"Tenten's gone to see him again."

Kazue paused, her hands just above the drawstring of her knapsack. The voice was all too familiar, yet not one she'd exactly expected to hear outside her tent. Despite this, she didn't look away from her bag. The boy, his shoulder braced against the stick holding up her tent, simply eyed Kazue with an unreadable expression.

"She told me she would," Kazue replied. "I think she's afraid that if she doesn't keep checking on him, he'll..."

He'll come back one last time and no one will be there to see it, Kazue finished silently. Those weren't words she could bring herself to say aloud. Silence fell once again, neither of them unaware of the truth in Kazue's words. Eventually, however, Neji shifted so that his back laid against the pole instead, eyes falling to the bag grasped loosely in one of her hands.

"You're packing."

"I am."

Silence descended then; Kazue returning to shoving her meager belongings into the bag. Obviously, she was expected to explain herself. Her team was in pieces, so it wasn't as if she'd been given a mission that involved them. Yet, Kazue was still officially a genin, so it was hard to imagine her being given a solo mission only a day after the events that had torn the village to pieces.

It wasn't until she'd placed the last roll of bandages into the pack and slung it over her shoulder that she offered any explanation. Even then, it was only to dig a crumpled paper from her pocket and offer it to him.

"She's already signed it when they announced the attack," Kazue said, her tone perfectly even. "I'm not sticking around for someone to tell me that it's not official now that she's in a coma like Hikari. When she wakes up, she can correct anyone that thinks I just took off."

Neji studied the letter without a word. Eventually, he raised his eyes from the paper.

"When are you leaving?" he asked.

"Tonight," she replied instantly, taking the letter back. As she spoke, she carefully folded it back into it's original, pocket-sized shape. "Noriaki is still caught up in the medical-side of matters. I'm supposed to have a break so I don't pass out in the middle of treating someone. I'll leave before they assign anymore patients to me."

"... by yourself?" he asked, tone neither approving or disapproving.

Kazue nodded.

"Tsunade-sama seemed to be planning to send someone with you," he replied. "It mentions you and a team, not just you."

"Tsunade-sama is in a coma," Kazue retorted. "She can't exactly pick out the team like that. I'm going alone. Don't tell anyone else."

Neji crossed his arms over his chest, eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

"Why tell me?"

Kazue hesitated, then shrugged in response as she placed her bag just inside the tent. She would return for it later, after she'd checked up on everyone. Then she would leave.

She was going to save him.

She couldn't do a damn thing about the Akatsuki. She couldn't do a thing to help Naruto, nor could she help save the village. Kazue wasn't strong enough for those sort of things. Even if she was... she never wanted to go near that person again and some faint part of her mind- evidence be damned- that if she joined with the others, she'd be forced to see his smug face. Perhaps she'd seen something in that place, or perhaps it was just unwarranted paranoia, but she was certain that he was involved in whatever was to come.

Kazue was much better off doing something she could do.

She was better off rescuing Jun.

She started out of the tent. Just as she'd moved to pass Neji, however, her foot caught on his. He stuck out an arm to steady her, that faint, familiar smirk playing across his lips for a split second before his even expression returned. Flustered, she steadied herself and hurried out of the tent without a further word. The second she was out of sight, Neji pulled one hand from his pocket - he'd shoved it inside the second she'd removed herself from his arms.

In that hand laid a single, crumpled letter.

_________________________________

They'd moved him to a small, underground ANBU station not far outside of the village. Tenten was rather certain that the only reason that the average shinobi had been informed of this secret structure was so that if they came across any escaped convicts from the village's completely demolished Black Ops building, they would know where to haul them. Either way, it was convenient for her. Not knowing where he'd been shoved... well, it would have been difficult. That much she was willing to admit.

Jun and Tenten were friends after all.

For the longest time the only sound in that room was the intake of breath. His- short and erratic; hers- slow and even. She studied him, he studied the air around her. She wasn't sure if he remembered she was there. Actually, she had to question if he'd ever noticed her enter. His eyes had flickered to her-- sure-- but not a word had left his mouth and he'd looked away almost instantly.

Although, perhaps he did and was pretending not to. He'd jerked himself into a small ball, mumbling under his breath and growing slowly more agitated. Despite the insanity his actions seemed to be displaying, she knew the current him was capable of speech. She'd been shown that and more on several occasions. It wasn't useless to come here.

Or at least, that's what she kept telling herself.

To be honest, anything that she should have felt about this matter had disappeared-- completely overwhelmed by the strong, heart-wrenching feeling that had settled in her chest like some sort of weight. The one she'd been ignoring ever since he'd given her that startling, heart-stopping smile, or perhaps before that. Maybe since he'd first dragged her off on an adventure, his twinkling eyes hiding the secrets that had long since torn their world to pieces. That feeling which now threatened to shatter her.

"... they said you haven't spoken to anyone since Ibiki brought you back here."

His head jerked up, entire frame going tense with her words. Those deep, once bright eyes settled on her, something that stole her breath for more than just a moment. If eyes where the window to the soul- then his had been inarguably altered by recent events. The light was gone, a cold, measuring edge to them instead. For the first time since they'd returned, she began to wonder if the others were right. If he was gone from everyone-- from her.

That feeling caused her to reject the idea as her mind reasoned that she'd known that they were right before she'd talked her way into the cell. She'd known things were different when they'd had to physically restrain him and drag him home. When he'd looked at her and simply gave a smile that spoke of how tired of this world he was. When Ibiki had told them of how little effort Jun had made to help the village.

Tenten had known since he'd lunged at them with the intention of fighting.

"I thought maybe... you'd talk to me."

Those eyes continued to study her for a moment, then, it was as if a switch had been flipped and he suddenly cocked his head, a bright, closed-eyes smile flickering over his previously cold expression.

"You consider yourself special?"

She stiffened. The voice- familiar yet not- sent a shiver down her spine. It left an ache within her, spurred on by that feeling she'd been ignoring.

"With reason," Tenten slowly replied.

His hands tightened around his knees, feet pressed together on the stone floor. His expression, however, seemed almost amused.

"I don't think there is reason," Kurai disagreed. "Honestly, what proof do you have that you are?"

She didn't respond, giving him reason to continue.

"Were you told sweet nothings?" he continued. "Were you treated nicely? Taken out? Were you bought flowers or chocolates? Were you hugged, kissed, revered?"

At the expression that crossed her face, a cold laugh escaped from his lips.

"You're deluding yourself. You're not special. You're just annoying. Honestly, why do you think he let me do that?"

She swallowed thickly, tears pricking the back of her eyes as that ache grew. Logic told her it wasn't him speaking, but her eyes saw his face, her ears heard his voice. It was his lips twisted in that cold smirk, it was his eyes searching for the hurt that she hoped wasn't so easily discovered as he probably wished. Logic was meaningless when faced with all of the physical proof. The heart didn't listen to logic, it listened to hurt and was swayed by feelings.

"Oh! Perhaps you're talking about the spark? Have you been reminiscing about that day on the grounds? That single second before I stole your breath?"

It felt as if there was a lump in her throat. Her already dry mouth producing nothing to help her. She couldn't breathe. It was just like then. The smirk grew, his eyes picking up on the sore point his words had brushed.

"You have been. That's sweet. Do you wish that you were back there, I wonder? In those few, precious seconds where it felt as if the entire world was about to change? Do you wish that what happened between us was difference? How's your neck?"

A flicker of anger sparked within her, burning away the feelings binding her in place.

"Not us," she retorted. "Not you. You're not him."

He rose a brow.

"I'm not?" he questioned, raising his hands. "Are these not my hands?"

He stood, a cold smile appearing on his face and freezing her in place despite the heat of her anger. When he took a step forward, she barely managed to remind her feet to echo the movement, pulling her away from his approaching frame. Something flickered through the air and she felt dread settle inside her. Wasn't this supposed to be a safe place? Why did it suddenly feel as if the air in the room had changed?

"Are these not my feet?"

Tenten's back crashed into the wall of the cell, the cold stone leaving her no escape. Kurai paused before her, that cold smile never wavering.

"Is this not my palm?"

His hand rose, skin gently caressing the curve of Tenten's cheek. She couldn't move.

"I wonder, am I really not the person you know?"

"You're not him."

The words were soft, hoarse even. His smile grew into a grin, a short laugh escaping his lips.

"Really? Then perhaps I shouldn't hold myself back. I really do hate leaving a jobs unfinished."

His hand moved, no longer caressing her skin but trapping her throat to the wall. Unlike when it was emotion stealing her breath, this was real. His grip tightened, slowly cutting off her oxygen and snapping her to reality, her hands crashing against his chest in an attempt to throw him off. A gasped cry for help, muffled as he reflexively tightened his grip. She kicked out, landing a blow to his knee which he seemed to ignore without problem.

"After all, if I'm not the person you came here to see, the one you spent so many hours with, then should I care if you live or die? I actually hate you, as you well know. So... why should I care if it's this hand that ends your life?"

Alarmed voices suddenly sounded from outside the door, someone having glanced in and realized that neither of them could be seen through the small window etched into the the door to their immediate right. He didn't move, didn't react to the sound of keys being shoved in the locked door.

He simply watched the fear lighting up her eyes.

Then he loosened his grip just enough so that she could breathe, that smile faltering, confusion fluttering over his face. His mouth opened as if he might say something, but then he was suddenly ripped away as one of the guards roughly threw him across the room to free her from the wall.

She crumpled at the base of it, her heart racing as her head spun. Her eyes, however, watched him as the confusion was replaced with that bright, yet cold expression once more as he laughed at the guard threatening to bind him, to find some way to punish the boy who could probably care less what this world did to him any longer.

The one who- for the shortest moment- had showed signs of being hers.

That weighted pain her chest caused her to wrap her arms around her torso for a moment, eyes squeezing shut as she attempted to force that thought away. This... it wasn't Jun. He wasn't there. That was the other him. She had to understand that.

If she continued to see Jun in him... she had a feeling she would suffocate under the weight of that unknown emotion.

This in mind, she forced herself to her feet and slowly stepped back out into the hall.

Kurai hadn't killed her.

She supposed that she 'ought to be grateful for that.

_________________________________

Miki-- ignoring all offers of medical attention-- instantly set to work on clearing away the hospital rubble the moment that she'd reached where the building had once laid. Others were working on the area given the unknown number of people that potentially still laid beneath the rubble. Katsuyu would occasionally point out where someone was trapped once enough light was available to her, but beyond that it was a guessing game.

She was exhausted, but she couldn't give up the work.

Hikari had been found rather quickly. She'd already been pulled to the side and examined by medical-nin. As soon as it was certain that she was in as stable a state as ever, Hisoka had hauled her off to whatever tent his family had set up for themselves. According to him, she was better off there until reconstruction had begun.

The other most important figure to Miki had yet to be uncovered.

"Noriaki... you've got to rest! You can't just... c'mon, I'll.... I'll make you your favorite sweet! You can start a fire and I can make a makeshift oven. I know how to do it, so... um... come rest, you can't just... you just... you're alive, so you've got to be careful!"

Miki tore her eyes from a particularly large piece of rubble, looking to where Kourin and Noriaki stood. The boy had wordlessly joined her at daybreak. Kazue had yet to show up, but Miki held no doubt that the girl was fine if Noriaki was with her.

"You rest."

"I can't just... I can't rest if you're not resting!" Kourin declared, uncharacteristically frustrated. "It's neither of us or both of us, Noriaki!"

He stared at her for a moment before silently dropping his large, tanned hand atop her head. Kourin squeaked, flushing red from the neck up.

"Later."

Seeming to have suddenly lost the ability to speak, the girl nodded blankly.

"O-okay..."

In any other situation, Miki might have laughed. As it was, she simply rubbed her aching, bandaged side with one hand as she considered telling him to take a break. Noriaki was the sort that wouldn't do it until she'd personally told him to. Before she could say a word, however, a commotion off to the side of the make-shift hospital area caught her attention. A woman, her unhealthy, pale skin leaving Miki with no doubt of her current state, was struggling with two, decently patient medical-nin. As Miki watched, she shoved one of the medical-nin away from the blanket she'd been laying out on and attempted to struggle to her feet.

"I c-can't just... I need to... You've got to let me go!"

"Calm down, Maiko," the calmer of the two medical-nin urged. "You've hit your head. We're working on it, but you need to rest. There's nothing going on at the moment. Just... lay back down... please."

The woman, Maiko, shrugged off the medical-nin's arm and slammed into the dirt as one of her legs gave out beneath her. A hiss of pain escaped her lips, but she didn't calm down. If anything, the fact she couldn't get up seemed to only worsen her distress.

"I can't! You don't get it... you don't... that man! He-- that man he... it... that child, I can't just..."

Call it motherly instinct-- or just her paranoid mind-- but that single sentence pushed Miki into action. She quickly picked her away across the debris covered ground to where the shinobi that had spoke was physically forcing Maiko back onto the blanket. The other had disappeared, presumably in search of a sedative.

"Maiko, is it?" Miki questioned, freezing both of them in place. "If you don't mind... I can look into the matter. You said something about a man and a child?"

She nodded, her free fingers curling harshly into the blanket beneath her. It was only then that Miki realized one of Maiko's arms was tucked into a sling. Her entire body seemed to have gone tense, knuckles whiter than Miki would have imagined possible.

"That... that man... he... we were told to wait, because... who expected th-this?" Maiko began, her stammered words running into each other as she rushed to tell the story. At the same time, she repeatedly paused and restarted as she spoke, as if she were having trouble straightening her thoughts. "So, I c-cared for the... oh, oh Kami. You're her. You're, you're her and... Kami I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. I couldn't, that man, he-- and I couldn't, oh Kami. You can't... he..."

Miki stared dumbly at the woman as she sputtered out indecipherable apologizes. She was... her?

"Calm down," the medical-nin murmured, laying an encouraging hand on Maiko's shoulder. At the same time, she shot Miki a dirty look as if how riled-up the woman was happened to be her fault. "Restart. You were in charge of the prenatal ward, weren't you?"

Maiko nodded, tears welling up in her eyes.

"I... I w-was... I... I like... I like babies so, so, the baby... I... she was crying. I... I think she knew something was wrong. I was trying to calm her down, so I opened up the glass. Momoe-sama... she'd said we would be fine doing that much. She likes being touched, you know? S-so, so I was calming her down, then suddenly... suddenly he... he... he..."

She trailed off, tearing her free hand away from the blanket to rub harshly at her eyes.

"I... everything went black for a second. Someone... someone hit me from behind and I... I couldn't move for a second. I saw him, though. He was looking at her so... so s-strangely. H-he wanted to know how to take off the cords. I t-told him that w-wasn't possible. That she m-might stop b-breathing. He said she wasn't th-that weak. I r-refused and... and... h-he... it hurt."

The woman's state was enough for even Mii's numb mind to understand what had happened. The information had been forced out of her.

"Maiko..." the medical-nin whispered. "It's okay... you can leave that part out..."

There was another beat of silence before the final, damning sentence was spoken.

"He... took her. I'm so... so sorry... I couldn't stop him and... he... he took her..."

The world spun.

Before she knew it, Noriaki was calling for help, one arm slung around her partially collapsed form. She couldn't breath. Her legs were shaking too horribly to support her any longer.

The world truly hated her.

"I knew it..."

The words escaped her lips on their own as medical-nin rushed to her and Noriaki's side. The wetness coating her side told her that she'd probably begun bleeding again following her fall. The wound hadn't been worth the time of the medical-nin so she'd requested it to only be bandaged up. It would seem that was coming back to bite her now.

"I knew it..." Miki repeated. "I knew he was here... I knew it."

More than that, she knew something far worse.

"I knew... with someone like me..."

Cold determination began welling within her despite the broken numbness that had consumbed everything.

"With a mother like me..."

The man could have only been one person.

"I'll kill him."

It didn't matter how long it took. It didn't matter what method it took.

A mother like her could only do one thing.

She couldn't protect the child. That much had been proven. She couldn't give the child anything. Her genetics themselves were a curse. She couldn't offer her a future. It was obvious how much the world hated anything to do with Miki.

No, the only thing she could offer the child was this:

She would bring her home no matter the cost-- and she would get rid of anything that stood in her way.

She was a shinobi after all.

___________________________

Despite everything, Kazue hitched her bag over her shoulder at nightfall.

Staying would do nothing-- even with the discovery that had been made. Part of Kazue hated how weak that admission made her. It was as if she was acknowledging that there was part of the world that she could no longer touch. Even if it... even if it was Miki...

Kazue couldn't go near Yukio. That would mean going near the others and there were far too many memories there that she didn't want to touch. It wasn't that she couldn't... it was more that she didn't want to see the person that world had made her into. Some part of her was certain that if she saw him again Kazue would have to acknowledge that she couldn't just fall back into her role in the village like she'd been trying to do. After all, at least the old her had been useful.

The old her would have figured out what that nurse had been trying to say-- that's what Kazue believed. She would have discovered that someone had taken off with the baby. She would have chased them down-- or tried. She would have done something.

The only route left to her was to do what she could-- which was find Jun a future.

So, she easily slipped through the pitch-black night to where the crumbled gates still partially stood. Just as she'd neared them, however, she stopped. A far-too-familiar figure stood there, back leaning against the crumbling wall.

"You can't."

He cocked his brow, holding a single, wrinkled paper in the air.

"I don't believe you'd be going anywhere without this."

Kazue blanched at Neji's words, her hands turning her pockets inside out.

"... thief," she accused. "Bastard."

He shrugged, straightening and tucking Tsunade's letter away once again.

"You'll need company," he said, ignoring her continued cursing. "And if we waste anymore time here, we'll be seen by someone."

Kazue's eyes narrowed as she searched his face for any sign of what he was thinking. After a moment, she sighed, trudging towards where he stood.

"Fine. But, one question... why?"

He stayed silent for a moment as they started down the path. He only broke off to offer the two shinobi standing a small distance from the gates a flimsy excuse as to their leaving. It wasn't until they were a dozen feet into the words that he spoke up again.

"I was there, too."

She knitted her brow. He was there?

"It was that mission, wasn't it?" he offered after a moment. "For Hikari."

Oh.

"Yeah... I'm pretty sure that was when it happened," Kazue agreed. "That's your reason? A misplaced sense of responsibility?"

Neji didn't offer an answer to that question. Kazue cursed, but didn't bother to press it. She doubted he would give in even if she did. Instead, forcing all thoughts on what they were leaving behind from her mind, she focused on the path they had before them.

She'd opened her mouth to ask Neji's opinion on the the quickest route to the Grass village when she spotted them. She stopped dead, eyes flying wide. Neji paused as well, his even gaze flickering between Kazue and the single figure further along the dirty path. The second the figure spotted them, they paused.

It took Kazue a full minute to find her voice.

"What are you doing here?"