Hello my darlings! Wow, I got 13 reviews on that last chapter…just wow. I love you all, quite dearly! Now here's to hoping chapter 20 doesn't fall short of expectations! Also: if you're into that sort of thing, check out Chekov's Gun on TVtropes. BossladyRiver thinks it will help make some random bits of this story make sense. Did you know that it's sitting at around 65,000 words if you take out the author's notes? D:

Anyway, to fully clarify something I didn't clarify earlier (Didn't want to really spoil it, but it's out of the bag as of this chapter): the dark haired man is not, I repeat, not Sasuke. I know it was just about a year ago, but Sakura knew Sasuke back in Iimori when she was younger (which if you go back and look, will lead you to a CG moment). Also, there is a letter later on in this and the word "father" is bandied about, as well as the word "son," and between the letter writer and reader there is no such relationship.

And now for the funfacts!

Funfact: Hokkaido wasn't always called Hokkaido (in fact has gone through a number of names through the centuries), it used to be called Ezochi. And the people who lived there were called the Ezo—and weren't recognized as "real" Japanese people which you know there is strong evidence that yeah, that is the case. Read up about it on the blog :)

Funfact: There's this thing called 'aphasia' and when you have it you can't remember certain things like names or dates, at least tied together anymore. So that's what their delightful guest has. Yes. Not to be confused with amnesia which he also has.

Funfact: Google told me that managing pain through meditation is the third best way that it could think of for doing so. Yes. Just so you know that I'm not handwaving "ooh Jedi-mind-poweeeeeers." Also the top few techniques I looked at were based on Buddhist-meditation styles and…um…Buddhism was kind of one of two religions you were required to be back then. So there.

Funfact: There really was a drought in the year 1655 and it really did have some scary consequences in 1656. Yes Also: this is where I'm jedi-mindtricking/handwaving/fudging the years up a little bit. USE THE FORCE …NUT. Funreminder below relates.

Funreminder: Sakura and Kakashi met in chapter 1 in 1656, got married in the spring of 1657, and now it is 1658ish at the moment. Yes, I've dragged you all through nearly two years of stuff—but I've got super awesome ninja powers of time-travel because its only taken us a year!

Funotherstuff: This isn't the last you've heard of Advisor Gama, although he isn't real in history.

Funotherstuff: A few more funfacts are over on the blog…when I get that updated.

Without further ado,

Enjoy!

Sakura didn't mind when Kakashi connived to have Kurenai around during the day. She wasn't nearly as badly suspicious as her husband was, but their guest still scared her. Kakashi's eye was often squinted with disturst each morning as he helped Tenzou move the man into the main room. She didn't ask him, because really what was the point? Sarutobi-sama had ordered them to allow the injured man into their home, and allow him in they would. What scared Sakura, and made her grateful for Kurenai's presence, was her guest's amnesia as well as his wounds—had he angered a rival? Been attacked by bandits? She feared what had hurt him, as well as who he might have been before his injuries.

He even had trouble remembering everyone's names from day to day. A quirk of his illness which was initially cute, but quickly became wearisome, was his penchant for bestowing nicknames to people. Specifically Sakura, since she was his near constant companion and he had to call her something. Tenzou and Kakashi were outside doing chores for a lot of the day, while Kurenai and Sakura stayed inside with their own chores and occupations.

What the man called Sakura was something that made no one happy other than their guest—who was sufficiently out of his head that they had to forgive him for it. It was even a replacement for his initial nickname. They had been sitting down to eat supper about a week after returning from Iimori, all bundled close to the fire for warmth, even their guest who could now sit upright for short periods of time. The man had smiled mechanically at her as she served his food and gave it to him, and then he had said it.

"Thank you, Oni-san."

It took him more than a few seconds to pick up on the fact that his three companions were staring at him, mouths agape. Sakura tried to say something, but she just couldn't. There weren't any words to respond to him—of course it was expected, somehow, but he had still casually stated that his host's wife was a demon. Kakashi had been the first to find his voice, choking out his words.

"I…I would thank you if you didn't refer to my wife that…way…while you're in my house." She and Tenzou looked away from the two men, leaving them in a private conversation—the head of house and his guest, as it was supposed to be.

"What shall I call her then?" the black haired man was genuinely curious, puzzled that his nickname wasn't met with praise somehow.

"Merely call her by her name, as you do with my servant and I."

"But I forget your names during the night and day, you introduce yourselves to me each morning and each evening—Oni-san works quite well for a woman so obviously of demonic heritage, and she must have a name because we are around each other nearly the entire day." Sakura ducked her head down, blinking furiously to rid her eyes of tears. She had thought herself to be immune to the constant comparison of her appearance and that of an evil spirit, but every time something happened that disturbed her inner peace. Like this.

"You cannot call her that," Kakashi's voice rose a little—not loud or even a shout, but quite forceful. Sakrua peeked up a little to look over at him, a warm smile bubbling inside as he defended her. "You can call Sakura anything you wish, but you may not call her 'Oni-san' in place of her actual name." Their guest rose to the challenge admirably, and almost a little too fast.

"So to call her, for instance, 'The Hag' would meet with your approval, if only because it is in place of 'Oni-san'?" he cocked his head to the side, still mystified at his host's insistence on this. Kakashi's shoulder's slumped but he nodded, suddenly tired.

"Yes, that would be acceptable."

Their guest was slow to remember things, but eventually he started to recall who he had been before arriving in Fujimi. He said he had been a painter, and had quietly asked after potentially taking it up once again—perhaps the familiarity with the paints would bring back other details yet left hazy by his injury. By midwinter he mostly remembered who he was, but his own name eluded him. Kakashi called him—in a sarcastic bordering on caustic manner—Sai, against the man's small protests.

"If you're going to call my wife The Hag, I will call you Sai."

After that Sai made more of an effort from day to day to call her by her name rather than his nickname for her. He tried to help out around the house as he could, but he tired easily. Instead he often sat by the fire with Kurenai as Sakura bustled around the house when she had chores to do. Otherwise the three of them stayed near the warmth of the main room. He would paint, while the women made infant swaddling.

Kurenai would have her baby at the end of spring, or the very beginning of summer, and in all honesty sometimes neither woman could think of more to do around the house other than sew. Kakashi, Asuma, and Tenzou spent their days mostly outside repairing fences, or cutting wood. Doing the maintenance that hadn't been done since at least the summer, which was obviously taxing to the three of them. Asuma would show up with Kakashi usually only to retrieve Kurenai and head across the fields towards their own home. Sakura wondered sometimes why they didn't all live together, but it was obviously a point of pride to Asuma to maintain his own house—so she didn't bring anything up.

Kakashi hadn't spent a winter lying next to someone for years. Of course he and Sakura were approaching their one-year anniversary in the spring—a spare two months now—and had slept on the same futon since then, but winter brought out a very different aspect of sleeping with her at his side. The cold chill of evening in their room had them diving for the covers faster and faster as winter fell on Fujimi. Some nights this cold dissipated quickly as they made love, but other nights it waited at the edges of their covers for a stray toe as they tried to simply go to sleep.

On the few evenings each month that Sakura wouldn't let him have her, for instance, they cuddled close to one another and tried to rest. She also liked to be warm those nights it seemed, and thieved his covers relentlessly. He almost always woke up in the middle of the night, finding that Sakura had stolen some part of their blankets and that she'd left his arm, his back, or his foot in the cold. This brought up the fact that the last time he'd spent the winter sharing another person's warmth was when he'd been a child, no more than five or six—protected from blanket thieves by his grandmother. His father's mother had slept in the main room near the fire with him cuddled up to her side, and she'd told him fairytales until he fell asleep.

But with Sakura it was different—the biggest difference of course was that she was his wife not his grandmother—but Kakashi liked each and every one of those differences. He went to sleep warm and (most of the time) woke up warm. The smell of Sakura's hair was on his pillows and in his nose, and her breath would be washing across his collarbone. Their late night conversations conducted in hushed tones so as not to bother Tenzou or Sai—who was apparently an amazingly light sleeper. Kakashi still couldn't believe…he hadn't ever imagined that a life like this would ever happen to him.

"Do you think it's foggy outside this morning?" Sakura hadn't been a fan of the winter in Fujimi. It had rained hard and long well into the season, and a sudden cold snap had nearly killed her newly-sprouted spring vegetables. And they got closer to spring, the days were less filled with rain and more with fog. It was eerie, yes, but Kakashi had spent nearly his entire life living in Fujimi and so it was a routine sort of oddness. Sakura however looked forward to the return of warmth, and of sunshine.

"Isn't it always foggy?"

"Yes, but I prayed last night that it would be sunny. I want it to be sunny today," she didn't say anything more, however Kakashi could feel some kind of giddiness bubbling out from her. But she would tell him what it was about when she wanted to. She pecked a kiss to his lips as she got up. Dawn light was just barely starting to make its way into the house, so all he could see was her dim shape in the gloom. Later on, Asuma would be over for sparring, and after they would walk through the fields to ensure that they were all still properly flooded. Sakura and Kurenai would look to the rice plants themselves, Kurenai teaching Sakura how to look after the plants before they would be transferred to the fields.

There was also the fact that their guest, Sai, had asked if he could go to the town for paints—he wanted to paint all of their portraits in return for their kindness to him. Kakashi was wary, but Sakura had seemed pleased with the idea and so he allowed it. The man could now remember all of their names and was fairly certain that he was from Kyoto—his accent was the same as Tenzou's, and the brown haired man had spent half his childhood in Kyoto. It was all very innocent, but the smiles which didn't always reach Sai's eyes caused Kakashi a moment of pause. Regularly. He knew that everyone in their small group knew of his scheming, but it was polite not to bring up the fact that Kakashi saw to it that neither Sakura nor Kurenai were left alone in the house with the amnesiac painter.

Sakura had gotten dressed and was putting up her hair—he could now just barely see her rather than her dim outline—with well-practiced efficiency.

"What do you want for breakfast?"

"Grilled fish, just what I always want," he teased back at her. Really she could have served rice and miso every morning and Kakashi would have been pleased with the meal, but she usually gave him a choice of what he wanted to eat. Sakura's face twisted a little before she stuck her tongue out at him as he reluctantly stood up in the chilly morning air.

"Gross—maybe I'll try to make those rice rolls Sai says they make in Kyoto. That will teach you a lesson," she said while she dodged his arms only to find that he'd feinted and she was still caught. He held her close with one arm while his free hand tilted her face up, and he grinned in answer to her devious smile.

"Oh and what will that lesson be?"

"Making people get up and go fishing this early in the morning, you would deserve whatever horror my cooking turned out to be."

Shisui heard little of the outside world other than the muted conversations conducted in the halls—his family's home had been destroyed, while all of the servants had been questioned thoroughly as to where Uchiwa Shisui had disappeared to. He felt terrible that such a thing had transpired, but he had to protect himself and his wife. They lived in darkened rooms deep within his friend's city house. The rooms with windows outside to even courtyards were too heavily frequented, and it would be odd to close such prime spaces to guests—and in the wake of the Uchiwa arrests it was always best not to seem odd or out of place. Apparently many other samurai families were reeling as the true depths of the investigation were gradually made known.

This left them in limbo at the moment. The servants had been sworn to secrecy on pain of death, while all around the city Advisor Gama's investigators swarmed in the search for the last few Uchiwa. He often contemplated how to ever repay the kindness they had been granted, for the danger his old friend Nobu put himself in for their sakes.

Rin for her part was largely despondent. She had been taken from all her acquaintances in Fujimi, and just when she had started to connect with her peers here in Edo she had been snatched away from them. In his plan of staying out of the eye of the government until the rest of the family had been dealt with, Shisui worried about Rin. She wanted to live a normal life, turn her back on their faith—except Shisui could think of no way to truly give her either of those freedoms. If they recanted openly, they might still be executed—no doubt stripped of their rank as well. Shisui deeply understood the place his cousin had felt himself to be in.

It was Itachi's brave cowardice that gave Shisui the strength to carry on. He and Rin would leave Edo in the spring and make their way north to Ezochi, and try to make a living out on that desolate frontier. It was securing the water passage that was difficult, the rest could be managed easily. Well, easily in the sense that they would be living as commoners as they travelled—Ezochi was far enough and wild enough that perhaps they could reclaim their place in what little society the northern island could offer. Shisui knew admittedly little about that place, and the Ezo who peopled it, but there were no other options.

Sometimes his wife would cry at night, softly so as not to bring unnecessary attention to their rooms. Shisui held her and wished he could cry as well. Their entire family would be dead by fall, and all of their previous acquaintances would be under compulsion to turn them in to the authorities should they make themselves known. The Uchiwa and their kirishitan faith had been mostly overlooked by those few who knew of it—in Fujimi at least—but after the rounding up of the family, Shisui doubted that even Kakashi would take them in.

The nights when Rin wept, Shisui's thoughts often turned to his near-brother. Kakashi had been Obito's best friend, was even the reason Obito was dead—sacrificed himself to save both Kakashi and his father. The man had been Shisui's other older brother, and Sakumo had been a warmer version of Fugaku. Their two families had meshed surprisingly well despite the constantly kept secret of religion. Shisui was now glad that after Sakumo's death Kakashi had withdrawn from them—hopefully he and his new bride had been spared from suspicion, but he sadly doubted it. The morning last spring he'd spent laughing with Kakashi had been a true blessing, sitting there with both the man's pink haired wife and Rin.

Had the girl truly had pink hair? Shisui's mouth quirked to the side with a wry laugh. That would put the Hatake man in a tight position. If Kakashi had avoided arrest, it would have taken a miracle of storytelling to the right audience…but if anyone could do it, it would be his friend. He hoped that years from now he might feel safe enough to contact the man, reconnect as brothers once more—without, hopefully, the threat of arrest.

For now he simply prayed for his loved ones—his blood relatives, his close friends, and their families, Kakashi and his pink haired wife. The winter outside was raging with howling winds, and even once the weather turned closer to spring the winds did not abate. He knew that the weather reflected a lot of things, and he could only suppose that many other people were just as displaced and terrified as he and Rin were—how else would one explain the dreary weather? It didn't rain very much that winter either, which was worrying after the drought surrounding Edo-proper of the previous summer.

Shisui briefly prayed that they got out of the city before perhaps another year went by without rain—not that he was outside much to miss it.

He stayed silent for the entire hour-long walk to Fujimi. The coins Sakura had given him jingled softly in their pouch, but they were the only marker of his passing. His breathing was controlled and his footsteps were light despite the quick pace he walked at. The pain of his injuries was nothing, and he was glad to finally have a chance where he could meditate such pain away—it would arouse suspicion if he were to be walking without pain just three spare months since his grievous injuries, just as his Edo accent had had to be dropped in favor for a Kyoto one.

His plan was foolproof, he knew that much from spending the winter with them. The family rarely went into town for anything, and even then they never spent much time there. They probably wouldn't hear of him sending a letter until he was already gone, and even if they did he could explain that he was writing a letter to his father asking for the means to return home, that he finally remembered himself. His master would be especially pleased with his findings, he knew, although greatly amused at the lengths he had gone to complete his mission.

Really, who stabbed themselves repeatedly and then travelled on the road another six miles?

My dear father,

The goods you requested me to pick up are indeed in Fujimi, set aside for you by Sarutobi-sama, but I am ill-equipped to transport them because I lack the proper documentation. If you would come to me here I am being cared for by Hatake Kakashi and his family, and afterwards the two of us should be well able to take your property back to Edo.

Your son.

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