Heaven Hold Us

by Okami Rayne

The War is over. But the wounded remain. In a world struggling for hope amidst terrible loss, the Tailed-Beast chakra that saved Shikamaru's life on the battlefield may yet cost him his soul. As darkness encroaches upon the hard-won light, there's only one man Naruto can turn to for help. A man no more a stranger to the darkness than Shikamaru himself. Sasuke. [BtB Post-War]

8. Chapter 8

Disclaimer: NARUTO and its characters were created and are owned by Masashi Kishimoto. Original characters (Tsubasa Hibari © TA. RAYNE) and plot are the property of the author. No copyright infringement intended.

Title: Heaven Hold Us

Pairings: ShikaNeji, KakaGen, InoKiba

Rating: M / R (language, themes, violence, sexual scenes etc.)

Genre: Drama/Angst/General

Summary: The War is over. But the wounded remain. In a world struggling for hope amidst terrible loss, the Tailed-Beast chakra that saved Shikamaru's life on the battlefield may yet cost him his soul. As darkness encroaches upon the hard-won light, there's only one man Naruto can turn to for help. A man no more a stranger to the darkness than Shikamaru himself. Sasuke. [BtB Post-War]

Timeline: Post Fourth Shinobi World War. 4 months after the War.

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HEAVEN HOLD US

VIII

by Okami Rayne

"Suteru kami areba hirou kami ari."

The voice strobed across the darkness in his mind, each word lighting like a star, fading in and out, a twinkle in a void of shadows.

Shadows.

Shikamaru.

He'd been looking for Shikamaru.

But then the voice had come – and with it, the light.

"I don't understand," he said.

"Suteru kami areba hirou kami ari."

The voice came again, an incandescent glow flaring on each word. Deliberate. Enunciated. As if the light was sound and the sound was light – and the blackness swallowed it all. He reached into that blackness, called out…

"Shikamaru!"

…and touched a surface both cold and smooth. Like glass. It reflected the darkness…and so did he. In the black mirror, he could see it. How it covered him like ink, and shadow, and sacrifice…like Neji's blood shining black in the moonlight.

Neji…?

He could still feel the weight of Neji's body…

Heavy in his arms…

Heavier on his conscience…

"Neji, I—"

The words choked off in a gurgle.

Copper, metal, salt.

The taste of blood filled his mouth like a red scream. Then the red filled his eyes and – no. Not eyes. Just one eye. And it was neither the left nor the right. It was an eye which opened like a crimson wound at the centre of his forehead.

It was no Sharingan.

And that made sense because he was no Uchiha.

But then neither was Kakashi-sensei…

Not that it mattered now. Kakashi-sensei had lost that eye. An eye as red as the one reflected in the glossy-black shadows.

"Suteru kami areba hirou kami ari."

The voice spoke again.

As if from inside.

But also from outside.

Like the red eye buried in his brow, it stared both into him and out of him, and he reached up through the disembodied darkness to touch his face. Felt his calloused fingertips, crinkled as if from too long underwater, trace the textured grooves of deeply contoured skin, tough as old hide, the dermis scored like pitted bark.

What the hell?

Not a Sage transformation gone wrong.

It wasn't toad-like, rubbery, or bumpy…

The skin felt coarse, weathered…

Old.

Ancient-old.

Dread, cold and queasy, sucked at his gut and stole all his air, pulling his breath into a shallow rasp. He steeled his nerves and continued to reach, felt up along the ridged flesh of his craggy cheekbone, and touched a lock of braided hair, hanging like a tassel over his left ear.

Huh?

Confused, he followed this higher up into his hairline, heartbeat banging out in horror the second his wrinkled fingers found and followed a path of flesh that should not have been. A gross protrusion from the frontal bone of his skull…a deformity…a growth…

A horn.

Devil. Monster. Celestial. Sage.

GOD.

The red eye throbbed, swirled, and expanded, a hostile red planet growing in the centre of his cranium, the rings of his sanity too small to contain it, the confines of his skull set to crack and burst, cast off like debris from a cosmic eruption…

Worlds were birthed this way.

Worlds ended this way too.

"Watashi no Musuko, suteru kami areba hirou kami ari."

My son, if you cast away one god, you'll find another.

And then the voice had a name.

Ōtsutsuki Hagoromo.

It registered in a jolt. Brought clarity. The planetary pain shrank to a burning pinpoint in the centre of his mind, became a white-hot singularity composed of heat, and hurt, and a hundred lives of heartache. The same story playing out, predestined, fated, as if he had no will of his own. That…crushed something inside him, but it was not a fragile thing…neither was the snarling, spitting, emanation of the other thing inside him…and that thing had teeth, and claws, and red, red, fur – much redder than the eye in the Sage's forehead. And he'd take his nine-tailed demon over a creepy horned deity in any lifetime at the beginning and end of any world.

"Worlds began with the Mugen Tsukiyomi," Hagoromo said. "Worlds ended with it too."

So many, many worlds. Hundreds of thousands of worlds, dreamed up by the moonstruck masses. He'd ended all those worlds, to save the one that had begun them all.

"You helped me save one world…" he croaked into the dark, his throat tight with emotion. "Please…help me save one friend."

"Asura," Hagoromo said. "It is not your fault. Nor is it your fate, my son."

It was the wrong thing to say.

The name.

The lies.

The endearment.

All of it.

Those words diffused their bitter prophecy, and like the breath of a god they misted out into the realm of nebulous existence in which this exchange was happening – had probably happened a hundred times before – suffusing into what must have been his soul. Only to stop, spark, shimmer, become something alchemical and changed, removed from the aeons of rebirth in which it was repeatedly consumed and conceived…

I've had it with fate…

…and somewhere in all that burning starry chaos, in the crucible of karma's cruel molten womb, eyes that never were and never would be again opened in the ageless dark…

Eyes like skies and oceans…

Bright, and blue, and boundless…

Those eyes stared directly into the orb of glaring red. Directly into the wizened face of the Sage of Six Paths…

And the young man those eyes belonged to, answered back.

"My name is Uzumaki Naruto, old man. And I'll never be your son."

Hagoromo smiled a gentle smile.

And then he laughed.

He laughed and the red eye burst wide open. Burst from skin and skull and starry space, a cosmic bomb of red primordial chaos that swallowed every wave of roiling darkness into wild and unforgiving light.

Naruto screamed.

Hagoromo laughed.

And between the blink and burst of an ageless eye, a thousand worlds began and ended.

"Wake up, brat."

Naruto jerked awake with a shout.

The sound tore out of him, wild and shaken.

Nightmare…

Sweat shone on his skin, his orange vest and black lounge pants plastered against every damp contour.

Blood roared in his ears.

Heart pounding like a taiko drum.

Nightmare, he thought again, letting that drill through the panic.

Weird nightmare. Different to the usual ones. The ones that tended to play out like movies – scripted, unchanged. There wasn't usually an exchange, so much as a remembered dialogue. The dead didn't talk with him in his dreams, they talked at him. And he talked back. Sometimes he shouted, sometimes he screamed – but his voice always moved in slow time, like a bad dub, all his words coming out wrong in content and in timing. Nothing he did affected anything. So the scenes never really changed.

People still suffered.

People still died.

Sometimes, he died too.

Really felt like it this time, what with that scary red eye bursting in his skull – which had been both his skull and Hagoromo's – like they'd shared a universe-sized aneurysm. Only that ancient old asshole had laughed. Laughed.

Seriously, what the hell?

Sitting rigid on the bed, Naruto automatically made to reach for his brow with his right hand. Immediately felt the absence of his arm's missing weight. A ghost-limb ache. The bandaged stump twitched and lifted on reflex. Scowling, he grabbed it with his left hand, breathing hard.

"Watashi no Musuko, suteru kami areba hirou kami ari. My son, if you cast away one god, you'll find another."

Great. Riddles. Only its echo felt like a hex, a curse, some kind of spell – which was stupid and childish and didn't make any more sense than the words themselves, but when it came to that shady, old-as-dirt, wizard-like grandpa, Naruto always felt like he'd been left too long on a carnival ride, not knowing which way was up or down.

Where he was.

Who he was.

I know who I am. Where I am.

As if to confirm it, his eyes darted in a quick search about the dim room, his gaze bouncing off indistinct edges and forms in the milky darkness. Desk. Cupboard. Chair. Table. Even as he oriented himself, panic still slithered through his muscles, cording around his spine, a cold slimy fear.

Then sudden warmth.

Radiating up and out.

A base rumble, from way down deep in his consciousness.

"Cut it out, you wimp."

Kurama…?

"Still here, kid."

A shuddering breath and Naruto scrubbed his hand across his face, scratching his fingers back through blond spikes, the shorthairs raised at his nape – animal and instinctive.

"They're still here, too," Kurama said.

Of course they were.

"Right," Naruto sighed through his teeth, his hand falling away, along with some of the panic clawing at this chest. He forced a shaky grin to his face. "Wanna give 'em hell?"

The Fox was silent.

Naruto snickered, but it came out weak and beat. "Yeah, I know. We got work to do."

A flicker of warmth, a little scratchy, but tempered by Kurama's newfound tolerance and a hint of what might've been affection.

"Wouldn't go that far," the Fox grumbled.

Naruto gave a huffy laugh, touched his palm to his flat belly and tried on his usual grin. It stretched too tight across his face. Felt phony. Tired. The fatigue scared him. Angered him. Growling at himself, he tapped the squat toad-shaped bedside alarm clock – which doubled up as a nightlight – then forced his legs over the edge of the single cot and rocked to his feet. He wouldn't sleep again tonight. Trying for more than the odd three to four hours was an exercise in torture.

The waking hours still held hope.

But the nightmares were forever set in rock – like names in a headstone.

Fated.

Destined.

"It is not your fault. Nor is it your fate, my son."

Anger sputtered weakly, but fear washed in on a cool flood, stopping Naruto cold. Guilt rode that fear-wave, bodysurfing on the backs of all the dead floating to the surface of his memory…one body, always, drifted a little closer to the shoreline of Naruto's mind…especially when thoughts of fate and destiny poisoned the waters…waters upon which floated long mocha strands…pale lifeless skin wrapped in ivory robes…the sleeves like wings…while sightless moon-white eyes, frozen and staring, gazed up blindly into death's terminal darkness…

The same darkness Naruto had been searching in his dreams…

Searching for…

"Shikamaru!"

Clenching his fist, Naruto sucked a breath, dread knuckling up under his ribcage. His stomach cramped, gave an angry gurgle, alerting him to a hunger he hadn't felt for days. Good. A distraction. Food would help. Swallowing thickly, he turned his steps toward the small kitchenette, padding barefoot up to the fridge, focusing on the routine motor skills required to operate one-handed.

That helped too.

Learning how to function without his right hand.

It took his focus off the nightmare, off the blue icy slush churning in his gut – at least for a few solid seconds. The other side of those seconds found him staring blankly at the contents of his fridge for a full minute, not seeing a thing.

A blind spot the size of a solar eclipse hung in his head.

In his heart.

They'd kept him so deep in the dark and so far outta the loop when it came to Shikamaru he wondered how far Tsunade-baachan would continue to go, or how low she'd sink, to continue keeping him there. Ignorant. Stupid. Clueless.

Let 'em think that.

Let them keep on with those round-the-clock gatekeepers T&I had stationed to keep him from breaching the giant walls of impenetrable silence and secrecy surrounding Shikamaru.

Let them think that would work.

He wasn't out of steam yet, not by a long shot.

"Settle down," Kurama cautioned.

Naruto bit down on a growl, scowling at the reminder. Anger hadn't gained him any ground with the higher-ups, only colder shoulders and bigger stonewalls. The whole 'closing ranks' and 'united front' bullshit struck him as a low and dirty blow. Suggested they didn't trust him. But he was too pissed off to be hurt about it. Because if he wasn't pissed off, he'd be panicking – and he'd sooner pick a fight than wrestle with the fear.

Screw it.

Let the Hokage and her Council bring their A-game; he wasn't ready to tap out on account of some hardcore silent-treatment and max-level security. Even if that max-level security were willing to make home visits.

Naruto's grin came again, bent harder than its usual shape, a tight and snarling flash of teeth as he smiled into the bowels of the fridge, his words hissing through his teeth. "Gonna take more than ANBU to throw me off, baachan."

"It's gonna take a hypoglycaemic coma, you stupid cub. Eat something."

"Alright already," Naruto grumbled, blinking a few times to refocus on the contents of his fridge, trying to work up an appetite.

He reached for the closest, most convenient item.

Bento box.

Hinata had made it. Hanabi had brought it, on behalf of her sister. Though it shamed Naruto to admit it, he'd been glad for the avoidant delivery because ever since Neji's funeral things with Hinata had felt like…string pulled too tight…a breath held too long…

Suffocating...

His chest hurt. And his throat tightened, as it always did, whenever he thought of her eyes and the world of pain and grief he'd put in them because he hadn't been faster, stronger, smarter, better.

And you think you can save Shikamaru, huh? You couldn't even save Neji.

Disgusted at the defeatist thought, Naruto slammed the fridge shut with his elbow, terminating the bright wedge of light, cutting off the refrigerated chill, and plunging the room back into the warmer orange hues from the nightlight. Frowning, he stepped over to the square woodgrain table off to the side of the room. Set down the bento box. Opened it.

A small, sad smile curled one corner of his mouth.

The contents were toad-themed and cute. Artsy. Thoughtful. Care and time had gone into it. Two fat mounds of fluffy white rice had been shaped into frog faces, complete with edible nori seaweed eyes and smiling mouths made of umeboshi. Cucumber lily pads, omelette rolls, and more green stuff that was probably good for him but held about as much as appeal as the store-bought salad Iruka had dropped off the day before.

"Naruto, this needs to stop. You're not helping anyone."

What little appetite he'd had, tanked.

Iruka's remembered words filled his empty gut with hot acid. Stubborn, bitter feelings curdling there. As if he hadn't heard those words a thousand times before regarding Sasuke.

"This is different," Kakashi had said.

And that's all he'd said on the matter. But that's not all Naruto had heard. He'd heard the unspoken lack of faith. He'd seen that false patronising crinkle at the corner of Kakashi's eyes, that strained and phony smile his sensei always wore when trying to mask his true emotions.

Naruto wished he himself had a mask.

Real or figurative.

He'd never been any good at keeping his feelings off his damn face. Or his heart off his sleeve. No cards were ever played too close to his chest because he had no interest in protecting himself from hurt – only others. Too bad he'd been so consumed with fighting Sasuke's constant uphill battle, he hadn't noticed Shikamaru had fallen in the trenches until it was too late. Worse, he hadn't realised the shadow-nin had even been crawling in them to begin with.

"It wasn't your fault."

Hagoromo's words sounded again, distant, fading. The old sage wasn't the first one to speak those words to Naruto and he probably wouldn't be the last.

Made no difference.

A lie was a lie.

He'd heard a lot of them lately. Had so many lies to sift through he didn't know where to start. Every time he did, it left him feeling achy in his chest and sick to his stomach.

"Eat," Kurama growled.

Frowning, Naruto abandoned the bento box. He stepped away from the table and reached out like a blind man, hand skimming the mini microwave, the toaster, the cool steel sink, fingers grazing over surfaces in an aimless drift, the way one does when trying to situate or ground themselves, before he wheeled away to walk the central length of the small apartment room, putting himself in direct line of the window, where the slatted roller blinds rested at half-mast.

He paced…

Back and forth…

Back and forth…

Across the roughly sanded floors, the soles of his feet rasping against the hardwood in a whisper, his mind already scrolling through the past few weeks. At first, all Naruto had known was that Shikamaru had been duking it out with a nasty strain of the chakra sickness. Nothing too alarming. Ninety eight percent of ninja were battling with that. He even remembered the statistic. Sakura had assured them all it wasn't serious. Crappy and uncomfortable, yeah, but not critical, not dangerous…sure as hell not life-threatening.

Until it was.

It had happened so fast.

No, it had turned so fast.

One moment Shikamaru was laid up in medical, the next he was locked up tighter than an S-Rank criminal, detained in a maximum chakra facility built to contain and defuse threats of the bijū scale and Bingo-Book Boss variety. Even Sasuke wasn't locked down that hard – not yet – which Naruto would have begrudgingly understood, regardless of what he felt about it. Because Sasuke actually warranted that kind of caution.

But Shikamaru…?

They were treating the shadow-nin like a rogue Jinchūriki.

Across the room, the jolly toad-faced alarm clock went off, belting out a short chorus of croaks and chimes. Naruto stopped pacing at the sound, came to an immediate halt in the middle of the room.

Time to get back to work.

But first…

He turned towards the window, made a show of rubbing at his eyes like an overtired child, grumbling beneath his breath. Reaching out, he yawned for effect and tugged the pull-cord on the blind, drawing the slats closed, casting the small apartment into a deeper orange glow from the nightlight.

And sealing off all visibility into the room.

The ANBU wouldn't care. Because Naruto didn't intend to leave. Not this time. He didn't have to duck out and run himself silly around the village to keep digging up clues. Besides, shaking an ANBU tail wasn't an easy task – he'd tried. Perhaps not as hard as he might have, but that would bring down heavier hitters and stricter measures. He needed to exercise some caution here.

"Not your strong suit," Kurama added unhelpfully.

Naruto smiled a little, and replied, "Keep an eye on those bastards, yeah?"

The Kyūbi didn't answer in words. Just another tickle of warmth in the vicinity of Naruto's gut that let him know he'd been heard. He patted his stomach, as if that might somehow translate to a pat on the Fox's head. A sharp cramp zigzagged through his stomach almost instantly.

"OI!" he squawked.

"I'm not your pet," Kurama rumbled with a peevish bristle of energy, though the pain vanished fast as it had come. "Brat."

Naruto rolled his eyes, chastened but not discouraged. They'd come a long way in their strange but sincere relationship, and he wouldn't trade that for anything, even at the risk of irritable bowel syndrome. Besides, the headway he'd made with Kurama was worth the tummy trouble. The sudden warmth in his gut gave an odd little tickle, like Kurama didn't know quite what to do with that sentiment. At least he didn't respond by giving Naruto gastronomical distress. Though come to think of it, yeah, he really should eat something before getting stuck into the serious stuff.

He put Hinata's bento box away, carefully, almost reverently.

Then slammed a cup of instant noodles in the microwave.

Nutrition could wait. The night would not. And night was the only time he could get away with doing this more covert crap without the bigwigs getting suspicious at his absence. They expected him to keep rocking up to butt his stubborn yellow head against their brick walls. They didn't expect him to put that stubborn yellow head to any better use outside of his troublemaking hours.

He'd exploited that.

Because even if the ANBU decided to play peekaboo, all they'd see would be Konoha's greatest knucklehead cramming his skull full of pointless Chūnin theory because he still needed to pass that stupid exam – never mind the whole Sage-training, world-saving, Six-paths-totting, levelled-up growth he'd been through.

Because nope.

Those were the rules and blah, blah, blah.

Naruto blah, blah, blah'ed away the next few minutes piling his desk with books, blowing steam from his noodles, sitting his ass down, and practicing a few swirly brushstrokes with his left hand, getting the grip strength and coordination right. He then switched to a pencil, then a pen, and repeated the process with each one, working with more conscientiousness than he'd ever been known to display without Iruka breathing down his neck or a sensei beating him about the head.

He continued this practice for precisely ten minutes.

Then he set down the pen.

Took a breath.

Reached for a large, tattered, grease-stained exercise book, it's powder blue cover graffitied with doodles of shuriken, kunai, funny faces, several figures with questionable anatomy, along with other random scribbles.

He flipped open the book.

And stared at the scrawling pages, which would read as gibberish to anyone else. Lines of random squiggles, words, symbols, pictograms, village crests, all of which would've had the Konoha Cryptanalysis Team scratching their heads and chalking it up to some drunken Pictionary game – played by a cheater who used the occasional words.

To Naruto, the gibberish read clear as ABC.

If he'd had the privacy, he'd have pulled it all out of his head and pinned it to a corkboard instead of info-dumping all his thoughts, clues, and confusions onto the pages in this seemingly disordered way.

But this was his chaos.

And he found the order in it, pouring over the symbols and picking up his thoughts where he'd left them scattered about on the page, grabbing up the pen to circle an inked symbol at the centre of the page.

Kusagakure's grass-blade crest.

He circled it, one, twice, three times.

Kusa.

Where it'd all begun, at least for Naruto. He had a spattering of hunches and clues, and they all dated back to that old Kusa mission. The one and only time he'd suspected Shikamaru might've housed something darker inside him than his shadows.

"I've got something dark living inside me. I'm not saying that's what's up with Shikamaru…but it's gotta be more than some glitch in his chakra. It's gotta be deeper than that. You know I'm right about this."

But he hadn't been, had he?

He'd called Ino on it – but she'd dismissed the suggestion of anything more sinister. Chōji too. Hell, even Sakura. It was on the grounds of trusting them, trusting Sakura especially, that Naruto had let it slide. Same as he'd trusted Shikamaru with Neji's weirdness that time in Hanegakure.

"You seeing the common denominator here?" Kurama pitched in — annoying, but honest. "You always did trust too easily. You still do. And you still let too much slide as a result of that trust, don't you?"

Naruto wrestled with that insight.

With its ugly truth.

He'd always told himself he'd had to let certain things slide, to focus on what had always mattered most, no matter the mission: bringing everyone home. No one left behind. Or alone. Hell, he'd let an avalanche of shit slide when it came to saving Sasuke, no matter what the Uchiha had done or who he'd become…all for the sake of bringing him home.

It had been no different in Kusa.

He'd had the same objective.

We all go home.

And they had come home…only maybe Shikamaru had brought something home with him. Staring at the Kusa symbol, Naruto scrolled the pen across the page and tapped it over the word 'CHAKRA'. He underlined it. Hard. Drew a question mark. Once again heard his own voice echoing back from that mission…

"Are you seriously buying that crap about Shikamaru's chakra? That might'a been the case the first few times but he's been acting weird ever since we left the village. He went all psycho on that old lady and then with the gators…"

Naruto's eyes widened.

He scratched the pen back across the page, drew a wobbly arrow above Kusa leading up towards the top of the page, extending the timeline further back.

That's right. Shikamaru was being weird before we reached Kusa…

Sure, but Naruto had written that off as Shikamaru struggling with his grief over Asuma. Barely two weeks after his sensei's death Shikamaru had been signed up for the Kusa mission. He'd barely recovered from the revenge plot on the Akatsuki bastards who'd murdered his sensei. Was it any wonder he'd been a little bit less chilled and a lot more unstable and reactive?

Made sense he'd be messed up…

Naruto had been a wreck after Jiraiya. He'd have lost his rag too, dealing with that kind of grief, plus being burdened with the role of strategist, with a dose of chakra corruption to boot – or whatever the hell Sakura had called it. Naruto didn't remember all the fancy medicalese, only that some foreign toxin – either from weird chimera-fleas, or something used to kill the weird chimera-fleas – had screwed up Shikamaru's tenketsu big time and had taken him off the board insofar as using ninjutsu. Sakura had said more on the matter and Naruto remembered squinting through most of it, and not just in confusion.

But in doubt.

Her excessive use of medical lingo at the time is what had alerted Naruto to the realisation that something was off. She hadn't extended the usual courtesy of dumbing shit down. She'd laid it on so thick it'd been about as clear as mud. Almost like she'd been trying too hard to sell the explanation to keep Naruto from questioning it.

Doesn't matter if you weren't sold right away…you eventually bought it.

Believed it.

Believed her.

Because why wouldn't he?

He'd voiced his doubts, no one had shared them. He'd been shot down by Sakura's medical thesaurus and Neji's orders. And then there had been bigger shit coming down the pipe during that mission, what with the Aikoku nationalists, the Nagu Butai suspecting Konoha of foul play, the mad-scientist chimeras – and then Kakashi-sensei had been taken, which had trigged Naruto's ultimate and overriding remit all over again.

We ALL come home.

Whatever lingering suspicions he might've harboured regarding Shikamaru were consumed by his immediate concern for Kakashi, and his dumbfounded anger at the bullshit decision to leave the copy-nin behind. Naruto couldn't get past that. He'd almost lost control of the Kyūbi, trying to contain his rage.

Yamato had stepped in.

The rest was a blur.

The notes he stared at now, illustrated as much. He'd written the word DEBRIEF off to one side of the page, several question marks dotted around. He couldn't summon up any clear details from memory. He only had a vague recollection of Shikamaru's weirdness being explained away during the debrief by Shizune and some other Jōnin, but honestly Naruto hadn't paid all that much attention because 1) he was too pissed off 2) he'd heard it already from Sakura, and 3) the only thing that had mattered – again, and always – was that not everyone had come home.

They'd. Left. Kakashi-sensei. Behind.

That's all that had filled his mind. The rest was inconsequential because everyone else was home. Shikamaru would recover. He was home and he was okay. But Kakashi-sensei wasn't home, and he probably wasn't okay, and no one would tell Naruto when Kakashi would be back or if he would even be okay and all Naruto could think was—not you too, please, not Kakashi-sensei…

But then Kakashi had come home.

And Kakashi was okay.

Tsunade-baachan had brought him back. Only for Naruto to almost mow his sensei down in the copy-nin's apartment, angry that his sensei had been traded like some sacrificial pawn. Angry that that decision had ever been made. Angry that everyone had expected Naruto to be OKAY with it. Angry that he'd been locked up like some lunatic for NOT being okay with it. Angrier still that he'd needed to be locked up because he couldn't control his rage, and—

Angry.

Just so, so angry.

ANGRY. He wrote the word. Slowly. Letter by letter. Pressing so hard the pen's nib tore through the paper. He froze at the rip, the tendons in his hand striped taut as piano wire. Somewhere between remembering and writing, his breathing had quickened, along with his pulse, the skin at his throat and chest burning tight and hot. Glaring at the back of his hand, he ground his teeth and worked to control the emotion scorching through his system, nostrils flaring to expel the air in a shaky rush.

Inside, Kurama turned a restless circle, tendrils of golden-red warmth unfurling, sending out the feelers, "Dial it down, kid. Our chakra is flaring. Unless you want to entertain them?"

Them.

Shit.

Naruto blinked. Then paused, considering. His mind stroking along his anger as if in possession of a weapon. A plan. Maybe his anger might land him in the same facility as Shikamaru or Sasuke, in which case, giving ANBU some entertainment of the bijū variety might be a good idea.

"No part of that is a good idea," Kurama snorted. "You're not up to it. And I'm not a performing monkey."

"Yeah, yeah," Naruto sighed, tossing the pen down.

Not his first impulsive scheme. Nor the most arguably stupid one. Anyway, chances were ANBU would lock him up someplace else to be dealt with later. For whatever reason, they didn't want him anywhere near Shikamaru.

Dammit!

Growling, he thudded back hard in the chair, rocking it onto its back legs. Summoning what little patience remained, he took a slow deep breath and let his head drop back, slowly closing his eyes as he fought to steady his pulse and bring his temper down from a boil to a simmer.

So close to the surface.

All that anger.

Towards people he loved, no less.

So easy to reach for. He didn't like that one bit.

"You think this is anger?" Kurama said. "Look closer."

Naruto didn't. He opened his eyes and stared down the notebook instead, fixing his attention back on the page. The question marks scattered around the paper caught on his mind like fishhooks, trying to pull more pieces from his tired brain. Thudding the chair back on all fours, he came forward to snatch up the pen, sticking the end in his mouth, frowning down at the word "CHAKRA" he'd underlined.

He needed eyes on Shikamaru.

Maybe a hand too.

He needed to see – or rather, sense – for himself, just what the hell was happening there. Just what the hell had gone wrong…and how to fix it. Because he needed to fix it. Badly. So damn bad it hurt. So he'd do what he always did. Everything in his power to make it right.

Everything in your power, huh?

Naruto stopped chewing the pen, the air freezing up in his lungs. And there it was, the small doubtful voice; the sick sinking feeling that lurked in the shadow of his anger and lived in the darkness of his dreams. Fear. The real monster hiding under the bed of ignorance they all expected him to lie in. Lie in. Lies. So many lies…but there was a truth buried in those lies – wasn't there? A truth he couldn't shake or escape or keep from thinking or fearing…

Or knowing.

Because though no one had said it, confirmed it, Naruto knew. Oh god, he knew. He knew in his waters, in his marrow, in his heaving heart…and what he knew scared the living hell out of him.

Kurama went very still inside.

Because Kurama knew it too.

It's my fault.

"Our fault," Kurama said.

The horror struck like a knife in the back. Naruto lurched as if stabbed, standing so abruptly the chair tipped back. "You knew…" he snarled aloud, voice hoarse and scratchy with salt and heat. "You knew all this time and—"

"So did you," Kurama bit back. "Why do you think you dream it? You just didn't want to admit it out loud."

Admit what out loud? That everything that was right in Naruto's power was now everything that was wrong with Shikamaru? That by trying to save Shikamaru's life on the battlefield all he'd done was grant his friend a bitter stay of execution?

The dream came back to him…

Conjured up in a chilling rush…

"It is not your fault. Nor is it your fate, my son."

He'd been so pissed to hear those words in the dream…because in the dream, he'd known them for the lie they were. In his waking hours, he could pretend. Like a coward. Like a fool. He'd always claimed he hated people who lied to themselves, as well as straight to his face. But Hagoromo hadn't spoken it like a lie – which made it worse.

It has to be my fault…

…because that's the only way that it made sense.

And no, Naruto couldn't explain it. He couldn't say exactly how he knew what he knew. He didn't possess Shikamaru's intellectual prowess, or Sakura's medical insight, or any actual solid evidence to support what he instinctively felt and knew to be true. It was something Kiba might've got, maybe, in some loose and half-grasped way – the thing about animal instinct or intuition.

Damn.

To think Naruto used to laugh when Jiraiya-sama or Tsunade-baachan would talk about intuition – he'd initially associated it as something mystical and girly. While Tsunade had almost beat him brainless for his 'moronic and sexist stupidity', Pervy Sage had possessed the patience to simplify the concept and masculinise it as 'gut instinct' for Naruto to fully appreciate and embrace it as a 13-year-old kid. Now, years down the line, standing with intuition's blade lodged in his gut, in his heart, he realised, there was nothing mystical or girly about it. It was brutal, blunt, and didn't beat about the bush. Ironically, in that respect, it was like a lot of women Naruto knew – only intuition didn't lie to him.

Unlike Sakura…

Unlike Shizune…

And Tsunade…

And maybe even Hinata when she looked into his eyes and told him with such aching conviction that…

"It's not your fault."

He wanted to believe it. Felt sick, not believing it. Had really tried to. He'd stomached the lie instead of food during his waking hours. But in his dreams, the truth always found him. In his nightmares, intuition twisted the blade of knowing so much deeper than all those lies. And now the truth was stuck in there. Lodged. Like the rock in his throat. Like the weight in his heart.

Sniffing, Naruto bent forward slowly, stiffly…like it hurt him to do it.

And it did.

He lifted the pen clutched in his white-knuckled grip, scratched a few notes onto the centre of the page. Picked up another pen – red – and circled what he'd written. Then he straightened, just as slow, and stepped back. Breathed for a full minute, to accommodate the pain in his heart. It didn't go. But it eased. Just a little. Just enough.

"I need the truth," he eventually husked, his voice thickening with each word. "I'm gonna get it no matter what."

"Because those in the know are just lining up to enlighten you, aren't they?" Kurama purred with acid sarcasm, his own distaste bubbling away beneath all that icy slush in Naruto's gut. "Believe it, you always say. Well, believe this – you're on your own."

"Shut up," Naruto growled without heat, sensing more protectiveness than malice in the Kyūbi's words. "I've got you, don't I?"

Kurama said nothing.

But his energy softened its sharp prickling charge.

Naruto sniffed at the response, a rueful smile twisting across his lips. He'd take what he could get. And right now, in this moment, Kurama was all he had.

That's not true.

No. He still had himself. While he couldn't bank on anyone else just yet, he wasn't going to bail on himself. He still had his Nindō too. The thread he'd never let go of, even if everything else unravelled. Even if the village kept him in the dark and he had to walk or crawl through this blind. He'd do it. By virtue of his damned stubbornness, he'd do it. Because he still had hope.

He always did.

And like he always had, Naruto took all his anger, all his pain and his fear, and poured it into that adamantine heart-shaped crucible inside him. A furnace that burned with a Will tantamount to that of the village's inextinguishable Fire. His heart throbbed, body heating from its former chill as if powering up. The cold dread evaporated into hot fumes inside him, the blazing pain-in-the-ass kind of fire that would help him work up a good head of steam for his next run at the higher-ups.

Fight later, focus now.

The daylight hours would be full steam ahead, right now he needed to shore up all that energy – and find a way to distract from the dream still teasing the outer edges of his consciousness, snaking its cold fingers around that blade of intuition buried in his heart as if wanting to thrust it deeper.

"Suteru kami areba hirou kami ari. If you cast away one god, you'll find another."

Flinching, Naruto shook off the spooked feeling and bent over the desk a final time to jot down those bizarre words in a clumsy scribble. He wasn't liable to forget what Hagoromo had said, but the act of committing words to paper felt like an attempted purge. Out of his head and onto the page, like all the other pieces – until he could make better sense of their placement.

At least he knew where to place himself.

If he could do that, then he wasn't totally lost.

Slipping the notebook into the desk drawer, he backtracked towards the centre of the room, walked a small circle, then sat crossed-legged. Wriggling for a few seconds to knock off the urge to fidget, he settled into a one-handed mudra, left palm cradled like a bowl against his folded legs.

Okay. Here we go.

Blue eyes drifted shut. And as if from a lifetime ago, he could've sworn he heard the croaking tones of the old sage toad, Fukasaku, directing him to calm.

"You must learn to sit still, Naruto boy."

Undoubtedly one of the harder parts of his training. If only Jiraiya had lived to see him truly master the art of meditation. Motionless and mute – for more than a few minutes? Behold, the old perv would never have thought it possible. Or maybe he would have, given how much else he'd believed Naruto to be capable of.

A swelling in his chest.

Not painful, but tender.

Sadness and affection.

Smiling softly at the memory of his sensei – and bolstered by the need to do Jiraiya proud – Naruto lengthened his spine and pushed his shoulders back, breathing slow and steady, all that hot-headed steam swirling through his veins gathering into the pit of his energy centres.

Breathing in, breathing out…

In through the nose, out through the mouth. Deepening the breaths, lengthening the counts. Again, and again, his lungs working like a gentle bellows, stoking the fire yet controlling the flames, the lull and rhythm drawing a deep, almost purring hum from Kurama's giant swirl of revolving energy, its great whirlpool vastness slowing to a crawl, a lava-red beast curling up to rest in the heart of the still and steady mountain.

Mountain…

Head listing slightly, as if he'd been called from far away, Naruto followed the gentle prompting of his mind, drifting deeper into the meditation, until the room faded away around him and the lush and verdant peaks of Mount Myōboku rose up from the mists of his memories…

The nightmare vanished in those mists…

So did the world and its aching weight…

And so did he…

Vanished in the blink of two brilliant sky-blue eyes…

…

...and two golden eyes drifted open. Slitted and drowsy, but far from tired. Relaxed, as any apex predator was wont to be. Alert in the way of casual awareness because he did not feel fear – at least not for himself.

Ah, still strange, the feelings this boy inspired inside him.

Flexing his energy with a small swell of chakra, Kurama hunkered down lightly at the edges of Naruto's mind, vigilant of those who sat just as stationary, just as calm, beyond the walls of the dormant room.

Ah, the old guard.

Wasted resources. They'd picked a shitty night to stake out the den of Kurama's noisy little Jinchūriki – the boy was here, but nobody was home.

Ah, not so.

Kurama was home – should they come knocking. He so hoped they would. Knew that despite Naruto's earlier suggestion of mischief, the boy wouldn't approve of such a naughty violent thought, but Kurama's thoughts were his own…and the boy was someplace far away in his mind, where rivers of Sacred Oil ran gold beneath the glow of a glorious sun…no shadows, no darkness, no wrinkled soothsaying ancient to mess with his tuckered brain or that far more tender, tired-out organ beating away despite all the blows it had taken…

Foolish brat.

Indeed. And yet, Kurama curled his many tails about the brightly pulsing lifeforce of this annoying little human and his stubborn glowing light, encompassing its puny yet powerful warmth within the sphere of his own blistering chakra. A shield far stronger than the barrier jutsus those clowns had erected beyond the room's four walls.

Inside the shield, Naruto stilled and settled.

Outside the walls, the ANBU watched and waited.

Fifteen in total. A flock of whispering killers perched on the buildings all around, nightbirds nestling in for the long and sleepless watch. Unaware of the slitted golden eyes staring back out at them through the deepening dark. Eyes lambent as beacons. Consuming as flames. Daring them to do what the ANBU had done over eighteen years ago now. When this boy was but a babe in a cradle. As innocent now, as way back when.

Back when Kurama had unleashed his rabid fury upon Konohagakure…

Back when that fury had been directed by an Uchiha's firestorm of unfathomable hatred and insatiable rage…

Back when the biju were nothing but monsters and beasts, and shinobi were lambs to their slaughter…

Back when these hardened killers, with their white-masked faces and their red, red blades had done so much more than watch…

And wait…

And whisper…

Oh, Kurama dared them. Dared them in silence – because he would not do it while Naruto was conscious. He dared them to assume the worst about this boy. The way the boy assumed the worst about himself. Oh yes. Kurama knew. How Naruto blamed himself. For what he believed he'd done. How Naruto feared himself. For what he believed he couldn't control.

If Naruto believed it, so would the village.

And Kurama could not abide that.

So if the village wanted someone to blame, to fear, to punish for what had happened to that young shadow-nin and his corrupted chakra – then Kurama would oblige. He'd give Konoha an enemy. A fall guy. A path of least resistance to lay the easy blame. Ah, for poetic irony, he'd even use Sasuke's Curse of Hatred to do it. Oh yes, if Konoha wanted blood, then Kurama would give them blood. Uchiha blood.

That failing, he would give them the bijū.

He would give them the beast.

He would not give them the boy.

---

The building took Genma by surprise. He'd always thought of residential complexes like cereal packages, the outsides tended to advertise what they boxed. Not always. But often enough. Which is why when Bull, the blessedly mute and most user-friendly of Kakashi's ninken – all brawn, no bark, and only minor bite-risk – plonked his big black butt down on the lamplit sidewalk next to Konoha's second largest senior residential care home, Genma had to backpedal a pace and do a double-take.

Komorebi Care Home.

An assisted living facility, predominantly nursing. The six-storey building stood tall yet unassuming beneath a canopy of red-yellow foliage, its pale and painted brick cast in soft buttery yellows from the wash of streetlights. Its accessibility features were subtle, signposted in white-on-peach hues – which matched the decorative shutters, terracotta tiles, and the quaint accents of the front terrace. A pretty, manicured spot with a vine-choked pergola and vintage teak benches, the old-world charm casting its spell. Easy on the eyes. Palatable. Unlike the tough bitter kernel buried in the heart of this place: the fact that those who checked in rarely checked out – unless appropriately kitted for the occasion; dress-code being a black cadaver bag and a gurney escort.

Old pain, oxidised with time, spiked in Genma's sternum.

Damn.

His eyes twitched in a flinch, face tight and body frozen on the sidewalk. As if in mutiny, his shadow stretched out like a long human smear across the shallow accessibility ramp leading up to the terrace, before the ground levelled out onto a smooth stone path towards the large sliding doors. Flower troughs lined the entryway to either side, a colourful cornucopia of tightly knit perennials, bright and resilient, still flowering despite the deepening cold and encroaching winter.

He wondered how many residents were holding on, like those flowers.

Flowers.

Unbidden, memory smoked a faint and hazy pall across his mind.

"I told you to bring flowers."

"These are flowers."

"No, Genma. These are fake flowers. They're not real."

"Like her."

"She is real."

"No, she's not."

"Genma…"

"Mine won't rot."

"Oh, heavens give me strength, child. Always with the smart mouth, hm?"

No. On that occasion, Genma wasn't trying to be smart. He was a four-year-old kid trying to be practical. Because he didn't know what to do with the pain that young. Words didn't achieve anything. Action always helped.

Until it didn't.

Frowning, Genma stared for a long unbroken moment, gaze turned inward to that distant memory as it pulled apart cloud-like, drifting away. Peripherally, he was aware of Bull panting through the seconds, wreathes of ghostly steam rising into the crisp night air. Dry skeleton leaves skittered down the ramp, scratching and catching along the guard-rails, gathering at Genma's feet.

Gathering like crumpled petals on a table…

In that room…

That room where the woman with the sad bronze eyes gazed at him through a veil of thickening darkness no doctor and no medicine could lift…

"Who are you, boy? Why are you here?"

The door to the care home slid open. A brief flood of light doused across the short distance, splashing onto the ramp, strobing across Genma's vision.

Bright.

Uncomfortable.

Genma blinked, the memories cutting out. He came back to the moment, his gaze still fastened on the plants. It took him a moment to register he wasn't breathing. Might've been surprised by that, if he wasn't angry.

Fucking Mugen Tsukuyomi…

Only explanation for it. Before that giant mindfuck, he'd have strolled past this place without a detour down memory lane. He'd have given the building a cursory look, insulated against any cold twinge of remembrance because he'd been fortified by years of forgetting. Until of course – Uchiha Madara. That egomaniacal bastard had mentally dismantled the world, forcing those caught in his 'what if' thrall to live out the tragic lies of their 'let's pretend' dreams.

Only it hadn't felt pretend.

It hadn't felt like a lie — or a dream.

It'd felt so goddamned real.

To everyone but Raidō.

"I knew. Knew it wasn't real even when it should've been…gods, what the hell does that say about me?"

Genma had no answer to that. Didn't want to think about it. Was taking great psychological strides to avoid it, along with the other question Raidō had thrown into Genma's rattled brainpan like a flash-bang bomb.

"I want you to tell me what you saw."

"Nothing real," Genma breathed, the words misting off into the cold night.

Nothing real.

"Like her."

"She is real."

"No, she's not."

Genma almost laughed, felt the black sound catch in his ruined throat. He was no stranger to bad images playing out in his head. Those reels were always spinning, like the old ANBU wheels, occasionally projecting the memories up onto the walls in his mind, flickering wraith-like, reminding him of the old lived-in pain.

Nothing special about that.

Nothing unique.

He'd learned to cope. Maladaptively at times – certainly in the ANBU years. But his current coping mechanisms tended more towards time-honoured avoidance and hardcore distraction. And should all that high-functioning stuff fail? He didn't need the drink or drugs. Just stone-cold duty. A sense of purpose. People to protect. A village to safeguard.

Meaning.

He'd learned what to attach that meaning to. Both before and after the War. In that regard, he'd had an edge on the rest of his generation. Practice. He'd danced around psychotic breaks all his life – whether by association or direct participation. His early childhood had introduced him. The drugs during ANBU had initiated him. And the series of 'surprise, I'm still not dead' mindfucks with Naoki – on top of all the other losses – had undoubtedly inured him. Prepared him. Well, in as much as anyone could prepare to have their world repeatedly split down the middle – to say nothing of what all that scar-tissue rupture had done to his head…

Or his heart.

Tch. I'm fine.

Well, should've been fine. Would've been fine.

If not for Madara's goddamned jutsu.

Bull gave a sudden phlegmy snort. Could've been a sneeze, or a not-so-subtle signal for Genma to quit with the whole spaced-out, dissociated, thousand-yard stare. Bad enough he was lurking like some batshit creepster outside this solemn place. He looked somewhat criminal; washed-out black hoodie and cargo pants, left arm tucked in a sling, convulsively swallowing against that hot and itchy burn in his throat like a jonesing drunk, body canting a little to the right, the fading cuts and bruises painting him several shades of sad and sorry.

Not sorry.

No, just sad.

Ah, fuck.

Blinking slow, Genma glanced across at the big furry brute and contained his annoyance to a cocked a brow. "Really? Here?"

The bulldog's lidded gaze ticked towards the building, then back, his flat drooping expression telegraphing total displeasure with Genma's complete lack of faith. Yeah, Genma wasn't sorry about that either. This had to be a joke.

"Don't give me that look," Genma said. "This place doesn't exactly scream 'fortress of solitude' for our resident sadist."

Nose twitching, Bull gave another gruff sound, more grumble than growl – and utterly unhelpful. Maybe picking the mute mutt hadn't been the best call – though it was preferable to the mouthy midget, Pakkun. Or the razor-toothed biter, Shiba. Not to mention the other fleabags. Motley bunch of mutts. United in their efforts to remind Genma that in their Bloody Book of Bite-Victims, Genma ranked just below cats. Such friendly fidos. Genma chalked it up to territorial protectiveness on the pack's part. Kakashi certainly hadn't raised a bunch of sweet little fur babies. Waif, in another life and body, would've fit right in.

Right. Screw it.

Huffing a sigh, Genma rolled his head to crack the tension from his neck and gave the dog a short nod. No biscuits or belly rubs. Anything beyond professionalism between himself and Kakashi's pooches risked a rabies shot. Which begged the question why Bull had agreed to play bloodhound in this little after-hours and off-the-record Morino Manhunt.

Worry about that later.

Honestly, the dog's cooperation bothered Genma less than the realisation that apparently Morino Ibiki had holed himself up in a residential nursing home for the night. Genma gave the place another wary once-over. This in no way squared with the "living arrangements" scenario Genma had imagined when it came to picturing where Ibiki lay his big bad head at the end of a good day's torture.

Expect the unexpected.

That fit the mood of his entire night. Lady Luck was pulling no punches. The ball-busting bitch. Good thing he'd taken the pain meds Yugao had left him. Ignoring all the reasons why commandeering a wheelchair was probably a bad idea, Genma tongued the slim steel needle poised at the edge of his mouth and hauled his busted and aching body up the lonely ramp and into the building's surprisingly plush and cosy interior.

He didn't expect Bull to follow.

Fortunately, the place was pet friendly. Or so said the framed sign. A big smiley dog face, stencilled and painted in mosaic-fashion, like a page out of one of those adult colouring books. Underneath the sign hung a detailed list of strict guidelines that Genma elected to ignore. Pivoting on the smooth polished floors, he made a slow beeline for the reception desk, taking in the hotel-lobby ambience of the place: patterned rugs to minimize the noise of wheels and foot traffic; comfy over-stuffed chairs which hugged a few rustic tables, their surfaces draped with lace-trimmed cloths, strategically positioned close to a visitor's refreshments area. It looked more like an annexed café – which put the Jōnin Station's kitchenette to shame.

Caffeine called.

Genma didn't answer.

He continued gravitating towards the front desk, gaze still tracking as he turned a half-circle to take in the rest of the space. Low-key illumination filtered through several tall and shaded floor lamps, the lighting warm and ambient, almost rosy in hue. Music played from hidden speakers, an instrumental piece, muted and easy on the ears, soft as a hymn. Further off, a fireplace popped and crackled, the homey woodsmoke scent underscored by lemon polish. Large curio cabinets gleamed in the borrowed firelight, heirlooms on display behind the shiny glass. Not a speck of dust. From curtained windows to pastel-papered walls, all the hard surfaces were clean and smooth, without the clinical stink or sterile aftertaste often associated with such purpose-built facilities. Someone had put some serious care and consideration into this place.

And money.

Not the standard sub-par home where people were shunted to subsist on charity and chance and, if they were lucky, compassion. Not your run-of-the-mill warehouse for the elderly. Not like anything Genma had ever seen. Or remembered seeing. Not that he had a wealth of experience to draw on…he'd been short-changed on those memories on account of…what? Trauma? Time? Didn't matter. Some part of his mind had been robbed blind of the heavier moments of his childhood — despite what Mushi claimed. And Genma was damn happy for it. He didn't want to remember.

"Who are you, boy?"

Again, that sharp spike in his sternum…

Another fragment of forgotten time, sliding bloody between his ribs.

"Where are your parents?"

Bull wobbled past, his ample bulk smacking into Genma like a canine hip-check, knocking him off-centre and out of sight of a harassed-looking woman faffing around in the office just behind the reception desk – where the mandatory sign-in book lay wide and waiting, demanding a signature.

Nope.

Falling into step behind Bull, Genma slid into a neat pivot and redirected his steps toward the stairway, sneak-mode activated. Fat lot of good it did him by the time he reached the door and spotted the keypad.

Passcode required.

Ah, shit.

Opportune moment, pending. He'd have to wait, watch, and wheedle his way in. Moseying a short distance away, Genma paused by a special events board and pretended to peruse the week's itinerary. Watercolour painting lessons. A couple of music concerts. An autumnal flower arranging session with Yamanaka Sayuri.

Genma's brows shot up.

Well, damn. Jokes and wonders never ceased. He'd never have pictured Yamanaka Sayuri in a place like this – a place that risked plastic vases and rotting flowers.

"Who are you, boy?"

"Aren't you adorable?"

Genma blinked at the cheery voice, turned sideways, and glanced out the corner of his eye at a straw-thin, blue-haired, dark-skinned intern crouched close to Bull. The kid looked like he needed to eat. Bull looked like he wanted to eat but preferred more meat on his victim's bones. It was a weird combination. Became weirder when the kid got handsy and Bull just took it like a champ, his big body sagging into the affectionate skritches administered to the thick dark fur-rolls corrugating his massive neck.

The intern grinned.

Bull thumped his tail.

Genma died a little.

If he'd tried that hands-on bonding with the ninken, he'd have lost an arm.

"You're not too bad either, hot-stuff."

It took a second to register. Frowning, Genma looked up from the dog. The intern caught his gaze and flashed a toothy high-beam smile that either suggested sleep-deprived craziness or rookie enthusiasm. That kind of amped-up happy, in a place like this? Genma squinted as if he hadn't heard right – which to be honest, he probably hadn't.

"Sorry?"

The intern chuckled, his dark skin glowing in a flush before he straightened up and adjusted the lanyard hanging from his scrawny tattooed neck – a series of inked lunar moons transitioning through their various stages, strung about his throat like a collar.

"Hah! Yeah, ah, sorry," the kid fumbled, scrubbing a hand back through his short, shellacked-looking neon-blue spikes. "I don't have a brain-to-mouth filter. I'm working on it. Entertains the folks here."

"Yeah, you're quite the comedian to be calling me hot-stuff."

And it honestly had nothing to do with rank.

Hot-stuff? Really?

Genma knew he looked like hot-shit.

The intern gave a shaky grin, trying and failing to look sheepish. His green eyes shone too bright, and his grin kept stretching. "Sorry, man. I can't lie. For real. It's a wiring thing in my brain. They should muzzle me. What happened to you? You look like you got into one of those 'bang, zoom, straight to the moon' kinda fights."

Ok, a talker. I can work with this.

Genma shrugged his good shoulder, eyed the kid's lanyard – Yuzuki. "My grandmother didn't approve when I told her I was looking at care homes."

Yuzuki laughed. It was a pleasant laugh. "Feisty lady. If she whooped you that bad, guess she doesn't need nursing care?"

"In time," Genma lied. "Figured I'd do some recon."

Yuzuki cocked his head, green eyes narrowing, but the look seemed more playful than suspicious. "At eleven o'clock at night?"

"Shinobi hours."

"Figured. You got the look."

"Black and blue? I think hot mess is the descriptor you were looking for."

Yuzuki gave another chuckle. "Nah, man. I'm black and blue and I rock it." He gave a hip hand-gesture Genma had no idea how to translate and then ran the same hand back through his stiff blue spikes once again. "But nah, it's not even your injuries. It's more the shady side-eye you were giving me – oh, yeah, and the needle in your mouth? Dead giveaway. You're a bit sus, man."

Genma gave an honest laugh, it felt weird in his throat. Unpractised. Rusty. "You get a lot of shinobi veterans in this place?"

Yuzuki's smile faltered a little, but the warmth remained. "Yeah. Some. It's fucked up."

"Language."

"Sorry. Told you. No filter."

"Fucked up how?"

"Well, you know…" Yuzuki sighed, the deep-chested purge of sadness, tucking his hands into the pockets of his apricot-coloured uniform pants, the matching shirt about three sizes too large for him. "They live through so much crap. Strong, powerful, got some hella badass dignity. Then it's just taken away. Eating and pissing through tubes? We don't even do that with animals." He looked to Bull, then back to Genma, his gaze lingering a little too long, looking a little too deep. "It's not right."

No. It wasn't. Neither was the direction the conversation was heading. Genma flicked Bull a look, breaking rapport. "Hear that, Boulder? You'll be spared the indignity in your old age."

"Boulder?"

Bull didn't look too impressed either.

And sure, it was a shit impromptu call-sign, but fuck it.

Genma's good shoulder twitched in a shrug. "He's big. He rolls. He gathers moss if I leave him too long."

Yuzuki laughed. He seemed to do that easy. His lanky frame swung like he might clap Genma on the shoulder, though he bent instead to administer another round of skritches to Bull's thick neck. No complaint. The dog suffered through it, though he pinned his lidded gaze on Genma, patient in a pre-mediated kind of way. Yeah, Genma wasn't coming out of this escapade without that rabies shot.

"I like you," Yuzuki said, whipping back to his full height. Kid wasn't short. Probably making up for the fact that if he turned sideways, he'd disappear. "Want me to show you around?"

"Depends. I don't want to land you in shit."

The statement shocked Genma as much as Yuzuki. There was nothing strategic about it. No ingratiating ploy. It was honest. Heartfelt. He meant it.

Ugh.

Clearing his throat, Genma almost took a step back but managed to lock his knees, wishing he'd been faster to lockdown his mouth. He shouldn't have given a rat's tiny turd whether this kid got pink-slipped. Genma was here on a private mission – the 'any means necessary' kind. Not the first time he'd slipped into a restricted establishment. First time he'd felt bad about it though.

This place is fucking with me…

Or maybe it was the upbeat innocence shining out of Yuzuki's eyes. Genma hadn't anticipated that. Or the affect it would have on him. Innocence felt so horribly misplaced here. Too positive. Too naïve. Too immune to the tragedy of what went on behind the veneer of 'assisting' living. More like assisted dying, without the actual mercy of release. But the light in this kid's eyes wasn't false or borrowed. Reminded Genma of Naruto.

"Oh shit," Yuzuki eventually said, drawing out the 'shit' in a playful singsong through his grinning teeth. "You just broke some serious I-don't-give-a-shit shinobi code right there, didn't you? Ha. Yeah, I know you did."

Caught flat-footed, Genma grunted, noncommittal, not appreciating his own transparency – or rather, the kid's sharpness. "Maybe."

Honest answer. It was the right play.

"Aw. You like me," Yuzuki said.

"Jury's still out, kid."

"Nah, you do. If you were a few years younger I'd be hitting on you like a kid's piñata."

Genma tried not to smile, oddly amused despite the absurdity – and the audacity. He'd have laid this cocky little shit on his bony ass if not for the genuine goodness powering that high-wattage confidence – which probably had less to do with ego and a lot to do with Yuzuki's wiring. No kid in their right mind spoke to Genma that way – even if they didn't know who he was and what he was capable of. He didn't invite this kind of reckless flirtation from the younger generation, even if he did inspire it at times.

Yuzuki was still smiling, a little awkwardly, waiting for the blowback.

Genma cut him a break, let his eyes carry his amusement. His voice too. "That's an interesting sales pitch – first part could use some refinement. You make it sound like I'm checking myself in here."

Blowing a horse-lipped snort, Yuzuki slapped a hand to his rail-thin thigh, a good hearty thwack. "Ha, you're alright, man. Yeah, you're funny. I definitely like you."

"Just enough to give me that tour, right?"

"Yeah, just enough." Still grinning, Yuzuki gave a decisive nod, winked at Bull like they'd shared some private joke, and swivelled towards the stairs. "Come on. I'll show you guys around. And as for landing me in shit? I'm already knee-deep because of my mouth."

"Shocker," Genma drawled, trailing after the kid with Bull in tow.

He memorised the pin Yuzuki punched into the keypad.

36912

As they climbed the stairs, Yuzuki's mouth continued to run. Genma let him talk, lagging a couple of steps behind, content to be the dead fish in this current. His body throbbed like an angry wound. Though the pain felt duller. Heavier. He owed that to the meds Yugao had given him. Would have taken a larger dose – tempting – but didn't want to blunt his edge…or risk scratching an old and dangerous itch.

"—chakra sickness?"

Genma tuned back in at the question, catching the tail end. "Hmn? Say again?"

Yuzuki glanced over his shoulder, a dark blue brow winging up. "Said you sound rough in your throat, man. Like you got the sickness. Unless you got some nasty-ass cold on top of getting beat?"

"No cold."

"Damn. You all got it, right? The chakra sickness?"

"All shinobi, yeah." Not entirely true. Genma neglected to mention the four exceptions; a certain silver-haired bastard and his Team 7 brats. But Yuzuki didn't need to know that. And honestly, Genma couldn't be assed to explain it.

"Huh," Yuzuki bobbed his head thoughtfully. "I hear it messes with the tenketsu? Leaves you with something like the flu?"

"Something like that. It varies."

"It contagious?"

"In and of itself, no."

"But your lurgies still are if your immune system goes down, right?" Yuzuki realised, casting a belated and worried glance over his shoulder. "It's the residents I care about."

Genma could appreciate that sentiment, however belated.

"I'm not gonna leave any parting gifts, kid." At Yuzuki's uneasy frown, Genma managed a faint chuckle that sounded like crushed rocks grinding in his throat. "Look, I know I sound as rough as I look, but the shit I've got isn't contagious. The chakra sickness likes to target vulnerable or overactive points on the tenketsu. Nailed me in the throat and chest."

"Overactive points, huh? You a singer?" Yuzuki teased, all grins again. "Or maybe you like to spit cute words and needles?"

Genma puffed a laugh to deflect from the accuracy of the last guess. "You got me. Karaoke is my weakness."

Yuzuki bobbed his head as if to a beat. "You should come sing here, man. Bring your grandma."

Genma stilled for a split-second, recovering fast. "Yeah. I'll pencil that in."

"Nice! So, there a cure for the chakra thing?"

"Time."

"Time. Sure, why not. They say that about a lot of shit, no?" Yuzuki stopped by the large double doors on the third floor and reached to tap the winking keypad, punching in the same code he'd used before: 36912. "Time moves different in a place like this. Goes too soon or comes too late depending on if you wanna stay or go, you know?"

Yeah, Genma knew. Didn't want to think about why he knew. Or what that knowing might prompt him to further remember.

"Who are you, boy?"

A loud wail went up, mechanical, monotonous.

Genma froze even as his instincts burst online, hard-wired to mobilise. Big angry leaps. Reactive, ridiculous. He gripped the right handrail running along the stairwell and squeezed – hard. Bull gave him a curious head-tilt, clearly unperturbed, which made sense, seeing as Yuzuki didn't so much as flinch. The kid simply nodded to himself and proceeded to open the door without urgency, humming a routine and relaxed note – like he'd heard this sound a thousand times before. Turning, he glanced down at Genma, his lips still tilted in their natural smiling cast.

"That's my cue to go brighten someone's bad night. Gotta ask you guys to wait here. Won't be long. Five mins, tops, okay?"

Distracted, Genma gave a listing nod, willing his nervous system to calm the fuck down – it'd been like this since the War. Hyperarousal and hypervigilance at the slightest, dumbest thing. No stranger to the workings of a burnt-out brain and body, he knew it would pass. Like a kidney stone, maybe. But it would pass.

He gave the kid a tight-lipped smile.

Then waited until Yuzuki passed out of sight and the door clicked shut before letting his legs fold and his body twist, sinking down in a boneless thud on one of the steps. His breath came harder, sweat cold on his nape, nausea rising in a wave.

Bull, two steps below, watched with steady vigilance, his big head still dipped to one side, pendulous lips quivering with a mumble-grumble Genma still had no hope of interpreting.

"Give me a minute," he said, hoarse, quiet.

Bull licked his chops, a slobbery smack in the ringing quiet as the nurse alarm finally cut out, its echo receding into the creaking silence of the stairway's bowels.

Sighing, Genma closed his eyes.

He gave himself 30 seconds to regather the loose threads of his composure and tie them back together, knotting up the air in his lungs nice and tight before letting his breath unravel by slow and aching degrees, his chest hitching against a cough before the tension eased and his throat bobbed once, twice.

"Eight times up," he whispered. A mantra, sometimes a prayer. Right now, it was a motivational bitchslap, though the hit glanced off, left him digging deeper.

C'mon. Get up and get on.

He didn't.

Just sat there box-breathing for another few seconds.

Bull sneeze-whuffed – a subtle nudge.

Genma's minute was up.

Up. Get up.

Planting his feet, he gripped the railing and opened his eyes just as Bull see-sawed his furry bulk up the two steps between them. The bulldog halted for a second, then pressed his solid mass against Genma's right leg, like he didn't trust Genma to stand on his own. It was…disturbingly considerate. And like Waif's rare bouts of affection — and Kurenai's tender treatment earlier — it left Genma feeling tired and tight in the chest. Like he'd need more than a minute to recover.

He swallowed roughly, reached for snark.

"You offering a ride?"

That did it.

Snorting, Bull knocked him sideways and almost down the stairs. Fair play. Wouldn't be the first time tonight that he'd taken a tumble down a stairwell on account of a seriously pissed off pooch. Though this one wasn't stoked on soldier pills. Not that Bull would need the advantage Akamaru had possessed.

I'm done for the night.

And down for the count. At this point a stiff breeze could've taken Genma out at the knees. He was that wiped.

That weak.

And yet, he hauled his ass up like a good little masochist from the depths of seven times down to stand steady at eight times up. Somewhere in the ghosting corridors of his memories, he caught a flash of sparkling green eyes, holding all the mischief of the impish words that followed.

"Nice work, dipshit, but can you walk a straight line?"

Karibi.

Genma almost jerked to look back down the stairwell, half expecting her pixy face to be gazing back up at him, smoke curling from her tilted lips.

No smoke, only shadow.

No shining green eyes, just the dim glow of the bulbs.

Bull followed Genma's faraway stare, looking back down the stairwell before turning a questioning look up towards Genma's face.

The dog whuff-huffed.

Genma blinked at the sound, came back to the moment. "Yeah, yeah, still here. Do your thing."

Bull did. The dog took point, leading them up, nose to some invisible wind. Maybe it was the late hour, maybe the next floors weren't for residents requiring round-the-clock nursing, or maybe Lady Luck had got a wild hair up her ass about being charitable, but Genma found their ascent obstacle-free.

Don't assume.

Bull paused on the fifth level, nosed at the door.

The keypad flashed, waiting for the magic number.

Genma would need both hands for this part. Slowly freeing himself from the sling, he cautiously rotated his shoulder, stretched out his left arm and flexed his fingers. Routine check. Bearable pain. Standard crap. Stuffing the sling behind a fire-extinguisher, he flattened himself to the wall adjacent the door and caught Bull's gaze.

"You better be right about this."

Bull gulped up some slobber and yawned obnoxiously wide, his entire maw on display. A not-so-subtle warning for Genma to mind his manners. Safe to assume Bull's bite would seriously compensate for his lack of bark.

Watch it, Shiranui.

Rolling his eyes, Genma tilted and looked through the small Plexiglass window. Beyond the door, wide corridors branched to left and right, a recreational common area directly ahead. Two elderly men sat near a gaslit fire, curved like comas in their armchairs, bent over a shogi board stationed between them, tapping out a quiet battle with soft 'clacks' of the lacquered pieces. A woman with a long and ratty silver braid sat at an old piano, punching out random and discordant notes.

No sign of any staff.

Yet.

Moving fast, Genma tapped in the code 36912. He waited for the access-granted beep and the green flash before easing open the door and slipping from the stairwell onto the residential floor. Resuming point, Bull waddled past with a confidence that Genma matched without effort, breezing through at an easy pace. In keeping with the lobby downstairs, the residential floor maintained the same cosy vintage aura, not dissimilar to the new retirement buildings that had begun to populate the more gentrified part of Konoha's hot-springs district.

They passed a communal dining hall.

A staffroom.

A library.

Then the corridor doglegged right, tunnelling down into a row of numbered doors lined to either side. Resident rooms. Bull ambled on ahead, zigzagging between doors until he went stiff, sniffed a couple of times, then promptly sat.

Bingo.

Genma sidled up to the peach-coloured door – number 14 stamped bright and white – eyes and ears scanning the dimly lit hallway for any sign of activity, utilising his amped hypervigilance for something better than a mini cardiac event in a stairwell.

Nothing.

Peaceful quiet.

Even the discordant piano notes didn't carry down to the apartment aisles. However the place had been designed, noise seemed to flow like air through a ventilation system, filtering out at certain bends in the corridors. No sounds drifted from beyond or beneath the doors either, not even the dull base of a TV set.

Nice.

Maybe he could flirt his way into temporary respite care. The shinobi barracks he'd currently holed himself up in didn't lend themselves to R&R. Though neither did adult babysitting or backstreet brawling with the younger generation.

Bull stood abruptly.

Genma contained his flinch at the sudden movement and glanced down. "Think I can manage from here. You good?"

The dog nodded, and just that small gesture felt oddly comforting. Not enough to risk losing a hand, but enough for Genma to appreciate the fact that the ninken had no reason to aid and abet.

"Thanks," Genma tacked on, clipped but sincere. "You need my help getting out?"

Snorting, Bull did the long-suffering grumble routine and shuffled off down the corridor without a backward glance. Fair enough. Turning back, Genma braced his right forearm along the doorjamb to room 14 and hung his head for a few sobering seconds, gathering what little energy remained. If the dog was wrong about this…

Come on already.

He raised a hand.

The door pulled open before he could knock.

Looking up, it took a lot to contain his surprise.

Mitarashi Anko melted into the slim gap between door and frame with all the grace and class of a Tanzaku Quarters hooker. A crude black-and-red fishnet suit hugged her curves like a second skin, a faux wet-look corset squeezing her midriff with just the right pressure to risk her breasts spilling over the scalloped cups.

Subtle as ever.

Amused, Genma tipped his head in mock-deference, forearm still braced on the doorframe, his voice rasping out on a dry note. "Ah, our resident lady of the night."

"I prefer creature of the night."

"My mistake."

Their eyes connected, a spark of shared mischief – though Anko's gaze carried heat, and a world of 'play with matches' promise. But then, that was nothing new.

"I don't remember ordering room service," she purred, sliding her thigh into view to ease and wedge the door open a tad more, displaying a shiny-chain suspender and ripped stocking, daring Genma to look.

He did, because why the hell not.

Pleased, Anko followed this up with her usual predatory inspection, smoky grey-brown eyes raking over his body in a slow crawl, cataloguing the mess. "Wow. And here I thought you weren't into the fun of a good rough and bloody tumble anymore, Shiranui."

Genma quirked a brow. "If by fun you mean my rough and bloody tumble down several flights of stairs? Yeah. Pretty sure they consider that domestic abuse, Anko."

"Domestic? Ew."

"Alright, abuse."

"Only if you don't consent."

"Do I look like I consented?"

Anko looked him over, wicked and whip-quick. "Always hard to tell with you."

"That's…painfully fair."

Bracing herself against the door, Anko chuckled low in her throat, a speculative gleam cutting across the lust-drunk haze smoking up her eyes. Watching him closely, she leaned into Genma's space by slow and deliberate degrees, encroaching, provoking, daring him to push her back – or meet her halfway. He did neither. Just stared from beneath his lashes, his bronze eyes steady on her face as he worked to keep his patience in check.

On any other night, he'd have flirted back.

Because again, why the hell not?

Too bad Kurenai's more refined and sensual 'silk-and-steel' vibe had ruined any part of him that might have playfully responded to Anko's more lewd and lusty antics. Worse than that, Anko's bed-hopping forwardness hit too close to Ino's earlier behaviour – and it hit so very wrong.

Genma's energy shifted, went a little cooler.

Anko didn't mind it – or if she did, she ignored it. "Well," she breathed, "What would you consent to tonight?"

Not this.

All the same, Genma weighed the moment. Anko could be vindictive if snubbed. He'd had enough claws digging into him tonight – and Mitarashi Anko was a whole different breed of cat. Being a scratching post for someone else's itch wasn't beneath him, not if he got off in the process – but his own needs weren't of the purring-persuasion right now…they were closer to a howl.

Damn.

A horrible ache stole across his chest, sudden and strong.

Kakashi.

He fucking missed Kakashi.

Ignoring the pain threading through his heart, Genma ticked his head back in a ruse of deliberation. He gave Anko a slow considering look before he tsk'd softly, reaching for humour to soften his upcoming rejection – and hopefully disguise the exhaustion pulling at the corners of his relaxed mask.

"After my shitty night? I'd consent to being euthanised."

Anko's grin flickered, her tongue sweeping out across her teeth. "Night's still young, Shiranui. Screwing you until you pass out is the best I can do on such short notice. It'll euthanise your mood just fine."

"Fun as that sounds — a care home? Bit of a vibe killer. I know you like to colour outside the lines, but really?"

Reading his eyes, Anko hesitated a moment – then she treated him to another slow salacious smile, her bee-stung lips shiny and red. "Thought I'd hand out a few heart-attacks to the oldies. Mercy kills, really."

"Thoughtful."

"I know, imagine the damage I could do if I had a dick."

Genma husked a tired laugh, easing back a little. "On that note: is he alive in there?"

Anko didn't respond immediately. Processing the rejection maybe. Or maybe not. A weird change came over her and she sagged against the doorjamb where Genma had braced his arm, close enough that the heat from her body radiated outwards like a thermal wave, enveloping Genma in the scent of sex, liquor, and a base note of smoke.

She didn't take her eyes off him.

And it wasn't a look he recognised.

Or liked.

Though she was smiling, her eyes weren't. Not really. That trademark glow of bright hot trouble and provocation flickered on and off like a dodgy lightbulb, a dangerous filament.

"Gonna put the screws to him, Genma?" Anko purred, a knife's edge skating along the spine of that question. "Shame on you. I just got him unkinked."

Genma's expression arched a little at the odd question — and the strange tone accompanying it. He offered a slim smile to cover his confusion, his unease.

"I'm sure there's a crass innuendo buried somewhere in that question – but no, Mitarashi. No screws. Sexual or otherwise."

Anko smirked, but her gaze was too still.

Genma's smile tightened in return, and so did his gut. Mostly because he couldn't place the mood or predict the moment, which set him on edge. This side of Anko rarely made an appearance. He'd witnessed it fleetingly over the years. Rare. Random. Not often enough to familiarise himself with the workings of this particular strain of her personality; it seemed to have periods of dormancy between its fickle spells of activity. Like a snake in the tall grass. He'd catch a glimpse. A venomous edge lurking behind the lips of her maneater smile, a sidewinder hiding in the desert-dryness of her laugh.

Viper-quick, it would strike out of nowhere.

Then vanish just as fast, a devious skin-shedding illusion, a cobra-dance without the musical flute or fancy tricks, just the fatal strike – a game she'd learned much too young.

Way too young.

Genma's expression hardened. The old ANBU instincts twitched and jumped beneath the surface of his skin, hungry for a dose of action to flush out the dark feelings taking hold. Hatred for Orochimaru. A Snake that had not only gotten his fangs into Anko as a kid but had swallowed large parts of her childhood whole.

Her innocence, being the largest and bloodiest chunk.

Reminded him of Naoki.

Only Naoki had gone the other way. Deeper into himself, barring all entry and access to his body – until Genma and Karibi. Before them, no one laid a hand on him outside of a fight or a formal handshake – excluding his family.

His family…

Ino.

Genma's blood chilled at the memory of her draped over his bed like ruined silk, a castoff courtesan, her lips twisting in a painted vixen smirk, the mercenary glint in her come-hither eyes so foreign to her face it hurt to think what Naoki would've thought – or done – had he seen her behaving that way. Looking that way.

The way Anko looked now.

Genma's eyes must've betrayed him, because Anko's smile sharpened, threatening to draw a little blood. She went for a play-bite instead.

"Should've brought Raidō, we could've had a party."

"Yeah, in separate rooms."

"Ugh, your boy is such a prude."

Genma shrugged, sliding his forearm a little higher up the doorjamb, feigning an ease he didn't feel, though the banter offered a bridge to safer ground.

"Don't see how you suffer," he countered, pretending to mull it over. "Way I see it, more fun for you. One occasion you'll be glad you don't have a dick. Raidō would appreciate it. Ibiki too, I'm guessing."

"Unfortunately." Anko breathed a phony sigh and tilted her head against the doorframe close to Genma's arm, a deliberate move to exhibit the mottled hickeys blooming along her pretty throat. "My fantasies are shot to shit with this big bastard. A fan of the penis he is not – unless it's his own. Ah, men."

"We're simple creatures."

Anko chuckled and the remnants of that odd look she'd sported vanished like a flipped switch. Back to the mischief. Neon-bright and belonging to the red-lights district.

"Oh, Genma," she chided, eyes twinkling as if in possession of a classified secret. "Ibiki is anything but simple."

"Careful, you're sounding attached."

"Only to what he's packing."

Genma huffed a laugh. "Thanks for that clarification."

Anko grinned, delighted, then leaned back into the apartment in a long feline stretch, putting on quite the show as the fishnet rippled seamlessly, inviting Genma's eyes to wander the territory further north, or south, of the corset's gleaming cinch.

He'd normally have looked his fill.

Didn't this time.

Good thing she missed that.

When Anko twisted back to face him, she had her long, tan, purple-lined coat slung in the crook of her arm. Fixing to split. Standard operating procedure for a one-night stand. Genma knew it well enough. Still, he couldn't resist.

"What?" he crooned, "You leaving?"

"Well, I'm done coming."

"So glad I asked."

Anko winked and slipped into the overcoat, tugging her choppy violet strands free from the collar before finally belting herself in, ready for the next ride. "Have fun. He'll be pissed to see you here, but I think you'll find him a little more agreeable after our latest session."

"I'm sure your visits are always therapeutic."

"Highly. You should hit me up sometime." Leaving the door ajar, Anko stepped forward, reaching up on tiptoes to press a 'chaste' kiss to the corner of Genma's bruised mouth, her tongue peeking out in a feathering stroke across the senbon's razor tip. "I guarantee, you'll love my version of Primal Screaming."

Genma hummed, angling the needle away with a smooth roll of his tongue, gazing down at her through his lashes. "Trust me, I've met my screaming quota tonight."

No word of a lie. He'd just turned down the volume in his head. But the background noise still played out; Ino's shrill animal cries coupled with Kiba's feral bays for blood. A 'primal screaming' chorus, underscored by his own howling anger — and pain. Like a dial being turned, the steadily rising volume carved a deep line between Genma's brows, his gaze going distant even as Anko leaned closer.

"Oh, for fuck's sake, Shiranui."

She smacked a big wet kiss to his clenched jaw, messy and sloppy and ridiculously childish. Looking to tease, not to tempt or test him – surprisingly. She was firing off the weirdest signals tonight. While this particular signal saved her a shove, it won her some serious side-eye.

"You're no fun anymore," she pouted, contrived annoyance twisting her red-smeared mouth. "You used to be up for anything."

"You mean down for anything."

"Ugh. Self-deprecation is very unattractive on you, Genma."

"That's a lie. And blame my sobriety."

Anko shot him a pitying look reserved for penitent sinners, sinking back as if some of his character-reform might rub off on her incorrigible soul.

"Aw, don't worry," she said, ducking under his raised arm to make her exit, dragging her nails playfully along his stomach. "I'll keep a bottle with your name on it. Just in case."

"Nice to know you've got my best interests at heart."

"Heart?" Anko laughed, rich and wicked, crumpling the word and tossing it over her shoulder, an unwanted sentiment. "What's that?"

Once upon a lifetime ago, Genma would have laughed. A harsh barking sound.

Instead, he just felt that ache again.

He watched Anko parade her away down the corridor, her creature of the night act slipping off, shucking the conquest routine for a lethal stalk that dared any god-fearing staff member to question her presence. An unholy spirit in the halfway-house to heaven. Gods help Yuzuki if that poor kid crossed her path. She'd slice him to ribbons and gift-wrap him for medical.

Convenient.

He could pass on Genma's regards to Kiba.

Shit.

Vicious thought. Inspired by Anko. Genma didn't want to think about what else she might've inspired if he'd let her get her fangs in. How the hell Ibiki handled her without becoming visibly unhinged was a mystery. But then, Ibiki understood the mechanics of minds like Anko's. She was an equation he'd probably worked out as compatible with his system long before he'd let her run amok in the steel-plated engine room of his private life. Everything in its place. Easier. Simpler.

"Ibiki is anything but simple."

Probably should've heeded that as a warning, because the second Genma pushed back the door and strolled into the apartment uninvited, the sight that greeted him almost had him turning an abrupt 180 in the other direction.

Shouldn't have shocked him really.

It had been that kind of a night.

Ibiki sat at the edge of a large floral couch dressed in a ridiculous apricot bathrobe that pulled across his mile-wide shoulders tight enough to test the seams. The white lapels hung askew at his chest, revealing a broad wedge of muscular pectoral corrugated with a webwork of hypertrophic scarring – and smeared in red.

Not blood.

Lipstick.

The rest of the robe hung open at Ibiki's legs which – thank merciful fuck – were not on display, though the ill-fitting apricot pants that stretched taut over the thick and corded muscles of his thighs and calves left little to the imagination. Cherry on the top of this retina-burned image? Ibiki wore a random orange baseball cap in lieu of his usual off-duty bandana, his dark deep-set eyes peering out from beneath the shadow of the hat's brim without expression, trained on Genma like black darts.

In the background, a grandfather clock ticked down a few awkward seconds.

Genma stared blankly, almost walked out.

It was just too weird, even for this kind of a night.

Oddly enough, the absurdity – and embarrassment – of the moment left no dent in Ibiki's ironclad composure. With the ease of a man immune to humiliation, Ibiki reached across the low-slung antique coffee table for a steaming mug. His gloved hand completely enveloped the peach ceramic. He brought it to his scarred mouth. Took a civil sip.

Genma watched in amazement.

Wondered whether his pain meds had kicked in.

This had to be a hallucination.

"This address…" Ibiki began, his deep tones hushed in the stillness of the room. "…is unlisted."

Beating back a grin, Genma gave a slow smile, marvelling at the fact that only Ibiki could pull off a threat whilst looking like a cross-dressing, nanny-murdering psychopath.

"What can I say? I followed the scent of sadomasochistic scandal."

Ibiki shook his head. A small, fractional movement.

"Fucking ninken," he breathed into his mug, whisper-soft.

No eruption. No anger.

No surprise.

Ibiki didn't entertain explosive emotionalism as a rule. Still. Didn't mean he wasn't privately fuming underneath that mask of steel-plated stoicism…and borrowed apricot nightwear. He still bled red, last Genma saw. And after the Mugen Tsukuyomi? Hell. Genma was willing to bet Ibiki saw red too, every now and then.

Hopefully he'd done some bloodletting with Anko.

Taking his chances, Genma kicked the door shut behind him and stepped deeper into the ensuite room, taking in the flouncy cottage-style comfort; embossed pastel wallpaper, sweeping lace-net curtains coupled with thick brocaded drapes, a few crocheted throws, several historic furnishings topped with flowery doilies on the carved teak wood.

The whole geriatric nine.

Genma did a double take. Maybe if he squinted really hard, all the chintzy crap would blur together like one of those optical illusion 'magic-eye' pictures, revealing the clue he was obviously missing.

"You know," Genma said, bronze eyes tracing the vintage stained-glass lightshade hanging from the ceiling. "I had you pegged as 'urban loft'. Metal accents. Exposed structural elements. Maybe some leather. A few mounted heads on the walls."

"Get out."

Still soft, still a threat – or at least it would have been to anyone else. Genma winced for effect and slotted his hands into the pockets of his black cargos, glancing over his shoulder at the door without any intention of leaving.

"Ah. You'd rather I'd knocked first?"

"I'd rather you consider your last will and testament before seeking me out after work hours in any place that isn't a public establishment."

"And miss the opportunity to see Anko's walk of shame?"

"Shame?"

Genma cocked his head. "Fair point." He eyed Ibiki's clothes, a pointed look. "And I thought Iwashi's red boxers were questionable."

Ignoring the jibe, Ibiki took another slow sip of his coffee. "I have rules, Shiranui. Rule 3: I don't shit where I eat. And right now, you're squatting on my rug."

"Yeah," Genma sighed without remorse. "Frustrating when people don't respect your boundaries, isn't it?"

Ibiki stilled, coffee mug lowered halfway. "Explain."

"What?" Genma scoffed, advancing sideways to keep Ibiki in his line of sight. "You mean you didn't send Yamato to kick down my door?"

"Yamato kicked down your door?"

Genma shot him a flat look. "He knocked really hard."

"Hn. Unlike the Inuzuka kid."

That smacked the flatness from Genma's expression. He froze by a decorative armoire, brows arching high. "Well fuck. You move fast, don't you? Let me guess, it wasn't civilian curtain-twitchers who fed you that information."

Which could only mean one thing.

Ibiki's silence all but confirmed it.

Sonovabitch.

Biting down on the senbon, Genma turned his head. "You keeping off-the-book tabs on me again, Morino?" he asked, his voice rolling out on a droll note even as his lips curved in a cold snarl of a smile. "Sending your little rookie goon-squad to surveil my ass?"

Ibiki took that without insult or regret, a deep hum of amusement reverberating from low in his throat. "Ah, paranoia. Mushi wasn't wrong."

Ah, the shrink.

Always a sore point.

Genma should've seen the hit coming a mile off.

"I'd love to see your psychological rap sheet," he shot back. "Does voyeuristic sociopath grace the list?"

Ibiki gave a dismissive snort, set the mug aside and rose from his perch in a single stiff movement, slow but stubborn, like his joints ached. He rounded the couch and turned towards an annexed room, words casting over his broad shoulder.

"Eyes and ears, Shiranui. It's my job."

Rolling his eyes, Genma jammed his hands at the waist of his cargos and prowled the perimeter of the main living area while Ibiki vanished into what Genma assumed was the bedroom. Hopefully to change.

Waiting for the big man to re-emerge, Genma cocked his hip against a frumpy scroll-back armchair – floral, of course – and studied the framed pictures hanging on the pastel walls. Family portraits. Cameo shots. Some taken at matsuri, others on birthdays. Two adults. Two kids. An elderly woman. Token resemblances. Stock imagery. False faces. Ibiki didn't have personal ties – other than his estranged brother – and even if he did, he'd never display them.

Hn. What the hell is this, Morino?

Some kind of smokescreen or operational cover story?

Because it sure as shit wasn't Morino's mancave.

The annex door creaked open.

Without fully turning, Genma glanced over out the corner of his eye and watched Ibiki return to the couch at the same stiff pace. He'd changed into a casual navy sweatshirt and dark slacks, baseball cap replaced by a black beanie. Right clothes, wrong scene. He still looked incongruous. A very square peg in a very round hole. Without a word, Ibiki reclaimed the edge of the over-stuffed couch, his dark and ominous aura overwhelming the quaint homey vibes in a swift and hostile takeover.

Too bad apricot wasn't his colour.

Too cosy.

Too civilian.

Ibiki tended to stick to the blue-grey-black end of the colour spectrum. The less colour the better. Made sense. Unlike everything else in this moment. Rubbing absently at the spot on his jaw where Anko had probably left a red-lipped stain, Genma picked up where Ibiki had left off, attempting to catch the other ninja's reflection in the glass portraits.

"Pretty sure that 'doing your job' doesn't involve illicit surveillance of private residences, Morino."

"Not typically," Ibiki replied, conversational, calm – completely unperturbed by Genma's invasive scan of the portraits, let alone his deeper intrusion into the room. "Only your little pavement dust-up with Inuzuka wasn't all that private, was it? A lot of public and private property was damaged." Ibiki waited, gave that rundown its unsavoury due before adding, "An impressive cockup, even for you."

Biting back a sharp laugh, Genma finally turned, senbon grating between his teeth as he flashed another tight and feral smile. "You know what's more impressive? How you can be balls deep in my business and Anko at the same time."

"We all have our talents."

"Explains why you sent Yamato to do your dirty work."

"He volunteered," Ibiki said without apology, matter of fact. He reached again for the peach mug. "You should've taken advantage of the visit. Got him to fix your door on the way out."

Genma had.

Not that he'd admit it.

He flicked Ibiki a droll look. "Who'd have thought getting kinky sex would make you funnier."

"Who'd have thought getting beat to shit would make you stupider. Although your stupidity on this occasion predates you getting beat to shit." Ibiki glanced up from beneath his brows, a quiet calculation working beneath his casual tone. "A Goei Shōtai involved in a backstreet brawl. With witnesses."

Ah, here it comes.

The T&I dress-down.

Familiar with Ibiki's 'character assassination' procedure, Genma rocked away from the portraits and strolled towards the curtained windows, needing to move — like that might take him out of range of the psychological mudslinging. He felt Ibiki's eyes track his path, a microscopic observation; dissecting, assessing.

Looking for cracks…

Genma would normally have taken this hot-seat routine on the chin, but he was running off a lean mix tonight and didn't appreciate the corner he was being herded into. Funny then, how he proceeded to dive headfirst into it like a pain-chasing crackpot.

"Backstreet brawl?" he echoed drily, peering through a gap in the gossamer netting at the soupy darkness of a lantern-lit courtyard far below. "You'd rather I'd thrown down with Kiba in a barrack full of PTSD-riddled shinobi?" He laughed, then pictured it – graphically. "Your T&I goon-squad would've loved that."

"You hospitalised that kid," Ibiki said, his voice spiking sharper and harder, before falling back to its indifferent flatline. "This off the leash shit I expect from Inuzuka. But you? Are you actively looking for a demotion?"

Irritation nipped at Genma. Toothy and sharp. But what gnawed at him worse, way down in his tired bones, was his anger at the bullshit claim.

Off the leash?

Hardly.

He'd reined himself in. Could've done way more damage if he'd wanted to. To Kiba. To Akamaru. To himself. He wasn't proud of that knowledge. Of that truth. But Genma hadn't invited or initiated that back-alley slugfest with the dog-nin. In fact, Genma had attempted, multiple times, to diffuse the situation. Warn the kid. Lay down some logic before laying down the law. Clearly Ibiki's mouth-breathing lackeys had neglected to mention all this, content to tilt the blame solely in Genma's direction.

A bit of payback, maybe.

Delayed, but inevitable.

Genma hadn't won any friends during his brief stay in T&I that one psychotic time. Though in all fairness, wasn't it Kakashi and his silver-furred sidekick – Shiba – who'd brought most of the hurt and all of the heat down on the department's head?

Yeah, 'cause you were down for the count.

All the same, Genma had been the reason Kakashi had gone lawless and feral. Clearly some of the underlings at T&I hadn't forgotten that incident. Or forgiven it. Genma still topped their shit-list. Or maybe he came in at close-second, right behind Kakashi.

Hn, only just.

Resigning himself to the guilty party by sheer association with the silver-haired bastard, Genma gave a shallow chuckle and turned to put his back to the lacy net curtains with their ugly velvet drapes, folding his arms with a wince.

"A demotion?" he drawled, eyeing Ibiki across the short distance. "Is that genuine concern for my career path, Morino? Because from the sounds of it, T&I could've intervened at any time."

"Have two of my rookies take on a feral Beast Mode Inuzuka and an unhinged ex-ANBU?" Ibiki pretended to consider it. "I don't think so."

"Unhinged? Really?"

"Their word, not mine. Apparently, you made an impression."

Apparently.

Genma husked a bitter laugh and glanced off to the side, wondering what the hell he might've 'impressed' upon them if he'd really let loose. "Great. Give you the full play-by-play, did they? Hope your goons enjoyed it."

"More than Inuzuka Kiba, I imagine. Ino too, had she been conscious at the time you tenderised her ex-boyfriend."

Stiffening, Genma jerked his gaze back, searching Ibiki's face for trickery. He found only blunt truth. "Ino," Genma echoed carefully, glad to have some insight into her vanishing act. "So that was you?"

Ibiki took a short sip of his drink, eyes still steady on Genma. "Cleaning up after you is not a foreign concept, Shiranui. Though the Inuzuka mess in the alley will be more challenging to hide than the Yamanaka scandal in your apartment."

Silence dropped like a cleaver.

Sudden.

Sharp.

Cold.

Genma stood perfectly still in that silence, the lines of his face and body drawn as hard as the steel between his lips.

He did not raise his voice.

He did not have to.

"I won't forgive that twice," he said.

Weighing the quietly spoken threat, Ibiki regarded him over the mug's rim. "You think the suggestion hurts? Consider the evidence to support it. Yamanaka Ino found naked. Unconscious. Bleeding. You're fortunate my people cleaned house before Yamato came knocking. Kurenai too, from what I was told."

That wasn't in any way reassuring. Tamping down the anger trickling through his veins, Genma dug his tongue along the senbon's lethal tip and sucked a slow breath before asking, "Where is Ino now?"

"Getting treated. Hopefully by a shrink." Ibiki swallowed another gulp of coffee, tipped his head as an afterthought, and added, "You're welcome."

"For what?" Genma finally snapped, teeth flashing. "Finding out you're even deeper up my ass than I initially thought?"

Ibiki had the gall to look amused. "You bent over for this. I'd ask myself why, but then, I know there's only one person you'd bend over for to get screwed this badly."

The snarl cracked off and Genma's face went blank and still once more. He looked Ibiki dead in the eye. "Fuck you, Morino."

Ibiki's scarred mouth twitched, a demi-smirk that read 'gotcha'. "Tell me I'm wrong. Tell me Kakashi didn't yank the old Yamanaka chain. Interesting tactic. Ruthless and bleeding-heart, a winning combination for the like of you."

Yeah, a one-two combo that never failed to cripple.

Genma's throat tightened. As did every muscle in his face against a reaction. He took a long moment before he spoke, redirecting. "Why take Ino off my hands? The hell do you gain?"

"Not half as much as I need," Ibiki muttered, ambiguous as ever, before sidestepping the question entirely. "But with you, I've learned to measure my expectations when scraping the bottom of the barrel."

"Wow," Genma breathed, resisting the urge to slow-clap. "What a recruiter. Where do I fucking sign?"

"You already did." Ibiki nodded towards him. "You're here."

Talk about a leap.

Stunned at the assumption, Genma unfolded his arms and hacked out a laugh, a sandpaper rasp in his burning throat. "You're delusional if you think that means I'm onboard with whatever plan you've got in motion. I'm not signing onto anything without full disclosure."

Ibiki shrugged, his neutral tone falling in a bored textbook recital, the whole code of conduct spiel. "Rank and file, Shiranui. You're forgetting. There's a system."

"Kiss my ass, Morino. You're forgetting too." At Ibiki's questioning look, Genma tapped his temple with a bleak smile, his eyes void of the humour. "Fooled me once, remember? I've been an 'ask no questions' cog in a System of Lies before. You'll appreciate if I'm still a little testy regarding how that last episode of Fuck My Life turned out."

Not even a flicker of a reaction.

Ibiki gave Genma the same blank and flat-eyed look he always levelled on people expecting him to emote. Expecting him to care. Or regret. Not that Genma expected any of those things. But ever since their last interaction outside of Shikamaru's holding cell, Genma had wondered at the strange and jarring look Ibiki had cast his way when the topic of that ruthless syringe-plunging KO had been raised. Felt like a long time ago now, that dangerous messed-up incident when Ibiki had dosed Genma into ball-tripping oblivion to keep him from spilling all the dark and twisted guts of his memories over Yamanaka Inoichi. Bitch move. But effective, no matter the means. But wasn't that just like Ibiki? Getting the job done.

"I'm supposed to believe you were acting as my friend?"

Genma had spat those words and Ibiki's face had locked down faster than a supermax prison, triggered by the threat of an emotional jailbreak. Maybe. Maybe not. Hard to pin it now. But in that split-second before Morino's face had wiped clean of expression, Genma had glimpsed something real. Something raw and maybe even reactive. Something that had probably been neutralised immediately behind the iron-barred cell of Ibiki's mind.

This time around, nothing emerged.

Not even a shadow of that look.

Whatever it was…

Or might have been.

Genma searched for it, studied the harsh angles of Ibiki's scarred face and found only that same blank screen, not a blip to indicate he'd ever faltered in the past – or would ever suffer himself to falter again. Which meant, of course, that Genma would probably spend the rest of his days attempting to trip the bastard up, just to be a prick.

Impervious, Ibiki lifted his head and met the look squarely. "Shit happens, Genma. Get over it. I handled that System without the benefit of heading it."

"Handled it? That's generous. I've still got souvenirs from the acid trip you sent me on."

Nothing.

Not even a twitch.

Ibiki carried on in the same bored tone. "I'm sure Inuzuka Kiba is on his own opiate-induced trip right about now. At least I sent you packing without a beat down."

"Yeah, because Kakashi beat you to it." The memory of that fight dug like a crowbar beneath the edges of Genma's thinly plastered mask, threatening to wrench it off-kilter, his smirk sitting bitter and crooked on his lips. "Don't pretend you did me any favours, Ibiki. You were toeing the Council's line, just like you always do."

Unblinking, Ibiki stared down the long dark tunnel of that accusation, leaning back to regard Genma with something close to interest, only sharper, colder.

"Just like I always do," he repeated, framing it as a question.

"They give you a knife, you find a back."

"Is that what I'm doing?"

"You tell me. I've no reason to believe you won't sell me down another bloody river."

"Is that what I did?"

"I'm sorry," Genma sniped, "Are these rhetorical questions?"

"You believe I want you involved in this shit again?"

Genma blinked, didn't expect that. Didn't trust it either. "Save me the disingenuous bullshit, Ibiki."

"Answer the question. Do you believe I want you involved in this?"

An uneasy beat, then Genma's smirk cut deeper, a disbelieving edge biting into his tone beneath the caustic snark. "What is this? A moral crisis? Is this a legitimate attack of conscience I'm witnessing right now?

Ibiki permitted himself a slim smile, the barest tick of his lips, and drained the dregs of his coffee. "You're not that important, Shiranui."

"No? You sure?" Genma glanced around to indicate the great big party of two. "Because apparently you need my sorry ass to get your little operation off the ground."

"Exactly. Need," Ibiki cut back, clacking down his mug like an exclamation point. "I need you involved. Not want. But need. Like a fucking hole in my head, of which I have several – all acquired less painfully than this conversation with you."

If that hadn't been a factual statement rather than a figurative one, Genma might've snapped back. As it stood, the honest answer shut his trap. Threw him off. Honesty paved a different road between them, urging Genma to ease off the warpath. Despite his smart mouth – which felt way more weaponised than usual – he hadn't come here to fight. Or talk so damn much.

Yeah, why the hell are you really here again?

Excellent question.

He ignored it.

Easing off the offensive, Genma slouched against the windowsill. "Alright then," he hedged, eyes still pinned on Ibiki, cautious and searching. "Let's skip to the part where you convince my once-bitten ass why this new System of Lies isn't another terrible idea."

"I don't need to convince you of anything. I'm stating facts. And facts don't lie." Cracking his knuckles, Ibiki flexed his gloved fingers in a slow gnarl, the snap and pop of joints sounding out. "It bores me to repeat that you're still one of the only bastards steady enough to assist with this crisis. Your current state notwithstanding."

Arching a brow, Genma gave himself a cursory once-over, like he'd forgotten that he looked like shit, and spread his hands in mock display, ignoring the twinge in his left arm. "Notwithstanding," he agreed. "Sure. It's not like you needed me stable the first time around. You think I'm bottom of the barrel now? Damn. What the hell was I back then?"

"Functional."

"Right. Until I wasn't." Surprised by the self-derisive growl in his voice, Genma smacked his jaws shut and looked away, fighting to exorcise the memories that still haunted those wrecked corners of his mind. Disgusted, he shook his head. "Look how well that turned out."

"Recruiting the players wasn't my call that time around."

The old anger stirred at that, summoned, conjured up, pulling its phantom pain through Genma in a cold wave. He let it flow. "No," he sneered. "You just clicked your heels and signed off blindly. No harm, no foul. No fucking questions asked."

Ibiki said nothing for a long second. And then he hummed, as if sampling Genma's response and finding it tasteless – or worse, weak. "That's a convenient narrative. Lazy. Comfortable."

The condescension in those words struck like flint to a blade. Genma's eyes flashed cold, so did the steel between his lips. "You really want to go there tonight, Ibiki?"

"You're way ahead of me," Ibiki said, resting an arm along the back of the couch, his eyes scrolling over Genma as if reading a dated headline. "But then, you're all about rocking up in the wrong places tonight, aren't you? Reactive. Reckless. Thought you'd left this shit behind you."

Genma couldn't argue that. It actually gave him pause. A very long and very uncomfortable pause.

Reactive. Reckless.

Yeah, that was not in line with the man he'd become.

No, just the asshole you used to be.

He could feel Ibiki's eyes on him, watching the realisation worm its way in. Bastard. In a bid to save face Genma might've got snarky, if the tiredness in his body wasn't urging him to just stop.

Stop.

Think.

And skip another verbal cut-and-thrust with Ibiki for the sake of self-preservation, if nothing else. Dredging up bitter blood and holding onto personal grudges and professional grievances wasn't something Genma usually did it. It was not only a pointless exercise. But a tedious one.

"Lazy. Comfortable."

Not true.

It wasn't lazy.

And it wasn't comfortable.

It cost him way too much to be either of those things. His resentment was, quite simply, a battle tactic. An offensive manoeuvre. An accessible weapon. Quick to draw but blunt upon impact. It had lost its edge. Especially in this battle. Ibiki's guard was solid after the last time Genma had shanked him with it. Assuming the attack had even penetrated the first time around.

Doubtful.

And yet…

Again, the memory of Ibiki's barely-there falter. That fractional tic in his iron face. There and gone, so damn fast. Not that the memory served Genma now. Ibiki's current expression retained its unassailable calm, not even a hairline crack. He continued to watch Genma with a resilience borne of hard-won sufferance rather than patience, or even tolerance. The fact that Ibiki could still sustain the whole 'human fortress' act even after the War – gods, after the Mugen Tsukuyomi – was impressive…in a really goddamned annoying way. More so because it engendered a very unwanted strain of respect in Genma.

Sighing, Genma straightened away from the window, throwing up his hands in a kind of half-assed surrender. "Look, one thing we can agree on? I thought I'd left this shit behind me too. That includes this clandestine crap."

He sensed Ibiki move but didn't turn to look.

"Like I said, shit happens." Ibiki paused here, gave a wry snort. "Granted, to you it happens with impunity."

Genma actually laughed, a quiet, ragged sound. "Oh, fuck off," he said without heat. "People keep dragging me into their three ring circuses – at least with you, it's better the devil I know."

"Hn. So you say. What really changed your mind?"

Red flags went up somewhere in Genma's headspace.

So did an alarm bell.

But he ignored the warnings for lack of fully understanding the threat. Or having a good answer. Dropping his hands back to the waist of his cargos, he walked a few paces away, trying to gather a response that rang at least partially true.

"Damned if I know. The great equalisers maybe." He stopped by the polished grandfather clock, watching the pendulum's hypnotic swing. "Necessity. Duty. The world burning. Take your pick."

Ibiki ignored the glib response and gave his own, "Kakashi."

The name settled heavy on the air. A phantom presence. Genma dispelled it with a bitter chuckle, too tired to be angry. "Like I told you the last time we spoke; way too late to play that hand, Ibiki."

"That hand never folds. Especially not now, with Hatake lined up for succession."

"He doesn't want it."

"Irrelevant."

Genma raised his brows in weary acknowledgement. True enough. Kakashi was no more immune to the political wheel of fucked-up fortune than any other bastard attached to its spoke. The wheel kept turning. You either rolled with it or you were dragged. Same outcome. Maybe a little less blood if you rolled.

Kakashi wasn't rolling.

Pursing his lips, Genma stared into the bevelled glass protecting the clock-face and watched the painted dial carve off the seconds. "Guess we're all getting roped into shit we don't want. Kakashi included."

"The difference here, is that the shit Kakashi doesn't want, becomes another steaming pile on someone else's doorstep."

"And how is that my problem?"

"Bold of you to assume it's not your doorstep I'm referring to, Genma. Remind me, who was it that set this child-minding shitshow in motion for you tonight?"

Genma's gaze sharpened on the glass, then on his own haggard reflection before he turned towards Ibiki, his tiredness growing some teeth. "What?" he fired back. "You expecting me to bitch Kakashi out over my mishandling of those kids?"

Ibiki's chin ticked back a notch, brows rising just enough to denote surprise. "Still defending him," he said quietly, almost reflective. "Interesting."

It shouldn't have been interesting.

And it shouldn't have stung.

But it did.

That sting became a burn, and that burn suffused him.

Bronze eyes narrowing to molten slits, Genma forced a low laugh, his words snapping out rapid-fire. "You like your facts, don't you? Here's some more. It's not the first time I've had babysitting gigs shunted onto me. And it's not the first time I've screwed them up either, is it?"

The truth of that rang like a blow.

Self-administered, but what the hell.

Genma wasn't finished taking the hit, his words spitting out like arterial spray, hot and bloody. "You wanna bounce my head off memory lane's sidewalk? Take the whistle-stop tour of my greatest fucking fails? Sure. Great. Go right ahead. Give me the fucking curb stomp while you're at it."

"Are you done?"

The question, so flatly delivered, brought Genma up short. Physically. Mentally. Like ice-water over the flames, Ibiki's question doused the rage. Put out the wildfire. Left a few spitting flames behind.

Shit.

Blinking fast, Genma jerked back a step as if disoriented. Surprised to find that the force of his anger had driven him right back onto hostile ground. The throb of his blood syncopated inside him, a base drumming in his ears. In his veins. A rapid escalation that shocked and disturbed him.

Damn, he was angry.

Angry and confused.

And this angry confusion risked edging into stupid. Stupid transparency. Genma wasn't stupid. And he was rarely transparent. However, he had played directly into Ibiki's hands with that emotional fireworks display – because protecting Kakashi instead of preserving himself revealed way too much about all the moving on he hadn't done…

And not just from Kakashi.

But from the guilt.

The guilt he claimed he didn't feel. Hollow claim. Because if that were true, then why the hell was Genma even here? Sure, Yamato had filled him in. Dangled some bait. But no one had forced Genma to bite. To bother. To butcher the rest of his really bad night by seeking out a ninken to come barging through these doors on account of – what had he called it? Duty. Necessity. The world burning down around them.

Liar.

Hell, Ibiki had called him as much the last time they'd spoken.

"You aren't any better a liar now than you were the last time you involved yourself with Nara Shikamaru."

Ibiki hadn't been wrong.

Irked Genma to admit that, but it was true.

Because he hadn't been summoned. He hadn't been sent. And despite his former suspicions about Ibiki's motives, this wasn't a setup. Ibiki had been straight with him right from the first. No subterfuge. No lies. If Genma felt played, then it was a trap of his own damned making. He hadn't even stopped to think things through after Yamato had left. Assuming the worst, he'd just acted. No — reacted.

Not smart.

Or safe. Or self-preserving. Certainly not his modus operandi since sobriety and sanity.

What the hell was wrong with him?

Where was all this reactive bullshit coming from?

I don't do this. Not since…

Pink pills and all his former poisons.

A hot crawl of shame flared across Genma's neck, burned like live ash. He focused on the eerie calm rising close behind. Different from his anger. Colder. Better. Easier to feel the chill of self-awareness, than the embarrassment of having lost his capacity to handle his shit and contain it. He hadn't been this volatile in a long time.

"Are. You. Done?" Ibiki repeated, slow and precise, but without the condescending edge, without the scorn – which was weird. Now would've been the best time to get in under Genma's guard.

Only Ibiki didn't.

He simply let his question hang.

Are. You. Done.

Further confused, Genma twisted away with a growl, rubbing his hands over his face to scrub away the scowl. "I don't know, Morino. Am I? Apparently, I don't get a say in which direction I get dropkicked by my comrades, let alone my enemies."

"Enemies?" Ibiki echoed, leaning forwards by degrees, his broad frame stilling at the very edge of the couch. "You don't want us on opposite sides of this, Genma."

"Threats are wasted on me, Ibiki."

"Oh, I know. There are no words but action with you. However," Ibiki paused, clasped his hands loosely between his knees and gave Genma a long considering stare. "What concerns me more than your actions tonight is the fact that your mouth hasn't stopped running since the second you walked through that door. Why?"

Why indeed.

Genma shook his head, at a loss.

I don't know.

Honest to gods' truth, he had no clue what the hell was up with his mood, his mind, or his fuming motormouth, until Ibiki did the very simple maths.

"What drug did Yugao give you?"

Ah.

There was that.

A chill shot through Genma, a cold dose of fear.

Growling, he swore beneath his breath and gripped the bridge of his nose hard enough that colours burst and swelled behind his closed lids. "A fucking placebo, I'm guessing. It's not even taking the edge off."

More lies. Not only had it dulled the pain, but it was also loosening his tongue, messing with his head, and turning his insides more flammable than 90 proof liquor. He was way off his usual laidback baseline – which had levelled out into a nice even keel since his sobriety. Even post-War, with his marbles still rolling around after the Mugen Tsukuyomi, Genma was still far more stable than he'd ever been during his drug-dosing days almost a year and half ago now.

Shit, what did she give me?

"Genma," Ibiki pressed.

"Don't," Genma snarled, sucking a breath to calm himself. Still pinching his brow, he raised his other hand in Ibiki's general direction, palm out – an honest warning to back the hell off. "I let Ino and Kakashi slide. You start on me over this? I won't be forgiving. I'm angry. I'm tired. I'm…way off base. Don't give me a reason to choose action right now."

"You'd lose."

"Didn't say I'd win."

"Masochism at its finest," Ibiki muttered, a steel-thread of humour running through his words, cold but not cruel.

Genma appreciated it.

Immensely.

But then, he'd also have appreciated a kick to the head if it meant knocking his mind back into a more rational state of balance and brain chemistry. Stupid, not to have vetted the drug or checked the dose.

You're on a real roll tonight, Shiranui…

He'd trusted Yugao to know what he needed…problem was, she'd only ever known what Kaika needed, way back when Genma had served with Yugao and Kakashi under that callsign in the ANBU. Unfortunately, what Kaika once needed to manage pain was not available on prescription. Or in any pharmacy for that matter. Even black-market pedlars had struggled to supply it.

Hence Mizugumo.

Gods, Genma hoped that's not where Yugao had sourced it.

No. Mizugumo's gone.

Gone to ground.

Or so he'd heard.

A sudden rustle of fabric signalled Ibiki's rise from the couch – and alerted Genma to the realisation that he needed to stop fading off into the past. Eyes still shut, he tracked the other ninja's movements by sound alone, listening out until Ibiki passed beyond earshot into that annexed room, giving him some space.

The old grandfather clock filled the silence.

Steady, soft, and oddly soothing.

Left alone, Genma took the opportunity to steady himself and began the inward task of retracing his steps – or rather, undoing his flying leaps. At least he could attribute his overactive mouth and snappish reactivity to the drug circulating in his system.

Not good.

Even if it did feel a little bit good. A little bit familiar. A chemical eraser smudging out all the sharp edges of his pain.

Yeah, until it all goes numb.

Dangerous. He needed to focus. Fast. Before the meds took the wheel and decided to set sail towards darker waters, where the old cravings lurked...deep, deep down, never truly dead. Dragging a slow breath, he urged the rational portion of his brain to crawl its way back towards the helm.

Focus.

Halfway into steering his mind back on course, he heard Ibiki re-emerge and sensed him approach; Morino's perilous aura doing its usual ten-steps-ahead thing.

Only without the aggression.

Or the grim reaper chill.

Suspicious, Genma cracked an eye open, surprised to spot two fuming mugs clasped in the other ninja's hands. Ibiki stood sideways, and only as close as was necessary to extend one of the drinks. A white flag gesture. Kind of. Judging by the stern set of Ibiki's jaw, he resented the social grace this action demanded. Hell, it probably irked him worse than anything Genma had said or done up until this point. Amazing how Ibiki could wedge hostile annoyance into even the most basic of hospitable actions.

The drink steamed between them.

Genma hesitated, wary.

Ibiki stared, waiting. "I can stick it in your neck if you'd prefer."

Bold joke, given their history — which was obviously the point. Rather than humour, Ibiki was probably searching for reactivity, testing the waters to see whether Genma would sink or swim. Genma would've played it the same way. Hell, he already had — earlier with Ino.

She'd gone under.

Straight to the deep.

Yeah, no thanks to you.

A knot twisted inside him, pulling tight. By that same knot, Genma hung on, tugging himself out of his grim thoughts and back into Ibiki's expectant silence.

The drink still hovered between them.

So did the offer for a hypodermic shot.

Snorting with belated humour, Genma accepted the drink with the paranoid squint of a royal food taster, immediately suspecting poison. He sniffed the contents and almost gagged, the bridge of his nose crinkling in disgust at the sour stink. "First Raidō and now you. What the hell is this? Decaf?"

So much for a white flag.

In Genma's world, being served decaf classed as an act of war.

Raidō had pulled the same stunt earlier with that flowery herbal rubbish – though decaf coffee still rated worse than the bright yellow turmeric crap. At least that medicinal stuff didn't pretend to be anything other than what it was. Decaf was a con artist parading as a coffee bean.

Ibiki was a prick for serving it and a psychopath for drinking it.

"When the hell did you start drinking decaf?" Genma asked, still appalled – but also curious.

Ibiki answered by way of a grunt – which was not at all – and raised his own treacherous mug in a mocking toast before turning back towards the couch, taking his sad brown piss-water with him.

No way Genma was drinking this crap.

Frowning down into the mug, Genma examined the buzz-free brew and guessed that Ibiki's unsavoury switch to decaf had nothing to do with heartburn or the jitters and everything to do with the stiff and rigid way he seemed to be moving.

Chakra sickness.

No doubt it had situated itself in Ibiki's joints, raising arthritic hell in the process. Morino's threshold for pain was grotesquely high, which meant the pain from the sickness must've been seriously debilitating to warrant him giving up his battery-acid coffee.

Probably one of the few poisons he enjoyed.

Asides from Anko, of course.

"And you call me a masochist," Genma muttered, cursing the decaf as he took a token sip, just to remind himself why he'd sooner risk an ulcer than give up his caffeinated ways.

Cocking a hip against the couch, Ibiki ignored the comment and wasted no time on banter, launching straight back into business. "This needs to happen fast, Genma. Kakashi won't listen to reason, and he won't comply."

Don't I know it.

Heading off the thought, Genma reached for context, hard-pressed to see Ibiki's words quite so black and white – which wasn't difficult, given the total lack of details. "Comply with what, exactly? Kakashi isn't irrational."

"Complex trauma after the War makes him volatile. He failed the recent psych eval."

Snorting, Genma cut him a wry look. "Most of us failed the psych eval."

"Not you. Surprisingly."

"I know. Clerical error, for sure."

"And most of us aren't running for Hokage."

"I wouldn't say he's running…" Genma tipped his head to one side and searched for the appropriate word. "Limping, maybe."

"In the opposite direction."

Genma chuckled, bleak and dark as the untouched travesty cooling in his hand. "Making a strong case for his candidacy, aren't you?"

"I'd sooner put you in that seat."

"What a vote of confidence."

"My vote counts for shit," Ibiki uttered, glancing briefly to the door as if suspecting eavesdroppers. "The silent majority have already spoken for Hatake."

Ah, the rumour mill. Or rather, the whisper-chain. Hushed tones were required when dealing with Konoha's avoidant silver-haired inheritor. A man who refused to comment or crowd-please. Kakashi seemed to think that 'I can neither confirm nor deny' was a satisfactory response to all questions pertaining to his standing as next in line – which, as far as Tsunade was concerned, he undoubtedly was.

Whether he wants it or not…

The second Tsunade finalised her decision to abdicate, the succession ball would roll faster than an Akimichi bullet tank. Kakashi couldn't dodge that. Or time-warp it the hell away.

Not anymore…

The vision of those sad grey eyes tore at the fabric of Genma's already threadbare strength. Sighing, he leaned heavily into the wall, favouring his right shoulder.

"Kakashi will do what's necessary," he said, as if by rote.

"Kakashi will do what he believes is necessary," Ibiki corrected. "And I can't trust that his beliefs about what's necessary will align with this village's best interests when it comes to Uchiha."

Genma let the silence hold for a moment, measuring those words against his own misgivings, his own uncertainties. Kakashi used to joke about being lost on the path of life, but whatever path he was presently lost on, Genma had no map, no compass, and no permission. Wherever Kakashi had emotionally withdrawn to, he'd made it clear he didn't want to be followed, much less found.

Gods damn you.

He wasn't sure who he meant to damn – Kakashi, Ibiki…himself.

Stalling for time, Genma set his untouched mug down on a small white table with a round tasselled lamp – making sure to use the fancy doily. Raidō would've been proud.

Hn. Is Raidō being dragged into this mess?

Yamato had mentioned trying to reach him, but Raidō wouldn't open the door. Might've been sleeping. Might've been too sick to get up.

Shit.

Underscoring his earlier mental note to check in on his partner, Genma skirted around the Uchiha Sasuke issue and homed in on the more pressing concern.

"And when it comes to Shikamaru?" he asked. "You trust Kakashi with that?"

Ibiki didn't answer right away. And that communicated more than any immediate response. "Once, I'd have said yes," Ibiki eventually said, grazing a leather-clad thumb along his mug in a meditative stroke. "But I won't take a gamble on Nara Shikamaru's life."

"You think Kakashi would?"

Ibiki offered nothing.

He took a sip of his piss-water.

Genma non-too-subtly aligned the senbon with the bastard's head. Ibiki's stall was obvious, and Genma wasn't sure which he hated more, the expectancy hanging in the silence or his urge to fill it with more than doubt. Kakashi wasn't here to defend himself against Morino's prosecution, but Genma was — and literally speaking, defending Kakashi would be his role as Goei Shōtai soon enough. Might as well get that head start.

"Don't underestimate Kakashi," Genma said, divorcing his heart from his head and speaking in the cool detached tone of logic, parsing it all down to professionalism. "He's made tougher calls."

"After what the War did to him, took from him, you think he'll make the tough call this time around?"

"Okay, now you're just insulting him."

"Am I? Some might consider his mercy towards Sasuke as admirable."

"Some might," Genma agreed, supplying the obvious response with a mordant quirk of his brows. "But not you."

"And not you," Ibiki batted back, his voice dropping a notch. "But then, maybe that's the appeal? I'm sure Kakashi's stunning lack of mercy towards you really appeases your masochism, doesn't it?"

The barb struck as intended.

Snagged on the silence…

Drew a little blood…

Rather than react, Genma flashed a tight white smile, his words grinding through his teeth. "What a shrink-wrap. Mushi would be proud. You got me."

"No. Not yet. Unlike Kakashi."

Genma's jaw ticked, his cold smile nailed into place to keep from carving into a snarl. Was Ibiki trying to set him off again?

Probably.

Kakashi wasn't the only one under scrutiny. All part of Ibiki's job, putting Genma through his psychological paces, looking for the personal tripwires and private triggers that might send him backsliding into former recklessness. This was as much a psych-eval as it was a recruitment gig; Ibiki needed to make sure Genma wasn't going to go sliding off the tracks. It made sense to throw Kakashi onto said tracks, just to see if Genma would swerve off course – or screech to a halt.

Ugh.

As much as Genma understood Ibiki's need to establish a psychological baseline, Genma was too damned tired for the T&I third degree. He was as stable as he was going to get with a foreign drug riding his ass through this grill-session.

"Lines, Ibiki," Genma said softly. "You're crossing them."

"Pathologies, Genma. I'm following them. It's what I do."

"Like a fucking bloodhound."

"Says the man who commandeered a ninken."

Gnawing on the senbon, Genma bit down on his immediate comeback, reminding himself that he'd voluntarily walked into this psychological meatgrinder. What a way to top off the night. Hell, by the time it was over, he could pretend he'd chosen this massive ball-ache on account of his alleged masochism.

If only.

Forcing the tension from his shoulders, Genma eased back into a far more remote and jaded skin, tough as old leather. Well-worn and lived-in, just like the unseen mask he pulled across his face. The coldness melted out of his smile, leaving it laced with its usual blasé amusement, his gaze shuttered by his lashes, shielding his eyes.

Across the room, Ibiki straightened.

He clocked the change immediately.

Good.

Genma made no attempt to conceal it. Hiding in plain sight worked just fine. "So let's talk about pathologies, Morino. Mercy, for instance. This ought to be a real cakewalk for you."

Ibiki's brow tightened and he demanded his usual, "Explain."

"Do I need to? History repeats, right? I don't recall you dragging the Sandaime over the coals when he was throwing out mercy like a confetti parade."

"Mercy?" Ibiki's eyes went worlds darker at the word – or maybe it was the mention of Hiruzen – his voice a near-growl. "And look what that mercy gave this village: A Snake. And look what it cost the Sandaime: his life."

That's not all the Sandaime's mercy had given and taken away from the village. Violet-eyes flashed in Genma's mind – and whatever satisfaction he might've felt at having gotten that small rise out of Ibiki dulled beneath the violent pain knifing into his own heart.

Grief's ugly shrapnel.

Time hadn't dulled it.

But he'd learned to hide it. It didn't touch his face or his voice.

"That's not all his mercy cost us," Genma pointed out.

"No," Ibiki agreed, the blackness in his eyes diffusing by degrees. "And now we have another snake in the nest. And Kakashi would sooner see him pardoned than punished. You call it mercy. I call it madness."

If madness was Kakashi's affliction, then Hiruzen had suffered it too. It was easy to cast judgment. Neither Ibiki nor Genma were sensei. Genma had never professed to understand that bond. He'd dodged that particular kunai to the heart. Not that it had spared him the blood spatter from lovers who'd been foolish enough to take on kids.

Naoki, with Ino...and to some extent, Shikamaru.

Then Kakashi, with goddamned three little brats, one of which had ended up black-sheeping his way into the ranks of the criminal nukenin.

Which brought Genma right back around to the choice that was no choice: Shikamaru or Sasuke. Naoki's sacrifice or Kakashi's second chance.

"Madness," Genma repeated quietly, a grim twist to his lips. "Hn. Must really be grinding your gears that you need Uchiha."

"I repeat. Shit happens."

"Yeah. I get that."

"You get that better than most. Which I regrettably respect."

Genma's smile regained its humour. "I love your backhanded compliments, Morino. They just hit different than your direct insults."

"Punching down is never beneath me."

"Funny."

It was. A little. Lifted some of the tension. Relieved, Genma gave the humour its due, then pushed – or maybe drifted – away from the wall with more grace than his injuries should have allowed. He felt floaty, disembodied.

Ah, hello pain meds.

They'd hit oddly fast. Clearly his old resistance had waned. In one way that was encouraging. On the other hand, it meant he needed to think faster than the drugs could metabolise – and he still had no idea what the hell he'd even taken.

You used to fight while flying higher than this…

Once, this floaty feeling wouldn't even have qualified as his feet leaving the ground.

Get a grip.

Genma blinked hard, gave his head a rough shake to focus. "Let's speed this along. How about you hit me with the strategy, so I know how many ways shit might continue to happen moving forwards."

Nice. At least he could still string a sentence together.

That boded well.

Ibiki's answer, however, did not.

"Not here. Not now."

Genma stared at him in open annoyance. "Yes here. Yes now. Before my pain meds kick in and I'm tits up and lights out."

"You're on your way."

Glaring, Genma ignored the words, reached for the imposter-coffee he'd discarded and downed it all in one disgusting swallow, sucking his teeth against the gross but sobering aftertaste before launching onwards to keep momentum. "From what Yamato disclosed, Naruto seems the bigger wrench in the gears."

"As always," Ibiki said. "Though Naruto is easier to manipulate than Sasuke."

"Bold of you to assume," Genma deadpanned, echoing Ibiki's earlier statement.

"It's true. He's emotional. Impulsive. And still as wide-eyed as he's always been. I can work with his emotionalism. I can even work with his guilt." Ibiki left the appropriate beat, waited for Genma to meet his gaze then delivered the blow. "But I can't work with Kakashi's."

Full circle, back to that silver-haired sonofabitch

"What?" Genma scoffed. "But I can?"

"You have leverage."

"That's a stretch."

"Then stretch, Shiranui. I'm flexible regarding this. The question is, are you?"

It seemed more a statement than a question. And it asked so much more than it pretended to. Crabbing his fingers over the empty mug, Genma tapped it down on the table, drawing a long breath through his nose. He stared at the elaborate doily, at its thick crocheted design, intricate as a web, and felt like a fly in a trap.

Is that how Kakashi felt?

Caught in the political web.

Paralysed by the pressure of succession.

Genma frowned, his gazing turning inwards to a bleak and battered place where he could still see those sad grey eyes staring back at him, struck with motes of silver in the moonglow, searching Genma's face for – what?

Forgiveness?

Understanding?

Mercy?

"You know that my leaving was never to do with you. Never."

Gods, he'd wanted to beat those words back into Kakashi's mouth. Along with the crueller ones the copy-nin had spoken, further back, before he'd cut and run.

"What you and I have comes at a cost in our world – and one of us will eventually pay it."

Oh. He'd paid alright. Upon reflection, Genma's tired anger didn't rise. But the old hurt pulled through him. A clear and damning sign. There was no way he could leverage Kakashi's pain without ripping into his own.

Closing his eyes against the ache, Genma straightened away. "I'm not fucking with Kakashi's head."

Across the room, Ibiki tapped his own mug down. Far too gently to be anything other than forced calm. "There's a window on this, Genma. With Kakashi in power, this plan will be dead in the water – along with Shikamaru."

And there it was.

The linchpin.

Shikamaru.

Genma's lashes flickered open on the kid's name, his vision taking a tad longer to focus as he looked across into Ibiki's lightless eyes. "You honestly think Kakashi would put Sasuke's life above Shikamaru's? Won't happen."

"So confident of that, aren't you?"

"He wouldn't."

"My caution isn't baseless."

Undoubtedly. Nothing Ibiki did was baseless. If he'd been keeping tabs on Genma, then he'd probably compiled an entire ledger on Kakashi's movements and questionable decisions – including his highly suspect behaviours in relation to Sasuke's incarceration.

How had Genma phrased it again?

"You know that 'public enemy number one' has two wide-eyed groupies still fighting his corner. Well…three, if you count Kakashi."

Understanding this, Genma tipped his head to acknowledge the reasoning, though he continued to fight Kakashi's corner. Devil's advocate, he told himself, because it sounded better than biased idiot.

"You think that just because Kakashi's mooning over his missed chances with his prodigal kid that he's forgotten what Sasuke is capable of? Give him some credit. He's not the Sandaime."

"You're wrong. That's exactly the problem."

Frowning, Genma cocked his head. "I don't follow."

Ibiki looked at him as if it were obvious. "Did you ever suspect that what Kakashi believes Sasuke might actually be capable of is redemption?"

Ah.

Enter in the wide-eyed groupie problem. Sighing, Genma chewed on the sour taste that left him with – though in all fairness that might've been trace evidence from that criminal piss-water he'd knocked back.

"Redemption," he echoed, searching Ibiki's expression. "Do you believe Sasuke's capable of it?"

Ibiki fielded the question, a quiet grunt punching out of him, reluctant and dismissive, his expression unchanged. "Doesn't matter what I believe. As I told the Hokage, I'm open to being proved wrong. Part of being flexible. I have to be. Either way, I can work the redemption angle if it proves to be true."

"Work it how?"

"Encourage it." At faint smirk hooked one corner of that scarred mouth, more ironic than amused. "Everyone loves a good redemption arc, Shiranui. Some might consider Uchiha a legitimate war hero for the part he played."

Yeah, and some people considered decaf a legitimate substitute for coffee. Didn't make them right — or sane. Of which Sasuke was clearly neither.

Seriously, a war hero?

For the sake of keeping an open mind, Genma entertained that possibility for a half second, trying and failing to picture it. Uchiha Sasuke, the demented black sheep, welcomed back into the fold of the forgiving Konoha flock because he'd suddenly decided, in the final fucking hour, not to side with the wolves. Some hero. It hung all wrong in Genma's head. Didn't mean it wouldn't hang on kinder hearts or convince more merciful minds — or more naïve ones.

"You really think you can sell a redemption sob story?" he asked, sounding as dubious as he probably looked.

"Crowds can be fickle. Narratives can be spun and sold."

Ah, the whole spin-doctor crap. Tall tales and long yarns. Public relations pragmatism, one of the dirtiest pieces on the political chessboard. Working close protection for the Hokage sure beat sitting in a tea-room brainstorming political plot-twists with the Council over matcha and mochi. Not Genma's wheelhouse, thank gods. All the same, he said his piece. Short and sweet.

"This is bullshit."

Ibiki shrugged. "Politics."

Genma refrained from further comment, his mind already looping back to the big yellow-and-orange spanner in the works. "It might be a little premature to assume Naruto would prioritise Sasuke over Shikamaru. Not after the body count."

"You'd have thought," Ibiki said, rounding the arm of the couch to sit, the muscles in his jaw bunching hard. "But Naruto's short-sighted stupidity when it comes to Uchiha might trump his sense of guilt for those dead in the ground — though perhaps not for those soon to be."

Blunt, but true.

Genma hummed. "Naruto's still asking to see Shikamaru?"

"Demanding to," Ibiki amended. "Every day."

"And you're denying him."

"Of course. Keeps him boiling at the right temperature."

"Does he know? About the Kyūbi's chakra catalysing the damage?"

Ibiki shook his head. "Not yet. Though I suspect some part of him knows. Or feels it. Either way, I will make it clear, provided his guilt makes him malleable."

Not to be ruled out. Either way, Genma left that alone, not wanting to lend too much support to that strategy. Guilt wasn't always predictable. Besides, Ibiki might not need to show that hand if he intended to put Uchiha in play.

"Hn. And he's still asking after Sasuke?" Genma redirected.

"Every day, to the same effect." Ibiki shrugged as if this were routine now. "If he's not causing trouble outside one cell, then it's inevitably the other."

Great, back to the coin toss.

Shikamaru or Sasuke.

Who to save?

It was a no-brainer for everyone else.

You sure about that?

Dismissing the niggling doubt, Genma glanced away, his eyes lighting on the window, which he moved towards once more, breathing a quiet sigh through his nose. While he couldn't assume what Naruto was likely to do, the kid's track record with Uchiha wasn't all that encouraging. And of course, there was Sakura to consider…

And Kakashi…

Shit, on second thoughts. Guilt might be the smarter tactic. The morality crisis always tipped the odds in favour of the most ruthless player – which Ibiki undoubtedly was.

"Well," Genma sighed, studying an intricate rose-design embossed in the velvet curtain, his gaze lingering on the brocaded thorn. "Looks like it's carrot or stick with these kids, right? Screw the carrot." At Ibiki's enquiring silence, Genma glanced over out the corner of his eye. "You said it yourself; you can work with Naruto's guilt and emotionalism. So beat him with the sticks, Morino."

"I intend to. Seeing as Hyūga Neji got the very short and very sharp end of said sticks."

Wow. Genma coughed an incredulous laugh, passing a hand across his mouth, shaking his head. "Fuck me, Morino. Thought you liked that kid."

"I did," Ibiki shot back, his brow tensing against a scowl, like it annoyed him to confess this. "That kid should be next in line for heading one of the most powerful clans in this village. That kid might've made Sasuke irrelevant in all this."

Irrelevant?

Genma started as if poked and turned more fully towards Ibiki, a dark brow sketching upwards slowly. "Wait, what? What do you mean? Irrelevant how?"

Ibiki stalled, backtracked. "Complicated — probably impossible."

Genma frowned, nonplussed at yet another ambiguous response. Hyūga Neji? Really? What the hell could Hyūga Neji have possibly done that their entire village seemed incapable of doing when it came to saving Shikamaru?

Kissed it better?

The bitter thought bled almost instantly into a cold stream of empathy. It's not like Genma had never wished that loving someone could be the cure-all to losing them. Too bad he'd learned both young and repeatedly that the whole 'love conquers all' bullshit had never stood the test of tragedy or time. Because if it were true, and love really did conquer all, then Genma wouldn't hate care homes, Naoki would still be alive, Karibi wouldn't have died…and Kakashi would never have walked away.

You're drifting, Shiranui.

Badly.

Shaking off the thoughts, Genma reclaimed his focus, mulling over the undisclosed Hyūga Neji puzzle and all the possible pieces – which Ibiki seemed hellbent on hoarding.

Genma tried again for an answer, phrasing it lightly. "Feel free to clue me in, Morino. You saying Hyūga Neji had some 'save the day' miracle fix we ought to know about?"

"Hn. Hiashi seemed to think so. Irrelevant now," Ibiki waved it off, sitting back stiffly to crack and rub at his knuckles, an absent and distracted movement which betrayed the discomfort he kept so masterfully from his face. "I still need to consider all worst-case scenarios. Naruto aside, you're still assuming Kakashi's rationality will prevail…but again, present evidence points to the contrary."

Bored with this line of reasoning, Genma rolled his wrist in a 'yeah, yeah' gesture and summed up the narration. "Right, because he's staking out Sasuke's cell. I told you; he's brooding. He's not planning a jailbreak."

Ibiki didn't look convinced. "Debatable."

Genma's gut tightened at the thought – the possibility. "Kakashi's conflicted, not stupid. So he's got some shit he needs to sort in his head regarding Sasuke. No surprise. The War did its damage. If you're quoting "complex trauma", then a little cognitive dissonance is to be expected."

"Not from a future Hokage."

Genma rolled his eyes and then his step, turning his back on the statement, and the doubts it seeded. "More ringing endorsements."

"Tell me I'm wrong."

Genma wouldn't.

As Goei Shōtai, he couldn't.

Look on the bright side, Shiranui – at least you no longer have a conflict of interest.

Ignoring the scathing little voice, and the reminder of how removed Kakashi felt to him now, Genma's steps deteriorated into a short, aborted pace, placing him straight back by the old grandfather clock…and close enough to the padded armchair that he almost folded into it. He didn't. Knew he might not get back up again if he did. He could feel the drug's warm numbing haze pulling over his tired mind like gauze, staunching the pain in his heart just enough to keep talking.

"If you're so worried about what Kakashi's likely to do," Genma continued, skirting the armchair's temptation to pause by the old armoire, his eye drawn to a strange little ornament gathering dust on one of the shelves, "then I suggest you reconsider whatever Uchiha-Uzumaki combo you're directing at Orochimaru."

"That strategy is still in the works," Ibiki said. "Other players will be enlisted. However, should it go ahead, then Uchiha will be the tip of the spear."

Genma hummed, distracted by the palm-sized figurine. Three monkeys sitting in a line, side by side. A common trinket. Same knickknack that he'd once seen in Asuma's apartment. Smaller in size, but same cast and colour. Resin. Deep red. Carefully crafted. It depicted the axiom of mizaru, kikazaru, iwazaru, meaning "see not, hear not, say not." Or it's more recognised "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" – each monkey covering its eyes, ears, and mouth, respectively.

Transfixed, Genma picked up the item, senbon ticking as he traced the details of the carving with a thumbnail, muttering his response to Ibiki as an afterthought. "Uchiha running point? What about Naruto?"

"Naruto is backup."

Genma almost dropped the ornament.

His laugh cracked out sharply. "Well shit. If that's your line of march…consider it fucked from the outset."

At Ibiki's silence, Genma glanced over just in time to catch the brief frowning look Ibiki shot the ornament in Genma's hands. Without thinking, Genma stopped fiddling with it and set it back, too astounded by Ibiki's gameplan to note that the item might have held some sentimental value – or significance.

"Backup?" Genma repeated, turning fully. "Naruto? That kid is an orange lightning rod. He conducts trouble like he does the head-cases — granted he sometimes converts them too."

"I can work with that," Ibiki said, eyes on the replaced ornament, though his expression had ironed out once more. "If he can conduct some of Uchiha's energy and play redeemer, all the better."

"Redeemer?"

"Naruto will keep Sasuke on the straight and narrow."

Genma's brow flicked up as if at a bad joke. Because that's what it had to be. Keep Sasuke on the straight and narrow? Sure. Because Naruto had managed that so fantastically for the five years Sasuke had spent flying off the rails and bypassing every station of sanity on the way.

"Not a chance," Genma said.

"I acknowledge it's a risk."

"It's a risk even Anko wouldn't bend over for, Morino."

"Risks are inevitable," Ibiki said, cracking his neck to one side and then the other, working another questionable chiropractic routine on his joints. "As I said, others will be in play to account for possible contingencies. Fortunately, no sleep will be lost should something untoward happen to Sasuke."

Blinking, Genma stared in amazement. "I'm sorry, have you met Naruto?"

"Naruto doesn't speak for this village."

"Not yet. But like Kakashi, one day he might. People listen to the kid – and not just because he's really fucking loud."

"Hearts and minds," Ibiki muttered in acknowledgement, his gaze straying off to the side in thought. "I've accounted for that. And I'll accommodate or Naruto's insufferable faith in Uchiha."

"Good luck. You may be open to being surprised, but I'm not hedging my bets on Uchiha's redemption arc, Morino."

"I know." Ibiki's gaze cut back. "Why do you think I've brought you in?"

Technically, Genma had walked himself in, fuck you very much. But considering he was neither proud nor happy about that fact, he let it slide. "Apparently I'm here to play devil's advocate to your worst-case scenarios."

"Partially."

"Terrific," Genma groused, turning back to the ornament he'd set down earlier, eyeing the trio of monkeys and wondering once again how he'd gotten roped into this crazy circus. "Does Tsunade-sama know you've psychologically press-ganged me into this shit? I take it she's onboard."

"I have immunity and means to act on this."

"Hn. What did you do? Spike her saké? Or maybe you went full stab-happy with a needle?" Letting his tone carry his humour, Genma glanced over with a wry look. "Must've been one hell of a dose."

"The facts outweigh her feelings on this matter."

"Ah," Genma smirked, acknowledging the no-nonsense manoeuvre with a teasing look of appraisal. "So, you hit her with the reality check."

The biggest stick of them all.

"That's the beauty of facts," Ibiki said, his smile tight and cold. "Even if they hit, they don't lie."

"But feelings do, right?"

"All the time."

Not always.

Genma considered that unwanted thought in the dark privacy of his own mind, the fogged-up windows in his head allowing for little clarify to shine through. It was getting harder to concentrate through that chemical smog. He blinked hard, beating his lashes like that might miraculously clear his vision – and by default, his thinking.

"Shikamaru…" he segued, switching tracks to jerk his brain from its stall. "How bad?"

"You saw for yourself."

Genma had. But not enough to hypothesise. He'd been orbiting the outer edges of the Nara situation to keep from getting sucked into another vortex he couldn't escape. Funny then, how he'd just leapt headfirst into the blackhole. The thought of Shikamaru circling that bottomless void, so similar to the last one he'd almost been swallowed into, had Genma's skin tightening and his throat working against a painful stricture.

Shit.

They said nothing escaped a blackhole, not even light…and yet, memories shot out from that yawning chasm, jagged as volcanic glass, slicing strips off Genma's conscience. A series of dark bloody ribbons tangling around the gnarled and corpse-like figure that occasionally rose from the dead and hijacked his nightmares.

Shuken.

Genma felt that name lodge like a rusted dagger, tearing a hole through the god-damned heart of him. Snarling mentally, he ripped that dagger free and sliced the throat of all the other memories bubbling up from the wound. Then with a speed that came from practice, he tied off all the bloody ribbons inside him like surgical sutures. Precise. Fast. A set of ugly train-track stitches, right across his soul.

Across the room, Ibiki's gaze burned steady as a spotlight, missing nothing.

Spine rigid, Genma kept his eyes on the monkey ornament as he cleared his throat, voice hoarse and low. "How long until we're past the point of rescue?"

"A month," Ibiki said. "That's being optimistic. Which I'm not."

"The seals can't save us there? Buy us some time?"

"By the time they begin failing…what's left of that kid won't be worth saving."

Such a frank and unforgiving statement. It begged for silence, because Genma wasn't sure he wanted to hear the rest. As they'd established, however, what Genma wanted didn't mean squat.

"Not worth saving," he mused, letting that settle like a stone in his gut. "You know, they said that about Naruto, about Gaara…about a lot of lost causes."

"They were right to," Ibiki reasoned, sharing none of the silver-lining hope Genma was going for, wielding his reality fact-stick like a bloody baton. "We were fortunate with Naruto. With Gaara. Fortune won't save Shikamaru."

Genma blinked slowly, gathering the strength to ask his next question. "And if we can't save him…what kind of damage are we looking at?"

Ibiki raised his brows, blowing out his cheeks with a brittle sigh, his gaze scrolling left as he sifted through the data filed away in his machine mind. "According to Tsuno? Darkness off the charts – and he wasn't speaking figuratively."

Genma stared for a long second, trying to parse that. "You telling me we're looking at another Kusa incident?"

"Worse."

"Worse?" Genma's stare went from considering to confused, annoyance twitching at his brows at the ambiguous response. "Shikamaru almost wiped the Nagu Butai off the map — along with our people. So when you say worse — worse how?"

Another question he wasn't sure he wanted the answer to. Hells, a year and half back Shikamaru almost murdered an entire village in Kusa via some severely fucked up shadow-possession osmosis. According to Kakashi, the shadow-nin would've siphoned the life out of anyone caught in his jutsu if Hyūga Neji hadn't stopped him. Saved him.

"That kid might've made Sasuke irrelevant in all this."

Again, just what the hell had Ibiki meant by that?

Running headfirst into that dead-end question, Genma momentarily forgot his original question as to how shit could possibly get worse, until Ibiki's answer snuck up like a stage whisper – with the impact of a scream.

"We'll be looking at another Nara Shikaku incident. Times ten."

Genma's spine went rigid, his mind trying and failing to categorise what he couldn't fully comprehend. He'd never been told exactly what Nara Shikaku had done after Shuken's mutilation and experiments. That incident was confidential, classified, under the higher-up's lock and key. The fact that it remained undisclosed struck Genma as far more disturbing than anything else they'd ever documented in relation to threats from within the village's own walls, and that included Orochimaru.

But with Shikaku gone, did such confidentiality still stand?

Genma didn't get a chance to ask.

Ibiki went on slowly, his voice lowered to the hushed tones the moment seemed to demand. "I'm not withholding. I know as much as you. What Shikaku did? They buried that incident so deep it isn't even documented."

"ROOT?"

"Nothing. Even Danzō wasn't willing to cross the Sandaime on that."

No, but he'd employed other methods to cross the hard-drawn lines and put his feelers out into Kusa. He'd used other means. Other people.

Again, the flicker of violet eyes.

With that flicker, came others. Faulty bulbs of memory, winking through the drug-haze clouding up Genma's head. Shit. If he'd been clearer, he might've been able to make sense of the staccato images flashing in that dark pit of his past – there was something to be seen there, something to be considered. But it would require lucidity. Especially if it meant revisiting some of his last moments with Naoki. Not that anything ever truly equipped him for that.

Genma blinked hard, sucking a rough breath through his nose. "Okay, so you don't have the full rundown on Shikaku's episode. But I take it you've made some educated guesses here regarding Shikamaru."

Ibiki spread his hands. "Well, we know Shikamaru is packing far more powerful chakra in his tenketsu than Shikaku at his worst, because of the Kyūbi and—"

"—And because of what Shuken did," Genma finished, adding what he knew to stay grounded in the moment. "It's a perfect storm."

Ibiki gave that a heavy second, nodding. "All that bijū chakra mixing with the natural energy building in his system? When our seals fail, Shikamaru will have more capacity for destruction than anything his father unleashed after Shuken."

Shuken.

Genma's throat pulsed, his jaw clenching hard before his expression wiped clean and he shook his head. "I need more," he said. "That's all too vague. Give me something I can square, Ibiki. A comparison I know. Something tangible."

Ibiki did. "Think Pein. Without the theatrical foreplay or the fancy attacks. Just darkness. Like someone switching off the lights. A black death. Slow or fast, who's to say. A vortex off the charts. That's what we're looking at if this cannot be contained. And that's just speculation based on what he did in Kusa. Let that sit."

Genma sat instead. Heavy and fast and cold all over. He sank sideways into the armchair he'd been avoiding, bracing himself against the immediate shock.

Pein-level destruction?

Fuck.

Genma leaned forwards as if dizzy, hands carding back through his hair in a rough sweep before he blew a short sigh to dispel the tension gathering inside him. He closed his eyes and breathed for a ten count.

Ibiki was silent.

He'd had longer to process this shit.

Genma might've caught up quicker, if not for the lag in his brain – courtesy of the painkillers slowing the cogs in his head, urging him to wind down into sweet unconsciousness for a while.

Right.

He should be so lucky.

"Alright," he finally managed, head still resting in his hands as he stared down at the faint and swirling motifs printed on the carpet's pale oatmeal fibres. "Now tell me what you're not saying. To the Hokage, to the rest of your players — maybe even to yourself." Genma paused, his voice dropping low. "You lie to me, I walk."

For a second, he thought he might have to.

But Ibiki denied him the exit, answering so softly it almost didn't carry. "I will neutralise Shikaku's kid if we can't save him."

Stone-still, Genma sat with that euphemism 'neutralise' and heard only its tactical translation: terminate.

Kill.

The word sank in by degrees, slowed by the drug – and the denial. Long seconds slid off the clock by the time his breath finally hissed out through his nose. A long and tired stream. When he finally dropped his hands and lifted his head, he searched Ibiki's face with a near lost look.

"Facts don't lie," was all Morino offered.

And feelings don't matter.

It was true. They didn't matter. They couldn't. Not when it came to this. This tough moral calculus based on pure utilitarian ethics. Kill one to save hundreds, save thousands. The greater good remit most villages lived by – and so many shinobi died by. The needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few. An unspoken rule. Carved in the marrow of the people until the day came when some poor bastard belonging to the 'many' became one of the 'few' called to die. Then those rules became a name carved in a headstone. In a heart.

Shit.

Genma closed his eyes, not wanting Ibiki to see the ghosts staring back out of them. He should've been inured to this. Possibly would have been, if not for history. History had his heart in a vice, even if his head knew better. He waited until the numbness settled in, and then he lifted his lashes once more, expression set in smooth professional lines.

"Tell me what you need from me," he asked.

"More than you can offer tonight. T&I, tomorrow," Ibiki said, rising from the couch and unfolding like an accordion, only instead of musical notes, his joints rang out a series of angry pops and cracks. "You need to rest. And I need to eat."

A quiet chuckle rattled out of Genma, shaky, exhausted. "Ok, that's a surprising triage of priorities."

"I need to be clear. So do you. You're about two minutes from spilling out of that chair and I won't clean you up off the floor."

No shit.

The floral patterns in the carpet and on the couch were starting to shrink and swell in a kaleidoscopic spin. Sighing, Genma braced his hands to his aching thighs and rocked to his feet, biting back a wince at the sudden movement and the headrush that followed.

"Suits me," he said on a long sigh, making his way to the door. "I need to process this new level of 'shit happening' with a stiff drink."

Not gonna happen, but it was nice to dream.

Ugh. Don't let me dream.

Too bad the drugs would probably have more say over that than any wishful thinking.

"Genma."

Ibiki's tone stopped him in his tracks.

Trying not to faceplant, Genma stopped at the door and twisted at the hips, hands slotted into his cargos as he looked over his shoulder, a dark brow raised in query.

Ibiki had moved from the couch to the old armoire, his lidded eyes fixed on the small monkey ornament. When he spoke again, his voice fell too soft to be anything but sinister. "You come here again and the current streak of 'shit happening' in your life will feel like Kannon's Grace."

Measuring the cold sincerity of those words, Genma's gaze tracked briefly from Ibiki to the ornament, then back.

For all the threats that were usually wasted on Genma, this one stuck.

Acknowledging the trespass, he gave a slow nod, his mouth twisting against a rueful smile. "Points for delivery, Morino. Message received."

Ibiki flashed a hard dead grin, showing teeth. "Just so we're clear."

"Explicitly."

Which was more than Genma could say about the thoughts and feelings swirling around inside him as he walked out that door and into the powdery light of the hallway. Everything he'd learned settled inside his mind about as clear as fog – though that might've been the drugs swimming through his system, clouding up his world.

"I need to be clear. So do you."

Solid advice. First order of business was to check in on Raidō, then get the hell home, finally pass out, and draw a real thick line under this shitty day. No detours. If there was another pile of crap to be found tonight, he'd be stepping into it with both feet or dropping into it face first.

"All in a day's work, Shiranui," he muttered.

Bull took that moment to round the corner up ahead, silent as a shadow and way too close to the ground for Genma's addled brain to take immediate note.

He almost tripped over the dog.

Swerving, he staggered sideways into the wall and rebounded, high-stepping over the ninken with a curse, his heart banging against his ribs in a skittish jump. "Fuck's sake," he breathed, adrenalin pouring through him in a wave. "You're worse than Waif."

Hell of a lot bigger though, so there really was no excuse.

"The hell are you still doing here?" Genma growled, trying to power down his nervous system and simultaneously recover his stride, moving on ahead. "Come to collect a pound of flesh for services rendered?"

Waddling along beside him, Bull cocked his head up, his big flat face scrunched into a wrinkled look of such utter annoyance Genma felt stupid for not speaking dog. Then felt something way more sobering at the thought of the man who did.

"You gonna rat me out to Kakashi?" Genma asked, pitching his voice to a bored whisper as they snuck towards the stairwell, Bull doing a remarkably better job on the stealth front, given that Genma's steps were weaving just a little.

Bull didn't deign him with a response.

Waited for Genma to punch in the keycode.

Which Genma did, very slowly, still not understanding the dog's presence as he stepped into the stairwell, gripped the guardrail, and prepared to descend several floors whilst playing the 'depth perception' game.

Good thing this place offered hospice care.

There's nothing good about this place.

Or about him being in it.

And it had nothing to do with Ibiki.

Frowning down the long dark tunnel of the stairwell, Genma didn't have time to worry about all the ways an ass-over-elbows fall might result in an overnight stay…because the second his foot touched down on the first step, Bull immediately pressed against his side like a service animal responding to an unspoken command to brace and assist.

Genma froze at the repeat gesture, his hand tightening on the railing. "I don't need—"

Bull growled. A gruff throaty rumble, more admonishing than aggressive. Basically telling Genma he was full of shit. A reasonable assessment.

Genma managed a crooked smile. "Always knew you were my favourite."

Bull wasn't flattered.

But he was patient.

He played the role of guide dog from stairwell to sidewalk, keeping close to Genma until he was out of the building, down the ramp, and onto ground which levelled out into even footing. Standing in a puddle of amber streetlight, his back to the care home, Genma glanced down at the big bear of a dog, at a loss.

For a wordless second, he tried to string together the appropriate thanks.

Failed miserably and said instead, "You fleabags know him better than anyone…do I need to be worried? Because if he's coming unglued over Sasuke…"

He let that hang.

Gazing up, Bull's ears perked and twitched, the human-like sentience in his watchful eyes glowing bright as halos in the streetlight. He regarded Genma with a solemn expression, panting quietly into the silence. The dog wouldn't answer, and it had nothing to do with his mutism. The pack wouldn't speak a word against Hatake. Loyalty at its finest. Good thing Waif couldn't talk – he'd have sold Genma's secrets for a can of tuna any day of the week.

Genma might've pushed it.

But he'd pushed enough.

His body was pushing back, his mind too – and it had some medicated muscle behind its angry, dizzying shoves. Ibiki wasn't wrong. Genma would be out cold on the sidewalk if he didn't spill his ass into bed real damn quick. It was time to draw that line.

Raidō first.

Without another word, Genma went one way.

Bull went the other.

And the night stretched on in both directions, the darkness growing thicker and blacker until a deep and menacing growl rolled long and low beneath the heavy rumpled clouds.

A storm was coming.

---

TBC.

Endnotes:

Suteru kami areba hirou kami ari – proverb that translates "If you cast away one god, you'll find another." / "There's a god who puts you down as well as a god who picks up you." Similar to 'when one door closes, another opens'

Bijū – tailed beast(s)

Jinchūriki – humans that have tailed beasts sealed within them

Ninken – ninja hounds

Mugen Tsukuyomi – Infinite Tsukuyomi; Madara's Big Boss genjutsu that traps the entire world in an illusion, enslaving the human and animal populations in a dream world.

Komorebi Care Home – 'Komorebi' literally meaning "sunlight leaking through trees"

Kaika – Genma's old ANBU callsign

Nukenin - missing-nin; ninja who abandon their village with no intention of returning

mizaru, kikazaru, iwazaru – three iconic monkeys (aka Three Wise Monkeys) from Japanese folklore. They embody the proverbial principle: "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil"

Kannon – a bodhisattva of compassion and mercy, she holds an important place in Japanese Buddhism.

A/N: Not quite live and kicking, but not quite dead either. If there's a happy median between those states, then that's where this chapter found me. Rusty and awkward and terrified too, but hey, I guess that's standard for writers who've been out of the game and miles off the map. I know it's been a long time, so if I hear crickets after posting this, I'll tragically understand. But if by some chance there are still readers who've kept a finger on the pulse of this comatose fic, then I would so love and appreciate hearing from you – you're the reason I haven't completely flatlined. Miles down the road, you guys have given me a reason to crank out content. I am so thankful to those who've supported me in my sporadic updates with HHU and for those who've returned to BtB to revisit the story and continue to show it love over the years. Bless you. Truly. Writer's burnout has been a unique and concentrated circle of hell, one I'm attempting to crawl out of at the speed of a dying snail. Please ignore the slime trail. And if the mood so strikes you and you enjoyed dipping back into my madness, I'd so love to hear your feedback.

A/N 2: Questions? Thoughts? Lamentations? Write me here (I've just realised ffnet has failed to send me notifications, which I've amended, so sorry if I have some unseen messages to catch up on!) or hit me up over at Tumblr under okamirayne and drop me an ASK if you fancy (Anonymous asks enabled); I'll do my best to answer. Feedback always deeply welcomed and warmly appreciated.