"This is a holiday and you've been resurrected,

Rise from the grave when everyone least expects it,

We are the ones that thrive off being rejected,

Hiding the bones and never learning our lesson,"

-Raging on a Sunday, Bohnes

Matsu held his side and tried to breathe through the pain between his ribs.

Sitting on a jagged rock, he watched Enyo throw himself to the side to dodge a kunai that cut through the water where he'd been, but couldn't stand or turn fast enough to stop Joji-sensei from sweeping his legs out from under him.

Matsu winced from above as his brother landed hard on his back. He shifted without thinking—trying in vain to find a more comfortable position—and let out a hiss as his muscles pinched.

He heard his own panting as he looked down at his side, sure there would be blood, but there wasn't. Joji-sensei just hit him hard enough to feel like he had an open wound.

Why are you still here?

It was a question Matsu asked himself every time he showed up to have his ass kicked, but nothing he came up with felt like a good enough answer.

Loyalty was a concept he still had a hard time believing in.

Loyalty to the Akatsuki? Loyalty to a 'home' that taught him to stay away from anyone who told him he could trust them?

Enyo glared up at Joji-sensei, arms slipping when he tried to push himself up. His eyes flashed down as he started to sink.

Joji-sensei told them this was as much as an exercise in chakra control as it was a spar, and swimming was akin to cheating. If they couldn't stay above the water after all this time, he'd walk away.

It was easy to say he was loyal, but in practice?

Maybe you can lead with us one day.

Matsu thought it might be that he was just bitter.

Joji-sensei crouched as Enyo made a frustrated sound at himself, elbow-deep in bubbling water, and tapped his head with his knuckles. Enyo's eyes shot up to him, and neither moved for a second.

Bitter that his little brother had a drive when he didn't, and jealous too, when he could admit it to himself.

Enyo stared at the water and took a deep breath, understanding some silent, secret instruction. The water settled as his brother regained control of his chakra.

At least the Akatsuki treated Enyo like a child. Where was this compassion for him, ten years ago—

Matsu sighed, throwing his head back. "What is wrong with me?"

He didn't have the same desire to train all the time like Enyo did, but then Enyo wanted to be like the Akatsuki, and the only way he could do that was by becoming a shinobi.

"He really has gone soft," Namekuji said, and Matsu barely had time to register the slug was behind him before he felt a slimy weight on his back and jerked involuntarily.

The sledgehammer of pain that seized his chest almost made him sick.

"You humans always go soft," the slug added, ignorant to or ignoring his half-hunched posture.

That Matsu was allowed a break at all spoke for itself.

"Could you get off?" Matsu asked, what he thought was polite.

The slug didn't move off his shoulder, despite knowing how much he disliked being climbed on. Matsu felt annoyed, but not surprised.

He looked down again and saw Joji-sensei holding a hand up, a stop directed at Enyo. His eyes were on something out on the water. Neither Enyo or Joji-sensei moved, but the water still rippled. Namekuji was looking at it too.

Them, Matsu realized, as the thing became a blurry figure half-obscured by his blind spot.

"Turn around," Joji-sensei signed at them.

He or she paused, but didn't turn around, and Matsu made out the slate-gray of their haori. He didn't see a headband as they came closer, but something shaped like a rectangle was on their back.

Joji-sensei pulled out a kunai, narrow-eyed, and the figure finally stopped.

"You'll have to forgive me," he said, and Matsu saw part of a gray-peppered beard. He pulled at his sleeve and turned it to show Joji-sensei the symbol of the Land of Rain. "I'm not too familiar with ninja code, you see, but I assume you recognize it? Could I also assume you to be someone who could get a missive to Hanzo the Salamander?"

Joji-sensei didn't move. "Identity. Proof," he half-signed, lower, within Enyo's sight.

"Kenta Rokujo, on behalf of his lordship Shohei Yodogiri," the figure added, bowing slightly, barely at all. "The circumstances of my visit might seem unusual to you, but it's not often that I have to cross the sea. There doesn't seem to be any scouts watching the border like there had been when I was last here. Hanzo would come to me before I ever saw the sand, but much has changed since then, it seems. The village has even lost her rain."

Enyo crossed his arms. "Prove you are who you say you are." He had a lisp from a split lip.

Lordship? Yodogiri? Who was—?

Matsu glanced at Namekuji. He didn't know how summons worked exactly, but this seemed like something Nagato should be here for. But Namekuji didn't move.

Rokujo smiled despite Joji-sensei's warning stance, but didn't take his eyes off him.

He was deliberately slow as he held his arms out. "Of course. I have a scroll with His Honorable Lord Yodogiri's seal within my right breast pocket. You have my permission to check it for yourself."

Joji-sensei hesitated, but ultimately approached Kenta, signing fast at them. "Diplomat. From Daimyo's court. Do not attack, no matter how he moves."

Enyo didn't react, but he didn't know what a Daimyo was. Matsu did though, and his nails left scratches on the rocks next to him.

Joji-sensei pulled out the scroll. Matsu didn't move as Rokujo's eyes flicked up to him.

The Rain Daimyo didn't know Hanzo was dead, hadn't known the rain stopped, and the Akatsuki didn't want him to for some reason.

Joji-sensei flicked the seal open and ignored the frown he was given.

"Red?" Matsu signed at Namekuji, clumsily, because he didn't do it often. He could only reliably sign back basic words without getting it wrong.

Namekuji didn't look at him. "He didn't come alone, and you're more water than muscle."

Matsu couldn't help the way he froze.

"I'd like to speak to Hanzo myself," Rokujo said as Joji-sensei finished scanning the scroll. "There are questions I'd like to ask, and I fear simply delivering the scroll to him will no longer be enough."

Matsu thought to ask where they were or to call Enyo to him, but he didn't. The hand he'd been using to sign dropped to his knee as he turned the second half of what Namekuji said over in his head.

He was more water than muscle.

How could the Akatsuki have grown up here?

What drove them to help people, to help him, for nothing back? He'd wondered it as he watched Yahiko cut a fireball in half to save him. What if he was a spy? An infiltrator? Or just a thief? And still—

And still Yahiko put himself on the line for them. And still Namekuji was choosing the safety of him and his brother over his partner's secrets.

Why?

"You can't see him," Enyo translated, and Matsu realized he'd stopped paying attention to Joji-sensei.

Namekuji's slime made his skin crawl and the slug knew it. It reminded him of the early, early days when starvation was new to him and he'd been desperate enough to eat bugs. Most had been covered in slime like this.

"What do you get out of this?" Matsu quietly asked. Even when the Akatsuki handed out fish it was in exchange for his loyalty.

No one does anything for free.

Rokujo stopped in the middle of re-tucking the scroll in his pocket. "You won't allow me to see Hanzo?"

Namekuji's tentacle-eyes only looked at him.

"Why protect us?" Matsu clarified.

"Did it too fast," Enyo mumbled to Joji-sensei in the background.

Why had Joji-sensei agreed to train them at all? What did he get out of it?

"As if I had a choice," Namekuji scoffed, and Matsu faltered, because that was it, wasn't it?

Yahiko saw him as part of the Akatsuki, and whoever told Namekuji to look out for them did too.

It was never that easy, but it was.

Matsu was the one who felt like an outsider at the edge of a boundary of his own creation. He bummed off Joji-sensei for lessons sometimes, but mostly he stayed away.

"I'll wait here for him then," Rokujo said, immovable.

They were the Akatsuki and he was, at best, some orphan too old to be one with no skills and a more talented little brother. Matsu let out a quiet breath and looked at the sky. He felt like a child, like someone who never saw the Akatsuki past being the Akatsuki like the civilians did.

"You're an idiot," he said quietly to himself, then forced his body to stand. He wasn't proud of the way his legs shook, or how he barely stifled a gasp as pain ripped through his chest, or his slight stumble.

He instantly had Rokujo's attention.

He looked dissatisfied with Joji-sensei, or with having to wait for Enyo to translate half-correctly, or both.

Matsu could've helped with the translating, but more excuses or stalling wouldn't make Rokujo leave. What could Joji-sensei say that wasn't telling him Hanzo was dead? What could Nagato do when he wasn't the one Rokujo wanted to talk to?

Matsu kept his hand against his side as he stepped up to the edge. If he was part of the Akatsuki, he'd damn well better start acting like it.

"My name is Matsu, and I'm the one who should be forgiven," he said, the words spilling out of him before he could think about what he was doing. "Joji-sensei was only protecting me by trying to turn you away. You can't see my father because he's in bad health."

Rokujo didn't turn to him because he looked commanding, but for the same reason Cho told him she didn't notice before and you look like him.

It was why Rokujo had looked at him first.

"My sensei and I meant no disrespect," he added, and bowed lower. His ribs felt like they were folding in half, but he was just well-trained enough to keep his voice steady.

Namekuji didn't move off his shoulder, but didn't stop him either.

Joji-sensei turned to burn him alive with his stare while Enyo tilted his head.

Rokujo looked at him for a long second, and Matsu held his bow.

"What happened to him?" he was finally asked.

Matsu was a self-admitted conman who'd conned Joji-sensei and even himself into thinking he had no skills, because sensei wouldn't have bothered to teach him deception if he knew he could already lie.

"My father was hurt on the battlefield, two years before," he said with a confidence he didn't feel. "Defending our border for two wars made him tired, and he made a mistake."

Iwagakure, Sunagakure, Konohagakure, what was the hell was the difference?

"He was stabbed from behind by an infiltrator from Iwagakure. We had, and have, no medic-nin who survived the war, so nothing could be done for him but to close his wound as best we could and wait for him to heal and wake up. He never did."

He thought that Hanzo the Salamander, who never told his own people about food shortages before they were starving, wouldn't have told anyone if he had a son or not. Who could say he wasn't a well-loved son of Hanzo the Salamander?

How could the leader of a small place like this not know he had a son that lived in it?

Rokujo didn't say a word, but his brown eyes roved up to the empty sky behind him.

What proof did he need when the lack of towers behind him told its own story of what war had done to the village?

"My father—he had enough chakra for the rain, but I don't," Matsu said. "I'm training to be a ninja, but I won't ever have as much chakra as he did."

If he'd been cared for when he was a kid, if he hadn't spent a good chunk of his life malnourished—

"I haven't met anyone who does," Matsu added. He should ask Nagato how the rain worked.

"And so you named yourself the ruler of Amegakure?" Rokujo asked. "With not a single thought for the input of the leader of your country?"

Matsu breathed out. "I only used our ninja to defend the border as my father would've. Nothing else."

Rokujo was silent again, but Matsu felt his scrutiny. He didn't raise his eyes from the rocks.

"If I knew the war was over, I wouldn't have kept my father's condition a secret," he added, because who would have come and told him?

Matsu would've remembered if they had allies, because maybe they would've tried to take fights away from the people here. He'd like to think an ally would care even a little.

He didn't lift his head, but the silence was one from surprise now, not suspicion.

He thought suddenly of the piles of scrolls he'd seen in the main room of the shelter the Akatsuki used as a base. Even if the Daimyo sent something about the war, how likely was it that it was at the bottom of the pile? How likely was it that Hanzo the Salamander would've told anyone about it before he destroyed it?

"I see," Rokujo said after another moment, and Matsu heard his dissatisfaction. "His Honorable Lord Yodogiri will hear of your situation, and you will eventually be summoned to appear before him. Prepare yourself accordingly. Should he find you worthy of it, he may have you take the place of your father. If not, someone more suitable will be chosen."

Matsu hesitated, wanting to glance up, because it sounded like something someone would say right before they left, and he couldn't be...?

"A Daimyo will not come to you," Joji-sensei signed at him, ignoring Rokujo's curious, careful glance. "What point would there be to linger when you have no real power?"

Enyo kept his arms crossed and didn't speak.

"My sensei—he wants me to ask you about the request made by—"

"To no point," Rokujo interrupted him, still looking at Joji-sensei. "Your charge has neither the authority to see what His Honorable Lord Yodogiri has written, or the place to answer it. I can forgive the paranoia of ninja, and even expect it, but I will not do anything intolerable."

Joji-sensei only stared back at Rokujo, unimpressed.

"I won't act without His Honorable Lord Yodogiri's permission again," Matsu promised, forcing himself into another bow, even as he grit his teeth.

Rokujo folded his arms in his sleeves. "His Honorable Lord Yodogiri will fully turn his gaze here soon enough, so I suggest you keep your word," he warned. He let the threat linger, and then turned away from them.

Matsu didn't dare move.

"He left," Enyo yelled up to him after a while.

But Namekuji didn't speak. Matsu breathed out again, a slow, painful breath, but stayed still. He focused on the sound of Enyo climbing up to him.

Enyo's feet stopped in front of him, but he didn't speak again, just well-trained enough to know something was off.

"You can relax, look-a-like," Namekuji said as he counted to thirty.

Matsu immediately collapsed, shuddering hard as he landed on his tailbone, and barely got his hands down to stop himself from fully falling backwards.

"Where was the other one?" Enyo asked, hands in his pockets.

Matsu checked his side and the bruise was darker, more irritated-looking, and had spread up his side. He pushed his shirt back down.

"He believed me," Matsu said incredulously, trying to still his shaking hand.

"Not many would lie to his face so boldly," Joji-sensei signed, pausing. "And even less who can use the excuse of their heritage."

Matsu fell back and couldn't manage the energy to care when Namekuji settled on his chest.

"Don't ignore me," Enyo said.

"Snails are deaf to brats with bad breath," Namekuji said back, and Enyo looked stunned.

Matsu closed his eyes. "How the hell did I do that?"

"You didn't, look-a-like," Namekuji answered. "I kept you on your feet. What, you thought that energy came from you?"

Matsu had, but decided to keep that to himself. "I don't like that nickname," he said, civilly he thought.

"Okay."

"Joji-sensei makes me brush my teeth every day," Enyo protested.

"Sure."

Enyo breathed on his palm and sniffed it. "It smells like clover paste."

"Uh-huh."

罪人

Matsu took a bite out of a seaweed, fish, and rice sandwich.

The seaweed had been flattened, wrapped around the entire thing, and the fish was packed between a thin spread of rice. It was easily the best thing he'd had in years.

Cho was leaning back against his shoulder, feet hanging over the side of the staircase he sat on. He didn't know what it was meant to be, but he did know the materials had run dry before it could be anything more than an idea.

Her hair was longer, tickling his arm, but he didn't pay attention to it.

He took another bite.

There were a few food stalls around him. Two on his right were tables carried out of a shelter or dragged over from an outpost. He knew because the tables were undamaged, maybe a little scratched, but the table to his left was missing a leg, and the one in front of him was made from old wood and broken stone.

The left one was taken from a collapsed house, probably.

A short-haired girl was in front of the stall with the replaced leg, talking, gesturing down at the wrapped fish on display as a woman on the other side waved her off.

A boy hanging from the back of a man (a black cloth tied tight covered his left eye) who must've been his father ate rice from a cup while his father paid for it with ryo.

The vendors wouldn't accept anything else.

The place that almost resembled a market was new, or new to him, having sprung up sometime between him wondering who he was now, and accepting himself as part of the Akatsuki.

He vaguely remembered what the markets used to be like, even if it was only the feeling of a hand on his back and the faint impression of clinging to a skirt because the crowds scared him.

Cho swung her feet, humming off-tune to herself, and he caught bits of rice and fish that squeezed out of the back of his sandwich.

The vendors were on the Akatsuki's (their?) payroll, more or less. Food was the most valuable resource here, and he'd already seen them turn away people that offered clothes or tools.

If there was a price to food, it made ryo almost as valuable.

They probably had a ninja discreetly hand out ryo in exchange for tradeable items, if he thought about it, but wouldn't have recognized anyone associated with them, even if they were here.

He needed a list or something, and Joji-sensei wouldn't tell him easily.

"You've been staring at that guy for a while," Cho said, sitting up. "Is he a work friend of yours?"

Matsu blinked, realizing that while his thoughts were somewhere else, his eyes were on the man, the 'vendor' standing behind the other undamaged stall.

He only had a few sandwiches left.

Just take it. It's on the house, he'd said.

Matsu responded to the question by eating the sandwich crumbs from his hand.

I don't owe you anything, kid, he'd also said, a long, long time ago.

"Oh, you don't like him," Cho guessed, twisting to face him.

It was the beard that made him look like he could be anyone from a distance, until Matsu stood in front of his stall with something to trade in a market where no one did anymore and stared into the aged face of a man he never thought he'd see again.

A man he'd hoped died.

Cho crossed her legs, her smile faint. "You used to be so obvious about how you felt," she said. "Not with words, but I felt like I could look at civilian-you, and know, instantly, what you needed to hear."

Matsu only wiped his hands off on his pants.

Look, you were a big help, but you should take this as a lesson.

"What happened?" Cho quietly asked.

"I wasn't obvious," Matsu grumbled.

Cho tried to smile. "You were. You made everything feel easy."

Matsu sighed, scrubbing a hand down his face. "All that matters is that I'm not sure if he didn't make me pay because of the Akatsuki or as a half-assed apology."

"Do you want it to be an apology?"

Matsu didn't answer. He didn't know and would rather not think about it at all.

Cho was silent for a second, and then she shifted around to lean on his arm again. "There's something I need to tell you."

Matsu leaned back on his elbows, and she adjusted so her head was on his stomach. "You can tell me anything."

She didn't for a long while, staring at the sky. "I'm a spy," she finally said, barely audible.

Matsu paused for half a second, then followed her gaze up to a thick cloud. "I know."

She went still, and he couldn't tell if she was breathing. "What?"

"I first suspected," he began. "When we talked about the Akatsuki, and you told me that the next shipment of rice would be in a week. You were annoyed, and weren't careful, because you never had to watch what you said around me before."

Cho didn't move, didn't speak, and didn't blink.

"I still don't know when the shipments are coming in," he continued, carefully. "Yahiko and Nagato don't tell anyone until it's here, and for good reason. I knew just now when you asked me what happened. If you were really from here and a war orphan, you wouldn't have to ask. You'd know."

Matsu waited, but Cho still didn't move.

"There might be more, but I wouldn't know unless I looked back on every time we talked, because civilian-me never would've noticed," he said.

He thought about what he'd told her about Yahiko doing what he did to put pressure on the spies, and how, since then, a lot of the orphans he'd known had gone missing. Defected. How the scrutiny on people who appeared during the war pushed people apart, ruined life-long friendships, and made Root want to take the information they gathered and run than be outed by another orphan or ninja and face the man who killed Hanzo the Salamander.

Matsu was sure that some of them had been caught, too, but the only way he'd know was if he stumbled on where they were buried or thrown in the sea.

"What's your real name?" he finally asked.

Cho shuddered once, a full-body shiver. "I don't have one," she told him, and sounded very small.

Matsu looked at her and she turned her face away. "Why stay?"

"I don't know if I..." she trailed off. "I don't know if I can tell you that."

Matsu paused. "You told me you were—"

"Saying that doesn't tell you where I'm from or who sent me or what my mission is," she said, all at once. "I need to be able to say that, because then I could say somewhere far away sent me, or I could say it was a lie, that everything I am is a lie and—"

"Cho."

She covered her face with her hands and took a deep breath. "I got attached," she said, slowly, carefully. "Isn't that sad? I couldn't do my job because I felt things."

"That's not a bad thing."

She shuddered again. "Easy for you to say," she said. "But if you knew, why didn't you tell anyone?"

Matsu looked up again. "I wasn't sure, and I do care about you, Cho—"

"Stop calling me that. That's not my name. I'm a number, or a color sometimes, and I can't even say it."

"Then choose you own name," he said, and heard her breath catch.

"What?"

"You deserve a new identity. Whoever you work for chose Cho, right? So, choose something else."

Cho moved her hands away so she could stare at him. "You shouldn't trust me. I could still—"

"You could be playing me," he agreed. "But there's no benefit to you to tell me you're a spy. The only reason I can think of is if you feel guilty."

Cho curled on her side and pulled her legs up to her chest. "It's lucky that you're Matsu of the Akatsuki now," she said, voice shaking, though her eyes were dry. "It's the only reason no one is watching two orphans whispering on a half-built staircase."

Matsu shifted again so he could wrap his arms around her. "I was thinking of finding a hobby," he told her. "I can't be Matsu of the Akatsuki all the time."

She huffed out a laugh against his chest. "You should learn to play an instrument. How long would they tolerate Lord Matsu while he's making everyone's ears bleed?"

"No one calls me that," he muttered. "And I wouldn't be that bad."

"You'd be awful," she said, breaking out of his hold to sit up. "Aren't you being taught by Lord Joji? And you still can't fish."

Matsu clicked his tongue, but she wasn't wrong. "What instrument?"

"The chikuzen-biwa. So I can steal it from you and play it myself."

"I'm not made of money just because I—"

"Make sure it's professionally tuned when I get it," she said.

Matsu scoffed.

A/N: 罪人- Revival

Ego Oportet Bonum Enim Aliquid - I must be good for something.

Chikuzen-biwa - short-necked wooden lute with five strings and five frets.