"Two birds of a feather,
Say that they're always gonna stay together,
But one's never gonna let go of that wire,
He says that he will,
But he's just a liar,"
-Two Birds, Regina Spektor
Yahiko heard the muddy water rippling behind him, but didn't look, the same way he pretended not to notice the small salamanders that nudged his legs or brushed over his feet.
The curious ones poked and prodded him because they'd never seen a human before and he didn't come here that often. He couldn't, what with there being enough poison in the air to kill anyone who didn't have a poison-eating partner near instantly.
His time limit was half an hour, maybe a few minutes longer, because Emon was bigger than when he was here last.
He could barely see the shadows around him through the slow-moving clouds, other salamanders moving on instinct to scramble into holes in the mud or disappear in the grass to hide from the big, orange-haired creature coming towards them.
The area was separated into inlets and basins, the land close enough to the water that it was muddy brown.
The ripples behind him slowed as Iida caught up to him. He'd rolled his pants up to his knees, and that might've kept them dry, if Iida didn't wrap her tail around his legs, stopping him just long enough to climb him and wind around his back.
Never mind that she was bigger than him, even if she didn't act like it.
Yahiko sighed as her hand stuck to his shoulder, but there was a reason he didn't wear his cloak here, and it began and ended with the youngest triplet.
She was older than him by forty or so years, but that was young for them. Barely a juvenile.
Her other hand stuck to his upper arm, determined to cling to him, even when her tail was underwater.
"Missed me so much you're willing to give me life-long back problems," Yahiko said idly, and started walking again, albeit slower.
Iida flicked her tongue slowly at him, the closest she could come to a greeting when she didn't speak human. Most were like that, understanding enough, but unwilling or unable to speak like him.
He walked under the shadow of a red and black-spotted salamander and lifted his hand in a wave when he felt her cold stare. There weren't any salamanders on or around her stretch of land.
He didn't recognize her, but that only meant old man Teika had been driven out.
Iida shifted so that her shadow covered his, still trying to protect him, just like with Teika, and it made him smile.
It was Kanetsu's rule that Yahiko not use chakra here, and an unintended side effect was that it made the more territorial salamanders think he could be eaten.
He left the nagamaki and his pouch behind, but looks like that told him Hanzo had never come here unarmed. He also thought that might've been why Kansetsu would ignore him if he was.
What might a paranoid bastard like Hanzo have done here when he thought everyone was against him?
The disarming rule could've also been because he'd asked Kansetsu where Ibuse was once before, and the ancient salamander had seen right through his pretend casualness. Another rule was that he could only kill something here if they challenged his worth as a summoner.
But he might've ignored it back then, even if it meant Emon would be exiled, because a summon-summoner contract could only be broken by death, or if the summoner was eaten by their summon.
Yahiko had a feeling Ibuse didn't feel all that warm towards him either, because they were kept away from each other.
He knew he didn't look all that intimidating in a gray shirt that needed serious mending and mud prints down his back, but if she wanted to think him young and tiny, he'd happily let her.
It was much easier for him when they didn't take him seriously.
Yahiko looked up at her and laced his hands behind his head, a little awkwardly, but with enough nonchalance that the giant salamander only stared at him for another second before she laid down, ruffling his clothes in the slight wind, and closed her eyes.
She was refusing to acknowledge him, and it was the best he ever got out of the territorial ones.
Yahiko kept walking, and Iida went back to forcing her head onto his too-small shoulder and making him drop his hands. She was really like a little kid.
"I'll smuggle in an eel for you next time. You still like those, right?" he asked.
Iida made a noise at him between a chirp and a mangled word that maybe, probably, was yes.
The small ones dug worms out of the water, or crickets out from under the mud, and he tried not to think too hard about what the bigger salamanders ate. Territorial fights were usually bloody, but he'd never seen them eat each other, and he'd very much like to stay in the delusion that they didn't.
Old man Teika was just fine somewhere else, and he had enough fuel for his nightmares to last a lifetime already, thank you very much.
Yahiko found the middle triplet, Haruo, and the oldest, Saikaku, lazing on a bank. He could see Kansetsu's shadow up ahead, and only the little ones ever got away with being anywhere near him.
"Little Emon?" Saikaku asked, croaking, blood on the grass next to her.
Yahiko didn't think about it as Haruo rolled over. "Fine. Her summoner is fine too," he said dryly.
He was too used to Emon. She was awake, maybe, but he had to think about it to feel her moving around in his lung, like he had to think about it to feel himself breathing.
"You are not—" Saikaku stopped, struggling to find the words. "You are—You are you."
"I'm not a salamander," he filled in for her. "Iida seems to like me well enough."
"Careless," Saikaku said, and Iida dug her hands into his shoulder and arm (painfully), and hissed at her, pressing her weight against him more.
Yahiko might've been cheating a little to use chakra to keep his spine from collapsing in on itself.
"Kansetsu," Haruo began, slower, enunciating each word. "What did you come here to ask?"
Yahiko thought about it as Saikaku and Iida argued through scent. He didn't understand that much of how they signaled each other with pheromones, and Kansetsu wouldn't teach him.
"You think Kansetsu would let me take the three of you out?" Yahiko asked. He thought he had around nine or ten minutes left before Emon got angry with him.
Or he passed out. Whichever happened first.
"Where?" Haruo asked, while Saikaku stopped staring at Iida to stare at him.
"There's a place in my village that Hanzo poisoned a long time ago," Yahiko answered. "You might not be able to help, but I still wanted to try, and no one else here likes me enough."
Saikaku stood. "What do—you—we—"
"What will you give us?" Haruo asked, slipping down into the water around his feet.
"Human food. Rice, seaweed, and anything still in the lake," he said. "I'll even introduce you to my friends, if you want."
"No," Saikaku said, and Iida hissed at her again.
"Seaweed. All of it," Haruo said, ignoring them. He was the only one of them with brown spots, though they were hard to see.
Yahiko laughed, "I'll see what I can do."
"Saika," Haruo said, interrupting them, and she stared at him.
"Human name. Not our—my name," Saikaku spat at him.
Yahiko waded forward. "I won't hurt you, Saika. I don't how many times I can say it before you believe that I'm nothing like Hanzo."
Saikaku didn't say anything for a few seconds. "There's big fish?"
"Big to me," Yahiko answered. "Probably not to you."
Another second, and he heard a soft splash behind him. Iida made another mangled sound that might've been laughing at her.
He had around six minutes left before they were finally close enough for Kansetsu to stop ignoring him. The poison was thicker around him, the water muddier.
"Will you ever tell me why you don't like humans, Kansetsu?" Yahiko asked.
The giant brown salamander turned to look down at him, shaking the ground a little, and if any light got through the poison, his shadow swallowed it.
"You," Kanetsu greeted coldly, but his default tone was cold. It was also the only answer he'd ever gotten to that question.
Yahiko changed tactics, "Why don't you like Hashirama Senju?"
Kansetsu paused, "Not that self-proclaimed Sage of Six Paths?"
Yahiko shrugged, with difficulty, "Would you answer that one if I asked?"
"So you can learn," Kansetsu said, and then stared at him, contemplating something.
Yahiko waited.
"If that human was arrogant enough to treat the tailed beasts like toys to be handed out to other humans, how many do you think he inspired to tame summons?" Kansetsu asked, full of disdain.
"Huh," Yahiko said. Not only did he not know that, but that did sound like a pretty good reason to dislike him.
"Enough of your human small talk. What have you come for?"
"I was getting around to it," Yahiko said, but Kansetsu looked neither amused, nor patient enough to answer him if he asked about the Uchiha. "I came to ask you for permission to take the triplets back with me. There's this lake back home that Hanzo filled with poison and I want—"
He faltered. It wasn't that he wanted to fix it so they could use it again. He probably wouldn't, and he doubted Nagato or Oka would want to either.
It was about—
moving on, taking everything, protecting everyone who was left, being selfish, doing what he should've done a long time ago.
Yahiko scratched his head and closed his eyes. "I feel like I have to do this, or I'd be a liar," he said. "I want so stop avoiding it, because I don't want to be someone who runs from the past." And it would take him years on his own.
Kansetsu looked at him, saying nothing. He shifted his gaze to the triplets.
"We want to," Haruo spoke, head above the water, and Yahiko felt more than understood a conversation happening between Iida, Saikaku and Kansetsu.
Kansetsu looked at him again, and then turned away and started in the opposite direction without a word.
Yahiko blinked at his back. "Was that a yes?"
"He used—said that—"
"Do as you please," Haruo said for her.
"Huh," Yahiko said again. He hadn't been expecting it to work that easily.
He watched thoughtfully as Kansetsu shuffled away from them. "Thing is, I need him to reverse summon us back, and he knows that."
Saikaku looked at Kansetsu and laid down in the grass. "Good luck."
.
.
.
Yahiko knelt and pressed a hand to the dirt where Joji-sensei had found Hanzo's sandal print so long ago, but it wasn't there anymore. It might've been if Nagato hadn't made it rain for his birthday.
"Bastard," he couldn't help saying as he moved his fingers away, but couldn't dredge up any heat with it, though part of him still wanted to.
Saikaku was in the water somewhere. Some of the algae had adapted to the poison, and the green-purple color made it hard to see if anything had survived.
They hadn't checked the entire lake back then, but it'd take only two fish living through being poisoned to create a concerning amount of mutated fish.
Yahiko didn't stand, but he could hear his younger self behind him, arguing with Konan about letting her catch more fish than him.
He'd locked a lot of his memories away after, well.
Even almost two years after he killed Hanzo, things he'd wanted to forget were still coming back to him.
Haruo ate small patches of purple-tinted grass around the lake, looking for seaweed.
Yahiko heard his younger self shoot a water bullet, mostly at Konan, and a tiny version of Oka protecting her and Kota with an earth wall.
It made him sigh, but it made him smile too. They were good memories, and he almost couldn't believe he hadn't wanted them once.
Iida came up next to him, sniffing at the spot in front of him like she'd find what he'd stopped to look at.
Yahiko looked out at the lake and saw his younger self and the three closest people he had to family yelling about changing the world. It hadn't happened here, but he saw it anyway. He didn't know why it made him laugh.
"Saika wants to eat all the fish," Haruo said, slowly, asking for her if she could.
It took Yahiko a second to register what he'd said as the memory faded, and then another to blink and stand.
He opened his mouth to ask them to show him, and then saw Saika's tail as she disappeared back into the water. He blinked at the fish she'd left behind.
It flopped weakly. It was the fish he remembered, if someone had scraped off patches of silver scales all over its body and left raw-looking skin behind. Its eyes were entirely purple.
Yahiko felt his concern rocket to an all-time high. "How many of them are there?"
"Not many. At the bottom," Haruo answered.
Somehow, it went higher. "None in the middle or at the top?"
"Bones. It smells."
And if the triplets cleaned the water it would probably kill them. The irony of that when he came here to make the water safe to be used again was enough to make him laugh so hard he had to wipe away tears.
"Tell Saika not to eat them," Yahiko managed. "I'll show her somewhere else where she can eat as much as she wants later."
They'd all need to wash off the poison before he had them meet anyone anyway.
Haruo slipped into the water.
.
.
.
"Saika, Haruo, Iida, this is my best friend, Nagato. You can trust him," Yahiko introduced.
Nagato looked at Saikaku, wary and behind him, then at Haruo next to him. He seemed a little too amused as he glanced up at Iida, on his back again.
"The triplets," Nagato said. "He told me a lot about you."
"Saikaku," Saika corrected, not moving any closer.
Haruo looked at him, at Nagato, and then inched closer, circling his feet. "Bad smell. Like a slug."
Nagato made a soft, surprised sound at that. "I—" he cleared his throat. "I have a slug partner."
"Yes. Bad smell," Haruo said like he hadn't understood the first time. "Do you have seaweed?"
Nagato looked at him for help.
"He does," Yahiko said sagely. "Down the back of his shirt."
Nagato's eyes barely had time to widen in alarm before Haruo climbed him and his best friend tipped backwards, all waving arms and yelling.
Iida, of course, being the most childish, finally gave his back a break to join Haruo.
"He doesn't have any resistance to your poisons," Yahiko happily reminded them.
Nagato tried to push himself up, but Haruo planted himself on his chest.
Yahiko smiled as Nagato laughed, holding up a hand to ward him off. "I don't have any," he wheezed.
Iida threw sand on them, because she could, and Haruo got off to nip at her.
Yahiko moved closer and held a hand out as Nagato spluttered and brushed sand off himself. It took a second before Nagato took it.
"By the way, the lake we used to train at as kids is full of mutant fish."
Nagato paused to blink up at him. His stare was blank.
Yahiko threw up his hands. "I didn't do anything," he said. "Why do you think it was me?"
"It almost always is. Even indirectly," Nagato answered.
Yahiko grappled his arm around Nagato's neck and squeezed, but his best friend only looked resigned.
"This doesn't change what I said."
Yahiko yanked him backwards, and Nagato shouted again as they fell into the sand.
A/N: The Hermit