Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. Beta'd by UmbreonGurl.

"Better never means better for everyone. It always means worse for some."

— Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

Their arrival at the base of the mountain is greeted by sentries, hidden in the forested underbrush, but still clearly denoted in his chakra sense.

Half a dozen of them, from here to halfway up Mount Hoyoken, strung out along the path upwards. There's likely more outside of his range, but as it is in this moment, there are half a dozen shinobi waiting on the four of them, himself, Anija, Toka, and Madara.

He'd protested Madara's inclusion on the trip, had feared there'd be some sort of incident between them bound to doom Anija's friendly gesture to naught but empty breath. However, while the Uchiha had glowered the entire way here, the trip has been silent so far. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. The tension on that front is enough to break kunai on, but as of yet, still confined beneath the surface.

The Inuzuka are a reclusive clan, largely keeping to their own territory and rarely leaving it for much of any reason, and only half a dozen guards to greet their arrival at the base of Mount Hoyoken is a rare show of trust.

That they'd been invited up to the Wolf's Lair to talk at all is interesting.

Anijia had taken it as a good sign, spoken happily of persuasion and peace and tactics and more people to join the village as though it were already a foregone conclusion. Persuade the Inuzuka, and the Hatake will follow. A sure course of action, Anija had said. But it is not. It is not and Tobirama knows it, feels it in the way the first sentry easily appears from the trees as though incorporeal, smoke-like in the evening light.

The man is tall, broad shouldered, neither smiling nor frowning, two red triangles gracing sharp, sharp cheekbones.

They are wary, not on edge, but not trusting either. Empathy has its problems, but it also its gifts. He knows very well that this will be no easy treaty to sign.

"You are here to talk?" The sentry asks, eyes as dark as pitch in the late light, an undercurrent of roughness to his voice, accent slightly different, almost archaic.

It lingers to Tobirama, unusual, as he cannot quite place it.

"Yes, we'd love the opportunity to!" Anija reaches forward, as if to offer a hand, but the sentry turns, one smooth motion that causes a lock in that wild mane of dark hair to swing free from the band that attempts to tame it and begins up the path without another word.

Anjia's face falls.

It is not quite the friendly welcome his brother had expected then.

Tobirama could've told him that long before they even left Konoha. But still, Anija had the strength to hope and Tobirama hadn't the strength to ruin it.

So thus it is now.

The four of them move forwards, up the path which winds up the mountain. He tenses when a chakra signature appears from behind, but a quick glance back reveals a large black wolf padding silently along the path a few feet behind them.

He had heard of the Inuzuka dogs before, but he hadn't been aware that they were...quite so large. The Inuzuka are reclusive, more so than the Hatake who often farmed outlying fields in western Fire Country and guarded merchant caravans that crossed the country. The Hatake dogs he'd met were perhaps, half the size of these.

The unblinking yellow eyes trained upon him unnerved him slightly. He's seen plenty of gruesome deeds, has done plenty himself, but there's something about being watched that never fails to unsettle him. Like a butterfly pinned to a sheet of paper in a nobleman's study, all eyes watching him has never made the tension settle.

The man leading them growls lightly in the back of his throat, tapping his thigh twice with a hand.

In a blur, the wolf surged to the forefront, following leisurely at the sentry's heels.

All around them, in the trees and in the brush, more chakra signatures began to close in and follow, still unseen and unheard.

Tobirama half suspects that the sentry knew just how unnerved he'd been and didn't bother to mention it. Why else would the man have called his dog?

The pricking on the back of his neck does not abate, however.

Yellow eyes are all around them, at the moment unseen, though not unfelt. He feels no ill will from the watchers though, more wary curiosity than anything else. For the moment, he lets it be.

It is not a terribly long path up the mountain, not by a long shot as the journey to get here had taken longer than the two hours it takes to scale the mountain, but the uphill climb is sharp and steep. While he was neither out of breath, nor did his calves burn from the exertion of walking up a path that seemed to have footholds only because of the passing of so many feet that it had worn smooth the stone, it didn't mean he didn't feel it.

Not one of their party really knows what to expect when they reach the top of the mountain. Neither the Senju nor the Uchiha have ever visited the Wolf's Lair.

He'd expected perhaps, houses, something like the outpost they'd all recently left behind, but that isn't a foregone conclusion either.

Toka draws closer to him, on their way up, leaving Anija and Madara to follow the sentry while they bring up the rear. "How many?" She asks, merely a whisper of a thought, two words quiet enough that they'd pass unheard unless—

"There are sixteen rangers out tonight, discounting me." The sentry responds from the front of the party some seven yards up ahead. Anija and Madara both startle slightly. They had only been not four yards up ahead and had heard nothing of Toka's question. "Eight of them are in the treeline."

Tobirama's blood runs a shade cooler than previously. That statement had been truthful. At this point in the journey, he would have said there were 8 chakra signatures in the treeline, not all so close, but within his range.

So there is to be no communication unheard then, no quiet discussion of plans after they retire for the night.

If one of them can hear a two word whisper from seven yards ahead, any conversation between the four of them will be overheard.

"Thank you." He speaks in a normal tone of voice, certain that the sentry has heard every word. "How much longer?"

The further they'd gone up into the mountain's depths, the thicker the underbrush. Here the thick canopy of leaves overhead is just enough to block out the weakening rays of sun, still lingering in the late evening.

Soon, everything will look the same shade of blackened tar if there were no stars or moon to guide them.

"Not long."

He still can't place that faint trace of archaic lilt, that something familiar but hazy can't be grasped nature of the accent.

Ah well, ignorance will have to do at this point. It isn't often that he thinks this — information is nothing if not valuable at all times — but for the moment, ignorance will have to do.

He wants the knowledge only for its own sake, but there is no reason to risk offending a potentially hostile entity in hostile territory.

There are more signatures on the edge of his awareness now, peaceable ones, moving in patterns that could only mean houses and streets. They are close to the Inuzuka Settlement, long christened the Wolf's Lair by the clans who lived below.

Here the air is sharp and crisp, cleaner than any town.

The sentry had been truthful, for they crest a rise, and suddenly the treeline ends and the path flattens and widens out into a clearing vast and wide.

The last shred of the day's sunlight hits the waving fields of golden wheat and glitters off the water in the rice paddies like burnished silver. Rice bent double, heavy under the weight of waves of grain, wheat tall and strong as far as clearing stretched.

Tobirama pauses to take in the sight, take in the woodsmoke curling from the edge of the wide, slope roofed houses, take in the sound of laughter and loud voices, take in the smell of roasted meat and freshly baked bread.

"Welcome to Okami's Villa." The sentry sighs long and soft, tension easing out of his shoulders though it shouldn't be so. It is only more dangerous the closer they get to the settlement not less, but the minds of other people have never been his strong point even if he is capable of knowing what they are feeling.

Tobirama notes the almost reverent way the other man lingers on the words however. Welcome to Okami's Villa.

His mind races through the possibilities in the space between moments. Okami, Land God, protector of the hunt.

A wolf god.

The Wolf's Lair.

Ah, so that was how the people down below named this place. The rumors might have a kernel of truth.

"My name is Kozashi."

Something about being down below had prevented the other man from giving a name.

The four of them almost speak over themselves to provide introductions, but eventually, they continue onwards, after Anija has chattered enough to fill a day's worth of conversation into no more than twenty minutes. He feels the signatures in the treeline break away, a group of teenagers racing each other through the rice fields, howling with laughter, pitch black mud flying with every step as children and dogs race each other back into the settlement.

Kozashi shakes his head, muttering something unintelligible under his breath.

In the dusky gloom, the lanterns casting warm light from each stooped doorway gleam like jewels. More often than not, there are dogs roaming the streets or sleeping on the side of the porch, puppies tussling in small enclosures in the yard, most larger than the flocks and children they are guarding.

The smell of food wafts through the paved streets. The bustling noise of conversation and a lively gathering in the central square washes over him. The chakra pulses here are bright and warm, enough of them together that it is almost uncomfortable to be around despite the clear signs of domesticity and no sign of an inhospitable welcome.

It's almost...too much like being in the capital, but honestly so much worse all at once. There, the signatures flickered like summer fireflies out and about in rice paddies. Here, everyone burns like a small sized bonfire, all foreign and different and altogether too new to be of much help in identification.

The only signatures he knows beyond the party he came with are Kozashi and his wolf-dog companion.

Still, strangers must be uncommon here, for a small bubble of quiet curiosity envelopes every person they pass, and the conversations fall silent.

That is, they do until a small figure leaps out at them from a side street. "Chi—"

Kozashi reaches forward and sweeps the girl — she could be no more than four years old, all toddler limbs and wide brown eyes, a shock of silvery white hair cut short to about her ears — up into his arms. "That's not your chichi, Hokime."

The child's face falls. "Oh." She settles herself, face pressed against Kozashi's shoulder still staring at him with wide eyes as if tracing his every feature. "Oh," she says again, slightly less exuberant and more sad than not. "You're right, Koza-ji."

What—

It takes two seconds, two seconds too slow for Tobirama to make the connection.

She'd thought— He doesn't finish the thought, tosses it away like a broken kunai before it sinks deep enough to cut.

He can't help it really. It's a coping mechanism.

If he never makes the connection, surely it could never hurt anyone.

The child is handed off to someone, her mother perhaps, before they make their way into the main house, pressed almost into the cliffside of the mountain. There are several chakra signatures inside the house, one almost too bright to look upon, like a small sun in and of itself.

He rather hopes that they are going to visit someone else, but Kozashi pushes open the main door and makes his way down several unlit corridors as unerringly as someone who could see in the thick darkness ever closer to the one who burns like a forest fire.

Tobirama draws back his chakra sense, tightly and hopes for the best. He could always ask for the other to dampen their chakra, to reign it in, as Anija has always done for him, and Madara now does begrudgingly, but here in nominally friendly territory, he is at best, unwilling to give away the advantage.

Show no weakness and perhaps you might not be stabbed in the back when the hour grows late and the world goes dark.

Kozashi pushes the sliding door before them aside. "We're here, Komari-hime."

From beyond the flickering patch of light spilling from the doorway, he finally lays eyes on the one who had stung his chakra sense so.

Her back is turned, but the silhouette of a woman in a red yukata with black cranes embroidered across the bottom half sears itself deeply into his memory. Few have ever had the raw chakra to force him to pull his senses closer.

She sets the candle lighter down when she turns towards them, face half cast in shadow, a sharp crooked smile visible nonetheless in the light flickering wildly over walls of gleaming cherry wood. A collection of dark placards — memorial tablets — each with a candle before it line the alcove behind her. "Make yourselves at home."

"Yes!" Anija takes a tentative step forward and offers her a hand. "I believe one of your men collected a draft of the peace treaty we wanted to offer?" Have you seen it? Do you have thoughts? Are you in agreement?

At least, Anija is containing himself this time and won't talk her ears off spouting idea after idea about peace. Tobirama can see the excitement tightening his brother's shoulders.

"What can Konoha offer my people that Okami has not already offered?"

"Oh, well peace will—"

She almost laughs, lips turning downwards in an attempt to contain herself before she cuts Anija's speech short. "You speak of the benefits of peace," here her gaze slides past them to the doorway and the settlement beyond "but we have peace here already. Why should we move?"

"Because Konoha is larger." He has counted the chakra signatures here, at least, all that were within his range before he had to draw his sense back when confronted with the forest fire of Inuzuka Komari. "And there is strength in numbers."

She turns her attention to him, a spark of interest flaring across her face, as she traces his every feature. "Yes, I suppose." Her lips are such a bloody bloody red.

The firelight does nothing to help that.

There is an advantage here to press. "How many able bodied fighters can your clan afford to send to defend your fields?" There might be more people here than anyone had ever imagined, but so many of them had been young.

The sentries watching them from the trees had been teenagers, hardly aware of how easily Anija could turn the forest against them.

She tilts her head to one side, dark hair falling over one shoulder, loose and free and wild. "The strength of the wolf is the pack, and the strength of the pack is the wolf. Will your allies offer me and mine the same trust I'd offer a brother?"

"No, perhaps—"

Her almost whimsical smile flattens. "My people are poor this is true. We do not play the daimyo's games and we reap none of the rewards. We are hunters. We are herders. We are farmers. But we are pack, and we still have our pride. What can Konoha offer that Okami has not?"

No, this is not a clan easily won by promises of more food, better shelter, and protection from enemies.

Anija might not know how to respond, and has in fact fallen silent, but Tobirama has always known. It is only a matter of weighing the words, of choosing the right ones to tip the scales.

"Because the world is dark and cold and gruesome." And this is true. The peaceable settlement he'd seen outside these doors are a world away from the place he'd come from, but that does not mean they do not collide. "Because you can join us or be left behind."

And when that time comes, there will be nothing to shelter the children he'd seen wrestling outside from the horrors of war.

And for the first time, he sees her amusement bleed with something like respect.

"Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire."

— Gustav Mahler

A.N. So this grew out of a prompt fill from the Sanitize server, which, by the way you should check out if you haven't already, and has potential to be a longer work, but I figured this was a good point to stop.

~Tavina