But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
-Robert Frost
Hozuki is not able to catch the strangled gasp before it jumps out of his throat like a fish.
He knows those eyes, still dreams of that voice, and as every single head at the table turns toward him he clamps his mouth shut so he will not humiliate himself any further.
Please, he thinks, as knives of truth carve meaningless patterns onto his skin, then harder and into flesh and organ, please let this be a dream.
But this is so much worse than any nightmare his scrambled-egg fucked-up mind could come up with anyway.
"Excuse me," he manages before all but launching himself off his seat, feeling violet eyes follow him all the way to the door. There is only one sink in the men's bathroom. He shoves his head under the tap and holds his breath as cold water blisters his scalp and freezes the panic, taking relief in drowning until his vision swims and his legs wobble.
The first lungful of air hurts so much that he almost cannot take a second, but he forces himself to because Koga fucking Harou is dead and the Nidaime Tsuchikage is sitting in that meeting room like some kind of smug zombie and Hozuki will show him.
What he will show him he doesn't quite know, not right now, but he will.
Subsequent breaths hurt, if he is honest with himself, just as much as the first, yet he dries his hair with a quick jutsu and steps out of the bathroom before he can dissolve into bits and flush himself down a toilet.
He reinvents a new personality for himself, makes himself bigger and more dramatic, takes cues from the late-night movies in which true love always triumphs. Year by year his collar becomes higher, the cut of his robes sharper. If Harou the midshipman loved Hozuki the Candidate Mizukage, then Muu the Nidaime Tsuchikage can love Hozuki the Nidaime Mizukage. He just has to live up to the name, be larger than the man he once was.
He'll be good enough for Muu, and then everything will be back to the way it was.
(He knows, even then, that this is impossible.)
Hozuki, as always, has to overdo everything he does and is rapidly approaching comatose levels of inebriation. The others look to Muu as the only one completely sober, pleading with unappealing and unconvincing doe-eyes. Alcohol permeates the air as if they are in the Village Hidden in the Booze.
He speaks through gritted teeth, the bandages filtering away the roughness of his voice. "I will take him to his room."
Muu half-drags half-carries the man up the endless flight of stairs. In a moment of lucidity the Mizukage grimaces, expression twisting in something that is not-quite anger and not-quite like anything Muu has ever seen on that face.
"You have legs," he snaps, irritated without reason. "Use them."
Surprisingly, Hozuki complies with uncharacteristic meekness, coordinating his feet in something resembling a walk.
"Key."
It takes the man three minutes to remember that he'd stuck it behind his ear, and he hands it to Muu without even a futile attempt at inserting it into the lock.
God, he thinks with derision, what a failure.
Muu all but shoves him into the room, tossing the key with deadly aim onto the coffee table. He is about to shut the door when he sees the other man sway. If he dies, they'll think I did it.
"Sit down."
He almost sighs in relief when Hozuki manages to locate the mattress with his butt. That look again, this time accompanied by words so soft he has to strain to hear them. So the man is capable of being quiet.
"What more do you want?"
Oh.
"Nothing," he replies, guttural and harsh, every inch the expert liar. He tells himself that he hadn't taken anything Hozuki hadn't wanted to give, and it isn't his fault that the man is a horrible judge of character. "Go to sleep."
Muu does not even check that his charge has lain down before marching out the door. He has to get out of here, because it is not him who wants to smooth away lines of pain with a caress, it is not Muu who aches in the face of Hozuki's drunken, pathetic anguish.
"Nothing." He gives the whisper the weight of conviction.
I am Muu. I am no one.
And, just because he can, he takes his chakra off the grid and stalks back downstairs to give a tipsy Senju Tobirama the scare of his life.
He cannot help but feel amused in the face of the Nidaime Hokage's severity. Currently the Senju is giving him his 'concerned' instead of the normal 'default' frown.
"These talks will collapse sooner or later if you two cannot learn to get along."
The admonition wrenches a bark of laughter from his throat, the irony hitting him right where it hurts.
"Oh, we can get along." Like a house on fire.
The other man's expression darkens, 'concerned' shifting into 'irked'. No, a man as cold as Tobirama would not understand. He wonders how the Senju hasn't melted in the warm climate of the Land of Fire.
"I will not have peace compromised by whatever petty feud is between you and the Tsuchikage."
Hozuki laughs again, though all it does is tighten the coiled mass in his chest.
"Don't worry," he manages between lingering chortles, slapping a hand onto the other man's stiffened shoulder. He does it because he can, because he knows it will piss him off, because if he doesn't he might bash his scowling face in instead. "It's not petty."
He can't decide which is worse, the thought that Muu is looking straight through him with those eyes or looking straight at him.
Both make his blood boil, but the latter perhaps more so. With all that cloth covering his face the other man could be smirking or even laughing at him with Harou's mouth. Every time the Nidaime Tsuchikage brushes him off the black, acidic rage seeps deeper into his bones. No, he could never feel apathy for this man, but he understands better than before how well his mother had taught him because-
-aren't love and hatred just two sides of the same damn coin?
Mother would be proud, he thinks, now that I am capable of drowning my own kitten.
Muu should know better than anyone else, really, the power of stories.
Stories had built his career, because he'd been good at making them up and even better at acting them out.
The story of Koga Harou had been his masterpiece, one which had flowed and expanded of its own accord, an organic fairytale that refused to be told the end and good night sleep tight.
Not all fairytales have happy endings. This, Muu should know.
When they fight, disdain makes way for grudging respect, because the man is dangerous, fast, crafty in a way that contrasts with his usual overblown theatricality.
Hozuki grabs blades from thin air and pushes wave after wave of genjutsu at him. He surfs them with glowing hands, gathering the energy needed to fire off his most powerful techniques. The stalemate lasts for some time — they are, after all, quite evenly matched — until Muu leans forward and breaks one of the weaker ripples of illusion.
Only to find Hozuki gone, dissipating in the sudden way of mirages and shit he turns but it's too late, the tide has turned and something about the other man's erratic movements tells him this time, staying alive is a secondary objective for the Mizukage.
"I loved you," he says with such hate in his eyes that Muu wonders if it is the wound or the loathing that is killing him.
"He loved you, too."
He dies with a crooked smile on his lips.