"I know dark clouds will gather 'round me,
I know my way is rough and steep,
but beauteous fields lie just before me,
where gods redeemed their vigils keep,"
-Wayfaring Stranger, Reinaeiry
Moss flattened wetly under my feet and tangled weeds brushed against my shins.
"There are traps all over out here," Chojuro nervously warned us, standing at the end of a path. The grass was stained rust red, like someone had started marking a way through and couldn't finish.
"They were for—from the war," he continued. "But now all they do is make it harder to escape."
Small, circular buildings were spread out around the field, bases or outposts from somewhere that'd tried to get a hold on Kirigakure.
The one closest to me was covered in so many weeds that I couldn't tell what color it used to be. Grass sprouted through holes in the roof.
Lightning was the closest, I remembered, think of Yahiko's map, and Konohagakure had been fighting Iwagakure.
I looked to the right when I saw movement. An older man was pulling long stalks of grass from another abandoned building, barely visible through the mist.
He hadn't noticed us. I knew, because he froze as Chojuro spoke. He quickly abandoned the stalks and bent down, taking off his basket and hurriedly tying bundles of grass together with string.
It'd be impossible to run with if he didn't. His hat was big and round, hiding his face and part of the gray cloth over his mouth and chin.
Chojuro tensed. Yahiko was looking at something in the grass ahead, a hand on the handle of the nagamaki, something he thought he'd need to cut; Hidan was sitting on the grass.
Naga sighed and asked, "Do you know where the traps are, Chojuro?"
"I wish I did," he answered apologetically.
Naga had his eyes on the man as he quickly stood. "If you help us," he spoke loudly, making the other man freeze. "We'll pay you."
The other man pretended not to hear him.
Chojuro's eyes widened. "No—You shouldn't have—" he sputtered quietly. "You can't trust him to keep his word—"
"We could make it through them on our own, but we can't avoid traps hidden underground," Naga interrupted him, his tone patient, keeping his eyes on the other man. "But we can't stay here, and I can't sense them."
Chojuro went silent, taking a step back. "You're right. Sorry."
"Don't be," Yahiko said, hands behind his head. "You know more about mist-nin than we do. That's why we let you take the lead. Nagato here is just overly friendly. But at the same time, I really don't want to meet those hunter-nin Mei kept away."
"No, I know, but..." he trailed off, looking away. "You didn't even say how much you'd pay."
"It's a trap," Yahiko easily, quietly agreed. "You know it and we know it, but we still have to do it."
Naga was fully facing the other man, who was trying to disappear into the mist. "I'm a sensor-nin," he told him, and the other man froze, turning his head to look back.
"Swordsmen," the other man named us, his voice hoarse and thick. "You all... had... it coming."
Yahiko tilted his head.
"But fine," the man continued, sounding like he wanted to cough. He pointed at a patch of grass. "Step... there. Around this building... I disarmed them."
Me first, I signed behind my back, walking ahead.
The other man's stare lingered on me for a long second, and then he eyed the Hiramekarei.
The grass crunched as they followed me.
"If you're so bored, why are you here, gray hair?" Namekuji asked Hidan as he stood.
"A snail wouldn't understand," Hidan said lazily, cracking his elbow.
"No one forced you to be here. You asked to come."
"I don't speak insect—"
The other man shuffled back when I neared him, and I only saw why when the moss underneath my right foot flared a sudden bright orange. The weeds turned to ash instantly under the heat of the explosive tag and—
—the heat dispersed as I drained the chakra from it. The word explode faded to a dull black.
Chojuro inhaled sharply behind me.
"You lied," I mused, a little impressed as he stared at me with wide, terrified eyes.
"I didn't even get to bet on how long it'd take," Yahiko lamented.
I shook my head and asked, "If I were a Seven Ninja Swordsmen, what would happen now?"
He fell back in answer, bundles spilling onto the grass behind him. "I... was dead... either way."
I paused.
He didn't do it because he hated the swordsmen or because he didn't believe Naga, or to escape. He'd done it because he thought seeing us was a death sentence and, if he was going to die anyway, he wouldn't go quietly.
I hummed.
"I'm not going to kill you," I said, and he looked guarded and confused and distrustful as I stepped off the paper tag. "Because we're not the swordsmen. We're from Amegakure."
.
.
.
"Why'd you do that?" Naga asked, too low for anyone else to hear.
I stopped, holding a (stolen) ration bar next to his over a small, wispy fire in a cracked cup.
If I listened hard enough, I could hear murmurs from the end of the alley. There was less mist here than on the field, but more of it was above us.
It made spying with summons impossible.
We were at the bottom of Minakami, or it felt like it, because the path leading deeper in sloped up.
Yahiko was asleep on his side, half-using Namekuji as a pillow, half being used as one. It was hard to tell he wasn't fully healed from being poisoned except now, when his exhaustion forced him to stop.
Hidan was asleep too, slumped against the wall.
Chojuro, I knew, was sitting against the opposite wall behind me with his legs pulled up, gripping the scroll he'd reluctantly sealed the Hiramekarei into, watching people pass by.
You didn't need to look harmless to blend into Minakami, or not like ninja. You just had to look like you didn't belong anywhere.
It had been around twelve hours since we left the ship, and now it was close to dusk.
"Oka," Naga said quietly, drawing me back to his question.
Why did you tell him we were from Amegakure, Oka?
"Because we're not mercenaries," I answered, just as quiet, turning the ration bar over. "When I talked to Mei, she didn't talk about the rebellion like it's ours, but just theirs. Their fight, their revolution, her chance. She wants us to care about Kirigakure because of what she believes about sacrifice, not because she wants us to see it as ours too. And she's right. It's not. Kirigakure belongs to mist-nin. But we're still part of it. People should know we're here because a daimyo can change his mind. If we do what Mei wants and he doesn't agree, what did we do it for?" I asked, musing as I watched twigs crackle and burn in the fire.
Naga was watching me, taking bites out of his lukewarm ration bar.
"Minakami is isolated," I continued, eyes drifting to the moss and green slime seeping through the cracks in the wall. "It's the only place that can know about us because they have no one to tell. They're not real mist-nin. Mei's clan died because they weren't. And if mist-nin fight for themselves, why would prisoners and traitors be more loyal? If selling each other out worked that guy who disarmed those traps would never admit to being able to do it."
Naga tapped his bar against mine, and I blinked at him.
He was smiling. "You might not remember, but we used to make fun of each other for talking like that. We used to call them speeches."
I remembered.
Naga looked down at the fire. "But you stopped doing them when we did. Or—no, you didn't stop. You still did them, but they were different," he corrected himself, voice still lowered. "You were trying to imitate who you were before, but you didn't know who that was. Or who you were anymore."
He had a way of telling me about myself like his words were indisputable facts, like there was nothing to argue against or question. He could say my name was Hibiki and I wouldn't be able to find the words to tell him he was wrong.
There was something unsettling about it, the trust I had in my brother to know me better than I did myself.
"You used to give those fake speeches to me or Yahiko or Mamoru-sensei. Not about the future, or our dreams, but to get us out of our own heads. You shouldn't have had to do it," Naga said, tapping my ration bar again. "I wish it wasn't something the three of us had in common. But I'm sorry that I didn't stop you back then. I regret that I didn't."
I looked at him and didn't know what to say.
I wanted to, was my first thought, my most honest one, but I knew that wanting to do something didn't make having done it better.
I broke off a warm corner of the ration bar and ate it as a test. The inside was still cold and hard to chew and I still didn't know how to accept apologies.
If I let Yahiko's grief eat him alive, or if I let Mamoru-sensei die quietly, or if I let you burst into pieces, who did that leave me with? I thought second, most tiredly and a little bitter, but would never say.
Who did it leave me with? Joji, who I hadn't let in for so, so long? Maho, who had blamed himself for being too weak, who was my closest friend now, but not then?
Matsu and Enyo, before I really knew them? Hidan, all the way in Yugakure?
Maybe it was the absence of regret that kept me silent, because if I was sent back to the day after Konan tumbled down that cliff, even knowing how it'd turn out, I'd do it all again.
It had made me happy just being near them, just being in the same room as Yahiko talked about Kusagakure or Mamoru-sensei sorted through scrolls.
I was happy to quietly exist, and I didn't know how to explain it to him without hurting him, and it would hurt him.
"I thought letting you do that was helping you like it was helping us," he quietly said, filling the silence. "I thought that you were working through how you felt and that was the only way you knew how. But it only taught you to push down your emotions even more than you were. And I didn't realize it until that day when you cried."
He hadn't wanted to hurt me by making me stop, he meant.
Thank you for trying to help me, I should've said, but didn't because I didn't feel thankful.
I know, I thought, abandoning politeness.
I understand, I thought, faintly.
I didn't stop Naga from quietly taking my ration bar, replacing it with his own, and holding my still-cold bar over the fire.
His was hot under my fingers.
"Is there anything we agree on, Naga?" I finally asked.
He looked amused. "Not to hurt each other, not to argue," he answered easily. "I brought it up not for that, but because I wanted to say that I was happy that you found another dream."
I took a bite of the ration bar, wondering what Chojuro thought we were whispering about.
"I never had a dream. I had everyone else's." I told him honestly, taking another soft bite. "I never had to have my own, so after Yahiko lost his, I tried to take Mamoru-sensei's. But that only made me realize that I had to find out what having a dream meant on my own."
"And you did?" he asked quietly, giving me a look that wanted me to keep talking.
"No. Yes. I wouldn't say it was a dream but..."
"I would."
"I love Amegakure. I didn't think I did, even when I missed the rain or sat in the sun. I thought that all that kept me there was the Akatsuki."
Naga broke the ration bar in half, still watching me.
I absently ran my fingers through the ragged strands of my hair, working out the knots. "But the world isn't just Amegakure," I started, then paused, looking away as I tried to explain, "It was easier not to care. To care about something is to let it have your heart. When I realized Amegakure already had mine, I couldn't pretend I didn't care anymore, even though I tried. But caring about Amegakure meant I had to care about the world outside of it, because other places affect the village. They decide, and have already decided, how much we mean."
I didn't know if it made any sense, or if when I looked into his eyes, I'd see that he didn't understand at all—
"It's getting cold," Naga pointed out, bringing my thoughts to a halt.
I didn't move, still looking away as I said, "When we're stronger, I'm taking back Kusagakure."
He was silent, and then he said, mildly, "I'm happy that you had Yahiko when you didn't have me."
I turned quickly to look at him and he calmly cracked the ration bar in half, not looking at me either.
"We always hurt each other the most when we're trying not to," I said back, not looking at him again as I broke off a corner of the ration bar. It was cold.
He only smiled, barely-there.
"His name was Might Duy," Chojuro spoke, whispering and full of a shame that wasn't his.
Naga turned, but I only held the bar over the fire.
"What I said about the mission my mentor went on. Might Duy was the one who killed them," Chojuro added, unsure sounding, and I finally turned around.
He rested his head against his knees, his arms wrapped tightly around them. His glasses were off and he squinted tiredly at the grimy ground.
"Is it important?" Naga asked, but not unkindly.
"No, but..." he trailed off. His eyes shut and he forced them back open. "But I know more about my mentor than I said I did. I didn't lie about him not teaching me anything, but his clan—his kekkei genkai is how he didn't die with the others."
I heard the strain in his voice, how hard it'd been for him to admit it.
"How can you talk so openly like that when you—being here?" he asked hurriedly, filling the silence where his admission was, "Even talking about something so soft, you never sounded weak. Ao—he'd never tell you to be quiet, and Lady Mei would never call you green for it. How do you do it—that? How-How can you be so confident?"
"I used to ask myself that a lot," Naga admitted, and Chojuro looked skeptical. "What I learned is that no one is confident. Everyone pretends to be until they don't remember how to be like they were before. Sometimes it takes borrowing confidence from someone else until it becomes your own."
Chojuro buried his face in his legs.
"If you weren't already doing that," Naga began quietly, realizing he'd lost him. "You wouldn't have become a swordsmen or fled to Nankai with Mei."
Chojuro tightened his arms around himself.
It wasn't enough. Not when there would be war, and not when he saw running as cowardly, because he was a mist-nin and still had his pride.
I took both halves of Naga's ration bar, placed my slightly warm one in his hands as he blinked at me, and stood, brushing crumbs off my leggings.
Yahiko didn't stir as I stepped over him but Chojuro froze, holding his breath and peeking out from under his arms as I crouched audibly next to him.
"Experience," I answered, nonplussed, "You were still trained, no matter how you feel. In war, you won't think. You won't have time. Your instincts will take over, and you'll see how easy it is to be confident when the lives of the people you care about are on the line."
I held half of the ration bar out to him and his surprise, or his instincts, made him draw back, his head jerking up as he moved.
"S-Sorry," he sputtered, squinting at the half. "I can't—" he gestured at his eyes and they flitted everywhere but at me. "I only have one extra pair and I can't risk falling asleep with them on," he rambled on, embarrassed. "Were you—Did you ever hesitate? In the war?"
I only waved the half bar expectantly at him.
He squinted at it a little more but took it, tracing his thumb over a corner before he took a hesitant bite.
Matsu did the same sometimes, when his eyes were tired.
"No," I finally answered, looking at the wall. "But I've lost, over and over. But it doesn't matter how many times you lose, or how many times you want to give up if you keep getting back up until you win."
Chojuro looked at the half bar for a long time. "Giving out information out for free. Trusting and helping me when I kept things from you. You're both weird to me."
I hummed. "You can pay me by telling me about Hozuki's kekkei genkai."
He looked at me, then he lowered his eyes, and did.
静水
I heard Naga's sharp inhale, a harsh, shocked sound that woke me up instantly. I started to sit up automatically, still half-asleep when I saw the wrapped blade aimed at him through the suddenly thick mist, less than an inch away from his face.
Naga was propped up on his elbows but not looking at the blade. His eyes were frozen on the face grinning down at him.
Everything in a circle around us was shrouded in foggy clouds.
"Well, well, it looks like a bunch of hatchlings have washed up somewhere they shouldn't be," the figure said, melding out of the mist like he was made of it.
He was tall and blue and tall. He towered over us as Naga tensed as he sensed his chakra, his eyes widening.
Watching him, it was the only reason I didn't move. I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen him surprised by someone else's chakra.
The figure's eyes roved over me and landed on Chojuro behind us, sticking there.
"K-Kisame," Chojuro quickly named him, shrinking under the heavy weight of his gaze. "What are you—why are you here?" he asked, voice shaking.
Kisame's grin only widened. "I see," was all he said, darkly amused.
I looked up at him, seeing why Mei had been so intimidated by Kisame Hoshigaki. Why she had no plan to fight him, if it came to that.
His presence alone had its own weight to it.
The bandaged blade quivered and Naga instinctively leaned back.
"So, hatchlings, which of you would like to go first?" Kisame asked, glancing between me and Yahiko, "If you behave and don't run I'll give each of you a chance to fight for his or her life. One on one, how does that sound?"
Naga closed his eyes while he was distracted.
"At least one of you can give me a good fight. Samehada says so. Did you tell them about her yet, Chojuro?" Kisame asked, staring at him again.
Chojuro trembled, shrinking down more.
Before Kisame could speak again, Hidan yawned loudly. "If you want to die so badly, I'll fight you," he said, standing. He sounded bored, but his eyes glittered. "I've been meaning to pay my penance for the pitiful sacrifices I've been sending to Lord Jashin. You'll more than make up for that."
Kisame looked him over in mild interest. "You're no Zabuza, and even he could never beat me in battle."
Hidan's eyes widened a little, brighter and wilder as he said, "Who the fuck was talking about that? It'll be my name you remember when I teach you the Way of Jashin—"
"We give up," Yahiko interrupted him, and Hidan whirled around to stare at him, but Yahiko was staring up at the mist blocking the sky, "Yeah, we could fight, and yeah, you'd probably win, but I think we can help each other instead. It sounds to me like you already know why Chojuro is here, and that means that you know that we know where the leader of the rebellion is. It'll be easier to capture her with our help."
"No! You-You can't," Chojuro said in outrage.
"Our client is just that," Yahiko said cooly, hands behind his head. "And contracts can change when the circumstances do. We were told you wouldn't be here, Kisame, but you are, so I think we can work something out."
Kisame listened without interrupting, and then he flashed his teeth. "Strategy, eh?" he asked. He shook his head and said, "But you see, you've made one critical mistake. You think I'm here on behalf of someone else. It's not a bad assumption, but I came here to find a certain chakra that Samehada picked up. No more, no less. I want to fight because I want to. There are no orders compelling my actions."
Yahiko went silent, thinking, but coming up with nothing, because there was no reasoning with someone who wanted to kill you just because.
There was no other trick he could use or amount of charisma that could manipulate someone like Kisame.
I watched him, humming quietly.
Samehada nudged forward, all on its own, and just barely tapped Naga. It made him gasp and his eyes shoot open, the blue lines down his arms vanishing instantly as he bent over and choked on a cough.
"Seems Chojuro didn't tell you that Samehada is the only one of the seven able to detect changes in one's chakra. She's especially attracted to other sensor-nin," Kisame calmly explained over the noise, staring down at Naga.
Samehada quivered again, and I realized then that it was hungry, that it had eaten his nature energy. She was bigger than before, her sharp spines visible through the bandages, but not tearing them.
I stood.
Hidan scrubbed a hand roughly through his hair when he saw me, the light leaving his eyes as he glared at the wall, but didn't demand to fight again.
"I'm Oka," I introduced myself.
Kisame gazed at me for a few seconds, and I stared back.
"You're not afraid?" he asked curiously.
"No."
"Not cocky or arrogant," he said, tilting his head. "Angry?"
I glanced down at Naga. "If she'd eaten more than his chakra I would be," I admitted. "She surprised him, but if those spines hit him, I'd see blood."
For a moment Kisame didn't seem to know what to make of me. "I'm waiting for you to convince me to spare your life like your friend, or to try and distract me so one of your other friends can misbehave and make me have to cut you down before I've had any fun."
"You'll be waiting a long time," I told him.
He studied me. "You're not offering to fight?"
"No."
Kisame looked at me for another second, waiting to see if I had anything else to say, and then he drowned me in Killing Intent.
I heard Chojuro twist away and violently empty his stomach. Naga grimaced and squeezed his eyes shut, throwing an arm over his face like the Killing Intent was a physical attack, and Yahiko froze, suddenly as still as a statue. He didn't even breathe. Namekuji seemed to curl up on his stomach and fight doing so.
Kisame didn't take his eyes off me, but I had been counting on this, because I didn't think any Killing Intent could be worse than Sasori's, and I was right.
I knew that when threatened, or even just annoyed, ninja used Killing intent like a warning.
Kisame was not just the ocean, but the entire world, smothering, suffocating, making me feel so small that the air felt like it was his as I breathed in, that I stole every breath in his universe.
It was seeing myself being cut, meticulously, into tiny pieces over and over and over. It was feeling every careful slice as Samehada dragged my chakra out through my blood and turned everything red while he laughed.
It was nothing but his grin in the sky as he made me watch myself struggle and gasp and try to keep myself together as he kept cutting again and again.
But that fear wasn't my own. It was the fear he wanted me to feel, but it wasn't the soft, terrifyingly loving press of fingers in my throat, nails that dug in and in until I could feel soft hands pulling out my neck bones through the holes made in my skin, just as lovingly.
Kisame was painful and bloody and cruel, but Sasori didn't think of being turned into a puppet as something to be terrified of. He used it that way because he'd seen that fear, but he didn't feel it.
Not when I'd looked into his eyes and saw enough apathy for me to acknowledge it.
Sasori's Killing Intent was something he loved to do, and all he did was share it with me.
"It's the same shit," Hidan was the only one to loudly complain, plopping back down as he grumbled, "Killing Intent this, Killing Intent that. Can't anyone try any new shit?"
I kept eye contact with Kisame and I released my own Killing Intent, the bottomless sea I used to see.
It didn't have the malice I'd thrown at Sasori, just the quiet promise of drowning, but I wasn't trying to threaten Kisame, only show him that his wasn't working.
Kisame's Killing Intent stopped, and I heard Yahiko take a breath.
I stopped, too.
"You're one of them. The Uzumaki," Kisame said, grinning again like nothing had happened.
I blinked as Chojuro groaned and asked, "You can tell?"
"You hold the ocean in your chakra," he explained. "An Uzumaki that can't be identified by sight can be by the feeling of the sea. Even I have more than that in my Intent."
"Were you taught that, or have you met one?" I asked curiously.
Kisame looked at me for a long time. "I didn't come here for this," he said. "For someone like you."
"If I asked you a question about why we're here, would you answer it?" I asked like he hadn't ignored me.
"Are you going to ask me to join Terumi?" Kisame asked. He showed off his teeth again.
"No."
He didn't move.
"Have you met anyone named Madara Uchiha?" I asked.
He was silent.
Hidan, in the background, scoffed loudly at me.
I heard Naga let out a ragged breath as he tried to even out his breathing.
"If I have or have not," Kisame began. "Why would I tell you?"
"Because if you know him by that name, he's been lying to you."
"And if I have," he said, taking a step and towering over me. "Why would I believe you, hatchling from Whirlpool's ashes?"
I let him, staring into his eyes until his grin weakened, until he realized that I meant it when I showed him I didn't fear him. Confusion, so fleeting I almost missed it, flashed across his face. He didn't take a step back, but he stopped trying to intimidate me.
"Because Yagura is being controlled by him," I answered. "I know that he can make himself intangible and his sharingan looks like a three-point pinwheel. I've met him."
Kisame's expression didn't change.
"But if you find proof yourself, you don't need to believe me. All you have to do is ask to see his face. You don't even have to know what Madara Uchiha looks like," I told him. "If Samehada can eat nature energy, then a normal transformation won't hold up either, will it?"
Kisame lifted Samehada to my side threateningly and the blade curled towards Naga, barely restrained by him tightening his grip on the handle. "True or not, what does him or the Fourth have to do with me not cutting you up into tiny little bits?"
"You want a fight, but you won't get one until you prove me wrong. If it was enough to just kill us, you wouldn't have woken us up. You want to see us struggle," I answered easily.
His pupils wavered, shrinking a little, and he went still again. "And what if," he began, holding Samehada out at Yahiko without turning. "I kill him, and help you find the motivation?"
I blinked, and then I gave him a small, cruel smile. "Why would I," I began in the same menacing inflection. "Do anything I knew you wanted if you did that? I can be spiteful. I'd make sure you were disappointed, even if it was the last thing I did."
Kisame didn't speak.
I hummed and asked, "How do you know you're not under his genjutsu?" like nothing had happened.
"I'd know," he answered immediately. His grin was barely there as he looked away, lifting Samehada to lean against his shoulder. "If I have to hunt you down, I'll make you understand why my Killing Intent is the way it is."
"You won't."
Kisame stared at me again, another flash of emotion in his eyes, and then he turned around. He made the ram sign and the mist around us began to disappear.
"Word of advice, when you're on an ocean in a different country, check the water for sharks. It'd have made it harder to track you if you had," he said, and vanished into the fading mist.
A/N: 静水 - Still water
Hello, it me, the author who sets things up and only pays them off 30 chapters later.
If I had a nickel every time I got a review where the thing being complained about was addressed in the chapter or the chapter right after, I'd only have two nickels, but it's weird that it happened twice.