Hello my lovely, lovely readers! I've been feeling really motivated recently (mostly because we're finally getting to the parts I had to flesh out the most in my head when I started writing this). And gah, wow, why did fanfic have to freaking crash hours after I uploaded the last chapter? I wish that I'd been able to hear more about what you all thought about it, but I guess that is at your own discretion now…Anyway, this chapter is mostly filler (well, filler my style which means a chapter that looks like filler but actually has a lot of stuff in it :D ) and the next chapter will probably have more stuff and be all interesting and such to everyone. Really, 27 was one of the kicker chapters that I've wanted to get right for a very long time.

Funfact: Cremation in the 16th and 17th centuries in Catholic countries was pretty darn frowned upon (to such an extent that to this day, cremation rates in predominantly Catholic countries don't usually exceed 20% of total dead-person-disposal ideas), and so I'm taking that for all it is worth here with Jiraiya and yeah.

Funfact: Ietsuna had a bunch of regents who advised him for a long time, and in 1658 he was only 17 or 18 years old. The regency over him only ended in 1663, a full five years after where the story is taking place right now. Again, he was the chill guy out of like the whole dynasty. Mostly.

Funfact: You don't actually scrub yourself in the tub if you're having a bath in Japan, you soak in the tub to be all relaxed and happy. You scrub all the dirt and dead skin and gross off while you're sitting outside of the tub on a little stool, pouring water over yourself occasionally. It saves on water for the bath itself because then clean people are rubbadubdubdubing in the bathtub, not dirty ones. It's basically like taking a quick shower before drawing yourself a bath. Yes.

Funreasearch (I should have done months ago but whatever!): there was actually a powerful daimyo family by the name of "Hatakeyama," running around nearish to where the story is set, during this time-periodish too! But they were boring. And way too high ranking for me to have properly wrangled them into this particular story. It would be a whole different story for our dear Kakashi and Sakura if Kakashi was the daimyo-to-be, now wouldn't it?

Well, without further ado,

Enjoy!

"My father is in town," she said, mostly as a way to distract him from noticing the minnows she'd put in his soup. Iruka became distraught over the tiniest things, truly. He didn't take her teasing quite as in stride as her brother had—her supposed brother, anyway. She hadn't laid eyes on him for a good fifteen years now, he might be dead for all she knew. But she rather hoped sometimes that her father died before her brother. If she was forced to only have one of them, she would choose her brother. Supposed brother.

"Oh really?" Iruka's voice was absent as he glanced at her once—he truly disliked her father, and Anko knew why. Iruka's mother, Umino Sayoko, was one of the nicest and most popular people in Edo—and Anko's father would have nothing to do with her for the simple fact that she had birthed three illegitimate children to the Sarutobi clan-head. Her father preferred guaranteed purity of the line, if it was to be hereditary. Anko's own mother had been forced into a convent to become a nun after failing for ten years to produce a male child. She was too high-ranking to divorce or do away with, she was a niece of Shogun Iemitsu and either move would go badly for Anko's father. He was far too intelligent to bring such attention to himself.

Iruka still hadn't noticed the minnows, and Anko wondered briefly if her husband could ever hope to successfully raise a child—there was a reason she had staved off having children for this long, using various herbs and invented headaches quite successfully over the last three years. Iruka was such an innocent sometimes that Anko mentally comforted him that at least he was married to her and not a woman who would let him flounder. But it was high time that they started attempting (well, Iruka had been attempting for years, too trusting to notice what she was doing to sabotage him) to continue the family line.

"Ackackaaagh—you!—there's a—!—woman…"

Sakura's coughing was unnerving but Kakashi reveled in it. She was so amazingly alive as she sat in the bathhouse with him. Sitting on one of the stools, she had loosened her obi just a little, and her yukata fell open to a wide V while her long hair was pulled over one shoulder so she could comb it a little, and he had never seen someone more relaxed or happy. And so very alive.

"How long have you been sick?" he said as he sat down next to her after soaking for a little in the ofuro, and poured some water on his hair to start scrubbing it. Sakura took the ladle from him and shakily stood so she could help him, leaning one hip against the tub as she took some water to pour over his head.

"I…I think for ten days or so. Tenzou thinks it was one of the little village boys who gave it to me, but I'm not so sure," Sakura paused for breath and cleared her throat, "I've been getting better over the last two or three days though, if only a little. For instance I can stand up today," she finished brightly. Kakashi decided not to question her further, it would only make him upset that he hadn't been notified of her illness immediately.

"When I got Tenzou's letter I panicked," he eventually said softly as he scrubbed the last of the dirt from his skin between the occasional rinse of water from Sakura. The room was quiet except for the splashing and dripping of water hitting the floor, and the husky wheeze of Sakura's breathing.

"He did say that he wrote to you a few days ago—that courier must have been fast!" Her voice was pleased, and a little indulgent. Kakashi's head drooped down before he spoke again, his elbows resting on his knees while his hands went limp.

"I got it yesterday morning, Sakura," he admitted, not looking up. He loved her so badly, he hadn't been able to think past getting home to find out what had happened to her.

Her hands reached out and grasped his bare shoulders, her fingers slipping only a little from the water still on his skin. He reached around her and tucked his face against her hip. His eyes were hot again, as they had been twenty minutes ago when he had seen her kneeling on the porch, her face pale save for two spots of high color on her cheeks. Kakashi couldn't believe himself, actually letting tears fall—how long had it been since he'd last wept? He sucked in a shuddering breath and held her tighter, but this time his eyes stayed dry.

Kakashi carried Sakura back into the house, leaving her near the fire where she could keep warm. He didn't even have to see Tenzou to know who was outside tied up to the fence—he'd heard Naruto's voice shouting in that foreign tongue of his for the last half hour. He couldn't have told anyone how he knew Tenzou would do something like that to a stranger, but it came from the fact that it was what he would have done in the same situation. Probably. In any rate, however, Naruto was unimpressed with his forty-five minute sit down. Their wandering painter sat calmly next to Naruto. With Sai's mind sometimes doddering between creepily aware and completely complacent it was hard to tell what went on in his head—but today was obviously a complacent day in the forgetful man's life. He was asking Naruto questions about what Edo was like and who he had seen.

Poor Naruto was probably catching about half of what Sai said.

"He says he followed you out here—"

"That he did, Tenzou. This is Uzumaki Naruto, who eats fish and noodles fast enough to make your head spin. Naruto," he said, nudging the yellow-haired man's thigh with his foot, "this is Tenzou, the family help. And this is Sai, another guest of the house." He spoke slowly, gesturing along to each word. Naruto understood actions far better than words most of the time—the young man's reply to the introductions was a muttered string of harsh-sounding gibberish. In that light, the young man would probably always be slightly intimidated by Tenzou just because of the circumstances of how they'd met. Not everyone's first greeting to a new person was to tie them up, after all.

"Is Sakura-san?" Naruto asked, rubbing at his wrists to relieve their aching after Kakashi untied him and helped him to stand. Kakashi clapped an arm around Naruto's shoulders, which had been tense until those blue eyes had sighted on Kakashi's smile. Behind them, Tenzou and Sai looked to the horses—Sai as always slightly bewildered, and Tenzou grumpy at the thought of feeding the two beasts until they could be returned to town. Kakashi slipped his feet out of his sandals and pulled his fingers through his hair—still a bit damp from the bath—while Naruto struggled with the laces on his boots, still muttering in that foreign tongue of his. He actually sounded a fair bit like Tenzou.

"Sakura, I brought someone back with me from Edo—he has been looking forward to meeting you actually. His name is Naruto, don't let him convince you otherwise," Kakashi called before finally bending down to help the younger man with his boots. Sakura called back that her mother had started tea for all of them, if they would only hurry up. Kakashi restrained himself from wincing at how raw and weak her voice was. She is alive, I am with her here in this house. That is enough.

The next day he took it upon himself to visit Sarutobi-sama—the man would have heard of his return by now, and would soon demand an explanation of Iruka's whereabouts. In fact, he met the rider as the man was on his way out—only sighting on Kakashi's white hair stopped him from continuing all the way to the Hatake farmland. Kakashi had taken one of the two horses with him, so it was easy to have his mount fall into a trot beside the man Sarutobi-sama had sent.

"Is Sarutobi-sama in good health, Yayoi-san?" Yayoi was a few years older than him, and one of the few retainer-samurai that Sarutobi-sama actually trusted. The rest of them vied for positions in his rule, and he hated most of them. It was a lament that Kakashi had heard for most of his life—why, o' why, would did the Hatake so respectfully refuse to be made official advisors to the daimyo of Fujimi? His father Sakumo had always argued that such an arrangement was for the best—not having a position meant that no lies were invented to keep the position.

"Yes, but in a poor humor today—he expressly told you not to return without his son, yet here you are. And Iruka-sama is quite obviously absent…do you know if he is alive?"

"He and Anko were alive and quite well when I left Edo—you know, my wife is ill. They feared she would die, I had to return." Yayoi nodded once.

"I had heard it—Asuma-sama came to ask that Sarutobi-sama force the doctor into seeing her. I don't know what was said, only that Asuma-sama left here even more furious than he was when he arrived. But you're probably lucky that Fumio didn't see to your wife—they say he accidentally killed that Uchiwa woman last summer with the dosages of medicines he gave her, before all that trouble with the family in the fall."

Kakashi shook his head, still upset.

"That does not mean he has the right to refuse services to a samurai—but it is in the past, I cannot change it. Though if he dares to refuse to see my family again, I will kill him."

"I'll be sure to pass that along to Sarutobi-sama once you have had your meeting with him and are safely on your way home."

Sakura was coughing still. She wished it was different, that Kakashi had come home and that she would get better soon after. This illness seemed to persist, and she felt guilty that she kept her husband awake at night—or even worse, would wake him up. Kakashi always sat up and rubbed her back as she struggled to bring up anything with her coughing. His hair stood up in every direction because he combed his fingers through it when he woke up each time. Their room was dark, but she still knew his hair was defying gravity.

He also refused to sleep in another room, despite Sakura wanting to keep him from getting sick. His one black eye was always open, looking at her intently as she fell asleep in his arms each night. The lamp was always glowing dimly somewhere near their bedding, even in the middle of the night when she startled awake fighting to breathe through a sudden fit of wheezing and hacking.

"Are you even sleeping anymore, Kakashi? You should sleep," she murmured as he held her after tonight's latest episode. One of his arms was around her waist while the other swept across her back occasionally. The lantern's wick was close to sputtering out—she would have to ask Tenzou to wrap some more for them, rather than run out.

"I'll be fine. You're the one who should sleep."

"Can I lay down then, or do you plan on keeping this vigil over me for the rest of the night? This can't go on, Kakashi, you'll wear yourself out and then you'll catch this sickness and then where will I be?" Kakashi slumped down backwards immediately, dragging Sakura down with him.

"You have to sleep too."

"Not part of the original deal—you're laying down aren't you?" Sakura grinned up at him, reaching a hand up to flick his cheek to punish him for being a pain. Her husband grinned back at her and turned on his side so he could face her better. One of his hands cupped her cheek as he leaned in to kiss her—Sakura hated it when he kissed her, because it felt like that was the time he would pick up this sickness from her. Kakashi didn't share her views, and would kiss her no matter what. Somewhere in her mind she knew that Kakashi was still decompressing, even a few days later, from his stressful trip to Edo and his terrified trip home to her—because he had been worried for her.

"You've been home for four days, and you've never asked if…" Sakura was afraid to see his face suddenly, and curled up so that her head was tucked under his chin. Her mother had assured her that even when she was delirious with fever nothing had happened, but that didn't dissuade the worry. Kakashi stayed silent, although he straightened out his body a little as he focused on her.

"You've never asked if I lost our baby," she said softly, so quietly that Sakura suddenly wondered if she would have to repeat herself. He took a deep breath, and then another—he tucked his chin backwards enough to kiss her hairline before returning his head to normal. His arms lay around her like weights.

"I was much more worried for you, Sakura, than anything or anyone else—I prayed that everything be taken from me but you. If you miscarried because you were sick—are sick, you're ill even now—then I brought that on you, on us. And I'm sorry if—"

"I'm not sure I have, Kakashi, I just wanted to let you know that—I'm not sure at all," she laughed softly, remembering her paranoia in the middle of the night almost a week ago when she had had her mother cut a lock of her hair for him just in case. The laugh was brittle, however, as she coughed brutally afterwards. It was not hard to believe that Kakashi's prayers had saved her life at the expense of the child that had only just barely taken inside her. Time would tell one way or the other, she was sure.

He sat in the shadows as Orochimaru tried to persuade Ietsuna to pardon the young Uchiwa boy. Jiraiya had preemptively explained in painful detail that morning exactly why the brother of the family leader should be put to death immediately after trial in the fall—and to not listen in seriousness to anyone who thought otherwise. The news brought to him yesterday about Orochimaru's visit to the Uchiwa prisoners was food for thought. He had every guard in the city on his leash—they were to accept any and all bribes that came their way, and if they told him what they'd been bribed to do he let them keep two thirds of the money.

If they didn't tell him, and he found out, he had them killed. Jiraiya felt that the system worked, because after the first bloody year he was rarely in the position of having to prove his seriousness. His wife's family ensured that he knew everything going on in the city anyway. He just liked extra security.

That was how he'd known the day and time Lord Hebi had arrived to the city, as well as the names of every guard the man paid off.

"I will consider your request as well as the prisoner's confession, please return to your home for the time being," Ietsuna said, his voice sure. Jiraiya smirked. He had omitted the morning's news of the Uchiwa prisoners. They occasionally died, usually the older ones from the conditions or a few suicides here and there. He knew of the superstitions Kirishitans had about the dead and had been monopolizing on them recently to minimize the suicides—things like cremation truly bothered them, enough to make them think twice about killing themselves…just not each other, it seemed.

The news he'd gotten that morning was that Uchiwa Itachi had murdered his younger brother Sasuke sometime the previous afternoon. When the morning's food was delivered, they'd found him sitting serenely in the middle of his cell with his brother's body draped across his lap. He'd strangled the young man after Orochimaru's visit, probably because of Orochimaru's visit and what he'd promised to Sasuke. But it didn't matter to Jiraiya the reasons why the Uchiwa family head had done it because, either out of jealousy or betrayal, Uchiwa Sasuke's death was to be a nice blow against Hebi Orochimaru.

Perhaps they would let the Uchiwa boy rot in the sun for a few days.

After all, they hadn't yet done anything with the boy's body and it wouldn't do to deliver it to the Hebi clan compound today or tomorrow—far, far too soon after Uchiwa Sasuke's death to be properly understood. Jiraiya smiled grimly. Orochimaru deserved every assurance of the whereabouts of his would-be heir. But first they would send a note later on today giving Orochimaru notice that the daimyo was giving serious consideration to his request—the higher a hope was, the more beautifully cruel it was when it shattered.

His Tsunade-hime had been beautiful too, before Orochimaru had had his way with her. She had killed herself from the shame—even now he could see her waterlogged body, retrieved from the river she'd thrown herself into. The wound was still raw for Jiraiya, even twenty seven years later.

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