A/N: Intended to be read after 92
"Get a load of this monster,
He doesn't know how to communicate,
His mind is in a different place,
Will everybody please give him a little bit of space?"
-This is Home, cavetown
Sitting on a rotten log that creaked ominously every time he shifted his weight and silently watching the rain-nin play in the water, Kisame thought of the first time he grinned.
He didn't know why that set of memories in particular came to him, but they did. It was something about what the Uzumaki—Nagato, he mentally corrected himself—said to him. He wondered why her and they were like this, so quick to apologize, to feel they needed to correct his judgement of them, as if his trust could be earned.
As if he could be befriended.
(even without trust, Mangetsu found common ground so easily with them)
Kisame had been around nine or ten. It was at the start of his kenjutsu training but before he'd learned what the graduation exam entailed, so more likely nine.
He'd grinned before, of course. His parents had not so much abandoned him as given him up to his clan, not equipped to deal with being intimidated by their own infant, but he'd given genuine smiles for the first nine years of his life to his clan's elders. He didn't remember why, but he knew they'd happened.
The first time he learned to grin, the way he would for the rest of his life, was the day he met Migiwa Hoshigaki, the first and last time he ever saw her.
A week after that, she'd jump into the sea and disappear.
But that day was also the day a wooden practice sword had been put in his small hands for the first time. He'd been carrying it, using it like a club to bat rocks down the road, surrounded by the noises of his clan. The Hoshigaki had mastered silence outside the land given to them during the formation of the village, but seemingly as a trade-off, let all the sounds they held in out around each other. It was common to hear infants wailing through open windows, or the wet slosh of freshly bought fish being thrown onto outdoor tables to be butchered, or doors shaking and shuddering as they were tossed open, barely hanging onto the hinges.
They were not unlike prey trying to scare away predators with loud sounds.
His child-self had been going home, or, well, the home he lived at then, when he spotted some other Hoshigaki his age on a porch, standing on each other's backs, desperately trying to peer into a creaky window to eavesdrop on whoever was inside.
He'd stopped but hadn't approached, not wanting to intimidate them.
He couldn't remember how long he stood there watching them whisper to each other and laugh before the door was eventually shoved open, banging against the wall hard enough to crack the frame and making those kids fall over themselves as they scattered. But Kisame had stayed there, frozen by the sight of the figure emerging onto the porch.
He'd heard the rumors about Migiwa by then (everyone had), but she'd seemed more made up than a real person until she was right in front of him. Her arms were visibly muscled, but that was just about every woman in his clan. No, what caught his attention were the scars all over them, like she only knew how to fight with her fists and defend with her flesh.
It was odd when kenjutsu was the lifeblood of mist-nin, when ninjutsu was the second most preferred and genjutsu and taijutsu tied for last place. Even he, with the physique he'd grow into, had learned them in that order, except genjutsu had been dead last.
But what he remembered most about her was her grin, a wide smile that showed the tips of her pointed teeth, like she found everything funny and would keep finding it funny as she bit into your neck and ripped out your throat. It was a grin to make everyone afraid, and she wore it like he'd wear Samehada.
Her eyes had flicked dismissively over the other children, who had escaped over the railing by then and watched her in terror from the gravel road, but when those sea green eyes roved over him and moved on, she'd blinked once, then looked back at him, studying him more closely.
He hadn't moved as she approached him or when she stopped in front of him. It was only when he was fully in her presence and her aura washed over him that he understood the instinctual unease the other children felt when he neared, but it had strangely made him feel like she understood him, like maybe she was the only one who could.
And then she'd asked, "You're him, right? They told me your name. Sorry, what was it again...?"
He hadn't been able to answer under the weight of her chakra, but she'd only rubbed the back of her neck and shrugged. "Doesn't matter in the end, does it? Be good," she'd said, her grin the barest hint of soft, then bent to pat him roughly on the head as she walked past.
The entire experience had mystified him.
Sometime after she disappeared, just after the Third Shinobi World war began, he'd learned that the moment he met Migiwa had been right after Iron Will Wakazume, the eldest member of his clan and his guardian and sensei at the time, had asked her to carry out her 'duty' to the clan to settle down to bear children. He was told this by Ocean Cutter Churami, the third eldest elder and his final guardian before he went through his graduation ceremony and no longer had to answer to his clan.
He remembered vividly the feeling of Churami taking him by the arms one day when he returned from the Academy, her getting down on her ancient knees in front of him to look him in the eye, and her telling him that Migiwa Hoshigaki was a stain on the Hoshigaki name and would be struck from the registry the clan had submitted to the village.
He recalled how she'd tried to explain the hit the reputation of the Hoshigaki had taken among the other clans. She'd squeezed his arms, hands trembling in anger as she told him that the Hoshigaki had been rare in that they had no members that became missing-nin before Migiwa, and after her many others had been inspired and abandoned them before they could be called for war, like their pride was a physical thing she'd take with her.
That hadn't come as a surprise to him. Before the war, after the elders confirmed that she had defected willingly and not been coerced or killed, the entire clan used to whisper and guess about why Migiwa did what she had. But only a few days after the war began, no one would say her name aloud.
No one wanted to 'inspire' anyone else.
What had bothered his child self was when he was asked, over and over, to agree to the things she'd said about Migiwa, to have no opinion but her own, and to promise that he'd do right by his clan. He hadn't understood it then, why it had twisted his insides to agree, but he made a deal with himself to never return to the Hoshigaki once he graduated.
But back then, when he was still their tool, and hadn't realized that all he could change was who he would be wielded by, he'd grinned just as Migiwa had that day, and promised.