander into parks and up the Naka River and let us lay on the grass and play in the sun. Play as we were accustomed to playing and not as the young were expected to play. Games of Ame and my childhood and lost family. Seek and Engage, and Shunshin Tag between the trees and over the water… Games of skill and talent designed to hone and enhance the same.

Rai seemed surprised by our method of play and by how only the youngest of my brood struggled with full shunshin, giggling a little as they held their breath and channeled their chakra and popped perhaps a foot or two from their original spot, and I had the impression despite her proficiency in taijutsu Rai couldn't do it. Tactical and offensive jutsus weren't her forte.

Yet Rai was skilled in taijutsu. After watching me spar with my children and instruct them in technique several times she asked to spar with me as well. Time and again she would try. It was at those times I saw a flicker of fear in her eyes. Fear of me in those green and gray orbs, taking me in and seeing something within me that did not align with her external view of me.

We were a poor match, Rai and I. I could disable any of her attacks in three moves and break any of her blocks in one. Without effort, without thought, with all the bare, base brutality I'd been taught since I was a child.

Haru was better. My daughter had a natural affinity for the ninja arts. Over and over she would draw me out onto the water and we would test each other's skill. Moving like dragonflies across the liquid surface, almost too quick to see, our bodies shimmering with the drops we kicked up. No, Haru was almost as good as I was and could sometimes land a blow if I was careless.

But no one could beat me at Shunshin Tag. No matter how they tried, no matter how cleverly they evaded, none of my children could ever stop me from simply appearing behind them and pulling them down into a squirming tangle of limbs on the ground. They would squeal, now that their voices had been released by time in Konoha, and laugh and say, "Mother! Mother! No fair, mother!" but they could never win. Speed and agility had always been my friends and weapons of choice. Not years with Kazue or in the darkness of Sakumo's cells or a war unwillingly fought could change that.

But in addition to the play I knew put Rai at unease my young ones and I would spend hours in the fading light just leaning on each other and singing. Sharing new songs we'd learned and revisiting old ones we loved. My ever-watchful guardian called us a flock of songbirds once, with a wistful smile, and the words went to my heart. Turning it over. Making me sad.

Songbird.

The name my fellow prisoners in the Intelligence Division had given me. Those who had been so kind to me while I was there, when I had been in pain and alone, apart from Rai, and who were still there, still locked behind bars and steel while I was free. The reality left me weeping into my hands and all my family reached to comfort me, but Rai looked stricken. Unable to discern what had wrecked me until she asked, "Oh, Ko, what's wrong?"

It was not easy to say, not easy to tell with my children so close, but I did and when it was done I asked my first thing of Rai. Begged a small request she seemed startled to hear, but gave me without a thought.

That was how I found myself surrounded by my children, with Rai at my side, as we all joined our voices in Natsukiboshi and other Konoha lullabies, and darted from roof-top to roof-top to tree limb. The people of the Leaf looked up in wonder but I gave no thought or concern to that. Let them look. All that consumed me was one thought, one idea, brooding at the horizon of my mind like the complex of buildings coming into focus before us.

The Intelligence Division.

It should have made me sick inside, but… my family around me and Rai singing so near me I could feel no fear. We took to the trees around my once cell block and sang among the leaves. Like the flock of birds we were. At first those within were quiet, but gradually a stirring came from the stone walls and voices filtered out the high, narrow windows. Something… that lightened my heart.

Afterward we would often go and sing at the Intelligence Division. Rai, in her way of knowing what went on behind it all, told me the guards and prisoners appreciated what I did. This also lightened my internal darkness. It loosened some of the knots I was tied up in inside myself. Released something soft and grateful.

Maybe that was just as well. The days were passing, the seasons were changing. Summer into fall, and… I was changing. Beginning to want more than Rai's house.

The therapist Hiruzen had assigned to me thought it was well… That I should want something.

The first time I had gone to see the woman, the day after my children had started at the Academy, Rai had asked if I wanted her to come in with me. She would if I wanted her to. I had told her no. Despite myself, despite my fear, I had told her no, and told myself the woman in the discreet and homey office was not Ibiki. This was not an interrogation, this was a conversation. But I knew better, knew I in part lied to myself. Knew this was not entirely a simple thing. And I wept there, on her couch, with my fingers pressed to my face, and all before she ever asked me anything.

But the woman knew her job well and worked her way past my stark terror and eased me slowly. Why shouldn't she? Telling me about herself she informed me we had one thing in common. She had studied as a medical-nin before turning to psychology. But more than that she knew how to acquire information as well as Ibiki did, if in a different and more subtle way. She had been given my file. She knew my mental state well and what would really distract me from my fear.

She did not pry for my feelings or the internal secrets I held close and secure, but instead asked me something nearer and dearer to my heart that first day.

I had children, didn't I?

Yes, yes I did.

What were their names? Could I tell her about them?

Before I knew it or understood what was happening she had me rambling about my dear ones, half choking over my tears, my legs drawn up, knees to my chest and arms wrapped around them. It was half happy, half hysterical what I said, but there was love in it. Love for lives that had become entangled with mine. And maybe she'd sensed it. She asked me one question of how I felt that day. Only one. How did I feel having my children back?

And rocking forward, burying my face in my legs, I told her as I shuddered, Relieved, I felt relieved.

I'd been so worn after that session. I hardly remembered anything, apart from Rai's concerned face, until I'd seen my children. But I kept going back. Week after week I kept going back to speak with the woman and let her see what lay under my skin as she peeled it back. I had no choice really, and I knew it and I accepted it as part of what I had to do to keep my children safe. I would endure anything if it meant them safe…

The woman was kind as she could be, though. As kind as she was allowed to be in her position of continuing to find the things Ibiki could not in our time together. She did not push. Did not dig for those things Morino had not managed to unearth and I had no wish to say. Not right away. Instead she concentrated on other things. Easier things.

Were my children happy in the Academy? Was I alright with how they were adjusting to life in Konoha? Did I enjoy living with Rai, a fellow medical-nin? What did I think of the Village Hidden in the Leaves? Was there anything I lacked?

Mostly simple and unobtrusive things. Neutral things.

For weeks and more weeks it was the same until I was relaxed. Until I didn't cringe or cry when I saw her. Until I sat placid and dry-eyed on her couch and could talk with a steady voice. Only then did the questions change.

I'd been interrogated in the Intelligence Division by Ibiki. How did I feel in regard to that? Was I recovering? Was I angry? Distressed in any way?

I did not want to answer. Did not want to review that line of thought and memory. But it was what she wanted, and I did and I hated it. There were few things I tried to hide, though, all the same. What was the point in it? Refusing would only lead to worse things, and I'd given so much to Ibiki it did not matter what else I released. About Ishi and Sakumo. About Ame and Kazue… How deeply I missed Kazue.

But there were some things I did refuse to let her touch. Some places I didn't grant her access to. Some things that I would still willingly suffer for, so long as that suffering did not extend to my children.

Two months after I first started seeing the woman, two months after my reunion with my little ones, she asked me to tell her my name. Ko wasn't my real name, was it? It was only what people called me, wasn't it? Would I tell her my real name?

I turned to her, expressionless, solid, unyielding, and told her I didn't want to talk about that. I was Ko. Just Ko.

If she was taken aback by this, my first and flat denial into a part of my past, she didn't show it. Not then. Not when I shook my head and would not speak of my childhood and family. They were dead. It was done. It did not matter.

Yet I knew she wondered why, wondered the reason I would willingly speak of pain and humiliation, but not this. Wondered and put the information away for later. As well as giving it to Ibiki and the Hokage…

The Hokage for certain. He always knew too much of my mood and mind each time I saw him on my monthly visits to his offices in the Tower. There was no doubt on my part what his sources were, and though I had been fearful and uncertain, filled with frightful trepidation to the point of dizziness and nausea my first visit, I began to find the appointments boring and predicable. Typical. Uninteresting. The man was kind in his way. Offering me paternal, elderly caring and consideration while he sat and smoked his clove tobacco. The head of Konoha knew all that went on with me and had no need of me to report to him. But still he called for me and still I went, answering his inquiries and absently studying him.

Really his only question of any particular concern to me each month was as to my contentment. Was I happy living with Rai? Was she good to me? Was there anything I lacked? Did I wish for any other arrangement?

Yes, yes, of course I was content with Rai. She was very good to me. I lacked nothing he could give me. No… No, I did not wish for anything else.

No.

No, I did not delude myself into thinking either the Hokage of the Leaf, or the woman he had set to pull apart the last of my secrets, cared intimately for me or my personal wellbeing. But… the woman I talked to did at least take responsibility for me in some regard. When I absently, strayingly, without even noting I did it, mentioned I felt the need for something she seemed pleased. Pleased with this sign of progress, and asked me what more would make me feel well.

What would make me feel well…

Useful. I wanted to be useful.

That was how I found myself working with Rai at the Konoha Byōin, putting my skills as a medical-nin to use once more. Healing, as I was meant to even if the Hospital felt familiar and foreign around me at once. A place resembling that in Ishi where I'd been employed, yet not like that at all. It left me feeling lost and wondering and small, despite how much I wanted to be there, despite how much I wanted to tend to something beyond myself. Wanted to use my hands for something which would not leave me feeling drowned in blood.

Rai anticipated my exhaustion and emotions, though, and did everything she could to make things easy for me. We worked, true, but only half days so we could keep meeting my children in the afternoons, and only in the civilian clinic where the non-combatants of Konoha came for coughs or aching joints or brought their children when they scrapped their knees. Easy work. Uninteresting work. Work free of blood and urgency and stress. Work which only minutely sated my desire to be useful.

I wished for more. Wished for work which would engage me, raise in me a sensation of belonging, but only found I felt out of place, out of tune, out of sync. Something in me was empty, unfulfilled in the most basic, instinctual and intimate of ways. As if something in my soul had been hollowed out or another of my limbs had been removed. I wanted to help. But Rai felt me incapable of baring the stress of it, and the people of the Leaf… those of Konoha… it was plain they seemed uneasy around me, and I lacked all way to reassure them they had nothing to fear of me. There was no denying I was a foreign nin and strange. Aloof and apparently unfeeling. So very expressionless and monotone with non-color eyes that looked far away. Seemed to look through them and passed them.

No one wished for a medical-nin who frightened them. They sought for ease, calm, when they came for healing. And I had none to offer them.

So I drifted through the days, still seeking after that fleeting, retreating desire to be useful, and all the while shrinking back into myself. Turning inward, making Rai worry. I could see in in her when she looked at me at night. The concern, the wonder if she had done something wrong. She hadn't really, and I wished I could tell her so. But feared to ask for more even as I regretted making my watcher fret over me. I had my children, I would be well in the end.

Or I told myself so.

But my children were also changing. Their natural tendency toward learning fast and frontline experience accelerated them through the Academy. There was really very little the instructors could teach them that I hadn't already shown them in some fashion. Seeing this, accepting it, the powers that ruled Konoha passed my children through early graduations when fall turned to winter and my young ones moved into other areas of learning. Most came to the Tree Leaf Hospital for direct training in medical ninjutsu, others opted to join genin teams and become ordinary shinobi, and Haru, my Haru, my child so like me, told me as the first snow dusted our hair she had been recruited by the ANBU.

"I'm going to be an s-rank shinobi, mother," she said, quiet eyes raised to mine.

"Is that what you want?" I asked, feeling the ache in my heart.

"Yes," she assured, looking out over the haze the Naka River had become. "I only do what I want now, mother."

Only what she wanted… Yes. Yes, I know that. Somewhere in my heart I knew that was true for all my children. And Haru… she was strong. Stronger than me in some ways. She would make an excellent ANBU, already looked the part beside her masked and silver-haired partner. She would be alright.

Really all of them would be. I knew it. Knew it even before their graduation when the Hokage told me he was extending the offer to me and my children to become Konoha-nin. To no longer remain refugees of war holding asylum in the Village Hidden by Leaves, but to become a part of it. I knew, watching my children accept the offer, they would be alright. They had found homes and their places in the life of the ninja world.

But I…

When my therapist asked me why I did not become part of Konoha with my children I could only cry and tell her what Kazue had taught me, that a medical-nin should not be bound to any village or held under their politics.

She was quiet, letting me cry, then she asked the question I anticipated, the one I feared. If I was loyal to Konoha. If I would betray them. I could only answer I was loyal to my children and they were loyal to Konoha. I would never do anything to hurt them.

"Does that make me a bad person?" I sobbed it, my voice a rising hysteric, my tears hot and thick between my fingers, the first time I had truly broken down into uncontrolled weeping since those weeks when we had met. But I was afraid, terrified that what I said, what I admitted, would send me back to Ibiki. That my refusal to join myself to Konoha would prove me finally dangerous and end all the softness I'd been afforded thus far. Because it wasn't my only refusal. I still denied these nin of Konoha access to my past and the time before my first death and I feared. Feared so that I curled into a ball of misery on the couch and it was some time before the woman answered me. Surprised by my out rush of overwrought feeling.

"No, Ko. It doesn't make you a bad person. I think… it makes you human."

The words were not a reassurance. But they were not an accusation, either. So all I could do was take them and move on into the clasp of winter. Cold drew down over Konoha like the closing of a hand, and snow lay heavy in the streets and on the buildings. All seemed to be muted under it. Voices, laughter, activity, emotion. All seemed to slow and go dormant like the leafless trees.

My children and I played in the snow, on occasion, ghosted over its crystalline surface while we spared, but it was different. We were never all together at once. Many were out on missions or training. We gathered when and where we could but this was growing more seldom and sporadic.

And I… I tried to understand that was well and to learn my way in a world I was unsure of, but I felt I was coming slowly apart at the ends. As if my edges were frayed. I began to feel reserved and remote, frozen and chilled with the ice of winter. For so long I had been trained and instructed for singular purposes. For one thing with my family, for another with Kazue, for something cruel and forced in Ishi. And in each place I had not wholly been allowed time and initiative to decide my own way. To know my own mind and determine my own life choices. Kazue would have given these things to me if we had been together longer, but we hadn't and I had never learned what I in myself would do, independent of others. Without the need to watch over the welfare of others above my own.

What was it I would do when all of my children went off on their own? What did I want… just for myself? What, of all the paths laid before me by my myriad instructors, would I choose as mine?

I had no definitive answers, but at least some things in my day-to-day existence conspired to improve my mindset.

This shift began in the Hospital. We were working in the clinic check-in some day in bitter January. Rai and I and a collection of other white-clad nin with quiet smiles and hushed voices. Our patients were sparse and mostly consistent of a scattering of elderly civilians come for physical examinations or minor aches.

I was moving lazily, lethargically, among a group of them, taking their information down in small, neat characters on a chart. The old at least had very little fear of me. Maybe they had become used to looking death in the face and so I did not trouble them. It did not matter. I was feeling rather absent, disconnected from it all, and the faces before me, from these people who did not really need me when a different thing happened. A strange thing.

The clinic was not meant for emergency cases. Was not intended to be a place the severely injured were brought. Was not, but all the same the door was thrown open and a panting, crying teen stumbled in, carrying a shrieking form curled around his chest.

Everything stopped at this sudden intrusion, went still and stiff. Yet while the rest of my kind stood locked and blinking, I moved with no thought and gentle hands. The teen carried a child in his arms. A weeping child. An injured child. And my only thought was to undo the damage that'd been done.

Shunshin had ever been easy for me. Natural. Like breathing. One heartbeat I was across the room, the next I was before the shocked teen, already slipping into the skin I'd worn on the battlefields of Ishi and Ame. Professional and thorough and frightenly efficient.

The younger of the two children, the one cradled in what surely must be his brother's arms if family resemblance was anything to go by, suffered from a broken leg. Though the older tried to hold him carefully the limb still dangled awkwardly. I noted this with a single glance and as I had learned to do over countless scenes of slaughter and death where all I could do was stem the pain of the dying, I slammed a chakra shunt into a particular line of nerves, turning off the younger boy's ability to feel pain.

I had to be a shock, my appearance and action almost too quick to follow, and the loss of discomfort another shock. There and gone in a flash of green. Whatever shocked him most, though, the younger child stopped crying as soon as I pulled my fingers back.

He blinked wet, confused eyes at me and I felt myself shift again. From the proficient, frontlines surgeon, I changed to something else, something slightly older and tenderer. "Hey there," I said softly, kneeling down to be at a better level with those hurt and frightened eyes. "I'm Ko. I'm here to take care of you. Will you let me do that?" I said the last, letting it hang just a little bit, inviting the tiny thing to tell me his name even as I reached out a hand to him. Slowly, gently.

With a whimper that wasn't quite cry and was in no way an attempt to tell me his name, he reached back for me and moved to crawl into my arms. His older brother, having brought him here for the help of medical-nin, let him come to me and I received the little body easily. "I have you. It's going to be alright," I assured, holding him and smoothing comforting circles into his back.

Rai was at my side then, broken out of her own surprise and now centered on me. "Can you do it, Ko?"

I glanced at her sidelong, then let my attention return to the one in my arms. "Yes," I said, standing and taking the weight of him with ease. Despite my small stature my body was strong, muscled, and I'd been recovering my physical energy over the months I'd spent walking free in Konoha. Nor was the injury difficult to deal with. A clean break. A thing handled in an exam room in the space of minutes while Rai attended me and I sang to keep both brothers calm.

Finished, the little one bounded up, seemingly thrilled and excited to have been treated by a real medical-nin. He hugged me around the neck, thanked me, and tugged on his brother's hand, eager to get back to climbing trees. A thing the older, still somewhat dazed, sibling didn't appear inclined to do. Perhaps some other day, he offered to his brother as I saw them out, hand in hand.

It was only when they were gone, only when I was standing, absorbing, absently warmed from within, feeling content and for once, not so empty, it was only then that my guardian smiled at me and said quietly, "You really are so good with children, aren't you, Ko?"

It surprised me she should be so taken with what I considered a completely easy thing. But then it was hard for me to tell her children had always been something near to the center of me. Hard to tell her children had been my special care wandering the ninja world with Kazue. My mentor had noted early my affinity for the young, noted it when I was still little more than a child myself and broken from my first death, and ever after he had made them mine to heal in whatever village we entered. It was hard to say that. To admit my base need to protect those younger and more defenseless than I was. I had my reasons. I did not need to speak them.

But maybe Rai didn't need me to. Quietly, without saying more than a few words about it, she switched us to shifts in the children's ward at the Hospital and this was better. This was so much better. So many young lives. So many… And perhaps the young didn't know enough of death to fear me. Like the old they seemed to have no unease around me. Only accepting me, and strangely seeming to recognize me, exclaiming to their parents or guardians I was Ko, Hisao's mother or Kaori's mother or Hideyuki's mother. Whatever the adults thought of me and the title mother, they accepted both with what grace they could for their children who in some way knew mine.

The little ones. All the little ones around me. They brought stinging tears to my eyes, but not because of pain. Keeping up with them, having their fingers curl into mine as they smiled up at me and let me lead them to the exam rooms, babbling all the while with complete trust in me. It broke my heart into two but left me weeping with a kind of lightness. This was what I wanted. Needed. This. This ability to preserve some light in the world. Children were young, most often they were full of cheer and radiance and their own personal wonder. Helping them, healing them, made me feel whole. More complete than I had been since Kazue.

Rai noticed it and her obvious pleasure was shown in little smiles and unspoken words I understood all the same. Her, "Hey, Ko, how you doing?" was more than enough between us.

More than enough after all the hours and days we had spent so close to one another. Rai. I lived with her. I watched her as the months rolled on, as winter lost its stranglehold on us and spring tentatively gathered warmth and light around it like a blanket. Watched her and learned her through little moments and subtle instances. Her smell, her smile, her sway in movement, her careless glances, her constant sluggish, barely functioning fumbles every morning before she had her coffee. I grew to know her through all this just as I garnered information of her past through a collection of slowly unraveled talks spaced over weeks and weeks. Conversations that were arranged to never be too much at once. Never a steady, chattering flow that would have overwhelmed me, instead random, but carefully selected, moments and little bursts.

This was how she told me about choosing her name. Rai Suru. Trust and change. Her only explanation for the choice, "I wanted it to have meaning." It was how she expressed her decision to answer the need for medical-nin in the Intelligence Division because someone had to do it and if that someone was her than someone else wouldn't have to.

All of it made me begin to look at the woman who cared for me with the same familiarity and affection and possessiveness I aimed at my children. She was becoming family to me in the same way they were my family. And I silently considered this unexpected event with the kind of seriousness and distance with which I pondered the thought of what I was to become in this world where I need find my own way, choose my own path, decided what it was I was to be.

Rai was family. And I… I had to find a way to live. Against my will, to my own slow surprise, I was waking up from death and I had to deal with that.

Once in the space of a quiet night where Rai and I sat apart on her couch, a movie playing into the air, Rai reading and I thinking, I asked softly, without looking at her, "If you could do anything what would you do?"

She glanced at me, then back at the book in her hands. "I'm already doing it, Ko. I always wanted to be a medical-nin. Helping people. Even if I ended being Yōkai, I'm still satisfied. What about you, Ko? What would you do?"

Perhaps I knew if I asked the question she would turn it back on me. Perhaps I wanted her to because the answer was on my lips and being uttered before I could think to stop it. "I would start an orphanage." I looked away, turned my eyes off to the distance, my hand clenching, stretching my skin taunt and white over my knuckles because I knew it wasn't the only thing I would do. "And I would teach children to take care of themselves." Because all too often I'd lived in a world where adults not only neglected their young, but used and abused them. Primed them to be what was desired, with no thought for the life destroyed in the process. If I could I would give the young the strength to stand for themselves and say no.

"Oh, Ko," Rai soothed, intruding on my thoughts and letting the book fall into her lap, "you can have that. You can do whatever you want. We'll help you."

I didn't reply to this, didn't acknowledge it. Because though I was regaining a will to live, a desire for something more, I did not see the truth in this statement. It wasn't that I distrusted Rai, or that she meant it, more it was that no matter how well things were in Konoha, I could not escape the creeping feeling this state could not last.

In every life I had lived something had come and ended me. Had upturned what I thought my life could be, dragged me from it, broken and bleeding, and killed another portion of me. Even Ibiki. I had had to die to be reborn in Konoha, now all I could do was wait with sickening expectation for the next stroke. Wait for the lightening to fall. Wait for the doom to strike, the way a man returned from war constantly waited to hear the rumble and growl of Doton jutsu in the earth beneath his feet no matter the time he knew he was safe.

No matter the reassurance all was well. No matter the calm continuance of placidity.

No matter.

I went through my days with rare, half smiles and absent glances. Better. Slowly adjusting to the flow of life in Konoha, life with Rai, but never fully at ease. Never free of those things I would not speak. Always waiting for the crack. For that inexplicable something I sensed was just out of reach.

It came one day when spring had turned the air fair and bright, though cold as only spring after winter and before true summer can be. That moist, sweet coldness with a hint of earthen musk as the ground woke from its frozen slumber. A clear, sharp day when all felt hushed and still and on the verge of waking when the early morning chill left the rustling breeze.

For once Rai was up before me. Up and moving around with the coffee pot untouched. When she saw me standing in the kitchen door, quiet and unsmiling, her face broke into fondness and she asked me to go for a walk. I agreed and soon we were prowling the deserted paths of a Konoha not yet awake.

Rai chattered, attempted to draw me out of my reverie, attempted to prompt me into conversation and engagement I would not afford her. And with a smile of affection, a tiny lift of her lips, she took my hand in hers as we walked.

I had been looking up at her, thoughtful, considering. At the feel of her hand curling around mine I let my face fall into expressionless lines, my heart slowing behind my ribs even as it seemed to swell with pain and final, bitter understanding. "What have you done with her?" I asked, voice soft, toneless in my aching shock, yet my feet never faltered in their slow, nerveless steps.

The face that was Rai's went hard, features twisting into something harsh and horrible, almost squirming into another face entirely like an image superimposed on another. "Took you long enough to figure it out, otouto." It was said with Rai's voice, but another's inflection and cadence, one I hadn't heard in so long it tore my soul apart, and I could do nothing but glance back at him with pained eyes.

"No," the word was thick and strained. "It didn't. I knew the moment I saw you, Ryo. Your jutsu was always flawless, but you never cared to study your targets. Rai doesn't love mornings and she would never take my hand without asking."

His instant frustration twisted Rai's lip up into snarling anger and the hand he still held around mine tightened, squeezing tighter with the intention it should hurt. "You always were condescending, otouto. If you want your medic bitch back, you'll have to come and collect her, Ko." He stretched the name with emphasis as if it displeased him, and tried to pull away from me, but I clasped his hand in a frim hold and looked up at him, letting the pain and pleading in my eyes appeal to him in ways I knew my words would not.

"You don't have to do this, Ryo."

"Have to?" It was a hiss that wanted to be a growl. "Who are you to talk about have to? You'll find me, or I'll kill her. That is if you still know anything besides healing, otouto."

With the last words he broke contact with me and flashed away from my grasping hand before I could get another hold on him. I would have pushed my chakra into shunshin and pursued, but Ryo had never been one to work alone and this time was no different. I had sensed the others directly after Ryo had dropped his act and tracked their chakras as they closed in following Ryo's departure.

The first of the three ANBU made the mistake of ignoring one of the basic tenements of taijutsu: size does not matter. He imagined his greater bulk and height would give him an advantage and foolishly entered my space. Angry chakra flaring alone my skin and the tips of my fingers I let him come, then just soft-blocked the arm he was using to swing a kunai at my neck, slid forward into his space too quickly for him to counter, and delivered a carefully calculated burst of chakra to his system. Just enough to drop him like a nerveless rock.

As the first went down I plucked the kunai from his hand and spun myself into to a double roundhouse that stunned the second ANBU who thought following close on the heels of the first would give her an advantage on a confused medical-nin who surely couldn't know much of combat. Likely when she came to she would have a concussion and rethink her estimation.

It was the third that gave me trouble. The man knew enough to hold back and observe. And he had a sword. But like size, weapons gave little advantage against someone who knew how to counter. I deflected several blows with the kunai, sparks flying when the flats of both blades met, then took the necessary risk, moved in close under his reach, and delivered a chakra infused punch to his chest that sent him flying back with the wind knocked out of him and enough broken ribs to ensure he would not get up until someone of my white-clad kin patched his bones back together.

The whole of it took less than a minute but it was far more time than Ryo needed to disappear. The attack no more than a distraction designed for that purpose

Yet I knew, straightening up, breathing slightly elevated, knuckles stinging, that it was going to be a difficulty for me. I barely had the time to run through a series of quick hand signs before the pair of Konoha ANBU the Hokage had set to tail Rai and I since my release from the Intelligence Division dropped into crotches to either side of me. Faces blank and covered by porcelain. Really my threatening Ibiki had been a foolish thing on my part. He had guessed there was something about me not quite in line with my image as a medical-nin before I'd so imbecilicly said those words of threat, but they had sealed the understanding of me as something else, and the Hokage knew enough to trust his Head of Torture and Interrogation. Ibiki had known I bore watching.

Just as I knew there was something I had to do. "I need to speak to Morino-san," I said slowly as the ANBU stood and urged me to walk.

I continued saying it all the way to our destination while the two herded me and I sensed other chakras passing us out of sight to clean up the mess I had made and transport the foreign ANBU to the secure wing of the Tree Leaf Hospital. I need to talk to Morino-san. I need to talk to Morino-san. Perhaps my repetition convinced them, or perhaps their orders had always been to bring me to the man if I did something meriting doubt and confinement.

In either case it wasn't long before we reached the Intelligence Division and I found myself in the same interrogation room where I had first met Ibiki Morino. Enclosed by the same stone walls, sitting in the same metal chair, situated behind the same metal table. Only this time my wrists and ankles weren't restrained and I just sat quietly; waiting with my hands resting loosely on the table and my gaze absent and distant.

It wasn't long before the famed torture of Konoha entered as he had the day we'd met, long, dark coat rippling around his large frame, to pull out a chair and sit across from me. His assisting ANBU were there too, mutely moving about the room, setting up recording devices, silent evidence this was an interrogation and not merely a conversation, and yet… neither Ibiki nor I seemed hurried to talk.

"Ko," he said at last when the empty, wordless space between us had lingered several minutes. He said it soft, as if to see how I would react to it, as if he still did not wish to startle me after all this time.

"Morino-san," I responded, voice strained but steady. I passed a hand over my eyes then. Tears were beading there but not falling, and I wanted to brush them away.

He let me. He let me have still more time to gather myself while we watched each other. While he took me in, this version of me like and unlike the delicate, trembling, and disoriented medical-nin he thought he knew from our last encounter. I saw the twitch move under his scar as he appraised my stillness and the here-to-unnoticed reddening of my split knuckles from where I had delivered the bone-breaking punch to the second of Ryo's ANBU.

"Talk to me, Ko," he urged at last. Gently still, despite his next words. "I have three beat to shit Ame ANBU soon-to-be on my hands, and from what our shinobi say, Suru is nowhere to be found."

"He took her."

That twitch fluttered under his skin again. "Who took her, Ko?"

"Morino-san." I paused, my left hand unconsciously moving to my right, the thumb massaging up and down the scar in my palm. "Do you remember what I told you of my family, Morino-san?"

He gave no outward sign my change in topic, so blatant and in disregard of his direct questions, troubled him. Whatever he thought of me and how little fear I showed him and this place that had so frightened and upset me a little less than a year previous, I had two things in my favor. I had always answered him, either directly or with silence, and I had never lied to him. Ibiki would have known if I had. He had likely encountered so many lies in his time in the Intelligence Division detecting them was as natural as reflex. But I had always told the truth, even in my avoidances, and I watched the turn of Ibiki Morino's reasoning behind his dark eyes. Saw the moment he decided this was my way of answering.

"You said they were nomads and that they were killed. That people die in war."

"Yes," I affirmed, thumb slipping up and down on the ridge of scar. "People do die in war. I watched my first man die when I was three." I did not want to see the effect of this on his expression, did not care to know if it would be pity or surprise or blank acceptance. There were other things I needed to say and they were pushing up my throat, threatening to choke me. "I told you my family were nomads, Morino-san, and that was true. But there was something I never told you."

"What was that, Ko?" The words were soft and maybe that helped the admission out along with my tears.

"We were assassins." I pressed my hands to my face and wept a little. Not hysterical or weighted tears, more tired and empty. These tears were old and worn with long use.

"Assassins." There was far less trace of surprise there than I would have thought possible, but then Ibiki had guessed there was something more in me I was hiding and my careless display of my combat abilities since my release had to have given him some clue.

"Yes." I swiped at my eyes, drying them, or at least pushing the salt water from them and onto my cheeks. "We most often hired our services to the Amekage and the Rain, but my family was not loyal. We took targets for other nations if they paid us well enough. For a time Ame ignored this, but when Hanzō of the Salamander took leadership of the Rain he determined we were too dangerous to him and found a man in our household willing to betray the family.

"He killed us in our sleep." My voice broke and this time I did weep hiccupping, rending sobs, putting my head down into my hands and letting this original pain run out of me in front of Ibiki. And oddly that was alright. The man had seen so much of me… Taken so many of my frayed and unraveling pieces out of me it almost felt right to let this go at last. The final thing I had held on to so stubbornly.

As he always had, Ibiki let me cry. Let me unburden myself until I was capable of lifting my head and going on, hands laying open and palms up on the table, my eyes fixed on that scar in my right palm. "He was quiet and careful, but I… I don't know. I heard something and got out of bed. I found him in a hall with blood dripping from his sword. He could have killed me, should have, but he didn't, he went for a kunai instead and… I was always fast. I got away."

"Did you ever think this person was still looking for you, Ko?" Gentle. Always so gentle this man. Even when he was taking someone apart.

"No." It was a hiccup. A last, little, choked exclamation from a constricted throat. "I thought he was dead. I thought Hanzō had removed the last trace of my family. Only Hanzō didn't, and now… now." I covered my face with my hands again. "He'll kill Rai if I don't find him."

"I'm sorry, Ko," he said soft, "I can't let you do that. Our ANBU will go after Suru. I need you to stay here with me."

A shattered laugh came out of me. "I understand what you want, Morino-san. But I… I need you to understand."

"Understand what, Ko? I need you to talk to me so we can find Suru."

"Yes. Yes you do." I dropped my hands and took in a shuddering breath. My gaze was wet and wavering when I turned it on him. "The man who killed my family… he's my older brother. All this time I thought he was dead. I thought Hanzō had taken my whole family away from me and left me for dead, but now… now I know it's not true. I have to go after Ryo, as much for him as for Rai."

Something flickered in Ibiki's eyes. Something that might have been pity or confusion or real sorrow for what I'd just said. It was hard to tell, but whatever it was he didn't let it color his voice when he spoke again. His tone kind and neutral. "I'm sorry, Ko. I can't let you go."

"I know, Morino-san." My voice trembled over the words but they still came out clear. "Your mistake is in thinking I was asking permission."

The last thing I saw before I put a chakra scalpel through my own eye was the surprise on Ibiki's face that I was not only skilled enough to create a shadow clone able fool him, but one capable of penetrating and defeating even the wards around the Intelligence Division.