"Oh love and harmony,

How cruel is this world,

All the skeletons,

Iron remnants,

Hold in all the crimson tears,"

-Sensen no Realism, esturd

"I think I feel safe enough now to tell you that if Shohei learns the truth because of Sasori's grand-relatives, I might not ever forgive you."

Moss floated on top of the water around us. "One of them could've been his parent," I pointed out.

"I'm not joking," Yahiko said, stepping up onto part of a stone bridge. "I'll never share food with you again either—"

"He won't, because Ebizo told us the truth the most," I told him. "He said other Suna-nin thought it'd create an incident, but Chiyo still tried to poison me. It only makes sense if she didn't think it would work."

It only makes sense if she used something weaker than what Sasori uses now, because then we wouldn't notice when she did it.

I looked down at my reflection on the water. "He said they didn't want to fight, which was why they tried to take us somewhere else, and why they asked to go to the inn to talk when everyone in Hyozan already thought we did it."

"So, they can't tell," I continued. "How bad could we make Sunagakure look just by saying they tried to poison the leader of Amegakure? And even if no one believed us, it would be just as bad if we said that Sasori killed the Third Kazekage and no one noticed."

I thought he'd laugh, but he didn't.

His eyes were half-closed and I thought, but you knew that already.

He looked exhausted. He'd barely slept since Hyozan, if at all.

"You remember what I said to Sana, right?" I asked, but I'd said that before, too.

Yahiko huffed out a laugh and put his hands behind his head. "Even if we weren't followed, it's just something about still being mildly poisoned, the heat I'll have nightmares about, and people thinking we had something to do with killing a Kage that set my nerves on fire."

"They'd tell Hyozan we didn't."

Would it make them look less bad if people thought Sasori had help, or worse, because they let us leave?

"That's not better," Yahiko said, closing his eyes.

Either we were added to a bingo book, or we were Ame-nin on a mission in Wind, and it could maybe spread to someone he didn't want to know.

"What they think we did or didn't do doesn't matter. We were supposed to be quiet, and we weren't," I said. "But Naga was louder in Yugakure, and you still found a way to use it."

"People believed Ame-nin were mercenaries before that," Yahiko denied.

I watched him step down onto the water, then back up on a rock. "Not to the point that Iwagakure made fun of us for making messes."

"I think that was more fishing for information disguised as a joke," Yahiko said, but he was smiling. "And I never should've had you and him go to Yugakure in the first place."

"We needed money. From anywhere or anyone," I dismissed. "It could've worked if Hidan didn't kill everyone."

Yahiko shook his head, grinning. "He still hasn't said why he did it."

"Point is, we really could have killed the Third Kazekage, and you'd still figure it out."

Yahiko laughed. "There are some situations you can't think or talk your way out of, but thanks. I think I needed that."

"That's why you have me and Naga," I said. I could see the rocky shore. "Naga's better at being honest, and sometimes that works more. Sometimes talking doesn't work at all, and people just need to die."

Yahiko shook his head again. "You're the best sister a guy could ask for, Oka. Have I told you that already?"

"Only three or four times."

"I'm feeling the strong urge to ruffle your hair right now."

I thought about that. "I know all the signs for every water jutsu you and Naga know."

"A little concerning, but I still like my chances—"

I raised my right hand. Dragon. Tiger. Hare—

Yahiko walked a little faster, whistling to himself, but I saw how hard he wanted to laugh.

.

.

.

Mamoru-sensei stood on the rocks, watching us come closer, hand in his pocket, water splashing up against the rocks in front of him.

Namekuji was around his shoulders, head lifted towards us.

"Seems I didn't die, sensei," Yahiko said airily, climbing up the shore.

Mamoru-sensei looked at him, then at me, searching for injuries. He relaxed a little when he didn't find any, glancing back at Yahiko.

"How was the desert?" he asked, and Yahiko laughed hard.

"I really, really hate you sometimes, sensei."

I maneuvered over sharper rocks. "It made me miss the rain."

"Maybe now you'll both understand how to ask the people around you to tell you what you don't know instead of rushing off unprepared," Mamoru-sensei told us.

"Sounds unlikely, sensei," Yahiko said, and grinned at sensei's exasperated look.

"The small one is dead," Namekuji told me, because he was mean, and I'd left him behind.

I hummed. "Guess you won't get a hug then."

He stared at me. "I don't want one."

I shrugged back. "Oh well."

He stared for another second, stubbornly, and then he jumped off Mamoru-sensei.

I didn't catch him, more stubborn, and he landed on my shoulder like pile of thrown bricks. I didn't mind it so much when I stumbled and fell, scraping my hands on rocks, shoulder aching, and laughed until I ran out of breath.

"Where's Sasori?" Mamoru-sensei asked.

"Ah. About that, sensei," Yahiko began. "I don't think you'll be able to contact Sana anymore."

Mamoru-sensei pinched his nose. "What did you do?"

"Oh, and you might be hearing soon that the Third Kazekage is missing, and it may or not have been Sasori," Yahiko added. "But we had nothing to do with it."

I hugged Namekuji as I sat up. "How did his grand-relatives know it was him, anyway?"

Yahiko tapped his chin. "Probably because the only way a Kage can disappear like that is if he was immobilized or knocked unconscious. And how many people could make something like that and be familiar enough with the area to escape unnoticed?"

Mamoru-sensei paused, then sighed deeply. "Do I want to know?"

.

.

.

We followed the shoreline until we found Naga.

He was close to the hideout, kneeling on Hidan's back.

Hidan's wrists were bound with wire, and I could see blood on them. The deep marks in his skin told me he'd struggled, and kept struggling, even after the wire didn't break.

Yahiko walked up to them. "Let me guess, he tried to kill you again?"

Hidan kicked his legs as he turned his head. "I'm not in the mood, so piss off and die, will you?"

"Nah, I think I'm fine right here."

Naga ducked his head, and I heard his quiet laugh. "He didn't," he managed. "I was taking a break."

Yahiko held out his hand, and Naga grabbed it as he turned.

"Fuck you," Hidan said as Yahiko pulled him up, but he sounded almost incredulous, like he couldn't believe Naga called whatever they were doing a break.

"How far away did you sense us?" Yahiko asked.

Naga only smiled. "If I tell you, you'll only use it as another thing against me later."

Yahiko looked thoughtful. "Oka threatened to use the sea against me earlier."

Naga turned away to laugh again.

"It's only funny because you can't understand," Yahiko said flatly.

Namekuji leaned on my head to look as I crouched next to Hidan. His eyes were closed.

"Where's your scythe?"

His eyebrows scrunched up. "Stop talking to me," he said.

I looked past him, to where a scroll had been dropped or thrown in the sand. "You cursed at me more before I left," I said instead of mentioning it.

"Take your opinion and stick it up your ass," he said, lower-pitched, eyebrows scrunched more.

I hummed.

"You're still hungover?" Namekuji asked. "Another reason I'm glad I'm not human."

"Stuffed animal asshole," Hidan said back, face pressed to the sand.

"Smelly breath has better insults."

Hidan made a vague noise that might or might not have been an insult.

I looked back at Naga. "What's a hangover?"

"It's when you humans drink poison for fun," Namekuji answered first.

Yahiko blinked. "Wait, did you say Hidan got drunk, or am I starting to hallucinate?"

Naga rubbed the back of his head. "I was there, too."

Yahiko fully turned to stare at him.

"It was my fault. I said he was too embarrassed to do drink, and... he proved me wrong," Naga said, sheepish.

Yahiko blinked once, astonished. "Did you drink?"

Hidan looked asleep when I glanced back at him.

"A little," Naga said, and he sounded happy.

Yahiko made the half-release seal, still staring at him.

"What did he drink?" I asked.

"Shochu," Naga answered, then added, "Alcohol," at my look.

Yahiko slowly shook his head. "I can't believe you threw a party without me, supposed best friend of mine."

"I didn't, and it wasn't a party," Naga said back. "Itsuki wanted to celebrate and brought it with him."

"I'd ask what was so important it was worth getting Hidan drunk, but I think my brain is melting," Yahiko told him, turning away. "I'm going to go pass out, and we can talk about Sunagakure later."

"How long did you tease me for what happened in Yugakure again?" Naga muttered.

"Tell you what, if Sasori doesn't show up by the end of fall, not only will I never mention it again, but I'll clean the main room until my arms hurt," Yahiko said. "But if he does, it'll still be only one of us who's failed a mission."

"I was the one who made a deal with Ren," Naga shot back.

"Yeah, yeah, but that wasn't the mission, was it?"

Naga didn't respond, but I saw his grin as he watched Yahiko walk away.

月光

Naga was sitting in the sand as I walked down to him, leaning back and watching the moon. His pants looked wet, even though the tide barely slid up to his feet.

It made me wonder what he'd been doing.

"Were you catching fish?" I asked, behind him.

He didn't have his weapons pouch, but that didn't mean he didn't put the fish somewhere else.

Maybe he reverse-summoned them to Shikkotsu and had his own place in the forest to himself to gut them, clean them, and feed the smaller slugs their insides instead of filling a storage scroll with organs and blood and burning it.

I looked at the moon's reflection on the water.

"I wasn't," Naga answered, but he didn't elaborate, and I didn't ask.

Sana told me the weapons I gave to her were hard to come by, and they must've been, when Wind didn't have a sea full of the dead thrown in with their flak-jackets and weapons pouches.

Probably because no one could stand to keep searching and stripping them after the fiftieth, or hundredth person.

We had more weapons and scrolls than we needed, because all I'd have to do was dig around a place that used to be a battlefield to find more.

Naga sat up and looked back. "I was starting to think neither of you would wake up until sunrise."

I hummed in response, thinking of Yahiko spread out on the floor of the main room on his back, an arm thrown over his face.

Even exhausted, he didn't make any noise, and hadn't even when Namekuji curled over his neck and part of his face and went back to sleep. I wasn't sure if it even woke him up.

I moved around to his front and crouched, reaching out, tracing the thin, pale white scar that went up the side of his neck and stopped under his chin with my thumb. I could barely see it.

He didn't stop me.

I dropped my hand, staring at him, a nonverbal who did that to you?

Naga smiled a little. "A samurai from Iron," he answered. "We sparred, and she used her chakra in a way that surprised me. That's all."

It explained why it scarred at all. It wasn't a serious injury, his eyes told me.

I knew all about how hard it was for skin to heal back to the way it was before a burn, just by looking at the pale pink patches down his left arm and leg. Even if he healed the cut the second after it was done, it probably still would've left a scar.

"Her name is Hangaku," he told me. "I want to think of her as a comrade, even if neither she or anyone else would see me that way."

I sat and looped my arms around my legs. "Itsuki is the one you sent to Iron, isn't he?"

He brought them alcohol because he wanted to celebrate, he'd said.

Naga looked at his lap, hair draped around his face and falling down his back. "I want to wait for Yahiko to wake up before I explain everything that happened."

He sounded happy again.

The sand under my feet was wet. I picked up a handful and watched it slide out of my hand like sludge.

Maybe we had Iron, maybe it was a missive back, or it was just a few people.

I watched a wave smooth over the small pile I'd made like it was never there. The first thought was easy to prove wrong, because Naga thought it would take years for them to fully trust us.

I considered the second, but they didn't need to come all the way here to deliver a scroll.

"Oka," he murmured.

A few people. Or just one.

I waited, musing, wondering how I felt.

I blinked when I felt Naga's hands around mine, and watched him uncurl my fingers, watched sand rain down. "Everything feels the same," I told him suddenly. "But you're happy."

Shouldn't I be happy, too?

He swept sand off my palm. "You don't have to be."

"I should be," I said, almost to myself. "It's what you wanted."

"So?"

I stopped.

"It made me happy because it felt like relief," he admitted, and his smile looked ironic. "I still don't know how Yahiko did it for so long. Some of it is because of what it means for the village, but it won't help with Lord Yodogiri, and I won't be able to do anything with it for a long time. It was mostly because I didn't have that pressure on my shoulders anymore."

I stared at him, and he finally looked at me.

"You want to care, Oka, but you don't," he told me. "I convinced Iron to help us, but it won't change that all the countries around us treated Rain like one big battlefield, would do it again, and wouldn't care about any of us. Yahiko might've convinced Sasori, but you, I, and him will still have to kill people, probably until we die. We could rebuild the towers and give homes to everyone and they still won't understand you like you sometimes wish they would. So what difference does what I did make to you?"

It was him reaching into my chest to grab at a tangled knot of feelings, tied so tight I didn't know what to do with it, and slowly, methodically unraveling it into neat lines.

Was this how he felt when he screamed his throat raw?

I fell against his chest and felt like I was a little kid again, tired of death.

No one died and I still felt sick of war.

I heard his sigh.

"I didn't mean to make you sad," I said, muffled.

"I'm still happy," he denied, patting my head, but it didn't sound convincing.

I shifted to curl against him. I didn't fit anymore against his chest, but I did it anyway. "You're lying."

He smiled. "And if I am?"

I didn't have an answer. "Your hair looks longer than it was," I mentioned, looking at all the loose red strands.

Naga made a soft, surprised sound at that. "It's not," he said.

I hummed. "Maybe it's because you don't wear it down that often anymore."

"It gets in the way."

"Cut it then."

Naga paused as he was about to speak, looking at the moon again. "You don't like it?"

"It's your hair. I don't care what you do with it, Naga," I told him, closing my eyes.

I felt his chest shaking with laughter.

踊る

Yahiko looked thoughtfully at the ceiling. "I miss everything when I stay, and somehow still miss everything when I leave."

"Sana told you explicitly that I shouldn't contact her again?" Mamoru-sensei asked, sitting against the back wall, a scroll unrolled over his leg.

It was the same off-white as a storage scroll, which meant it was from someone here. Maybe someone already dead.

"Only after she said we ruined everything she built," Yahiko said. "I think that part is more important."

Mamoru-sensei didn't speak for a few seconds. "I've known Sana for longer than you were alive," he finally said.

Yahiko nodded. "That makes it more impressive that it only took a day to ruin that."

Naga only watched them, behind Yahiko.

"More like a week," I mentioned, sitting opposite of Mamoru-sensei.

Matsu was in another corner, muttering and hunched as Namekuji covered his back in slime.

"Not counting when I was passed out," Yahiko said without looking.

I leaned an arm on my leg. "I talked to her and didn't drive her away," I said. "It only happened after you woke up."

Yahiko shook his head. "I suddenly think everyone here would be interested in the part where you laughed at Sasori."

Naga made a noise at that, but Mamoru-sensei only glanced back at the scroll, unsurprised.

"Almost as much as they'd want to know what you hallucinated while you were overheating and poisoned," I said back.

"What was it?" Mamoru-sensei asked, interested again.

Naga waited for me to answer too.

Yahiko turned, looking at me, and I stared back.

"I don't think you want to play this game, Yahiko," I warned him.

He considered it. "I won't forgive you?"

"You used that yesterday."

He looked thoughtful again, and then he slowly shifted down onto his hands and knees. He lowered his head. "Please forgive me, cruel little sister. Everything that happened with Sana was my fault."

Naga covered his mouth, but couldn't hide his grin before I saw it.

"Look at that," Mamoru-sensei said. "I didn't know it was possible to shame him like this."

"Was it that bad?" Naga asked.

"More embarrassing," I answered. "Would it stay a secret if I told you?"

"No," Mamoru-sensei said without hesitation.

Naga tried to speak, but he was laughing too hard.

Yahiko sat up and shook his head. "I complete a mission before Nagato, and this is what I get."

"It's not done," Naga protested. "You can keep saying it is, but it's not."

"Denial isn't a good look on you, best friend of mine."

I glanced at Matsu as they argued. He didn't move Namekuji, but he looked like he wanted to. "He only does stuff you don't like because you react to it," I told him. "He did it to Mamoru-sensei and—" I stopped.

And Konan, too.

"I don't mind," Matsu said mildly. Namekuji pressed his head down, and his fingers twitched.

"Next time you ask me to do anything, I want one of those underground ferrets," Namekuji said.

"I don't think I could catch just one," I told him.

"It doesn't have to be alive," he dismissed.

"You could do it yourself."

"Could," he agreed. "But I won't."

I smiled.

"Can slugs get rabies?" Yahiko asked, tapping his chin as he looked back at Naga.

"I don't think Namekuji can," Naga answered. "But they wouldn't have run if they were infected."

"So slugs can, but summons can't," Yahiko concluded.

"I don't mind," Matsu said again, forcing his head up. "I can't stop how I'm reacting, but I think—" He stopped, letting Namekuji push his head down again. "I think I want to get used to this."

I looked at him, and I thought it was only because he'd pushed Enyo to talk to Kota that he gave her the necklace around my wrist. He'd pointed out the shinobi Hanzo sent to keep an eye on us.

"I still don't believe what you said about Matsu buying us time with Shohei," Yahiko mentioned.

"Hey," Matsu said, but mostly sounded surprised.

"I don't either, and I was there," Namekuji added.

Matsu paused, then leaned back against the wall, and Namekuji squeezed around to his chest. "I'm best at lying," he said, smile faint. "I'm here, aren't I?"

"I don't know," Yahiko said. "Your terror when the hideout was attacked sounded pretty real to me."

Matsu looked like he wanted to say something, then reconsidered. "It surprised me, too," he admitted.

"You should stay around more," Naga said after a second.

Matsu's smile widened. "You're still too nice. I don't think I'll ever understand it."

"I'm not," Naga denied. "It's my way of thanking you. I'm not sure you know what you did for us."

Matsu's eyes widened, but he only shook his head.

Yahiko laid back on the floor. "Don't you think it's getting a little crowded in here?"

"Even if Joji and Enyo were here, there'd be more than enough space left for thirty to forty people," Mamoru-sensei said, and didn't glance at him.

"I thought shinobi were supposed to see underneath the underneath," Yahiko said back, hands behind his head.

"Jiraya tell you that?"

"He might've," Yahiko sniffed.

"It's nothing concrete, but I was thinking about making a tower for us at the center of the village," Naga said. "I feel like we've outgrown this place, too."

Yahiko grinned and closed his eyes. "I knew you were my best friend for a reason."

A/N: 月光 - Moonlight, 踊る - Dance