"Seal my heart and break my pride,

I've nowhere to stand and now nowhere to hide,

Align my heart, my body, my mind,

To face what I've done,

And do my time,"

-Dust Bowl Dance, Mumford & Sons

I watched a cluster of small stars, dim ones, through a hole in the clouds.

I couldn't even see the moon.

"It wasn't all bad," Maho said quietly.

I looked down. His legs were buried under a mound of sand next to me. He'd done it to himself because he was cold and his cloak was folded and sealed so he didn't get sand on it.

"Iwagakure," he clarified. "I don't miss a lot, but sometimes I wish we had more than fish. Rice fish, seaweed fish, kelp fish, fried fish, broiled fish—" he slumped down with a sigh.

"People eat seaweed and rice without fish," I pointed out.

Maho laid back and spread his arms out, "I really miss kufi."

"Snails and clams aren't fish either."

Maho didn't look at me, but purposefully jerked his leg, and sand broke apart and fell over my leg in chunks. "And pani puri too," he said.

I stared at him. He wouldn't look back at me, but the corner of his mouth quirked up into a smile.

I pulled the ends of my cloak out of the sand and looked out at the sea.

Enyo walked in circles on top of the shallowest part of the water, concentrating on a line of brown, stringy yarn wound messily between his fingers and around the back of his hand. He walked without making ripples as he twisted his fingers to push a needle through part of the web. He pulled at a thread in the middle, somehow tightening it around the needle.

I couldn't tell what he was making.

"What's kufi?" I finally asked.

"Ice cream with milk," Maho said, making a cylinder shape with his hands. "It's made in a mold, with pistachios and red berries. You're supposed to let the milk simmer first, but some of the vendors were only worried about opening the earliest and making as much as they could before everyone else, and never did."

His smile was faint, "Ainu made the best kufi," he finished, dropping his hands.

Someone who would've handed him over to the Stonebreakers without a second thought, because he was here and not there.

"And pani-pur-ee?" I asked, and he snorted, giggling.

"Puu-ri," he corrected between breaths.

I didn't repeat it, and that seemed to make him giggle more.

"It's—" he sat up, shaking his head, and sand slid out from between brown strands. "It's dough. Thin, fried dough with different things inside. Depended on the cook. I liked the tamarind mix. Liquid is always poured into it, like stew, and had a lot of different peppers and spices. And salt? I don't know."

I hummed, "I think Naga would die if he tried it."

"It's not that spicy."

"He never used spices when we had a kitchen for a reason."

Maho didn't respond, and I remembered that he hadn't been there for Jiraiya and that house or Tsunade. It felt like he had been. I could see him in a corner of that room, hugging himself and shivering and too new to know how to talk to us.

Like Osamu's awkward looks and out of place concern.

"It came with stuffing made of potatoes and onions and..." he trailed off, squinted, and shrugged. "The matron would make it, and I'd eat out of the bowl by hand when she wasn't looking. She punished me so much for that, but I could never stop."

"You could make it," I said, and he turned his head, "When we have more than just fish."

"Not even if I had all the ingredients. No one ever taught me how to cook."

"Naga would if you asked," I told him. "He doesn't get to try that much anymore."

Not when I knew how to gut fish and make enough of a fire to make the meat edible, Yahiko didn't mind his fish a little burned, Joji fished with Enyo and Matsu, and Mamoru-sensei never needed Naga to cook for him in the first place.

Maho looked at the water, "Yeah, maybe."

"He'd make time," I said. "He always does."

"I didn't even say why I said that—" his voiced pitched high and he wouldn't look at me again.

"Yahiko's voice broke the most when—"

"That was normal. It happens, sometimes," he said indignantly.

"It happens late for some people—"

Maho threw handfuls of sand at me and I twisted away.

I looked up again as it splattered down my back, but I couldn't see the same stars. The clouds had moved, but I didn't remember where they'd been, or if I was looking at the right part of the sky. It all looked the same, sometimes.

The thought surprised me, that I was used to the sky.

"Why are you a ninja?"

Enyo stood on the sand, the needle having disappeared beneath neat lines of yarn.

Maho made a noise at him, then stopped, because Enyo wasn't looking at him.

I thought about it.

"You tol' me—" Enyo stopped, frowning, "You told me you like this. The stars and the sun," he said, jerking his chin up at the sky. "You cou' do it all the time. No one'd stop you. They'd sup-port you," he went on, enunciating the word carefully. "Storm God. Twilight God. And then no one could tell you what to do, even if they tried."

Who would use it to try and hurt us if I went and retired like Mamoru-sensei? The people who still supported Hanzo, probably. Root, maybe.

"Twilight God?" I asked.

Enyo looked embarrassed. "Yahiko," he said, then made a face. "Lord Yahiko," he corrected, and sounded more sure.

"Why twilight?"

"Because they say it was twilight when he went and killed Hanzo," Maho muttered. "And it doesn't only mean between day and night. It could mean the time when something's about to end. The old Akatsuki finished dying that day when you and Yahiko killed him, and the new Akatsuki was born when the sun rose."

I tilted my head at him.

"What?" he asked, and his voice dropped to a mumble, "I go out, sometimes."

"You're always late when we train," Enyo pointed out.

Maho blew out a breath, "That's because I can never find Joji-sensei, not because I stop to eavesdrop."

Enyo turned his nose up at him.

"If they talk about Yahiko, and it doesn't include you—they call him the God of Endings," Maho said, looking at me. "A lot of people still don't believe that you—or anyone—was strong enough to beat Hanzo without being more than a shinobi, even with how long it's been."

I hummed.

"You could tell them the truth, Wolf," Maho said, nudging me.

Who would believe me, so long after it happened? And some things were better kept private, anyway. Even if I explained it all—the grief-fueled anger, or the anger-fueled grief—it would just be pulling open an ending.

I stood without answering, and ignored the sorry look Maho gave me. It was too dark to see more than a few feet, and there wasn't much to see, but if I walked far enough, I'd see fires made from fish grease or whatever couldn't be eaten or used. I'd see the people we'd done all this for.

"How old are you, Enyo?" I asked.

"You didn' answer—"

"And when's your birthday?"

Enyo didn't respond, but I only waited until he did.

"Ten," he eventually said, then paused, "Eleven," he said, less sure.

I waited, still.

"I don't know—what's a birthday?"

I looked back, but then Matsu told me he hadn't had time to do anything but survive, hadn't he?

When would he have had time for birthdays?

"Why do you want to be a ninja?" I asked instead, and he made an annoyed noise at me. "It's hard. Too hard, sometimes. You could help us in other ways."

Enyo went silent. "I can't," he said, suddenly subdued.

"You're good with a needle. Maho and Naga could use you, even if you don't want to be a medic-nin. You could mend clothes or shoes or—"

"No," Enyo said.

"You can carry steel frames easier than a civilian can, or try. Or bricks. Even if you don't know how a building becomes one, someone could teach you. You wouldn't have to kill anyone."

Enyo didn't speak.

I looked up higher, like I might be able to see all the smoke from the fires. "You could help build earth walls—"

"I can't use earth-style," he interrupted, and I stopped.

"Ah."

"I want protect Matsu," Enyo said bitingly.

I turned to him as he shoved the yarn deep in his pocket.

"That's why. I want to be one so no one ever beats him up again."

I met his stare, "Even if it means you'll have to kill people you never met?"

Enyo didn't look away from me, but he didn't answer.

"Even if you end up feeling like it's all you can do?"

"Hey, that's not true—"

"Yes," Enyo loudly interrupted him. "I'll—I'll be anything if he doesn't have to protect me 'nymore."

I hummed again, and looked away first. "You're right," I finally said. "There are a lot of things I could do, but most of them mean being left behind."

"What does that mean?"

"They'd keep going," I answered, and maybe it didn't make sense to him, but it would. "I'd stop," I said simply, "And they wouldn't."

I'd be Mamoru-sensei.

He was still involved in what we did sometimes, but most things he only heard about after they'd happened. Like the daimyo.

"What do you want to do?" Maho asked, unhappy-sounding.

I glanced at him.

"You both want to do things for other people," Maho explained. "But what do you want for yourself? What's your dream?"

Enyo didn't move when Maho looked to him. He only stared back in silence.

"I want to make Konan's dream come true," I said, knowing it wasn't what he'd asked.

"No, that doesn't count," he responded fast, almost before I finished speaking, shaking his head at me.

I reconsidered, "I want to keep you from going back to Iwagakure."

"Oka—"

I crouched, so abruptly that the rest of the sentence died in his throat. "Is this the part where you tell me that it's not normal to not have a dream—"

His eyes were sad.

"—where you say that most people do, back in Iwagakure?"

His expression went blank. He grabbed my shoulder and squeezed until I stopped talking.

I looked at him, waiting for him to speak, and then he shoved me backwards.

I had both hands in the sand to stop myself from falling before I processed what happened. And then I saw his smile.

"I had to," he said, and tried to smile. "It's just what little brothers are supposed to do. We mess with older siblings because we can."

I considered that as I pushed myself back up. I made sure to look into his eyes as I spoke to Enyo, "Help me bury him and I'll get you better thread."

Maho's eyes widened. "What?"

"It's yarn, and it's good qua-lity," Enyo said, hands in his pockets as he came closer. "I got it from Joji-sensei." He kicked Maho's buried legs.

"What do you want then?"

Maho attempted to wiggle free until I threatened him with the half-snake sign and he went still, holding his hands up.

Enyo glanced lazily at me and pointed at the twine around my wrist. "I want to fix that."

"Deal."

Enyo nodded and got down in the sand.

"Wait, wait—ow," Maho said as I carefully pulled his arm down and pinned it under my knee. "I was just messing around. Don't—Oka—."

"I'm messing around too," I said, pushing sand over his arm.

.

.

.

"I think my vision is getting worse," Matsu said.

I handed back the screwdriver. He bent over a screw bolting a door to the ground as I grabbed another screw from a bag.

"I don't think I've ever seen anyone with glasses."

"I did once. A Suna-nin," I said, taking the screwdriver as he held it over his shoulder. I twisted a square metal sheet into the floor until it stopped moving and dropped screws into the other corner holes.

Matsu poked at a loose hinge as I tightened the screws.

"Are they still staring?" I asked.

"No. Maybe they finally realized we're just people," Matsu said, wiggling another bolt. "All of these are loose."

"I'll ask about it. It'd embarrass them, wouldn't it?" I asked, poking him in the back with the screwdriver until he took it from me.

"It'd embarrass me, and I barely know what I'm doing."

I pulled a metal sheet from a pile and slid it above the first one. "When's your birthday, Matsu?"

Matsu stopped screwing. "Enyo asked you about it?"

"No. Why would he?"

"Because you celebrate birthdays, and sooner or later he'd ask about it. Or... he might not. He used to be a curious kid," he said, bending down more to look at something. "May. That's a good month, I think."

I took the screwdriver back. "What do you want?"

"Nothing. I have everything I want."

I hummed. "Maybe Enyo would know."

Matsu looked at me, then scrubbed a hand down his face. "A chikuzen-biwa."

"Okay." I held out the screwdriver.

Matsu didn't take it. "You know what it is?"

"No, but it won't be me who gets it for you."

"The daimyo reopened a trade route?"

I tapped him with the screwdriver. "That's never mattered."

.

.

.

"Could I get a chikuzen-biwa for my birthday?"

Naga paused with his spoon against the rim of a bowl.

Yahiko swallowed fish. "I don't think you know what that is."

"What is it?" Naga asked.

"An instrument," Yahiko said airily, finding meat between the bones of a fish. "But I'm sure Oka can tell you more."

I answered by taking a bite out of a fish and ignoring him.

"You want to learn to play?" Naga asked, surprise leaking into his voice.

"Sure," I said, taking another bite.

He hesitated, "Why do you want it?"

"Because."

Naga looked at his soup.

Yahiko waved a bone at me. "You know how much of a hassle it would be?"

"That's why I asked."

His mouth opened, then closed.

"I could ask Ren," Naga mused.

"You're serious?"

"It wouldn't hurt."

戦争の子供たち

The forge, if it could be called that, had already been too small for Etsudo, Asuga, their tools, clothes, and bedrolls, let alone three more kids.

Mamoru watched Sen, Hachirou, and Yua in the back corner of the room, sitting together on a nest of thin blankets.

Sen held Hachi's shoulders as he unwrapped old bandages around the stub where her knee ended. Both were determined to handle the cleaning and bandaging themselves, even against his advice. She shuddered as he lifted her leg, and Hachi's voice was hoarse from apologizing.

She ducked her head and squeezed him as he pulled the last of them off, and his voice broke on the next apology.

Yua sat quietly behind them, sucking on her thumb, and stayed that way even as dirty, pink-stained bandages were dropped next to her.

They were in their underclothes, but it wouldn't have helped, because the heat in the air still made him uncomfortable.

Liquid metal hissed and steamed as Etsudo poured it into a cast, and Mamoru caught Hachi's minute flinch. Yua still didn't move.

Mamoru didn't take his eyes off her.

It wasn't the first time he'd observed her eerie silence. She ate what Hachi or Sen offered her with few sounds and had no reaction to a hammer being banged against stone or the screech of metal when Asuga tested Etsudo's weapons out.

Hachi had learned to hide his flinches. Sen, in a more aware state, covered her ears.

Yua looked and watched, but she never let herself make a sound.

The reactions of the former didn't surprise him. Trauma, he knew, tended to manifest the clearest in civilians. But it was Yua who, when he looked at her, dragged up the memory of a time before he was a sensei, when it was only him and a little girl in a blood red scarf in a damaged house he thought he'd die in.

It wasn't the apathy that that little girl had looked at him with that reminded him of Yua or the lack of fear, but that she was a child, a toddler, with eyes that looked too old for her face. Eyes unintentionally made that way by siblings trying to help her survive.

Yua turned back to look at him, catching his stare, and he heard what they'd told her, be quiet or they'll hurt you, Yua.

Don't move until you hear us, Yua.

Use this knife to protect yourself, Enyo.

Don't come out for anyone but me, Oka, no matter what.

But this—Mamoru could have prevented this. Yua—maybe not, but what happened to Sen and Hachi didn't have to happen.

The kids had stopped existing to Etsudo the second she'd started on the work of burning her wood reserves into charcoal. She was in her element, and it was like only the furnace, the tools in front of her, and the vision she had in her head were in the room.

She wore gloves, the old-fashioned, hard labor kind, and a face shield, but it was her own body that did most of the work in keeping her cooler in the face of all that heat.

Mamoru had decided to keep it to himself a long time ago, but there'd been a time when he thought she was better than him at water-style, and ninjutsu in general.

His kid-self had been jealous of her natural grasp at molding her chakra into an element and her control. Eventually, during a stint in Sunagakure, she'd refused to suffer through the desert heat with the rest of them and taught herself to adjust the temperature of the water she made.

She'd teased him endlessly about not being able to get much more than room temperature out of his own water, but they'd been fueled by the invincibility of kids who thought they couldn't die no matter how much they were warned otherwise.

War made quick work of those kinds of kids. They either lived long enough for their childhoods to die, died quickly, or shattered completely. And their genin team experienced all three.

If he touched her, her sweat would be freezing. Once, she'd been thought of as a prodigy too.

Mamoru tore his gaze back to the kids.

Sen was barely conscious as Hachi wrapped a quarter of a fresh bandage roll around her knee. He'd known from the moment he first saw them that if he'd put it out there that he, or the Akatsuki were looking for kids to train, they would've found him or a ninja associated with him, and he'd have made sure they never did this.

He'd sat on the idea instead, like his students had ever left him in peace once they came up with a plan for him.

The Second Shinobi World War had been a wakeup call, and this was starting to feel like another one.

"Etsu," he called, because she'd want to know he was leaving, but she didn't hear him. He didn't want to wait for her, because there was a nasty feeling churning in his gut.

He knew it as guilt.

.

.

.

Mamoru eventually found Joji near the senbon-ridden part of the beach.

He eyed the senbon as he stopped behind Joji and Enyo, then the corpse of what had probably been a binturong that had wandered into them died. He didn't know what game Sasori was playing at by leaving them there.

It spoke of arrogance, like it was a statement of how even if he came here, he only did as he wanted. Sasori was the only one who could safely clean this up, and he was choosing not to. Or, and it was the worse option in his opinion, Sasori just didn't care and hadn't given a second thought to the senbon or the beach after he'd met Hidan.

Ninja who didn't care about their own equipment were a different type of dangerous. Even Hidan, who emptied weapons pouches as soon as he found them, kept the scroll with his scythe on him at all times.

Mamoru only saw said scroll once, but he'd been surprised at how new it looked because Hidan used his scythe without any care for the condition it would be in after he was done.

Sasori didn't even seem to care about his own puppets by the way he'd treated them when Oka and Hidan found him. Mamoru hadn't been there, but something had made him drop them in a way that left porcelain-like chips all over, and even a wooden finger or two.

The puppet master had moved the broken pieces out of his way but hadn't done anything else with them, which meant they ended up reported to him because no one wanted to touch them.

If Sasori found them worthless, why bring them all the way here?

He couldn't have known he'd have to build his own lab if he wanted one, could he?

...how would he have known?

He was giving himself a headache. There was no use thinking about it, not when his students had already decided how things would be.

Mamoru would never understand their easy confidence.

He lifted his gaze to Joji just as he yanked Enyo's hands apart before he finished making the dog sign and held one of his hands up.

"Slow," Joji half-signed.

"I know," Enyo signed back, frustrated as he swiped blood off his nose.

Joji threw his hand away, "Then do it again."

Enyo glared up at him as he stepped back. He counted to three under his breath and shoved his hands together—

Joji had his arm twisted behind his back in an instant. Enyo shuddered but didn't make a sound.

"Joji," Mamoru greeted mildly, with no intention to interrupt.

He didn't think it possible that he'd see Joji take on a student after Yahiko, let alone three.

Bloodless Joji, he'd been called during the war. He'd worn a rebreather then, like anyone did when near the same battlefield as Hanzo, and had worked under a team that had assassinated the commanders of any enemy-nin that made camp in the Land of Rain.

It had worked to disorganize them or make them retreat. For a while. They were efficient, and made it through multiple camps in a night if they were quick.

Joji was the only one of his team who always came back without blood on him, even when the enemy-nin were alerted and they had to slaughter entire camps.

He'd eventually been pulled off the field by his commander, and Mamoru had stopped hearing about him. Until he'd lost the responsibilities he'd had and found out that Joji had been slowly dying the entire time when he turned up in front of his students.

Mamoru first met Sana on the field, too, through Tadao, before she defected. Even their intel division, as sparse as it was, eventually had to fight on the front lines.

Oka would tell him to simply, find another contact, if he complained about it, and he'd remember why he was only their sensei in name alone now, and it had little to do with them not being kids anymore.

He shook his head.

Enyo dropped his head in the sand and groaned, arms around his stomach. He twisted his body to tentatively touch his ankle and hissed.

Joji stood over him, signing at him, "Stand."

Enyo bit his lip but tried to push himself up. He fell back the second he tried to put weight on his ankle and couldn't hide his loud, uneven breathing.

Joji hadn't lowered his hand.

Mamoru was against teaching kids to endure pain like this, even if he understood why it was done. Enyo wouldn't be spared in battle because he'd hurt his ankle

Enyo reached out instinctively like he might hold onto Joji, but stopped himself. He got on his knees, then carefully stood, clenching his fists as he put his right foot down.

Five seconds passed before Joji signed at him, "Faster."

Enyo's eyes half-closed. He dropped down, shaking hard, then he stood again.

Joji had him repeat it until he could stand fast enough to deflect an attack, and only then lowered his hand.

Enyo collapsed and rubbed his palms hard against his eyes.

Joji turned around and signed, "Ask."

"Has Yahiko talked to you about the crazy idea they had for us to start an Academy?"

Joji didn't answer, which meant he had, and it hadn't gone well.

"It's even crazier that they think we're the best candidates for the job. Two washed-up ninja who don't know how to stay out of their way."

"Speak for yourself."

Behind him, Enyo held the end of a used-looking bandage roll with his teeth, in the middle of wrapping the rest around his swollen ankle.

Mamoru's smile was faint, "I think they're right."

He could easily see Sen in Enyo's place if Matsu hadn't been stubborn.

Joji said nothing, because it was a responsibility he didn't want and they both knew it.

Mamoru had made up his mind a long time ago that he'd had enough of kids, but responsibility didn't often come as a choice. It was nothing but dumb luck that it took this long for two kids to mess up this badly, even if the thought made his gut twist.

"It might take years just to get it close to what it used to be," Mamoru said in the silence between them. "No records of how many there are, nowhere to keep them, and nothing to teach them but what we remember."

Joji still didn't respond.

"Not to mention that we both know Konohagakure loves to use kids as spies."

"I am not a teacher," Joji signed at him.

He was right. He'd never chosen to be a teacher. Yahiko didn't know what the word no meant, and Nagato and Oka had forced more kids on him. Still—

"Enyo seems to be turning out well."

Joji's eyes narrowed slightly. Enyo openly watched them.

"Will you pester me too if I refuse?" Joji eventually signed.

"Oka once said something like, if they turn out half as good as Yahiko is, it'll be worth it," Mamoru told him. "And the prowess that kid has with that blade—I can't take credit for that. I can handle the kids you weed out, and the recordkeeping."

Joji looked out at the sea and didn't sign back.

"You willing to take care of the kids that hurt themselves next time this happens, or get rid of the bodies?" Mamoru asked, because it was inevitable that there'd be a next time.

Beside him and Joji, who had the power to make people listen when they made a decision? The power that came with being branded Akatsuki.

"Too many," Joji finally signed.

Mamoru paused. "Too many?"

"Kids," he clarified with another sign.

"Yeah," Mamoru agreed, pinching his nose at the thought of all the work ahead of them. "We'll need to start off small, find a way to test them to see what they already know, and come up with a system of keeping track of them."

"You will do it," Joji signed.

Mamoru looked at him.

Joji tapped himself and shook his head.

He felt another headache forming at the back of his head, but the feeling in his gut had gone away. "When we get funds—" eventually, "I refuse to manage them."

Joji didn't respond, but he didn't say no. He pulled a scroll from his pouch and tossed it to Enyo, who fumbled to catch it.

Enyo's eyes lit up at it. "We're going fishing, sensei? Now?"

"Rest your leg," Joji signed at Enyo, signaling to Mamoru that the conversation was over.

A/N: 戦争の子供たち- War children

Nagato - 18, Oka - 15