Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The woods were quiet near the border. The skirmishes so frequent and so disruptive not a single animal dared poke their noses out lest it draw attention. It’s familiar to him, in a deep in his soul beyond the bounds of memory kind of way and he hates it as much as he lets it guide him to safety.

Fragments weren’t smart to base your decisions on and yet he found himself doing that an awful lot.

The rattle of the cart rolling over a pothole jolts him out of his thoughts, abruptly reminding that supply train duty was no time to get lost in his own head. Not in these dangerous times. Not during the Third War.

Especially when there were children depending on him, he thought, ignoring for the moment that they were all the same age. In body at least. None of them would be alive if it were the same mentally.

Some days he thinks it’s a blessing. (Some days he wishes it was.)

“Pst! Toboe!” A boy with shaggy dark hair falling in his eyes hopped onto the back of the cart, “Switch with me, I’m tired.”

“You’re always tired, Ippei,” he grumbled, but gamely crawled out of his burlap nest anyway. Moving around would help banish the dark thoughts, or so he hoped. “And what have I told you about pulling your hair back?” He tugged on a lock of hair for emphasis.

Ippei batted his hand away goodnaturedly, “Yeah, yeah, Mom, whatever you say.”

Toboe scowled, knowing from long experience that trying to refute that ridiculous nickname would just make Ippei whine at him. Again. Hearing Ippei whine stirred old, old memories with warped feelings and warped associations and it all just tangled up in his head sometimes, whether he loved those long dead people or wanted to escape them.

“Ooh, Mom’s scolding Ippei again,” Aino whistled; under her breath but still loud against the tense hush they all walked in outside of the village these days. She kept her brown hair cropped short, almost proudly showing off the livid scar running from temple to ear.

“Go switch with Kagari if you’re feeling that mischievous,” he snapped half-heartedly. Aino made a face at him; Kagari had drawn the short straw. He was up front driving the cart; a position that previously belonged to a cantankerous chuunin who’d made no bones about how little regard he held them in. But he was dead and they were not, and so it goes in war.

It made Toboe seethe with all the bitter fury his eight year old heart was capable of, and the parts of him convinced he was someone else reborn curdled with wrath and shame.

The village was supposed to be a sanctuary from war, sanctuary for children like them! But here they were, child soldiers taking to the field once more. Genin so lowly they didn’t even merit a jounin sensei of their own.

No, those were reserved for the best and the brightest, the clan heirs and the geniuses, not rootless, nameless orphans like Ippei, and Aino, and Kagari. Even Toboe, when it came down to it; too old where it didn’t count yet and too invested in his classmates’ progress to give much care to his own work.

It wasn’t like he had anything to prove to anyone. There just didn’t seem much point to showing off when flashiness just got you killed.

Toboe firmly reminds himself there’s no point in getting self-righteous about it. If he is Toboe alone then there’s nothing he can do about it. And if he were somehow that person too, which he adamantly denies, then his decisions helped make this problem and he should stop whining about how unfair the consequences were now that he’s suffering them too.

Toboe stilled, head cocked and /listening/ hard. “Aino, we have company.”

Aino freezes then forces herself to keep moving, stiff and trembling minutely. “How many?”

“Three signatures,” Toboe rotated until he faced them, “coming south-west. Chuunin level at the most. Eta...fifteen minutes. Go warn Kagari, and prep the horses.” He turned to knock on the cart. “Ippei! No time to nap. Operation: Nobody’s Home is a go.”

A long heartfelt moan came from the burlap nest. “Why do we even call it that? That’s a stupid name.” Ippei fumbled his way out of the nest, blearily pulling his hair properly back.

“Because Kagari thinks we suck at naming things and the rest of us don’t care enough to dispute him,” Toboe said dryly.

Even more heartfelt cursing came from up front and the cart jerked to a halt as Kagari pulled on the reins. A boy with spiky, auburn hair hopped off the front seat and unhooked the horses from the cart with movements made deft with experience. In short order the four of them overturned the cart, strewed the empty burlap strategically around, removed a wheel, and activated a seal inked on the underside of the cart to cast a genjutsu that made the scene look aged and wrecked. Kagari cast another genjutsu on the horses to make them walk a certain distance from the cart and return later when the coast was clear.

The four of them huddled under the cart, pulling their chakra inward and waiting with baited breath.

Toboe quietly tapped time and coordinates for the incoming shinobi.

At the barest sound of shinobi sandals hitting wood, then dirt, they went absolutely still. Ippei’s breathing stuttered when he instinctively tried to hold his breath only to force it even again. Toboe felt a brief flash of satisfaction that he shoved aside as irrelevant for the moment. He’d crow about one-upping the academy teachers once they survived this.

Toboe narrowed his eyes as three pairs of feet could be seen through the gap between cart and ground; those sandals were Konoha standard…

“Aw man! This looks like one of ours,” a woman complained.

Toboe exchanged a meaningful look with Aino. False alarm? She mouthed. He pursed his lips and shrugged back.

“For kami’s sake, can’t we get one break,” a man grumbled bitterly, kicking a loose stone.

“Can’t you stick a sock in it?” the woman rebutted. “We’re all tired Hamaki. Think of the kid.”

“Is that all that’s on your mind these days?” Hamaki hissed. “I am thinking of the kid! I think it would’ve been kinder to let him run himself to death against Iwa instead of lugging his creepy, staring ass back home!”

“You—!”

The last set of feet, much smaller than the other two, shuffled over to the overturned cart. Toboe eased up onto all fours, the other three following his lead. They winced when a hand slammed down on the seal and forcibly deactivated it, interrupting the increasingly vitriolic argument.

“What the...hell?”

Toboe pinched the bridge of his nose and clambered out from under the cart, coming nose to nose with an active mangekyo sharingan. The Uchiha wielding them was his age, he noticed with a pang of dismay, young and exhausted and possibly broken if the thousand yard stare said anything. The boy’s curls hung lankly, and the bags under his eyes threatened to swallow them whole.

Toboe blinked and an impression of a different Uchiha boy overlaid the real one, looking so alike it was breathtaking. He blinked again and reality reasserted. Unable to quite resist the impulse he reached out and smoothed his thumbs over those mangekyo eyes, making the Uchiha blink instinctively, and then again in bewilderment.

“You’re going to drop dead if you don’t deactivate them soon,” Toboe said, not quite blank but not quite apathetic either. “The coast is clear.” He said over his shoulder.

The Uchiha wasn’t the only one blinking when three more eight year olds popped out and began setting the cart to rights.

“Genin Toboe; de facto squad leader of supply squad thirty-four,” Toboe saluted. “These are genin Kagari, Aino, and Ippei. I’m afraid our original leader, chuunin Akahara Ryouma, died three months ago.” And good riddance, he finished in his head, the man was an enormous prick.

The woman gave him a hard stare. “Field Commander Chuunin Kikei Yomi. These are chuunin Hamaki Tohru, and Uchiha Shisui. You didn’t pick up a replacement at any of the supply stations?”

“No availabilities,” Toboe tilted his head, “and no expediences on replacements on the basis of we hadn’t gotten ourselves killed yet.”

“Yeah, cause you hide like cowards,” Hamaki drawled, an unpleasant expression on his face.

Toboe gazed at him blankly, long enough for Hamaki to start twitching uncomfortably. “Do you expect us to win any fights, Hamaki-san?”

Hamaki’s mouth twisted bitterly but whatever he was going to spit was lost when the Uchiha spoke.

“‘T was a good trick,” the Uchiha shrugged listlessly when they turned to look at him. “I might not have noticed if it weren’t...you know.” He limply gestured in the vague direction of his face.

“Thanks, Senpai!” Aino chirped, sensing a safe lull in the conversation. “Ippei doesn’t look like much, I know, but he has a steady hand when it comes to sketching. And Kagari and I know all about sabotaging stuff without actually breaking it for real.”

“We’ve survived a lot of encounters with it,” Toboe said softly.

The Uchiha made to respond when Kikei cut over them. “We’re commandeering this cart,” she said implacably. “At least until the next supply station. We’ve been called back to Konoha for mandatory leave and some of us could use the break more than others.” Despite the neutral tone the Uchiha flinched minutely.

Kagari, who could read the undercurrents with all the skill of a street rat who always knew when he needed to cut and run, promptly made a production about what a relief it’d be to hand off cart driving duty to someone responsible and how he could finally nap for a change. And hey, Uchiha, you wanna pass me that burlap you’re standing next to? It’s for the nest.

“Nest?” The Uchiha parroted, still staring with mangekyo eyes.

“Yeah, nest,” Ippei nodded. “We all take turns on watch so it’s better to have naps throughout the day. So we’re always well rested, see?

“No one likes a sleepy watchman,” Aino speedily reattached the wheel with rather unnerving skill.

Toboe laid fingertips on the Uchiha’s elbow and gently but firmly steered him towards the reassembled nest. “Get some rest. We’ll watch.”

He couldn’t quite make out the nuances of the look the Uchiha shot him. It was tired, and disbelieving, and something that was grief, and anger, and the slow birth of madness rolled into one, drowning under relief. But he was out like a candle the instant his head hit his makeshift pillow.

Hamaki snorted, wordlessly taking the front seat and tsking impatiently as Kagari rehooked the returning horses back up.

“I won’t tolerate hiding,” Hamaki said, bitter and warning, and perhaps Hamaki was the one who should’ve been left on the front lines to run himself to death.

“Surely, with chuunin such as yourselves, we won’t need to,” Toboe said dryly.

Hamaki snorted but said nothing more, settling into sullen silence.

“Well,” Kikei said briskly, “now that that’s out of the way I suppose we’ll all get along just fine.” She settled next to Hamaki with a warning glare at the sullen chuunin, who glowered back.

Speak for yourself why don’t you, Toboe thought dryly. The Uchiha probably wasn’t the only one in need of mandatory leave; Hamaki was just as dangerously on edge in his own way if the blatant insubordination and backtalk were any indication. Battle fatigue manifested in many ways.

Too bad the war meant a dearth of Yamanaka to talk to.

Toboe hopped onto the back of the cart; resuming his prior place of leaning on the nest and letting his senses cast out for movement. Just drifting freely. The reliable canary, as always.

Even when his warnings went unheeded.

But that was a Tobirama problem.

He was Toboe.

Chapter Text

But that was a Tobirama problem.

He was Toboe.

It was a full day before they made it to the next supply station, Toboe and his band keeping their heads down and their voices lower around Hamaki and Kikei. Adults weren’t... precisely enemies but they’d had more than enough of their superiors treating them with indifference, an open secret that genin corp members like them were jack-of-all-trades fodder. If the chunin noticed they were being unobtrusively avoided, they kept it to themselves.

Shisui spent a great deal of time curled up in the burlap nest, either in brief snatches of sleep or staring sightlessly into the distance. Toboe noted with some relief that his sharingan deactivated sometime in his sleep. None of them bothered trying to move him when it came to taking naps themselves, just flopped into the nest with him and pulled him into a sleepy cuddle. Shisui was just skin-hungry enough to allow it with minimal complaint.

“What do you guys transport?” Shisui asked at one point when it was Toboe’s turn. His voice so raspy Toboe immediately thrust a canteen at him with a stern frown. “There’s nothing in the cart but empty burlap?” he tried again after a careful sip.

“We’ve done food, on occasion,” Toboe said, slow and contemplative. “Weapons too. Armor. Clothes. Medicine once.”

“But none of that’s your usual, is it?” Shisui’s gaze was uncharacteristically— or perhaps all too characteristically? —piercing, remnants of his grief-fueled lethargy being shaken off, if only for the moment.

Toboe had turned away from that too perceptive gaze, burying his face in his makeshift pillow. “You’ll see when we hit up the next supply station.”

Shisui frowned at the non-answer. “But—”

“It won’t bring you peace of mind to know, Uchiha.” Toboe ignored the way Shisui flinched. “Leave it be. Concentrate on sleeping.”

Toboe responded to further attempts to ask by rolling on top of him and firmly ignoring any protests. Having actually earned the title of genius, Shisui learned not to keeping asking when Toboe didn’t feel like answering.

He’d find out soon enough anyway.

Midday the next morning saw the supply station bustling and suspicious, hidden in the trees and manned by a paranoid Yamanaka as it was. Predictably, as soon as the cart rolled to a stop his teammates promptly darted under it when it looked like he might ask who was coming with. Just because Yamanaka Inosu was...okay, he really couldn’t blame them. Toboe would foist this on someone else if he could get away with it.

“A moment, Commander,” he murmured to Kikei. “Yamanaka-san’s a little wary of new faces. He’s seen a lot of would-be infiltrators this side of the border.”

“Ah, I don’t know if I’m comfortable—” Kikei started only to be interrupted by Hamaki sneering, “If the kid wants to do something useful for once, I say let ‘em.” Kikei rounded on him with impressive speed.

Toboe slipped away while they were arguing. He’d never get anything done if he waited on the approval of upper management, that’s for sure. He picked his way past traps to within ten feet of the door, conscious all the while the eyes watching from inside.

“Yamanaka-san?” He tried. “Genin Toboe, reporting for package pickup.”

The door cracked open.

“What’s the passcode?”

Toboe nearly rolled his eyes. “Lilies on the wind.”

There was a long moment of silence.

“That code’s been in circulation a month now. I don’t think I like it anymore.” Yamanaka said musingly.

“Oh, for—! You instated it on a whim! No one’s going to figure out your stupid system!” Toboe bristled, crossing his arms.

“Careful infiltrator, I have you in range,” one green eye could be seen past the door.

Toboe allowed himself a good eyeroll, frankly he felt he earned it. “Lotus reaches for the surface. Dandelion drifts downward. Morning glory blooms in summer—”

Yamanaka threw the door open with an offended gasp, one hand pressed to his collarbone like a scandalized civilian granny. “How did you guess what the codes were? They’re unguessable, you said so yourself!” He squinted suspiciously. “Grandma Ioko, is that you in disguise? I told you I was eating fine.”

Toboe could feel his cheek twitching. “It doesn’t take a genius to figure out you’re into awful seasonal poetry.”

“You take that back! Hono-san’s work is the epitome of grace!” Yamanaka pointed an imperious finger at him. Toboe seriously considered the merits of lunging forward to bite it.

Several heartfelt groans came from the roof. And the bushes. And the trees. A woman poked her head over the roof ledge, blowing a strand of her long brown hair out of her eyes. “Just let them in, Inosu, for gods’ sakes. You’ve already scanned them and come back negative for bugs.” The bushes rustled again. She rolled her eyes. “Figure of speech, Aburame!”

“What the hell was all that,” Kikei said, face blank and going blanker as more shinobi crawled out of hiding and back into the station. Hamaki looked visibly disturbed. “What did she mean, scanned?”

“Yamanaka-san has a gentle touch, Commander,” Aino popped out of hiding and right behind the chunin. “He’s the first defense of Supply Station 89.” Also hair-raisingly terrifying. Toboe had nearly worked himself up into a panic several times thinking Yamanaka Inosu had detected his little problem; those memories weren’t real, they weren’t, but if anyone said something than they might be, gods—

“Congratulations, Senpai,” Ippei said to Shisui. “Looks like you’re a real boy after all.”

“Uh, thanks?” Shisui’s eyes kept darting to the doorway way where Yamanaka had disappeared, like any moment now he’d reappear and do something else equally as ridiculous as before.

“They just let him invade the minds of his fucking allies?” Hamaki snarled, face flushed and shoulders drawing tight. Kikei laid a restraining hand on his arm that he shrugged off roughly. Aino exchanged a quick look with Kagari and they both ducked away back to the cart.

“You don’t spend a lot of time at the border do you?” Yamanaka reappeared in the doorway, a small black-banded crate tucked under his arm. “You frontliners; so accustomed to enemies stabbing from the front you forget to look behind.” He hefted the crate. “Got your package, Toboe. Fresh from the front. Your next stop’s Konoha isn’t it?”

Toboe took the crate carefully, skirting out of the way when Hamaki stormed over to get in Yamanaka’s face. He took it to the cart and pried up a board to reveal a storage seal between the layers of wood, one of many. Shisui eyed him with solemn understanding from his place in the nest.

“Shouldn’t you be Squad 44 then?” He asked, seemingly nonchalant at finding out he’d been sleeping in a cart for hauling the dead, but Toboe could see the stiffness in his body language. Or it could have been Hamaki yelling. Both, Toboe figured.

“Life doesn’t adhere to puns, Uchiha,” Toboe said, offering a bland look.

“That’s just tragic,” Shisui said, equally bland. Kagari, loading up fresh rations into a far corner, nodded in agreement.

“It would be a big, glaring target on our backs though,” Ippei lamented, helping Aino up into the cart too. “Speaking of targets,” she said, glaring at the congregating chunin, “is that guy gonna stop yelling soon? This is the border .”

“He should know better,” Toboe said, eyes narrowed in annoyance.

“And I’m sure he does when he isn’t belligerently suicidal. S’why he’s getting sent home. He got people killed picking fights.” Shisui slumped back into the nest, eyes suspiciously shiny, lips pressed tight. Toboe frowned, thoughts circling back to the Uchiha’s mangekyo, those weren’t nice implications...

All of them grimaced when Kikei and Yamanaka finally resorted to KI to get Hamaki to shut up and get back to the cart.

“What’s Kikei’s deal?” Kagari asked, voice lowering. “Or is she just enforcing leave?” Enforcing Hamaki’s leave went unsaid.

“Kikei does something for T&I best I can figure,” Shisui murmured, swaying as the cart jolted back into motion. The horses whinnied and something about the sound upset Kagari, prompting him to climb up into the front seat and wrestle the reins away the chunin.

“What do you think you’re doing, don’t crack the reins so hard—!”

“Don’t tell me what to do, you little—”

“Hamaki!” Kikei snapped, killing intent rising once more. “You don’t know shit about driving horses. Leave it to people who do.”

Hamaki glared at them both, jaw clenched. “Fine, let the brat have his way,” he spat. “I’ll walk. See if I care.” Kikei wrapped an arm around a pale Kagari’s shoulders, face hard, her other hand moving to the tanto at her hip. Hamaki took the hint.

Toboe waited until Hamaki had moved ahead of the horses before turning to Aino and Ippei, “Kagari sleeps between us until we’re back in Konoha.”

“Konoha? How about until we’re back on the road even,” Ippei shook his head, hair flopping into his eyes. “It’s going to be a long three days.”

“Tell me about it,” Aino grumbled. “Hey, Senpai, you’re closest to the food. Dig me out an energy bar, would ya? I’m gonna need it.”

It was, indeed, a long three days. Not only did they keep themselves between Kagari and Hamaki, but Toboe had taken to spending long hours on night watch to make sure Hamaki didn’t do anything...unstable while most of them were out. He despised Hamaki’s attitude, it brought to mind fragmentary recollections of his— Tobirama’s— that man’s father. Toboe didn’t know if this Butsuma Senju was like that all the time or if the memories of his bad days were resurfacing first, there weren’t any emotions attached to give him a clue. There rarely were.

Toboe fiercely resented the effect Hamaki’s attitude had on his teammates as well. He’d worked so hard to undo the damage working under Akahara Ryouma had caused with his callousness, and his disregard for his squad’s lives. Even Shisui flinched more than once at some of the things Hamaki said despite repeated upbraiding from Kikei. Toboe could almost see their vulnerable hearts bleeding anew. He vowed that Hamaki had better watch his step from now on or Toboe would give him the final relief he seemed to long for. Painfully.

They all breathed a sigh of relief when Konoha’s gates loomed before them, tall and reassuring, the warm stone a welcome site.

Once past the gates Kikei grabbed Hamaki’s wrists, twisted them up his back. “This is where I leave you, Shisui. I’ll see you in court, alright?” She attempted a bright smile that didn’t quite mesh with the cursing chunin forced up onto his toes to relieve the pressure in his shoulders.

Shisui made some noise of assent, head ducking and gaze going distant at the reminder. Toboe gently pet his curls. “Do you need to be dropped off somewhere?” he asked. “We can stop by your Clan’s compound if you’d like. Or, if you wanted, you could come with when we drop off our cargo and go to the hospital with us. Whichever.”

“Someone’s injured?” Shisui asked, muffled by his knees.

“We’re just going for a check up,” Ippei said, trying for a reassuring smile. “Keeping our files up to date, you know?”

“Speak for yourself,” Aino retorted. “I gotta get this checked out again.” She pointed to the scar on her temple. Aino had been hit by a raiton-charged ninja wire in the skirmish that killed their former Squad Leader, now she was required for check ups whenever she was in the village, or once every month if she could swing it, just to ensure there’d be no surprise hiccups in her brain down the line.

“Senpai?” Kagari leaned over the front seat, concern in his eyes. “Where do you wanna go?”

Shisui took a shaky breath, then he gave them a wobbly smile. “I think I want to stay with you guys a little longer.”

Chapter Text

“Senpai?” Kagari leaned over the front seat, concern in his eyes. “Where do you wanna go?”

Shisui took a shaky breath, then he gave them a wobbly smile. “I think I want to stay with you guys a little longer.” 

The war ended while they were in the village. Word came from the front that Namikaze Minato, their own Yellow Flash, had decimated an army of Iwa shinobi all by himself. Further word suggesting an armistice was being drawn up was shaky but still going strong with the Hokage preparing for departure.

Shisui has complicated feelings about it. He doesn’t have to fight anymore and the relief makes his breath catch and his hands tremble. But he doesn’t have an outlet anymore either. Doesn’t know how to find one on his own. He’s just so angry these days, his eyes throb and he hates them, he hates what they mean.

He makes the—mistake? Good call? He doesn’t know yet —of mentioning he felt at loose ends in Kagari’s hearing and predictably it got back to the others.

He’s greeted the next day by Aino who drags him to obstacle courses and runs him until he can hardly think through the burn in his muscles. Ippei tags along and pelts him with chakra philosophy when it seemed like he was quiet too long for his tastes. Kagari hovered in the background, quietly fussing in his way, complaining about the state of his fridge and the dusty state of his home. Shisui knows he should make more of an effort with his house; when his mother returns he doesn’t want her coming home to a pigsty. He’s just, restless and listless at the same time and he doesn’t know how to deal with it.

“Don’t you guys have supply runs to do?” He asked at one point, sprawled out on his back on the cool grass after Aino made them all run obstacle courses until Ippei collapsed and refused to move out of self-defense.

“We’re waiting for Toboe to finish,” Aino grunted, her hands curled around her feet, trying to eke out one more centimeter of stretch.

Shisui lifted his head to look at her properly, “With what?”

“With what he’s doing,” Aino said firmly, shifting to a different position to stretch.

Toboe was...weird, in Shisui’s not so humble opinion. The guy was a still pool with a nightmare shark hidden under the surface, he could just tell. Toboe wandered in and out of their training sessions with alarming unpredictability, sometimes participating, sometimes napping. Questions were worthless, he’d humor maybe a handful before responding to further attempts by rolling on top and going to sleep.

It all depended on the kind of question, really.

“How did you guys end up on the field so early?” Shisui was once again sprawled in the grass, next to Toboe, it being one of the odd days he felt like participating. “You guys aren’t—um.” He flushed.

“Prodigies?” Toboe murmured, blinking one eye open to look at him. “No. Just more motivated than most.”

“What do you mean?” Unconsciously, he mimicked Toboe’s hushed tone. Besides, they were laying next to each, there was no need to be loud, or so Shisui told himself.

Toboe gave him a lazy look, rolling onto his side and tucking his arm under his head as a makeshift pillow. “Kagari and Aino are from Tanzaku-Gai,” he said, which seemed completely off topic. “Street brats,” he continued. “Different gangs but they generally ran in the same circles. They got busted; petty stuff, but they had a number of charges against them. Their choices were indentured servitude or the shinobi academy.”

“Oh,” Shisui said, feeling a little lame for not knowing what to say. He knew, intellectually, that during such times keeping full jailhouses was a waste of resources compared to community labor but it was quite another to actually know people who were personally affected by those policies. “And—?”

“Ippei’s a mission baby,” Toboe said with a sigh, curling into a more comfortable position. “Or a battlefield baby. He doesn’t bother keeping the story straight. Either way, he wants independence from his Clan for personal reasons I never bothered asking about and he never bothered to explain.”

“So what’s your story?” Shisui asked when it looked like Toboe was content to leave it at that and let the silence stretch between them.

“Mm. Some stripe of unwanted shinobi get. Like Ippei,” he shrugged lazily. “Guess I pickpocketed a few too many people for them to ignore.”

“Are you serious?” Shisui breathed, eyes wide.

“What can I say? I was bored.” A hint of a smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth before fading just as quickly. Toboe closed his eyes, clearly ready to be done with this conversation and nap. Except he wasn’t quite finished.

“We were the youngest in class, you know,” he murmured. Shisui gave him a sharp look. “The rest of them had two, maybe three years on us. So we stuck together and that was that.”

“I see,” Shisui said though he didn’t actually. He was from a major clan and a prodigy besides, being alone in a room full of people was par for the course for him. The idea of— what? Commiserating? Bonding? —with the Uchiha kids in the same boat had never occurred to him. They were the up and coming pillars of their Clan but...they weren’t exactly encouraged to interact when they could be training.

What would it be like, he wonders, to have peers instead of always being too far ahead or too far behind and always, always the odd one out?

He shies away from those thoughts with instinctive revulsion. He already had a friend and now he’s gone. He’s not, he’s not ready to open up again. Not so soon. Not while the wounds are still so raw.

Shisui desperately wants another mission, he wants away . Unfortunately, he’s stuck in the village until Hamaki’s court martial and nothing can make bureaucracy hurry up when there’s more important things to be focusing on. Like supply demands, and funerals, and the gods damned war ending. It’s been two weeks already and he’s easily looking at one more before he gets a solid heads up on the matter.

“I can hear you thinking,” Toboe grumbled, grabbing Shisui’s shirt and dragging him closer to tuck the Uchiha’s head under his chin. “Go to sleep.”

“I don’t want to sleep.”

Toboe sighed at him, “I know, but you need to.”

“Why?” Shisui asked. He knows he’s being petulant. He knows and doesn’t care, he just wants to stop feeling jittery in his own skin every time he has a second to breathe. And he’s had a lot of time to just breathe.

Toboe sighed again, “If you don’t sleep you’ll be short forever.”

“That’s not—”

“I’m on it, okay?” Toboe rolled them until he was on top. Shisui flailed halfheartedly, too used to this behavior to put up more than a token protest. “I know you feel bad right now, I’m working on it.”

“This is you ‘working on it’?” Shisui asked incredulously. And maybe a little weirded out. This didn’t look like therapy, it looked like distraction and naps, which, he wasn’t complaining but. What the hell?

Toboe tightened his grip, “No, idiot. This is my leisure time. You’ll find out what I’m doing later.”

Well. That wasn’t ominous at all. Seeing as Toboe was now stubbornly pretending to be asleep, and the others put actual clams to shame with how tight lipped they were, Shisui guesses he’s just going to have to trust they won’t put him in real therapy. He’s heard things from the jounin about therapy.

His mother comes home the day before the court martial.

Uchiha Nagatsuki arrives home from the warfront the way she arrives everywhere; in secret, in silence, a complete ambush. A true stealth artist to the core. Shisui wakes up one day and she’s simply there, puttering around like always.

He has to stop and grip the doorway because it feels like his heart is trying to crawl up his throat and his eyes are burning again. He can’t make himself speak, as if to do so would wake him up from a dream. His mother merely holds an arm out in invitation, and he takes it eagerly, crowding up against her side and letting her sway them to the rhythm of her humming.

Later, there will be serious talks and tears aplenty. For now there are only soft touches and comforting quiet.

She stands by his side when they attend Hamaki’s sentencing, a supportive presence when he’s called to the stand to give his testimony. She also holds him after, when the memories are too much and he just, needs a minute to put them away again. Shisui knows he’s not okay. With his eyes, how could he be?

Having his mother there makes things, not better, but easier. It’s not so quiet at night, with only his thoughts for company, too strung out to sleep but too tired to want to get up. At any rate Toboe stopped forcing him to nap all the time so at the very least he must look better.

That was another thing; his mother meeting his…he’s not actually sure what to call them, they certainly weren’t friends. Supremely nosy pack of genin who take liberties with his time and person? Eh, close enough.

Watching them awkwardly shift about when his mother answered the door felt a little bit like payback. All except Toboe who just looked her in the eye and told her the kotatsu needed updating, the heater kept stuttering. Wonder of wonders, she didn’t punt him off the stoop for that. Instead she invited them in for tea! To tell her about his health of all things!

Shisui felt betrayed.

They were tattling on him!

It’s a relief when the mission centers summons him a few days later. Watching his mother and his nosy band of genin shamelessly conspire behind his back was hair-raising and awful and full of tea and naps. Naps!

Did he look like a civilian brat to you? What kind of shinobi needed naps?

Aside from the Nara. They don’t count.

A mission was just what he needed, something to channel his restlessness constructively.

They’re probably not sending him back to the front; that would have been a different banded messenger hawk. Only the medics, supply runners, and chunin couriers are being cycled between the front and the village, of which Shisui was neither. As a matter of fact, they were already sending shinobi home squad by squad, his mother included.

Which was why it was such a surprise to be handed command of Supply Squad 34.

Toboe was completely unapologetic when he confronted him. “We lost our chunin commander,” he shrugged. “I put in an application for you to fill the post. This way you get out and about like I know you want, but you’re still getting the distance you need to heal.”

“I’m fine,” Shisui said automatically.

“Uh-huh, and you don’t sleep when you’re alone because…?” Toboe arched a brow.

Shisui blatantly ignored that, “I don’t even know your routes!”

“It’s called learning on the job, Uchiha,” Toboe said, unsympathetic and bland. “Believe me, this is just what you need.”

“I don’t believe you,” Shisui said despairingly.

Toboe patted his curls condescendingly, “That sounds like a you problem.”

Chapter Text

“I don’t believe you,” Shisui said despairingly.

Toboe patted his curls condescendingly, “That sounds like a you problem.”  

“I still don’t believe you,” Shisui declared four months later. “How is dragging me through every harrowing smuggler’s route on the border suppose to help?” He slumped miserably against the cart only to groan and drag himself back upright. Autumn was just around the corner but the heat of summer was hanging on by its teeth with a vengeance and Shisui hated it. Uchiha weren’t meant to languish in high heat, it made them flush in blotches. Ugh.

“Who says harrowing at your age?” Ippei mumbled tiredly, flattening his bangs over his face to block out the noon day sun. Shisui sympathized, he was confused about Ippei being too lazy to roll over so the sun wasn’t in his face, but he sympathized wholeheartedly.

People really underestimated the effects of bright light on Sharingan enhanced vision and every Uchiha ever, since the day the Senju swore on their treaty never to teach their anti-Sharingan tactics to another soul, prayed that it stayed that way.

“You do Ippei,” Aino said tiredly, hunched under her burlap sack up front with Kagari as she was. She had the shortest hair, and as a consequence, the worst sunburns across her scalp and shoulders.

“I am scarred for life, I tell you!” Shisui said, letting himself sway with the cart. It was too hot and muggy to nap in shifts like usual so they were all tired and cranky and drooping. Even Toboe was bleary eyed from hypervigilance.

Toboe who was lying face down in the cart and hissing at anyone who tried to touch him.

Toboe peeled his face off the wood to eye him balefully. “Are you clawing at your face when you think we can’t see anymore?”

“No?” Shisui trailed off sheepishly.

“Are you asking me or telling me?”

“No,” Shisui repeated, because Toboe could be as bad as the academy teachers when it came to proper diction. Like everything Toboe did, it lowkey drove him up the walls.

“Then it helped,” Toboe said decisively, then face-planted back down.

Shisui stuck his tongue out at him.

“I saw that,” Toboe mumbled into the wood.

“Did not!” Shisui yelped.

Kagari groaned, “Please don’t start that again, please. I can’t take it.”

Aino turned to glare at them, and even Ippei lifted a lock of hair to stare at them judgmentally. Shisui squirmed. Kagari was the quietest and kindest among them; nobody liked it when he was upset. They’d literally killed people for it.

Kagari eyed them all exasperatedly, “We’re almost there, just hang on until then, okay?”

Shisui slumped, it always seemed to take so much longer to travel in the heat. At least when the four terrors were leading him down shady paths riddled with bandits and smugglers and desperate refugees willing to stab a man to be left alone he was adequately distracted. Terrified for his skin and wallet, but adequately distracted.

Hells, he never knew there were so many ways in and out of Fire! You’d think the border stations would be on top of it but civilians were cannier than he ever gave them credit for. And apparently some of the border stations were even aiding them to get ahold of foreign goods without having to go through international trading red tape! On orders no less!

Shisui’s world has been upended far more than he’s comfortable with the last few months. At least it isn’t boring.

“ETA twenty-five minutes,” Toboe said, partially muffled from his face being squished into the wood.

“Thanks ‘Bo,” Kagari said, rolling his eyes when Toboe hissed.

Ippei finally mustered the will to flop onto his side, whining pitifully about unsticking himself the whole time. They were all quiet for a time, heat lethargic and droopy. The border near Iron country was so damnably muggy. It felt like the heat was a literal oppressive blanket, smothering thought and will. It meant rain was imminent, he knew, but rain had been imminent for days now and the wait was getting unbearable.

Ippei broke the silence. “Do you think there’s a separate afterlife for shinobi?”

Aino groaned, “Not this again!” Kagari patted her consolingly.

“It’s a legitimate question!” Ippei propped himself up on an elbow. “Some people believe the dead are segregated by how well they adhere to some arbitrary moral standard. Given the vast differences between shinobi morality and civilian morality—”

“Shinobi get around that by ascribing to the Pure Land theory of the afterlife,” Toboe lifted his head long enough to answer, looking supremely annoyed. “Everyone goes to the Pure Land, everyone reincarnates from the Pure Land. Endless cycles, blah blah.”

Shisui couldn’t help himself.

“Not everyone ascribes to the teachings of Buddha Amitabha though,” He said, perking up despite himself. Philosophy debates were pretty much the only time Ippei would voluntarily work himself up and Toboe had never met a question he didn’t want to pick at. “My Clan are more Shinto than not, we believe in Yomi. And don’t you pay respects to Guanyin?” He arched a brow at Toboe.

Toboe arched a brow right back, “The Merciful Goddess leads her followers to the Western Pure Land.” The idiot was unspoken but loud. Shisui resisted the urge to stick his tongue out again.

“Shisui has a point,” Ippei said thoughtfully, tapping his chin. “Pure Land Buddhism is widespread but it’s not universal. So where do we go when we die in other faiths?”

“What’s the point in wondering if you don’t ascribe to the those faiths in the first place?” Aino growled over Kagari’s whimpered not you too! She turned on the drivers bench and climbed into the cart, Shisui yelping in offense at being stepped on. “You already know where you’re going, why confuse the map?”

“But what if we’re wrong?” Ippei asked, throwing his arms akimbo and eyes widened plaintively. “What if we’re following a made up fantasy and Jashinism is the only real religion?”

“That’s ridiculous!” Aino snapped. Shisui closed his mouth, pouting at being talked over. “A thousand years worth of followers can’t be wrong!”

Toboe rolled to face her, scowling, “Yes, they can. You see it all the time when popular superstition interferes with scientific thought. And anyway, why Jashinism?”

Ippei rolled his eyes, “It was just an example!”

“You know it’s illegal in Konoha to be a practicing medic and a Jashinist?” Shisui piped up from his place in the corner.

All four of them turned to look at him.

“What really?” Aino tilted her head, face scrunched skeptically. “Isn’t that an infringement of religious freedom?”

“Noo…?” Shisui squirmed uncertainly. “They’re a little quick to amputate and mercy kill, so they aren’t anyone’s first choice if you want to live with, you know, all your limbs intact. Or just live period.”

Toboe finally deigned to sit up, looking predatorily intent though by now Shisui knew that’s just what curiosity looked like on his face. “That’s fascinating. How did that happen?”

Shisui grinned; Uchiha had the best stories about legal mishaps. It was about time he had an appreciative audience for them.

“It wasn’t really noticeable in the early days of the village, healing back then not being as good as it is today skillswise,” Shisui began with relish, the other three in the cart arranging themselves to listen. Even Kagari had his head cocked. “But then Tsunade-hime took the world by storm with her innovations and suddenly wounds that would have ended in disfigurement or death had been reduced by a factor of sixty! And boy were some people not happy, they—”

It was one of Shisui’s favorite stories; practically his bedtime story. One of his great-aunts had been a medic at the time; she was one of many to rally behind Tsunade-hime about pulling the hospital out of the Warring Clan’s Era. For every argument posed against them, his great-aunt had personally had a hand in slicing them to pieces with all the legal jargon an Uchiha could bring to bear.

It was thanks to Tsunade-hime and people like his great-aunt that the hospital now offered the amenities of education and neutrality that it did. That medics had to be licensed for what was within their skills to deal with, and punished if they killed others by going outside their skill. That things like amputation and final mercy had rigorous oversight to prevent malpractice and murder.

That it was illegal in Konoha to amputate and kill others under the guise of practicing religion.

It was a much pleasanter way to spend a journey than languishing, Shisui decided, especially when it elicited such rapt attention in his audience.

In this way it felt likely it barely took any time at all to arrive at the border encampment; the very last major outpost used by the army, nestled at the border with Iron where it was between Rock and Lightning. Squad 34 had been summoned to ferry the very last of the casualties from those whose injuries had been too great to survive being moved from camp to camp, and whatever other supplies they could fit.

An Akimichi was waiting to greet them at the edge of the encampment, a jovial man by the name of Manao.

“Why the lot of you are skin and bones!” He tsked after the rigmarole of swapping identification. “Come along, we’ll get some food into you while they load you up.” And saying such he brought his fingers to his mouth and gave a ear-piercing whistle. An assorted group of chunin looked up at the noise and were summarily drafted to tend to the horse and cart, much to Kagari’s fretting.

Aino ended up dragging him away by the scruff.

Shisui was completely on board with getting food, eager for the chance to ditch travel rations for one meal, practically skipping as Manao led them towards the center of the camp where the important tents for food and healing were. He listened with half an ear as Toboe politely inquired about the dismantle rate, what was left to go, what was ready to go now, and had they experienced any trouble this close to the border? Toboe would tell him what he missed later, right now the people were more interesting.

Most of the specialized units had been sent home, like his mother’s stealth-based squad, as well as most of the heavy hitters for political reasons that essentially boiled down to making people nervous when they were too close to the border. What was left in the camp were a bunch of middling to low frontliners, two whole squads of medics, and an excess of logistics and supplies squads.

Suddenly, Toboe froze mid-sentence, gaze distant and head cocked. Ippei halted just a step ahead of him, tense, “What do you sense?”

“Akimichi-san, do you have squads patrolling the surrounding area?” Toboe asked tersely, brow furrowed.

“No, we don’t,” Manao said, all the joviality disappearing in an instant. “Incoming?”

Toboe nodded, “Roughly thirty, possibly forty.”

Shisui sucked in a harsh breath, hand going to his tanto.

Chapter Text

Toboe nodded, “Roughly thirty, possibly forty.”

Shisui sucked in a harsh breath, hand going to his tanto. 

Toboe is unsurprised when Manao immediately shoots down any suggestion of Squad 34 participating in the upcoming skirmish. Unlike Shisui, Toboe is entirely aware of what they look like to adults; a bunch of thin children who’ve been on the road too long. Like many children Toboe -Tobirama- used to know, Shisui had been blooded too well on a battlefield to remember he was nominally in the group most adults filed under ‘to protect’.

Pointing that out just garnered a dumbfounded expression with a hint of an upcoming sulk. A reaction not entirely out of the norm from what he not -remembers. It was a hard lesson to learn. Some people wouldn’t learn the lesson until they were grown and seeing children on the battlefield from an adult perspective themselves.

Some never learned the lesson at all.

Shisui subsided into quiet griping about being benched but didn’t attempt to protest very much. These damn Uchiha; it was a full time job just keeping one healthy - and that’s with back up.

Toboe was fully prepared to pull the ‘de facto medic of the group’ card, which thankfully wasn’t necessary. A camp this large had adequate numbers of shinobi to deal with even large squads and Shisui was under no real misconceptions as to exactly how useful he would be in his present state. That is to say, pitifully.

“C’mon,” Aino stalked ahead, tugging Kagari by the wrist. “Food first, then we hit the medical tent.”

“Why are we always checking in with the medics?” Shisui whined even as he followed more or less willingly.

All he got was unimpressed stares for his trouble.

“That’s where our cargo is…?” Ippei trailed off meaningfully. Implied descriptives like you forgetful moron helpfully wedged themselves into the sentence..

“I knew that.” Shisui flushed.

Toboe shook his head with a sigh.

Uchiha; what could he say.

The medic tent was at the very center of camp, the most protected region and the easiest to find. Currently, it was the loudest courtesy of some poor soul who managed to shatter their leg and was complaining at the top of their lungs while a young medic was ruthlessly realigning the bone shards.

She looked up and smiled kindly if tiredly when they shuffled in. “Oh hey, you must be the corpse squad! I’m Nohara Rin, nice to meet you!”

Her patient protested loudly, “It is not nice to meet you—ow! Ow, ow, fuck, can’t I get some pain killers?”

Rin sighed at him in that distinctly ‘I’m not mad, just disappointed’ manner some medics had perfected down to a fine art if not a full weapon style. “I really wish I could, Gento-san, but you know we have limited supplies right now. I can’t just break out what we have for every injury. Why, someone might get it into their head that they know better than medics and disregard what we say as suggestions.”

Gento looked vaguely like a mouse cornered by a particularly playful cat, trapped and clawed at with no hope of escape. Impressive given that Nohara hadn’t so much as leveled a pointed look at him, just smiled serenely.

“Why,” Rin continued, massaging the slowly straightening leg firmly with glowing green hands, “it’s almost as if this wouldn’t have happened if you’d just listened and not tried to start a physical therapy regimen against all advice.”

“But—ow! But Nohara, it’s my leg day,” Gento pleaded for—something, possibly mercy or at least understanding. Toboe didn’t know why he tried, medics had a zero tolerance bullshit policy once they got their hands on you. So did commanding officers, actually.

“Yes,” Rin said agreeably, “it certainly is.” Then she dug her fingers in around his kneecap and several things clicked loudly. Gento whimpered. So did Ippei for that matter.

Toboe rolled his eyes and shoved Ippei out of the tent to panic out of view. He was surprisingly squeamish about bones. “Nohara-san. I’m Toboe, and this is Aino, Kagari, and our commanding officer, Uchiha Shisui. The one outside is Ippei. I regret to inform you there’s going to be a delay in picking up our cargo. There’s a large squad of foreign shinobi about to be intercepted by our own.”

“Oh,” Rin’s eyes turned downcast, concentrating on the way she dug her thumbs into the whimpering Gento’s leg with a final wet crunch. “I see. Thank you for telling me. I’ll let the others know so we can get the tent prepared for fresh casualties.”

“If you need any assistance we’ll—” An incoming shinobi interrupted him.

A boy around Rin’s age burst into the tent on the other side, “Rin, we have incoming—!” He cut himself off, glaring at Toboe and his squad with suspicion with his one visible eye. No, staring at Shisui with suspicion.

Shisui just gave him a surprisingly catty once-over and turned away with a sniff. It wasn’t in his nature to be so blatantly dismissive but his Uchiha genes certainly ensured he had a natural talent at it if the way the boy stiffened was any indication.

Toboe glanced at him, confused; clearly there was some history there. He dismissed it for later. More important things to attend to than any interpersonal drama here. He hasn’t had nearly enough tea to deal with that.

“I heard, Kakashi.” Rin turned to him with a delicate frown. “Please don’t shout in the medic tent. I’ve told you before.”

Kakashi flinched imperceptibly, shoulders hunching like a scolded dog. “Sorry,” he muttered. Shisui snorted and Kakashi glared at him.

“Are you going out with the squads to drive them off?” Rin continued in a slightly louder voice to get Kakashi’s attention, attempting a soft smile and falling short at just tired.

Toboe elbowed Shisui, arching a brow questioningly. Shisui flushed and looked away.

Kakashi shook his head slowly, “I’m guarding the camp.”

“Oh,” Rin said, voice going quiet. She set Gento’s leg down and started the process of strapping it to splints. “Anyway, Toboe-san, we don’t really need any help yet. We’ve had things on lock for several days now. Maybe check back in when our squads return? We could always use the extra hands then.”

“If you say so!” Aino chirped, instantly relieved to have an excuse to leave the suddenly awkward atmosphere. “C’mon, Kagari, Minoru-san back at the food tent offered to teach me a new card game and you gotta help me cheat!”

“But it was just getting good!” Kagari protested as Aino dragged him out of the tent.

“You and your gossip, I swear!”

“It’s not gossip, it’s intelligence—!”

Nohara coughed awkwardly, a mortified flush taking over her face.

Toboe very carefully did not roll his eyes. This is what he gets for surrounding himself with children, he supposes. Endless bouts of nonsense with a only a passing familiarity with tact. At least they had age as an excuse.

Kakashi at least seemed dutiful enough to stick to his post, or he would have gone after Aino and Kagari if the furious glare he shot their retreating backs was any indication. Toboe silently commended him his restraint, otherwise Toboe would have to intercept him and he might have been nasty about it however justified Kakashi’s temper was or not. Shisui would help him, he’s sure.

“By your leave then, Nohara-san,” Shisui nodded. “We’ll let you get on with, uh,” he eyed the still whimpering Gento, “things.”

Toboe held his silence until they were out of earshot. “Shisui, what was that about?”

Shisui scowled, uncharacteristically angry as Toboe hadn’t seen him since they first met and even then he was more sad than anything. “You probably haven’t heard yet, being out all the time. That’s Hatake Kakashi. Genius extraordinaire. Student of the Yondaime. Blah, blah, blah. More importantly, he has a Sharingan eye. Supposedly one of my cousins gave it to him while he was dying in the field.”

“I...see,” Toboe blinked, honestly taken aback. He...hadn’t thought anyone without Uchiha blood could survive a sharingan implant. The biological makeup of their eyes was so specialized that organ rejection and death by chakra exhaustion was in the ninety-sixth percentile. The Uchiha Clan must be up in arms over this. “You think he stole it then?”

“I don’t know what to think, honestly,” Shisui’s scowl deepened. “I liked Obito, for all that we generally didn’t run in the same social circles. Just the idea that his own teammate could desecrate his body like that, before it was even cold—!” He stopped, forcibly taking deep breaths. “Nohara was the one that did the transplanting and she also swears Obito asked it of them, and Obito genuinely liked her. I want to trust that Obito wasn’t wrong about her, I really do.”

“He didn’t have a good opinion of Hatake?” Toboe inquired, because Shisui was right, they were cut off from all the Konoha local news. Hell, why didn’t he hear about this when they were back at the village?

No need to wonder why actually; either people were disinclined to speak about it around children or they assumed they already heard. Six of one, half dozen of the other.

“Well, to hear Obito go on about it he either hated the guy or secretly nursed a crush on him,” Shisui said dryly.

Toboe snorted, “They are about that age.”

Shisui made a disgusted face, “Teenagers are so weird.”

Toboe had a moment of dissonance where he remembered being a teenager, remembered being an adult shaking his head at teenagers, remembered being an adult teasing children about being teenagers one day themselves, then promptly remembered he’d never been any of those things and shoved the not-memories back. He blinked, the sun glaring brighter and harsher than it had been  before, sounds coming in murky as he tried to reorient himself back into his own skin. There was something— something teasing on the edge of his awareness—

“—where Ippei went?” Shisui was saying. Things. He was saying things. He needed to focus. “Toboe? Toboe, are you spacing out on me?”

There was something not right, something that kept slipping out of his grasp as soon as he took notice of it—

—The world snapped back into place and Toboe grabbed for Shisui’s shoulder.

“Enemy incoming! Squad of fifteen, coming underground! North-east direction and ETA five minutes and counting down!” Toboe panted for breath, alarmed, staring wide eyed into Shisui’s own panicked eyes. “We gotta move!”

“Right!” Panic shifted to determination and Shisui bolted down the path ahead, shouting the warning and setting off a ripple effect of increasing alarm as various shinobi dropped what they were doing and grabbed for weapons. Either making their way to the north-east side of the camp or frozen, frantically searching the ground around them for signs of underground dotons

Toboe doubled back to the medic tent to pass on the warning before bolting in the opposite direction Shisui went to do some rousing of his own.

Five minutes was practically no time at all.

Chapter Text

Toboe doubled back to the medic tent to pass on the warning before bolting in the opposite direction Shisui went to do some rousing of his own.

Five minutes was practically no time at all. 

They’d taken Nohara Rin.

It didn’t make sense.

It made too much sense.

It didn’t make sense it how much sense it made. It was confusing trying to articulate it and Toboe could see his frustration reflected in Ippei and Shisui and possibly Kakashi if the poor kid weren’t out of his mind with frantic worry. The teenager was arguing furiously with Manao about going after the Mizu squad that took her, and getting little traction by the looks of it.

Toboe could sympathize with the likely logic.

No one here was on the level of an Anbu, save perhaps Kakashi himself, and sending their shinobi out after them would only lead to heavy losses. Nohara Rin was a student of the Yellow Flash and taking her was almost certainly a political move. Political hostages were too important to kill. Ergo, Nohara Rin could sit tight while messages were sent to the Hokage and his heir to straighten out this mess.

It was the practical thing to do. The tactical thing to do.

Manao could not be faulted for his decision.

It was still patently obvious that Kakashi wouldn’t wait for due process to get his teammate back.

“So like, you’re going with, right?” Ippei casually dropped beside him in the dirt, twirling a shuriken.

“Why would I do that?” Toboe didn’t bother asking what he meant. He wouldn’t insult either of their intelligences like that. “That’s suicide.”

“For me and the thieving twosome maybe. But you’ve got that look in your eye.” Ippei pointed out. “The one that means you’re thinking about doing something crazy and making it look logical.”

“I do not!” Toboe said automatically. “And are you really suggesting I take Shisui with? His Clan would crucify me if I got one of their precious Mangekyo users killed doing something dumb.”

“As if Shisui wouldn’t get himself killed doing something dumb anyway,” Ippei snorted. “He almost got kicked in the head by the horses three times before he figured out he should stop spooking them on accident.”

“He was convinced they just hated him,” Toboe laughed quietly. To be fair to Shisui, the horses probably did hate him. He ate their apples. In front of them. Maple and Sunflower never forgot or forgave.

They had a good laugh about Shisui’s complete inability to not upset the horses for a minute.

“But yeah, I think you should take him with,” Ippei said when they sobered again. “You need back up. You know that. I don’t trust that Hatake to have his head in the game.”

“And I do?” Toboe asked dryly, sardonically amused and slightly bitter.

Ippei shrugged laconically. “More than he does, that’s for damn sure.”

Shisui had to be pinned before he’d agree to go along with his admittedly foolhardy plan, though it didn’t take much arm twisting to accomplish. Toboe was vaguely pleased to know that Shisui had adjusted well to his directions. Soon enough he’d even cease to be a functioning disaster under a thin veneer of temporary professionalism.

“And what are we going to do if we encounter Mist anbu?” Shisui demanded some time after they snuck out of camp, trailing behind the much faster Kakashi who found it too much trouble to dissuade them. Or rather, dissuade Toboe. “Mist nin are already terrifying, I don’t even wanna think what their anbu are like!”

“You know how I have a suiton affinity?” Toboe asked, almost sheepish. Shisui immediately assumed a look of foreboding, “Yeah? And a weirdly convenient talent for pulling water out of almost anything—oh gods.” Shisui clapped his hands to his mouth, turning green. Toboe shrugged apologetically.

“It’s a good defense,” he offered, trying to comfort in his awkward way. “Lungs are the easiest; they’re almost ninety percent water. I know people make a big deal about blood but that’s way finickier, you have to add an element of earth for all the iron if you want to pull out something that looks like blood—” Shisui made a distressed noise as if it were yanked from the depths of his soul, and Toboe sheepishly fell silent.

“Okay,” Shisui said, strained, and more than a bit horrified, “new plan. How about, I just set them on fire. Okay? I could probably do Amaterasu if I really have to.”

“But—”

“I will set them on fire.” Shisui repeated, eyes wide and edging into manic. “Please, don’t ever try to explain the mechanics of ripping people into their constituent elements to me ever again. My heart can’t take it.”

“Okay?” Toboe almost squeaked in the face of Shisui’s vehemence. Shisui nodded firmly, with all the gravitas of a Clan Head accepting a solemn oath.

They spent the rest of the run in embarrassed silence; following Kakashi’s unerring tracking skills, Toboe’s chakra sense, and even Shisui’s keen sight that could pick out dirt that had been disturbed underneath. As they neared the camp’s location, Kakashi motioned for him and Shisui to slow down and fall back, to prepare for extraction while Kakashi caused a commotion. Or so Shisui told him, Toboe hadn’t the benefit of being taught more than rudimentary modern Konoha sign language yet.

Kakashi launched himself over the rocky outcropping into the camp and shouts of alarm immediately sounded, followed by a cry of pain and the smell of ozone and burnt flesh. Toboe and Shisui took that as their cue to sneak around to where Nohara Rin’s chakra could be felt wrapped in and around something caustic that had Toboe swallowing down nervousness. (Tobirama remembered the caustic feel of Bijuu chakra, so angry, so old, so painful to touch.)

A couple anbu were hanging around near her, naturally. Toboe motioned for Shisui to be quiet and concentrated hard, groping for the feeling of water masked by foreign chakra. Pulling from people was a lot harder than pulling from earth or air, nature didn’t care if you were being upfront on the matter but with humans you had to be sneaky or it ended up a battle of wills. He synched with the closest one and frowned; not wanting to be dramatic he forwent the lungs and just extracted as much moisture out of his brain as he could. Brains were delicate enough it didn’t matter that he wasn’t very precise at this yet.

The anbu dropped like a ragdoll and the others went on alert, just barely audible cursing reaching their position. Toboe hissed angrily and groped for the next one, yanking indelicately, that one dropped too, garbled screaming and all.

“Do I want to know what you’re doing?” Shisui whispered.

“Use your imagination,” Toboe whispered back irritably. Shisui turned green, whimpering, “Oh gods, this is how you guys have been surviving on your lonesome, isn’t it?”

Well, obviously? None of them were going to win competitions for weapons work and hand-to-hand any time soon, that’s for damn sure. A shinobi’s oldest survival strategy was stealth and trickery and a good dose of surprise, applicable at all hours.

Then the bundle of terror and terrifying that was Nohara Rin leapt on the last two with a flare of clean, green chakra that sliced instead of mended. “Who’s there?” She demanded, and Toboe decided all over again that she was quite likable. “I may only have my wits but I bet they’re sharper than yours!” Scratch that; very likable.

Shisui scrambled around the rocky outcropping with a shout of, “Special delivery for Nohara Rin; one rescue party!” Toboe sighed and rolled his eyes. Maybe a bit fondly but no one was around to call him out for being soft.

Nohara Rin looked a little roughed up but otherwise okay, if you were sense blind to the Bijuu chakra threaded through her that is.

“Something happen?” Toboe asked, trying not to let the sharpness leak into his voice.

Nohara flinched, hand rising to press to her sternum, choking out, “I can’t go back to Konoha.”

“What!” Shisui yelped, veering around to give her a betrayed glare.

“You don’t understand!” Nohara cried, tears welling up and spilling down her cheeks. “I’m a bomb waiting to go off, they made me—they made me a—!” Her voice broke on a sob. Shisui hesitantly reached for her hand, expression blank and chakra rioting with stunned horror and sympathy.

Toboe patted her arm. “If there’s time, there’s hope. Your sensei is a seals master, isn’t he? You just have to hold on until he can take a look at it.” Nohara nodded at that, determinedly forcing down the next sob, mouth firming into something fiercer.

They made tracks posthaste. Nohara was limping a bit but if it bothered her she refused to show it. Kakashi came tearing out of the camp behind them on the tail end of an explosion, a lot more ragged than when they saw him last, sharingan gleaming. “Oh shit,” Shisui hissed, as the anbu came after them.

Toboe didn’t need to be a genius to know they weren’t going to outrun them. Still, it paid to throw caltrops anyway. Shisui yanked a handful of explosive tags out of his pouch and tossed them over his shoulder, trailing wire, and spun quickly to thread fire down them. Several anbu cried out as caltrops were converted to flying shrapnel.

Still, it was a temporary victory. They were caught.

And then Nohara Rin decided she would rather die than let them win.

And then chakra exhaustion and the sheer shock caught up with Hatake Kakashi and he collapsed.

And then Toboe and Shisui were left to their own devices.

“Shit!” Toboe slid to his knees beside Nohara, heedless of the blood puddle, assessing. Kakashi missed her heart, thank gods, but he took a hefty chunk out of her upper left lung. “Shit!” He slapped both palms to her chest, chakra reaching. The most basic iryo-jutsu is circulating oxygen for a patient, forcing the blood to keep moving, keeping the body alive. A lot trickier to do with the lungs so badly compromised but moving liquid had never been beyond his grasp.

Above his head fire roared and Shisui staggered, chakra low, panting. Under his hands, Nohara Rin gasped a ragged breath. “Come on, come on, you’ve got one good lung left!” Toboe hissed. He moved a hand to try a Mystic Palm only for the blood to stutter. It was concentration divided too much.

Nohara was trying to say something, trying to push him away.

Toboe cursed and ignored her, letting go of her blood and pushing healing chakra into her perforated lung. Lungs were ninety percent water, he could fix this.

He managed a centimeter all around before he had to abandon it in favor of making sure she didn’t bleed to death on him.

Nohara went still, eyes wide. Toboe’s breath caught in his throat. A shadow fell over them

He looked up into a single Mangekyo in a scarred, half-warped face.

Shisui hissed in a surprised breath.

“Obito?”

Chapter Text

Shisui hissed in a surprised breath.

“Obito?” 

That pale twisted face was going to haunt his nightmares, Toboe knew in that instant, that single maddened eye, so familiar in all the wrong ways, boring into his own. There was no higher reasoning behind that eye, only an animal intelligence bright with pain and looking to inflict some hurt of its own.

The strange Uchiha, this Obito leaned down until his face was level with Toboe’s. “Rin will live,” he stated, a thin veneer of shock-blank over a growing well of incandescent rage still settling on a suitable target.

“I’m trying,” Toboe offered cautiously.

“Do better than that,” Obito hissed viciously. Toboe flinched back despite himself, another face flashing before his eyes.

“Obito,” Shisui choked, stumbling forward, reaching out to touch, and Obito jerked back, taking his cousin in sightlessly. Obito looked beyond him to the Kiri nin, his expression hardening, disappearing under a strange spiraling mask closing around his head.

“Keep Rin safe.” With one last look at his teammate struggling to breathe he took off. They both had to look away as the first Kiri nin in reach was literally ripped apart by Obito’s bare hands.

Well, with that kind of potential death sentence hanging over his head Toboe set to work with a will and a prayer.

The problem was, he couldn’t circulate blood flow, and gather clean water from out of thin air, and repair lung tissue all at the same time. He didn’t have enough hands, nor the concentration necessary to do three precise, finicky things all at once. It was either one or the other, and either way, Nohara was losing blood fast. Already, she was dangerously pale and her pulse stuttered more and more every time he dropped circulation to rebuild tissue.

Okay, solution, solution…

Shisui dropped down by his side and grimly shoved a soldier pill between Nohara’s teeth, pushing up on her lax jaw until it crunched. “That should help some.”

Some, but not much.

The jolt to the chakra was certainly helpful, by any means, however nerve wracking the pulse back of bijuu chakra in response. Toboe jerked his hands away from the purple flickers with a hiss.

Distantly, he could hear Shisui cursing but that was a Shisui problem, not his. He had a bigger one to deal with.

Fuck, even if he got the lungs repaired he simply didn’t have the skill or know how to even begin to fix the rest of the damage the Chidori caused. What wasn’t cauterized crispy black was torn and jostled by an entire arm shoving through. It would need sterilization, it would need the fibers picked out, oh hell, so much of this burnt tissue probably needed to be taken out too. Didn’t surgeons try to avoid cauterizing too much in case they left tissues vulnerable to infection?

How the hell was he going to regrow bones?

Wait a second... was he seeing this right?

Toboe peered furiously into the bleeding cavity. After the flickers of purple chakra there was… less burnt tissue? The lungs were almost connected again and, yes, that artery was half a centimeter longer all around.

A dangerously reckless idea came to him then.

“Shisui, jam another pill in her mouth,” Toboe barked, digging one-handedly for his own pouch to see if he had any left himself. “We need a bigger flare up!”

“Uh, what?” Shisui gave him a wide-eyed look but he gamely dug a few soldier pills out of his pocket anyway. “What is that chakra?”

“Bijuu chakra.” Toboe connected that last bit of lung tissue, finally able to let go of it in favor of something else. Respiratory patched, vascular next. But which one to connect first?

“Excuse me?!” Shisui yelped, freezing.

“They put a bijuu in her,” Toboe explained shortly, “I can feel it. It’s like the lady at the ramen stand. That’s why she tried to die. But, when its chakra flickered like that it healed things. We need to trigger another pulse.” Toboe, normally not the beseeching type, gave his teammate his best pleading face. “Our only other options are to poke the seal, or let her die, Shisui.”

And letting Nohara die was really, really not an option with her maddened teammate orchestrating a literal symphony of screams in the background. Toboe didn’t even need not-memories to tell him how bad an idea that is. And Toboe simply didn’t have enough chakra to deal with this on his own. He wasn’t even a trained medic! He had basics, and improvisation. That’s it.

Shisui blanched to a sickly grey at that.

He stuck the pill in her mouth.

The next pulse was larger, less flicker more flame, crawling out of the bleeding cavity to spill over her chest as she arched, eye’s flying open and glowing purple.

Toboe and Shisui scrambled away from her, Toboe dropping her life support in the process. Nohara made a choked noise, then a louder one, fingers clawing the ground as she found the breath to howl; long and loud, and worse, attention grabbing.

But the hole in her chest was shrinking; bones growing back, tissues rejoining, muscles knitting and skin growing back over. The purple chakra danced over her in flickers and spurts, dripping off like candle wax to sizzle in the dirt as she forced herself up right, and then to her feet, swaying. Then she bent over and threw up what was left of the soldier pills, bijuu chakra receding beneath her skin.

“Nohara-san?” Shisui asked tentatively, when she wiped a shaky hand over her mouth. “Are you still with us?”

“Questioningly so,” Nohara gasped, then spat out another glob of bile with a grimace of distaste. “Which fool was responsible for this bright idea?” She indicated the puddle of vomit.

Shisui, the filthy traitor, immediately pointed at Toboe.

Toboe silently vowed revenge.

Whatever lecture Nohara was gearing up to give him was thankfully interrupted by a blur of loose, now bloody, robes colliding with her with a joyful cry. And tears. There were definitely some tears.

“Rin!” Obito cried, “Rin, Rin, RinRin Rin! You’re okay!” Rin, for her part, looked several parts still slightly nauseous and disoriented, shocked, disbelieving, and finally, joyous. “Obito!”

Well, that was Toboe’s cue to leave. Now way was he sticking around for emotional drama while he was riding the woozy edge of chakra drain. Except looking past them revealed a gorey graveyard and what looked like someone’s best attempt at a lake of blood and— no, nope, going the opposite direction, gonna be productive and check on Hatake. Yes, that seemed the best course of action.

Fortunately, Hatake’s problem was chakra exhaustion; easily solved by shoving a soldier pill in his mouth and splashing his face with water. He only choked a little bit.

Unfortunately, Hatake wanted in on the drama fest.

Even more unfortunately, Obito was still pissed as all hell at him, which pissed off Nohara because dying had been her decision, thank you , which promptly made Hatake burst into tears and set everyone off all over again except in different directions.

It was enough to give Toboe hives.

He buried his face in his knees and just, tried to ignore the world until everything stopped shaking. It’s just the adrenaline, he told himself, adrenaline and chakra exhaustion. Times like these the world was too bright, too noisy, closing in around him and clogging up his senses.

After a few minutes, Shisui came to sit with him, careful not to crowd. “They’re kind of a mess, huh? It’s been almost ten minutes and they’re still going at it. I think I saw this exact plot in a tv drama once, you know, the ones that stream past Wind country from Bharata Khanda? They’re wild.”

“I’ve never watched a tv,” Toboe murmured against his knees. Partially disinterest, mostly because televisions were still expensive enough that only government buildings and the wealthy had them. It didn’t surprise him to hear that the Uchiha clan had one or two floating around.

“Oh, right,” Shisui said, a tad sheepish. “Anyway, Mom introduced me, the last time we were home. We, that is, the clan, has like two or three communal tv rooms where we just kinda lounge around and relax, and let me tell you, visual based entertainment is literally amazing when you’re biologically hardwired to be visually inclined. Literally amazing, I tell you.”

“I’m sure,” Toboe murmured. Although that was actually a bit fascinating; he’d never considered the Uchiha as a visually based culture before. Huh, that might go a long way to explaining how their compound had been laid out and designed because much of it was really, unnecessarily pretty. Not even gaudy, just very aesthetically pleasing. What about—

“Okay.” Toboe finally deigned to lift his head. “You have successfully distracted me. Go you.”

“Oh good, I thought you were gonna pass out on me too,” Shisui said, forcibly cheery. “I mean, everyone else has, you might as well take a turn too.”

Well. Two can play at that game. Toboe shifted his weight onto his feet and lunged to shove the Uchiha over, taking the opportunity to flop on top of him and get comfortable. Shisui yelped and flailed in response. “I’m the only one who passes out on you,” Toboe informed him tartly. “Don’t be so melodramatic.”

“What about this—” Shisui gestured to all of them, “strikes you as a logical response?”

“It’s perfectly logical,” Toboe scowled, lower lip jutting out. “The ground is hard and uncomfortable; you are not comparatively. Everyone wins.”

“I’m not,” Shisui deadpanned.

Toboe blinked. “Everyone I give consideration to in this equation wins.”

“So just you. Argh.” Shisui slapped a hand to his face. “Why say ‘we’ when you clearly mean ‘me’?”

“No, Shisui.” Toboe rolled his eyes. “I mean me, not you. Get it right.”

“That’s what I just—!” He trailed of into an inarticulate noise. “Oh, whatever...”

Perhaps getting comfortable on his habitual human pillow hadn’t been the brightest idea; Toboe could feel sleep drag at his limbs, weighing down his eyelids. His pillow too sprawled a bit too limply to not be feeling it himself. Even the mist/fire/feather of his chakra was droopy and low, barely stirring when Toboe teased him.

Maybe they could just, rest their eyes until the drama fest concluded? That would be nice…

It felt like he barely closed his eyes before a hand was shaking him awake, rolling him off Shisui. Nohara gave a strained smile, “Hey, you two. Obito says there’s a place nearby we can rest and get medical attention. It’s where he’s been all this time apparently.”

“Why not go back to camp?” Toboe asked, voice thick with sleep that wanted to be. Shisui made a noise of agreement.

Nohara lost a bit of the color in her face, saying tightly, “I don’t dare risk it.”

Fine then, Toboe nodded, that was Nohara’s decision to make.

Just as long as he can nap when they get there, where ever it is.

Chapter Text

Fine then, Toboe nodded, that was Nohara’s decision to make.

Just as long as he can nap when they get there, where ever it is. 

Shisui was going out of his mind.

This was not a new state of affairs. His mind had left the safe confines of his skull sometime around figuring out Nohara was now a bona fide, extra terrifying Jinchuuriki, then it outright skipped the paddock after his formerly dead cousin showed up in the creepiest outfit and everything went full soap opera. Said dead cousin was now trying to usher them into a dubious portal of doom like he didn’t figure out how to use his mangekyo literally ten minutes ago.

Shisui dared a peek at the veritable irrigation field of blood and quickly looked away with a shudder, garnering an inquisitive sleepy noise from Toboe propped securely against his side. Poor guy was literally falling asleep on his feet from chakra exhaustion. Obito beckoned them in, and Shisui grimaced.

Portal of doom it was.

It was dark and creepy inside, Shisui noted with a shiver. Toboe should count himself lucky he’s too out of it to pay attention, Shisui thought, he’s certainly going to be seeing this place in his nightmares later.

Another portal swirled out of the dimness, leading to a place that was just as dark and creepy, with added dankness and the pervasive smell of plant rot.

Oh good, Shisui always wanted to know what being trapped in a tomb was like. Not.

Except he wanted to be trapped in here — Obito’s eye? — even less so into the tomb they go. And, huh, Shisui squinted into the darkness, it was less a tomb and more a tunnel, roomier than he expected. Where they in a cave? Was this Obito’s grave?

“Oh gods, I hope not,” Shisui whimpered, repressing a shudder. Toboe grumpily jabbed a finger in the his kidney, grumbling about him being too loud next to his ear. “Oh, I’m so sorry if me being upset about being stuck in a dark cave somehow annoys you.”

“We can dig our way out,” Toboe murmurs into Shisui’s shoulder, more sleepy slur than word.

“That is painfully optimistic of you.” Shisui informed him. “But I’ll take it.”

“Come on!” Obito reached for Nohara’s hand and, after a second’s hesitation, reached for Hatake’s too. Hatake looked like he might cry again. “The old man’s just up here. He can help. He put me back together, and that was no mean feat!”

Obito took them further through the cave, hands clasped with both his teammates’, following what Shisui picks out as enormous trailing roots after a minute of disbelieving squinting. They kind of have the same texture but they don’t look...woody enough, is the best way he can think to put it. Like if he reached out to touch them they wouldn’t feel like tree roots, but something spongier, damper, something that fed on fallen wood maybe. The wrong kind of cellulose.

It feels so wrong in here, Shisui shivers.

Obito leads them right into a cavern where the roots culminate in a— giant creepy statue chained in meditation with branches coming off it. Bodies hung, or were half submerged, in the tree-like tendrils, what’s left of their faces twisted in agony. Darkness clung unnaturally to the whole thing like an oil slick, as if its very presence were polluting.

And nestled in the pall of its presence was a single throne, housing an old, old man with an uncontrolled grey mane slumped bonelessly.

“Hey, gramps!” Obito irreverently breaks the silence with incongruous cheer. “I’m back! You wanna meet my teammates? Hey, you didn’t die while I was gone did you? Not cool.”

But did he ask if we wanted to meet the cave mummy? Shisui groused, tightening his grip on Toboe, no, he did not. Toboe gripped tighter right back and Shisui glances at him, concerned. Toboe had turned his face enough to stare at the old man with one wide eye, hiding the rest with his fringe and Shisui’s shoulder, not a trace of his previous drowsiness to be seen. Shisui was very concerned now, taking a step back towards the relative safety of the cave tunnel.

“So, the prodigal son returns.” Horrifyingly, the mummy is still alive. And speaking. “With success at his heels. But who’s success, I wonder…”

Obito sauntered fearlessly right up to the withered figure. “You’re saying strange things again, gramps. Aren’t you happy for me?”

“Obito?” Hatake asked tentatively, supporting a very nauseous Nohara trying to curl up where she stood. “Who is this?”

“This is—” A wrinkled hand cut Obito off, the other groping for the cane. The old man heaved himself to his feet with a delicate wheeze.

“Let me get a look at them, brat,” the mummy reprimands in his dusty voice. “I’m not so old I can’t announce myself just fine. The day I am is the day I’m dead.”

“You say that like it’s not any day now,” Obito grumbled, getting swat at for his troubles.

Hatake, in a stunning lack of survival instincts Shisui can only assume were bred out of his bloodline, moved a step closer, drawing the cave mummy’s attention. His black gaze swept over them, pausing briefly on where Shisui and Toboe were huddled still in the tunnel, settling finally on Nohara who had one hand clamped to her mouth and the other arm wrapped around her stomach.

Shisui felt bad for her; those soldier pills clearly hadn’t sat well.

The old man tsked, hobbling forward. “I don’t need an introduction for you two,” he told Hatake and Nohara. “If I heard anymore about you from this one,” he motioned to Obito with his cane, “I’d swear we’d already met before.”

“I’m afraid we can’t say the same,” Hatake said cautiously, still so astonishing to Shisui to see him curbing his carelessly sharp tongue. “You healed Obito?”

“How?” Nohara croaked through her fingers. Regret creased her face, chased by rising green, and she belched loudly, swaying forward to lean more firmly on Hatake’s shoulder, groaning.

“I’ve lived a long time, and learned many things,” the old man said, gaze going distant for a second. “For instance, my hard won wisdom is telling me this young lady needs to sit down before she falls down.” He motioned to a stone — bed? Altar? — nearly hidden in the dark. “And the two of you can come out now. My jaw aches too much these days to bite.”

Shisui swallowed, turning enough to catch Toboe’s wide, red eyes. Toboe squeezes them shut, then lifts his chin, determination stealing over his face. Shisui nods, taking it for the answer it is, and grasps his friend’s hand.

After this, they were definitely friends. Shisui doesn’t follow acquaintances on off the books — of the rails — missions, that’s for damn sure.

“Ah, another Uchiha,” the mummy muses as Shisui cautiously emerges. Something about the way he says that makes the short hairs on the back of Shisui’s neck stand on end. As someone with a very stealable bloodline, that was the last thing he wanted to hear. “And, another Hatake?” He leans on his cane, as if to better peer around Shisui.

“Probably not,” Toboe muttered. He took a deep breath and moved into view.

The cave mummy hissed at the sight of him. Toboe flinched.

“ You, ” the old man spat. “Come back to interfere, have you? Obito! Get rid of him.”

“I’ve never met you before!” Toboe exclaimed. Shisui drew his tanto.

“Gramps, what’s gotten into you?” Obito demanded. “He’s just a kid!”

“He’s a nightmare that should have stayed dead, now do as I say, brat!” The old man snapped his fingers and the weird spikes of Obito’s collar closed around his head, muffling a startled, “Hey, what are you—?” His body jerked, once, twice, then, slowly, as if resisting every motion, Obito took a step towards Shisui and Toboe.

There was instant pandemonium.

Obito howled protest with every shambling step. Hatake ran to his side only to be backhanded full across the face, knocked to the ground, stunned. Nohara screamed, and the old man grabbed her by the collar, holding her out at arm’s length. Hatake hesitated, clearly torn between who to aid first. Toboe bolted for the tunnel with Shisui in tow only for the way to be blocked off by identical bone-pale men that phased out of the rock, looking eerily similar to the corpses on the statue.

“Hashirama won’t protect you this time,” the old man snarled, wrinkled hand white-knuckled on his cane. “How dare you show your face to me after all these years. After all my hard work!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Toboe insisted. Shisui slashed at the nearest bone-pale obstacle, dragging his friend away. “I don’t know you!”

Panic was the only thing lending Shisui strength at the moment. Panic enough to power through jelly legs and low chakra. But only for a minute. The bone-pale men herded them towards the altar with cruel smirks and a show of licking their lips.

“Let me go!” Nohara cried, twisting in the old man’s grip. Obito screamed again. Nohara’s mouth firmed. As long as he lives, Shisui will never forget what she did next.

Nohara turned to the old man and threw up a bijuu on him.

The old man disappeared under a clawed foot with wide eyes and a shriek.

The Sanbi roared, shaking the cavern. Cracks spiderwebbed the ceiling.

“Oh my gods,” Shisui breathed, dropping the tanto, staring certain death in the eye. In his peripheral, Nohara scrambled away from the bijuu posthaste, colliding with Hatake long enough to grab him and charge for Obito.

The bone-pale men melt away under the corrosive force of the Sanbi’s chakra, sinking into the ground. The Sanbi turns, smashing a tail against the cavern wall. The mountain rumbled. The cracks widened. A crash echoed out of the tunnel. Shisui’s heart sank.

They really were going to die here, weren’t they?

Skinny arms wrapped around his shoulders as Toboe buried his face in his shoulder, murmuring, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t know this would happen,” over and over in frantic litany. Shisui could only hold him right back.

And then an arm wrapped around them both and scooped them backwards through a portal into broad daylight.

Shisui blinked, whiplashed. “What?” Toboe stayed huddled to his side, all but hyperventilating. Shisui mustered some scraps of brain power enough to pat him on the back. “What just happened?”

Obito leaned over his head with a shaky smile. “Uh, I’m awesome, that’s what.”

“Why are you in your underwear?” Shisui asked blankly.

Obito flushed, highlighting his scars. “I had to phase out of my Zetsu bodysuit first! Give me a break, geeze.”

“We’re in training ground seven,” Nohara said, raspy but light with wonder. “We’re safe.”

Hatake lunged at Obito who squawked and flailed. He was, maybe, just maybe, crying again. At this point, Shisui might consider joining him. When the shock wore off. That’s where Toboe looked to be heading himself, which Shisui found very worrying given the boy’s generally even emotional keel.

Nohara fell over, giggling at a weirdly high pitch, gasping, “Someone please take me to the hospital.”

Chapter Text

Nohara fell over, giggling at a weirdly high pitch, gasping, “Someone please take me to the hospital.”

Shisui passed out the instant a medic deposited him on a bed.

He woke up to a soft sound — here he squinted at the clock, then the calendar — two in the morning a day later, limply arranged in typical corpse pose and mildly shivery from the IV stuck in his arm. Enough moonlight streams through the window to cast the room in soft grays and silvers, lending it an air of unreality.

Shisui blinks and thinks about going back to sleep. He probably could if he just closed his eyes.

Instead, he turns to look to the side.

Toboe was sitting up in his bed, curled up in a ball, face buried in his knees, shaking like a leaf in a storm wind.

“‘Bo?” he croaked into the stillness.

“I’m not crying!” Said the boy who was definitely crying.

“Okay,” Shisui said, too tired to be anything but agreeable, wrung out and still aching, “you’re not crying. What are you doing then?”

“Just— thinking. I’m just thinking.”

“Okay,” Shisui repeated. “But you look cold. Come over here, it’s warmer.” 

Toboe shakes around another soft sob, and for a second Shisui thought he’d say no, but then Toboe uncurled enough to slip off the bed, dragging the blanket with him. Shisui scooched to the side, pulling the edge of his blanket up and over, cocooning Toboe. Toboe shoved his face in Shisui’s shoulder.

Shisui doesn’t know what to say. He… doesn’t think this is near death jitters? At least, not entirely? Toboe wasn’t front-line but he’d seen combat, he was fierce and pragmatic and matter of fact in the face of peril. Toboe didn’t scare easily. Except— something about that cave mummy had terrified him in a way Shisui almost didn’t quite recognize, if only because he’d never seen what terror looked like on his steady friend.

He’d never seen Toboe cower like that. 

He didn’t like it.

It made him feel like he’d swallowed a coal that was burning him from the inside out when all he wanted to do was spew that fire on the nearest target. Preferably the one who made Toboe — his friend, his steady teammate, the first one to reach out to him when all the world was still bleak and doused in angry grief — cringe and shiver so hopelessly. So helplessly. 

Ah, he thought, throwing an arm around Toboe’s shoulders, so this is love after loss.

And then he brushed that thought aside for the future with all the blithe acceptance an Uchiha can manage under the force of their own emotions. Really, what was he going to do about them? Fight it? Please. As if.

They say Uchiha who have lost precious people are dangerous in their grief, tumbling headlong into madness.

Those people don’t know the danger of Uchiha who have survived loss and found precious people again. Those are the Uchiha who would stop at nothing to never lose another bond again, and their thwarted wrath was so much greater.

Shisui blearily waves sanity goodbye in a hospital room at oh god in the morning. 

He doesn’t regret it at all.

“What were you thinking about?” He asked, swallowing down the ember-bright feelings before they could spill out of his mouth like the most embarrassingly touchy-feely gold coins imaginable. “Looked like deep thoughts.”

Toboe huffed a wet laugh. Shisui counted it as a victory.

“Just wondering who that old man thought I was.” 

“Eh,” Shisui said with a pragmatic shrug, “who knows? He was super old, I bet he was senile.”

Toboe huffed another laugh, “True.”

“Plus, he’s dead now so we’ll never know for sure,” Shisui continued. “It could be anyone! It’s not like people with white hair are that rare. I know at least three excluding you! It could have been just some guy who peed in his miso, or the Nidaime himself! We’ll never know.”

Toboe didn’t laugh this time.

“Toboe?” Shisui cautiously prodded, patting his back.

“...I think I prefer being mistaken for the guy who peed in his miso,” Toboe offers after a tense half-minute. 

“You realize, of course, this means I’m never eating any miso you give me,” Shisui replied solemnly.

Toboe finally breaks into tired, half hysterical giggles. “Shut up! I wouldn’t actually! That’s so gross!”

“But you just said—!” and that was as far Shisui got before he couldn’t hold back his own giggles. He doesn’t know how they don’t attract a nurse with all the noise they’re making. It’s fine though. It’s good. It’s very good. Laughter feels good, and Toboe’s laughter feels all the better for its rarity.

Shisui doesn’t remember drifting off at any point but he must’ve because he blinks awake to daylight feeling like no time had passed at all. Toboe was a warm weight on his shoulder, mouth slack and brow smoothed out, arms wrapped tight around Shisui’s middle in a tell-tale death grip that Shisui knows from experience is inescapable without waking him up. That’s probably on purpose, now that he thinks about it, which he usually doesn’t because thinking about Toboe and cuddly in the same sentence still struck him as weird even though it happened on a regular, if not daily, occurrence.

Also a regular occurrence is the arm being slept on going numb. Worst way to wake up, ever. It takes five minutes of whining and twitching and tugging for enough feeling to come back that he can flop it on his face and clumsily rub the sleep from his eyes. Ugh, he felt like stretched rubber all over.

Toboe slept through it all, the brat.

...he was really pale, the dark, exhausted bruising under his eyes standing out starkly. Shisui recalls practically dragging him around, weak and half-unconscious from chakra depletion.

On second thought, Toboe could stay asleep.

Shisui didn’t mind.

It wasn’t so bad, being a pillow. Most of the time.

The sunlight splashed on the far wall had traveled four finger widths to the left when a nurse finally bustled into the room, clucking briskly to find them in the same bed. She had a plain round face just beginning to wrinkle at the corners, and dark eyes, her hair hidden under a cowl attached to her uniform. There was a name tag pinned to her front but for the life of him Shisui couldn’t make out what the untidy scrawl actually said.

“You’re lucky you left the IVs alone,” she said dryly, setting a tray down on the nightstand and going about the arcane process of switching out fresh IV bags. Shisui shivered from the fresh surge of cool saline. “If you had, you’d have woken to the night nurse stabbing you with needles in your sleep, and believe me, no one would have been happy about it.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Shisui said meekly as she moved to the other side of the bed. Toboe brow’s scrunched grumpily in his sleep once the nurse finished with him, grip tightening as he tried to burrow into the nearest source of warmth. In the interests of breathing, Shisui helpfully pulled the blankets up. “How are the others? Do you know?”

The fact Obito was alive was kind of still blowing Shisui’s mind. Half his body crushed was a graphic enough explanation to need no elaboration, after all.

“They’ll live,” the nurse said simply. “Not sure how much I should tell you about the specifics.” Shisui nodded knowingly; security clearance. “The Nohara girl’s damn lucky though, I can tell you that. A day longer in captivity and no one’s sure she would have survived.”

Oh. Ouch. Shisui winced. That would have been… bad. Given Obito. And Obito’s… everything.

His very Uchiha everything.

Shisui’s got a mangekyo; he knows how that goes. He’s lucky he had people around to console him through it, and he knows it. Obito all alone in the aftermath of Nohara’s death with only that cave mummy… 

It didn’t bear thinking about. 

“Anyway, you two are stable,” the nurse said, gathering her tray. “Chakra exhaustion and regular exhaustion. Rest, eat well, lots of fluids, don’t do anything strenuous, and you should be fine. Both of you will be out of here in no time.” She paused, glanced down at Toboe. “Oh. Someone’s probably going to want to talk to him.”

“Uh, why?” Shisui asked nervously. It did not escape him that him and Toboe might be in massive trouble for going off the way they did. Shisui and Hatake would be fine, they had serious connections. Toboe though…

“Kid,” the nurse eyed him, “have you any idea how crazy what he did to keep Nohara going was? Trained medics don’t improvise like that in the field; it’s insane. Then again, a trained medic would have known more than Mystic Palm, and they certainly would have known better than to deliberately poke unstable seals.”

Well no, it hadn’t escaped Shisui what Toboe did was wildly reckless at best, thank you for asking. He has the future nightmares and everything from seeing the actual literal Sanbi from up close and personal.

“So tell him when he wakes up to expect someone’ll want to talk to him, alright?” She finished.

Shisui nodded.

He slumped back on the pillows once she left, drained. He sighed, “I think this one’s a you problem this time, ‘Bo.”

“Looks like it,” Toboe unexpectedly replied back.

Shisui jerked, yelping, “How long have you been awake?”

“Just the last two minutes,” Toboe murmured around a yawn, finally deigning to release Shisui from his relentless deathgrip and rolled over onto his back. “You were doing fine so I didn’t want to interrupt.”

“Interrupt what? She probably should have been telling you all that,” Shisui complained. “Aren’t you curious?”

“No,” Toboe said simply.

Why was Toboe like this, Shisui lamented, why did he put up with it?

“Since I’m not under a jounin commander, if I agree to become a trainee medic they’ll take me off our team and put me on one more liable to see combat. I can’t leave you guys like that,” Toboe added lightly, pulling the blankets up to his chin with a sigh.

Oh, Shisui thought dumbly. That’s why he put up with it.

They really were friends, weren’t they?

Chapter Text

Alright, folks, some news.

It's been such a long time since I started this fic that my understanding of canon and the characters involved has evolved several times over and now I can hardly write due to the new vision clashing with the old. I'm loathe to give up on this story though so I'm going to try to rewrite it with a better, clearer outline, and hopefully longer chapters.

I want to sincerely thank everyone who's been following the fic so far, I know this is probably disappointing news, but I want to give you guys the best I can and the current quality of Howling is no longer that. For you, I will leave this up so you can continue enjoying it. I hope to get started on the rewrite soon.

Best regards

Pandaflower (Pearl)