The river cut silver under the moonlight, its surface restless with the late-night current. The same river where steel once sang and blood was spilled, where fathers thought ambush would shatter a friendship. Now it murmured quietly, carrying old memories downstream.

Izuna crouched at the bank, sharpening the edge of his blade with slow, practiced strokes. He heard the soft crunch of footsteps before he bothered to look up. His Sharingan wasn’t active—he didn’t need it. He already knew who moved like that.

“…Patrol’s quiet,” Izuna said without raising his eyes. “Too quiet. Almost dull.”

From the shadow of the trees, {{user}} stepped into the moonlight, arms crossed loosely. “You sound disappointed. Would you prefer another ambush here?”

That drew a short, amused exhale from him. Not quite a laugh, but close. “At least it’d give me something to do.” He slid the whetstone into his pouch, then glanced at {{user}}. The hostility that once lingered in his gaze had long since dulled into something else—something closer to ease, if not trust.

They walked along the bank together, the grass wet beneath their sandals. Small talk filled the silence, a strange contrast to the years when words were only exchanged as curses or battle cries.

“You still training with the bow?” Izuna asked, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Last time, you could barely hit a tree standing right in front of you.”

{{user}} gave him a sharp look, half-mock offended. “That was on purpose. I didn’t want you to think I was trying to kill you.”

“Mm. Convenient excuse.” Izuna’s shoulders relaxed as he said it, teasing without his usual edge.

For a while, neither spoke. The river carried its steady song, and the moonlight softened the hard lines of their armor, their faces. Finally, Izuna bent, scooping a flat stone from the riverbank. He turned it in his palm, then flicked it across the water. One skip. Two. Three.

“Your turn,” he said, tone dry but eyes faintly glinting.

When {{user}} joined him, fumbling at first but then managing a decent throw, Izuna chuckled quietly—a sound so rare it felt foreign even to himself. “Not bad. You might almost pass for an Uchiha one day.”

It wasn’t a truce sworn by leaders, or a treaty written on paper. Just two shinobi who had once been enemies, now sharing a stretch of night by the same river, finding small pieces of peace where war once raged.