"Swimming through the Milky Way,

I wanna break away and take the leap,

Since we're falling anyway,

no moon to rise would be okay with me."

-drop pop candy, Jubyphonic

It didn't feel like Hanzo was dead.

I looked down at the nagamaki, abandoned in the corner where the Bastard's body used to be. The metal was stained a deep, rust-red. The floor beneath it was earth. Deep, deep underground were bits of broken stone and Hanzo's body.

If Mamoru-sensei didn't bury him, the entire shelter would've been filled with poison by now.

Was it confidence or arrogance that stopped you from using the one weapon we couldn't fight against?

Did it matter?

I stared at the freshly packed dirt and I didn't feel any different.

Hanzo the Bastard was dead.

I still hated him.

Amegakure was finally, finally ours.

Naga was right.

I avenged you, Kota.

It still hurt to think about her.

Behind me, Mamoru-sensei leaned over the splintered desk and picked out a cream-colored scroll.

Yahiko sat against the wall opposite of me, eyes barely open.

"What's it say?" I asked Mamoru.

He opened it, gave it a quick scan, then dropped it on the floor with a handful of other scrolls. "Another mission request the Salamander ignored. Kusagakure wanted us to send aid when they were invaded by Iwagakure. Four years ago."

I hummed and pointed at a scroll with a green cover that had been set off to the side. "What about that one?"

"Konohagakure. Their Hokage wanted us to back out of the war. In exchange, he would keep shinobi away from our border and consider a future alliance. Too late to respond now, but I wanted to look over it again later."

"But he already gave us his shinobi."

Mamoru-sensei shook his head. "Back when we made that deal for Root, the Hokage wasn't involved. Doubt he ever found out about it. Root is Danzo's alone," he said, picking up another scroll. "Always was."

Maybe Konohagakure wasn't as good of a place to live as I thought.

"The asshole hid something here," Namekuji said. He sat on a stone square in the middle of the room.

Yahiko stood, wordlessly bent down beside him, and felt for an opening in the cracks.

"How did you know?" I asked, moving away from Mamoru.

"It's always 'how' and never 'I'll stay quiet because he's right,'"

Yahiko lifted the block with a grunt, dropped it heavily to the side, and reached in.

I waited and Namekuji rolled his eyes.

"I can slip through the cracks," he said. "I can't do that anywhere else in the room."

Yahiko had to use both hands to pull out a big purple scroll.

Mamoru-sensei whistled. "The salamander contract. He never told anyone where he hid it, even before he became a paranoid bastard."

Yahiko unrolled it. There was a name on it, written in dried blood.

Hanzo.

Directly below it was another name, connected to the first by a faded, broken red line.

Ibuse.

Yahiko quietly looked at it, then bit his thumb.

"Once you sign it, you can't take it back," Mamoru-sensei warned. "I can't say what the salamanders will be like for certain, but I know it wasn't easy for the Salamander to get Ibuse."

Yahiko didn't look up. "I said I would take everything from him. Even this."

Mamoru-sensei only shook his head. "Do it outside."

Yahiko nodded, gathered up the scroll, and left the room.

Namekuji crawled up the back of my leg. "Because you'll follow him," he said in explanation. "And Nagato'll be annoying about it if I don't go with you."

I looked back at Mamoru-sensei, but he only waved me off.

.

.

.

I followed Yahiko's footsteps to a grassy field. The remains of pillars and half-built houses or outposts were covered in moss and barbed vines.

Yahiko sat in the middle of the field.

I looked at a sandaled print on the ground, so obvious that I knew he'd left them on purpose.

He didn't look up when I stopped next him.

The scroll was spread out in front of him, but the space next to Hanzo's was still blank.

"I keep thinking she would be disappointed in me," Yahiko eventually said. He stared down at the scroll, hands in his lap.

I sat across from him and put Namekuji down in my lap.

His fingers curled into fists. "I didn't listen to anyone, and I did what I was always scared of. I dragged everyone down with me."

"You didn't," I said, and he looked at me with tired eyes. "If you didn't look for the Bastard, I would've. If you kept him alive, I would've killed him. Even if you forgave him, I wouldn't have. He would've died, no matter what."

Yahiko pressed his palms against his eyes.

"You didn't make anyone stay," I continued, tracing 'Ibuse' with a finger. "Mamoru-sensei and Joji could've left like Etsudo did, but they didn't. They knew what we would do, and they still believed in us."

He grimaced. "Maybe they shouldn't have."

I thought about that. "You were sad and angry, but you didn't do anything to hurt anyone. The only other path for us was to die."

"I was cruel to Nagato and Mamoru-sensei. They didn't deserve it."

"Your words hurt," I agreed. "But if you really wanted to hurt Naga, you would've pulled up his lilies. You told Mamoru-sensei to leave, but you never tried to make him. You crossed lines, but not the important ones."

Yahiko laid back and draped an arm over his eyes. "Let me be sad."

"I want to be sad, too," I admitted, glancing up at the rain. "But I can't, and you can't either. You're the leader now. We always wanted the people here to look at us to make things better, and now they will."

He dropped his other arm over his face. "At me."

"No. At us," I repeated. "Maybe they'll look at you to carry all their hopes, but I won't. Become a god if you still want to, or don't. Make the world a better place, or just Amegakure. You'll always be just Yahiko to me, no matter what you do."

Yahiko lifted his arms to stare at me.

I shrugged. "And you won't have to do it alone anymore. The people here will be looking at the Akatsuki to make a change, not just you."

Yahiko suddenly started laughing, shaking his head. "If someone told me three years ago that the local wolf would be the one to tell me what I needed to hear, I wouldn't have believed them."

"I guess it's my way of saying sorry for depending on you for so long," I mused.

Yahiko's smile faded. "You shouldn't be. It's what I wanted."

I still felt sorry.

If we didn't depend on you to do the impossible and change Hanzo, like you always did, would you have still walked into that ambush?

"I didn't think it'd be like this when we took over," Yahiko admitted.

It was supposed to be the five of us.

He sat up and looked at the scroll again. "But I can't let this go."

He looked at me, waited for a second or two, then shook his head again. "If it were anyone else, they would try and stop me," he said lightly.

But I wasn't them. I glanced at Namekuji.

"Like anything I say will stop the orange-haired one from doing what he wants," he scoffed.

Yahiko smiled a little, reopened his thumb wound with his teeth, and drew his name in blood. He drew a red line, pressed his hand down into the empty space below it, and clouds of white smoke appeared around his hand.

When it cleared, a giant brown salamander was on the grass to the right. It was smaller than Ibuse but towered over Yahiko even when he stood.

"I am Kansetsu," it said in a low, croaking voice. "Many of your kind have attempted to form a contract with the salamanders before, only to be eaten. Fail to prove your strength to us and you'll be devoured as well. This is the only chance you have to turn back, human."

"Will you eat him?" I mused.

Kanetsu didn't acknowledge me.

"What do I have to do?" Yahiko asked.

Kansetsu observed him. "Very well."

A giant summoning seal appeared beneath the salamander, bigger than any I'd ever seen. Three black salamanders appeared in puffs of smoke behind Kanetsu, along the outer ring of the seal.

"Haruo, Iida and Saikaku will fill the area with a poison. You will stand at the center of it. Attempt to escape and you'll be eaten. Fall or die and you'll be eaten. Survive until I've decided you've proven yourself, and only then will you be partnered with one of us."

I wondered if he thought I'd let them eat him.

"If that other human doesn't want to suffer the same fate, she should leave."

I glanced at Yahiko.

He nodded once.

"As someone who has been poisoned, I'm telling you this is a bad idea," Namekuji said.

Yahiko faced Kansetsu again. "I need to do this," is all he said.

I picked Namekuji up and backed off. I jumped halfway up a cracked pillar, yards away. It groaned, raining tiny stone pieces, but held as I walked to the top and sat.

"This is why stubborn humans shouldn't exist," Namekuji muttered.

"He says he'll do it, so he will," I said.

"I hope your optimism helps when he collapses."

Haruo, Iida and Saikaku opened their mouths wide and blew purple streams of poison. They combined into a thick, toxic cloud just before Kansetsu and swept past him, engulfing Yahiko in moments.

Purple waves rolled over the grass and swallowed the bottom of the pillar. It stained the stone purple, but never rose higher than the middle before falling back down.

If it could fill the sky, no one would be able to live here.

I saw Yahiko's outline, a vague, disappearing shape in the mist. I watched his outline's hands fly up to his neck, the way he stumbled forward. I heard him choking on it.

Haruo, Iida, and Saikaku didn't stop.

His outline disappeared in a thick cloud and reappeared with his head tilted back, gasping for air but only finding poison.

Namekuji squirmed in my lap.

I could have helped him if he wanted. It would only take chakra and a thought to blow the poison away. But it would be the same as giving up.

His knees bent, but he didn't fall.

Hanzo the Bastard went through all this and still died like a genin.

I couldn't see his outline for a second, and in the next his hands were limp at his side. He didn't move as poison washed over him, and his knees didn't move closer to the ground. He was still looking at the sky.

"You should help him," Namekuji said.

I patted his back but didn't move.

I wanted to, but I wouldn't. I couldn't.

Kansetsu's tail rose out of the smoke. As one, Haruo, Iida, and Saikaku stopped. Then they disappeared.

The poison slowly thinned and sunk, seeping into the dirt.

"We accept your contract, human," Kansetsu said. "There has ever only been one other who was both bold enough to summon us here and strong enough to win our favor."

Yahiko didn't move.

As soon as the poison around him disappeared his knees hit the dirt and he fell forward.

I stood and Namekuji climbed up my back. "What about the poison?"

"I owe you no answers, wielder of the Rinnegan," Kansetsu said.

"Don't you?" I asked and raised my right hand.

Kansetsu oozed disdain. "You're not the first human to think power puts you above those you perceive as below you, and you won't be the last. You're not even the first with those eyes to think so."

"Don't care."

Kansetsu stared at me. "His partner will reverse the damage," he sneered and disappeared in a burst of white clouds.

"What an asshole," Namekuji said.

I hopped down. "He's allowed to not like humans."

It was like the poison had never been there at all.

"Doesn't have to be an asshole about it."

I knelt next to Yahiko. His eyes were open and glazed over, pupils a murky purple.

His veins were swollen and dark against his skin. It looked like purple branches were clawing up his face.

"Get Naga," I said.

Namekuji de-summoned himself.

I found the salamander contract where we left it. There was a new name below Yahiko's, the line connecting them solid, like it was done with a brush.

Emon.

小南

Naga traced an artery down Yahiko's arm.

"There's no part of his body that isn't poisoned," he murmured. He frowned and pressed a hand over Yahiko's forehead, muttering under his breath about him having a fever.

Yahiko laid in front of the shelter entrance, his cloak turned into a makeshift pillow. Naga had used a clone to move him here.

Yahiko's chest rose and fell in short, fitful spurts. I looked at the bloated veins in his hand. It looked like a mess of tangled wires just under his skin.

I had to trust that 'Emon' was doing what Kansetsu said.

If they weren't, Yahiko would've died before Naga found us.

Naga's glowing hands moved down to his chest and he grimaced. "Left lung fully paralyzed, right only partially functioning," he diagnosed aloud. He sighed.

"You don't have to take the poison out," I said.

Naga paused. He looked at me for a second, then his eyes flicked back down, widened, and he jerked his hands back.

Yahiko suddenly coughed hard, purple mist leaving his mouth. He shuddered.

I didn't move, closer to his legs, but Naga leaned away from it, covering his mouth and nose.

I hummed. "His summon?"

"There's—" he stopped. "You knew there was a salamander in his lung?"

"Nope."

"That big asshole told her that the summon would deal with the poison," Namekuji said. He laid in the sand around Yahiko's feet.

"You didn't sense it?"

"Next time Oka threatens a summon eight times her size, I'll focus on looking for what I didn't know was there instead."

He didn't say he couldn't have, because I took too much of Naga's chakra from him.

Naga looked at me at this, but I only smiled.

He shook his head and refocused on Yahiko. "It's in the inferior lobe of his right lung," he said. "It's small. Quarter of a pinky long, at most. It reacted to my chakra entering his body and tried to protect him from it."

"'Inferior lobe?'"

"The bottom. Here." He tapped a lower part of Yahiko's chest.

"But you used medical chakra."

"I don't think it knows the difference," he said. "It's still too new. If it knew his body better it would've protected him more than making him cough."

"'Emon,'" I mused. "Does this mean you can't heal Yahiko anymore?"

"Until he de-summons it," he answered.

"Here," Mamoru-sensei said. I glanced back, just as he tossed a scroll to my brother. He stood on the top stair.

Naga unrolled it and held it up. Hand signs were drawn on the inside in a line, with arrows pointing from the first to the last sign. "'Rainmaker Jutsu?'" he asked.

Mamoru slipped his hand in his pocket. "The salamander used it to control the rain," he said. "He didn't have the reserves to switch it on and off, but you do. You can use it to force the rain to stop."

Naga's eyes widened. He spread the scroll out on the sand and practiced the hand signs.

Bird. Rat. Ox. Monkey. Rat. Snake.

"What if he does it wrong?" I asked.

"It'll be a downpour," Mamoru-sensei answered. "Worst case is he adds too much chakra, and he has the reserves to take the hit. I doubt he'd be out of breath."

Naga fought a smile. He stood, flashed through hand signs, and threw his hands up to the sky.

Nothing happened.

I sat back and stared up at the clouds, always the same shade of gray. Rain stuck my hair to my forehead and dripped down my nose.

Naga grunted, took half a step back, and I ducked my head as the rain came down harder.

It lasted for three seconds. Then it slowed to a drizzle and stopped entirely, like the sky was a pipe and my brother was a faucet handle.

I couldn't help but wait for the feeling of rain on my skin. The weight of it soaking my clothes. I listened for the pitter-pater, the splash of water hitting puddles, but it was suddenly, deafeningly, quiet.

Naga's hands shook.

Mamoru-sensei tilted his head back and closed his eyes.

The clouds started to shift and break apart. My eyes widened when I spotted blue through the gray.

It was always a dream to see the sun in Amegakure, a wish, something abstract.

Somewhere along the way I must've stopped believing in it, because it felt like I was watching something impossible.

The light stung my eyes and I felt warmth on my hands.

It felt like I was in Fire Country, watching the sun come up. But I was home and it was the middle of the day.

I stared up at the ball of light in the sky, even though it burned, even when my eyes teared up. I hadn't seen the sun in three years.

It felt like longer.

Mamoru-sensei made a displeased noise and shaded his eyes, but he peeked at it too.

How long was it since you last saw the sun, Mamoru-sensei?

The clouds turned from gray to white, and then dissipated. Only the sky and the sun were left.

Naga dropped to his hands and knees, panting hard.

I should've felt happy. But all I could think was of how sorry I was.

I'm sorry, Kota. I couldn't keep my promise.

We had the sun and she would never see it. I wiped my eyes with my sleeve.

I heard something from far away, a sound like a dozen or a hundred people shouting at once from the village. And I realized it was cheering.

They were cheering for us.

Because the sun meant Hanzo was dead. It meant we won.

Why doesn't it feel like it?

Yahiko's eyes were open. He struggled up on his elbows, stared at the sky for a second, then shifted his gaze to Naga. "I'm sorry," he croaked, and Naga went still.

He shifted to look up at Mamoru. "I'm sorry to you too, sensei. I thought..." he trailed off. "I thought if I killed him, I could go back to how it was before. But that's not how this works. Everyone kept telling me that, but I didn't want to listen. I realized it when I was standing over him. He was dead and I was still someone I didn't want to be."

"I spent the last three years looking for Hanzo. I never did anything else," Yahiko continued, shaking his head. "I would never be able to face Konan if she saw me the way I was—" He faltered and cleared his throat. "I don't think I'll ever feel 'better' in the way I wanted to, but I can't be who I've been either. I don't know who I am anymore."

"You're Yahiko," I said. "You like to fish and when fruit is soft and a little rotten on the inside. I changed too, but I'm still me."

Yahiko looked at me, then Naga. "When did she get good at giving advice?"

"I don't know," Naga murmured, glancing my way.

Was it advice?

I looked at the sun again.

I only said what I felt.

Yahiko struggled to sit up. "Brothers again?"

"We never weren't," Naga answered, and Yahiko smiled.

He turned back to Mamoru-sensei.

Mamoru raised a hand, palm open, but there was no rain to land in it. "It was a rough time for everyone. I'm only glad you finally came to your senses."

Yahiko stared at the sky. "I don't how what I'd do without you guys," he said. "Really."

A/N: 小南 - Small South

I deny that the civil war in Amegakure lasted longer than the Third World War. A village at war for 12+ years wouldn't have recovered as much as shown in Shippuden (only 3 years later), ninja magic be damned. In canon, the civil war lasted until the chunin exams.