A/N: I'm stuck inside for the foreseeable future and therefore have no excuse Not to crosspost the latest addition to the Western AU! Enjoy the first two chapters! :D
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Chapter One
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It's been a long hot day, dry enough that you can taste sand on the back of your throat, but then they're pretty much all like that out here.
What's been unusual about today is the quiet, and Hana's not fool enough to think that's going to last so she's bound and determined to enjoy it while it does. Leaning back on the porch of the sheriff's office, relishing the relative cool of the shade under the roof's overhang, she stares out at the streets—they're more or less empty today, church not yet out and anyone not listening to sermons at home fixing whatever passes for a Sunday dinner—and wonders if the Scarecrow's gotten a shipment of hard candy recently.
The thickness of the air and the uncharacteristic silence in the streets makes her feel tired. Languid, like she's already dreaming. The thought sounds better and better by the second. Rubbing Haimaru's furry thick head absentmindedly, Hana lets her eyes slip shut.
And of course that's when the dog starts growling.
Hana's eyes fly open, her hand already going to the gun at her hip, but she sees nothing. Someone else would probably assume their pet was snapping at shadows, but Haimaru isn't Hana's pet—he's her partner, and she's known all her life not to doubt his instincts.
So when he leaps up and bounds off the porch into the blazing hot sun, Hana doesn't think twice before she follows.
She hears the commotion before she sees it, sneering and jibes, and by then the cause is pretty obvious—it's those cousins from the outskirts of town, a pair of troublemaking shitkickers who always manage to find new ways to be a collective pain in her ass. There's a third guy in between them, head down under a wide-brimmed hat like that's gonna do him a lick of good. Hana's opening her mouth to shout a warning when the first punch gets thrown, clocking the middle man right in the jaw, and then she finds her voice—and her sidearm—real quick.
"Dosu! Zaku!" she barks. The pair turns around at the sound of her voice as she draws up closer. "I know I've talked to you before about starting shit for nothing." On a Sunday, no less, a part of her wants to say, but they'd probably just laugh at that one. Hell, she'd probably laugh right along with them.
Zaku stops, but he hasn't wiped that infuriatingly smug little smirk off his face. He's the one that threw the punch; Hana would be able to guess that much even if she hadn't seen it with her own two eyes. Zaku's not much—garden variety shiteater, likes to fuck with authority as far as he's able to without getting shot, likes to go after unarmed men for the same reasons.
Dosu's different. He's the one that's always sent a trail of goosebumps down Hana's spine, if she's being honest with herself, that face all covered in bandages so that you can't tell what he's thinking about anything. He's not much for physical violence, but Hana would bet her most prized pelts that there're at least a handful of bodies picked clean by scavenger birds that have his name on them.
Neither of them used to be bold or stupid enough to jump people in the middle of the street in broad daylight, but ever since the Fugaku cleared out it feels like it's been up to everybody else to try and clean up the mess.
"We ain't starting nothing, Hana," Zaku protests, the words totally at odds with the smirk still plastered on his dirt-smudged face. "Just havin' a conversation with an old friend who's come back to visit."
"Conversations ain't usually likely to involve fists," Hana says flatly. "And that's Sheriff Inuzuka to you."
The stranger's head shoots up at that, enough for Hana to see his face, and then she nearly chokes on her own tongue. Too late she notices Dosu's one visible eye flickering between the two of them, the cogs turning.
"That's right, Sheriff," he murmurs in that fake-soothing voice of his. "We seem to've caught you a criminal, haven't we?"
The hatted man's eyes meet hers, and Hana curses him with every fiber of her being.
Goddammit, Shisui, you always did have shit timing.
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Shisui's done a fair amount of stupid shit in his life. What can he say? It's a lifestyle choice.
One perk of that is that he's used to fear. He's lived with it more or less every day of his life—the everyday stuff like wondering if rain would come or the supply trains would keep running or some shitkicker fresh out of the saloon would decide today was the day to shoot someone in cold blood just for shits and giggles, all the way up to the big stuff like whether he might, by slipping up somehow, cause the whole damn town to realize he was bent and then string him up for it, law or no law, or whether his ma would come home on any given night. At this point he's even lived long enough to see both of those big fears come to pass—and somehow here he is. You live this long out here, you learn how to shove all that shit down and shove it down deep, where even you might forget it exists; otherwise you go batfuck, jumping at every shadow until the thought of swallowing a pistol starts to sound like a great alternative.
Shisui hasn't reached that point, but he thinks it still says something that stepping off that train into the blazing heat of the sun—coming home—is probably the scariest fucking thing he's ever done.
It'd been weirdly easy getting back here, when all was said and done; the hardest part by far had been deciding to in the first place, and once that was done the rest had fallen into place with suspicious straightforwardness. Shisui briefly thought about utilizing his oldest skill—sticky fingers have never steered him wrong yet—but somehow it didn't feel right, taking from the place that'd been his shelter for so long. Even if Mizuki was a piece of work.
So he'd used his second oldest skill, found a sketchy-looking man from some sketchy-looking parts of town, and traded his pistol for a handful of cold hard cash. From there it'd been a short trip to the train station. The man behind the glass took his bills, passed him a ticket and that was that.
He'd meant to sleep on the train. It hadn't happened, obviously, Shisui doesn't know what the fuck he was thinking. He didn't know what the fuck he was thinking when he got on that train without having any kind of plan about what would happen when he reached the end of the line. He would say he didn't know what the fuck he was thinking when he decided to go back to begin with, but…
But that'd be a barefaced lie. Shisui knows why he's going back.
It's not a smart idea. Hell, he's pretty damn sure it's not a good idea, in any sense of the word. He doesn't even have a plan for what he's gonna say when he finds Itachi—if he finds Itachi. If the sheriff hasn't up and left already, slipped right through Shisui's hands like so much desert sand.
If he doesn't have a pretty dark-haired wife on his arm by the time Shisui gets to him.
So yeah, no plan, no backups, no safety nets of any kind and almost no hope any of it's gonna work out. Good thing Shisui's never let that kind of thing stop him.
He still stands frozen for a minute after getting off the train, though. Long enough that anyone paying attention would probably think he was trying to get his brains fried, if they hadn't already. He can't help it; there's too many feelings kicking the shit out of each other—the good feeling that comes with setting foot on your own ground after an absence, the unease at not knowing whether you're safe there anymore and, if not, where and how the danger will show up.
It comes pretty quick, matter of fact, though maybe not as quick as Shisui was expecting. The wrath of God, he's heard, tends to come on like a lightning strike (sometimes literally) on the heads of sinners, but maybe God was just trying to lull him into a false sense of security, because he's made it all the way to town before Dosu and Zaku jump him.
"Hey there, friend," Zaku is saying, but Shisui's already stopped listening. He knows how this goes.
They're cousins, he knows that much, though you can't really tell much from looking—same eyes, maybe, dark and about as friendly as a sandstorm, but Dosu's covered head to toe in bandages so there's not much to parse out there. Zaku's easier, his face in full view, which is more than enough to tell he's just another brash idiot. Shisui knows how to recognize his own.
But they usually stay out on the outskirts of the town, which is where Shisui likes them, and he's pretty damn sure the rest of the people here feel the same way. They're nothing but trouble, those two.
So now Shisui's back to wondering about divine judgment. Especially as he's picked a real shitty time to be unarmed.
"Holy shit, look who's back after all," Zaku says with sudden recognition, snapping Shisui out of his thoughts. "Thought you were never gonna show your face again in this town, Shisui."
"Missed your fine company," Shisui says back, cool as he can be. "City folks just ain't quite the same."
"You can say that again," Zaku sighs. "Gotta say, I was gettin' real sick of their type havin' free reign to run this town. Outsiders, all of 'em."
You don't show your face on these streets unless it's to steal shit, who the hell are you to talk about outsiders? Shisui keeps his face blank though; he really doesn't like the way Dosu is watching him. And he is watching, make no mistake; there's a big difference between watching and just plain looking, and Shisui learned to tell the two apart a long time ago. Could save your life, that skill.
"Not sure I get your drift," is all he says. Zaku shrugs.
"Fugaku was a prick, I know you ain't gonna argue with that one. 'Specially since he always seemed to want you strung up in particular." He grins. "But he didn't fuck around, I'll give 'im that. Almost salty enough to make you forget he wasn't from around here. Liked the rules too much, yeah, but maybe in another couple years we could've dragged him 'round to our way of thinkin'."
Gotten your ass dragged out of town by a horse, more like, he thinks.
"But then his kid…" Zaku whistles. Shisui tries his damndest not to stiffen up; just because Dosu's silent as the proverbial grave don't mean it wouldn't be a huge mistake to forget he's there. "What kinda rod did he have shoved up his ass?"
Part of Shisui immediately wants to make a bad joke because that's just who he is, timing and situational awareness be damned, but then the past tense registers and Shisui's self-control slips for long enough that he blurts out, "The fuck do you mean did?"
He figures out his mistake pretty much immediately, not that it helps him one goddamned bit when Zaku starts to smile like he won the damn lottery.
"What's your stake in it, Shisui? You two have some business?"
"Just behind the times, that's all," Shisui says, wrangling his voice back down to a normal volume. "He hand over the reins to someone else?" Did he marry her? Move back to the city under Fugaku's thumb and I just missed him all this time?
Did he get his stupid ass killed when I wasn't here to stop him?
Zaku shakes his head. "You really are behind the times. Don't even know there's a new sheriff in town."
There's a feeling like cold water trickling down the back of Shisui's neck. "What are you talking about?"
"Fugaku's kid is gone," Zaku snaps, apparently sick of the whole game. "An' nowhere you're gonna be able to follow."
"Don't be hasty, Zaku," Dosu's gravelly voice murmurs—close, Shisui thinks, too close, but the realization is dull and muted by what's probably shock—"There's always a way."
Shisui hits the ground before he even realizes he's been hit, pain blooming like an ugly-ass flower over the side of his face where Zaku just suckerpunched him. Squinting up against the desert sun Shisui catches an eyeful of silver glinting at Dosu's side—knives being much quieter than gunfire—and on instinct he fists his fingers in the sand, heart pounding in his ears; maybe if he blinds one of them he can get a leg up on the other—
"Dosu! Zaku!"
They both turn around and Shisui takes the chance to haul ass to his feet—and no further than that, apparently, because there's someone pointing a gun in his general direction.
Itachi?
But then Shisui's brain catches up with his stupid pounding heart and points out that no, the long dark hair and the hat don't mean shit against the obviously female voice. The person with the gun is a woman.
Which just raises a whole bunch of other questions.
He's barely paying attention as the cousins try to explain themselves, too fixated on the woman herself. Her back's to the sun so he can't see her face, but the star-shaped badge on her vest glimmers and it's making him feel queasier than Zaku's punch did.
Not dead, not dead, they're lying pieces of shit, he can't be—
"That's Sheriff Inuzuka to you," the woman snaps, and Shisui snaps right back to reality.
Their eyes meet and once the shock clears off her face, Hana Inuzuka looks like she wants to kill him herself.
Dosu is saying something about Shisui being a criminal, about him and his dumbfuck cousin performing a 'civic service' or some shit similar, but Shisui's attention is already torn eight different ways. The badge on her chest, the massive snarling dog at her side, big enough to make anyone think twice if the gun didn't do it for them. The old friend he hasn't seen in ages.
The woman who's probably gonna arrest him now.
Shisui didn't exactly give her a choice, strolling in like this, he thinks with a little twinge of guilt. He wonders how long she's been running this town—and there's the prickling of fear again to go with the guilt, what the fuck happened to the last sheriff?—and just how much she can afford to lose.
Not that much, Shisui knows, watching her face settle into something cool and determined. Not on me.
"Dosu," Hana says, "the ever living fuck are you talking about?"
Shisui blinks. Zaku blinks. Dosu probably blinks, not that anyone else would be able to tell if he had.
"Come again?" Dosu asks.
"You heard me," she says. "You're going on about a criminal and all I see's an idiot with a head full of sand who finally up and came back home."
At this point Shisui's pretty sure that he must've taken a wrong turn someplace. Wandered out into the desert without any supplies and now he's dying there and hallucinating before he goes.
"You sure about this, Sheriff?" Dosu is saying, real quiet, and Shisui's instincts might not be as great as he thought they were but there's no way to mistake the silk in that voice. Like a spider spinning a web.
Hana's no fly though. She's a damn black widow if Shisui ever met one, and she looks Dosu right in the eye.
"Why? You got something else you feel a burning need to say? I'm listening." Her hand hasn't left her holster.
The cousins, meanwhile, had panicked when she showed up and put their knives away real quick. Meaning they're short on the draw by a long shot, would be even if they'd kept cooler heads; no way in hell a little silver blade beats a Winchester without some divine intervention.
And that's even without taking Haimaru and his eight thousand teeth into consideration.
It's obvious the second defeat settles in. Dosu's posture goes stiff and Zaku, predictably, opens his big mouth.
"So this is what the law means 'round here now, huh?" He spits into the sand. Haimaru growls. "Guess that's what comes of havin' a fucking woman running the—"
"Careful, Zaku," Hana says, her voice barely less of a growl than the dog's. "You might wanna go get yourself a drink before that heatstroke fucks with your head any more than it already has."
And see, Zaku's always been the one person in town Shisui felt like he could point to and say that while he, Shisui, might be stupid, at least he wasn't—you know. That stupid. So when Zaku looks like he's gonna move forward, making Shisui reach on automatic for a gun that ain't been there in a while now, he's not really surprised.
But stupid people never make it this long out here without somebody smarter looking out for them, so when Dosu sticks an arm out to stop his cousin ending up with a bullet between the eyes or a fang-shaped chunk ripped out of someplace important, that's not really a surprise either.
"You have a good rest of your Sunday, Sheriff," Dosu murmurs, nodding at Hana. "I'll make sure he drinks up."
Hana's hand doesn't leave her holster. "Not too much, now, you hear? I don't want to be hearing about any…incidents later on." Her eyes are sharp. "It is the Lord's day, after all."
"Of course," Dosu says, and all but drags Zaku off by the arm. Shisui's real hopeful that they have their own stash of whiskey in whatever cave they're inclined to call home and won't be bothering Anko tonight.
They're barely out of sight before Hana rounds on him. At least her hand's off the gun.
"What the fuck are you doing here?" she asks, cool as anything, like this was a conversation they were already in the middle of before Zaku and Dosu interrupted.
"Suicidal impulses flare up every now 'n again, and I'm only human," Shisui replies, matching her ease for ease and hoping it's mostly a joke. "How've you been doing, Hana? Haven't seen you around in—"
"If the next words out of your mouth are 'a dog's age' I will shoot you here and now."
Shisui puts up his hands in surrender. He don't feel much for fooling around at the moment anyway; now that the immediate threat of getting knifed and/or shot full of holes is out of the way, he's only got one other reason for his heart to be pounding like it is.
"So how'd you end up running this shithole?" he asks, trying to sound casual even with his heartbeat in his throat.
Hana doesn't say anything at first, just squints up at the cloudless sky with an expression like she's churning butter in her head, and part of Shisui wants to snap that this ain't the time for daydreaming.
"Come on," she says right when Shisui's nerves are about to snap in half. "You look half-dead and I need a drink. There's stuff in my office."
Her office.
Shisui's got nothing else to do but follow.