ii.

Chapter Forty-Seven: Descent (Rewind)

"Woken up like an animal, teeth ready for sinking. My mind's lost in bleak visions, I've tried to escape but keep sinking. Woken up like an animal, I'm all ready for healing. My mind's lost with nightmares streaming. Woken up (Kicking and screaming)" -Daughter

It started like any other normal day she supposed. She crawled out of Itachi's bed early, long before anyone else had deemed it an appropriate hour. Nanami herself had long since shucked off the cocoon of sleep, and finding it again seemed an exercise in futility she wasn't interested in wasting.

One dark eye that swirled red for only the briefest of moments split open blearily at her as she slipped from underneath warm covers.

"Nanami?" he murmured questioningly. She just gave the tired man a soft smile.

He made a humming noise of acknowledgement to her unspoken words. The eye slid shut once more as Itachi rolled his face back into his pillow. His dark, unbound hair sliding over his neck like a waterfall of silk past the shell of his ear.

Something warm burst in her chest, painful and tight, and too full of everything for this man to possibly exist at all but also entirely par the course for Nanami's state of mind. She loved Itachi so monstrously, with fire and teeth and a frightening amount of obsession that none of her brothers blinked twice at. She loved them all this way; it was the only way she was capable of love, with everything she had and even then a little bit more.

She pulled the covers up to his shoulders, gently tucking him in. He hummed again, a quiet sound of appreciation this time. She turned, padding on soft feet to the other member of the room. Nanami retrieved a fallen pillow halfway across the room, and another at the foot of the other occupied bed.

Gently lifting one of Oceans' arms she tucked the first into his grip, a grumble rose for her efforts and a reflexive squeeze over the soft object that had been returned to him.

The other she had to lean over his hulking form to fit snugly between his back and the wall like he liked.

A fort of pillows for the shark man. She tittered in the privacy of her own mind, lips twitching with the effort to keep quiet.

Silver eyes and too sharp teeth poking from a soft, content smile that lazed about his lips like a sunbathing cat was her reward.

She tucked him back under his covers too.

An unfamiliar snort of disbelief sounded behind her as she turned to the door. Nanami ignored it; it wasn't important. This wasn't the first, or the last time (She hoped, she always hoped.) that she would bring her brothers some small scrap of what little comfort she could offer them. An unconditional gesture of affection with nothing required in return.

Big, menacing killers that they all were.

The next room found her trotting quietly towards a sleeping Burning Earth.

The man was all gangly limbs and wild blonde hair in his sleep. Arms akimbo and carelessly thrown over the side of his mattress were returned to their rightful place, and hair ties were gently pulled from knotted hair.

He politely pretended to sleep during her careful ministrations, but the shine of humored blue irises gave him away when he rolled over and kicked at the blanket she had just put over him. She smiled fondly at his stubbornness.

For all that Burning Earth seemed like an adult, comparatively, he was really just a teenager himself.

Not that this world saw teenagers as children.

"That's an interesting concept." A man with a long blonde ponytail murmured quietly at her side.

She looked at him askance.

"It's rude to interrupt." She admonished the stranger gently, quiet despite the fact that had he truly been here her brothers would have reacted to him by now.

That, and the fact that for all that this had started like a normal day, these exact events had already occurred. Repetitive motions or not, every day had its own quirks.

"Yes, you're dreaming." The stranger confirmed, trailing after her as she gently pushed past the half-open door to Loud Blood and Beating Hearts' room.

"Why the names?" He asked her, and she shot him another quelling look, miffed with his interruption of her early morning ritual. Nothing took precedence over her brothers, nothing. Not even weird Konoha shinobi that found themselves wandering through her memories.

Nanami shifted a few books on Kakuzu's desk, gathering her ledgers for the table downstairs and flicking off the lamp that Hidan had most likely left on.

Beating Hearts hated it when Loud Blood was wasteful. (Which was pretty much always.)

"Why are you here?" She asked the stranger instead of answering his question.

"I'm just here to see." He said gently, a strange look in his eyes. It was all soft, understanding surface tension barely balanced over a sterner, inflexible foundation. Maybe displeasure or some other similar severity. Nanami was familiar with the masks that men wore to hide their inner workings from the world. She grew up surrounded by them.

She did her best to ignore the strange, lying man.

Shuffling around the room only took a minute, papers tucked under one arm as she gathered forgotten laundry and cloaks that needed to be hung.

Piercing blue eyes followed her every action, meaningless that they must seem to him. (Or perhaps not? Who knew what this man found interesting.)

"What is that supposed to mean?" He mumbled somewhere behind her as she trotted down the stairwell into the living space.

He paused at the last step, gaze sweeping over the room.

"Not exactly what I imagined." His hands tucked behind his back in a way Nanami found overly casual.

"You talk a lot." Nanami curtly informed him.

"Nanami." A voice caught her attention, and compelled to respond by events that had already come to pass, she turned to the man with a happy, if not slightly tired smile.

Moonlight cast cold rays through the window, cut with swaths of warm yellow from the light streaming from the open kitchen door.

"Echo-sama, good morning." The orange haired man nodded, hands folded atop a closed book from where he sat at the low table.

"Sama?" The stranger murmured. Nanami continued to ignore him.

The light from the kitchen glinted off the silver studs in his ear.

"Where is Hummingbird?" She carried on, because if Echo-sama hadn't desired some form of conversation he wouldn't have said anything at all.

"She sleeps." Was his simple reply as Nanami folded herself gently onto a worn red cushion across from him. Papers spread out in front of her within moments in a sort of organized chaos.

The compressor inside the refrigerator just beyond the kitchen door kicked on with a hum, soothing in its familiarity.

"Who taught you to do this?" Echo-sama said after a few minutes of silence, save for the scratching of her pencil, the low buzz of lighting, and the aforementioned refrigerator.

The blonde stranger sat himself next to her like he was fucking welcome here or some shit. She shot him yet another disgruntled look, her irritation with his mere presence becoming grating and abrasive as the moments ticked by.

Nanami paused, returning to the actual important person in the room.

She wouldn't lie to him. She wasn't sure the truth would be appropriate either though.

The strangers perfectly manicured blonde eyebrow ticked upwards.

"I've been helping Beating Hearts for a long time." She said instead.

Yahiko's image, still and calm, quirked at the edges of his features; and a soft blink that wasn't timed just right told her he had caught her non sequitur. Though it could have been at Kakuzu's nickname, which Echo-sama didn't care to remember for any of them most of the time. Somehow she doubted he'd missed the context clues though. He hadn't for Konan's name only moments before.

Whatever he may or may not have noticed was lost in the next hour as she worked diligently at her assigned duties, and Echo-sama seemed content enough to watch.

Or sleep with his eyes open- he really was a mystery to her.

"And yet you can tell he noticed something by the way he blinks." The Konoha-nin once again interjected himself into what was a pleasant, cherished memory.

The stranger's head cocked to the side in a particular motion, looking taken aback for a moment.

"Why would this be a cherished moment?" More words looked like they wanted to roll off his tongue but he stopped himself in time. His eyes roamed about the room, as if looking for something he had missed that would explain things he clearly didn't understand.

Nanami turned to him fully now, the silence of the room total and unnatural. As if all the clocks in the world had stopped ticking.

"Every moment they deem me worthy enough to continue by their sides is cherished," she snapped, irritated. "Every moment they live is cherished," she admitted only a moment later, something in her deflating at the reminder. Nanami only wanted to be left alone with her Red Clouds, it really didn't seem like all that much to ask.

The blonde man's blue gaze darkened. An angry scowl, ugly and rude stole across his face and for the smallest of moments Nanami remembered who he was.

His expression changed in an instant from thunderous to shocked before that knowledge seeped from her mind like water held in her cupped palms- but the damage was already done. Just because Nanami couldn't pin his identity down now no longer meant she was ignorant to the empty space where that knowledge should be.

"Neat trick." She told him with a side order of eat-shit-and-die.

There was an uncomfortable pause.

"You aren't what you seem, are you?" He asked rhetorically.

"Who wants to know?" She bit out, incensed over the way she had known him and then suddenly she just didn't.

He smiled at her then, gentle and kind and as fake as every time she'd ever said 'I'm fine' combined.

His expression eased a bit; a fresh, burning pain shining behind his eyes before it too was gone, replaced by his earlier lax blankness. Nanami was starting to get the impression that her thoughts and mental metaphors were not as guarded with this nin as she would prefer.

"Let's move on shall we?" He murmured into the yawning space between them. "Lets try something farther back."

Nanami's brows furrowed as his weird phrasing.

The next moment found the breath leaving her lungs with a grunt of impact, body hitting the ground with all her meager weight.

She wheezed, stars dancing in her vision as she looked up into the canopy of trees; the sun shining happily between bright, summer green leaves and branches weighted lightly with twittering birds. Short, prickly grass found ways to jab into her exposed skin, another discomfort smothered by the wind getting knocked out of her.

The forest of River Country was alive with sounds, familiar to her younger self like the motions of Burning Earth's fingers twinning braids into her hair, adorning her locks with little feathers and pretty beads. Comforting, nostalgic.

Beating Hearts leaned into her line of vision, scowling heavily with arms crossed and black threads returning to his shoulders in a smooth, uninterrupted motion. His skin was warm in the sun, tanned in a way many from Waterfall were. His jagged back hair fell around his severe features in an endearing way.

"Pay attention." He grunted at her.

She wheezed some semblance of acknowledgement.

"Fucking ass hole! What'd you do that for, seriously?!" A howl rose from across the clearing. Nanami gathered her bearings, sitting up and bringing a hand to her temple, shaking her head as if the action alone could clear away the budding headache.

She got to her feet at the same moment Loud Blood found his.

The white haired man cracked his neck, face splitting into a shit-eating grin. His cloak was, as always, nowhere to be found. Bare chested and rolled up pants cinched tight around his waist. He twirled his three pronged scythe between deft fingers before bringing it to rest across his bare shoulders. Chains clinked together in the only bedtime lullaby she'd ever been given in this life.

"Odd phrasing." Someone murmured behind her.

Beating Hearts turned on Hidan, scowl deepening to something a lot more menacing. Nanami knew the look- of course she did. Kakuzu had three levels of temperament: Generally Displeased followed by I Will Only Warn You Once topped off with Violence: In Concert.

"Do not cleave Nanami in half." Kakuzu looked all kinds of irritated, having to iterate something out loud that he felt should be a given was tantamount to repeating himself; which usually earned one a trip straight to Level Three Kakuzu Temper.

Hidan scowled, spitting onto the ground like a thug, canine tooth poking out from the corner of his lip in a show of aggression. He turned on her and Nanami paused in her efforts to dust off the bottoms of her pants.

"Listen, little bitch," as he spoke, he took large, loping steps towards her with an insistent stride. Nanami held her ground, used to his ways. A smile curled at the edges of her lips, happy and content to watch Hidan's too bright eyes as he got started waxing poetic about Jashin-sama. Because of course that's where this was going. It's Hidan.

"If you'd just accept Jashin-sama into your heart all of this 'careful' bullshit would be-" 'pointless' she was sure he would have said. Loud Blood never got to finish, as of course the subject of his god was very much taboo to the others when she was around.

Withering black threads erupted from his throat, blood and gore showering across her face and neck. Hidan gurgled, more blood welling between parted lips as deep purple eyes rolled into the back of his head in a swift death.

A choking, startled noise sounded off to her left; her unwelcome guest unused to such casual violence.

Kakuzu's threads quivered, jerking in an angry movement as they pulled from Hidan's corpse to let him fall heavily to the ground. Nanami used the long trailing edge of her black cloak to wipe at the red dripping down her face.

"Why does this bring you comfort?" The Konoha-nin sounded angry, frustrated even as he rounded the tree cover into her line of sight.

Loud Blood lay still in his crumpled, undignified heap at her feet, and Beating Hearts paused mid-step and mid-gesture. Time once more at a standstill.

Nanami's brow furrowed in consternation, eyes dark with fury she rounded on the stranger, tension tight enough to pluck between them.

Offense burned inside of her like boiling water in a tea kettle. Pressure building uncomfortably until the inevitable screaming wail.

How dare he? How dare this man come into her memories and alter the last shred of what would be left.

"Stop it." She snapped, matching his aggressive steps and meeting him halfway. "You have no right!" Her voice raised, eyes wild when she caught sight of Kakuzu's acid green gaze. (Still, much too still.) "Put them back! Fix this, you have no right to meddle with my memories!"

The man's blue eyes burned. "They're lawless killers." He whispered fiercely, as if speaking too loudly might break the hold he had here. "They murder for money and they murder for no reason at all. And you think- what?" His face twisted into an ugly sneer, hands clenching at his sides. "You think you love them?" He took another step, but Nanami held her ground. She wasn't afraid of this man. He was no Orochimaru, he was no Kakuzu at the third repetition.

No, she saw this shinobi for exactly what he was.

A wounded animal.

Like would always recognize like, after all.

"You're a child. You don't know the first thing about love. Killers," he scoffed. "That's all you are."

Nanami's bitter laughter tore his features into something that looked more that she'd slapped him instead. Bitter, and ugly, and far too knowing to belong to any real child. It riled down after only a moment, petering out into an unmistakably unhinged tittering giggle. She watched the man take in ragged breaths, his wide eyes suspiciously misty from the force behind his words but she held no sympathy for this creature.

"That's right." She murmured, and for a moment he looked taken aback by her agreement. "We're killers, aren't we? Murderers, villains." She paused to take a ragged breath of her own. "Do you know the difference between my family and yours shinobi-san?"

His mouth opened but she powered through.

"The person who tells us to do it." And again his expression turned thunderous. "You think that just because you have a Hokage who tells you what to do, and when to do it, that it protects you from the choices you make and the people you kill? You think that just because you have a family that smiles for you, supports you, and tells you you're doing the right thing that that somehow saves you from being this-" A curt, sweeping gesture towards her brothers. His eyes tracked the movement.

"You think you're so much better than us just because you go to bed at night secure in the knowledge that you did good for your Hokage, and someone told you you did the right thing- well fuck the right thing." She stomped her foot, every inch the nine year old she appeared to be for a moment. "And fuck you too. Everyone deserves to be loved. Everyone deserves to be missed when they're dead, fuck you for trying to tell me I don't know what love is! Maybe you should stop taking your life for granted and appreciate the shit you have!" It was by far the most aggressive she had been with nothing but words in this life. (It was no doubt a small piece of Bitter Wings executing its influence.)

This guy really, really rubbed her the wrong way, and for all that she recognized the open wound in his expressions; Nanami was hurting too. Nanami was always hurting, always waiting for the blow to land; suspended in the moment before a flinch for the majority of her life- and you didn't see her going around judging other people for what little they had.

This guy was a huge dick.

"Now fucking fix them!" She ended on a shrill note and almost flinched at her own tone. Raven Eyes would be disappointed with her lack of composure.

Shinobi-san's blank mask was back in place. He smoothed his palms over his red vest that lay on top of his flack jacket. It could have been to press the wrinkles in the fabric, but Nanami liked to think it was because his palms were sweaty.

"An interesting concept." He said hollowly for the second time, and once again the world melted around them, shifting to take a new form.

Thoughts drained from her head like a water bucket with a hole in the bottom. Her seven senses scrambled; a giant, incorporeal fist smashing down on the 'reset' button of her awareness. She fought for a handful of seconds before the shrill, piercing wail of the nin's control shattered her into cooperation. (it hurt it hurt it hurt)

Nanami turned, compelled by some force she didn't comprehend to crouch low into the underbrush like this was what she had been doing for hours. She waited, a creature full of patience with sharp teeth and a sharper knife.

Her fingers dug furrows into the loamy soil, moist from recent rain and heavy with the scent of ozone.

They would be coming soon, any minute now- as long as she wasn't misreading the way the sun hung low on the horizon. She hovered at the edge of where the thick copse of trees thinned out into a spacious, flowing valley. She could only assume this is where River Country ended and another country began.

She wasn't sure which one, she didn't have much use for the geography of this world outside of which areas were more populated than others and how best to avoid them. But even then her chakra sense was more handy in this than decrepit knowledge from a lifetime ago.

A flash of movement caught the corner of her eye and she had to bite the inside of her cheek to quell the shiver of excitement that wanted to run a course down her spine. It would be best to stay absolutely still, deathly still. Her chakra flickered gently; a bird, or maybe a mouse. So small and gentle, so unassuming as to be nothing of importance.

Nanami didn't like people, it was true; people were dangerous in a way that animals would never be. Cunning and terrible- but for all that her tiny little self welled with trepidation at the thought, she was also very curious.

And this small group of shinobi had been stopping by the edge of her woods at the same time every week like clockwork. So here she was, peering out from the underbrush, small and ragged in every inch of toddler hood that she had once been.

Nanami had Oceans though, and maybe a little of Raven Eyes, who was terrifying and fascinating by turns with his piercing red gaze that peeled her apart with a glance. So even though she was alone, and she wandered these woods comfortably in her filthy kimono, her chosen hovered at the edges of her thoughts, always just there. She was always waiting for the next moment she would get to see them.

But today she waited for strangers, and she was not made to wait much longer when the three man cell dropped from the trees into the valley below. They spread out like a well-oiled machine, all parts of a whole with the smallest of flicks from one man's fingers. Nanami thought maybe he was the leader. The group combed through what Nanami could see was a very well concealed campground. Left from the previous weeks stay, nothing but scuffed dirt and crumpled leaves to show it had previously been occupied. Their unique chakra signatures flickered about with life, strangely no different up close than they had been when she watched them with her inner eye from miles away. Their chakra reflected nothing of interest; exhaustion, boredom, and the underlying tension that all shinobi seemed to have when keeping alert.

Her bare toes dug harder into the dirt, seeking a firmer purchase for the moment she knew she would need to leave.

These nin wore no sigils like the Hyuuga man she had met some months prior from Konoha, but she knew the animals masks they wore were indicative of the same village.

She'd never seen them in this life, but she still knew.

Konoha-nin then. Unless some other village was trying to impersonate them but Nanami was under the impression that this was supposed to be peace-time; but then again, she didn't really understand the mentality of village shinobi so maybe they had their reasons. Probably best not to make assumptions.

"That's a very astute observation for a child so young." A stranger said at her side, and it was weird but some part of her was aware that he wasn't really here.

(And she knew the words because she'd heard them spoken all her life but she also hadn't? They layered; she understood and she didn't. It was uncomfortably confusing.)

"Shh." She told him with a quick glance.

The Konoha ANBU didn't actually say anything, which wouldn't have mattered anyways since her Japanese was sketchy as hell, but the hand signs they flicked at one another were interesting. She had no idea what they meant either but it was neat to watch.

Something strange caught her eye then.

Something weird that blipped into her thoughts like a neon dot of colour on black canvas. Nanami turned, eyes tearing away from the spectacle before her to look off into the foliage in the opposite direction.

It moved there, between the deep shadows of trees, and her eyes narrowed in an attempt to get a better look.

The longer she watched, the more familiar the figure appeared; like looking at the very last puzzle piece that had the right shape but the wrong image. It belonged, because the thing had forced itself to belong, but it hadn't always been here.

Red eyes flashed in the gloom, cat-like in its reflectiveness in a way that struck a chord in her chest and her first thought was Raven Eyes- but that wasn't right, it was close but it wasn't right.

Bitter Wings skittered over her thoughts then, and it was a strange name, one that fit in her mouth just fine like she'd said it a million times even though she hadn't.

The stranger who definitely didn't belong appeared at her side, his familiar-but-not features screwed up in a strange look. Somewhere between incredulous and fearful and she paid him a moment of attention before going back to the figure in the woods- the ANBU behind her all but forgotten.

"What is inside your head, little girl?" The man murmured, and her head tilted to the side, feather braid sliding past her ear in curiosity.

"Thoughts?" She told him, because what else would there be? What a weird thing to ask.

The man turned from the dark figure in the woods to look down at her with what she could only call a disapproving look.

Nanami turned her nose up at him before looking back into the deep shadows cast by thick, cramped trees; eyes searching for the tell-tale flash of Sharingan, but it seemed that as soon as the strange blonde man had appeared that Bitter Wings had taken his leave.

Whoever he was.

"The ANBU." The stranger prodded her. She ignored him for a moment longer, the whistle of suspicion sounding like a clarion through her thoughts and she was loath to ignore such important instincts. "Child." The man's voice held an edge, and she winced at the piercing sensation that prodded at her with metal plated tips into her temples.

So she turned, thoughts led toward the animal masked men in their strange encampment like a barbed bit had lead her by mouth.

She watched them carry on about the encampment, shuffling bags and flicking hand signs to each other with subtle movements. She didn't understand them, but she supposed it didn't really matter anyways.

Their chakra signatures rumbled lowly under their skin, compressed into tight little balls of rotating energy. Nanami wondered why this would be the practice of a group of men that were supposedly so advanced among their village, when clearly all it did was make the wispy blue energy burn brighter.

Her head tilted in confusion, a feathered braid falling across her shoulder. Her own chakra fluttered weakly, mimicking the size and shape of the bird her feathers belonged to. The men before her seemed none-the-wiser that she could tell.

But Nanami was young, and in a split second of distraction as a hawk flew overhead, her chakra sputtered, and so it was that a cat mask turned to face her direction. The mask's empty eye sockets unnerved her, a chill skittering down the flesh of her back. It was hard to tell exactly what the man's eyes lay on behind his mask, but she rather thought that was probably the point.

Her toes flexed in the dirt, turning her body without sound, preparing to dart off into the woods only to come face to face with the cat mask that had just been staring at her. The other ANBU, now at her back all flicked about in suppressed alarm.

The cat mask before her tilted his head in much the same way she had only moments before, his much larger stature crouching down to tower over her in what she assumed was supposed to be a disarming motion; bringing himself more level with her own low center of gravity.

The way his chakra pooled into his hands belied his motions, a battle-ready motion if ever she had imagined one. It shivered under his skin, nervous, confused, wary.

"Are you lost, little girl?" He murmured behind his mask with words she didn't understand (Confusion swarmed because she did understand, clearly she did-)

Nanami shivered with apprehension, and side stepped as quickly as possible to remove herself from being sandwiched between the Konoha-nin. The cat mask turned to follow her movement, but did not rise from his crouched position.

His chakra felt sturdy, rooted deep in search of water but also rising high into the boughs to soak up the sunlight. A weathered thing, ancient, but also somehow young and innocent. Never had she meet a human who's chakra felt more the the forest she called home.

Despite this, Nanami fled. She wanted nothing to do with these people, these men who were anathema to her Red Clouds.

"To think we had been this close to stumbling into Akatsuki so many years ago." A man with a blonde ponytail that streamed through the air like banner kept pace beside her.

Nanami snarled at him with sharp little baby teeth, startled by his presence and lacking any words that might be enough to express her unease.

The blonde's lips quirked down as his eyes studied her. "Perhaps this is a little too far back." He murmured more to himself than to her.

Her next step brought her to the low lying table, her usual cushion beneath her feet as she folded herself as gracefully onto it as possible. An attempted mimicry of Raven Eyes' dance-like posture and motions. The seam of her pillow was torn at the side, spilling little puffs of white stuffing from where Hidan's scythe had met its fabric during their fight a few hours previous.

She frowned at it, little fingers attempting to push the stuffing back where it belonged. Movement caught the corner of her eye and she looked up just in time to see the man she had just been trying to imitate perch himself neatly on his own pillow just across from her.

She wondered, after watching him move for the millionth time, is she would ever appear that fluid. Raven Eyes gently placed a small pile of work books between them, his painted nails brushing across the surface of the topmost book.

He waited patiently for her attention to still, for her eyes to meet his unfathomably deep pools of black before he spoke.

"Today we will discuss syntax." He spoke slowly, carefully for her benefit; but even his efforts could not provide understanding for everything her told her. Raven Eyes had spent enough time teaching her at this point to know when something was lost on her however. "Sentence structure." He tried again.

Nanami's head tilted to the side, her attention momentarily distracted by Loud Blood snickering from where he had perched himself on the arm of the couch to perform his morning prayers. He watched her with droopy eyelids, the purple of his iris appearing darker, more intent than usual with his half-lidded gaze.

Her heart thudded painfully in her chest. He was so beautiful.

"Putting words in the right order." Loud Blood practically sneered at her, but his careful annunciation and the fact that he had bothered to clarify in a way that she could understand belied his derisive tone.

Raven Eyes cleared his throat, bringing her attention back around with the patience that practically defined their relationship.

"Is he a very patient man?" The leaf-nin with the ponytail asked her at her side, perched atop the pillow that Beating Hearts usually sat on. A frown creased her lips, distracted again by the stranger's presence in a place he did not belong.

It bothered her to an unreasonable degree to see him sitting there, sitting in a place that her mind should only remember green and red eyes cut from stained glass like a warning, venomous in their paper-thin patience. A ghostly sensation pasted over her arms, warm skin touching hers and warmer threads, comfort and belonging in the well-worn and beloved memory.

Nanami shuddered, a foreign prodding in her mind, forcing her attention back to the question that had been presented to her. Her gaze flashed back to Raven Eyes for a moment, his body motionless with hands folded gently atop today's pile of workbooks.

She supposed the nin must not know Itachi very well if he had to ask. The elder Uchiha was the most patient, enduring human being on the face of the planet.

"Is that right?" Disbelief coloured his voice. Nanami couldn't bring herself to care what this man bothered to believe or didn't.

Irritation snapped at her heels regardless, a strange emotion she was not used to feeling so clearly, so readily. Even as she contemplated this emotion, her eyes tracing the familiar outline of Itachi's calloused hands, a figure shimmered behind her brother. Her irritation evaporated, replaced with mild curiosity.

Like heat waves pooling on the ground, the image solidified itself slowly. An outline coming into view.

The Konoha-nin stiffed, and stood at her side; fingers twitching for his weapons pouch on reflex.

"This isn't a part of your memory." His voice informed her, like she wasn't already aware.

Nanami couldn't bring herself to feel any of the agitation that the adult felt, because even though the mirage didn't belong it also felt as if it did.

(He was always there, just under the topmost layer. Waiting with borrowed patience as he ascended the stairs of her thoughts.)

Fingers curled around her upper arm, hefting her up to stand. The touch was unwanted, unwelcome and a violation of her space. It made her mind feel crowded, too many people's thoughts, too many souls crammed into her skin and fighting for a space their shape didn't fit into regardless.

A hand landed on the blonde man's arm threateningly, and her gaze swept up the white-clad arm to meet deep pools of black that shifted to a whirlpool of red with a single blink. His lips set into a perpetual scowl.

"Nanami." Bitter Wings named her. "Stop talking to this parasite."

The Konoha-nin looked stricken, eyes wide and fingers loosening on her arm even as Bitter Wings tightened his own grip in warning.

"How could you possibly-"

Nanami fell backwards, sounds and colours rushing past in a dizzying array of time on rewind.

She fell into herself and she stumbled, tiny feet on hard packed earth crusted with dirt slime. She stumbled again, her tongue thick and hot in her mouth with thirst as swept it against the few teeth that she actually had.

Wooden houses packed together like sardine cans against the narrow road. Poverty stricken with a rancid odor of decay and feces.

The nameless girl looked up into the face of a child, no older than fifteen at most. Burn scars made her face a horror to look at, but the nameless girl had never known this human to look any other way, and so it just was.

The older girl tugged gently at her hand, her little one so tiny in the girl's grip as she trundled along after down the dirt road.

She tripped, unused to walking just yet and fell through the earth into nothing.

She faded into the dark, her memories flickered with light until it died all together, leaving her with two people on either side and the great expanse of all consuming void in all directions.

Sasuke's hand found hers, his larger, warmer fingers folding between hers with a sensation not unlike her own possessiveness flashing through her feelings like a thunderclap.

Inoichi took in a sharp breath on her other side.

"What is this place?" He said without words- because here, nothing existed.

Only the echoes of before and the ugly promise of to come lived beyond the pale.

The Yamanaka clan head took a step into the dark, and she would have warned him not to had she had the presence of mind to do so- but it was too late. He tumbled down, foot landing on nothing at all and sunk with a struggle into the before.

Nanami hesitated for only a moment, before stepping in after the man.

He'd be lost here forever if she didn't bring him back, she knew.

"Don't let go of my hand." She said to Bitter Wings without air or words or even meaning; but he nodded all the same.

AN: Hello! Long time no see! So sorry for the very long wait, I hope you enjoyed this chapter! Please leave me a review with your thoughts, I'd love to heard from you guys! And of course, as always, prompts or thing you'd like to see for the story are always helpful for my writers block.
I have quite a few running projects right now so IEAD got a bit slumped, and I apologize for the wait.

Thank you for reading!