Aisa, Kento, and Michiko were sitting in a kneeling position next to me, when I woke up next. They all looked exhausted and worried. Not a bit of their energy or enthusiasm was on display. "Sensei!" Michiko perked up when she saw that I was silently observing them, having just woken up.

"You three did well, I've been told," I spoke gently, my voice raspy. Aisa took the cup of water and handed it to me so I could drink. He pointedly didn't stare at my missing fingers.

It was the first time that they didn't brighten up at my praise, exhaustion pulling down on them as though gravity had doubled. The attack had taken a big toll on them and it showed tremendously.

"Go home and rest," I ordered. "Be with your families. Don't waste your break hours on me."

Shoulders sagging, Michiko and Kento got up. "Feel better, sensei," Kento murmered.

"We'll come visit," Michiko affirmed.

After they left, I turned my attention towards Aisa who sat in front of me, wide-eyed and shaking with anticipation.

"Where's Aiden?" He asked. "I haven't been able to find him anywhere yet, which makes sense I guess because all the hospital areas are overflowing and none of the lists of injured with their locations is even remotely up to date, and he was probably hurt a little in the fight? Because the bad guys were really strong—Kento, Michiko, and I had to help take one out and it was really scary and hard but we're fine! Anyway, do you know where Aiden is?" Even though he was visibly tired, his voice still brightened, asking about his brother.

I let out a deep breath and stayed silent, carefully watching him, trying to figure out how to say what needed to be said. But instead of the truth that needed to be spoken, I found myself echoing, "Eat your vegetables."

Aisa looked at me strangely and let out a nervous laugh. "You know I only like ramen and sushi and your desserts and not vegetables, Cashile sensei," he replied. He could sense the mood change however and responded accordingly: denial. "I guess the reason I couldn't find him in the hospital is that he wasn't that badly injured, so he's still out there helping, right? He saved you, right? I sent him to you to save you," he said quickly, desperately, naively. His fingers clenched on his knees.

"You idiot," I whispered, unable to bring myself to say what I need to say. Aisa grabbed onto my arm, anxiety most likely overwhelming him. Keeping facts from him, keeping him in the dark would do nothing. If anything it would make him more helpless. I needed to tell him straight. Instead, my mouth formed the words, "He loves you."

"I know, Cashile," he laughed, voice high and nervous and increasingly hysterical. "I don't need you to tell me that." He stood, laboriously pulling me up with him, grip tight and eyes panicked. "We should go look for him; he's probably wondering where I am and if I'm okay and if you're okay, too."

I squeezed my eyes shut, wishing to rub at my temples, wishing to rub away all the headaches and the problems. I shook his hand from my arm, swaying weakly for a moment. I wanted to put this off. I wanted to panic, throw up, pass out. Instead, I swallowed audibly to clear my throat and said, "An enemy wounded him. Stabbed. In the chest." Unfortunately, I stumbled in both my voice and my facial expression. I ruthlessly strangled my emotions, pushing them down, down, down, into a steel room with locks that I knew would rust and break long before I was ready for them to. "He's gone."

"Y-you... you mean he's going away, right?" Aisa asked, voice high pitched and trembling. He stepped away from me and I locked my knees to keep from collapsing bonelessly to the ground. "He's going away for awhile but then he'll come back, like you did, right?"

I stared at him as his lips trembled and his eyes—a lighter brown then Aiden's, rounder and softer, too—filled with tears. "No, Aisa," I replied. My voice was cold and void of emotion and I struggled and failed to turn it into something kinder without releasing my iron grip on my own emotions. "He's not coming back."

There was silence between us as Aisa blinked, two large tears sliding from his eyes to make room for more. "What do you mean he's not coming back?" Aisa demanded, but there was no real force behind his question. "What do you mean? Of course he's coming back; he always comes back; he has to come back!"

Aisa was crying hard, shaking and sobbing and snotting. I sat there, cold and resolute and very far away even though I was only feet from him. I didn't want to deal with this, I wanted anyone else to be here to force this through Aisa's head, I wanted Aid—

"He's dead."

I spoke before I really registered my mouth forming words, and I vaguely thought that I should have be alarmed by the fact that I couldn't really feel my lips move or lungs push air out to make the sound that had fallen so flatly onto the ground between us. Two words. Two words that somehow contained an inconceivable, impossible, incomprehensible truth. Aisa is frozen, staring at me and studying my face with wide eyes but I don't crack, I couldn't even if I wanted to, and instead of my face the words crack the earth beneath Aisa's feet, the very foundations of his world, and I don't even reach out to steady him as he rocked, swayed, collapsed.

When he passed out from exhaustion and hyperventilating and grief-fueled sobbing. I stood, placed him on the makeshift bed in my stead, and left the area. I found a nurse who agreed to give me a once over, passing her glowing green hand over my body, and she declared me injured, capable of leaving, but not fit to help with the reparation of the village, yet.

I nodded, pressed my thumb into the stumps of my fingers, and told her that there was a genin on the bed I'd been using who had passed out from exhaustion after finding out his brother was dead. Then I left.

I needed to find my old sensei. He owed me a favor.

***

I found him in a makeshift headquarters building, going over all the intel from both attacks that had been generated so far. When I walked in he looked up, concern and relief sweeping across his face at the sight of me.

"Cashile," he sighed, placing paperwork down. "You're alive. Are you okay?"

"Ibiki," I greeted, my voice cold and distant even to my own ears, ignoring his question. "I have a favor to ask."

He watched me closely, eyes guarded at my tone. "What do you need, Cashile?" He questioned slowly. "Intel on the Rising Phoenix's attack isn't very in-depth, yet, if that's what you're looking for."

"No," I told him. "I can get the data later. No. I want something else. I know that you are adept at tearing down walls in minds." He winced at the reminder of what he'd done to me after the spiders, guilt flashing across his face for a split second. Good. Now he was more vulnerable, more likely to agree to my demands.

"Yes," he finally acknowledged, if only to fill the silence.

"How good are you at putting walls back up?"

A wary look comes to his face; a look that he didn't bother to hide. "Who do you want me to put a wall up in?"

I raised my dead eyes to his and allowed the admittance of weakness to fall from my lips. "Me."

He processed the information, several emotions flitting through his eyes. He never was good at hiding his emotions around me—from me. "Why?" He finally asked, trying to understand, buy more time. "Why do you want me to put a wall in your mind?"

Emotions tried to surge up, rebel from my firm grasp on them. I ruthlessly shoved them down into a box, pressing my thumb into my stumps. "The Rising Phoenix had to break down walls in my mind to find the information they needed," I replied. "The information that my parents had hidden in me as a child."

"You want me to take that information away from you?" Ibiki raised his eyebrows in disbelief. "That's the last thing I would expect from you. 'Knowledge is power', right?"

"I do not wish for you to seal that information from me." Ibiki swallowed, clearly beginning to truly worry about my monotonous tone and emotionless face and dead eyes. "The Hokage—Minato—placed another seal in me."

"The one that blocked the memories of the first four or five years of your life, right?" Ibiki remembered. "It's the only compromise he could reach with the village elders. They wanted you executed or imprisoned, just in case you were a spy as well."

"Yes." I nodded. "I want you to replace that seal."

Ibiki stared at me. I had predicted a loud reaction: yelling, vehement refusal, demands of something in return. Instead, he softly asked, "Why?"

The silence stretched between us before I decided that I would need to inform him of my reasoning: otherwise, he would refuse to do as I asked. "The early years of childhood are integral to the development of a child's emotional competence," I informed in a detached, clinical tone. "When the Hokage sealed—"

"You want me to seal your early childhood memories," Ibiki interrupted in a flat tone, realization beginning to color it with indignation, "Because you want to go back to how you were."

I nodded shortly.

"You were a sociopath," his words grew more heated, more colorful and hot and bright and I just want them to cool down, to be calm and emotionless and dead like Aiden. "You didn't feel anything for anybody—not even yourself!"

But more than his words I was hearing Aiden's voice, and he's telling me to be careful, telling me he loves me, telling me he's stillherestillherestillhere, and I just wanted it all to stop.

I shook my head sharply, denying his words, shaking the thoughts from my head, and something must have shown on my face, because Ibiki's voice abruptly became subdued. "You're feeling things," he theorized, voice suddenly exhausted. "Your emotions have been returning because the Rising Phoenix had to break the Hokage's seal in order to reach the information they needed. And then they broke you, made you into that emotionless puppet, and you didn't have to deal with the memories because they sealed everything away."

He was watching me with irrefutable sorrow in his eyes. I was being strangled by the rising emotions, by the grief and the anger and the hate and the regret and Ibiki wasn't helping me.

"But then, when we got you back, you broke open every seal in your mind." And was it my imagination, or was pride coloring his voice? His voice dropped lower, "Including the seal on your early childhood. Right?"

My neck was stiff and head heavy as I forced a nod.

"And ever since, the emotions have begun to return in full force. When you were the Claw there were no emotions, and when you had the Hokage's seal they were... muted."

Another nod, short and desperate.

"And you've never had to deal with these emotions before," Ibiki realized. "You're not like the rest of us, who learned how to control and live with them. You've never had them—not really, at least. And now you don't know what to do." He paused, watched me for a moment, then softly asked, "Cashile, what happened to make you decide this now?"

"He's dead." The words slipped from my lips despite the locked box that was my emotions and it showed that I was right, to ask Ibiki to do this. I shook my head sharply. "You've torn down walls in my mind before, without my permission. Now put one up, with my permission."

Ibiki understood exactly what I was offering: forgiveness, of a sort. We would be even. He would no longer owe me anything for invading the privacy of my mind. I knew that he would agree to seal my memories as I demanded.

Ibiki stared at me for a long time. "Cashile," he began, and I can't recognize the emotion coloring his voice, this time. "You may hate me for this; you may not understand; you may not ever realize why: but I hope that, maybe, one day, you'll forgive me." He took a deep breath. I didn't understand why he thought I would hate him for sealing my memories: I'd asked him to do it, after all.

He made several hand signs, and I prepared for him to enter my head. I took a staggering step as I felt the pressure on my mind, the presence that could only be Ibiki, and it bears down on my mind for one long, insufferable moment, and then it was suddenly gone.

It had felt like an instant, but I knew several minutes had passed. Tentatively, I reached back into my memories, stalked through my mind castle, and tried to find the seal.

There was none.

I cried out, overwhelmed by the sudden onslaught of memories and emotions that I had reached out to grab, barely managing to slam the doors of my mind palace shut and escape from the tide.

When I opened my eyes, Ibiki was watching me with sad and hopeful eyes. "You didn't seal the memories," I accused, anger slipping into my voice. "Seal them!"

"No," Ibiki shook his head gently. "I won't."

"What did you do?" I growled, desperately trying to understand. "What have you done to me?"

"I placed a seal around your mind," he explained. "No one you go to will be able to tamper with your mind unless they're more skilled than me; unless they can break my seal first."

Tears sprang to my eyes, and I angrily wiped them away, hating my weakness, hating the world, hating the emotions I couldn't control. Hating Ibiki for betraying me. Hating my helplessness. Hating Aiden for dying. For living. For loving me. And above all...

Hating myself.