The war brought out both best and worst in people, for some, it showed their bravery and their honour. They willingly went off like lambs to slaughter for the off-chance to make a difference, to make things better for those they loved even if it cost them their own lives. For others, their cowardice was like a stench they couldn't shake, some ran, they fled to the mountains. To the lands which had been otherwise untouched by the warring clans. Not that Hisa blamed them.

If she'd been any different? if things had gone differently? Perhaps she would've done the same.

Stubbornness.

The scant remaining villagers called her dedicated, they called her loyal and she bit her tongue. To them, she was a mere boy trying to keep their small settlement safe. Blind to her faults and clueless to how her mind worked.

She wasn't dedicated, she wasn't loyal, she was vicious and she was bitter.

Like a child being told not to do something and in petty retribution, she does it anyway.

It didn't bode well for her, it didn't do her any favours. Above all, she aimed for survival. There wasn't any pride in what she did, what she had done for years to get through cold winters. It was how she stumbled through five years, alone and helpless until she fell into Aoi's awaiting arms. His wing shielding her.

Hisa was unwilling to move.

The warring clans weren't subtle in their movements, one hiring a Senju and the other hiring the Uchiha. It just grew from there, animosity and hatred and blood. Children dropping like flies. They were the ones to bring their war to her doorstep, their village hadn't moved. The Clans, their feud was the one which was encompassing them, was growing like an infection in a wound. Hisa simply decided to take things into her own hands.

(the knife was in his throat, the sick thud thud thud)

"We don't serve Senju or Uchiha," Hisa told the man.

He was muscular, tall and built to take down many. Unlike the few shinobi she'd had the dubious honour of interacting with, he had the wear and tear of age. Older than the others, no mistaking him for boyhood. His eyes were like knives, that of a veteran, of a man who had seen and bled too much. The wrinkles and the scars and his scowl serving to tie her stomach in knots.

Her eyes dancing down to his clan symbol.

Senju.

"You serve paying customers," he insisted and there's a bite to his tone.

"Aoi served paying customers," Hisa she corrected "that distinction got him killed." Her eyelashes fluttering against her cheekbones and her lips purse under her mask. "You wanted good service? Shouldn't have killed him."

It's a lot more cheek than she'd been willing to give any soldier before.

The slick feeling of blood glides over her hands, Hisa ignores the ghostly sensation because she knows the Uchiha's blood is not, in fact, on her hands. Metaphorically, definitely but in the literate sense, the only thing which covered her hand was the smudges of polish used on the weapons.

"Boy, do you know what you're messing with?" the Senju man growled.

"M'not messing with anything, I'm telling you, we don't serve Senju or Uchiha," she said. If her tongue felt heavy and she had to properly enunciate so she wasn't slurring her words out of fear, then that was her business. "I'll say this to you and anyone else who tries to buy my wares, you wanted good service? Shouldn't have killed him."

There's a vicious satisfaction.

And then there's a knife against her throat.

She knew the gap between their skills, whilst she might have been light on her feet, Hisa had been training for all of a year and a few months. The Senju and the Uchiha were born and bred for war, they breathed it and they bled it. What Hisa did know, was fear.

Fear was a constant companion.

The Senju man was quick with his knife, leaning over the counter with the blade pressed against her jugular but she refused to gulp, in fact, out of sheer stubbornness she refused to even blink. No doubt Aoi would be screaming at her for her reckless tendencies since she leant forward against the blade, a kunai and it was blunt.

He needed new weapons, after all, that was why he was at the blacksmiths.

"Is this supposed to make me more inclined to help you?" she whispered as if asking for some big secret.

"Brat," the man growled.

His words were hissed, they were vile and acidic. The last time someone had called her a brat it had been said fondly, it had been something close to affectionate - but that had been ripped away from her.

Hisa nodded, blade scraping against her neck.

"Damn right," she said. Her hand reaching over and flipping the sign, overtly and completely unsubtle, telling her customers that she was now closed for business. The Senju never moving his blade, instead, he watched her do it with a sneer. Hisa wished that she wasn't wearing the mask so he could see the snarl on her own mouth - wanted him to see her baring her teeth. Instead, she played coy and she played sweet, her eyes wide and her tone patronising. "You can always try tomorrow."

The soldier stormed off without another word.

The air whooshed out of her, the only reason he hadn't killed her was because he needed her wares. There was no naivety, as soon as she became obsolete he'd probably be back to gut her like a fish. No doubt he'd probably bring others the next day though, to try and pressure her into making weapons for him, for their Clan.

He could try.

.

.

"Everyone stays inside, if the fighting breaks past the gates then take them to the cellar and flip the latch," Hisa old the innkeeper quietly.

The Senju and The Uchiha had congregated outside of their small settlement, both hired on opposing ends of a dispute between merchants. It wasn't about the merchants though and it never was, their competition and their war served nothing but their pride. It echoed in the night and it haunted their doorways.

The innkeeper gave a curt nod, the gaggle of villagers gathered in the room were quiet. The low hum of chatter was like white noise and the panic, the tension weighed heavily on everyone's shoulders. Who wanted this sort of life? No one cared for this blood bathed pissing match between the clans. All they wanted was for this to stop, for their children to grow up without a fear of being inducted into slaughter, for their daily lives to carry on. They didn't want to be cowering in the inn, to have to retreat to the cellar where they kept their alcohol and surplus stock for the winters.

Her people deserved better than this.

Hisa paused, lips parted and eyes sweeping across the huddle - were they her people?

"You're going out there?" The innkeeper asked gruffly, scratching the tip of his nose, attempting a disinterested tone.

"Gotta do something."

He nodded.

"Wait here," he murmured and hobbled off.

Most of the people who remained in their settlement were villagers who couldn't leave easily, it was the elderly and weak and the sick. Most of the young men and women, the small families had left in droves after the first clashes. Around the same time which there was mention of civilians being forced into servitude to clans, to fight their battles for them. There were even fewer children remaining, they were either too young or bordering on an age which some would consider using on a battlefield.

Hisa stared at the ten-year-old boy, nestled in the cradle of his mother's arms.

He was trying to ignore the sound of war in the distance.

(Hisa wondered if they'd be able to sleep without it when it ended.)

Eventually the innkeeper hobbled back, drawing a few stares from those who cared to look. Hisa was the only person lingering in the doorway, the door opened a crack so the wind whispered against her spine. The lashings of rain had subsided for a moment but there was a rumble in the clouds, dark with a promise of a storm.

The innkeeper handed her a weighty black material, it was thick and sturdy in her hands. She folded it, twisting it in her rasp as she peered up at him, confused. The innkeepers lips unfurled into a wrinkled smile, one of guilt and grief; "It was meant for my son, before he…"

His fate didn't need to be said aloud.

"Aoi made it for me, as a favour as long as I promised to keep an eye out for you when he left," she hadn't known he planned on leaving but her cheeks felt hot, throat tight and the tears were welling. "It'll be a little tight around the chest, considering."

Hisa's eyes widened and the tears spilled over, a small spark of panic igniting.

"A few of us've known for a while, we get it," the innkeeper murmured, placing a warm calloused hand on her shoulder. He glanced over at his wife who was making rounds through those who needed blankets, food and water. She almost seemed to feel his gaze, glancing up from the older woman she'd been attending to, nodding in their direction with a small smile of her own. The innkeeper looked back at Hisa. "We owe you."

"You don't owe me anything."

"Agree to disagree," he offered.

Hisa nodded and stepped back, his hand falling from her shoulder and she glanced at the dark material. "Thank you."

Without another word said, she walked away and the door closed behind her.

The armour was thick, soft to touch and plated with metal under the fabric. It wasn't light but it wouldn't hinder her since she carried a lot worse during her times at the shop. As he'd said, it was a touch tight around the chest but it could've easily been her nerves? Hisa, whilst trying to protect the home which Aoi had given her, hadn't actually stepped foot on a battlefield. She'd never seen the viciousness beyond their settlement. The death, the blood? That had been within these walls, it wasn't against soldiers born and bred for this.

Hisa had been born for nothing of importance.

She'd been left on the steps of a shrine, ruthless survival instincts did the rest of the work.

The thud thud thud in her ear was familiar as she grabbed as many blades as she could keep on her person. Fingers gliding lovingly over certain blades she knew Aoi had crafted himself.

The thud thud thud was his head meeting the ground.

It was her footsteps towards the gates.

The sound of bodies meeting the ground.

It echoed the thrum of her pulse in her ears.

"Getting back up doesn't mean shrug it off," Hisa whispered to herself, lips moving against her mask and the gates in view - once forever open, now closed in light of the brewing battle outside.

The clang of metal.

The stench.

The fear.

The gates opened.

.

.

"Was it scary?"

"Were there monsters?"

"Did you beat them?"

A laugh bubbled from her bloody and bruised lips.

A few months had passed but nothing had changed except for the callouses on her skin had hardened and the bruises was overlaid with more bruises. Could she have been considered battle-hardened? The squabbles between Senju and Uchiha hadn't slowed but Hisa had kept pace with them, the first time walking out of the gates during battle hadn't been her last.

It was considered commonplace now and everytime she was walked back into the settlement there was a group waiting for her.

The innkeeper seemed to be set on keeping his word to Aoi and was there waiting every time alongside his wife and the medicine woman of their small village, Mizue, the gnarled and bitter face she remembered when she demanded vengeance for her brothers murder. Aoi's sister bundled her into a room in the inn and tended to whatever wounds she'd garnered trying to save their small and frail village from whatever damage the Clan's would cause.

The next morning, the children of the village came to see her.

Every time without fail.

There weren't many, Rei was ten years old and sat on the edge of her bed, his little sister in his lap. Daisuke was the one sprawled out across her legs, peering up eagerly whilst his little brother hung back. Haru was a little shy though he seemed to listen as eagerly as his brother did.

"It's always scary," she told them quietly, the mask hung around her chin.

She saw no point in hiding her gender these days, not whilst walking around the sanctuary of their village. On the battlefield, she was genderless, she was a soldier in an army of one. Her shorn hair had grown so it curled around her jaw. Nobody questioned her decision and no one said a word about it.

"But sometimes being scared is okay," she said with a small smile, feeling the tug of a particularly large scab on her lip, threatening to tear open and bleed once again.

There was a beat of silence before more questions seemed to pour out of their tiny bodies.

"Did you get really hurt?"

"Did you fight the Senju?"

"No stupid, it was the Uchiha!"

"Don't call me stupid!"

Before a brawl could break out between Haru and Daisuke, the innkeepers wife swept into the room. Their argument quietened under her firm and reprimanding glare, she was a stern woman with lines framing her features. There was a bowl of whatever stew she'd made in her hands and another pot of salve for her to rub on her wounds so they wouldn't get infected.

"Alright, Hisa's had enough visitors," she said and there was no room for argument. "Your grandparents are looking for you, Rei, Emi."

Rei knew better than to argue, simply scooping his little sister up and heading out to find his grandparents. Emi waving over his shoulder which Hisa happily returned. A laugh caught in the back of her throat when Daisuke and Haru seemed to shrivel under the innkeepers unimpressed gaze.

"And you two," the innkeeper's wife jabbed a thumb over her shoulder. "Your parents are down the hall."

They hesitated for a second.

The woman rose an eyebrow.

"Bye Hisa!" Daisuke yelped, grabbing his brother by the wrist and dragging him out of the room.

"Those boys," the woman scoffed.

"They're young," Hisa murmured fondly.

With times being as they were, there wasn't much time to simply be a child. To be considered a boy and not a man, a soldier. The woman said nothing and laid her bowl of stew on the end table, placing the pot of salve behind it. Her expression weary and amused.

"Unfortunately, they don't get much better when they're older."

AUTHOR NOTE: WHAAAT? AND UPDATE ? I know it's been ages but my muse has been on an all time low for pretty much everything at this point. I've had so much going on. So! Let me know what you think, we're moving into the actual meat of the war now where I can have Hisa interact with Senju's and Uchiha's. Your reviews and follows and favourites are everything to me, thank you so much!