Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. Beta'd by UmbreonGurl, Fishebake, and aflowerydeath.
"The earth is littered with the ruins of empires that believed they were eternal"
— Camille Paglia
She hears from the first runner that Koza has met the visiting shinobi by the official path off of the mountain.
Jin and Keimaru are young still, having just hit their growth spurt, all long, gangly limbs and not enough understanding of their newfound reach, cheekbones just starting to cut through the puppy fat of childhood, prone to moving like whirlwinds and knocking over objects.
These visiting shinobi — she turns their names over in her mind: Senju Hashirama, Senju Tobirama, Senju Toka, and Uchiha Madara — are likely the first non-clan shinobi Jin and Keimaru have ever seen, if one discounts the Hatake.
"Do you think they are strong, Komari-hime?" Jin asks, bouncing from foot to foot with heady anticipation.
"They would not have come here if they were weak, Jin." She offers the boy — he is just a boy really — a fond smile. "Doesn't Haruko-baa want you home soon?"
It takes a moment before her words catch up with Jin, but when they do, he is off again, Keimaru dodging his heels. She watches him go, late afternoon turning single strands of his dark hair gold and wonders if the decision she's going to make is the right one.
He is not wary of outsiders, not really. He has never been down below the mountain.
The Children of the Pack might know that those who live below are unfriendly at best and enemies at worst, but that hardly means the thought is internalized. They know it, but they do not believe it. And that would cost them. That would cost them dear if it should come to war.
As she watches, Jin whoops and leaps into a puddle by the side of the street, watery black mud spraying up all about his feet. A boy really, he's just a boy still, this distant cousin of hers. Fourteen summers old this year with the promise of many more if she only makes the right choice.
Likely, he won't actually be in touching distance of the Senju, or the single Uchiha of the peace envoy ever again.
Not this visit anyway.
She has no doubt that if she refuses them this time, that they will return.
And when they do in that hypothetical future...when they do, it will be with fire and blood instead of open palms and courteous words.
The news from her brother-in-law, Kotaro, says that more clans than ever are joining the newly created Konoha.
It has only been half a year, but not only have the Uchiha and the Senju managed to not kill each other, the Hyuga, the Nara, the Yamanaka, and the Akimichi have already moved into the new "village."
She's no fool. The writing's on the wall.
The writing's on the wall and the tenuous peace here in Okami's Villa is about to come to an end at her hands. At her orders even, the age old traditions of her clan will warp and change, becoming unrecognizable. Yasuka-sama, I am not sorry because I want to live. I am not sorry.
The tenuous beat of her heart in her chest pounds a steady refrain. I want to live. I want to live. I want to live.
Before they had peace because those who lived down below were ready and eager to tear out each other's throats with no care for those who lived here up above. They profited on the pain and fear in some ways, took advantage of the war zone down below to build a land of peace.
There is no fault in what she is about to do, is there? Centuries of history erased.
But if she plays the game correctly, at least most everyone will live. If she plays the game.
Long, long ago, her mother had held her hands and told her — One day when you are queen, you will have to make hard choices. Remember, Mari, an Inuzuka does not play games.
But that was in the world before, where the clans below were willing to kill each other over a mouthful of rice or the clink of two gold coins against each other.
The world has shifted and changed.
And to survive a changing world, you must shift and change with it.
She lights the candle before Kiyo's memorial tablet. I pray for your guidance, my love. There are crueler storms to weather in the future.
Her hands do not shake when she blows out the match and watches the smoke curl up from the burnt wood. It smells sugar sweet, maple burning to ash between her finger tips.
And a long long time she stands there, contemplating what she is about to break.
She hears the sound of feet approaching long before she even bothers to turn around — a party of five, four hesitant, one not. She smells them too — they carry with them the scent of smoke and ash, of blood and steel, of a ruined peace.
Maybe it's only her own suspicious nature speaking. Her own prejudices screaming at her to not listen to the ones who live below — all who live below are deceitful by nature, Mari.
She closes her eyes and breathes out, long and slow.
There's a game to play.
Koza's back.
They're here.
The door is soft against the dark cherry wood as it slides open, though she feels the vibrations down in her bones anyway. Soft or loud, she can't stop what she can hear. It's like an extension of her. A sense of scent, a sense of sound, a sense of touch.
Her dominion is the villa, a throbbing pulsing web where she knows every nook and cranny.
Soft or loud, the sounds carry all the same, all echoes and reverberations.
"We're here, Komari-hime." Komari-hime. So formal you are in front of guests, my sweet cousin.
Other than her brothers, she'd always been closest to Koza.
Long ago, Haha-ue took him in when he had nowhere else to go. He might as well be her only living brother. She has no living brothers.
This fractured family only has five living members now — Koza, Shumaru, Hokime, Takamaru and herself — where they once filled the whole house. Now these wooden walls and wooden floors rattle with a coffin silence filled with ghosts.
She turns towards the visitors, setting down what remains of the match as she does so. "Make yourselves at home."
The four of them, three men and a woman, one Uchiha and three Senju — a man with white hair...all her breath turns to ice.
He had white hair. Eyes so red that he might've been a demon. Kotaro told her this when he brought Kiyo back, broken and bloodied on that long road into the villa, summer sun so hot sweat slid down his face like tears.
The cruelest part of it all was that Kiyo had still been alive, bleeding out slowly beyond the help of medicine or mere mortal hands, a wound made to make him suffer.
They'd given him poppies to ease the pain of it. She'd held his hand as the sun set and his words slowly grew more garbled, disconnected like a pearl necklace suddenly snapped, beads flying in every direction. She does not remember much of that afternoon, that afternoon where she'd sent Koza and Hokime out to play by the river; she chooses not to remember much of it.
It is kinder to remember Kiyo as he'd been in life rather than as he lay dying, the last words on his lips her name.
A Senju. He'd said in his half delirious musings. A demon too fast for words.
And here before her is a white haired man with red eyes, his chakra tightly leashed down to its bare core, wearing the Senju crest upon his clothes.
She wonders what his name is.
Wonders if it is luck or fate or merely unfortunate circumstance that brought him here.
Wonders if Okami-jiisan had a hand in this.
"Yes!" The other Senju man steps forward, offers her a tentative hand. She smells the uncertainty on him, the barely concealed excitement and concern. He hopes for peace rather earnestly. "I believe one of your men collected a draft of the peace treaty we wanted to offer?"
She wonders if he knows what his… brother? It would have to be a brother, have to be either Senju Hashirama or Senju Tobirama who—
No, best think of this later.
First, she has to play the game.
"What can Konoha offer my people that Okami has not already offered?" Her own voice seems far away, colder than the north wind.
Normally she is kinder than this, mother to a daughter, mother of a clan, a woman of family...a heart made for love.
She is used to bloody hands, but she is not used to a heart carved by a butcher knife served on a platter like so much bloody meat.
"Oh, well peace will—"
She almost laughs, lips turning downwards in an attempt to contain herself before she cuts the Senju's speech short. "You speak of the benefits of peace," she looks outwards, picks up the sound of Hokime's scampering feet and Takamaru's softer tread following her about the house. Her daughter is well protected. She grew up with Takamaru, his own senses an extension of her own, the most loyal friend she's ever had. "but we have peace here already. Why should we move?"
"Because Konoha is larger." It's the white haired Senju, who cuts in. His voice is deep, a timbre not unfamiliar though his accent is strange. There's an odd sort of softness to his consonants, not nearly so hard as she is used to. There's a roughness to it, almost as if he is either on the cusp or just recovered from a sickness, the rasp of a cough lingering… "And there is strength in numbers."
She turns to look at him fully for the first time. "Yes, I suppose."
He is quoting their age old proverbs at her.
It would grate more, but she's tracing the lines and planes of his form instead, careful to remember every inch of him — blue armor, a white ruff of fur about his neck as though he were Okami-jiisan come to flesh, something of a hollow gauntness to his cheeks as though he has not eaten well in a long time.
The visitors all look like that though, not as though they'd starved, but more like meals had been in short supply of late, lean with hollow cheeks.
It does not bode well, does not bode well for her pack, despite their lack of wealth, no child or elder much less able-bodied pack member goes hungry.
The firelight does nothing to help that. It throws shadows in the gaunt dips of his cheeks and brow, makes him look more human than demonic. Just a hungry young man, like the stray children that Haruko-baasan fed in open secret.
The children down below starved in the streets with no one to take them in, power, wealth, and food gathered into a few tight fisted hands. She'd always known this, has heard the stories, has seen the sights.
She does not want to know that Kiyo's murderer is no more than a man. A young man, younger than her expectations, younger than Kiyo had been when he died, younger than her.
He is so young for her to blame. Just a man.
He has taken her silence as hesitance then, pressing forward with more words. "How many able bodied fighters can your clan afford to send to defend your fields?"
He knows. She realizes this, between one breath and the next. A sensor.
She tilts her head to one side, hair sliding over her shoulder, breathing calm. So he knows. What of it? Her questions are still the same. If they do not concede her pack's autonomy, death would be a kinder fate. "The strength of the wolf is the pack, and the strength of the pack is the wolf. Will your allies offer me and mine the same trust I'd offer a brother?"
They would not. She knows they would not, knows it sure as she knows Kiyo's face, sure as she remembers her otouto's dimpled smile, sure as she feels the warmth of the lit candles behind her.
"No, perhaps—"
"My people are poor, this is true. We do not play the daimyo's games and we reap none of the rewards. We are hunters. We are herders. We are farmers. But we are pack, and we still have our pride. What can Konoha offer that Okami has not?" Whatever words they choose to woo her, her questions are the same.
They do not know that she intends to accept. She intends to accept, but she does not intend to accept an uneven bargain.
No, Haha-ue had told her not to play the game, but she is Inuzuka Komari, mother of a clan, and if she is to play the game despite the warning, she can only do as she has always done with everything else her life.
If she must play the game, she will play it well.
"Because the world is dark and cold and gruesome." What a truth he speaks. It is likely the only truth he has ever known. The world below is indeed, dark and cold and gruesome. "Because you can join us or be left behind."
She would respect him; she really would.
She would, except for the blood between them.
He looks like a man, reminds her of the stray children Haruko-baasan feeds with their extra rice, but she has no sympathy for him in this chilly heart of hers.
And she never will.
Takamaru tells her that the visitors are well situated in their rooms, comfortable enough despite being among people they clearly do not trust.
That is, all but one.
She finds Senju Tobirama — she knows his name now; he'd introduced himself with an extended hand that she did not deign to take — sitting on the stooped porch looking out at darkening gloom.
He has his chin propped up one one hand.
This close she can hear his every breath, the steady beat of his heart in his chest, the slight hitch in his throat when he noticed her arrival. Her chakra is pulled tight about her, close enough and her footsteps soft enough that he did not notice her approach until she was quite close.
This close, she could tear out his throat with her teeth if she so chose, wager her life and the lives of all she holds dear for the poisoned sweetness of vengeance.
Her blood may boil, but she is smarter than that.
No, it might be simple to kill him now, but it is also costly.
Good things come to those who wait.
He is only a man.
Men can die a hundred thousand different ways, a hundred thousand innocuous ways.
She sits down beside him on the edge of the steps.
She used to sit here with Kiyo, her head against his shoulder, his arm around her waist at this same time of day.
"Do you find my hospitality poor?" she asks him, for really, she is rather curious. He is the only one who has not decided to stay in his room.
"No," he says, but does not elaborate further.
She can smell no lie on him though. This close he smells of earth and steel, sweat, though not unbearably so. The further you elaborate, the more likely you are to slide into untruths.
They continue to sit in silence for a long moment, dusk falling ashen all about them like the remnants of buried dreams.
"Is there a reason you've pulled your chakra tighter?" He stares straight ahead red red eyes fixed on something she cannot understand in the distance.
"I am told I am painful for sensors to consort with if I do not."
This is only the truth. Ever since she picked Okami's Sword up from the rack where it hung in the shrine, she has been difficult for sensors to live with.
"How did you know that?" He asks her, words suddenly sharp. Ah, she has spooked him, an acrid undercurrent of fear radiates from him now.
Faint perhaps, because he holds himself relaxed still, the picture of idle curiosity, but it is harder to hide from the other senses.
Sight is cheap and easily deceived after all.
"Would you know how many people live here if you do not?" She twirls a strand of golden wheat about her fingertips — Kiyo had always told her she had a killer's hands, nails that so easily became claws in defense of others. "I am not a fool, Senju Tobirama." She smiles, rolls his name through her mouth, tastes the difference of it on her tongue. "Though I suppose it would be easy to mistake me for one."
He will be a dead man soon enough, even if she will never taste his blood on her tongue.
He will be a dead man soon enough.
"We have built cathedrals
Out of spite and splintered bone,
Of course they aren't pretty,
Nothing holy ever is—"
— Brenna Twohy
A.N. So! A continuation! Bits and pieces hinted at in chapter one are becoming clearer in chapter 2!
Thank my lovely betas for reading and rereading this chapter. Their enthusiasm for this fic and continuing it has been a constant source of inspiration for me.
And thank you so much to everyone who reviewed, favorited and followed.
~Tavina