DISCLAIMER- I own nothing. Unfortunately.

A/N- Some insanity and AUs about Kiharu and friends. Like what you read? Feel free to request a sequel! XXX

Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

There was something in the water.

It was late, far later than I had originally thought, and I knew my mother would start to worry if I was gone for much longer.

Apparently, even after being reborn (even if said parents didn't realise that) or even just being an extremely 'mature' child didn't spare your parents from fussing.

Not that I was going to complain.

After losing everything once, I'd be a complete asshole to fail to appreciate all I'd been blessed with in this life.

Cool parents? Check.

Freedom to roam and explore without being caged or discriminated against? Check.

Not having to be a killer? Check.

Maybe I should elaborate on that last one. Ahem. My parents were farmers and we lived outside of Konoha.

See? You get my drift?

Bullet. Dodged.

I was an only child, which was kinda new, so there wasn't any kerfuffle over son/daughter inheritance. One day the farm would be mine. End of. And, thankfully, manual labour wasn't a big deal. It didn't matter that I sucked balls at Japanese or didn't know how to gut fish or hunt. Digging a field was digging a field. Didn't matter what world I was living in.

So, in the daytime, our little family of three would slave over the farmland we owned (an impressive amount, in all honesty. A good few acres - I wasn't sure exactly - of fields filled with rippling slopes of golden wheat, just a few miles from Fire's hidden village) but, in the evening, I was left to my own devices. There were few families in the area, even fewer travellers and so, so long as I was home before it got too dark, I was allowed to do my own thing.

The Naka river, which cut through the mountains of the north, winding around Konohagakure, and flowing past our home, was as beautiful as it was vast. Whilst the majority of the water was fast-moving, a torrent of deep sapphire, there were shallows and small pools beneath waterfalls, where the waters calmed for a while.

It was there that I loved to venture.

A half an hour trek from our land, the small series of waterfalls were my own secret place. They were slow-flowing, small bumps and burbles in the river, and safe to venture across or linger in. On the summer evenings, nights like this one, the clear depths were mystical, droplets falling like crystals from roughly hewn rocks that had long since worn smooth.

The forest was silent as I dabbled my feet in the water and wrung out my sopping wet hair.

My sigh broke the stillness of the clearing, the sky flushing purple as the last rays of sunlight disappeared behind the horizon.

Glancing upstream, I blinked twice.

Was that...something bobbing in the water?

This was a river, things were washed down it all the time, from animals to sticks to supplies, but this looked different.

Like, was that- was that clothing?!

Lurching to my feet, I sloshed through the water, a futile struggle against a far superior current. I may have been a better swimmer in this life than my last, but I was only a 17 year-old girl.

Girl: 0. River: 1.

"Hey!" I gasped, chin tilted up as the water splashed against my chest and up my neck, squinted eyes firmly fixed on the dark shape moving steadily closer. "Hey!"

God, I hoped it wasn't a bandit or something.

The-the thing was carried past me and I threw myself across, wrapping my arms around the larger object and using my momentum to shove us over to the nearest rock.

Oh God, oh God, I desperately gulped and refused the urge to look down. It's a guy, there is a guy in the fucking Naka. If this was a-a body, I needed to get us to shore before freaking out.

Getting back on solid ground wasn't particularly hard, the water so much calmer when broken up by the little dips and waterfalls that made this place so special. Lugging a body a foot taller and 60 pounds heavier than me? I was lucky I did hard labour day in and day out. I was wheezing by the time we flopped onto the pebbled bank, the man boneless and freezing cold. Slumping down next to him, I propped myself up on one elbow.

The man-no, boy, maybe a year or so older than myself, oh God- was porcelain pale, tinged blue from the water. He was completely waterlogged, clothing black and heavy as it clung to his trim frame. Dark hair, curling slightly even when plastered to his head, was matted and pitch black.

His face was strangely familiar, even though I knew I'd never met a single shinobi in this life- and didn't that take the fucking cake?

A shiny yet worn Konoha Hitai-ate was gleaming on his forehead, damp curls half-concealing the engraved leaf.

And then, even as I watched, a slow trickle of scarlet blood traced beneath one closed eyelid, trailing over alabaster skin and into onyx hair.

Aw, fuck.

~o000o~

The first thing Shisui was aware of was how cold the world was.

It was like winter had come, regardless of the fact it was mid-August, encrusting his fingers and toes in frost, like his skin was ice itself.

In all honesty, Shisui wasn't even sure how he was feeling anything, considering he thought he'd di-

The Naka. Itachi. Danzo, the coup, Konoha-

His body gave no physical sign he'd woken up - what else could he have done, surely this wasn't heaven - but Shisui's mind had jerked into hyperdrive.

The ground was damp beneath him, shifting and sharp, so he must have washed up on the banks of the river, somehow surviving the fall. Well, all he remembered was the whistled of air in his ears, blood streaming from his eyes - even now, they throbbed in agony, like kunai driving deep into his skull - and then the booming force of the water. The pain had been unreal, making his already aching body pulse with agony until the darkness had swallowed him.

Shuffling nearby had the Jonin tensing minutely, forcibly keeping his breaths shallow and slow. At least the noise meant it was unlikely to be another shinobi, too light to be a bandit-

The slight sound off pebbles sticking - barefoot, probably female, judging by stride and rhythm - announced the return or his assumed saviour, before the rocks shifted, a few hitting and bunching around his shoulder as the figure kneeled beside him.

A warm hand, which felt like a firebrand against his icey skin, rested against his forehead and Shisui finally noticed his lack of shoes and Hitai-ate, flak jacket gone as well, most likely.

Short nails lightly scraped his skin as the woman (?) smoothed his wet hair back, another roasting-hot palm pressing against his cheek and tilting back his face.

Something warm and dry was threaded around his neck before being slowly slid behind his head. Like a sling, his skull was gently lifted, only a few inches from the ground, before lowered onto a makeshift pillow (probably a bundled coat or something similar). Hmm, so they were conscious of aggravating any head or neck wounds...

When his feet, almost numb from the cold, were wrapped in something silken, just as warm and dry as his pillow, Shisui decided to see where his rescuer was going with this.

Rustling and the snapping of branches were the only noises to pierce the quiet forest - judging by smell and the sounds of the leaves overhead - before a muted clatter of rocks preceded the sharp smell of burning. And now, a campfire…

Shisui almost opened his eyes to peek at his saviour before abruptly remembering he would never do that again.

He didn't have eyes anymore.

Shisui, for all the issues he'd had with his Clan in the recent years, was a proud Uchiha. Not only was visibility incredibly important for a shinobi but, for an Uchiha, it was even more so. To go from Mangekyou, even if that damned mutation was as horrible and fucked up has it had been, to total, irreparable blindness...maybe I should have been better of dead after all…

A scorching weight settled against his side, burning through his sodden clothes like an open flame, and Shisui reflexively jerked.

"Shhh, shhhh-," an achingly tender voice hushed him, warm breath - wild berries and coffee - caressing his cheek. The woman - that voice could belong to nothing else - slowly leaned her head on his, carefully pressing her cheek to his own and tangling their limbs. "I'm sorry, really sorry, but you could get hypothermia if I don't warm you up, fast. Actually-" she leaned back, small hands worming under his shirt and peeling it upwards. If Shisui was in any other position, at any other time, and not almost delirious from the pain of his eyes, he would've blushed scarlet at the sensation. First time a girl touches me like this and I'm blind, half dead and half drowned-

"What happened to you, shinobi-san?" her voice cracked and Shisui could easily hear how she swallowed nervously. With no sight, all his other senses were going haywire trying to compensate.

The question, though, was loaded, a bitter reminder of the shitstorm currently blowing up back home, and Kami, what if the coup had already happened…

The panic and terror curdled in his throat, twisting his lips subconsciously, and his watcher reacted immediately.

"I know you probably can't tell me," she flustered, sounding concerned by his reaction, whether it was brought on by pain or anger. "But you're only a few miles downstream from Konoha and I think I fucking deserve to know if enemies are going to be fucking hunting us." Her tone shifted, growing more and more incensed as she went on, until she was all but ranting by the end.

Shisui was still silent but, inside, he was reeling.

Sharp words they may have been but they managed to do something the fear and pain hadn't.

Shisui's mind cleared, the fog of agony and despair swept aside, for the meantime, in the face of possible danger.

There would be no enemies like his 'nurse' had suggested but...Danzo might come for him, regardless.

They were out in the open, a civilian (?) and a blinded, wounded shinobi. Shisui didn't need his vision back to see how shit those odds were.

"We need to move," he rasped, throat cracked from salt water and everything.

Absently, the 18-year-old wondered if he'd had to have been resuscitated.

"Who are you?" the woman whipped back at him, searing hands running over his limbs and head to make sure nothing was obviously wrong. Surprisingly strong arms wrapped around his shoulders, heaving him up with raw strength and using her own body weight as leverage, their chests pressed flush.

Head spinning from the movement, eyelids reflexively twitching to open and pulling at the dried scabs around his lashes, Shisui spoke without filter.

"Uchiha Shisui."

The sharp breath, a touch too loud to escape notice, and the hands fastening his sandals for him shook violently. Recognised, then.

A hot weight settled against his back, shoving him upright with difficulty, and Shisui immediately leant against the nearest tree once his feet were under him. His knees trembled and his neck felt like straw.

"Dazai Kiharu…"

She was silent for a long moment, fingers (where they rested cautiously on his arm) controlled to a barely-there tremble and Shisui absently wondered if she was afraid of his Flee-On-Sight rep, even when blind and wounded.

Leaves rustled, wood scraping wood, and Shisui assumed, from the damp-smokey smell, the woman had put out her little fire.

Fingers wrapped around his, pulling his hand - left, she was clever to leave his dominant free - to curl around her bicep, arm flung over her shoulder and her own limb supporting the Jonin around his waist.

"My house isn't too far, okay?"