This is an AU in which Team Taka had to go on the run some time after Itachi's death (but before the Kage summit); Sasuke knows about Itachi's true nature, but can't do anything about it at the moment.
I own nothing.
They had to steal a catamaran from that town in Hi to get here. Suigetsu said that stealing boats is bad luck and would come back to bite them later; he was roundly ignored, as the others put their things (provisions either paid for or stolen, changes of clothes, the few personal belongings) into the boat and climbed inside. After a moment of being stared at expectantly, Karin sneering from behind Juugo, Suigetsu climbed inside the catamaran behind Sasuke and they started off.
A few hours later, they're landing at the place Sasuke told them about. According to his terse explanation, Orochimaru would come here sometimes, looking for old scrolls and such, and he would take Sasuke along with him. "It's important that you know more about the world around you, Sasuke-kun."
It's an island Sasuke's brought them to, still and silent. They sail up roughly a hundred feet up a river meeting the sea at the far south end of the island and, between them, Juugo and Suigetsu drag the catamaran to shore. When they're done, Suigetsu takes a long draught from his canteen and casts his eyes around the place as Karin had done when she first climbed out of the boat, stiff and sore.
They are standing in the ruins of what once was a city. All the buildings have been crushed and reduced to rubble. Broken spires rise out of the earth, jagged and resembling nothing so much as fingers reaching up towards God. There's not so much as a solitary inhabitant to be seen. In the dying sunlight, the broken shell of this city aches of loneliness and desolation, and of something else, something…
No. Karin squeezes her eyes shut to banish the thought from her head.
"Some creepy place you've dragged us to, Sasuke," Suigetsu remarks dubiously, his voice distant as if coming through a screen of water or the distance of a thousand miles.
Though she doesn't say as much, Karin can't help but agree. She stares around at the wrecked skeleton of this city, feeling its desolation find its way past the surface of her skin, and then has to turn her gaze away.
They camp out in the open, unwilling to go under the precarious slabs of stone, perhaps thinking of ghosts and spirits that cling to bleak places such as this.
-0-0-0-
In daylight, however, the ruined city isn't nearly so unnerving. The ruins are bleached white from the sun, and seem far more prosaic. No one's really thinking about evil spirits (not that Sasuke would have admitted to that in the first place, or so Karin thinks) anymore, and their minds turn to other things.
The heat is… The heat isn't quite what Karin expected for this time of year, at this latitude… Okay, it's not at all what she'd expected; she supposes they might have traveled further south than she thought. It's like they've come to some island in the south tropics, instead of an island off of the southern coast of Hi no Kuni.
Juugo goes off by himself during the day a lot, seeking out the solitude that can be found so easily in this deserted place; for the most part, he leaves as the sun is peeking up over the hills beyond the city, and returns only when it begins to sink over the waves, staining the waters red. Karin doesn't know what he does for food.
Suigetsu goes diving in the river, crowing that it's almost as good as being back in Mizu. He comes back with his arms full of mussels, makes a show of not letting Karin have any until she snaps at him to stop being such a child. He snickers, grins nastily and hands her a couple. "Geez, Karin, you're really pissy tonight." It was only Juugo choosing that exact moment to sit down between them that kept Karin from leaping on top of her irritating teammate and pummeling him. She knows her fists would likely have met with nothing more than water, but it certainly would have made her feel better, if only a little bit.
Sasuke doesn't stray from the campsite, uninterested in exploring the ruins or wading or swimming in the river. Karin catches him doing his katas once, stern and focused, when he thinks no one is watching, and she smiles. She's ashamed to admit it, but Karin had been avoiding Sasuke, whether through physical distance or simply lack of interaction. His chakra has grown so dark and cold lately, after the death of his brother. She's glad to see him doing something so ordinary as going through his katas. It makes Karin think that maybe Sasuke will go back to normal, given time.
And as for Karin?
On the first day, Karin walks down the riverside to the seashore. Her stocking are lying folded neatly away, and her long-sleeved lavender blouse has been traded for a thin, white cotton shirt with no sleeves. Her slim, bitten limbs are pitted with surgical scars and the old scars of the use of the bloodline belonging to her particular branch of the clan, but she has lost all her need to keep them hidden here. The only people here are ones who know where these scars come from, know why she had to let her arms grow thick with crescent-shaped ridges of scar tissue.
For now, Karin feels her heart being pulled in two different directions: a yearning for the ocean and a yearning to explore the city. The latter she ignores, for even in daylight the ruins of this place are not a place she feels comfortable being alone in. As for the ocean, Karin's never known she could feel this way about anything, a longing deeply rooted in her chest. Not even with Sasuke, has she felt like this.
Her shoes are left on the shore, forgotten. Karin wades out in the water, past her knees, gasping at how cold it is and marveling at how clear it is, some tight feeling making her chest constrict. At the same time, a curious, almost childlike happiness, shakes in every bone in her body. Never has she felt so uncomplicatedly happy…
What… Why? Karin stares around at the gorgeous blue waters stretching out before her, cranes her head around to stare at the ruins at her back. She's happy, yes. But why is she so happy? Karin frowns for a moment, the day seeming just a touch dim. She's long since ceased to trust in the power of a simple change of scenery to make her feel like this, light and buoyant, as though the cares of her life have been stripped away.
After a few minutes of this contemplation, of scowling into the clear blue sky (the sky and the sea are the same light, soaring shade of blue here, so similar that Karin can't begin to tell where the sea ends and the sky begins), Karin abruptly decides that she doesn't care.
She smiles.
The hot, humid air smells of sun and salt and surf. Little fish, gleaming silver and gold and scarlet, dart away from her feet as she wades around in the ocean, carving furrows in the water. Elsewhere, Karin, picking her way gingerly across not sand but a rock bed, stares in fascination at little whirlpools that spring up everywhere before her. They swirl for a few seconds, disappear, and then reappear, catching the little fish and making them miserably dizzy.
Karin discovers the tide pools some yards away from where she had been originally. Water crashes over the rocks and she perches on the edge, staring down into the pools, spray dotting her shirt and wetting her hair, running her fingernails through water that seems much warmer here. Brown algae and translucent green sea lettuce pucker with each movement of the tide. Sea anemones, different species with pink, blue and golden tentacles, sway gently in the water, bringing bursts of bright color to the pools. Sea urchins with purple spines so delicate that Karin's sure she could break them off with her fingers cling to the bottom, and limpets to the sides. Large, five-armed starfish as scarlet as her hair wriggle in their search for food. Little blue crabs scuttle away from the sight of her hand. From time to time, Karin spots the huge, pale pink shell of a whelk. Once, she even spies a cuttlefish peeking shyly from a cleft in the rock.
Eventually, the heat growing uncomfortable, Karin dives beneath the surface of the water to cool off. She comes up with her glasses streaked with water, and wishing she had a proper bathing suit. Her shirt is plastered to her flesh and nearly transparent, her hair soaked and stuck to her cheeks and neck. Her lips and fingernails taste of salt. Karin lies out on the shore, nestled in amongst the sand, foam swirling at her feet. She doesn't go back to camp to get lunch. She doesn't even feel hungry until late in the afternoon.
It's only natural, after that, that Karin gets a bright red sunburn. Suigetsu howls with laughter at the sight of her, stomping back into camp with her skin red and blistered and starting to flake. She throws her shoes at him and then goes behind a large slab of stone with some salve. Karin's not terribly concerned about her sunburn, beyond her deep discomfort and pain and wondering just how she's going to sleep tonight. There's medical ninjutsu and salves (like the one she's picked up now) that can vastly reduce the amount of time it takes sunburns to heal. Besides, Karin's always healed from things like this unnaturally fast. Now shouldn't be any different.
On the second day, her sunburn half-healed and the skin underneath it heavily freckled (Karin mourns deeply for the loss of her evenly pale complexion), Karin remembers to wear sunscreen.
-0-0-0-
Karin keeps to the seashore for several days, wandering back to camp only for food and rest. She actively avoids the ruins that still call to her in the voice of some long-lost ancient language. But as time goes on, its call sinks its hooks deeper into her flesh. She can hear it when she sleeps. A week into Taka's stay in this place, Karin goes not into the ocean in the morning, but deeper into the remains of the city.
She can tell the streets from the foundations of wrecked buildings by the stonework; a foundation will be a single slab of stone (whether still intact or shattered), and the streets are made of pure white flagstones, laid flush up against each other. Some of the stones are shattered, but many are still unbroken, and Karin keeps to the unbroken stones when wandering aimlessly about.
There are designs on the jagged rocks that once made up the buildings of this city. Many bear the crest that can be found on the flak jacket of Konoha shinobi, the swirl, something Karin finds curious (Was this a Hi no Kuni outpost?). But there are other symbols on the walls as well, and the doors, columns, foundations, and even the flagstones. Swirls and squiggles and sharp lines. Karin feels as though she's seen them somewhere, feels as though she ought to know what the symbols are and what they mean. She looks at these symbols and feels a nearly overwhelming sense of déjà vu.
Déjà vu. That, Karin suspects, hits the nail on the head. She stares at every inch of this city, and feels as though she's seen it before, as though she ought to know what it is.
It's an eerie feeling, not exactly frightening, but lonesome and melancholy. Wherever Karin goes, drinking in the sights of the wrecked city, she feels as though there is someone standing behind her, whispering into her ear, but in a language she can't understand. Shadows flicker in the wind and she stares, wide-eyed, at them, expecting these shadows to suddenly morph into the shape of humans and their owners to come out from behind the hunks of rock. She expects to turn a corner and see children playing in the street.
And the worst of it is that Karin feels as though she would know all of their names, if she saw them.
-0-0-0-
"I wonder what happened to all the people here," Juugo wonders aloud one afternoon.
Karin looks over at him, frowning. Rarely does Juugo ever express a great deal of curiosity about the world around him. This, she supposes, could be a good sign; if he's starting to take an interest in the world around him in general, it could mean that he's finally recovered—somewhat—from his long years of imprisonment. Karin still has no doubt that he could slip into one of his psychotic rages, given enough provocation, but at the same time, she welcomes any measure of recovery Juugo makes or seems to make.
"I don't know," she says slowly, eyes narrowed slightly. "Probably one of the wars," she remarks with an all-too-casual shrug. There's a problem in this, that Karin is starting to suspect that she does know what happened here. She keeps her mouth shut, though, because Karin's never liked saying something only to find out later that she's wrong, and because that suspicion's starting to gnaw away at her, like an injured person who's too out of it to notice that they're chewing, instead of biting.
They walk on in companionable silence. Juugo really is much calmer here. Eventually, they're going to have to move on—their provisions won't last forever and Karin doesn't think spending the winter in this place, where the only cover are broken buildings that could topple over on anything underneath them at any moment. I suppose we could try sailing east, Karin muses, past the Elemental nations. I've always wondered what's out to the east…
Karin's point is, eventually they're going to have to move on, whether Juugo likes it or not. She hopes, though, that wherever that place is, it's a place where Juugo can be just as calm as he is here. After everything, she thinks he deserves that—not that Karin would ever admit as much to his face.
Juugo stops and stares at a sudden explosion of color on and in front of a white-washed wall, a small smile growing over his face. Growing out of a patch of uncovered earth are snowy hollyhocks and purplish-blue larkspur shivering in the gentle breeze. Climbing up the wall, nearly obscuring it totally is a large growth of wisteria, light violet and crawling ever upwards; Karin can see part of another of the strange symbols that adorn so many of what once were the buildings of this city. Another one of those symbols that she half-remembers.
"I think," Juugo half-whispers, reaching out to run his fingers over the hollyhock petals, "that I would have liked to have seen this city when it was still a place where people lived."
"So would I," Karin agrees with him, her eyes glazed and her lips pushed tight together.
They move on, venturing further into the city than they ever have before, but not fearing the consequences of that overmuch; if they get lost, they can just walk down to the ocean's shore, and walk until they find the river again. Juugo tries to climb over a bit of rubble, uncaring of the danger, but Karin tugs on the hem of his shirt until she gets his attention. "Not there!" she scolds him. "You'll hurt yourself."
He frowns down at her. "The stone seems very sturdy here."
"Tch, there is a path, Juugo, and no debris obstructing it. If something falls you'll fall and break your neck. That's not going to happen on the path, so follow me."
For a few moments, they proceed to engage in something of a staring match, locking gazes. Juugo half-glares. Karin sneers. Juugo is forced to look away first, and clambers down from the rubble, not meeting her eyes. He follows after her.
After a while, they come to a clear, open place, a square field left totally untouched by the destruction. Karin barely has a moment to think about how odd it is that there is not so much as a solitary sign of destruction here, before she stops dead in her tracks when she sees what is growing in these fields besides grass.
Twelve apple trees, three rows of apple trees, loaded down with fruit, that in the many years since they were last tended by human hands, have grown tall and vast.
"My father grew twelve apple trees, four in three rows. I wish you could have seen the color of their fruit, Karin. You could not find jewels on the throats of queens nor blood anywhere in the world such a rich shade of red."
She stands there, stock-still, for what feels like an eternity; the once-warm day seems now touched with a chill that settles heavily on her shoulders.
"Karin?" Juugo puts a tentative hand on her shoulder, frowning at the sight of her face grown ashen-pale beneath its thick smattering of freckles.
Just… Just a coincidence, Karin tells herself, and shakes away from her frozen state, to form an uneven smile instead. "Excellent!" Her voice is just a touch high-pitched. "We've finally got something to eat that isn't hardtack, or mussels, or those damned MREs."
"Suigetsu caught fish," Juugo protests.
"Oh yeah, like those were real tasty. I need fruit in my diet, Juugo. Otherwise, I'm just not happy." Karin bounds forward into the tall grass, wading in a swaying green sea that comes up past her waist; it thins out and becomes nearly non-existent as she comes under the shadow of the tree. "Come on, Juugo! Let's get some apples!"
Karin reaches upwards and plucks an apple from a low-hanging branch. From behind her there comes a spike of chakra, but she ignores it in favor of closer examination of the fruit.
I've never seen an apple this large before, or so red. She runs her fingers over the smooth, unblemished skin of the apple. And none of them are bruised, or worm-eaten, not even the ones fallen on the ground. Karin stares down at the apple in her hands, so large that her fingers can barely contain it, marveling at the color of it, so rich and deep a red that it nearly hurts her eyes to look upon it. So beautiful that she thinks twice about eating it.
"Karin?"
"Come on, Juugo," she calls absently. "Or do you want me to eat all of them and not leave any for you?"
"Karin, I can't get into the field."
"Oh, what do you mean, you can't? I don't see a fence, so why—"
She turns on her heel, and drops the apple.
Indeed, Juugo can not enter the field. Black symbols hang in the air, glittering, burning. He is clutching his left hand to his chest, a bright burn spreading across its back. He stare at the symbols hanging in the air, the barrier keeping him out, bewildered and almost fascinated. But mostly, just bewildered.
"My father grew twelve apple trees, four in three rows. I wish you could have seen the color of their fruit, Karin. You could not find jewels on the throats of queens nor blood anywhere in the world such a rich shade of red. And he used a seal so that no one not of our blood could go into the field and steal his apples."
Karin purses her lips. "What kind of seal?" she asks curiously. "A seal like you use, Mama?"
Kaori smiles and nods, her blue eyes twinkling behind their delicate wire-rimmed glasses. Not for the first time, Karin wishes she had pretty blue eyes like her Mama, instead of her weird red eyes. Some of the kids in the village mock her about her red eyes. Others just look away. "That's right, Karin. When you're a bit older, I'll teach them to you."
Of course, it's not like Kaori lived long enough to teach her daughter those seals. But now, Karin finally realizes why the symbols on the toppled buildings of this city looked so familiar to her. Oh, sweet God, why did it have to be here? She feels as though someone has stepped over her grave.
"Karin?"
Juugo's voice comes as though from far away, but it effectively drags her back to the present. "It's a combination of a seal and a barrier," she explains absently, not meeting Juugo's gaze. "I think it's meant to keep out intruders?"
His brow furrows in another bewildered frown. "But why can you get in, then?"
"I couldn't tell you," Karin lies wearily. "I… I'll pick some apples, and we'll take them back to camp. We can come back here tomorrow with baskets."
She finds she's completely lost her appetite.
-0-0-0-
"I know where we are."
This is Karin's blunt pronouncement over a supper of hardtack and roasted apples (Suigetsu's sick of picking up mussels, and couldn't catch any fish; Karin still isn't hungry, but ate to avoid drawing undue attention to herself). Neither Sasuke nor Juugo show any particular reaction, the former not even looking at her, the knowledge of which needles her keenly. Suigetsu, however, stares at her with one eye narrowed as though she's said something especially stupid. "Huh? Don't we already know where we are?" A bit of a smirk plays around his lips.
Karin glares sourly at him, and though this doesn't erase the stupid smirk from Suigetsu's mouth, he doesn't say anything more. "I know the story of this city," she clarifies tightly, "and how it was destroyed.
"This city…" She draws a deep breath, staring down at her feet. Breathe… Breathe. For God's sake, breathe; you're better than this. You're not the sort to fall to pieces over stuff like this. "…This city was Uzushiogakure, the capital of Uzu no Kuni. Its ruling class was the Uzumaki clan, a very old clan that claimed to be descendants of the Rikudo Sennin himself."
"Oi, Karin. That doesn't tell us a damn thing as to why this village got wrecked."
"Well, if certain people would stop interrupting me, then perhaps I would get there."
"Don't start fighting," Juugo pipes up, speaking for the first time this evening, shifting his shoulders uncomfortably. Suigetsu shoots a wary glance at him and edges away from his teammate, closer towards Sasuke.
Karin sighs deeply, her nostrils flaring. She stares into the fire as she goes on. "The Uzumaki were renowned for their skill with seals, and made notorious by their long life. A full-blooded member of the Uzumaki clan might live more than two hundred years; it took them thirty years to reach adulthood."
"Living two hundred years doesn't sound like much of a kekkei genkai to me."
"Will you shut up, Suigetsu?!"
"Stop fighting."
It takes Karin a long moment to regain her equanimity, and a longer one to convince herself that she's capable of going on. "Uzushiogakure was often referred to by the nickname "The village of longevity." Uzu was never a major power—it is, as you can see now, a small nation. However, there were those who feared this nation for the Uzumaki's prowess, considering them unnatural for their exceptionally long lives.
"Some thirty years ago, a force of enemy shinobi landed on Uzu's shores—I don't know from what nation they hailed." Mama never told me that. She wouldn't tell me that. "They ravaged Uzushio and put every inhabitant that they could find, shinobi and civilian alike, to the sword. The few survivors fled to other countries. They hid their identities and tried to rebuild their lives. To this day, the survivors of the purge, the Great Diaspora, as it's called, live in secrecy," Karin concludes heavily. "You will find few in these nations who would admit to being an Uzumaki."
Suigetsu snorts. "Great ghost story, Karin. Really reaching."
Karin is too tired, feeling all of a sudden utterly drained, to shoot a retort in his direction. She's also too tired to respond to Juugo's expression of mild concern at the rather crumpled look on her freckled face. In divulging that information, though neither of them have any idea about her heritage, Karin feels as though she has laid all bare—and that has not been something she has ever particularly cared to do. Karin doesn't feel secure unless she holds all the cards close to her chest; when others know more about her than she does about them, she feels vulnerable. There's nothing Karin likes less than feeling vulnerable, as she does now.
And there's a wrenching in her chest, to have told them this tale. It's not a particularly keen pain, but it hurts, all the time, to have to think about all of this.
"I already knew that."
Her red eyes snap to Sasuke's face at this assertion. He is frowning at her, a touch irritated, dark eyes as dull as old stone.
Suddenly, Karin feels a hot lump in her throat, and frankly, she rather wants to cry.
She won't cry, of course; that would just be an utterly ridiculous thing for her to do. Karin simply doesn't cry, you know, and especially not in front of three men, even if they are her teammates. Karin learned a long time ago that crying gets you nowhere. She learned a long time ago that crying doesn't help.
But there he is, sitting across from her at the fire. Coldly handsome, chakra still dark and brooding (on the latter score, more so than usual), and telling her that he already knew everything she just said. And Karin remembers the things she would whisper over him to soothe him, during their time together in one of Orochimaru's hideouts in Oto, when he was feverish. He knows everything. In that case, he must know how much it hurts her just to be here, knowing where here is.
And yet, he said nothing.
Why didn't you stop me, then?
For all that she feels about Sasuke, for one long, hard, hot moment, Karin would like very much to punch him. More than that, she'd like to jump over the fire and strangle him. She gets these angry feelings a lot, in times of stress, and even Sasuke isn't immune from being a recipient of these feelings, not when he's done something idiotic enough. Or thoughtless enough.
Maybe I'd just yank on his hair until he apologized…
But Karin does none of this. Without another word, she dumps her plate on the ground and goes behind a large slab of rock with her bedroll. She can't bring herself to meet any of their eyes as she does so; she feels like if she did, she'd howl aloud. At least if starts to cry like some great big baby, no one will be able to see her do it.
-0-0-0-
That night, Karin lies awake on her back in the dark staring up at the moon. She lies awake, numb and empty and feeling as though her limbs are too-light, but at the same time made of lead, unsure of what to feel anymore, if she should feel furious, desolate, or both. She can hear the fire crackle and pop, can hear Juugo's not-quite-snoring whistling breaths as he sleeps. She can hear the ocean tide, a hundred feet down the river. But there's something else that she hears far more clearly.
"How I wish you could have seen it, Karin. Our shining city, as the sun rose over the ocean. The buildings gleamed white and gold." Kaori's eyes grow far away. "How I wish you could have seen it," she whispers sadly, staring out the window of the tiny house they live in together, in that equally tiny village in Kusa no Kuni.
Karin's seen it. She's afraid that Uzushiogakure doesn't quite stand up to her Mama's expectations, but given the circumstances, that's to be expected.
But she feels deeply bereft as she comes to one inevitable conclusion:
In another life, this would have been home.
So why couldn't I have known it then?