The Ghosts of March Keep Whispering

:: ::

"So if you're not, like, a seal-sy person, how come you knew I was good at it?" Kiba drew his spoon through a bowl of dark red stew and took in some light colored meat, a kinda-jello cube, and a potato all at once. The spice hit him as quick as the heat and he swallowed without chewing as his mouth set aflame. "What the—what the fuck is that," he whispered.

Across from him, Mabui chuckled into her hand before taking a sip of her own meal. She didn't share the same visceral reaction and continued to eat like the devil themself wasn't in her food. "I will admit that Tragopan Blood Stew is an acquired taste, but it's one of our milder dishes."

Akamaru woofed around the yak bone he was gnawing on and lolled his tongue when his partner glared through watering eyes.

"Take some butter tea. It will help."

Kiba downed the cup in one gulp and hung his tongue out his mouth, hoping the frost of Kumo's air that rolled in every time someone opened the front door could chill his taste buds, and Mabui took a moment to mull over the past few months.

She had to give Kiba a whole new set of clothes when she let him out of the cell because the plain clothes could have the potential to be too telling, so she'd taken some liberties with his style. The standard-issue black pants stayed but she'd pilfered through her apartment and her brother's old clothes for some outgrown mesh shirts and a couple of black track jackets with a white stripe down the middle of the back and around the elbows. Those ones ran a little big, but she figured he would grow into them. Long-term planning and all that.

The thing she was most mindful of, though, were the metal bands and brown tattoos on his person that would instantly announce his status.

She had him wrap his ankles and forearms with bandages colored the signature Kumogakure red and told him never to leave his cell without them. Only when he agreed did she have him keep several rolls for convenience.

"But to answer your question, even though I didn't understand much of what you'd written on the walls, I understood enough that it belonged in advanced theory," she said. She tore a piece of flatbread and dipped it into her stew. "Tell me, Kiba-kun, what led you to study seals?"

He bent over his bowl and slowly dug out another piece of meat, careful to get as little soup as possible. "I wanted t'know how ta' reverse seals."

A pang rattled just behind Mabui's rib cage. Those seals... it nearly slipped to the back of her mind. After they'd been brought in from the border and examined by a seals expert sworn to secrecy, they'd confirmed the seal work to fall under the 'cursed' category due to its manipulation of body, mind, and will, and had also confirmed its unwilling application by the apparent stress marks amongst the black lines.

It sickened her to her stomach to hear of such a thing. The Kumor developed their sealing techniques through skin once a long time ago, but the move to paper mediums came because of the permanent, detrimental effects that were consequence with their use.

Some of the older generations who still live with them were blind or deaf or had lost all movement in one arm or the other, or their skin on a leg had been burned so thoroughly even if the clear ink of the seal still remained. Or maybe they couldn't remember their own name longer than a day but could recite their favorite book cover, notation and all.

Those who currently utilize powerful skin seal knew of the risks they took. But nowadays, there were so few.

"I ended up gettin' really into it," he continued. "Turns out I'm pretty good at it? Sakura and Shino thought I could do a lot with it and I have a teach' back in my old village. Or, uh, had." Akamaru set his head atop the hand his partner rested on his lap. Kiba cleared his throat and quickly fished for a jelly cube thing. Jelly cube? Oh, it was blood. Definitely congealed blood. "But it's still cool. Am I allowed t'look at the sealing books in your library?"

"I don't think it would be too difficult to grant you restricted access to the Lenticular Library Circuit."

"Lenti—Mabui-san," he whined, "that's not a word!"

She covered her mouth as another laugh spilled past her lips. As she brushed a few strands of her hair behind an ear, she glanced out the window of the small restaurant they were tucked away in. The warm rays of an afternoon had lessened and stars began to speckle the sky. "It's getting quite late; I'll have to return to Raikage-sama's office soon to prepare tomorrow's schedule."

"Okay," he nodded. He tipped his head side to side, wondering if he should take another sip of the demon stew before he left. "Thanks for bringin' us, Mabui-san! We've never had Kumo food before and Akamaru really likes the yak and bison legs!"

"You're welcome," she smiled. As they stood to gather their bearings and venture out into the crisp air of her beloved village, a solemn feeling weighed down her bones and down to the soles of her feet as they walked the path to Catatumbo Penitentiary, then eventually some back roads so no one knew where they would end up.

It was times like these she forgot Kiba was a prisoner.

She forgot he wasn't a surname-less boy with a genius for seals and their theories, that he hadn't come to learn from the capital of the country like his village mates Shino the Medic-Hopeful or Sakura the One-Handed Sword. She forgot that he hadn't been born on the borders, none of them, and that they were actually a product of one of their greatest enemies.

'But', some part of her murmured, 'an enemy that sealed their own and left them for dead.'

"Hey Mabui-san, I got a question."

She glanced down at him.

His face screwed up. "What's a tragopan?"

"They're a type of pheasant, and the ones served in that restaurant those native to this part of Lightning."

"Pheasants? What, like... pretty chickens?"

She pressed her hand to her mouth again to smother her laughter. "I suppose you can call them that," she agreed.

And when he grinned, she couldn't help but think how Konoha didn't deserve a boy like him.

:: ::

"Ah, what a shame."

Naruto's ears perked up and turned to the sound of the voice. His hands dripped with the frigid water of the stream that rushed a step away from where he knelt, and he wiped his face dry on his jacket sleeve and pushed himself up to his feet.

Jiraiya sat at the base of a tree with a pen between his teeth and his nose deep in one of his brainstorming notebooks.

"Didja say somethin', Ero-sennin?"

"Just trying to figure out how to write this part and... hm... what do you think about me adding a bit where my beautiful heroine gets a White Letter then the kick is we don't know who it's from and BAM! Cliffhanger!" he exclaimed. Naruto rolled his eyes and shook the water from his hands. "How about that?!"

"I don't even know what a White Letter is!"

"Huh? You don't?" Jiraiya set down his notebook and squinted at his student. "Aren't they supposed to teach you that kinda stuff at the Academy?"

"Well they didn't," the boy sniffed. He didn't actually remember if they talked about whatever those letters were or not with all the times he didn't pay attention, which was always, but there was no way he was gonna admit something like that. "Whatsa' White Letter?"

"So." The sannin beckoned Naruto closer until he plopped on the ground in front of him, legs crossed and eyes wide. "Let's say you go on a mission that's high risk. When you gain rank and experience you'll learn to distinguish the dangerous ones and the dangerous ones you might not come out of. That's when you write your last words in letters for important people who maybe won't see you again. It's morbid, but hey, we signed up for this. Can't say we didn't know the risks, right?"

Something familiar nudged at the back of Naruto's head.

"You take those letters, seal them all up in white envelopes, and write who they're for on the back in black ink. After that the person takes every letter they've got and leaves it with a trusted person in the village to distribute if they really don't make it back. But on the chance they do, that trusted person hands it back to them." Jiraiya rolled his shoulders. "It's mostly jounin who take up the practice, but depending on the mission, you never know, you know."

Naruto reached for his gray backpack and threw the front flap open. He dug through old clothes and weapon wax and clumpy wire and ramen packs until he reached the bundle of envelopes he tucked in a clear plastic baggie so he wouldn't get them all dirty.

The Yuuhi Kurenai on the back on the top envelope was written clear as day.

Did... Did Sakura-chan really g-give him...

"—uto? Oi, brat!"

His head snapped up. "Huh?"

Jiraiya frowned, concern pulling at his laugh lines as he watched the boy wrap his arms around his pack and pulled it close to his chest. "Did someone—Did someone leave you White Letters?"

He shook his head so hard the sannin thought that if he kept it up a little longer it might have popped right off his neck, but Jiraiya could always pluck a lie out of a sea of truths and half-truths. Being trusted with White Letters wasn't a bad thing, per se, but knowing Naruto and the scant friends he had, he was curious as to just who in the village had trusted this boy enough to leave something as delicate as a last will and testimony.

"Look, it's okay if you got some, but it was probably a bad idea to bring them along if I'm training you out of country for who knows how long—"

"They're not White Letters," Naruto declared firmly. His lips pressed together and his eyes hardened in a way Jiraiya hadn't quite seen before. "She just asked me to keep them! It's a mission that's s'pposed t'last, like, nine months or somethin'! Nothing bad's gonna happen and, and, she's prob'ly back in Konoha right now! You'll see!"

Heart heavy, Jiraiya opened his mouth to try and explain that no, it wasn't good for us to think like that, because the more you push it away the harder it pushed back and sometimes your friends don't make it back, but Naruto was up on his feet with an excuse of hunger on the tip of his tongue as he escaped further downstream to catch a couple of fish.

He leaned back into the tree and sighed. "You'll learn one day, kid." He thought of Minato and Kushina, faces from his Academy years that he never saw again, all the missed opportunities and all the people he'd ever failed. "Sometimes, things just don't work out the way you want."

An image of Uchiha Sasuke flashed in his mind's eye, as well as the scratched hitai-ate he left behind with his unconscious student at the Valley of the End.

"But still, I wished the world was kinder to you, Naruto."

:: ::

Darui heard of the way too rowdy kid that joined the seals sector. Or maybe 'joined' was a strong word. It was more like a kid showed up with Mabui one day and solved a seal array by taping pieces of it to the ceiling because "lookin' up wasn't the same as lookin' down."

Then he found out who the kid was.

Then, understandably, he made sure he wasn't day dreaming and gently pulled Mabui aside and asked, quite politely, what the fuck was going on.

"It's... complicated."

"Can you uncomplicate it?"

"Kiba-kun, he's..." Mabui trailed off, searching for words in the walls with how fast her eyes shifted from spot to spot. It caught Darui's attention instantly, because of everything she was as the Boss' dutiful assistant, indecisive wasn't one of them. "He's a nice boy," she finished lamely.

"A nice boy," he parroted, tone as dry as the sand dunes he once scaled in the Wind Country provinces. "The prisoner."

"Shh!"

Her hands latched around his bicep as they stood just outside the Seal Division workspace. The room hummed with the buzz of Kiba and the workers elbow-deep in a particularly tricky ten-layer seal and it was only the two of them who'd stepped out into the hall, but Mabui wasn't one to take chances and Darui had known her long enough to pick out the quiet panic in her face.

"The Seals Division doesn't know?"

"The only ones who do are the assigned guards, C-san, Bee-sama, and I," she said. His eyebrow cocked at the mention of his partner. "And along with Kiba-kun came Shino-san and Sakura-san. They're his village mates from the border town near Turtle Island. Surely you've heard of them?"

All of the prisoners had been let out of their cells and had backstories to cover up their true identities? Boss once mentioned to him in passing that the circumstances around the Konoha prisoners had changed, but he figured it was nothing big, maybe a shifting of placement or a hold on an execution date, so he'd let it be and kept his nose out of that business.

Apparently that was a mistake. And look where it left him.

He exhaled through his nose and shuffled a bit to the side to peek through the glass window of the door. Kiba hovered over one of the tables with one hand holding a brush and the other gesturing just as wildly as the rest of him as he and another technician tossed ideas back and forth. His eyes were bright and every time he opened his mouth there was a flash of sharp fangs, but he looked every part of an eager kid that talked about the latest cliffside he scaled or the new high score he made at the arcade.

It was strange to see the cheer directed at seals, though.

He turned back to Mabui and her anxious face and exhaled again. "Okay, okay, sorry. So, Kiba," he said. "He hasn't tried to make an escape? Nothing turns up missing from the offices?"

"Not at all. Perhaps we believed them to be lying at the start, but," she frowned, "as per protocol for most established shinobi nations, if a shinobi doesn't report back to their village within three months of their return date an investigation is launched. If the investigation yields no results in the month after that, then the case files are more often than not marked MIA or KIA and left on a casual watch list." They both peered back through the window, catching Kiba's laugh as the dog set his paws on the table and wagged his tail. "We captured them in October, Darui-san. It's been six months since then. If anyone had been looking for them, they aren't anymore."

He knew no one was looking for them, but hearing it out loud left a bitter taste on his tongue.

Darui couldn't imagine what his life would've been like if he didn't have Kumo at his back. A village was only as good as the people that filled it, and since he would never allow his loyalty to Boss waver nor let himself turn his back on his friends, his comrades, his family, he couldn't even fathom waking alone in a cell after being left to die in the Lightning wilderness.

He remembered the day they'd brought in the team. Chuunin level at the highest, attacker unknown, their near-unconscious bodies waiting for the Border Patrol like a bleeding, barely breathing gift.

There were teeth marks in the Inuzuka's shoulder that sunk deep through the bone made by something like a tiger or a lion, but most likely one of those leopards that roamed the country, and a kunai stuck through each thigh. When Boss demanded more details of the scene, they said the boy had red eyes from tears and they could hear him screaming himself hoarse minutes before they got there.

He didn't think the circumstances would ever be clear to him with as little as anyone from the team wanted to talk about the incident. The other information they wanted they couldn't even ask with those disgusting seals on their tongues.

Darui rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand. Of all the lost kids Kumo opened their arms to, why did the next bunch have to be Konohans?

Something cracked up his spine and through the muscles in his throat.

He and Mabui burst into the Seal Division workspace, him with a hand on the hilt of his cleaver sword and her armed with a handful of kunai she hid in the sleeves of her blazer.

All Darui saw was the explosion that left his ears ringing and that the Inuzuka—Kiba—pushed a seals technician to the ground as the brunt of the blast sent him crashing through the tables behind him, one ear bleeding and his nin-dog partner diving towards the rigged seal to pull it further away from the rest of the people in the room.

:: ::

The ten-layered seal they were trying to unlock had fail safes buried in the matrices, one of which had been an explosive tag masked under a sequence that Kiba and Seals Technician Yotsuki Kiyoi of the Yotsuki Clan, one of the ridiculously few clans under Kumogakure, had accidentally overlooked when scanning the set-up for openings to break.

But that wasn't what snagged Darui's attention and dragged him back to the work room the very next morning; it was that the chuunin, the boy, the Konohan, Kiba, shoved Yotsuki away so he wouldn't get hit with the blast.

Seventy percent hearing loss in his right ear, C told them after assessing the damage and healing to the best of his ability. Yotsuki-san would have had it worse had he not avoided the explosion. How was that managed, by the way?

Darui's gaze swept over the now cleaned division, empty for all except himself and the unsolved seal locked up tight at the other end of the room.

Kiba didn't have to save Yotsuki. He had no obligation, no ties, no camaraderie for his enemy shinobi. And really, it probably would have benefited him more if he hadn't pushed Yotsuki out the way, because even one downed Kumo-nin was a victory for the hopeless. Kumogakure was the Konohan's enemy, his chains, his warden.

And yet.

"He's a nice boy."

... Well, maybe "nice" wasn't the best word for it.

The clack of an opening door sounded behind him and he turned, expecting another inspection crew to gauge the room and take a look at the scroll responsible for the damage.

It wasn't an inspection crew.

It was Kiba who stepped in with his nin-dog hovering around his knees and two inked tags hanging off metal chains looped through his earlobes. He blinked when he met Darui's eyes, which were a little wider than his usual half-lidded stare, and scratched the back of his head with a sheepish grin.

"Mabui-san said I was pro'lly gonna have the room to myself since the team's gonna be out the rest of the week," he said in a way of greeting. "Uh, sorry if you didn't think I was comin'. Do you want me ta' go, uh, sir, or...?"

"Darui, and it's fine, sorry I'm in your way," Darui said. He glanced over at the boy, noting nothing much different save for the fashion statement dangling from his ears and the few bandages stuck on the visible spots of skin. "What are you doing out? Thought you'd want to recover after yesterday."

"Oh yeah, but I'm good now."

Darui blinked. As Kiba stood there with a sheepish grin and his hands in the pockets of his track jacket, he thought of the hoard of broken stables stacked just outside near the trash bins and the blood that stained the splintered bits.

"You're a prisoner, not a Kumo-nin," he stated bluntly. Kiba flinched minutely and Akamaru's tail droops. "No one's forcing you to buck up until there's someone that does. You just turned mostly deaf in one ear."

"Y'think that's gonna stop me?" the boy huffed. His eyes narrowed, feral at the edges as something stone cold spiked out from the dark depths of his pupils. Darui's bored expression morphed minutely at the sight—a sight far differed from the rowdy troublemaker he saw just the day before. This one was wired. Wild. "I got banged up in that explosion, so what? I fixed it." He jabbed a thumb at the tags swinging near his face. "Diffusion and amplification seals. Shino told me 'bout hearing aids once and it's like the same thing, just for shinobi." Akamaru woofed lowly and pointed his snout towards the lock box, and his partner looked down. "Oh, right!"

And just like that, the darkness in his eyes was gone and the fanged grin touches back on his face. Darui could've gotten whiplash with how quick those emotions had come and gone, how they swirled in a way that he wasn't quite sure that even Kiba knew that he'd done it.

Was it from his time in the cells or something before that, Darui wondered.

"Heard they locked up that seal after it went off on us," Kiba said, ambling towards the metal safe in the corner of the room. "You have the key? I wanna take another stab at it, if that's cool."

The drive to work on the very thing that nearly killed him less than twenty-four hours ago startled Darui again, and this time he was getting annoyed by all these surprises. A prisoner was all this boy was; a young, abandoned, genius prisoner that Konoha let slip through their self-righteous fingers.

He was starting to see why Mabui liked him so much.

He nodded once. "Sure."

Darui twisted the safe lock as both Kiba and Akamaru glanced away to leave the combination out of their hands (honestly, what was that? The kid was out of his mind) and carefully set down the seal configuration on the closest unbroken table.

Kiba lit up immediately and unfurled the thick scroll until it spanned the length of his workspace as Akamaru curled into a ball close to his feet, head on his front paws and his eyes half-lidded as they never strayed from his partner.

'Loyal,' the Kumo jounin mused to himself as he plopped on a wooden stool opposite the boy. Elbows propped on the table and his chin in his hand, Darui watched as Kiba dipped a brush ink a newly opened bottle of ink and flew through matrices and sequences like he was born to do it.

It was intriguing to watch him work, honestly. Darui was never one for seals despite how integral of a part it had in Kumogakure's foundations. Every careful stroke of black and every messy scribble on scratch paper felt like standing in the middle of an art museum when you knew nothing about art; frankly confusing but entertaining all the same.

About thirty minutes into the comfortable silence, Kiba spoke.

"Um, Darui-san, is it true that Sakura's the sparring partner for this dude named Killer Bee?"

"If she's that pink-haired girl who's always with him, then yeah," he affirmed. He wasn't too sure of the name, but he'd caught a glimpse of the nin with one arm missing and the other clad in white bandages and a vambrace of blue-dyed yak hide most definitely meant to cover her prisoner identification.

"So she's okay?"

The genuine worry in Kiba's face hurt a bit to look at. If he remembered correctly, the Konohans had all been separated since the moment of capture and hadn't seen each other since.

"Okay enough that she can keep up with Bee-sama." Which was a trip in itself to find out. No one could keep up with Killer Bee—not with his eccentricities, not with whatever caught his attention next, and definitely not with the stamina he never seemed to run out of. But from the whispers that sometimes floated by him, the girl tried, and by god she tried.

He told Kiba bout the one-armed cliff climbing, the taijutsu spars that were said to last for hours, the way she apparently just didn't stop even though it was clear that she needed to.

And Kiba just laughed, his eyes flashing with a watery shine.

"She's always been like that, y'know," he grinned. "And Mabui-san told me 'bout Shino too, that he's workin' at the hospital and stuff and it's... it's good. That they're both okay." He glanced back at the place his and his team's sealed scrolls were kept, unbroken, and his grin fell off his face. "Um, Shino has a medical inventory book he likes ta' keep track of an' there's a sword Sakura like ta' use. Can uh, can you get those to them? They'd really like it. Please."

Darui stared blankly, blinked, and dropped his chin back into his hand. If he noticed the boy's eyes had grown even shinier, he didn't say anything about it. "I'll do what I can."

(Shino and Sakura get their things within the week.

But he didn't tell Kiba that.)

:: ::

April Howls Softly at the Moon

:: ::

It had always been on Sakura's agenda that she learn one-handed seals. It would have been more practical that way with one hand molding chakra for jutsu while the other held a kunai or sword to deflect any bodies or projectiles that got in her way.

But then the Coliseum happened; Incident #2.

(She wasn't looking forward to whatever Incident #3 would have in store for them. Third time's a charm was the saying, but Unlucky Eight was never unlucky on a whim.)

Sakura swallowed down a few gulps of some energy drink brand they didn't have in Konoha and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, some of her pink hair falling into her eyes. She knew her chakra control was better than others. It had to be—she never had monstrous reserves like her father and no matter how much she trained, it was still one of the genes that never lent its favor.

But since her realization of it years ago, there were certainly jutsu she knew could make up for what she lacked. Luckily for her, she'd seen a prime example of one over and over again when she was still in Ame.

And once she mastered it, she would have to thank Kakuzu-san if she ever saw him again.

There was a tap on her shoulder and she turned her head only for a finger to poke her cheek as raucous laughter filled her ears.

She blinked. "Break's over, Bee-sama?"

"Ah, you're so cold, I don't think I've ever seen you pop a grin," he sighed, dropping onto the rock beside her. He knocked her knee with his and pushed up his sunglasses with a knuckle. "But we can take a longer break, give a rest to those bruises on your shins."

Sakura glanced down at her pants which had ripped off from her bandaged ankles and pulled up the cloth to the sight of mottled red, black, and blue. The mountains here weren't particularly soft, she thought dryly, and she'd scraped her legs against them every time she tried to dodge a hit by going low.

Shino would have a stroke if he found out she wasn—

A shutter knocks into her chest and her heart squeezed.

Seven months. That was how long it had been since she'd seen Shino's hands flare green and Kiba's face smudged in black ink and Akamaru with his tongue lolled out after a long run. She remembered each of their faces like she saw them just yesterday, but it was only in her luck that the last thing she could recall were Shino's and Akamaru's prone bodies and Kiba screaming to the heavens that wouldn't listen.

Seven months.

They probably looked a lot different now.

Her cheek got poked again. She turned her head to the other side. "Yes?"

"What's got ya' thinkin' way over there?" Bee asked. "You've got that thousand yard stare, I swear, I don't know where's your care."

Sakura set her drink by her katana. "I'd like to see my team, but under my circumstances, I know it's not possible." Bee's face was unreadable, as always, and she swore she'd learn to read the crinkles around his eyes. "They're alive, though, and as long as they are I won't have trouble waiting to see them again."

What she didn't say was that even if it took a million years, she would wait, because from her skin to her muscle to her bone to her core, she knew it was her fault they were here in the first place. If she hadn't been so different, they wouldn't have tipped the dominoes that landed them on Shimura Danzo's hit list.

If they hadn't met her, they'd be better off. She knew that.

(But she was selfish; she loved them and she didn't want to let them go.)

((She didn't know what she'd do if she lost someone like that again.

Her father was already enough.))

Bee was quiet and contemplating, like how he usually was half the time like he was having another conversation with someone else, somewhere else. Almost a minute later he came back to himself, a tilt to his lips as he rubbed the underside of his chin.

"Tell me somethin'," he said. He stuck one of his swords into the dirt and leaned against the hilt. Sakura frowned—what a way to treat a decent blade. "What was it like at that Coliseum?"

She was instantly reminded of the stale scent of settled dust and weeks old blood. Screams rang faintly in her ears and she can pinpoint the exact feeling a freshly sharpened ax cut through flesh and bone as she saved the one person she shouldn't have.

She felt a sharp sting in her left arm just where her wrist would have been, and she looked down. Still, nothing. Just bandaged right at the bend of her elbow. "Think of it as dog fighting for bets. Except the dogs are anyone they could kidnap and collar and the ones making bets are the corrupt rich." She tore her eyes away from her arm and fixed her gaze at a spot far off in the distance. "But it wasn't the worst. It was training with consequences; I didn't have to like it to know that it helped."

"Help? Help with what?"

:: ::

Bee was starting to put the pieces together.

Ever since he'd chanced upon her at Catatumbo, there had always been something off. He noticed, Gyuu noticed, and he was sure C and Mabui and Enmu and A noticed if her and her team had yet to have their bodies burned and their ashes sealed into the earth. The girl was young but she wasn't stupid, and she fought nothing like those Konohans with their "moral high ground" and subpar kenjutsu skills.

And... sometimes, when they walked through the village he'd get snubbed by the older Kumor as usual. Sakura never asked or treated him differently when she saw, but once when someone made an off-handed muttering about her hanging around the wrong sort, she'd simply blinked, turned, and said, "The only wrong sort I see is somebody who can't mind their own business. Look me in the eyes and say that again."

Bee had snorted into his hand when the passing citizen paled and quickened their pace down the street, and Gyuuki had sat quiet and pensive as the girl, blank-faced and cold, turned back around and continued her walk, the scars on her shoulder flashing from under her shirt.

She was someone he wanted to get to the bottom of because, well, he liked the kid. Prisoner or not.

'You're an idiot.'

'What's up with you crampin' my style, Gyuu? Go make some friends, maybe you'll find out somethin' new.'

'Make friends while trapped in your thick head?'

'I could always introduce ya' to Sak—'

'Pass.'

Bee huffed quietly and asked Sakura about the Coliseum. Her answer wasn't quite what he expected.

"But it wasn't the worst," she said. "It was training with consequences; I didn't have to like it to know that it helped."

Some of that iciness trailed back into her face. She wasn't much of an expressive person to begin with, but he was starting to think that her chill wasn't as innate as he first thought. But Gyuu's interest piqued at her words—neither of them would describe a 'kill or be killed' situation as a training experience, much less one that made for a lot of learning opportunities.

"And how many training opportunities did ya' get, that ya' managed to work a sweat?"

The look she gave him said that she could see his question for what it was—her kill count—but she answered with another beat. "One hundred twenty-four during the rounds. Twenty during our escape. One hundred forty four in all."

Bee opened his mouth, a frown in the corners of his mouth and a question bursting on his tongue, but then there was the tell-tale tingle at the back of his neck as Gyuu's warm, heavy chakra washed over him. Pale pink pupil-less irises melted over the whites of his eyes behind his dark lenses, and he straightened in his seat.

"One hundred forty four," Gyuuki's voice drawled from Bee's mouth. Sakura's eyes narrowed slightly, but other than that she offered no other movement. Even he had to nod to the small part of him that found it so damn interesting. "Why did you think it was necessary to keep count?"

"It's important to keep a track record," she answered. "Keep yourself in check because no one else will."

"And for your team?"

"One hundred eighteen for Shino, one hundred sixteen for Kiba."

It didn't skip his notice that the number of her kills exceed the other two by a substantial margin. Gyuuki might not completely understand how humans worked or why they thought pitting themselves against one another could ever be fun, but he was sure an institution like the Coliseum could only work on a system that its victims had to follow to a T.

'So what're you sayin'? It's not like you to find somethin' dismayin'.'

Gyuuki didn't get to reply to his curious host, because the girl at his side shifted to face him better and bent down into a short, polite bow. "I haven't introduced myself, but you've probably seen me through Bee-sama," she said. "I'm Sakura. It's nice to meet you."

There wasn't an ounce of fear in the slope of her shoulders and her tone was as bold and genuine as it had been when Bee found her pushing herself to fatigue in one of Catatumbo's empty concrete cells.

The first thing he realized was that she knew he was a tailed beast.

The second thing he realized was that even when the scars on her shoulder had been caused by one of his siblings, she didn't treat him any differently than she treated Bee.

'It's nice, isn't it,' Bee remarked gently, his voice a soft brush against the back of the head. 'To get treated like you ain't some outcast misfit.'

"...Call me Hachibi."

And he relinquished control back to his host, receding back to the open space of his seal.

He said nothing for the rest of the day, his mind too filled with thoughts of weird little Ameks and their mannerisms.

:: ::

He was going to lose his mind, he just knew it.

Motoi stared at the pink-haired kid standing in front of him, a katana slung across her back and probably the blankest expression he'd ever seen on anyone across her face. He hoped she didn't notice how much he was losing his shit on the inside, but yeah, in all the years he'd been stationed as head supervisor on Genbu, the Turtle Island, he'd never had someone just... show up. Maybe she was lost? Yes, lost. Just happened to wander onto Kumo's sentient training ground that was literally an enormous turtle that floated around the coast as she pleased.

"I don't think I'm supposed to be here," were the first words that came between the two of them, and Motoi's face slowly dropped into his hands.

"I see," he sighed. He inhaled deeply before he rubbed the dark green tattoo over the bridge of his nose. "Well, you're here now, so I suppose there's no harm in registering you. The barriers signaled another body upon arrival, though—may I have your names and villages of residence?"

"Sakura, no surname. I was originally from Imvula, but I've been staying in Kumo to improve my kenjutsu," she replied.

"Imvula? The border town close to the South Coasts?" he questioned. At her nod, he hummed and tucked the information at the back of his head. Imvula, the Rain Village, no correlation with Amegakure, the Village Hidden in the Rain. "Alright. Your companion, then?"

"Killer Bee-sama. I've heard that all the Kumo-nin know him."

Motoi's back went rigid, but he hid it as best he could as he pulled a small notebook from his vest to flip through his notes and prior registries. Of course Killer Bee had to catch him off guard with a visit today; the one person he could never look in the eye that brought along a strange kid that wouldn't break eye contact if he wasn't the one to do it first.

But karma hated him anyways, so he might as well go with it.

"I don't know if Bee-sama's told you, but he's made friends with every animal on the island including Genbu herself and with every visit he takes the time to greet most of them, if not all."

"... Ah."

"You could do as you please here, really, as long as you're not harming any of the inhabitants or causing intentional damage. Which you're not going to do, are you?"

She quirked a brow. "Not that I planned."

He narrowed his eyes. "I'll take your word for that. Against my better judgment." He shook his head. "But if you're going to wait for Bee-sama, I suggest training at one of the many available fields except field number six, or find something to keep you otherwise occupied for the hours you're probably going to spend here."

"I'll train then," Sakura said. "Field six, that's the one two to the left from the entrance, right?"

"Yes." Motoi blinked. "Wait, how did you know that?" He knew the field numbers by heart from all the years he'd worked here, but the numbered posts had all been taken down some days ago and the new replacements had yet to be repainted.

"It's the only one with a genjutsu over it."

"How long did it take for you to see it?"

"A minute or so. It caught my attention when I was walking towards you." Her blank eyes twisted with calculation as she squinted. "Why?"

Why? Because it shouldn't have taken a measly minute for one of his genjutsu to get noticed, especially when the purpose of the one over field six was to direct people's attention away from it without realizing their attention was being forced elsewhere. Normally it would catch a shinobi's eye if they'd been on the island long enough to figure something wasn't quite right, but this girl comes in and does it immediately? On the first visit?

"You're a genjutsu type," he noted with surprise. Her brows furrowed. "Oh, were you not aware? Only genjutsu types could have seen through an illusion like that so quickly."

"I might have noticed something once," she replied. (She remembered holding her father's hand in a cemetery and seeing trees that looked so wrong in her eyes before a kunai came from them and clipped her arm.) "But I never got trained in it."

And that was odd. Because her talent for it, from what he'd seen, could be curbed into something extraordinary.

"Did you ever want to learn?" He tucked his notebook back into his vest and took a seat on the trunk of a felled tree. Sakura eyed him warily, but took the open invitation and sat a step or two away with only the slightest hesitation.

"I guess it was something I never got to focus on."

"Are you interested in learning?"

"Are you offering to teach?" she shot back.

Motoi leaned back with a hum. Her defensiveness shouldn't surprise him—here he was, a complete stranger trying to pry into the history of her skills and talents. She had every right to be worried and didn't seem used to the Kumo-way of scooping up the worst to make them the best, and scooping up the best to make them better.

When he thought about it, he supposed teaching wouldn't be so bad. With all the time he'd spent on Genbu passing the years with only animals and short visits from other Kumo shinobi as company, it got a little lonely from time to time. He was lucky he usually preferred the quiet and the solitude and the sound of rolling waves that pushed against Genbu's great sides.

But, teaching wouldn't be too bad.

"I suppose I am," he answered honestly, lips tipping up at the first time the girl broke her expressionless mask by letting her eyes grow a fraction. They quickly snapped back to a glare, though, as her own arm shifted closer to the katana at her hip.

"What's in it for you?"

"I'll get my first student to continue on what I know. That's a good enough reason to want to take you under my wing, isn't it?" He shrugged. "But it's your choice. I'm just a jounin who's only getting older."

Her stance didn't lighten and her hand continued to hover over the hilt of her blade, and if she kept looking into his eyes she would see the way dark depths sparked in approval. He didn't have to ask her to prove herself, he didn't need to fight her to make her show her resilience.

In the way she never let up, the way she persevered with everything she must have lost...

It was proof enough for him that she must already be someone exemplary.

Eventually, Sakura lowered herself into a slight bow. "I would be pleased to take you up on your offer...?"

"Motoi." He clapped her shoulder a few times to get her to straighten up. "Nice to meet your acquaintance, Sakura-san."

Not too far away, Bee smiled to himself as he scaled a tree to watch a number of Himalayan Jumping Spiders crawl around the branches.

:: ::

But May Was Never Kind

:: ::

The hospital was stressful. There were medics rushing the halls, nurses filling out paperwork, beeps and clunks and clicks sounding off in the building that would never hush. It was bustling, it was frantic, it was chaos—

And Shino loved it.

He didn't know exactly when the idleness started on him like an itch he couldn't scratch, but he noticed how quick irritation started to settle if he wasn't reading or writing or sewing strands of muscle together. His kikai felt the same way too, and Shino managed to convince C to at least let his colony flit around the vents and blame the noise on the air conditioning.

He stopped by a window in the hall, one hand in his white coat pocket and the other holding open the file he's in the middle of reading. The skies aren't the same deep blue like in Konoha and much of it was drowned out by the clouds.

Everything was paler and the sun didn't feel quite as yellow.

And even though nothing was the same, the village was like a breath of fresh air in his lungs.

"Shino-sensei!" a nurse called ahead of him. "C-sensei requires your assistance in Emergency Room Three!"

"On my way!" he returned. As he hurried toward the stairs and made his way down to the first floor, he paper-clipped the page he left off and set it on the administration desk before he slipped into the emergency room. He pulled on a pair of gloves from the rack on the wall and tugged them on as he shut the door behind him and approached the burned, unconscious body on the bed.

Odd that it's only C and him there, and there were no nurses checking vitals.

"Training injury?"

"Field mission," C corrected. Shino assesses the angry red burns that curled, leaving no centimeter unscathed with the sheer amount of top skin layer that had been singed right off. He brushed some of the stray blonde hair that was soaking up blood from the wounds.

He'd seen those burns before.

"Tailed beast chakra," he recognized. C flinched, his head shooting up. "It causes permanent disfigurement no matter how severe the injury and requires immediate attention to address possible internal damage."

"How did you—"

"I've treated it before." An image of Sakura's dim apartment flashed behind his eye and there was a phantom feeling of blood on his fingers, sweat on his brow, and a tunneling vision from the sight of burnt cloth buried in weeping gashes. He shook his head and clenched his fists when the threat of tremors started to creep down his arms. "There's not much we can do but assure whatever needs to be healed is healed." But when he lowered his head back towards the body, he saw the tips of their patient's finger slowly but surely knitting itself into a normal skin color. "What..."

"This... isn't a typical Kumo-nin," C started reluctantly, but Shino had already turned his ear away as his brain kicked into overdrive. Chakra burns, self-healing, only him and C attending to the patient; only one viable explanation rose and he supposed it wasn't a stretch.

"No, because this is a jinchuuriki," he interrupted, and the medic across from him paled. "How did I come to this conclusion? Those capable of wielding healing chakra are scarce in Kumo, as you've once told me, and I doubt any of them are capable of such an advanced healing capability that can be utilized in an unconscious state. In fact, the only person who may be able to perform such a feat is Senju Tsunade." He tilted his head, oblivious to the way C tensed.

"Look, if you have any problem with jinchuuriki I suggest you—"

"Whatever needs to be done has to be within the short window between time of injury and the end of the healing period," Shino continued, too engrossed in his thought process to have heard anything at all. His hands flared a careful mint green as he hovered one hand over the torso and the other over the heart. "Thirty minutes is my estimate." He glanced up and frowned. "C-sensei?"

C blinked out his stupor, his hands glowing chakra-scalpel blue and a slight smile on the corner of his lips. "We need to get the bone shards out of her left arm and right leg before they're completely healed in and we have to dig it out ourselves. Remember what I taught you about using chakra as a tool?"

"Stay away from the veins as much as possible."

"Good, keep it in mind. Let's get to work."

:: ::

The jinchuuriki's name was Nii Yugito and she was host to the Two-Tailed Cat. Many looked up to her and her skill and just as many, if not more, feared her all the same.

Shino lent an ear to the whispers of his colleagues where he'd learnt just a couple of things. One, of all the times she'd come to the hospital, only C and the same one nurse had come to her aid. Two, the longest she'd ever been unconscious without signs of waking was twelve hours, most likely due to the nature of her beast.

It had been twenty-four hours since he'd been called to assist her healing and she hadn't even twitched.

There was something wrong, and Shino was going to figure out what it was.

Call it intuition or paranoia, but a sudden change for anything called for suspicion. From all the eavesdropping he'd done on his classmates at the Academy to the spying he'd done once he started to carry the Unlucky Eight name, he learned how crucial it was to never count out the 'stupid' or 'impossible'. Underestimation led to downfalls, and downfalls could lead to death.

On one of his breaks he entered Yugito's room and flipped through the clipboard hung on the foot of the bed. Because there was no nurse that accompanied him on the clock as per C's orders (just to mind his training, was the excuse, because they couldn't just say a prisoner couldn't wander without supervision), the door was cracked wide open.

"No change," he muttered to himself. "How is there no change? All the medication has been given, all internal and external injuries have been healed..."

He walked around to the IV bag and took a sample of the solution. A quick glance out the door showed no one passing by, and he wasted no time dropping the sample into a vial of clear liquid he'd produced from his coat. A quick inversion of the container and the mixture remained clear, free of any indicative color.

That ruled out sabotage, then.

Shino straightened one of Yugito's pale arms and searched for a vein near the joint of her elbow. He pricked her freshly healed skin and smeared some of her blood on the pad of his thumb. Plucking out the medical inventory book C returned to him two months ago, he opened to the back cover where his self-made pocket still held the seal papers Kiba drew up with a jutsu Sakura manufactured one night after dinner.

One bloody thumb-print later, the seal brightened and dimmed, but didn't change color either.

"If nothing's wrong with her blood either, perhaps..."

His eye drifted towards the door again. Even after running every possible consequence in his head, he shut the door, locked it, and let his kikai swirl around the room.

:: ::

C tapped his pen against his desk as he sat in his office, tens of papers waiting for his signature but his thoughts a million miles away. It was about that time of year again for staff evaluations that would eventually be read over by the Cirrus Central Hospital head and then eventually Raikage-sama himself, and rarely was there ever an employee that came out with a poor assessment.

Which came to the problem of the newest medic working the rounds.

When he picked Shino up from Catatumbo, he was expecting a medic that could at the very least take up the slack and keep the rest of them from shouldering too much work. He thought the hospital would have a new medic to take on simple cases like broken skin and snapped bones, or would take up the duty of going through the routine check ups all shinobi were required to attend to once a year.

But what did he end up getting? He got a medic that could pick up a plethora of anomalies three minutes after a simple scan, could be as efficient without chakra as he was with chakra, and could correctly identify chakra burns by sight and hold no prejudice for any patient he worked with.

And much to his disgruntlement, those things he listed were only the few of many.

To put it simply, Shino was brilliant and he had no idea how Konoha let this one go.

He frowned. And if the boy had been left to rot in Catatumbo, there would have been nothing left of him but scar tissue and healing hands.

A knock on the door resounded, and C straightened. "Come in." A nurse bustles through and set another stack of files by his side. He withheld a sigh. "More evaluations?"

"Got it in one." She smiled pityingly. "This is the last batch of them, if that makes you feel any better."

"A bit. Thank you," he said. He clicked the top of his pen before setting it down. "If you're going past the break room, could you get Shino for me? I need to talk to him about some of the upcoming appointments we have later today."

"Oh, he's not in there."

C could pinpoint the exact moment his blood started to freeze.

"What do you mean?"

"I stopped by the break room before coming here and the only one in there was Q-sensei eating his lunch and—C-sensei?"

C was up on his feet before he even got a chance to think and brushed past the nurse with a quick 'excuse me'. His office was on the top of seven floors and there was an endless amount of units he could check to find the wayward medic.

'Had I let my guard down? Was he waiting for the perfect moment?' He burst through every door he passed and looked through every single viewing window. 'What was I thinking, letting him roam and interact with the Kumo citizens? I shouldn't have been so desperate—I shouldn't have taken the chance.'

He'd skimmed three floors before he was struck with a thought.

C shunshinned to the second floor, the step-down unit were all patients were under intermediate care and ran towards recovery room eight. In the plastic pouch on the wall just outside was the file labeled Nii Yugito with her shinobi identification picture of all to see.

He grasped the door handle and tried to turn it. It didn't budge.

There was a rush in his ears as he tightened his grip and forced it in so hard that his hand went through the door and ripped the locking mechanism from its frame.

C barged through the door, and the scene that welcomed him was one that he probably wouldn't forget.

Blood streaked out of Yugito's nose and ears as Shino stood by her bedside, black insects on half her face and half of his as he cradled a wriggling mass of white worms in the palms of his hands.

"There were parasites in her brain," Shino greeted. One of the worms dropped onto the floor and a small team of kikai swoop down to immobilize it. C's jaw unhinged. "When would you like to conduct further research?"

:: ::

Itachi didn't feel it was right for him to intrude on his partner's space; he was entitled to his own secrets and traditions, and perhaps in this case, his times of mourning the wife and daughter he barely spoke of.

Kisame sat in front of a grave, cross-legged and rain pouring over his uncovered head. His cloak was absent as well as Samehada, and the grounds were alight in neon white depictions of lambs and lions that ran all the way from the gravestones to the brick walls that barred the cemetery. Just like the rest of the art that scattered Amegakure, even these ones had meaning, and they might as well have been the most sentimental of them all.

Itachi shifted from his spot beneath an overhang just a ways behind the graveyard gates, just out of his partner's line of sight but his partner perfectly in line with his.

Kisame was never a quiet, somber sort of fellow. There was always a friendly air about him despite his pointed teeth and the way his posture screamed for a fight. He joked as he pleased and laughed out loud all the same, but there was never an ounce of disrespect he carried in his huge, muscled body. Every opponent he addressed with the same courtesy as his comrades and he always upheld his top moral of never killing or harming children.

A kind criminal, Itachi thought. Maybe it was a bit oxymoronic and maybe that description won't ever make sense, but at this point he doubted he'd ever meet another person like Hoshigaki Kisame—someone who had no reason to look upon the world with a chuckle and a grin, but did anyways.

And, someone who always seemed to remember his favorite types of tea and the off-fact that he always liked eating dango in even sticks, never odds.

Itachi's brow furrowed.

The rain continued its merciless onslaught and he unconsciously tightened his cloak around himself as his breath came out in puffs of faint white. Now that he thought about it, it was Kisame who nagged him to go to his appointments, cooked his favorite meals whenever he happened to be at his apartment, could always manage to find a book at the bookstore that he himself was never interested, but Itachi was always surprised to enjoy.

He scoffed lightly and shook his head.

'It's his kindness,' he thought softly, 'that I always seem to be taking advantage of.'

"He's visiting his daughter today, it seems."

Konan appeared beside him, aloof and as chilled as the air around them with her arms crossed over her middle and not a single drop of rain on her skin. Itachi tilted his head.

"You know of his daughter."

"I used to look after her whenever Kisame-san was away," she said. She glanced at him briefly before her gaze flickered back to the cemetery. "I understand your confusion. It's hard for him to speak of her even after all this time."

Itachi didn't blame Kisame. He can't. How could he, when even at night when he was all alone and his parents' names refused to leave his lips without a burning in his throat and tears swelling just behind his eyes. He regretted and regretted and regretted and regretted, and when he looked at Kisame it was almost like he never did. He lost everything, they both had, but for Kisame it was never his own fault.

That was the difference between them. Because Kisame was a good man,

'And I'm not.'

"I believe it was best for the two of you to be partners," Konan said. "It's good for you. The both of you."

Itachi turned back to ask what she meant, but there was nothing beside him but the cold and the rain.

:: ::

"I heard you were the one that saved my life."

Nii Yugito leaned against the entryway of Greenhouse Five and watched as a boy spun around in his chair, his sample left in the microscope and his goggle-glasses hanging around his neck. She noticed how his right eye shined and didn't move in tune with the other, but before she could observe further, his gloves were peeled off and in the nearby trash can and he was readjusting the glasses over his face.

'My, it turns out the boy is as interesting as C-san made him sound.'

"I noticed the parasites," he replied. He stood to smooth the wrinkles in his coat and extended his hand. "Shino. It's good to see you've made a full recovery, Nii-san."

She took his hand and gave a firm shake and a friendly smile. "You dug around my brain a couple days ago, Shino-san. Call me Yugito."

"Yugito-san, then," he acquiesced. He gestured towards his work bench. "Would you like to take a look at what nearly killed you?"

"Morbid," she snorted. "But sure."

Yugito leaned over the table and peered into the twin ocular lenses he pointed out on the microscope. Under the harsh white light under the viewing table, she spied a few flat things writhing in the petri dish.

"These worms are of a chakra-consuming variety," Shino explained. He picked up a scalpel and directed her gaze to the thin, pink lines that sprouted from its ends. His fingers were covered in scars, she saw, and it seemed to extend past the bandages and his sleeves. "They have the ability to mask themselves in what they devour, making it nearly undetectable for medics since they complete most screenings with chakra as well."

"So how did you spot them?"

"I employ the use of non-chakra standard scans," he replied. "Why? There is a chance to catch things that chakra cannot, as exhibited with your case." He set the lid on the petri dishes and raised his head back up to her. "Prior to your admission to the hospital, have you gone swimming in questionable waters or consumed meat that hadn't been fully cooked?"

She blinked. "Oh, uh, I had some fish from a stagnant lake, but I thought I wouldn't have to worry about that if I cooked it through enough." Her gaze followed his hand as he jotted down bullet points on his notepad.

- Heat resistant? Devise experiment.

- Life span without viable hose? Continue current experiment.

- Living conditions? Follow up with C.

- Visit Cirrus Central's store rooms for more samples.

He was a more competent medic, Yugito mused. When she'd woken up at the hospital mildly disoriented and Matatabi hissing at her in furious worry in her head, C had come in shortly after with an account of just what happened to her and the fact that he hadn't been the attending medic at the time of the parasites' discovery.

That probably surprised her more than anything; she was a younger jinchuuriki with far less social pull and experience than Bee, and much of the hospital staff were wary of taking her on ever since that incident of an intern burning their hands on Matatabi's chakra and scorching the ends of those nerves.

It wasn't like it was her fault the intern hadn't been paying attention, but the damage was already done and she was pushed further on the outskirts of Kumo's social circles.

"As long as you continue to take your medication as directed, all of the parasite residues should be cleared from your system and your name can return to the active mission roster in two weeks' time," Shino said. "If you have any questions, feel free to ask."

'There are scars on his neck as well, Yugito-chan,' Matatabi remarked with lingering interest. Her tails flicked behind her in her host's mindscape. 'Those are most certainly self-inflicted.'

Yugito pulled back from the microscope and planted her hands on her hips. "I've got just one: who are you?"

His brow furrowed. "Who am I? As in, my origins? I hail from Imvula—"

"C told me the same thing, but I knew it was a lie from the moment he told me. And seeing you now only cements that truth," she said. The crease between Shino's eyebrows leveled out as he tucked both hands in his coat pockets. "Other than that, you certainly don't have the subtle lilt in your vowels that all natives share." She smiled. "It's quite a small border town, Shino-san, and while you and C have everyone else fooled, I'm sorry to say it hasn't swayed me."

"Then there's not much I can say," he admitted. "It's all under C-sensei's jurisdiction, but all the time I spend out of the hospital is in Catatumbo Penitentiary. Why?" Her eyes blew wide as they tried to search for the lie in his face. "I'm certainly not a guard, which leaves the only other option."

Yugito was stunned.

Her life was saved by a foreign prisoner.

'Who knows I'm a jinchuuriki, but doesn't care regardless.' And he must be trusted, especially after the stunt with her case, because he was the only one in this greenhouse and she knew C well enough that he would've never let a prisoner to themselves if they posed even the slightest threat to the village.

'And what does that mean to you?'

'That if he doesn't care that you're with me, then...'

A smile was back on her face, but it was much softer than the last. "I just remembered what I came here for." She bowed deeply, and Shino shuffled a surprised few steps backwards. "I wanted to thank you for saving my life, and that you'll have my unending gratitude for everything you've done."

"Yugito-san, there's no need to thank me. Why? Because all I've done is my job," he protested.

"And that's more to say than a lot of other people," she replied with only a drop of resigned bitterness in her voice. But it was gone when she addressed him again as she took in just how young he was. Too young to have been captured and locked in Catatumbo. Too young to have possibly known about the parasites in her brain when no one else did. But here he was. "I would've died if it weren't for you."

He ducked his head. "I had only done what was necessary."

Matatabi purred, satisfied. 'Ah, how modest. Such a rare find these days.'

"Well whatever you call it, I'm thankful for." Yugito glanced through the glass walls of the greenhouse. "Sorry I have to cut this visit short, I need to meet with Raikage-sama to turn in my mission report." She flashed him one last smile before she headed for the exit. "But I'll see you around. Let me know if you need anything, alright?"

She turned around—

"Actually, Yugito-san, could you do one thing for me?"

—but the call from behind has her looking back over her shoulder.

"Please be careful when eating fish from dubious bodies of water," he deadpanned. "Brain parasites truly aren't a prime source of nutrition."

She laughed. "I'll do my best."

She would definitely pay more visits to the hospital from now on.

:: ::

And in June, the Rain Would Swoon

:: ::

Kiba had been combing out a pretty ridiculous knot from Akamaru's fur when his cell door clicked and swung open, revealing Darui in his usual uniform with his sword slung along his back.

Kiba cocked his head. "Uh, didya' need me for somethin' else?" he questioned slowly. "Mabui-san walked me back probably, like, an hour ago and it was pretty dark when we were comin' back so, oh shit, wait, are you guys gonna kill me? Like, is this it? Okay, well, I guess it took you guys long enough but I thought we really had a thing goin'—"

"You're not getting executed," the jounin interrupted amusedly, holding off a snort at how the boy sagged in relief. Someone might as well have told him he wouldn't have to take a test and he would've reacted the same way. "You're getting transferred to another cell. Get your things and come on."

"Wh—another cell?" Kiba hefted himself to his feet and swooped his scrolls, ink, and brushes into his arms, and Akamaru scrambled onto all fours and latched onto his partner's spare clothes. They were led out the hall and up the spiraling stairs instead of the usual downwards. "Somethin' wrong with ours?"

"Did you like your old cell?"

"Nah, it sucks," he answered honestly. This time, Darui did snort. "But I'm pretty sure that was normal prisoner treatment. You sure we're definitely not gettin' killed?"

"Do you want to be?"

"Uh, no, but I'm just askin'."

They ended up somewhere on the top floors, Kiba noted cautiously. One had an open entrance with no door, and a quick glance inside showed him a clean space with room for storage. But the other had the same thick metal door as his old cell, and as Darui swung it open and ushered him inside, he saw...

He blinked. And again. Then he rubbed his eyes with his sleeves and blinked a few more times and strained himself to make sure his eyes weren't acting up.

The new cell was as big as Sakura's apartment back in Konoha; the walls were painted a cream color and a bookshelf spanned an entire half of one wall. To its right was a plain gray couch and to the wall adjacent was a cluster of beds that Akamaru carefully poked at with a damp nose.

"What's..."

Across from the book shelf was a connecting door that led to a bathroom equipped with a single sink, a toilet, and a shower head all surrounded by white tile. Kiba slowly set his things down on the small brown table near the shelf and turned towards the door.

"What's this?"

Darui gestured lazily. "Your new cell." At the sight of Kiba gazing up at him with some newfound wonder, he averted his eyes (shame, it must have been when he reflected on it later). "This is the ninth month you've been at Catatumbo and the sixth month you've loaned your services to the Seals Division. Mabui-san and I were able to pull a couple of strings." He hummed. "Well, us and a few others." He coughed to clear his throat. "I'll leave you to settle down."

The door shut but Kiba barely heard it. One of his hands dropped to thread through the fur on Akamaru's head.

He didn't know how long he stood there staring at the clean walls and carpeted floor and the couch he could already imagine himself taking day-long naps on.

He couldn't remember the feeling of sleeping on something that didn't have springs digging into his back or wasn't a concrete floor. The other cell was a gray brick with nothing in it and the Coliseum cell had just been a rotting, dilapidated—

Akamaru barked frantically, and Kiba's head snapped over to the beds.

Beds. Plural.

"I-Is... that..."

There was the sound of the door unlocking again and he spun around, nearly knocking his shin into the table.

Shino walked in, and they made eye contact for the first time in nine months.

"Shi—OOF!"

Kiba couldn't manage another syllable as he was lifted into the air and crushed into sturdy arms and the deafening sound of kikaichu buzzes. A face pressed into the crook of his neck and a pair of arms locked around his middle like they hung on for dear life, and before he knew it, he was stifling the choked sobs that clogged his throat as he wrapped his own arms around his friend's neck and breathed in the familiar scent of herbs and antiseptic and old books.

"You grew out your hair," Kiba sniffed, a hand coming up to feel the high bun atop Shino's head.

"And you got new earrings," Shino mumbled. They pulled away with their hands still on each other's sleeves, and Shino braced himself to keep steady as the now-enormous Akamaru dove into his side. Kiba grinned sheepishly and scratched the back of his head.

"So I got a story 'bout that, actually..."

"What does that mean?"

"Okay, but don't get mad—"

Akamaru suddenly wiggled until he was back on the ground, his tail wagging so fast it was nearly a blur.

Kiba and Shino shifted back towards the door.

It wasn't closed.

And Sakura stood in the threshold, over a full head taller than them both and pink hair cropped to the base of her neck.

More tears burst past Kiba's eyes and he shouted the first thing that popped in his head. "Why the fuck are you so tall you goddamn sasquatch?!"

He ran and jumped into her, her good arm latching around his waist as he clung on. Shino and Akamaru weren't too far behind and their combined weights were enough to barrel them all into a pile by the bookshelf.

Kiba's shoulder smacked against the table, Sakura knocked the back of her head on the floor, Shino ended up a starfish over the both of them with all of Akamaru's paws planted on his back.

"I'm not tall," Sakura murmured. Her right arm held Kiba as close as she could hold him and she buried her face on the top of Shino's head. "Not my fault you can't grow."

She still smelled of polished steel and fresh bandages and rain at its most violent, and it only made Kiba cry harder.

It had been so long since he'd felt this warm.

It had been so long since he'd been home.

:: ::

And here we end with fabulous fanart by

OfCloves, my lovely beta!