[Cross-posted from AO3; originally posted there on 29/09/2014.]
.-.-.-.
Travelling takes a lot longer with half the team missing. Without Sasuke to lead them and Karin to guide them, they're always getting lost; without Sasuke's access to Akatsuki sponsorship, they don't eat so well or sleep so well, either. Juugo had thought that, perhaps, without Karin, they might make up the hours of wasted time Suigetsu generally invests into harassing her, but it doesn't take very long for Juugo to realise he underestimated the depth of Suigetsu's commitment to time-wasting. They're only a half a team, and though they might have managed breaking out of jail, it's been getting clearer by the day that a team works much better when it's whole.
By the time they make it into the bright, airy forests of Tea Country, they've been going for nearly two days. Juugo's weary and he's hungry, and the constant, low-level wariness about being alone with Suigetsu is tiring in its own right, and so when he happens to catch a flash of vivid pink through the forest's high, bare-branched canopy, it takes him a moment to realise what it is. Who it is. Or—who it looked like it was, anyway, but it doesn't matter: she's gone by the time Juugo recognises her, darted on into the trees.
"Was that Tayuya?" He stops and shades his eyes, peering up into the distant canopy. "Suigetsu, did you see that?"
"Dunno," says Suigetsu, supremely disinterested. "Might have. I never heard of any Tayuya."
"From Sound," says Juugo. The trunks of the forest's trees are pale and smooth-barked, and don't sprout branches until maybe fifty metres up; that tiny dash of colour would be easy to spot, if it was anywhere nearby, but there's nothing. "Um—the Sound Five. Orochimaru's personal guard. She was a member."
"Didn't they all get killed?" Suigetsu's been trudging along a few paces behind, but he's stopped too, now: keeping his safe and unsubtle distance from Juugo. "Over some Sasuke shit—that's what I heard."
"Well," says Juugo, after a moment. "That's what I heard, too."
Suigetsu gives him a sideways look that Juugo recognises very well by now. You're talking nonsense, says the look, except in Suigetsu's head it probably sounds more like you're a fucking madman, and Juugo supposes that's fair enough. "Obviously not her, then, was it? Seriously, Juugo, you gotta think about this shit before you say it. You sound mental."
It's really not unfair. All the same, worry has kindled up an even more worrying fire inside Juugo's belly; it's a mild, windless morning, but the heat of his curse seal is simmering inside him.
They're back to travelling in silence, then, for a little while—or as close to silence as anyone travelling with Suigetsu can get, which is rarely very close at all. Sunlight spokes down through the foliage, dappling the grassy forest floor: it's the kind of bright and lovely day Juugo would expect to find brimful with birdsong, but the trees are quiet. All of Tea Country has been, though, and by now it's not so strange—certainly not so strange as the first town they'd reached, deserted as every Tea Country town they've passed through since then: empty shops with their windows unshuttered, empty homes with their doors unlocked.
The peace stretches on a little longer: and then, from nowhere, a series of explosions blasts it open.
An instant of deafened, ringing silence—and then more explosions begin, each detonating before the last has settled, close enough to feel a burst of warm, gritty air through the trees with every new explosion.
Half a beat quicker to react and far lighter on his feet, Suigetsu's already halfway to the canopy by the time Juugo thinks to follow him, up where the pale branches jut out like spokes from a wheel. "Mile, mile and a half away?" he yells down, over the distant crashing of rubble. "There's some weird shit going on out there, Juugo, seriously, I dunno what the fuck we're heading into—"
In the trees: the flicker of a shinobi clad in the dark greens of Hidden Grass, alone, and travelling fast towards them.
Juugo leaps hurriedly higher, and lands in the rustle of the leaves as the man closes in. "Excuse me," he calls, as loudly as he dares, and he waves, tries to flag him down. "Do you know what's going on?"
The man doesn't respond. He doesn't even seem to have heard, fairly barrelling along through the network of smooth pale branches, and Suigetsu launches himself down into his way as well. "Hey—hey! We wanna talk to you! What's going on out there?"
The man shows no signs of stopping. He's closing in on where Suigetsu stands, arms folded, planted directly in his path—and Juugo leaps out of the way, just in time, as Suigetsu's confrontational glower turns to alarm, and then to water, and the man charges straight on without hesitation, sandals skidding only briefly on the damp patch where Suigetsu had been.
Juugo takes a moment to compose himself. His blood is too loud in his ears. A deep breath, and another, and he jumps down to the wide, smooth branch below. "Are you okay?"
"Fucking fine," says Suigetsu, though he doesn't sound happy about it. He's wringing out the front of his shirt, dripping wet. "You see that asshole's face? I've never seen a guy look that much like a corpse and keep on going."
"Like a corpse?" says Juugo, carefully.
"Yeah," says Suigetsu. "Like—rotten." He wrinkles his nose in revulsion at the memory. "Gross. C'mon, let's get out of here."
Rotten, like a corpse. Juugo thinks of Tayuya, and then very deliberately he sets his thoughts of Tayuya aside.
They keep moving. They keep moving for barely a minute, because there's a sound like a far-off whip-crack, and a scorching electric smell cuts the air.
Juugo looks around. "Lightning jutsu—?"
But another series of explosions begins to detonate; and before they've even finished there's the whip-crack, and the stink of electricity—and a sudden larger blast, distinct from the others, so huge that the ground shudders—and then another, and another, and by now the chaos must have gained momentum, because it just keeps going. The rumble of constant sound; the smell of smoke; and, down at the level of the forest floor, a thin haze begins to spread. Misty tendrils curl slowly between the trees, creeping steadily outwards.
Suigetsu turns to Juugo wearing a toothy, malicious kind of grin that means absolutely nothing good is going to happen to anyone at all.
"What is it?" says Juugo. He's not expecting to like the answer, which is just as well given that Suigetsu's already veered violently to the right before Juugo's even finished speaking; his stomach turns an unhappy roll, and he chases after him, leaping tree to tree. "You're—Suigetsu! You're going the wrong way!"
"It's mist!" he yells back. "Mist from Mist—someone in this shithole of a country's got Mist jutsu—"
There's a flash of dark grey, and barely twenty metres away a whole team of ninja go flitting through the trees. The ground heaves—dust fills the air—not far off, the treeline lurches as some unseen earth jutsu violently warps it.
"This way," Suigetsu's shouting, "Juugo, this way, c'mon, I can feel it—"
Some kind of confrontation down at ground level: blood on dirt visible in the flickering gaps between branches as they run. Sunlight catches on the angle of a blade. Someone's still alive down there, moving slowly, a weapon like a mace in either hand and some kind of body armour close against their limbs, heavy and white—and white?—
Juugo doesn't stop to think. He jumps straight down from the treetops and he lands hard, in a hazy cloud of mist and smoke and churned-up dust. A moment later Suigetsu lands beside him, already complaining: but across the blood-spattered glade, a boy with a mace in either hand stops moving. He looks at Juugo, his expression plain; and then the maces start to disappear, sucked back inside his body through his palms, until he uncurls his fists to show his empty hands, and though Suigetsu's just shut up for the first time in hours, Juugo hardly even notices the silence.
It's Kimimaro. Or rather—it can't be Kimimaro, but it looks like Kimimaro, from the sleek white braiding in his hair to the clan markings painted on his skin; and while he's pale, he's only subterranean pale, aristocratic pale—not the bleached, sickly near-grey he'd been towards the end. The jagged bone sheathes still sprouting from his forearms to protect his hands look sturdier, too. Juugo should know: he'd been with Kimimaro right up until the day before he took his final mission.
It flashes through his mind in an instant, so used is Juugo to calculating worst-case scenarios: they should run. There's no best-case scenario here, apart from maybe both escape alive; they should run, and they shouldn't look back at Kimimaro—at whatever imposter has slipped inside his dead skin, and turned the whites of his eyes to grey.
Juugo knows it, and he means to do it. He really does. But he opens his mouth to say so, and all that comes out is Kimimaro's name, and by then it's already far too late.
"Juugo," says the imposter, courteous as the real Kimimaro. "It's been quite some time, hasn't it?"
He looks Juugo over, a strange and terrible softness in those greying eyes. And then he dips his head—and the sight of that strange, elaborate parting—that an imposter should go so far! Juugo stares, transfixed, at that zigzagged line along the scalp. They've taken Kimimaro's skin, but worse than that they've taken the small things—the way he would knot back his hair in the mornings, the precise and formal manner of his bow, his memory of Juugo.
"Get a grip," Suigetsu says sharply, "Juugo—"
But there's a man inside this dead man's skin: the horror suddenly hits, with a force that feels like a blow to Juugo's heart.
"—down, Juugo—take a fucking breath or something, okay? Okay? Juugo—Juugo—"
Juugo isn't really Juugo anymore, but what he is lets out a bellow and charges. And that Kimimaro can't be Kimimaro—but time passes, it must do, and when Juugo blinks his way back into consciousness he finds a cage of bone erupted from Kimimaro's sternum, locked rigidly into place around him.
Slowly, the fire subsides. Kimimaro's hand is flat against Juugo's shoulder, and he's speaking, too quiet to pick words from the murmur but gentle, shushing, utterly confident. Kimimaro is on tiptoes to get anywhere near reaching him. Juugo's grown a lot since they were both fifteen.
Maybe the rest of it, an imposter could mimic: but not this. Juugo can't believe for a moment that there's an imposter in the world who could calm him the way that Kimimaro can.
"I'm okay," he says. "I'm okay. Kimimaro?"
Kimimaro studies him a moment longer, and then the bone spurs retreat beneath his skin. "Impure World Resurrection," he says, "which permits the dead to live again, under another's command."
"So—it's you?" says Juugo. "Really you?"
Kimimaro's smiling. Juugo feels half-sick with hope and fear. "Really me," he says. "Under a jutsu of Lord Orochimaru's own invention—even in my death, he treats me kindly. We have much to thank him for, Juugo."
"I knew I recognised you," Suigetsu says, suddenly. "You're Orochimaru's old pet, aren't you? You're the second-rate Sasuke." He levels the first two fingers of his right hand in Kimimaro's direction, a child's finger gun. "But I heard you got killed by a couple of Leaf genin—which is fucking embarrassing, by the way—so you wanna tell us just what the hell you're doing back?"
"For the purposes of war," Kimimaro says, quite placidly. "Resurrection, by the power of my Lord Orochimaru."
Suigetsu bares his teeth, expression ugly. "Yeah, I got the Orochimaru bit, thanks—"
"Stop it," Juugo interrupts, "—please stop it," and Suigetsu subsides with bad grace, though his water gun stays aimed for Kimimaro's heart.
There's screaming in the distance, the lurch of earth ripping open.
"Ah—excuse me," says Kimimaro, already moving, and he darts into the trees. The sick wet sound of bone tearing flesh is still familiar, though it's been years since Juugo last heard it; the heavy sound of bodies hitting dirt, too, though that's very much still a part of Juugo's daily life.
"If Orochimaru's back," starts Suigetsu—but he stops. Some very strong emotion Juugo doesn't really want to think about seems to be simmering violently within him. "If he's back, I'm gonna kill him this time round."
"We'd have heard about it if he was," says Juugo.
"We've been in jail," says Suigetsu, and Juugo shrugs. They'd still have heard: he's sure of it. News like Orochimaru travels, even in jail—maybe especially in jail, where pickings for disaffected, unstable new Sound recruits had always been rich.
A shuriken zips by them, slams into a tree. There's the sound of breaking bone, and a cry chokes off into a gargle. A moment later, Kimimaro reappears, readjusting his shirt across his shoulders. "My apologies," he says. "Under this jutsu, my will is not my own. I attack when I am commanded to do so."
A pause. "You're—being controlled?" says Juugo.
"I am," Kimimaro agrees, and adds, mildly: "I really don't mind. I would follow the same orders of my own accord."
"Oh, yeah, I bet you would—"
"I understand," Juugo interrupts, voice raised to drown out Suigetsu, "no, I... I do understand. Was that—uh. Anyone... particular, just now?"
"Only enemy troops," says Kimimaro. His smile is beatific. "As I feel no urge to harm you, I presume we fight for the same master in this war."
"Well," says Juugo, carefully, since Kimimaro's endless enthusiasm for someone to call master was never really an enthusiasm Juugo shared, "well—I'm on a team, now. Uchiha Sasuke's team. Um—what's this about a war, by the way?"
But the light of recognition has already flicked on in Kimimaro's strange grey eyes. "My successor!—my successor. Of course. Does Uchiha Sasuke serve my Lord well?"
Juugo hesitates. It's a mistake: Suigetsu cuts straight back in.
"Sasuke killed your precious Orochimaru, and good fucking riddance."
For the first time, Kimimaro's gaze shifts from Juugo. Perhaps it's the way his eyes have greyed, or perhaps it's just how long they've been apart, but his expression is unreadable.
"Chopped him right in half," Suigetsu elaborates, with a helpfully violent explanatory gesture, "and then in half again, and then—"
"I don't think that's true," says Juugo.
"And then," says Suigetsu, ignoring him entirely, loud and slow, "he chopped all those bits—in half—again."
"Yet I feel his chakra within me," says Kimimaro. He doesn't seem at all concerned. "This is Lord Orochimaru's jutsu, and I feel his power within it. As long as I live, his will lives on in me."
"Fuck this," says Suigetsu, and drops his gun, disgusted. "I'm gonna go look for whoever's got that Mist jutsu going. Catch you later, Juugo."
It's a bad idea, and Juugo starts to say so—but Suigetsu's already gone, disappeared into the misty trees beyond the edge of the clearing, and only the uncomfortable tension of his foul mood remains. Juugo looks down at his hands, and then he looks at Kimimaro's hands, and then he looks at Kimimaro, who is already looking up into Juugo's face with an expression of such unshakeable calm that Juugo's worries settle down beneath it. Suigetsu is an excellent ninja, and almost definitely knows how to navigate in mist; Juugo is not a bad ninja, but he certainly knows how to navigate a forest, no matter how many dead men have risen to fight within its boundaries. He'll find his partner again.
"About Orochimaru," says Juugo. "He—Sasuke really did kill him. Suigetsu wasn't just trying to upset you."
"Oh, I believe you," says Kimimaro, serene as ever. "But his spirit lives on regardless. I know his chakra better than my own."
Juugo doesn't question it. Maybe it's just as well Suigetsu already left.
Flickers of motion pass by in the branches far above them, but Kimimaro doesn't react. It's not the enemy, Juugo supposes—whoever the enemy might be. Not the enemy, unless perhaps it is, and Kimimaro's master has sent another of his dead puppets on their tail instead. The smell of smoke is in the air.
"There's a war going on?" he asks, and Kimimaro dips his head in acknowledgement. "Who are you fighting?"
"Honestly, I'm not sure." But he considers it, expression thoughtful. "I know the enemy when I see them, though—or rather, my master does. And since my master directs the course of my attacks, it works out the same, in the end."
Juugo nods. He's not sure what else to say. The enormity of three years dead seems to grow and grow until it presses down on the entire clearing, and keeping his head unbowed beneath it seems just about the hardest task in the world. Around their knees the mist is swirling, low to the ground and hazy.
He says what he's thinking, in the end. "You look well."
"For a dead man?" says Kimimaro, and at Juugo's startled look he laughs. "No—I feel well, it's true. Not even my own body can harm me in this form."
Juugo can't remember the last time Kimimaro laughed. He certainly can't remember the last time Kimimaro teased him, and as for the last time Kimimaro went more than five minutes without stopping to manage dizziness, standing straight and breathing deep—Juugo has no idea. Something feels as though it's grown too huge inside his chest, and as though it's growing still.
"You, too," Kimimaro adds. "Freedom suits you, Juugo. You really do look well."
"It's because," says Juugo, and stops, and tries again. The feeling is growing, pushing out against his ribs. "You told me I could trust Sasuke. So I did. So—it's because of you. That I'm free now."
Kimimaro nods. "You were loyal," he says. "And through your loyalty, you have been rewarded. Are you happy?"
Kimimaro has always been given to bluntness. Once, Juugo had found it disconcerting, but that hadn't lasted: it's comforting for someone to be exactly who they seem to be. "Yes," he says.
Again, Kimimaro nods. "The truest happiness can be found in service," he says, with all the gentleness and unmoving, implacable conviction of a travelling preacher. It might not sound like much to someone who didn't know Kimimaro—didn't know him the way Juugo has known him, through the bad times and the worse times—but it translates to Juugo as something like you deserve it, or perhaps you have earned it, and more than that to I am glad that it is so.
The skin beneath his elbows stretches, bulges, and splits; bone pushes out, extending with a grinding sound. It keeps going, twisting and elongating, until once more his fists and forearms are encased by thick, jagged gauntlets of bone. "I suspect I am being reminded of my duties," Kimimaro says. Experimentally, he flexes his fingers; then looks up to meet Juugo's gaze, his strange, greyed eyes as calm as fog. "Juugo," he says, and for a moment hesitates. "I—am grateful to have met you. Here, today. To have seen you well."
"Me too," says Juugo, without thinking. "I mean, I am as well—glad that we met. I can hardly believe it, but." The bare skin across Kimimaro's collarbones is moving too now, something flexing beneath it, bulging and writhing like thick worms beneath the skin. "Is there anything I can do?" Juugo says suddenly, as it occurs to him. "I know you're—dead, but can I—is there anything I can do? For you?"
"You could burn incense at my grave," says Kimimaro, expression wry, and Juugo smiles, weakly, rather than tell him that if he has a grave then Juugo certainly doesn't know about it, and that Juugo rather doubts he has a grave at all. The death of a subject was never a reason for Kabuto to stop medical experimentation on the subject. Bone breaks through Kimimaro's skin, bloodless, the ends diverging into two and into two again, a growing fan of spikes at his shoulders. "There is nothing," he says, and pushes his shirt down from his shoulders. The loose sleeves catch briefly on his gauntlets; he shakes them free. "You will find out for yourself what lies after death one day, and I have no intention to tell you in the meantime—but I have felt Lord Orochimaru, and I have seen you; and so I shall do my duty, and I shall rest in peace."
The spikes are growing, knotting behind Kimimaro's head and spreading, a jagged lattice like a crown of bones.
"If this—if you say you can feel Orochimaru's chakra," starts Juugo, hesitantly, "because it's his jutsu..." He touches his hand to his chest. "Don't you have mine, too?"
Curiously, Kimimaro mimics the gesture; but the rigid armour sprouting from his elbow gets in the way, and he drops his hand. The curse seal at the junction of his sternum is dormant, stark against bare skin. "I do," he says, as surprised as Juugo's ever heard him. "I—yes, I suppose I do, don't I?"
Sudden whooping laughter cuts the air, rising up over the distant rumble of destruction. A small squad of ninja with the same greyed-out eyes as Kimimaro blitz past, hurtling on their way, vaulting and somersaulting through the treetops like the whole lot of them are revelling in how it feels to be alive. Alive, or at least not quite so dead.
Kimimaro takes half a step after them and then jerks back, movements suddenly irregular. Speaking rapidly now, he says, "I am—being ordered to perform my duty. And I wish to. I will not resist. But it's as you say, Juugo: you will be with me."
"Yes," says Juugo, "yes, I will, I'll—"
Ribs burst open like skeletal wings unfurling. "In my thoughts and in my blood," says Kimimaro. He considers Juugo a moment longer, then smiles, so terribly gentle that it nearly hurts to return. "I'd ask that you live long and well. Nothing more."
"Yes," says Juugo, again. "You'll—I'll be thinking of you, too. I do. Always."
Kimimaro in motion is as graceful as he ever was, fast and silent, his shirt flapping loose behind him as he takes flight through the highest branches. Juugo shades his eyes and watches till he's gone. It doesn't take long, but Juugo watches for a little while after that, anyway: daylight mottled through the canopy, scorch marks on the trees, traces of mist. Explosions are still going off, somewhere; from the sound of it, they've moved a long way from where they started. A stinking cordite trail lies behind them.
"Well," he says, eventually. He takes a breath, lets it out as a sigh. "Well, then."
There's mist on all sides, pale and fine. In places it thickens but it doesn't rise much higher than his knees: apart from in the direction Suigetsu took off towards, where the view between the trees doesn't stretch very far before growing hazy, in the gradual, disorienting manner of thickening mist.
Juugo takes a last look up into the trees; and then, with something heavy settled into his stomach, he sets out into the fringes of the mist.
The temperature drops rapidly inside it. The haziness grows worse and the mist grows thicker, until he's taking every step in a blind white fog with his hands upraised in case of low-hanging foliage. Though the sounds of fighting continue, they seem muffled—vague and unreal, dreamlike. His clothes cling to him, cold and damp.
Under his bare feet the ground turns rockier, starts sloping downward. The world is blank and white, but he moves as quickly as he dares.
At length, the vague outline of a boulder rises up. Juugo avoids it, and from then on the world begins leeching back in muted shades of white. He's emerging into a much deeper part of the forest, into an area that looks like it was recently subject to earth jutsu, the ground churned over and littered with rubble. The mist here is enough to unsettle, but not enough to obscure, and beneath its haze the whole forest seems paler, seems bleached. The shade of the trees is heavy and cold.
Not far off, metal clashes on metal. Juugo ignores it. There are wet footprints on the rocky ground: traces of them, the brief imprint of a heel, the ridged sole of a sandal, only still visible because of the damp the mist has brought, and spaced so far apart that whoever left them must have been moving at speed. It could be anyone—and there are Mist-nin in the area! Mist-nin, whose array of water techniques are notorious the whole continent across! It could be anyone.
But... it could be Suigetsu, too, whose tendency to drip under pressure has proved useful for tracking him in the past; and Juugo picks up the trail.
The footprints continue downwards, their path getting steeper as the forest gets deeper. Whoever left them was moving fast, and was agile enough that more than once Juugo has trouble finding a trail that's veered violently off course in a single step, or catapulted from the ground into the trees and launched back down at another angle. At one point the trail starts leaving splatter, and the splatter gets heavier, and then for some twenty metres everything is wet—glistening stone, puddles in the crevices, the leaves above still dripping. The trail resumes on the other side, and the footprints are clearer than ever.
There's a rocky clearing, and in the rocky clearing are several dead ninja. Their clothes are wet; their faces are discoloured, mottled, bloated. A beat of horror and then Juugo rushes by them—skidding down the steep path between the trees, casting frantically about for a flash of purple, a spike of familiar chakra—
And—there! In the thin mist, and not alone: with a shinobi in a Sand-style khaki headscarf, whose hand is pressed against his thigh and whose expression is twisted up in pain. Juugo can't see Suigetsu's face, and his cloak is gone, but he'd recognise the considering tilt of his head anywhere—the finger gun gesture, too.
"Wait," says Juugo, and then yells it instead, because it's far too late for stealth now—"Suigetsu, wait, don't—"
A small wet sound like a pellet hitting flesh; the Sand-nin's other leg gives way, and in an instant Suigetsu's tackled him to the ground, straddled his chest and pinned him, and there's—something—happening, a puddle spreading out around them, the Sand-nin's body heaving beneath his weight, the sound of gagging—which falters into silence just as Juugo crashes into the clearing, a trail of splintered branches behind him.
"What are you—Suigetsu! What are you doing?"
Suigetsu's on his feet in a move so swift it flows like water; the gun is back in business, levelled at Juugo, and Juugo's about as startled to find that it's not actually Suigetsu wielding it as he had been to find Kimimaro alive and kicking. It looks so like him it could be his twin, but it's not him: not unless Suigetsu has managed to get himself killed and resurrected in the half an hour he's been apart from Juugo, which doesn't seem likely, all things considered.
"You wanna say that again?" says the stranger, and though he says it casually, like Juugo's welcome to decline, he's also just killed at least a dozen ninja while alone and unarmed, and his stare is very hard.
"I—thought you were someone I know," Juugo says. He picks the words carefully; he keeps as still as he can. "I was wrong."
"Yeah, no shit," says the stranger. "You wanna tell me who you thought I was? And who the fuck you are, while we're at it—you from Mist? You don't look it."
A beat of silence, and the stranger gestures impatiently with the two fingers of his gun: hurry up. Juugo's not sure he wants to tell him, but he's not sure he wants to irritate him either, not while he's lost and teamless. Reluctantly: "Juugo. I'm not—"
"—go! Juugo! Juugo, you fucking moron, where the fuck are you, I fucking heard you fucking calling me—"
Someone's crashing through the trees with very little care for stealth. The stranger cocks his head and listens. The gesture is so familiar it's unsettling: a weird, mirror-world variation on the theme of Suigetsu.
The yelling's getting louder.
Conversational, the stranger says, "You got someone looking for you, Juugo?"
"My teammate," says Juugo, after a moment.
The stranger nods. Then he grins, like Juugo's the joke and just hasn't realised it yet, and a terrible feeling of unease flips over inside Juugo's stomach. "Some teammate you are, huh? You gonna call him over, or you just gonna let him fuck around in the woods all day?"
Juugo stares at him a moment longer, but he seems to mean it—looks as serious as anyone could look, dripping wet and showing a lot of very pointy teeth. "Okay," says Juugo. He hesitates, takes a breath—calls Suigetsu's name. Then again, louder; and though filed teeth no longer do anything to intimidate Juugo, the stranger's grin is still not a reassuring vision.
A thump from somewhere nearby, a cracking branch: "Juugo, you fucking headcase!" Suigetsu yells, and launches himself into the clearing from somewhere up in the trees, landing with a billow of his cloak, accusatory finger already pointing. "Why the hell'd you go running off like that? I go back where I left you, you've fucking disappeared—"
An instant later, a distant cry becomes, abruptly, a very near cry, and not two paces to Suigetsu's left a young dead kunoichi bursts from the mist. She's wild-eyed and red-haired and shrieking with delight, wielding a longsword that's sparking blue all the way down its blade, arcs of light jolting loose; her grin is very wide and her teeth are very sharp. "You're noisy!" she cries—then spots the stranger, and her manic grin gets wider. "Hoozuki! Is this a party?"
"A private party," says the stranger, and flaps his hand to shoo her on. "Invite-only, so you can fuck right off."
"You're no fun," she says, but she's still grinning, greyed-out eyes bright with something half-deranged and terrifying. "Where's Jinin? I got some scores to settle with that asshole."
"Flooding out the south-east, last time I saw him," starts the stranger, but whatever he says next is drowned out by the girl's screech of delight as she dives back inside the mist, her sword upraised and sparking. Moments later there's the whip-crack sound of lightning jutsu, electrifyingly near, the static so strong it crackles through Juugo's hair: and she's gone.
"Fucking lunatic," the stranger says, fondly—and then, by way of explanation: "Ameyuri? You remember Ameyuri. Picked you up from the Academy for me a few times, your teachers nearly shat themselves. Everyone remembers Ameyuri."
Juugo certainly doesn't, and if Suigetsu does, he's not giving it away. He's staring at his double with a look so dazed it's like someone just cracked him round the skull.
"You think you're surprised," says the double, not at all unkindly. He gestures the fingers of his gun in Juugo's direction. "This guy reckons he's with you?"
"Yeah," Suigetsu says, blankly. "Yeah—yeah, that's Juugo. Yeah. Mangetsu?"
"Yep," agrees the stranger. He studies Juugo a moment longer, critically appraising; then nods, satisfied, and drops his gun. "Hoozuki Mangetsu—you abandoned my little brother in the woods, apparently."
"I know," says Juugo, without thinking. "I mean—I didn't, Suigetsu abandoned me—but I've heard about you. Suigetsu talks about you. A lot."
Sudden mortification seems enough to snap Suigetsu out of his daze. "What the hell, Juugo, you can't just say—"
Airily, Mangetsu waves it off. His grin is back in place, though it's looking far less like the intimidation tactic of a predator and far more like his spirits are just too high to hold it back. "It's a completely natural impulse to talk about me a lot, brother, don't worry about it. But listen—they sent a whole squad after me," he says, and though his voice is still light there's a note of seriousness creeping in, "and I just got done this minute taking it out, so I reckon it's gonna be quiet round here for a little while. So if you want to stick around, I'm probably not gonna try and kill you. You want to stick around?"
Suigetsu's silence stews for barely a moment, before exploding into bewildered fury. "Is this—what is this, some Orochimaru bullshit? You got Orochimaru controlling you, too? Is he in your head?"
"What the fuck's Orochimaru got to do with anything?" Mangetsu demands, looking about as outraged by the idea as his brother does. "I'm just your basic zombie. Your basic puppet zombie who can't do shit without permission."
Suigetsu folds his arms, glare narrowed and disbelieving. "Tell me something only the real Mangetsu would know."
"You got yourself accidentally flushed down the toilet one time," Mangetsu says promptly. "When you were, like—five. I literally never took a more disgusting mission than getting you back. In fact," he begins, and Suigetsu loudly, hastily, intervenes.
"All right!—all right, fine." The suspicion lingers. "Where's your sword?"
"Fuck if I know. Graverobbers?" Mangetsu shrugs, turns up his empty palms. "Some bastards just won't let a guy and his sword rest in peace together. Where's yours, little brother?"
The last of Suigetsu's suspicion evaporates: either that, or he's just so keen to talk swords that it doesn't matter any more, because he brightens up at once. "I got Zabuza-senpai's, so it's mine now—the Executioner's Blade. You know the one," he says, importantly.
"Yeah, no shit I know! So you're in the Seven? Did you kill him for it? That asshole always had a problem with us, didn't he, you better have given him hell—"
"No," Suigetsu interrupts, "no, it's—the Seven doesn't even exist anymore."
"The Seven doesn't—?"
"Nope."
For a moment, the clearing is quiet: the pair of them stand in grim, silent contemplation. Something in the Sand-nin's drowned corpse gurgles. Mangetsu's clothes still drip, steadily, on the stony ground.
"I got it confiscated in prison, anyway," Suigetsu admits, and Mangetsu lets out a burst of startled laughter.
"Prison?—you wanna tell me what you were doing in prison, little brother?"
"Not much." He shrugs, resigned. "We broke out, like—a week ago? Boring as shit in there. No offence, Juugo."
"What?" says Juugo: who sat down at the foot of a particularly broad tree some few minutes ago and has been doing his best since then to stay quiet, and unobtrusive, and to pretend he can hear nothing of what seems like it should be a far more private conversation. "Oh—oh, well. None taken," he says—and adds, because Mangetsu still looks curious and Suigetsu is generally averse to providing details: "It was mostly for murder. And terrorism. And assisting a terrorist. And attempting to invade Iron Country, they said, though we didn't really invade, as such..."
"Brother," says Mangetsu. He stops, and then he shakes his head, grey-eyed and fond. The mist around him swirls up and flows back out. "Catch me up, okay? Last thing I remember, you came up to—" his hand claps against his upper arm, a little way above the elbow, "—here. How long's it been?"
"Four years," Suigetsu says immediately.
"Four years?" Mangetsu echoes, seeming rather more impressed by the news than anything. "Fucking hell, I'm pretty sprightly for a four-year-old corpse, aren't I? C'mon—fill me in. Four years, what've you been up to? Give me the highlights. I got killed, and you—"
"Got kind of taken captive," Suigetsu says, reluctantly. "Kind of," he stresses, and directs a sudden, threatening scowl to Juugo—who nods, just slightly, and Suigetsu relaxes. Some details aren't really Juugo's business to provide. "Yeah, in Sound. That was—whatever."
"Yeah?" The look Mangetsu's giving him has turned to one of careful consideration. "They used to get up to some nasty shit over there, I heard. You know what the Mizukage's like—sucker for a horror story. He was always on about Sound."
Suigetsu says nothing. Then he says, "Yeah, well," and scowls at the dead Sand-nin, as though the dead Sand-nin is somehow responsible for his brother's access to classified political information. "That lasted a while, I guess."
"Till you got Zabuza's sword?" It's the right thing to say. Suigetsu brightens at once. "Just don't tell the Mizukage you lost it," Mangetsu adds, reflectively. "He'll have your guts, if you do—serve you filleted next New Year's. I'm not even kidding, he's a fucking psycho. Don't let that happen."
"That Mizukage got killed," says Suigetsu, but it doesn't sound as withering as it was probably meant to. "Yeah, so. We just do our own thing nowadays. We were in Akatsuki for a bit, but it never—"
"Aren't we still?" Juugo interrupts.
"Huh?" Suigetsu frowns round at him. "Are we?"
"These are Akatsuki cloaks," Juugo points out, and lifts the front of his own to show the red silk lining.
"Huh," Suigetsu says again, surprised. "I guess we are, then. I sort of figured we'd left by now. So," he announces, rounding on his brother, "I'm in Akatsuki at the moment—"
But Mangetsu's laughing too hard to answer him, and matters deteriorate for a minute or so into an argument Juugo doesn't try to follow: still sitting at the foot of the tree, gazing absently at the bloated face of the dead Sand-nin. When they sound that alike, it's hard to keep the overlapping voices straight.
"It's a terrorist organisation made up of S-rank criminals, you don't just forget you're in it—"
"I think there might be people coming," Juugo says suddenly. There's a sudden, distant spark of chakra: deep in the ground, shinobi-made rather than natural, and hurriedly concealed. The other two are looking at him. "I don't know if they're—which side they're on, though. I can feel the chakra."
Mangetsu heaves a sigh of resignation. "Yeah, okay. No problem. You wanna stay for the show?"
No answer from Suigetsu, and the question wasn't meant for Juugo.
"Old times' sake?" he coaxes. "Wanna come and kill a bunch of total strangers with your big brother?"
"Fuck," Suigetsu says, at last. Juugo makes the mistake of looking up, and looks away twice as fast as soon as he catches sight of the look of pained indecision on Suigetsu's face. "Fuck, look—you know I would, right? But we got all this stuff to do."
"Stuff you broke out of jail for," says Mangetsu, and Suigetsu nods. He looks profoundly miserable about it. "Oh, c'mon, cheer up—I don't even wanna do it, to be honest. This mind-controlled corpse puppet shit isn't exactly my idea of a good time."
"Yeah," says Suigetsu, "but." He stops. He's looking even more profoundly miserable.
Juugo gets to his feet as quietly as he can, retreats a little way into the cover of the trees. He'll pretend he's listening out for birds, if either of them asks—pretend he suspects the birds are coming back. In reality, the forest is entirely, eerily bare of wildlife as far his connection to its natural chakra extends; but removing himself from the scene still feels like the best thing to do. It's not like he doesn't know Suigetsu is capable of experiencing emotions beyond annoyed, annoying, and mildly sadistic: it just feels inappropriate to stick around and see it for himself.
"You think I'm disappointed you got better shit to do? You think I'm not, like—over the moon that I show up back from the dead, and you got that kind of important shit going on?" Mangetsu's voice drops again, lower still, and Juugo brushes dirt from the bare soles of his feet while behind him, in the clearing, conversation takes place at an accelerated, unintelligible murmur.
"—in the Academy," Suigetsu's saying, getting louder, "in the textbooks, I saw it—so you got every kid in Mist learning how you're this, like—fucking genius, or whatever. And the memorial in the market square—"
Mangetsu interrupts; things fall back into unintelligibility.
"Look—I'm dead, and you've got a life. Okay? That's literally—like, that's all I wanna know. I couldn't ask for—" abruptly quieter, and by the time his voice lifts back up there's some kind of humour in it. "I can't believe you're making me say this shit. Don't fucking ask me if I'm proud of you, or I'm gonna disown you. I'll gut you and then I'll disown you. I'm clan heir, I can do that."
"I'm not making you say shit, you asshole—" entirely outraged, "—you're the one saying it, don't blame me when it's you who's—"
"Oh, for fuck's sake," says Mangetsu: and then there's the strangest rustle of a noise, and a rush of air—and then one of them laughs, sudden and startled, and Juugo can only hold out for a moment before he caves to curiosity.
Suigetsu whips around in panic the second Juugo leaves the treeline. Half a step away, Mangetsu's looking at his hands, palms upraised before him, watching with fascination as they crumble into nothing.
"Did this happen to your guy?" Suigetsu demands. "Your—to Kimimaro?"
Juugo shakes his head, and Suigetsu stares at him for another panicky moment before turning back to his brother, and seizing him by the shoulder—trying to seize him. Mangetsu's shoulder gives way with a puff of something like ash, a dusty cloud of it.
"Guess I'm dying," says Mangetsu. "Again." His damp white hair is flaking into pieces like paper set alight. He looks up, apparently content. "Suigetsu, if you show up to the afterlife younger than me, I'll bring you back as a zombie just so I can fucking kill you myself."
"The afterlife?" Suigetsu looks suddenly hopeful. "So you're—is it, like—"
Mangetsu cuts him off with a shake of his head; ash billows out from the movement, dry and desiccated. "Not your business," he says, firmly. "Just make sure you outlive me, okay? I'm what, like—seventeen and a bit? And a half? You only got a few months left to go, it'll be a walk in the park. Don't get ambushed."
"You think I'm dumb enough to let myself get ambushed?"
"That's the spirit," Mangetsu agrees. It's uncanny to see an expression as affectionate as his on a face so much like Suigetsu's, who's rarely anything less than completely fatuous at all times; it's uncannier still to see it returned by Suigetsu himself, and Juugo turns away again.
It's not long, after that, until the mist around them disappears. Without its haze the view through the trees is clear; the view consists mostly of more bodies, ones the mist had hidden, blood and water splattered liberally around. An entire squad, Mangetsu had said, and Juugo had taken that to mean he'd caused the deaths of a dozen or so ninja: but a dozen was perhaps a very conservative estimate.
Juugo hesitates, but the prickle of chakra in the air is getting stronger, and whatever attack team had been sent for Mangetsu will soon arrive for the two of them; he doesn't fancy their chances, unarmed, against an unknown army of unknown size. "We should get going."
"Yeah," says Suigetsu. He stares blankly at the small pile of charring ash for another moment, and then snaps out of it. "Yeah. Okay, yeah. And we don't tell Sasuke about any of this crap."
For once, Juugo understands exactly what he's getting at. He doesn't particularly want to talk to anyone about this, either—least of all to Sasuke, to whom he and Kimimaro owe so much, and who already has more than enough emotional baggage of his own without the two of them adding another heaping double serving. "I won't tell him anything," Juugo agrees.
"Or Karin. Especially Karin. If you tell Karin—"
"I'm not telling anyone anything," Juugo says, patiently. "And if there really is a war going on, they'll probably be too busy to listen, anyway."
The look Suigetsu gives him is startled, and then considering; and neither of them says much of anything, after that, for a while. They go up into the trees and through them, the scorched branches and the wet leaves.
.-.-.-.
.-.-.-.
That night they stop in an empty village, and forage for food in the empty kitchen of an empty inn, and eat at the clean, empty counters: Juugo quiet and Suigetsu holding forth, aimlessly, on the failings of Tea Country cuisine, and Tea Country gas cookers, and Tea Country water quality—until, mid-sentence, he sets his knife abruptly down, and goes silent.
"Is everything okay?" Juugo says, cautiously.
"Fuck," says Suigetsu. He looks at Juugo with an expression so absolutely horrorstruck that Juugo is immediately certain that some terrible Mangetsu-related thought must have hit him. Kimimaro-related thoughts have been haunting Juugo all day, after all; it's no surprise that Suigetsu would be feeling something similar.
Still, Juugo hesitates before speaking. Grief is private, and painful, and Juugo finds it difficult enough to know how to deal with others' emotions even when those others aren't as confusing as Suigetsu... but the two of them—they've been through something, today. They've shared something very difficult. Suigetsu is his teammate, and for the sake of the team, Juugo will do his best.
Juugo takes a deep breath, and lets it out. "It just—takes time," he says. "Just living with it. Because things happen. And you can't stop them from having happened. But it's okay. That's the important thing. It's always okay, in the end."
"Yeah, well, not if there's a baby," says Suigetsu. "What the hell are you talking about, Juugo?"
"...your brother?" says Juugo. "Wait, what are you—"
"Mangetsu? What—look, forget him," says Suigetsu, and waves it off. "I'm serious, Juugo, okay? What if she's gone and got herself pregnant?"
"If she's—" That wasn't what Juugo was expecting to hear. He takes a second to readjust. "Are you talking about Karin?"
"How long have we been gone?" Suigetsu demands. "Two months? Two months without supervision, that is plenty of time to get knocked up."
"Supervision?" says Juugo, feeling like he's falling further behind the point of this conversation by the moment.
"Me," Suigetsu says, impatiently. "My supervision. Sasuke doesn't know what's good for him, I would not put it past him to let her talk him into it. Fuck, can you even imagine how prissy that kid would be?"
Utterly bewildered, Juugo concedes that he can't. "Does Sasuke really want a...? I didn't realise Karin did. A child. Does she really?"
"Who knows what the fuck Karin wants," Suigetsu says, darkly.
Juugo takes this to mean that Karin has no interest in having a child outside of Suigetsu's relentlessly paranoid imagination, and the conversation begins to make a lot more sense. "This—definitely isn't about your brother, then?"
Suigetsu makes a face. "What does Mangetsu have to do with anything?"
"Uh," says Juugo. "Nothing, apparently."
"You sound kinda obsessed with him, Juugo. Like, no offence—" and Suigetsu pauses, long enough to refill his cup from the sink beside him and take a drink, his voice matter-of-fact, "—but it's weird. Kinda creepy, to be honest."
Juugo shakes his head, bemused. He could speak up to defend himself: but what's the point? Things are back to normal, apparently. It must have happened when Juugo wasn't looking, but that's okay. Probably the best way for it, really.
"I guess I can understand it, though," Suigetsu allows, in response to nothing at all. "Since Mangetsu's pretty cool and everything. I guess I understand. Like, if you were really easy to please—"
"There's ice cream in the freezer, I think," Juugo interrupts, because if he doesn't then Suigetsu is more than likely to keep this train of conversation going for the rest of the night, without any help from Juugo whatsoever. "But I'm not sure how long it's been open, it might be going off by now—"
Suigetsu's across the room in half a second flat, freezer door wrenched open, recriminations forgotten. "Doesn't matter," he says, already rooting busily through the drawers. "Pass me a spoon, will you? And a bowl. Two bowls. Do you want some? Three bowls."
Juugo nods, and gets up from his chair. The weight of his exhaustion settles heavily down about him.
"Oh, shit, vanilla!—make that four bowls, Juugo, okay?"
There are beds upstairs, unmade but empty, and he suspects tonight he'll dream of Kimimaro; but he often dreams of Kimimaro, and tonight, perhaps, the dreams will be kinder than before. "You can have the whole carton," he says, "I don't mind. Here—" and Juugo passes a soup spoon across the counter, which Suigetsu receives with impressed delight and jams straight into the half-melted, unappetising-looking tub.
"You're not so bad, you know? Not selfish. That's what's wrong with Karin and Sasuke, they're selfish. I've always said—"
"I'm going to bed," Juugo says, firmly. "Good night, Suigetsu."
"Try not to snore," says Suigetsu, which is about as close to sleep well as Juugo's ever heard him get: but the inn's beds turn out to be soft, and the sheets turn out to be heavy, and Juugo sleeps very well indeed.