Bird in a Cage (Slow-burn SuiKarin)

Karin can't stop thinking about how things could have been. The fairy tale ending she always dreamed of - a life with Sasuke - has crumbled under the realisation that her prince was always in love with another woman.

Suigetsu feels like a bird in a cage. A life of house arrest doesn't suit him, especially not working under a man who once kept him imprisoned. No matter how he looks at it, he is trapped. And there is nothing he can do about it.

To make matters worse, Orochimaru might not be as 'reformed' as he lets on. The atmosphere at the hideout is tense, and his recent experiments are proving increasingly disastrous. Karin is struggling to hold everything together, but even the sternest ex prison warden has her limits.

Elsewhere, a strange request from Sasuke sends Suigetsu back to a place he'd rather not revisit: the Hidden Mist.
And no matter how much he tries to run from his bloody past, it always seems to catch up to him in the end.

The lives of Karin and Suigetsu have already been planned out for them. Can they defy their fate? Or will they stay trapped in the bird cage, forever someone else's captive?