"I said make me love myself,
so that I might love you,
don't make me a liar 'cause I swear to god,
when I said it I thought it was true,"
Saint Bernard, Lincoln
It felt almost cathartic watching Nagato kick someone else's ass for once.
Yahiko rolled up the sleeves of his cloak and leaned back on the sand as he watched Nagato punch Hidan in the gut so hard he folded in half, choking, coughing blood, but still reached for him with fingers that looked bruised, if not broken.
Nagato had never hit him that hard, but one of the perks of being immortal was being able to take a casual, organ-rupturing punch like it was a high-five.
Yahiko knew he was still holding back (the only reason Nagato used partial Sage transformation was to mess around with nature energy or to show his sparring partner what it might be like to take a hit from a stone clone; and by sparring partner, he meant himself).
Nagato stepped back, out of range of Hidan's shaking fingers, and Hidan crumpled to his knees. He only didn't collapse completely because of the hand he shoved against the sand.
"Another soft one," Namekuji said from his place on Yahiko's stomach.
Yahiko tilted his head back and let the sun warm his face. "It only happens when someone else is persistent enough to make them that way," he said back. "Can't say it would've worked if we'd treated him like an outsider from the beginning."
"We," Namekuji repeated with a scoff.
"Hey, I'm owed at least sixty percent of the credit," he retorted. "Making friends on a battlefield is my thing."
"Was your thing."
Yahiko opened his eyes. Fuzzy, dark spots appeared in the corners of his vision as he stared at the sun. "Was I really like that as a kid?"
"Worse," Namekuji said. "Almost everyone you turned Oka would've left to die."
Yahiko laughed, but thinking about his kid self would always feel like being pinched, wouldn't it?
"Am I still like that?" Yahiko asked, regretting it, but didn't look down.
Namekuji stared at him. "I thought humans are supposed to change. Isn't that the whole point?"
Yahiko paused, blinking at him. "Am I crazy or did you just say something nice to me?"
"You smell like the inside of a binturong."
"I—" Yahiko stopped and didn't think too hard about that sentence. "If changing is a human thing, I guess that makes you human, too."
Namekuji stopped. "I'll never forgive you for saying that."
Yahiko sat up. "Yeah, yeah, love you too, Namekuji."
He ignored Namekuji's indignant noise, carefully didn't look at Hidan as he puked, and blinked when he saw Itsuki, standing on the sand and talking to Nagato.
He blamed not noticing his approach on Nagato. It was his fault for being able to sense halfway across the sea and making feel, well, less on edge. If Sunagakure taught him anything it was wondering how any ninja without genetic luck went anywhere without paranoia eating them alive.
Not that he was talking about himself, of course.
"Seems all I'm good for is playing messenger," Itsuki was saying.
"Something I should know about?" Yahiko asked.
Nagato's shoulders slumped, and he mumbled something, something that sounded suspiciously like—
Yahiko's eyes lit up. "I don't think I heard you there, best friend of mine."
Nagato refused to look at him. "Hiruko," he said, and said nothing else, but it was more than enough.
Yahiko grinned. Namekuji went around to his back as he stood, strolled over to Nagato, and leaned an arm on his shoulder. "One more time? I was all the way over there, you see, but I think I'm close enough now."
Nagato stared at a distant point above Hidan. "You're an asshole."
"An asshole who completed his mission—"
Hidan tackled Nagato around the waist, and the space under Yahiko's arm was suddenly empty as they hit the sand. "Fuck you, you red-headed bastard—"
Yahiko considered telling him what would happen next, but instead he watched happily as Nagato twisted his legs and hooked them around Hidan's middle.
Before Hidan could draw back Nagato's arms wound around his neck, twisting and yanking him down, squeezing hard as he squawked and kicked.
Yahiko used to have that move used on him all the time during their taijutsu-only spars.
"Not that I want to interrupt," Itsuki said, half-amused, half-confounded by them. "But if this really is Sasori of the Red Sand—"
"It is," Yahiko told him, watching Hidan tug at Nagato's hands.
Nagato had a pretty good grip normally, but with the blue stripes down his arms? He felt bad for Hidan, really, but not enough to move.
"—you're sure you want him as part of our forces?" Itsuki finished.
Yahiko shook his head, "I wonder how many said the same thing about Hidan."
"Piece of shit," Hidan choked out, somehow still glaring up at him as he thrashed, face almost purple.
Itsuki said nothing for a few seconds, and then he sighed, "It's nothing more than luck that I didn't meet him on the field, but I've seen the aftermath of picking a fight with him up close. Sunagakure used to send him out alone before he defected. Just one guy to hold the northeastern front, and he never lost. It didn't become public he defected until after it was over, and even then only those doing cleanup heard about it."
"There aren't many alive that could handle someone who kept an area clear with only the weight of his name if he goes rouge," Itsuki continued, almost anxiously.
"That's the point," Yahiko told him. He could've explained more, could've gone into great detail about why they needed Sasori of the Red Sand, but trust and caution were two sides of a balancing act, and he often toed that line too much already.
Itsuki looked at him, but Yahiko only watched Nagato push Hidan's limp body off him.
"Kanna's still watching him, right?" Yahiko asked.
"Yeah, and she made sure I knew how unhappy she was about me leaving," Itsuki scoffed.
Yahiko glanced at him. "I wouldn't have asked him to come here if I didn't think we could protect this place from him if we had to."
He heard Oka in his head then: Win or die. Fight or die.
"If one or more people as strong as you say he is tries to fight here again, I want to be able to stop them," he said carefully. "I don't want to use our ninja like I used you and Kanna to pretend to watch out for him. Throwing bodies at the enemy is what led to this in the first place, but Oka and Nagato and me are nobodies to everyone outside the village. If any other country really wanted to invade, we wouldn't be enough to make them hesitate."
Itsuki stopped. "If you're doing a plan as insane as that, you might as well poach ninja from other villages while you're at it."
"That's what I said," Yahiko said, looking pointedly at Nagato.
Nagato pushed himself up. "The point isn't to make as many enemies as possible. Missing-nin are hard enough to track without a connection already in the underground, and only us and Kirigakure actively take on mercenary work. The problem with missing-nin is that if they go missing, not many would know or care what happened to them."
"We might not have turned Hidan in in Hot Water, but what does that say to Yugakure?" Nagato asked, scratching his cheek. "That we fought, injured him, and he got away? That we were injured? That we caught him and sold him to someone who might want to know about Yugakure? Or for his immortality, if anyone else knew about it. If I were from Yugakure and knew what Hidan was like, I wouldn't believe he was working for another village either."
Yahiko looked at Nagato, rubbing his chin. "You're scary," he decided.
"You knew that."
Yahiko ignored this, "And you talk too much."
"Itsuki was there when I talked to Miyashita," Nagato pointed out, but Yahiko heard the smile in his voice.
Yahiko retraced Itsuki's footprints in the sand, ignoring that too. "Yeah, yeah. I'll go see Sasori and hope you'll think about what you've done while I'm gone."
Itsuki stared between them. "You both still claim you were trained by Mamoru, right?"
.
.
.
"Don't retaliate, even if he attacks me," Yahiko said, eyes shut as he strolled toward the hunched shape he knew was waiting on the shore.
He wasn't close enough to see him, but who needed vision when he had a Namekuji?
His collar was pulled just high enough to hide his mouth.
Namekuji pressed down on his head to tell him just how much he didn't like that idea, and Yahiko accepted the bath he'd need later to get all the slime out of his hair.
"I don't expect anything to happen, but there's always the chance something could've changed between when I saw him last and now," Yahiko added, mostly at Itsuki, to his left and behind him. "If it comes to that, signal Kanna to retreat and—"
"With all due respect, I won't be following that order," Itsuki cut him off.
Yahiko opened his eyes but didn't stop walking.
"Seems that what I told you before gave you the wrong idea. Yeah, I might be scared shitless of the kid, but I'm no coward," he said. "Don't know how to break it to you, but Ame-nin don't run."
Yahiko wondered how often shinobi were killed by their own pride. "Kid?" he repeated.
Itsuki continued on, "If you think Kanna or I agreed to watch the border because we didn't intend to defend it if we had to, then you don't really get what the idea of what you're trying to do here means to not just us, but everyone. Especially after your better half's effort to make orders seem more like requests."
"My better half," Yahiko repeated with a scoff, eyes on the sky.
He said he didn't like to use them, but what he'd kept to himself was the part where he just didn't want the weight of more pointless deaths.
He could use the sad state of their forces as an excuse all he wanted, but Chizue, Fuji, Haya, and Tora were really ferrying grains back and forth from Kusagakure because their pseudo-alliance let him trust Fujiwara enough not to have them killed.
Shinnai and Kanae were still in Suisai because Nagato wanted them there, sure, but it helped a lot that he considered Ren a friend.
It was Nagato and Oka who went into unknown territory in Hot Water because he knew they'd come back.
Itsuki and Kanna's lives were in his hands, whether they thought so or not. Who would be the one to tell their comrades, friends, and family if they didn't come back?
There was only so much Yahiko was willing to pawn off on his better-half.
Maybe this was why Mamoru-sensei had taken the scroll he'd been reading right out of his hands earlier and shoo'ed him out of the hideout like he was a human-sized puppy. He could sense the melancholy.
"You smell bad," Namekuji said, right next to his ear.
It surprised him so much that he stumbled.
Namekuji was unapologetic when he looked at him.
If Oka were here, she'd say something like, stop caring so much, or, healing isn't easy or happens all at once, especially for someone who can't pick what he wants to eat without overthinking.
Well, maybe not the second one. That sounded more like Konan.
He stared at the clouds, wondering what Oka found so fascinating about the sky, and had the thought that maybe people would die for him, and it was just something that would happen. Like the sun rising was just something that happened. He couldn't control everything, and he didn't want to stop being co-Taiyokage, because then he'd stop being himself.
What would he even do with free time, without something to think about, without loving Amegakure so much that he couldn't help but want to save it, even now?
It made him laugh.
"Lord Taiyokage?" Itsuki questioned.
"I can't and won't stop you," Yahiko agreed, lacing his hands behind his head again. "But it won't come to that. Sasori won't attack, and I'll bet a drinking party on it. If he does, we'll throw a party on the beach. I'll even force the rest of the Akatsuki to go."
Namekuji scoffed, curled around his neck. "Good luck with that."
"Well, I don't plan to lose," Yahiko said back. "Still sense no one around him?"
"No, but he's in that shell."
Yahiko blinked. He could see Sasori's outline, and that he was wearing a brighter coat. Almost maroon. "Shell?"
"It might fool others, but he just stuck layers of chakra to the inside that moves like yours. He keeps enough to himself to function, buried under it," Namekuji answered. "Hope you see why eating chakra from the rest of you is insulting."
"Huh. So, in other words, Sasori's chakra control makes me look like Oka," Yahiko deciphered.
Namekuji went silent, "That's what you're taking from that?"
"It's the most important part," Yahiko defended. He tilted his head toward Itsuki. "You know, I never asked, but did Hidan do anything embarrassing while he was drunk?"
Itsuki tore his eyes away from the shell. "I'd appreciate it if you'd let me be terrified in peace, Lord Taiyokage."
Yahiko couldn't help a grin. He stopped in shallow water, not quite out of tail range, but far enough that he could dodge it. Probably.
"You kept me waiting," Sasori intoned, voice still as smooth as rocks.
Yahiko carefully did not look at the moss-covered trees behind Sasori, where he had no doubt Kanna was hiding. "If we're being honest, I didn't expect you to show until winter at earliest. And besides, as you can see, there aren't many sensor-nin here. Someone had to come and get me."
Sasori didn't acknowledge this, and only looked him up and down. "Annoying," he finally said. "Almost as much as that slug witch."
Yahiko paused. He didn't know much outside the broadest part of the war, but if he thought about it, Tsunade was probably the only person in Konohagakure who could figure out a cure to his poisons.
"More importantly, here I am, proving I'm who I said I was," Yahiko drawled.
Sasori's eyes flicked to Itsuki, and then he turned, staring deliberately at a tree behind him. "If this is all you can spare to even attempt to stop me, it's an embarrassment."
Yahiko shrugged, "Now do you see why I went through all the trouble to find you, of all missing-nin?"
Sasori's eyes slid back to him, but he said nothing.
"Does this mean you accept what I offered?" Yahiko asked after a second.
"Fool," Sasori growled. "Do you think your village so interesting that I'd come all the way here to gawk?"
"Some might think so," Yahiko said mildly. He turned around and started back across the water.
He didn't hear Sasori or Itsuki following him but didn't stop.
"That's it?" Sasori asked. "No discussion of details, restrictions, or who, exactly, you tempted me here to kill?"
Yahiko tilted his head back. "Oh, right. Itsuki, tell everyone that from now on, Sasori is a jonin of Amegakure and part of the Akatsuki."
It was quiet behind him. He couldn't even hear his own footsteps.
"Sure," Itsuki responded, a beat too late, betraying how nervous he really was.
"What," Sasori said.
Yahiko spun, walking backwards. "I'm choosing to go with the strategy of blindly trusting you, making all my friends feel more and more worried about my mental state, and then having an intense heart-to-heart that I'll barely tell anyone about."
Sasori didn't speak, but Yahiko had the feeling he'd surprised him.
"I should kill you just to teach you to keep your mouth shut," Sasori said.
"Yeah, but then how would I give you samples of what let me survive your poison?" Yahiko asked, still walking. "I think getting nothing out of this would be more annoying, but what do I know?"
Sasori stared at him again, and then shuffled onto the water, grumbling.
"You know, giving you a chance to make a counter-antidote to the only thing protecting me from you concerns me a lot more than you think," Yahiko told him.
"You're a much bigger fool if you think that your salamander is what kept me from killing you."
Itsuki only began to follow once Sasori was past him, and Yahiko pretended not to see Kanna climb down from her hiding spot, or the look she shared with Itsuki.
"I don't think that," Yahiko said. "I have a very realistic view of how little I can do against your ranged attacks—"
"Stop talking," Sasori spoke over him. "The poison I used on you was never meant for you, and yet here you are. Don't bother trying to talk me into underestimating you."
Yahiko didn't break stride, but he mentally tripped, suddenly very aware of the poison still in his body, because that meant...
...said poison had later been used to take out the Third Kazekage.
"Ah," Yahiko said, because how did someone respond to that?
Emon kept it isolated, but couldn't break it down, and he'd chalked it off on her inexperience. Now though, he thought that Sasori was just that good.
And sure, maybe he should've told everyone his plan and let Joji-sensei lecture him.
.
.
.
"I'm Nagato. I've heard a lot about you," Nagato said, attempting to seem professional and polite.
Sasori ignored both his presence and his outstretched hand as he shuffled past him, and Yahiko shook his head. He leaned a sympathetic arm on Nagato's shoulder.
"You have the charisma of an ant," he whispered.
Sasori stopped higher up on the sand and stared at an empty space in the sky where one of the towers used to be.
"Shut up," Nagato hissed back at him, awkwardly lowering his hand.
"Here I thought Oka was depressing, but this is a different kind of sad," Hidan said, grinning.
Sasori's eyes flicked to him like he hadn't noticed him before.
"Who was it that said someone wouldn't want to come here to play ninja again?" Yahiko asked airily.
Hidan didn't blink as he raised his middle finger.
"You failed to include the part of your offer where I'm expected to work with others like me," Sasori said. "I don't work well with people like him."
Hidan tch'ed, waving him off. "Don't you worry your ugly face, puppet bitch. I don't want to be around you either."
Nagato started to move to intervene, but Yahiko only leaned harder on his shoulder.
"Better to let them settle this now than hold a grudge later," Yahiko said, leaning close. "I more or less gave Sasori free reign of the village, and we won't always be around."
Nagato looked at him. "Why would you—Why?"
Yahiko shrugged, "I'm just using our semi-tested method of confusing missing-nin until they decide not to kill us anymore."
Nagato muttered something about how Oka was supposed to be looking up to him and not the other way around that Yahiko cheerfully ignored.
"The demon of Yugakure, hm?" Sasori said, almost to himself.
Yahiko expected Hidan to grin wider at that. He thought he might ask if his bingo book entry mentioned Jashinism or laugh and say those warm water heathens weren't completely worthless after all, but he didn't do either.
In fact, Hidan didn't look happy about that at all.
Huh.
What did Maho and Oka do to him?
Sasori didn't seem to know what to make of it either. He was still for a second, staring at him, and then his spine-like tail burst out from under his jacket.
Nagato tensed as it whipped toward Hidan, but Yahiko only watched the point stab the sand where the Jashinist had been the second before.
Hidan was already mid backflip.
"It's bold that Yugakure decided to take it upon themselves to call you the Second Coming of Zabuza for killing a portion of a measly village," Sasori said as his tail rose lazily, hovering as Hidan landed on his feet.
Hidan stuck a pinky in his ear, bored-looking, "You say something, puppet fucker?"
Nagato sighed and closed his eyes.
"You should tell Hidan to stay away from Sasori, you know, when we're alone," Yahiko said.
Nagato's eyebrow twitched.
"Annoying," Sasori said. He peeled off his mask and opened his mouth.
Yahiko blinked as the shell's jaw unhinged, then again as a hail of senbon shot out at Hidan.
He lost count after the first two dozen.
Hidan's hand twitched down to his pouch, but he stopped himself from reaching in, and Yahiko didn't miss the split-second of his fist clenching before he darted to the side, senbon glittering where he'd been.
Sasori turned his head to follow him, and Yahiko contemplated the fact that they might never be able to use this part of the beach again.
"Them doing this won't settle anything," Namekuji spoke. "Why are you really letting them fight?"
Slime was soaking through the bottom of his sleeve, but Yahiko didn't move his arm. He sighed. "Why does everyone always think I'm plotting something?"
Hidan took off his shirt and threw it to the side in almost one motion, then switched places with it an instant later. His poor shirt suffered an instant and tragic death.
Yahiko entirely blamed Nagato on him being able to do that that fast.
"What was it the puppet said? Save it for someone who believes you," Namekuji said.
Yahiko sighed more dramatically.
The puppet shell closed its mouth, and Hidan pointed at him. "You'd make such a shit sacrifice it's not even worth the effort," he shouted. "So fuck off."
Sasori didn't hear him, "I expected more out of a demon. It takes so little to be called S-ranked these days."
Hidan closed his eyes and ran a hand through his hair. "You really know the fastest way to piss me off. Warm water this, warm water that. I killed a bunch of bastards that deserved it, but when did I say that was special?"
Sasori stared at him.
Hidan chuckled. "Besides, you were on the field longer than I was. You don't think you spawned your share of fucked up rumors of shit you never claimed to be—"
"Is this all you can do?" Sasori interrupted him, waving his tail. "Act like a coward and run your mouth?"
Hidan laughed so hard his shoulders shook. "You can kiss my entire ass."
Nagato's eyes opened. He was coated in so much slime it was like a second, thicker layer of skin. It felt dry and hard like Namekuji's slime after it crusted into his clothes.
"About time," Yahiko drawled, moving his hand off his shoulder and shaking off slime.
Nagato didn't respond, but his eyes were on Sasori's tail as it cut down towards Hidan again. He bent his knees and disappeared, throwing up sand in his wake.
"I bet you don't even have a dick—" Hidan was shouting at him, crouched like he was about to jump when the tip of the tail stopped in front of him. Sand fell over Yahiko's sandals.
Nagato held both corners of a vertebra-shaped section of the tail, eyes narrowed, refusing to move as the metal strained to reach Hidan. The slime around his hands bubbled purple, and Yahiko watched chunks of his slime coat hit the ground, sheared off as the tail thrashed.
Sasori's eyes latched onto Nagato as the tail twisted, joints creaking as the tip tried to stab him, but Nagato was just close enough to the end that it couldn't curl enough.
The longer he held onto it, the more Sasori's stare intensified. "You said your name was Nagato?" he finally asked.
Nagato stared back. "You were asked here to be one of our ninja, not for this," he said. "Hidan of Yugakure doesn't exist. Attack him, and you're attacking us. You should remember that if you want Yahiko to give you what you want."
Sasori fell silent. The tail went limp.
"Well, shit," Hidan said, still crouched. "You are fucking scary, red-head."
"Us?" Sasori asked.
Nagato froze, and then he sighed, "You didn't tell him anything, did you?"
Yahiko laced his hands behind his head. "I guess I didn't," he said breezily.
Nagato dropped the tail with another sigh, and it slithered back under Sasori's coat.
"You know, it might be easier to move around if you came out of that puppet," Yahiko said, and Sasori's eyes flicked to him. "It's not fooling anyone, so what's the point?"
Sasori didn't answer.
"No one here is going to attack you for being Sasori of the Red Sand," Nagato said.
"You irritate me," Sasori growled.
Yahiko watched the shell lean forward on its arms, spread its legs out, and blinked when the entire back popped off and hit the ground, taking the coat with it. The shell's gaze dropped to the sand, suddenly lifeless, and then the whole thing collapsed in on itself.
It had looked almost human the second before, but now with the joints visible in its arms and the legs twisted unnaturally, he couldn't believe he didn't see it as a puppet before Namekuji told him.
"They said you had pink hair. I just didn't fucking believe it," Hidan said.
The hunched shape in the middle stood slowly, turning to look at them, and Yahiko thought that his eyes looked more like a puppet's than his actual puppet did.
Nagato's eyes widened and Yahiko felt some of the same surprise, because Sasori of the Red Sand couldn't be much older than he was, if not younger.
"So, that's what he meant by kid," Yahiko noted. He had the thought that Sasori pretended to be Hiruko not just because of bounty hunters, but to avoid having to prove himself to everyone he met.
Yahiko was well-acquainted with having to do just that, and while he mostly didn't mind, he could see the appeal of avoiding shocked eyes and disbelief all the time.
"You're one to call someone a kid," Sasori said. He wore the tan shirt of a Suna-nin, but Yahiko had the feeling that his flak-jacket had suffered the same fate as Hidan's shirt.
Yahiko laughed, but felt thrown off by his voice. "Not what I meant. The shinobi that came with me, Itsuki, said you were a kid and I didn't believe it. Even your bingo book picture looks older."
Disinterested, Sasori only stepped out of his puppet, flipped a scroll out of his weapons pouch, and turned his back to them to seal it. He was just as hard to read as his puppet had been, even with his face uncovered.
"Nagato will fill you in on the situation here," Yahiko decided, suddenly deaf to Nagato's immediate protests.
Hidan snorted.
"Why?" Namekuji asked again.
Yahiko turned away and lowered his voice, "If I learned anything from Hidan, it's that the fastest way to make someone hostile and full of bloodlust take us seriously is to kick their ass. Nagato didn't do what I thought he would, but I think a message was still sent."
Namekuji looked at him. "You knew he'd intervene before the loud one opened his mouth."
"I know a lot of things," Yahiko said airily.
"Oka was right about you."
Yahiko shook his head, "You keep your little sister from being imprisoned by Suna-nin, and this is what you get."
赤 砂
"We've been staying here," Nagato said. "There's room, if you—"
Sasori ignored his attempt to show him the shelter entrance, but Nagato couldn't say he was surprised.
"The rest of the village isn't much better," he admitted as Sasori stared at the trees, and then in the opposite direction, at the sea, memorizing the area. "I'll see if we can find a place for a workshop, but almost everything is still being rebuilt. Even if it's started now, the progress will be slow."
"Show me your plans."
Nagato blinked, "Show you?"
Sasori stared back at him, expressionless, telling him how likely it was that he'd repeat it.
"Okay," Nagato said a little awkwardly, but hesitated. It was one thing to trust Sasori to work for them, knowing that not even Yahiko could tell him what he might do with Emon's poison, and another to tell him what and where they planned to build.
Sasori clicked his tongue at his silence. "Are you going to stand there like a fool and keep wasting my time?"
It went both ways, he reminded himself.
Sasori was trusting Yahiko to keep his word, after all.
"I don't have them," Nagato finally said. "How everything will be laid out is handled by Keitaru, a civilian—"
Sasori was already walking away before he could explain more, leaving Nagato blinking at his back.
A/N: 赤 砂 - Red Sand