My gosh…Okay. Wow. I say this every chapter now, but wow. The response to this has been getting more and more amazing and I just have to say thank you to everyone. Really, really really. Okay so here we are getting to where there is actually a bit of plot and progression and the like—and sheesh, it only took the villagers a year! But more on that later.

This chapter seems like a filler chapter but actually it is not…it's actually kind of pivotal. Yeah. Anyway, funfacts!

Funfact: Now, you can't have a Naruto story without ramen in my personal opinion, but unfortunately back in the day they didn't call it 'ramen.' They didn't even have ramen in the 1650s! Ramen didn't appear as its own thing until the 19th century or so it seems. Before people just ate soba or udon and such if they were going to have soupwithnoodles. I considered fudging things but…No. You can't make me. My integrity is already quite miffed at what I'm planning to do in a few chapters.

Funfact: Usually shipwrecked sailors were just executed on the spot, unless they shipwrecked somewhere near Nagasaki or Osaka. Then they only might get executed on the spot, they might win the lottery and get sent to Dejima to catch a ship…somewhere else.

Funfact: The shichi-go-san festival, as a coming-of-childhood-festival, from like the 12th century. It started among the nobility and then filtered its way down through the ranks in society. By the 17th century it was a samurai tradition, and by the 19th it was even tradition among the non-elite and peasants.

Funfact: Shichi-go-san means 'seven-five-three' and was celebrated when a boy turned three or five, or when a girl turned three or seven. The children were dressed up in fancy kimono, and boys were allowed to wear hakama for the first time. Girls changed out a simple cord for an obi to tie their clothing shut, too. In the 1600s children were also allowed to grow their hair out after their 3rd birthday, because up until then their heads had been kept shaved bald. No, I'm not making this up.

Funfact: Geta, like Jiraiya wears in the manga and anime, were still sometimes worn by men. But only by weird men apparently from what I could find. They used to be fairly normal, but fell out of style by 1600—for men, I must stress. So there is a little fudging here, but hopefully you'll all catch on to why I fudged it.

Funfact: Women during this time wore their hair differently based on if they were married or not, rather than a ring or something.

So without further ado,

Enjoy!

Sakura didn't miss him immediately—in fact it was almost like Kakashi was out fussing over his rice paddies rather than on his way to the capitol. She cleaned the house, putting things away from where they'd been discarded in the mad dash of packing yesterday. Sai was out of the house, ghosting after Tenzou like a lost child after Tenzou gave him the barest hint of permission to do so—their guest was nearly himself once more. It seemed he had been a silent and biddable person. He was different from Asuma who was opinionated and stolid, or Kakashi who went with the flow of things but whose voice was clearly heard.

Instead, Sakura missed Kakashi as she tried to go to sleep that night. Although it was a little different, she combed her hair and laid out her bedding just fine. The blankets had warmed up well, too, so that wasn't the heart of the problem. Sakura lay on her side looking up at the dimly lit ceiling, one hand reaching across to where Kakashi normally lay his head. And it was then that she missed him, because she realized that the room was dim and not dark—because Kakashi was the one who blew out the lamp when they went to bed.

After she realized this and blew out the flame, Sakura wondered if she would wake up cold. But she kept her tears at bay because she wasn't alone in her shock and pain—Asuma had more family in Edo than just his cousin, it seemed, as did Tenzou. The two men even had to worry about getting the rice crop planted in time, despite the help Asuma had hired for them. He refused to hear of either woman helping out—Kurenai because she seemed to be only inches from birth every day, and Sakura because of Sarutobi's refusal to choose anyone but Kakashi to look for Iruka.

It stemmed from a personal feud he had with his uncle, and Sakura chose to take the gift for what it was—Asuma had hired the men, put them up in a room in the town, fed them, and supervised them. He refused to take a single coin from Sakura for it as well. The rice paddies were fully planted before Kakashi had been gone a week, and Sakura's carefully saved money was preserved.

So Sakura either willed herself not to cry, or was just too busy for it. Her parents had responded to Kakashi's letter quickly—they would both travel to Fujimi after a few days, and Masaki would return to Iimori periodically to care for his business. When they'd arrived, five days after Kakashi had left for Edo, Sakura had managed to smile at her parents. Their presence had initially strengthened her resolve that everything would be okay, that Kakashi's absence wasn't the end of the world.

She didn't cry until an offhand remark from her mother pushed her off the edge.

Her mother had taken over cooking from the start, letting Sakura focus on making a kimono for Sai as well as repairs on Kakashi's clothing—it was difficult to get him to admit it when his tabi needed mending, let alone his actual garments. His absence was actually going to do wonders for his clothing. Sakura sat in the main room with her sewing, her mother fussing over both her and Kurenai. No, Sakura didn't cry until something her mother said during an unimportant conversation pushed her to it.

"You know, Sakura, you could have it much harder—Kakashi could be in your father's profession, and be away traveling every other week. Masaki was gone for probably half of my pregnancy, you know."

As she bawled into her mother's shoulder, Sakura knew the truth of the statement. Married life for most people involved weeks, months, even years of separation—whereas in nearly a year, Kakashi had rarely left her side. She knew that she was lucky, but it was hard to call herself that in the middle of mood swings, stinging cravings for umeboshi, nausea, and perpetual exhaustion, all of which she felt like she was facing alone. The rest of the day she had been sad and withdrawn, not even Tenzou gruffly trying to cheer her up did anything.

The next morning as she coaxed her stomach into letting her eat—something her mother had made for her—Sakura came to a decision. She wasn't going to be a deadweight—she wasn't allowed to help with the planting because of Asuma, she wasn't allowed to cook, and many other small things, but she would find a way to make herself useful whether those around her liked it or not.

He decided to keep an eye on the young man, for everyone's sakes. So Kakashi took the thin futon they'd had the yellow-haired man sleeping on downstairs and moved it up into the lofted room on the second floor. There he'd be mostly safe from prying eyes during the day, and at night Kakashi tried to teach him how to talk. He was quick to grasp "good morning," among other pleasant nothings—already having a functional understanding of "sorry."

Kakashi decided to call the boy "Kamaboko," after he tried to eat an entire roll of the stuff—and succeeded. Inoue-san suggested they call him "Naruto," after the individual slices, and they'd coined a name for him—Kamaboko Naruto. It stuck so well because of how fast he ate, and the fact that the cured fish paste was usually the only thing they could get him to eat with his soup and rice—he couldn't stomach much else. Kakashi wrote, in his letter to Sakura, that he had never seen one so finicky. He didn't ask her how she was faring—he'd realized on the road that she hadn't been eating much in the mornings, and that she avoided serving certain dishes if she possibly could. If he'd been paying attention to her instead of other things, he might have noticed sooner. And there was the possibility that her response wouldn't be of good news, and Kakashi didn't want to get his hopes up by prying.

"Kakashi, you have—" and then gibberish. Kakashi looked up from where he was writing to peer at Naruto. They'd had a discussion earlier that day about his new name—he had it in his head that they were going to call him something completely unpronounceable, and they'd explained that no, they were going to call him Kamaboko Naruto. He sighed—the young man was nothing if not indomitable. He mixed what words he knew with whatever it was he normally spoke, determined to be understood.

"I have what?" Naruto looked frustrated for a few moments, gesturing at his left hand grandiosely. Kakashi didn't let even a smirk cross his face—it was hilarious, but amusement was not helpful to teaching Naruto how to speak.

"Inoue-san and Kanna-san—Kanna-san. You have Kanna-san?" Kakashi stared at him for a long moment, working out what Naruto meant by that before it clicked.

"A wife? Yes, she's far away though. Wife, Naruto, wife. I have a wife." he said the words slowly, gesturing that Naruto should repeat after him. Once he'd grasped the words (mostly, his accent was atrocious), Kakashi did give him an encouraging smile. "Her name is Sakura. Sakura. Kakashi's wife is Sakura." Naruto dutifully repeated him, and Kakashi left him to mull over the words on his own—letting people think through a problem on their own was often far more rewarding for them than being hand-held throughout the process.

He reached over to his small travelling pouch and pulled out his papers, kept carefully in a well-wrapped packet. As he untied it, Naruto tromped his way over to his side—among everything else that was foreign, the young man was extremely loud in everything he did. Among the permission notes from Sarutobi-sama to travel to Edo, his identifying documents proving he was a samurai, and blank sheets for letter writing—among all that, was a small portrait Sai had given him before he'd left. It was of Sakura and himself, a tiny copy of the larger portrait he'd done for them. The picture was carefully done, and Kakashi felt it was a good likeness of them both.

Naruto took it with care and inspected it in the dim light of the lamp.

"Sakura—" followed by gibberish, but an excited kind of gibberish with a lot of gesturing towards himself. He pointed at the hints of green used to color Sakura's eyes, as well as her soft pink hair, while pointing at his own eyes and grabbing at his hair.

Kakashi didn't know how to tell Naruto that Sakura didn't even speak Chinese, let alone whatever Naruto babbled on in. Neither did he know how to tell Naruto that Sakura was thought to be a demon—and that they were going to try to pass Naruto off as one as well in the case that he was discovered. It probably wouldn't work, but it was worth a shot.

"Sakura-san, there's someone to see you," Tenzou's voice called from the hallway. Sakura looked up from her stitching at her companions—her mother and Kurenai. They were typically her only visitors because she disliked the village and the villagers disliked her—she had thought it would always be that way. She put down the half-finished kimono—for Sai, who looked ridiculous in his taken-in former-yukata-kimono—and stood up, brushing a few lingering threads from her clothing.

"You can see them in, Tenzou," she said as she went into the main room to put on hot water. With so few people ever formally visiting the house, she could always offer them tea because she always had some to spare.

She barely suppressed a double-take when she saw who her guests were—the innkeeper's wife and her daughter-in-law. And, wriggling against his grandmother's hold, was a quiet little boy of no more than three. Sakura vaguely remembered the boy and his mother from a year ago—she had smiled at them from across the room when they were at the inn, but the young mother had seized her arms around her baby and left the room immediately.

"Taeko-san, Ito-san, it is pleasant to see you," she said softly with a gentle bow. The two women bowed as well before Taeko, the innkeeper's wife, started in on why they were paying her a visit. Sakura was fairly sure they were supposed to go through a few more pleasantries, but she wasn't exactly sure what those were—she'd been raised with the same standards as her guests after-all.

"Sakura-san, this is of course an overdue visit. Your father has stayed in our inn enough over the years that it was remiss of us not to offer his daughter a proper welcome in town. Why we haven't should remain in the past, because it was not a polite reason," she shot a look at her daughter-in-law which almost had Sakura cowering.

"We apologize for our family's behavior, Sakura-san," Ito said in a small voice, her head bowed.

"I…appreciate the sentiment, but I admit that I fail to see why the three of you would travel an hour out of town to offer such an apology when a letter would have sufficed. It is a long journey for two women, an even longer one for as little boy as…." She led the question of the boy's name, she felt that Ito would withdraw from the conversation if Sakura were too forthright.

"It is precisely because of little Hayate that we've come," Taeko said when Ito remained silent. "He's going to turn three in a few months, and our family wants you to make his shichi-go-san outfit. Ito has purchased the materials already, and we will pay you for your time of course." Sakura couldn't speak for several long moments, she was in shock. Her first visit from a villager and it was a commission for an important coming-of-age celebration.

"I don't understand why you would come to me, surely there are other women with a better command of the needle," she started before Ito bent forward in a bow, interrupting Sakura during her minute pause.

"My husband and I saw your embroidery work on the clothing your guest, Sai, wore to town last week. We were both impressed, and he told me that he would like you to make Hayate's outfit. It was not polite of me to wait so long to come, as my mother-in-law has already told you. But I am here now, and would like you to make my son's outfit for us."

"And we wanted to get our order in before everyone else took up your time with their own orders—there are at least three other women who are boasting that they are going to commission you for their children," Taeko butted in after her daughter before Sakura could even respond.

The house was silent around them, but she knew that silence to be unnatural—Sakura was sure that her mother and Kurenai were listening in from the hallway, and Tenzou was just outside the house on the porch. She had a rather large audience for this rather small favor. But it was an important favor, because a little boy only turned three once in his life—and this little boy in particular was the heir of a rather prominent Fujimi business. His shichi-go-san outfit needed to be of special importance.

"Of course I will make Hayate's outfit for you, when do you need it?"

She'd found her niche—fixing and repairing people's clothing wasn't strenuous, wasn't something she had to learn, it was something she was good at. It wasn't something amazing like healing, but it was a start. It was hers.

Kakashi had finished his letters to Sakura and Sarutobi-sama two days after arriving in Edo—he had had to word each of them quite carefully. Sakura's because he had endeavored to tell her about his new roommate Naruto, and Sarutobi-sama's because it was hard to list the rampant destruction of the city. There was also the matter that he had found the Sarutobi clan compound. It had burned to the ground, but passerby had told him that it had been evacuated on the first day of the fire—all Kakashi had to do now was find Iruka and Anko, or at least find out if they had made for Fujimi on their own. He refused to believe they were dead.

So it was with his bundle of letters that he went out that day, looking for a courier traveling north on a road that went through Fujimi. Eventually he'd found a trustworthy one who came highly recommended by the few samurai he'd become acquainted with.

"And when you get to Fujimi you must deliver it to Sarutobi-sama himself, not an aide, not a servant, not a family member. The daimyo himself—tell him it's from Hatake Kakashi about Umino Iruka." He was just paying the courier when someone came up at his elbow and bowed shortly. Kakashi turned and bowed as well, but waited for this stranger to speak. The courier bobbed his head shortly and took off like a shot—Kakashi had just paid him double after all, and traveling at double speed was completely warranted at that price.

"You're from Fujimi?"

"…Yes, I am. I'm here on orders of the daimyo—"

"Did you know a woman named Rin?" There was a nervous hesitance to the man's demeanor, as though he wasn't sure if he should even be bringing the topic up. A sympathizer then.

"Yes, she and her husband moved here to Edo last summer," Kakashi said

"They," he glanced around briefly before continuing, "they stayed with my family shortly after some…trouble. I did all I could to get them out of the city when my family's compound burned down, I don't know if they did or not. I would have kept silent, but you said you were from Fujimi and everyone was saying that the north must be full of…full of…"he searched for words, and floundered.

"Friends?" Kakashi offered. It was a harmless word, really, and easy to react to in a forbidden conversation.

"Conspirators," the man finally choked out, as though realizing that he too fit the definition. He rushed on, ignoring Kakashi's startled look, all while staring intently over Kakashi's shoulder.

"If the north is full of conspirators, and the three of you are from Fujimi then…then…" Kakashi turned around to look down the avenue his companion was staring down, obviously frightened out of his wits. A tall, burly man was clomping his way towards them. His hair was raucous despite being pulled back into a reluctant topknot, and it was whiter than Kakashi's. Age lines carved their way down, around, and over his face, making his visage truly terrifying despite his unfortunate choice in footwear and his equally unfortunately styled hair. Momentarily forgetting whatever it was this other samurai was trying to tell him, Kakashi asked in a hushed voice who this man was.

"Advisor Gama, he is the shogun's right hand man—and he deals with the kirishitan problem, and foreigners." Kakashi's back went rigid at the sight of this lord—one of the highest in the government, in the land even because his rank was higher than some lesser imperial lineages. They watched for a little while longer as the man's retainers tried to coax him back to his carriage, until he was so near that Kakashi and his companion had to throw themselves to their knees to bow.

His geta clomped to a stop near their heads, as their foreheads nearly touched the ground.

"You, with the white hair—what's your name? Where you do you hail from?" Kakashi unbent his arms a little to raise his face from the ground so his words would be heard. The sounds from the street seemed muted now. Kakashi couldn't even hear the rustle of the breeze over his own heartbeat and the well of silence that engulfed his ears.

"Fujimi district, my lord, my name is Hatake Kakashi." There was a beat before Gama spoke, as though he were choosing his words carefully.

"Here to find family?"

"To find Sarutobi-sama's son, my lord."

There was a long pause during which Kakashi nearly drove himself mad wondering what caused it. Perhaps because Gama had had to deal with the entire Fujimi branch of the Uchiwa family? Or, even more paranoid, had word of a "pink haired demon woman," made its way even to this man's ear?

"And you, where do you hail from, what's your name?" Kakashi tried to contain his sigh of relief as Gama's attention turned towards his unlikely companion.

"My family lives in Edo, Lord Gama, we are retainers for the castle. My name is Omura Nobu."

"Hmm. And your reason for being so far from your home?"

"Looking for horses lost in the fire, one of my servants believes that they escaped the stables rather than being stolen. I was giving this man advice on who to use as a courier."

"A believable enough story, Omura Nobu. Where are each of you staying?"

"I am staying with my wife's family, in their home near the river," Nobu said quickly, fear touching his words. Kakashi refused slump as he realized what was going to happen—Gama was likely just questioning random people he encountered, with the plan of interviewing them later for some reason known only to himself. Naruto would likely be discovered then and there was no telling what would happen to Kakashi or his hosts.

But lying would make whatever happened worse.

"I am staying with a family whose home did not completely burn in the fire," with which he gave directions to Inoue-san's house as well as what time he planned on returning that day. There was an appreciative sound from their interrogator before he moved on down the street. Kakashi and Nobu waited a long moment before standing. As they subtly stretched out their aching elbows and knees, their eyes met.

It had certainly been a close one.

My dear son,

While I was walking through Uncle's garden I ran into a retainer who had lost something—something you mentioned he had lost, the last time we spoke. I am going to help him, of course, and may perhaps obtain his aid in transporting my package to Edo when the time comes. When I finally tear myself away from work here, I will be bringing with me two packages addressed to you. For some reason they were sent here instead.

I fear for when I see you, my son, that you won't recognize me—for now I can distinguish between the old-elderly and the young-elderly. Unfortunately, according to Uncle, I fall into the former rather than the latter despite all my protestations.

Lastly, the journey to pick up my goods has been further delayed. While many of our family's holdings survived the fire, a great many others did not. I have been called to help in the rebuilding—imagine, putting an old man like myself to work. My task would be so much easier if I could travel to pick up my things, but as you know that is impossible for at least another few weeks. In the meantime, keep them safe as ever my son.

Your father

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