Day 2004 : Yase Village

Riley passed a cup of tea across the table, watching the steam curl above it and dance in small shapes and patterns.

"My mother told me that long ago, before our people found their way into the ocean and hid away from the Chrysanthemum throne and Ali'i Nui, the Datu's and the sultans and people of Tiwanaku and Huari, we would read the steam that rose in warming morning and out of soup and teas. It would tell us the future, our fortunes and our lucks, and our curses."

"So what does it say?" Kisame asked, looking down at her. His pale eyes were alert and interested. His little partner was out in the yard, watching the sparrows play. They were all leaving today, gone back to their villages. Kisame and Itachi would go on to their village of the rain, Ame, and Riley would go back to her borrowed home of Konoha, and tell her student about her adventure, and try to puzzle out who would be summoning the devil himself in a land that had no concept of satan.

"I have no clue," Riley admitted, smiling wryly. "That was a thousand years ago, at least."

Kisame pointed to the air. "I think that swirl means we'll meet bandits on the way home."

"Oh, how dreadful!" Riley's smile grew into a grin. "And I think that that one," a hole in the fading wall of steam, "means the sun will be out when I return."

"You pick boring fortunes," Kisame complained.

Riley shook her head. "Okay, okay. That one there," she pointed to a whirl, "Means that I'll be swallowed in a whirlpool in… five years."

Kisame laughed at her.

He was a nice man. Jovial and light hearted, for all his nature shone through. A shark on land, a predator in a man's skin. She could see his loyalty though, in the way he stayed at Itachi's side, in how he guarded him when the fight began with the Inferius.

She liked him, but that might have had more to do with him being the only other one of her people that she had seen since the fall of Atlantis and the razing of Mu. She wasn't sure.

"Weirdly specific."

"You asked!" Riley flicked her fingers and the steam blew in his face, buffering his ice-blue skin. His spiked up hair wilted and he huffed, pushing it back in place.

"Guess I did."

Riley swirled her fingers around the rim of her own cup. The tea turned with it, over and over. Steam rose higher when she upped the temperature.

"What was it like? Your village here?"

"Kiri?" Kisame clarified. Riley nodded.

Kisame moved his head back and forth. Riley thought if it wouldn't have hurt he might have bit his lip in thought.

"Not a nice place," he said at last. "Bloody and cruel, especially during a war. My folks died on a mission when I was young, and I had a talent for violence. Tensions were pretty high between regular people and anyone with a bloodline, I left right before the purges started under the Mizukage."

Riley's stomach twisted. "Purges?"

"They went after anyone with a kekkei genkai and killed them. Men, women, children, didn't matter. Most clans were either wiped out or fled."

Riley shook her head. That was horrible.

"...In most parts of the world witches would be burned alive if they were caught," she admitted.

"So the world really is fucked up glonally," Kisame surmised.

Riley raised her cup. "I'm afraid so."

They fell into a quiet. Riley looked outside, where the wind was blowing faintly and the leaves, torn down during the storm, fluttering with them. Had such a thing ever happened in Konoha? Whatever had happened to Naruto's parents? Who were they? Had they had a kekkei genkai? A bloodline, Kisame had said. Just what did that entail?

"There was one good thing," Kisame said suddenly. Riley looked at him, curious. "Once in a blue moon the mist would part and you could see the ocean stretching across the world, and the light where the sky met the sea."

Riley felt herself start to smile again. She knew exactly what he meant.

"The ocean is beautiful. One day, I want to return."

"Why don't you?"

"My leg, mostly. And it's not much fun to visit to go places alone."

Kisame looked outside himself, towards his young partner. A teenager, barely.

"I'll meet you there," he offered. His shoulders were tensed, like he was waiting for her to reject the offer. Riley did no such thing. She grinned.

"I'd like that. How about in five year, when I'm supposed to be swallowed by a whirlpool, we meet at the coast?"

Kisame looked at her with his pearl-pale eyes. His sharp teeth flashed.

"There's a village on the ocean. Hokkaido."

"We'll meet in Hokkaido then."

Day 2005 : Konoha

As much as she enjoyed traveling, there was nothing that ever quite matched up to the feeling of coming home after a trip. The relief that came with dropping your bag by the door, the rush of joy at seeing your own things in your own space. Even the realization that most of the food in the fridge was gone bad by now.

With few other options, the night already closing in and most shops closed already, Riley made her way to the hallway once more so she might knock on her neighbors door.

He was home, she could feel him, and his whole pack of hounds, but he didn't open the door. Strange. She knew that he knew that it was her on the other side of the door. She tried again, growing concerned. It wasn't so late for him to be asleep.

Finally, the door opened, but it was one of his hounds on the side, balanced carefully on his hind legs. His long muzzle was wrapped in bandages.

"'Akinu," she said, lowering herself to the dogs height. "What's wrong?" She reached to touch his mouth. The dog jerked but didn't move to bite her.

"Mission," said Bisuke, coming up behind his partner. One of his ears was all but in tatters. "Kakashi's with the others. He's not in a good mood."

"Is he hurt?" she asked swiftly.

"Even if he is, he won't let you try to heal him," he said sagely. Riley pursed her lips. Stubborn, paranoid ninja. He had known her for years, and known her to be harmless for all of them. Hadn't he?

Riley stood up. Reckless, perhaps, she stepped across the threshold of the apartment and inside. The two hounds looked at one another but didn't try to stop her as she picked her way through.

It was neat. Sterile, almost. Everything was in a place, meticulously organized and shiny to the point that it looked staged. Less than a place to live and more like a place to take picture of. It was unsettling. Riley did not like it.

Sitting at a table that looked like new was Kakashi, trying to wrap a bandage around Pakkuns paw. All of the rest of his pack was surrounding him on all sides, but they parted for her like the red sea. He was focused so intently that she had a small, foolish fear that he might not hear her approach. As if the uneven clack of her cane and the scuff of her shoes could be mistaken or ignored by such a paranoid man.

"I didn't answer the door for a reason," he told her. There was an accusation in his voice that she very promptly ignored.

"A silly reason, I'm sure. Where are you hurt?"

"I'm not," he denied swiftly. Riley looked at Pakkun.

"His shoulder mostly," the dog reported dutifully.

"You're all traitors," Kakashi said firmly, pulling the bandage tighter. It must not have been too bad, because Pakkun didn't bite him. Riley patted herself down. She had dropped her bags in her apartments on the floor, but in the last few years she had taken to wearing a ninja belt, with pouches and buckles and pockets. It was a nice red, to match her favorite scarves. Russet, almost a burgundy. And she tried not to think about how close it was to dried blood.

She pulled out a tea pouch at last. Checked it.

Peppermint, ginseng, ginger, and matcha.

From another pocket she produced a small capsule filled with brown salve. The ingredients were listed on the inside of the lid, or she'd forget which one it was. Ashwagandha, lemon grass, echinacea, annatto, comfrey, yarrow and moon drip.

"Put this in a tea," she ordered setting the bag on the table in front of him. He looked at her, brows furrowed. Not his little smiling curves or anything of the life. "I'm serious, Kakashi. Drink the tea, or I'll tell the hospital you're ducking out on them."

She had no idea if he actually was, but he was stubborn as a mule when he wanted to be. His dark eyes narrowed with a note of betrayal that she ignored and pushed the capsule towards him.

"And this is for your shoulder. Lets see it," she ordered. She brokered no room for argument, and whether it was her tone or their friendship or a fever already setting in Kakashi obeyed her. Riley sat up straighter as he carefully removed his shirt, revealing a patch of white against his shoulder that was starting to stain red.

She didn't ask what happened. She knew she wouldn't get an answer. She was no shinobi, and so she was not privy to the lives of her friends who were.

Instead, with careful hands, she reached to peal the tape away and remove the cloth from his shoulder. He didn't hiss when she pulled but it must have hurt. She could feel when it tugged at the healing skin and the scabbed blood and the scent of copped hit her nose before she had removed it entirely.

It was a jagged cut, running from the top of his shoulder, almost at the joint, all the way down to a nipple. Kakashi was a strong man. She didn't dwell on who could have hurt him and his hounds so badly. Instead she lay her hand across the injury, seeping blood again.

"I'm going to use magic to keep the blood inside your body," she told him slowly. "It's going to feel cold, and you'll taste salt. Is that okay with you?"

She had to ask. For Kakashi and for herself. These healing magics were delicate and required cooperation. To force them would cause pain to all involved. Riley included. Kakashi looked at her like he was trying to see into her soul before finally he inclined his head.

"I agree."

The power in such a simple word shivered through her. Her arms glowed, swirling with light. Not the blue that was the custom but a deep red that etches its way across her skin. Riley focused not the feeling, like oil on water and like trust laid before her at once, but on keeping his blood flowing where it was meant to go. It did not want to leave his body and Riley was happy to help it stay there.

She dipped her fingers into the salve and spread it smoothly across the injury. The muscles twitched and jumped but Kakashi didn't move away or strike out. He was watching her intently. She realized, belatedly, that at some point he had grabbed a knife.

Riley moved her hand as she went, the heat of his body mingling with the coolness of her magic. The salve covered and sealed his skin. Riley places one finger on either side of it. The red changed and the feeling of oil and trespass left her behind. Blue, laced still with vague traces of violet that unsettled her, glowed across her skin.

"Sfragíste kai therapéfste."

The light pulsed across the salve and it lit soft blue. It evaporated, and in its place the skin was whole and there wasn't so much as a scar left.

The whole process took less than two minutes but to Riley it felt like it took an hour.

Only when she had pulled her hands back to herself did she glance, however briefly, at the rest of Kakashi. The mask came down across his throat and to his collarbone, but his chest was bared to her. A collage of scars, silver and puckered, it told the story of a warrior and a man who did not go down easily. Kakashi was a survivor.

Riley looked back at his eyes and found them locked on her face. Intent, dark, there was a spark of a fire within.

"I didn't know you could heal."

Riley cocked her head just so, flutters of pale hair falling across her cheeks. "You never asked."

Finally, finally, his eyes curved upwards into a smile that she knew, and the tension left her shoulder. Bull nudged her hand and she obidiently scratched behind his ears.

"If you're a healer," Pakkun said, "Why didn't you heal your leg?"

Riley touched her leg, rubbed against the gap under her skirt.

"There are some things that I can't heal. My leg is one of them. Not everything can be undone."

Many things couldn't. Oil in water twisted under her breast bone, and she knew, knew, that the red was evident beneath her shirt.

"Can you heal them?" Kakashi asked, nodding towards the dogs. Riley smiled and nodded.

"Yes, I can. The next time you get hurt, stubborn man, you should come find me. Not hide in your apartment."

Kakashi merely smiled at her and Riley got to work on the hounds.