"I am in misery,
There ain't nobody who can comfort me,
Why won't you answer me?
The silence is slowly killing me,"
-MiseryXCPR
Matsu stopped and stared as I held out the chikuzen-biwa.
"It's not May," he said, wiping sweat off his face with his shirt.
"It isn't," I agreed.
"How did you do it?"
I smiled a little. "I asked." And Naga asked Ren, and Ren asked the fire daimyo.
"That's it?"
"Should there be more?"
He reached out to take it hesitantly, touching the air next to my hand before he corrected and brushed his fingers against the wood. "Why would they—" he stopped and looked at me. "It was your birthday."
"It's what I wanted."
He took it from me, his smile wistful.
"You don't want it?"
"I do," he answered. "I just used to want it for someone else."
"Urakawa?"
"None of your business," he answered, but not unkindly, plucking the strings. "Did it come with something to play it with?"
"Play it with?"
"It's fine," he dismissed, turning it over in his hands. "Is it too late to say happy birthday?"
"I don't think it's ever too late as long as you mean it."
"Ah, can't say it then."
"I could take it back."
"Only after I learn to play it."
正常
Water sprayed around me as I backflipped away from a small fireball and pushed off the water, making half-signs, dragon, tiger, hare. I shot a concentrated stream of water at Yahiko and he shot another fireball at it, blowing steam between us.
Naga was shooting air bullets at me as I fell.
I dropped straight into the water and it burst above me.
A silver-red blur shot out of the steam as I poked my head above the water. Naga didn't dodge, but raised his arms as Yahiko substituted with the nagamak. He didn't budge when Yahiko's foot hit his arms.
Yahiko grinned, twisting to kick Naga in the head and Naga freed an arm to block it, grabbing his ankle—
—and let go as Yahiko made the tiger seal, quickly putting space between them, but Yahiko didn't shoot fire at him.
The tip of the nagamaki stopped above my head, shaking against the sudden pressure, and his clone laughed as I looked up at him.
"Truce?" he asked.
He was knocked off his feet, tumbling and disappearing beneath the water as it was pushed away from me in violent wave. Water splashed over Naga as he and Yahiko clashed kunai.
I was standing on the surface as Yahiko climbed out and ran a hand through his hair.
"Nice of you to not attack me while I was down there."
"I didn't think your clones were that durable."
He laughed. "You'd know if you sparred with me more." He was in front of me suddenly, blade sweeping the water where my feet had been as I hopped back.
Water hissed around the blade as he twisted the handle, throwing steam at me, blanketing everything misty white again.
"Training Hidan is more than enough for me," I said, aiming my palm at a glint of silver in front of me. I pulled, expecting a substitution or a trick, and the nagamaki propelled over my shoulder, trickless, heat warming my neck.
I paused as it sank into the water, glancing at the tear in my shirt on my shoulder. It didn't break the skin, but it burned.
"I get the feeling he wouldn't be happy to hear you call it that," Yahiko drawled from somewhere in front of me.
"What else would you call it?"
"I'd call it Hidan not knowing what tactical retreat means." He went silent.
I ducked a punch from behind and he batted my foot aside when I aimed backwards at his knee. His kick swung above me as I rolled forward, aiming my palm at his other leg without looking.
His foot slid forward but he flipped backwards before he could fall, twisting his arm to block my punch as he landed on his feet. My right palm was already against his stomach.
I had the split second thought of him switching with the nagamaki and so twisted to drive my foot into his side as hard as I could, but he didn't burst into water.
He flew sideways, and I realized that Naga was in the path of the Yahiko-shaped projectile I'd kicked at him through the dissipating steam. He'd positioned me here.
Naga's attention snapped to him just long enough for the clone to take advantage of his distraction and elbow him hard in the chest and shove him. It tried to catch Yahiko as he collided with it and it burst into water, slowing him just enough for him to roll on top of the water instead of crashing through it. Naga fell to his knees, coughing hard.
Yahiko laughed through a wince, holding his side as he sat up. "Worth it," he gasped.
"You gave it-it had more chakra—" Naga broke off with a groan.
Yahiko stood, even as pain flitted across his face. "One of the only benefits of not having much chakra. If I give enough to my clone it'll have more than me. It's the only thing I have left that you don't know how to counter."
"Yet," Naga said, coughing again.
"Hidan isn't that fast, and he doesn't do taijutsu more than he has to," I mentioned. "But when we fought, you reminded me of him. That's why I thought you were the clone."
"Are you calling me slow?" he asked. "I'm offended."
He didn't answer the why, and I hummed—
I tilted my head and aimed my right hand at the shore, hearing whoever it was before I saw the tied blond hair, the plain green kimono, and the pack full of scrolls next to her feet.
Pretending to be civilian, even though she had too much of a presence, but she didn't seem like a ninja.
"Hangaku," Naga named her through a wheeze. "You're early."
I lowered my hand, but she didn't stop staring at me.
"Yes. Baron Miyashita left earlier than he planned to attend to an urgent matter within the imperial court," she explained, nudging the bag at her feet. "Your teacher refused to accept the materials."
"Mamoru-sensei is like that," Yahiko drawled, hands behind his head.
"Urgent?" Naga asked.
"It's not truly," Hangaku said, hiding a smile behind her hand. "Many extended members of the royal family think he was not punished sufficiently enough for his actions here. They know he despises court and express often how they miss him."
"The infamous favored nephew," I hummed.
Hangaku eyed me. "Infamous?"
"Naga is a gossip," I said matter-of-factly, and he spluttered and hurried to stand.
"I'm not," he said quickly. "They know as much as they do because we lead the village together. I don't know if Baron Miyashita told you—"
"Oka," she named me, realization in her eyes as she turned. "And Yahiko."
"You don't have to go to court with him?" I asked.
"I leave Watamura when he does, and return as he does," was all she said. "I would like to spar with you three, if you don't mind."
Yahiko shook his head, walking onto the shore away from Hangaku. "I'm done. Too exhausted."
Maybe he was, but it was more because if they fought she'd know a samurai trained him.
"At the same time?" I asked.
Hangaku pulled out a scroll hidden underneath the back of her kimono, opened it, and unsealed a naginata. "I have no preference. I am the guest in this situation."
Naga backed off and retreated back to where Yahiko—
She appeared in front of me, throwing up sand in her wake, chakra extending from the tip of the naginata.
I moved my left hand in the way of the strike absorbed it. Her chakra was like a metal sheet, refusing to bend into my chakra pool, similar feeling but somehow too different.
I threw out my right hand. She suddenly slammed the point into the water in front of me and vaulted over me, dodging a push that left a hole in the water where she'd been.
I breathed her chakra out and made the half-dog sign.
"You sensed the pressure," I thought aloud as she twisted back in front of me, the point of the naginata poking the air where my other hand would've been if I'd used the full sign.
She backed up as a cage of water tentacles formed around me.
"You should've attacked my brother first," I said.
Hangaku's eyes flitted to each tentacle. "Thirteen," she observed. She bent backwards as a water tentacle shot over her head, spinning the naginata to cut apart two more tentacles that tried to slide around her arm to grab her.
She never stopped moving, twisting between tentacles or spinning around strikes, and I felt like I was watching a dance. She spun the naginata like a shield that minced anything that hit it, but stopped and adjusted just as fast to slice a tentacle that caught her knee or tried to grab her from a blind spot.
She eventually gave up on closing the distance and stood on the water farther away, panting.
I didn't stop making the half-dog sign. More tentacles rose around me, and she looked at them warily.
I smiled and said, "I could do this all day."
狂気
"Why didn't you tell me before?" Nagato asked, gently prodding the bruised skin down his side. It was too-soft like rotten fruit.
Yahiko squeezed the part of his shirt he'd rolled up, the only sign Nagato knew he'd let out to show he was in pain. "I did," Yahiko claimed, waving his other hand. "I had to go over how Sasori and I met at least three times between you, Mamoru-sensei, and Joji-sensei, and you were there for at least two of them."
The bruise was in the shape of his liver. Nagato didn't need to use chakra to know it was swollen and pushing against his other organs. He was already showing signs of early liver failure.
Yahiko's neck was bruised down the middle, but not as dark or obvious as his live.
How hadn't he noticed before?
Naga only looked at him, and Yahiko patted him on the shoulder.
"I think I knew Emon couldn't do it back in Hyozan after I woke up, but I didn't want to admit it. Fear is something that I like to put in a box and pretend it doesn't exist," he admitted. "Besides, what kind of summoner could admit that he overestimated his summon?"
"A good one."
Yahiko didn't smile. "Emon kept me alive this long. I thought I could endure it. Can't exactly ask our puppeteer for the antidote when he might just give me something worse and I'd never know."
"And then your liver started to fail, so you called the medic."
He laughed.
Naga had to concentrate to feel the chakra-barrier Yahiko made to keep the poison contained to his liver. Yahiko had used his smaller pathways to do it, changing the flow of his chakra in a way that would've left anyone who wasn't Yahiko with permanent damage.
"I thought you trusted Sasori," Nagato pointed out.
"I gave him free reign, didn't I?" Yahiko countered. "But, yeah. At the very least, he won't give it to me unless I give him what he wants, and I can't do that yet. He hasn't finished our tower and started on his lab, and we haven't gotten to him yet. Nothing else is keeping him here."
Nagato was silent. "How much pain are you in, Yahiko?"
Yahiko tilted his head back. "I need to learn that move that samurai from before used on Oka. Hangaku? The one where she wouldn't let her make hand signs?"
Nagato prodded the spot again but Yahiko didn't react. He hesitated to use medical chakra. He didn't know how the poison would react to it.
"Joji-sensei claims he doesn't know it and told me he left before he'd finished training. But I think there are some things about being a samurai that he just doesn't want to think about," Yahiko continued like nothing was wrong.
"You owe Emon an apology," Nagato finally said.
Yahiko closed his eyes. "Yeah, I know."
It was just another distraction.
"It'll hurt," Nagato warned him.
Yahiko laughed.
Nagato didn't know how the poison had changed with Emon's attempt at an antidote, or how trying to pull it out of his liver would affect him.
He'd pulled poison out of Namekuji before, but never an actual person.
"I felt you looking—it's not hard to make chakra barriers inside your body," Yahiko said. "I just abuse my body's defense mechanisms—"
Nagato distantly heard his hiss as he touched the bruise with glowing fingertips and sent a weak pulse of chakra into his liver, just enough for a picture to form of what he'd need to fix first—
His hand jerked back automatically, seconds before he was blinking back to himself, and he felt Yahiko's fingers digging into his shoulder. He realized what just happened, or almost happened, as his best friend caught his breath.
The poison had responded to his chakra, but in a way that left him stunned. It'd started metabolizing his chakra to take on its characteristics.
He'd never had that happen before. Normally, the body didn't recognize medical chakra as harmful. It was why people only had a bad reaction if the medic-nin messed up.
It was why Yahiko's chakra barrier didn't work against the medical chakra he'd slipped through it. It was why if there was a poison that could disguise itself as medical chakra and move around freely in the body—
Nagato breathed out.
It was a poison made for medic-nin. It told him that Sasori had intended to leave the Third Kazekage behind. Any medic-nin that tried to heal him would've made it worse, would've put him in agony.
who would Sasori want to hurt like that?
But Nagato knew the answer. Who had personally met Oka and Yahiko because they wanted to find him?
The poison hadn't finished adapting to his medical chakra. If it had, Yahiko would be writhing, screaming, and Nagato would've had to watch him die.
But it had still been too close. If he couldn't sense what was happening or yank his hands away fast enough—
It was a poison that sounded like it was made for Tsunade-sensei.
He'd almost killed his best friend.
"Minato—he-he used fuinjutsu that could suppress chakra. His bingo book page—it says a lot. Most would leave it at that, but I-I kept wondering how he could do that without his enemies organs shutting down," Yahiko managed. "It's because, ah, because our organs produce more chakra than our pathways. So even if your pathways are cut off, your heart keeps beating. I just moved some of that extra chakra by tricking my body into thinking that my liver wasn't getting as much chakra as it should've."
Nagato couldn't speak.
Yahiko pressed a fist to Nagato's chest. "Talk to me, man. I'm too tired to keep talking about my body."
"I didn't think I could be surprised like that again," Nagato finally said.
Yahiko laughed a little. "That bad?"
Nagato couldn't imagine— "How much pain are you in?" he asked again.
"So, everything living thing has some form of chakra, even trees and plants—"
"I'm going to talk to Sasori."
"What?"
Nagato gently untangled himself from Yahiko.
"What do you think you can say to him?"
Nagato did what Yahiko always did to him. He stood and left without giving him an answer.
.
.
.
Nagato stared up at the skeleton of a tower.
He'd seen it on paper. He'd sat with Keitaru and let him turn the ideas in his head into something concrete with a brush, but that was a long time ago. He hadn't been involved much after that.
It was unfinished, half as tall as it was supposed to be, and didn't have many finished walls. It reminded him a little of the old towers. He could see where the face would be at the top. Something different from what the old ones had been.
Yahiko had been the one to suggest the tongue sticking out. Jokingly, but Nagato had taken it seriously.
Unfinished pipes and drains that didn't have a purpose yet hung from the side of the tower, and puppets were all over it and never stopped moving.
A spiky-haired puppet hung from a beam between floors as it hammered, missing its left arm at the elbow, one eye hanging out of its head. Nagato looked away instead of watching it shake.
A puppet on the ground collapsed suddenly and a second with horns immediately turned to grab it under the arms and drag it over to a pile of broken arms and legs off to the side. Three of the horned puppet's six arms didn't work.
As it pulled the broken puppet around a cracked torso it locked up as it went to toss the other puppet, clicking and twitching until the fingers cracked open and it dropped the broken one.
A puppet fell from the tower in a crash of broken wood and got back up, leaving half its face and arm as it started to climb again.
It unnerved him, but Nagato didn't comment on them.
He saw Keitaru's sketches on the ground around Sasori, and then the puppeteer himself sitting on a ripped cushion, surrounded by wooden pieces and ripped cloaks.
The cushion was stained red. Shuriken were the ground around his feet. The puppeteer had taken off his shirt, splattered red with blood, and left it folded on the ground on top of a gray weapons pouch that wasn't his. He'd traded it for a shirt that was the same gray as the flak-jackets their ninja worse.
Nagato looked at Sasori again, but didn't know enough about puppetry to know if it was impressive that he was only using one hand to control so many puppets.
Sasori idly spun a small stick between the fingers of his other hand, the top of it darkened with fish grease, telling Nagato that he'd at least gotten up to get something to eat sometime in the last couple of hours. Sometimes it seemed like Sasori didn't move from that spot at all. Nagato noted that his nails were painted teal.
"How long ago did they attack you?" Nagato asked, stalling.
Sasori didn't acknowledge him.
Nagato paused, then moved closer anyway. "I want to make a deal," he began, with much more confidence than he felt, "I can show you to a place underground where you can make your workshop. All I want is the antidote for the poison you used on the Third Kazekage."
Sasori stopped spinning the stick. "And why would I need you to find it?"
"There are traps," Nagato said, hearing himself waver, knowing that Sasori probably knew about the underground city already.
He had nothing else to trade when Sasori already had access to everything.
The puppets abruptly collapsed all at once, thudding to the ground or slumping over beams as the chakra returned to Sasori. He'd spread himself so thin, but only lost a little of it to nature energy.
"You're a fool," Sasori said without turning around.
Nagato persisted despite himself, "There are seals. If you enter the wrong way, the entire place will flood."
Sasori paused. He put his hands on his knees, stood, and looked back at him with cold eyes. "I think you severely underestimate my knowledge of fuinjutsu. Are you done bothering me?"
Nagato went silent. "No one knows about the tunnels other than the older, surviving ninja and the rest of the Akatsuki—"
"It's almost impressive that you didn't kill that other fool in your attempt to help him. If you're coming to me, that means you tried," Sasori said over him. "You're more competent than I thought if he's still breathing, but not enough. That fool will die and I'll take care of him. He'll be much more beautiful in death than he ever was in life."
Nagato sighed.
"He'd make such an irritating puppet," Sasori continued, turning his back on him. "But I haven't created anything in such a long time. I'm getting tired of waiting."
Nagato paused, wondering how Sasori expected him to react. How did people normally react when he threatened to turn them or their loved ones into puppets? When he spoke about doing it like he'd done it many times before?
Fear, Nagato thought. Anger, or maybe disgust.
"Do you regret it?" Sasori asked, still not looking at him. "That fool spoke with such confidence, acted so arrogant, all for it to mean nothing in the end. His salamander is more average than I thought. How disappointing for you."
Nagato, oddly, felt his nerves settle. It was Hidan who had done this to him, who made being insulted something that felt familiar.
"You're bored of them," Nagato said.
Sasori stopped and looked at him.
"You don't like using these puppets for some reason, but you're not willing to use the ones you do like for this, so you have to," Nagato reasoned aloud. "That's why you've been leaving them everywhere, and why they look like this."
"Are you dense?"
"You wouldn't want a workshop if you don't take care of your puppets," Nagato forged on. "And… you don't owe us anything."
Sasori turned, staring at him in silence, and it almost felt like he was baffled.
"Yahiko was worried you wouldn't stay," Nagato mused to no one. "He was worried that if he died, you'd leave."
Nagato met his blank stare, and thought of what he knew about Sasori.
Sasori had been alone for a long time. Alone on the battlefield for most, if not all of the war, and alone as a missing-nin.
Nothing and no one but sand and heat.
Of course he owed them nothing. Nagato could talk like this with Hidan because Hidan had known a version of them. He could sit and not take Hidan seriously, because he hadn't changed as much as he thought he did.
Nagato had been making the mistake of treating Sasori like Yahiko was, like Akatsuki as a concept was something he inherently understood.
What did Sasori think it meant to be Akatsuki?
"I'd hate you, but I'd still do everything I could to keep the village from turning on you if he died," Nagato told him. "How I feel doesn't matter to you, but that's what it means to be Akatsuki."
Was it a title to him? Or was it just a word that floated around him that meant nothing?
"Yahiko made you Akatsuki, so I wouldn't turn my back on you," Nagato continued his attempt at an explanation, not meeting Sasori's eyes, but feeling the burn of his stare. "I'd be so angry, but I'd still protect you from my sister. To be Akatsuki…" he trailed off with a sigh.
Oka didn't use words to show Hidan what it meant, but she'd still showed him. Maybe he could do the same, in his own way.
"You're not just a higher rank, but our equal. Not in strength, but in freedom," Nagato began again. "You won't be ordered to take missions, or have to report to us, or have to fight if you don't want to. To me, being Akatsuki means to be able to trust the people around you with who you are. The village wouldn't agree. But they don't know who we are. Just who were, when we thought strength and power was enough. You've probably met jonin by now who are stronger than some of the Akatsuki. I don't know if you've met Matsu, but he and his brother were Akatsuki before they knew how to be a ninja."
Nagato paused, but Sasori just looked at him.
He didn't get it, but that was okay too. "Do you mind if I watch you work for a while?" Nagato asked.
"You're insane," Sasori finally decided.
Maybe he could show Sasori by letting go of what he came here to do, even if it made him feel tense.
"I didn't bring any cards with me," Nagato said mildly. "But if I went to get some, would you still be here when I got back?"
Sasori said nothing and did nothing.
It felt like Sasori didn't know what to do with him.
Nagato felt a grim amusement, but he stayed and watched, and Sasori didn't chase him away.
A/N: 正常 - Normalcy, 狂気 - Insanity
sasori: I just threatened your best friend with graphic violence
nagato: wow I didn't bring any cards
sasori:
nagato: do you have any dice?
sasori: no, seriously, what is wrong with you
./.
patch notes
*the scene between Oka and Nagato in chapter 68 has been rewritten
*the last scene in 71 between Oka and Etsudo has been rewritten
*added scenes in 74 before the POV change
*some edits to 75. Changes were made, but nothing big enough to change the scene itself. Mostly recontextualizes chapter 63.
*renamed Michi (chapters 35, 57) to Sae. I realized I really like M names for some reason.
*moved many chapters to Tilt. Kill your darlings and all.
I haven't been happy working on Axis for a while now and had been trying to "push through it" instead of enjoying it like I used to. Wish I could kick past me for deciding to upload weekly and burning through my backlog so fast I didn't have time to do any editing on anything new, and current me for forgetting that I didn't start this story to meet a deadline. I won't be editing anything before 66 even though I really want to, because then I'd never leave the chapters between Memento Mori and the Hyozan Arc. Not to get sappy but uh, thanks for sticking around for so long. I do read every review, but I mostly just change things in editing instead of replying, aha.