Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
Rating will probably be changed to M later for foul langauge. And violence.
Partially inspired by Tozette's Dirt and Ashes, or: The One-and-a-Half Body Problem.
Title taken from Laura Ingalls Wilder's These Happy Golden Years
There is a line that she remembers, that comes to her unbidden:
April is the cruelest month.
And this is, indeed, a fact, because she is born on the second day of April.
It is not yet spring but not quite winter, suspended between death and rebirth. This is the time she is born into, and it is along with another child, who is more delicate than the snow that still lingers on the mountaintops stretching above the place she has to call home.
(How so very cruel it is, to be given this life.)
April in Yugakure is never anything beautiful—she can almost taste the rain on her tongue, but the air is so dry that it sucks any life beginning to bloom away. It is an old, tired village, reflecting its inhabitants, and during this month, it is especially brutal.
The sun shines and scorches the cracked soil beneath her feet and the wind is sharp and bitterly cold. It is a contradiction within itself, just like Yugakure is.
They are a village of ninjas, battered and weary of war, but a village of ninjas nonetheless.
(She wishes she had never been reborn).
The child, the young boy who had been born with her, lies by her side, back against the ground and eyes squinting against the too bright sun.
He rolls onto his side as a particularly strong gust of wind passes and Fujiko huddles closer to herself; their clothes thin and useless against the chill.
"I'm hungry." Her twin brother (twin brother?) snaps, his glare drilling an angry hole into the hard, rough ground. His stomach rumbles with a sound akin to a tiger's growl, and Fujiko is sharply reminded of the aching pain in her own stomach.
Fujiko casts him a wary glance—he's never been able to control his temper, and his outbursts are always ravenous, always looking for an outlet—which just happens to be Fujiko most of the time. "Just wait a little more, Hidan. Kazumi should be home soon."
Hidan (the boy who is her brother?) lets out a disgusted hiss and grips a handful of dirt, coloring his fingernails dark brown, and throws it at her. "She's never home, you liar."
Expertly dodging the clump of soil—she's too accustomed to Hidan by now—Fujiko shrugs and pulls her legs closer to her chest. There's nothing much to say, simply because Hidan is right.
Kazumi—the woman who birthed them—is a prostitute who should have never had given birth. (Fujiko refuses to call her mother. "Mother" is a word for a different woman; kinder and full of love and affection and smiles fuller than the moon.) Hidan and Fujiko are mistakes and they are burdens that damaged Kazumi's reputation beyond repair.
How they get food now is a mystery to Fujiko. (Except it's not. She's not a child and she knows how much one night of pleasure can cost.) But she pretends to be ignorant; pretends not to know what people mean when they spit "whore" at Kazumi when they pass by, pretends not to know why they are the bastard children of the village.
Kazumi never talks about their "father", who is less than a ghost to Hidan and Fujiko. The only thing Fujiko and Hidan can agree on is that they don't have a father and don't need one.
Hidan claws at the ground with frustration, and Fujiko can see small smears of red mixed into the dusty brown. She winces inwardly, trying to ignore how dirty and unsanitary their whole living conditions are, and braces herself for a piercing scream, followed by tiny, raging fists.
His five year old body is not yet strong enough to do lasting damage, but damn if it doesn't hurt.
Loud, drunken laughter shakes the air, breaking the sort-of tranquility that had surrounded them, and Hidan's head snaps up, immediately leaping to his feet in a show of dexterity that would have surprised Fujiko if she hadn't been born into a fucking ninja village.
"She's home." His eyes glint like amethysts under boiling lava, and they hone in on the slender woman supporting the large, drunken ape of a man that are now stumbling up to their house.
The woman, Kazumi, is delicate like the morning dewdrops on spider webs, but she manages to hold up a man over half her size. Her long, silver hair shimmers like waves made of blades, and she is just like Hidan. (And maybe like Fujiko.) They are fragile looking, like porcelain dolls, but it is nothing but steel and blood and a will to survive beneath their skin.
Fujiko slowly gets to her feet, her mind racing with panic, because it's the fucking daytime and Kazumi never brings customers home during the day.
There's something horribly wrong, and it sits like a boulder in her stomach.
Kazumi ignores the two of them as she moves for the door, dragging the man into the hot, suffocating air inside the house. Hidan and Fujiko exchange glances and follow after her, because something is just not right.
They are five years old and starving and malnourished and basically made of bones and thin strips of flesh and they are absolutely not prepared for what comes next.
With a pained grunt, Kazumi heaves the half-conscious man onto the floor of the living room, so that he is splayed over the grimy wooden planks. When she looks up, her eyes are those of a wild animal's—cornered and ready to fight and crazed. They are not the eyes of a human, and Fujiko takes a step backward because half of her is already predicting the next few seconds.
Kazumi slips a knife out of her tattered kimono and plunges it into the man's chest. Blood sprays from a severed artery and the man howls like a wounded dog. He throws Kazumi into the wall with a single swipe of his arm and tries to lurch onto his feet.
Fujiko is frozen and the only thing she can feel is her heart racing in her chest because—did she just see a man get stabbed in front of her? There is only a sour, icy cold where her insides used to be, and she remains rooted in place as the man lumbers towards her, his features twisted into a grotesque snarl that she knows will haunt her nightmares for the rest of her life (if she even lives).
He comes closer and closer and Fujiko can't even think or move and her eyes are wide open and she's probably not breathing and his fist is moving toward her and—
There is a razor-edged cry, straight from the soul, straight from the depths of hell, and Hidan streaks toward the man in a flash of silver-grey and slices the man's knees open with a kitchen knife. The man stumbles and trips with a curse, his face twisting with pain.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Her brother (brother!) screams at her, hair disheveled and eyes frenzied and mad. The only thing Fujiko can think of in that moment, is the fact that a five year old just screamed "fuck" into her face and this is not right none of this is right.
Hidan snarls at her and grips her arm in a vice like hold that contradicts his fragile body and yanks her so hard that flashes of sheer, intense agony rip through her shoulder. She shrieks, the first sound she's made in the past two minutes, and the two of them fly out of the house in a whirlwind of frantic legs and arms and heavy breaths.
"Let's go!" He keeps dragging her, keeps making her run when her legs are too tired to move, even when there's no air left in her lungs.
They run and run until the decrepit huts part of the seedier side of the village disappear from view; run until they've left broken into the dark woods that surround the south edge of Yugakure.
Finally, finally, they stop and collapse on the floor, gasping for air that is never enough, and sweat rolls down her head like a waterfall. It is hot and cold all around them, and shade of the trees are like a blow to the chest—too cold under the wind that brings icy throbs to her head over her overheated skin.
Time passes indefinitely and somehow, they are safe. Fujiko lies on the dead, itchy leaves under her back and feels the adrenaline that she hadn't known was there leave her body. She's so fucking tired and her body is too heavy for her to move.
"You idiot!" Fujiko turns just in time to see an elbow crash into her stomach, blasting whatever air she had in her body away. Tears prick her eyes and the pain is hollow yet pounding in her stomach, and she can't speak, much less breathe.
She blinks away the black dots that mar her vision and sits up, giving Hidan a wounded, betrayed look. The action hurts her, bone deep, until she remembers that Hidan communicates through bruised knuckles and bony knees.
He is pure fury, but Fujiko thinks she can detect a hint of fear in his fierce expression. "Why didn't you move?!"
"I was scared." Fujiko admits meekly, ashamed of her inability to move, to think under dire circumstances. Her brain is the only weapon she has in this world, and she couldn't even use it. The shame is heavy and damaging on her, and an unwanted tear slips from her eye.
It rolls down her cheek like a droplet of rain (but it isn't raining, not now) and she tries to turn away before Hidan can see it. His eyes focus on the tear and she can see the rage fill him up again, filling him until he's a balloon of a boy. He pushes her into the ground ferociously, and the ground smacks against her, sending echoes of dull pain through her already bruised body.
"Don't cry! Get up! Why are you so weak?" His words pound against her like blows from his fists and Fujiko struggles onto her feet, trembling like a leaf against a hurricane.
"Sorry." She murmurs, but a part of her is humiliated that she's getting beaten down by a five year old. Granted, Hidan is a vicious five year old, but he's just a child. She has lived for eighteen more years than he has.
Her spine straightens and she promises herself—biting down on her tongue hard enough to draw blood—that she will never let this happen again. She will not be weak, because to be strong is to survive. (Just like Hidan.)
Hidan grins with approval, his mouth curving wickedly like the edge of a katana. He offers a hand to her, and she takes it.
The two of them head back toward the direction they came from, and Hidan nicks a piece of moldy bread from a dingy stall as they head back to the house they were born in. Using the tiny edges of his still growing teeth, he rips off a piece and hands it to her. She takes it, gratefully, and relishes in the feeling of actually having something in her stomach.
Fujiko casts a sideways glance at her brother—(her brother.)—and the setting sun casts a shadow against his face in such a way that crafts the delicate structures of his face into a menacing scowl.
She realizes, then, that Hidan is not the sun or the moon or even the stars that hang in between. He is not the galaxies that spiral large and wide, made of the stars that sprinkle the universe. What he is, is something vastly different and much more frightening.
He is a supernova, on the cusp of life and death. His life is a tightrope but he isn't balancing. It is easier, for him, to throw himself across that thin wire, meandering and leaping towards the other side with a bravery bordering on foolish. Every move is an explosion, a roar of passion, blazing brightly, screaming I'm here.
He is always caught up in what is purely life, and sometimes, it's so dazzling that it burns before it blinds.
Fujiko is terrified but she tells herself that she will not be. (This is the only way to survive).
Her grip on his hand tightens and he squeezes back even harder. The bones in her hand ache but she doesn't let go.
And this, with all its savagery and desperation, reminds her of a line; a piece of herself from what feels like an eternity and a half ago, but really wasn't:
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
A/N: Quotes and most of the chapter title taken from "The Wasteland" by T.S Eliot. The lines I used have many different interpretations but I basically just molded them to fit in with this.
Time to destroy myself with a self-indulgent SI/OC fic. ;-; and I know pretty much everyone and their mother has written a Naruto SI/OC fic but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. And this is, obviously, an SI/OC as Hidan's twin. Which I know has been done before too, but I rather like this idea.
Fujiko means child of the wisteria.
Also, here's my interpretation of Hidan: He's a fucking savage, doesn't give two shits, angry at his circumstances (during childhood), dosen't know how to use anything but violence to express himself (besides crazy screaming and laughing). Of course, there's more to him, but I don't want to bore anyone and write a whole essay. I don't really think he'd be a particularly nice or loving brother (except when it counts) and there are siblings that don't get along. Fujiko and Hidan have a tentative relationship made stronger by mutual struggles for survival but it ain't always sunshine and daises and Hidan can get abusive and violent. So basically: he's not a good brother (most of the time).
Thanks for reading and let me know what you think!