ii.

Chapter Eighteen: Home Again

"Nostalgia is a way of remembering people and places and wishing things hadn't changed."

It turned out that Nanami did get to see Loud Blood's ritual. She even got a running commentary on how it felt and how he thought it worked. (He apparently, didn't actually know.) He grinned the whole time, pleased by her attention which made him seem to want to talk even more.

Kakuzu on the other hand, looked pissed. Even his chakra felt pissed.

Nanami stayed well out of the way.

It was during this, she realized, that maybe he really was trying to get her on the Jashin bandwagon. Maybe it hadn't been a joke or a game to him at all? And that thought made her feel silly because of course; Loud Blood would never joke about Jashin.

So it was as they traveled back towards Rivers that Nanami discovered that the Zombie Combo had stolen a valuable item from the village that smelled of sewage, from a group of very, very stupid men.

You'd have to be pretty stupid to chase after the Akatsuki with rusty knives, switchblades and a handful of C-rank jutsu.

It was a massacre.

There were a lot of them, maybe fifteen men in total. Nanami perched high in the trees as Hidan let out a whoop of joy from his circle of blood.

Kakuzu swept out a line of deadly threads, severing limbs and heads as it went. There was a clicking-cracking sound as his wind natured mask detached from his back to blast holes through the men attempting to circle around him.

There was blood everywhere. Nanami thought they looked beautiful and deadly, firmly entrenched in their elements.

A large man separated from the others who were falling like flies when he spotted her high in her tree. His smirk told her he thought she would be easy pickings in comparison (which she was.)

The moment he touched the bark of the trunk below her, his eyes gleaming in a disgusting way, she reached out with her chakra and brushed it along the trees. Projecting her desire to it through her chakra and although the tree wasn't exactly a sentient thing, it responded to her with the groan of age old wood, and another more malleable branch bent and swept into the man's back with a punishing force as he climbed.

She heard his spine crack with a wet echoing sound.

He fell back to the ground below, eyes glassy and stunned.

He didn't get back up.

Hidan came over after another minute and toed at the man's corpse. He looked up at her with a feral grin, slathered liberally in blood. It dripped off the tips of his hair- which was loose from its swept back position and lay in wet spikes in front of his eyes. He had multiple stab wounds littering his torso, all self inflicted.

"Fucking nice little bitch." He praised her.

She brightened, and grinned back at him with sharp little teeth.

Loud Blood threw her down on the couch in the great stone room hard enough to make her bounce off of it and land on the floor.

She hissed at him, and he grinned at her with a brush at his now crunchy hair that was falling into his eyes before trudging his way to the bathroom to shower.

She was glad, he smelled awful.

Beating Hearts on the other hand had managed to get out of the short lived battle in a much less ruffled and bloody state.

Beating Hearts always smelled nice. Maybe it was a product of the semi-immortal thing? He smelled like clean water and that old paper smell you get from books that are well loved.

Loud Blood would smell nice too if he wasn't constantly slaughtering people and bathing in their innards. Ew.

Nanami rolled onto her back and propped her legs up above her onto the couch. She laid like that for a while, staring at the grey stone ceiling. It was a familiar sight. Comfortable. Even still, she hoped she'd get to go outside again soon. She loved her home, but it wasn't beautiful like the outside was.

No, Nanami wasn't here because it was aesthetically pleasing, she was here because she loved her Red Clouds.

"Have a good time?" Burning Earth said down to her as he shoved her feet off the couch and flopped himself over on it.

Nanami pushed herself away from the couch with her toes and stretched her arms above her head. Her back gave a satisfying pop and she heard Beating Hearts make a disgusted grunt from the table.

"Nanami did, thank you." She told the blond man who was curling an arm to rest his eyes in the crook of his elbow.

"She made friends with the nine-tails." Kakuzu informed them, she thought it was probably as punishment for popping her bones within hearing distance of him.

Raven Eyes lowered his book to hover above the table and gave her a calculating look. Burning Earth peaked at her with one, bright sky blue eye from under his arm.

Oceans head poked out of their open doorway.

"How did you manage that?" He asked her as he ambled over, dragging his sword across the floor with him; half bandaged with the rest of the unfinished roll trailing loosely after it.

He sat near her to the left of a particularly bad blood stain on the rug, and pulled the massive sword in his lap to finish.

She shrugged, propping herself up on her elbows so she could investigate how dirty her bare feet were from her time outside.

They were pretty dirty actually, she wiggled her toes a few times, enjoying the feeling of gritty earth sliding between them. It reminded her of coming home from the beach.

"He sat under my tree." She supplied. From the inside of the bathroom she heard Hidan cackling.

"He was alone?" Raven Eyes asked her. She shook her head.

"No, he's still traveling with the toad sage." Itachi made a humming sound. "Interesting." and then he went back to his book, curiosity sated.

No one asked how she knew about Jiraiya. Or even of him.

"Your hair is getting long, un." Burning Earth commented even though his arm was covering his eyes. Nanami reached up with a little hand to pull a lock in front of her face. Yea, it was getting kind of long.

"Would you cut it for me?" She asked, letting the lock of hair flutter back down to rest against her shoulder; since he had brought it up after all.

Burning Earth sat up with a put upon sigh like that wasn't what he'd been aiming for to begin with. "Sure, Nanami-chan."

She knew him well enough to know he enjoyed grooming, (He was good at it too, his hair was always gorgeous) and she enjoyed it just as much when he did it, so it's not like she was complaining.

It had taken forever for him to warm up to her, but once he had she'd found herself sitting near him while he was armed with little rubber braid ties and a hair brush most mornings. (At least, when he was home. Burning Earth and False Pieces were gone more than anyone else.)

"Who's turn is it to cook." Oceans asked Burning Earth as the man slid off the couch and reached down to Nanami's hair to tug at it; seemingly to test its length. He had an eye for those things. Nanami leaned into him and closed her eyes.

He gave a one shoulder shrug, and then paused, suddenly serious. Nanami cracked one eye back open as his movements stilled, and then her brow furrowed in concern at the sudden change in the blond man's demeanor.

"I'm not sure, but I vote we order take out if it's Hidan's turn, un." Nanami bit her lip in an effort not to laugh at how serious he sounded. She hid her face behind her hand so she could snicker quietly.

The last time Hidan had made dinner, it hadn't gone well. Actually, anytime he 'cooked' anything it didn't go well. It usually came out of the kitchen looking just as raw and bloody as it did coming out of the package. This last time though he'd set the stove on fire. Beating Hearts had been furious, and Nanami had wholeheartedly agreed. She'd been the one to tally the expenses for the replacement and it had cost them the total sum of Burning Earth and False Pieces previous mission.

It felt like a huge waste. They could have just stayed home with her- instead they ended up paying for a stove.

Nanami had chewed him out, upset by the waste of time and money that kept her Red Clouds away which of course had ended in a fight between them, and screaming accusations that she was spending too much time with Kakuzu and that she sounded too much like him.

Beating Hearts had watched the entire display with an immensely pleased look on his face.

"Seconded." Raven Eyes murmured from behind his book cover, bringing her back from her musings to the present conversation.

Nanami squinted at his book from her vantage point trying to read the title. It had too many kanji she didn't know though, so she let it go as a lost cause.

"I think Raven Eyes cooked last." Nanami offered, and she saw his eyes slide towards her over the top of his book. He ended up cooking the most, because he was the only one who was decent at it. She got the feeling he didn't really like to though. She suspected it had something to do with memories of his family, but he never mentioned it, and she didn't ask.

Nanami was also a decent cook, but she couldn't reach the counter properly without a step stool and using the oven was a mystery to her. She was more used to cooking over an open flame- and they'd had plenty of that in the kitchen courtesy of Hidan.

"Guess that makes it my turn. Now I regret asking." Oceans muttered to himself, giving a harsh tug at the last of the wrappings Samehada wore.