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::

"I'm not gonna lie, I'm actually kinda mad. A little disappointed. Definitely insulted."

Deidara picked his head up from the door frame he'd been smacking it against and turned a withering glare to the shinobi standing in the middle of the cabin and nudging the bear rug with his foot. He was dressed in maroon pants and a sleeveless light gray turtleneck—what a damn idiot. How had this bastard not gotten hypothermia with the literal blizzard fucking up the world outside? "In that particular order, yeah?"

"Oh yeah. Fucking absolutely." Hidan of Yugakure bent down to flick the bear rug in the nose, his hitai-ate swinging around his neck and his red-bladed kusarigama coiled on his hip. "Because there's four of us in here, the snow's stacked so high it's gone over our heads, and I'm pretty sure there's, like, a snowman trying to kill us."

A kunoichi walked into the room, actually dressed for this shit weather in a forest green parka and layered beige leggings, and tossed a dusty black jacket to Hidan. Its hood was lined with fur.

"The fuck's this?"

"A jacket. So you don't freeze to death," Haruno Sakura of Konohagakure deadpanned. She was younger than he thought she'd be and there was still some baby fat in her cheeks. "I don't know about you, but I'd rather have you not die of frostbite if you can't help it."

"Aren't you a medic?"

"Yeah, but I can't cure stupid."

Deidara snorted and thumped his head back against the door frame.

The cabin wasn't actually the worst thing in the world and he was sure he'd be admiring the rustic architecture if it weren't for the situation he and three other perfectly decent ninja got themselves into. And—And it wasn't even a normal way to end up!

Four strangers stuck in a cabin in the middle of the Arctic Zone far off the northwest coast of Lightning Country.

He was going to find a God and punch the bitch so hard.

At least they weren't warily watching each other from different corners of the cabin anymore. A temporary truce after twenty-four hours wasn't a short time to give in, right?

"Okay, so." Hoshigaki Kisame of Kirigakure lumbered up the stairs leading up from the basement with two crates in his arms, both of which he dropped on the floor for them all to see. His cloak was draped on one of the rickety stools in the kitchen and had to be made of some sort of animal skin, something slick and water-resistant. Pretty fashion forward, too, especially next to that ginormous sword that he swore was breathing. "I've got some good news, bad news for that good news, more good news, but also bad news for that good news, and good news that doesn't have bad news."

Deidara rubbed his hands all over his face and dropped into one of the recliners. "Just save the good good news for last. Spare me the heartache, yeah."

Sakura sat on the arm of the couch and Hidan flopped onto the bear rug, all of them a respectable distance away from one another but close enough to look like they were first year Academy students gathered around for show and tell.

"First good news, we've got food." Kisame pointed to the first crate. "A lot of it, actually. A good corner of the basement is covered in it, but..."

Hidan leaned forward and pried the top off the crate with his bare hands—animal—and pulled out the first can to read off the bolded words on the threateningly orange label. "Snake soup." A pause. "Are you fucking—snake soup?!"

Kisame's gaze darkened. "I wish it was only that bad."

He and Hidan locked eyes for a long moment before the latter dug back into the crate with desperation and read off all the cans he, well can. "Pork brains in gravy, canned whole chicken, roasted scorpions, creamed deer, chocolate covered silkworms, corn smut—"

Sakura covered her mouth and gagged.

"—fermented blue cheese fish? Motherfucker, what the hell is this?!"

"The food that's going to last us the storm."

Deidara couldn't take his eyes off the discarded snake soup staring at him from the floor. Menacingly. "No."

Hidan eyed the second crate like he couldn't trust it, so Sakura steeled her stomach and ripped off the lid with her bare hands too—another fucking animal—before yanking out a large bottle by the neck.

She screamed. "THERE'S A COBRA IN THE BOTTLE—"

"WHAT the hell is with this cabin and FUCKING SNAKES—"

Deidara pressed his hands together and started to mumble. "Gods, if you're out there, you're cunts, and fucks, and I hate you—"

"It's snake wine or three-penis wine," Kisame interrupted, "and I know damn well which one I'll be drinking."

Hidan narrowed his eyes. "... which penises?"

"Which—"

"You guys are gross," Sakura sighed. She jiggled the bottle and the king cobra didn't move, its body curled along the glass edges and its hood flared like it was about to strike. She shivered. "It should be safe to drink? Depending on how long it's been fermenting the ethanol should have neutralized all its venom, but I can't say that it won't run the risk of systemic envenomation with acute damage to the vascular system..." She drifted off as all three pairs of eyes began to glaze over, and she sighed again. Deeply. "It shouldn't kill you but if there's any venom left, you can get poisoned."

"Is there any, I dunno, fucking water?" Hidan asked. His eyes flit from the assortment of cans to the liquor before trailing up to Kisame. "You're tellin' me there's a cabin in the middle of fuck-all nowhere without any water."

"There's tomato-celery juice and raw milk."

"I'd rather drink dick. Literally."

Deidara pinched the bridge of his nose. "Is—Is the good news even that good, yeah?"

"Well, I mean." Kisame scratched the back of his head. Outside, the snow stacked up to cover three fourths of the window and the howling wind whistles against the corners of the small cabin. "I found Uno, three versions of Monopoly, and Candyland?"

There was a moment of silence before Hidan grabbed a bottle of three-penis wine and drank.

::

Deidara moved his Rubber Duck piece to the Time Out Corner for the twenty-third time and utilized every last fiber in his body not to flip the board.

Three versions of Monopoly—Great Nation Landmarks, Dog Breeds, and Kidz, respectively—were the ones they could pick from and honestly, putting off Candyland and Uno was the only viable option unless they wanted the cabin caught up in flames, so with a majority vote for the Kidz version (Sakura puffed out her cheeks and made it clear that she wasn't a kid, she was a chuunin) because the first two sound so boring, and they started the game without much concern to how long it would take.

It was eight hours into the first game and Deidara literally wanted to die.

The cans were untouched for the time being because they weren't that far into desperation, and he'd been begging for a bankrupt the last three hours to absolutely no mercy. He had two measly red properties on the board and his only real competition was Sakura, who owned both utilities and a railroad. They'd both elected to ignore the absolute power struggle between Hidan, owner of all the dark blue and green deeds, and Kisame, owner of literally every other space.

"I spent three-hundred fifty on this Circus, you rat bastard—"

"And my Lemonade Stand is going to wipe you out anyway!"

Deidara laid back on the floor and kicked his legs up on the couch.

This wasn't the worst situation he'd ever been in. He'd been trapped in enemy territory, fought off ambushes, ran from Kurotsuchi when he'd stolen her hairdryer when his finally kicked the bucket, but this...

He glanced at the other three.

This wasn't the worst situation he'd ever been in, but it was new.

The Arctic Zone was neutral ground for them all, but none of their countries were all that friendly and each of them stemmed from a source of political power. Haruno Sakura: the Fifth Hokage's apprentice; Hoshigaki Kisame: a member of the Seven Swordsmen and Clan Head; Hidan of Yugakure: Jounin Commander; himself: The Third Tsuchikage's grandnephew. For all intents and purposes, none of them should even be in the same country let alone the same cabin, and even under these circumstances they shouldn't even be talking

"Since when did you get ten hotels?!" Sakura shrilled. There were a hundred whole monopoly bucks in her hand. There were five thousand seven hundred in Kisame's.

"Haruno-san, I keep telling you, it's all about the Lemonade Stand."

"I'm gonna steal your fucking lemons."

"I will make you swallow every lemon you steal, Hidan-san."

It was wrong. All of it. They had important positions to maintain, loyalties to brandish, high-rankings to uphold. They were the faces of their countries with all the expectations tagged onto their names all over the world.

Yet...

Rubber Duck continued to mope in the Time Out Corner and Deidara flopped onto his side.

"Hoshigaki," he whined. "Sell me the Zoo, yeah!"

::

Deidara blinked awake from his sprawl on the recliner and immediately turned his face towards the closest window; the snow was still piled high, the storm still raged on, and he was still stuck in a cabin with the people he almost threw hands with over fucking Monopoly.

He rubbed a hand over his face and swung a leg to the ground, pausing at the sight of Sakura on the floor. She was cross-legged, staring intently at the can in her hands as a bottle of snake wine sat uncorked by her feet.

He nodded at her. "Which one's that, hm?"

She jerked slightly and looked up at him. "Oh, uh, the creamed deer." Her lips pressed into a grim line, almost queasily. "It looked like the best option and I think heating it up would only make it worse."

And it would probably make the whole cabin smell like ass, too.

"Are you really that hungry?"

"No, but like," she gestured helplessly, "we have to see which ones we can actually eat, right? The storm doesn't look like it's going to let up any time soon and I don't want to spend another Monopoly game with a morbid curiosity about what some of these taste like."

He blinked slowly. "... You were one of those kids that popped the heads off your dolls, weren't you, yeah?"

Her cheeks burned as pink as her hair.

"Creamed deer for breakfast? Fuck," Hidan mumbled as he crossed his arm atop the bear rug's head and pillowed the side of his face against it, his hair sleep-mussed but his eyes alight in interest. "Gotta give you props for being the first up to bat."

"I can't believe we're already starting this." Kisame's hulking mass turned around from facing the back of the couch—he'd probably been awake for a while now—and sat up, scrubbing a hand through his hair. "Haruno-san, your sacrifice will be remembered."

"We'll toss your corpse out in the snow and pray," Deidara added.

"We'll tell everyone you died by snowman. It's a more respectful death," Hidan intoned. Sakura's face positively reddened as she huffed and turned her attention back to the can.

"You bet I won't be the first one trying the rest," she grumbled. A finger hovered over the tab for a few moments before she cemented her decision, squaring her shoulders and pulling it toward her. There was only the quiet crack of the opening can and she peeled the tin until it clicked off completely.

It wasn't... Well.

The can was filled with a soupy white something, thick and viscous and mostly solid from the cold. A thin layer of fat filmed the top and the meat poking out was a grayish-brown, speckled with black bits of pepper and frozen air bubbles. The surrounding area immediately took on a smell of garlic, onion, and game and though it wasn't particularly pungent, there was definitely a soil-like undertone that probably shouldn't be there.

Kisame wrinkled his nose. "On second thought, I think I'll feel guilty about letting a ten year old die from suspicious canned food."

"I dare you to put a whole spoonful in your mouth," Hidan said.

"Don't—Don't do that."

Big green eyes stared down at the concoction. She jiggled it. It barely moved.

Deidara smooshed his knuckles against his mouth in suspense.

"Spoon!" The Commander shouted, Kisame's warning glare sailing straight over his head. "Spoon! Spoon! Spoon! Spoon!"

"You don't have to eat a whole spoonful. Actually, you know what, don't even eat it—"

"I'm not ten," Sakura interrupted.

"Wh-What?"

She whipped her head to stare Kisame straight in the eye. "I'm not ten," she repeated. "I'm fourteen."

Then without breaking eye contact, she tipped the can until the creamed deer cylinder slid out halfway and took an enormous bite.

"NO!"

"YEAHHHH! KONOHA!"

Deidara snorted so hard his tonsils may as well be up in his nose.

The can slammed down on the wooden floor and she braced her hands against her knees as she chewed. A crinkle between her brow, eyes shut, and a smudge of solid fat on the corner of her mouth, she chewed and chewed and chewed for a full minute before she swallowed it all down.

Another minute passed.

"... And?" Kisame prompted.

"It's, um—" cough— "it's really. Really strong and, um. Lots of onion powder in that and. Uh." Sniff. "Chewy. So chewy. I think I ate a joint. Or six." Cough. "Um, can... can someone pass me the tomato-celery juice? Please? I think the wine is just going to make me puke."

Hidan tossed her a bottle, and she grabbed it with a knuckle-white grip.

"I think... I'm going to just starve the rest of the day."

"Yeah," Kisame nodded solemnly. "That's fair."

::

"It's like walking down a fucking one way street!"

"It's a kid's game, yeah!"

"This game's gonna be two seconds long—"

"I refuse to cycle through another game of Monopoly so soon."

"There's Uno!"

"I don't trust you enough to believe you won't stab me if I ever +4 your ass in Uno," Deidara retorted as he lifted the lid off the Candyland box and tossed it over his shoulder. Hidan groaned and zipped the zipper of the filched jacket all the way up to his face. "If I'd known this mission was gonna pull this bullshit, I would've packed more rations, yeah," he grumbled and snagged the yellow gingerbread man piece as Sakura started to flip all the cards in one direction. "Stupid ass bounties, hm. I never get sent on those."

"Bounty?" Kisame questioned. Beside him, Samehada rumbled quietly. They'd been stuck in the cabin for a little over ninety-one hours without much chatter between them since the kunoichi took one for the proverbial team. It wasn't like it was news—four foreign ninja from less than friendly countries didn't have much to talk about, and any small talk about the weather had been exhausted the first day of their entrapment.

He could already feel Old Man Onoki yanking his ear and berating him for getting into classified conversations with the enemy. But what else was he supposed to do? Talk weapon maintenance after witnessing the true meaning of loss when Hidan went bankrupt in Monopoly?

No. No way.

"Tracked a rogue Iwa-nin out this way, been a pain in the ass for the past couple years." Onoki's scathing voice in his head only grew louder, and through all the times that he'd gotten scolded, this would be around when the old bastard would throw his back out. "Brown hair, ponytail, red paint around the eyes—"

"—purple band around his leg, wears those stupid earrings shaped like pigs?" Kisame grinned, all his sharp teeth gleaming. "He's why I'm out here, too."

"Aren't we far from Kiri, hm?"

"I was in the area," he shrugged. He plucked the blue piece and lined it up behind the yellow one at the start. "Heard that he was around in the town I stopped at and thought he was worth enough to cash in."

Sakura looked between the two of them and worried her bottom lip.

Hidan took the red piece. "At least you actually had an asshole to chase after. Yu sent me to poke around rumors about some of our shinobi that're supposed to be dead and surprise surprise, I end up with jack shit. Was about to head out when the storm happened."

They didn't expect any response from the girl.

She was the youngest of them and the most under-classed in rank and Hokage's apprentice or not, she was probably smart enough to know that she'd be no match for one of Kiri's Seven or a Jounin Commander or even himself as another Jounin. It wasn't her fault that Konoha's worst kept secret was that they trained their ninja softer than the other nations; she would've been raised no different, especially with a surname that sounded like it didn't have any significant ninja connections.

Deidara didn't hold it against her. Loyalties were one of those things that got screwed into your brain over and over until you saw your village symbol burned into the back of your eyelids, and the only ones who could really get away with some carelessness were the ones worth so much in the books that it got to the point that the other shinobi who could even manage an attempt were the ones worth just as much.

Hoshigaki was nearing unapproachable territory, S-rank. The Commander's at least an A. Himself? Last he'd checked, he'd been at an A purely for his relation to the Tsuchikage and having a kekkei genkai. And Haruno...

Well, he'd never seen her face in a Bingo Book. The only reason he'd known of her was because he had to listen to the Old Man rant about Slug Princesses and Suna Advisors and annoying poisons.

And not only was she not in the Bingo Book, she probably ran her mouth just as much as the other Konohans—Will of Fire this, Will of Fire that, gods, it was so pretentious. Just say you like your friends.

"I..." Sakura fiddled with the remaining green gingerbread. Hidan was mumbling over the instruction sheet, Deidara was re-tying his hair, and Kisame was kind enough to glance in her direction to show that he was listening. "I... came here looking for an herb," she admitted with a sigh, and set her piece at the end of the line. "There's an herb that grows from the ice caps and the microbes that live in this part of the ocean, and when you mix it with these human synthesized proteins, it's supposed to fill your chakra back about half-way regardless of how big your reserves are."

Deidara hummed, detecting no lies in her tone as he picked the first card and moved up to the first blue space. Well, well, well, guess her balls of steel didn't just apply to questionably canned deer.

"No fucking way there's an herb like that," Hidan scoffed.

"Yes freakin' way," Sakura retorted. "The Arctic Zone is supposed to be atop an elder summons burial ground, and it's speculated that the essence changed the biome so drastically that everything that lived here when it died got altered. Some sea creatures changed physical forms, and some microbes help these herbs grow on ice caps!"

"Huh." Kisame drew a card from the deck. "That explains why the squid I caught and ate had three eyes and fifteen tentacles."

"You ate it?!"

"It's the only thing keeping me from digging into the can crate of death over there, so I'll take my chances."

He landed on orange and crossed the rainbow trail. Sakura scowled. Lucky.

"What I don't understand, and no offense, yeah," Deidara said as Hidan picked up the card that landed him on Gumdrop Mountain, "is why they let you go so far out all by yourself. You said you're a chuunin?"

"Yeah, but I always get sent off on my own for herb retrievals. Shishou was kind of worried, but I told her 'what's the worst that could happen?' Famous last words, I guess," she pouted.

"You made it through Lightning Country? On your own, yeah?"

"No way, I trekked up the Unclaimed Lands north of Fire and took a ferry out Ishi-ka Bay and onto the Zone's mainland."

"FUCK, the Unclaimed Lands!" Hidan shouted as he smacked his hands against his face and fell back against the couch. "That would've been so much easier than banking off fucking Frost Country and muscling through the Glacier Passages—"

"What do you mean you went through the Glacier Passages?" Deidara demanded. "The ships in Lightning don't pass through because of the hazard and you're telling me you pinballed—"

"Okay, first of all, it was more like hopscotch than pinball, I wasn't boinking around the glaciers like they were fucking bumpers and the cheapest fare stops when the ice blocks start—"

"Pay the extra fare to go the long way, yeah!"

"Who's the loser that paid the extra fare and ended up in the same shit-ass cabin?"

"The cheap fare wasn't that bad," Kisame added. "When it stopped at the glaciers I just swam the rest of the way."

Sakura squinted, completely forgetting it was her turn to draw. "Sw—You swam—?!"

"So I wouldn't have to pay extra."

"THANK YOU."

"LIKE THAT'S ANY BETTER, YEAH!"

::

Candyland ended up in halves.

Long story short, Hidan had been lined up for the win with his red gingerbread man on the second to last space, but then he'd drawn the card that banished him to the Plum Trees at the beginning of the game and Deidara and Sakura laughed so hard they didn't even notice Kisame trying to stop the kusarigama from being swung at the floor.

It was daylight robbery but the game was overrated anyway, so.

It had been one hundred thirty-seven hours of cabin time and they were all sitting in a line on the bear rug, their backs against the couch and their various jackets and cloaks thrown over themselves like blankets. The fireplace in the corner smoldered with the small flame started from one of their flint and steel sets, and the liquor box was cracked open with strings of packing straw spilled over the side.

"Art is fleeting," Deidara proclaimed. He rested a forearm on Sakura's shoulder as he propped himself up, waggling a bottle of snake wine with the other hand. It was a ridiculous looking four liter thing with the lip as wide as two shot glasses, but a cobra had to be stuffed in there somehow and the liquor was already down about half way. Samehada was laid up on the actual couch cushions, some of its scales poking out of its wrappings as it... purred? "A captured moment in time. A memory. A movement of momentary." He took a gulp and handed the bottle off. "Art is a temporary whisper in a temporary body looking for a canvas to show the world that we are more than we're temporarily deigned."

Sakura tipped the bottle back and took a long sip that burned her throat and made her stick out her tongue. "I don't know half of what you just said, but you're a beautiful person and your words are nice." She considered the bottle for a few long seconds before taking another sip and making the same exact face she did earlier and pushed down a burp as she passed it down. "Deirada-san, you have a very strong opinion. Amazing."

"I'll fuckin' drink to that." Hidan toasted the fire and chugged. If he measured his intake by shots, he would probably have two hells of a hangover in the morning with nothing back pig brains and raw milk to wash it down. Actually... "Holy fuck. Hold—Hold the fuck—"

Kisame easily grabbed the bottle as Hidan scrambled off the rug, expertly dodging the liquor crate but managing to run forehead first into the opposite wall. The snake wine was unlabeled and definitely a product of some backwoods bullshit, and if Kisame had to put a finger on how potent it was, it'd have to be somewhere between shochu and disinfectant.

Hidan half-stumbled, half-crawled into the basement. Kisame drank until it stung his nose.

"Y'know what else's a strong opinion? That when s'meone uses boring old' kunai to kill a nin, it's bold. Revolutionary. Historic. But when I do the same thing with a crab claw I'm a menace and a barbarian and I have to leave the restaurant—"

"There's art in the crustacean and they don't respect you for it." Deidara pointed out. He took the bottle and raised it to his lips. "They're jealous of your shoulders and your personality, yeah! That's why they think they can shame you for havin' crabs."

Sakura nodded emphatically. "They don't deserve you even a lil' bit, Hokigashi-san."

"Stab another man!"

"Yeah!"

"Use two crab claws!"

"Yeah!"

"Go back in that rest'rant and blow it up!"

"YEAH!"

He and Sakura commit to the high five, but the latter aimed too far to the left and smacked him so hard in the chest that all the wind rushed out of him and he landed flat on his back, his bottle-holding arm straight in the air to keep it from sloshing.

Kisame sniffed, wiping away the tears building up in his eyes. "You're both so small and genuine. Like quiches."

Hidan tripped on the stairs only once as he stumbled back into the main room, an assortment of cans and bottles in his arms that fumble and fall when he drops back into his spot. Sakura took the bottle from a groaning Deidara, patted his head, took a swig, and passed it over Hidan's head and back to Kisame.

"Look, this is—here's the fucking move." Hidan drew up the kama of his kusarigama and oh so carefully poked the top of a can with the tip of his blade, spinning the can between his legs and coming very close to an accidental dick weaponing, but he managed a perfect incision and pried off the top.

Pink chunks floated in equally pink liquid, and Sakura took immediate offense on behalf of her hair.

"Then." He took a milk bottle with a picture of a happy little cow on the side, popped off the cap, and drank about halfway.

Deidara groaned as he pulled himself back up into a sitting position and stared blankly at Hidan's milk moustache, the half-empty milk bottle, and the cracked open can that looked like pure alien guts. "That's gonna curdle in your stomach so hard you'll be shitting cottage cheese for a week, yeah." He blinked. "You know that, right? You know that alcohol curdles milk? You know that you're literally gonna—WHAT are you DOING—"

Hidan painstakingly poured the pork brain and its gravy into the bottle, and Kisame took one long look at the devil mixture before inhaling the snake wine for an entire ten seconds.

"Mm-mm. No way. Nu-uh." Sakura shook her head as she crawled onto the couch and squeezed herself into the space between Samehada and the back cushions and cuddled up to the sword. She poked one of its showing scales. It rumbled and poked her back. "Super bad idea, Dihan-san."

"S'fine. Look—" The bottle was raised and slopped around a pretty pastel pink liquid that would have looked appetizing if it weren't for the fact that every single person in the cabin knew just exactly the sort of nefarious thing it really was— "it looks like it's strawberry flavored."

"Di'you forget what happened with Haruno-san, like, two, no three. Four? Four-ish and a little less. Days. Ago." Kisame handed Deidara the bottle when the blond motioned for it like watching Hidan for longer would start to sober him up. "Creamed. Deer. Tha's not right."

Sakura flung out her hand and wiggled it. "And 'm fourteen."

"And she's fourteen," Kisame agreed with a short nod. "What're you? Like, seventeen?"

"'Scuse you, bitch, I'm twenny-one—"

"You're twenny-one and a Jounin Commander?!" Sakura gasped. She squished her cheeks together and propped her elbows up on Samehada. "You're so cool!"

"Where'd'you even get seventeen from, yeah?" Deidara wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "'Course he can't be the seventeen when I'm the seventeen."

"Oh my god," Kisame muttered as Hidan capped the milk bottle and started to shake it so hard he was positive the brain chunks were liquefying. "I'm surrounded by babies."

"Oh yeah? Can a baby do THIS?!"

Everyone watched in unified horror as Hidan flicked the metal cap across the room and emptied the whole bottle of milk-brain-gravy into his mouth, swished it between his cheeks, and swallowed. It took a few seconds for his brain to catch up with the brains in his stomach and for his tongue to scream about all the injustices wrought upon it, but he paused. Raised a finger. Tilted his head.

"Well—"

"Don't even fucking say it, yeah."

"Fine. Pussy." Hidan pushed himself back onto his knees and started a slow crawl to the basement. "I'm just gonna make some—" hic— "fuckin' more."

Deidara slowly sank onto the bear carpet until his forehead rested squarely on the bear rug's nose.

Sakura cuddled up against the sword and let out a light snore.

Kisame vaguely noted that while he polished off the last of the liquor, the wine bottle was empty of anything else. What kind of wine was this again?

::

The next morning, Hidan burst out of the bathroom.

"MY SHIT LOOKS LIKE COTTAGE CHEESE AND A SNAKE ALMOST BIT MY DICK OFF."

::

"I... think the storm's over?"

Deidara blinked at the sound of Kisame's voice and looked over at one of the windows. One of Hidan's hands were in his and he was halfway through his explanation of how if brain-milk didn't end up killing the Commander then his short palm lines will, but that was when he actually took notice of the glass and how they could actually be seen through.

"Uh... Huh. Looks like it, yeah."

Two hundred eleven hours have gone by since they'd been trapped in the cabin in the middle of the Arctic Zone, and instead of shunshinning away from all the other ninja and trying to put as much distance between himself and the hovel like a normal reaction would make him do, Deidara cast a blank stare around the room before dropping Hidan's hand and hoisting himself up to his feet.

"Where the hell's my cloak, hm?"

"I'm pretty sure it's still hanging in the bathroom after we tried to wash Hidan-san's blood off it," Sakura replied as she scooted over to one of the recliners to fish out the kunai pouch buried in the seat.

"Mine and Hoshigaki-chan's," Hidan corrected. He coiled his kusarigama at his hip and shrugged on the black jacket that definitely wasn't his to begin with and what he definitely was going to take with him. "We both lost at the knife game and you know it."

"Says the one who accidentally cut off his own thumb," Kisame snorted. He threw his own cloak over his shoulders—seal skin, it turned out to be—and hefted a stretching Samehada onto his back and pitched up his voice as he mimed, "Oh look at me, I'm a Jounin Commander who thinks kunai are fun to play with—"

"Says the bitch who cut his damn hand on his own damn sword—"

"And I healed the both of you even though you didn't deserve it," Sakura butted in just as Deidara re-emerged from the bathroom with his dark brown cloak clasped under his chin. "But I guess it was better than when Deidara-san almost blew off his foot after the third Monopoly game."

Deidara huffed and swept the cabin for his clay pouch and sandals. "Wouldn't have had an accident if I didn't get tackled for buying a hotel, yeah."

"You didn't deserve that motherfucking hotel."

Kisame opened the front door first. He backtracked at the few inches of snow that slumped through the entrance, then squinted out at the snowy wasteland as he took a tentative step out into the cold. Hidan hopped on one leg as he tugged on his other sandal—the idiot didn't even wear snow boots—and followed, Sakura right behind him as she sighed loudly and nagged at him to hurry up.

Deidara spun slowly as he took in the cabin he'd spent the last eight or so days in. Bear rugs, board games, exotic wine, canned nasties... He puffed out a breath and shook his head, an unwitting quirk at the corner of his mouth as he recounted all the time he spent with people that should still be strangers.

Except now he knew that Haruno had a collection of patients' bone shards she wanted to make into a decorative necklace and had a birthmark shaped like a carrot on the bottom of her left foot, Hoshigaki had a very specific fear of squirrels that were just a little too fat and could play the bassoon, and Hidan could both cry on command and sing high-notes that were way out of his vocal range.

Plus the three of them knew he was once in a movie when he was a baby and had a piece of shrapnel stuck in his left shoulder that he never cared enough to take out, so basically all his life secrets might as well be out in the open.

Blue eyes caught on the Uno box by the fireplace. They'd never gotten around to it, too caught up on revenge Monopoly and finishing all the liquor and getting into arguments about what should and shouldn't be added into instant ramen, but...

Deidara snagged the Uno box, tucked it into one of his flak jacket pockets, and headed out the cabin.

"—should be closest to the Southern side of the main ice cap along the side where any boats would drop off," Kisame said as he eyed the gray skies and speckles of snow that floated down from them. "Ports for the Unclaimed Lands should be even more South, the ones for Frost Country should be East of that, and Lightning Country should be Northeast of that—"

"Wait, um." Hidan scratched the back of his head. "How-How long were we in that cabin again?"

"Two hundred eleven hours, hm," Deidara answered as he crunched up to the group standing at the other side of the cabin. "Why?"

"'Cause I'm... pretty sure that my boat back was supposed to roll up three days after it dropped me off."

A beat of silence.

"... The captain of the boat I was on said he only takes the trip up here once a month," Sakura recounted numbly. "And I was supposed to be on the boat back four days ago."

Deidara scrubbed at his eyes as he too looked up at the skies, too dark and foggy and uniform in their darkness to fly a clay bird in a place he didn't even have mapped out. "If we have to stay in that musty cabin for another month, I'm gonna go mental, yeah. We're finally outside and I'm swearing off snake soup and tomato-celery juice and roasted scorpions for the rest of—I swear to fucking Hoshigaki's monopoly on Monopoly that I'd rather drown in the goddamn ocean than look at one more bottle of three-penis wine!"

"Fucking UGH I was so ready for real food. Cağ kebabı, İzmir köfte, hünkar beğendi..."

"Yuno cuisine, right?" Sakura asked in spite of their slowly collapsing situation. Best to think of other things than potentially getting stuck in the Arctic Zone for another three weeks. No, stop thinking about it. Stop it. "It's on my list of food I want to try."

"Then you gotta go for that authentic baklava, none of that fake shit they try to sell you in the neighboring countries."

"Oh! That flaky pastry drizzled in honey?"

"Yeah, and lemme tell you that the pistachio ones are way better than the walnut bullshit—"

"Hold on, I can't think straight when all you're doing is making me hungry," Kisame interrupted. He hummed to himself as he peered at something in the far distance, and after a few moments he turned to them, a glimmer in his eyes. "Do you guys have good grips?"

Deidara warily crossed his arms. "... Grips, yeah?"

::

A huddle of penguins watched as a shark man zipped through the water past their ice shelf. Three great whites trailed after him just as fast, humans screaming and clinging onto their fins for dear life.

One of the penguins shook their head. Tourists.