"If I was dying on my knees,
You would be the one to rescue me,
And if you were drowned at sea,
I'd give you my lungs so you could breathe,"
-Brother, Kodaline
Yahiko stared up at the cloudy sky with his hands behind his head, his fingers cold against the concrete, and guessed it was sometime in the middle of the night.
He admitted to himself, in the privacy of his own head, that he'd frozen.
He hadn't felt Killing Intent like that since, well, Hanzo.
He hadn't faced a problem he hadn't been able to talk his way out of since then either, and Kusagakure didn't count because he hadn't been given a chance to talk.
He had misjudged Kisame, had said the wrong thing, and suddenly he was sixteen again.
Suddenly it didn't matter what he'd done or who he'd become since then. It was him who tried to bluff his way out of that situation, to play into who everyone thought they were because mercenaries didn't follow the rules of ninja.
It was him who'd looked at the threat to the people he loved and realized he'd chosen wrong.
Kisame hadn't called him out on the lie, but when Kisame had eyed him, it felt like he'd known.
In that moment, that brief, eternal second, it felt like he could hear rain pounding in his ears.
And then Oka stood up and Kisame had looked away.
Yahiko blinked at the sky. He had so many issues.
But, more importantly, he was starting to think he was going soft, and it wasn't because of the poison he was still recovering from. Even under Hanzo's Intent, which he still thought had been worse, he'd been able to move.
But now, without the war, without the need to always be on alert, he'd barely been able to breathe. Even Sasori had only used his Intent against him like a warning, like a stop bothering me and go away.
His ten-year-old self would've killed for the chance to go soft, and here he was thinking of what it almost cost him.
Yahiko stretched as much as he could without moving his hands or his legs, because his body (more specifically his still-healing side) was starting to dislike this position, even if it was comfortable.
As for his legs, Namekuji had fallen asleep on them.
Nagato came and knelt next to him, and Yahiko turned his head to him as a ration bar was put on his chest. "You'll have to use your chakra, but you should eat instead of overthinking the whole morning," Nagato said quietly, giving him a knowing look.
Yahiko couldn't help a startled little laugh, as silent as he tried to make it. "It's not morning, is it?"
Nagato looked at the sky and mused, "Hard to tell. It could be noon for all we know."
Yahiko followed his gaze and said, "It can't be. I don't remember a lot before I fell asleep, but I'm sure it wasn't as dark as it is now."
Nagato didn't argue the point. He crossed his legs, glanced at where Hidan was sprawled on his back with his cloak over his face, and asked, "Did you see where Oka went?"
"I fall asleep for a few minutes and she disappears," he said in answer. "You still can't sense?"
"I'm working on it," Nagato said tentatively. "I can sense up to the end of the alley," he offered, then admitted, quieter, "I feel blind."
"Welcome to how the rest of us feel all the time," Yahiko drawled.
Nagato huffed, but he had a small smile, too.
If Oka needed them, she'd flare her chakra. And knowing her, and how subtle she was, all of Minakami would feel it if she did.
Yahiko grabbed the ration bar and warmed it beneath his fingers, looking back at the sky as he said, "It's not like you to not keep anyone on watch."
Nagato's smile turned rueful. "I did," he said, even quieter. "He offered. I think he felt like he owed us, and I was tired," he admitted.
Yahiko blinked. He wanted to but didn't ask what happened between them and Chojuro while he was asleep.
Chojuro felt like he'd owed them?
"I should've stayed up," Nagato said after a second.
"Wasn't blaming you," Yahiko said back immediately, and Nagato shook his head.
"Don't blame him either."
Yahiko lifted his shoulders. "I think we're even after what I tried to do. I was using his reaction to sell the lie," he said, and took a bite of the warm enough ration bar, "And speaking of failed plans, I did have one for Mei, you know."
"I know."
Yahiko looked at him.
"You're always scheming something," Nagato said unapologetically.
Yahiko blinked at him and ignoring that, took another bite and said, pointedly, "But, for it to work, no one was supposed to know we were here."
Nagato looked amused.
Yahiko didn't look at where Chojuro sat against the wall, but he'd shuffled away from them after Kisame left, far enough that he was comfortably out of earshot. "I was going to force her hand. We were never going to do this with only the promise of getting something in the end, but we still came all this way, which meant I needed Mei to be in a place where she couldn't turn back before I could do anything."
Nagato pulled another ration bar from his pouch, held it out to him expectantly, and Yahiko's eyebrow twitched, even as he took it and began to warm it for him in his other hand.
"When we met up with Mei again, I would've told her that we'd walk if I didn't get proof from the water daimyo that he'd do the things she said he would. From what Oka said she said, without us, this entire plot fails. Mei wouldn't have been able to say no," Yahiko explained. "If Mei proved that her influence is as strong as she said it is I'd be a lot more convinced to do this. Wanting to surprise the Mizukage with us meant we had every advantage in a negotiation."
"And then Oka told that guy we were from Amegakure," Nagato finished for him.
"And then that plan went up in flames," Yahiko agreed, tossing the other kinda-warm ration bar at him as he sat up, ignoring the painful pinpricks down his side.
"To be fair to her," Nagato began, breaking off a corner of it, "You never tell anyone when you have a plan, and then you do your plan while keeping us in the dark the whole time."
He was right, but Yahiko still wanted to wave his arms at him nonsensically to show his frustration; but then his side would hurt more than he could bear, and, plus, he was supposed to be the most adult of them here.
"Did she at least tell you why she did it?" he asked instead.
Nagato paused, then ate another piece. "It's almost what you wanted to do," he mused. "If people know we're here, then Mei can't go back on her word."
Yahiko looked at him and Nagato shrugged back.
"Do you know what else she's planning to do?" Yahiko asked him.
Because his little sister was a lot of things but he'd never known her to be reckless when it mattered, which meant she had a plan. He just didn't know what it was.
Nagato shook his head but looked amused again.
Yahiko couldn't help himself. He flopped backwards and took a miserable bite of his ration bar. "So, this is what it feels like to be left in the dark," he said, just as miserably.
Nagato choked on a laugh, turning away to cough.
"What do we do now?" Yahiko asked, sighing heavily.
"We trust her," Nagato said simply, his voice strained as he tried not to laugh again, cough, or both.
Yahiko glanced at him. "It was a rhetorical question. I was being dramatic. Let me be."
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Hidan sit up, looking irritated and tired as he yanked the cloak off his face. He got up without a glance at them, barely mumbled, "Gonna find a sacrifice," loud enough for them to hear, and then ambled away.
Yahiko could only blink at him in stunned silence, watching Hidan throw his cloak on behind him like a blanket, turn the corner, and disappear.
"I don't think he's ever bothered telling us he was going to do it before," Nagato noted quietly, looking in the same direction.
Yahiko finished off the ration bar and folded his hands behind his head again. "Now to finish corrupting Sasori."
Nagato scoffed.
"Oh, right," Yahiko said, tilting his head towards Nagato again. "Hidan kissed Oka on the ship."
Nagato stopped, staring down at what was left of his ration bar for a few seconds without blinking, and then he broke off another piece and ate it, saying nothing.
Yahiko studied him. "You knew?"
"I knew he liked her. I didn't think he'd act on it, but Hidan is Hidan," Nagato answered carefully, then paused, and added, "He cares about the village in his own way, but not enough, I don't think, to care about the politics of it. And if he doesn't care about why we're here, and he didn't come here for me or you, then there can only be one reason."
Yahiko looked at the sky and said, mildly, "I thought it was like you said. Hidan being Hidan. You know, doing whatever he wanted, because he can," and then, even milder, "I threatened to throw him off the ship."
Nagato choked on a laugh. Once he'd composed himself, he leaned back on his hands and said, "I wanted to talk to him about it, or—I'm not actually sure what I would've said. I barely know what I'm doing there. But you heard what happened when Namekuji tried to bring it up."
Yahiko blinked slowly at him. "That was—that was Namekuji trying to talk to him about it?"
Nagato looked back at him and said, "It's Namekuji," like it explained everything, and it did.
"It's Namekuji," came the muffled, mocking voice from his legs. "Last time I help you."
"I told you not to do it," Nagato said back, but sounded used to it, like they all were.
Yahiko felt Namekuji moving, turning to glare at Nagato probably, but didn't look. "But, while we're on the subject, and now have plenty of time until our team leader comes back to tell us what do next, let's hear about your love life, best friend of mine. Any guys I should know about before I'm blindsided like with Hidan?"
"Why is this suddenly about me?" Nagato asked.
"Because if this has been coming for a while there's nothing to talk about. Hidan knows what she's like. He'd have an easier time with anyone else but he has to know that already, so," Yahiko said, lifting his shoulders. "And I like gossip."
Nagato hesitated, then shook his head and said, "I don't have any for you. I don't think it'll ever happen. I don't want to get—"
"Hurt," Yahiko finished for him, watching the mist. "Like me, you mean."
He waved off Nagato's sharp look and said, "I don't regret any of it, you know."
Nagato frowned, sitting up more, "I didn't mean—"
"You did, and that's okay. Even if I end up single for the rest of my life, I'll always be glad that me and Konan happened," he interrupted him, not looking down. "That that could happen shouldn't stop you. I thought we left that kind of fear behind a long time ago."
Nagato was quiet. And then he said, "You didn't."
"Ah," Yahiko said, understanding. "I'm not afraid of being hurt. I just..."
Yahiko shook his head, forced himself to meet Nagato's lowered gaze, and shot him a grin, "I know that, right now, if I did get into another relationship, I'd just feel like I was replacing her. I don't want to put those feelings onto someone else. It wouldn't be fair. I guess, the simplest way to put it is that I'm not ready. But it's not fear."
Nagato looked back at him, sighed, and then murmured, "There's still no one, but I'll try not to let that get to me from now on."
Yahiko's grin softened into a smile. It felt more real.
"Some of us are trying to sleep," Namekuji rudely reminded them.
Yahiko found himself trying to muffle another laugh and only partially succeeding. "You should talk to Chojuro," he told Nagato, who blinked at him. "You know, explain why I said what I did before. You're the only one he might listen to."
Nagato looked over at Chojuro, let out a quiet breath, and stood. "I'm always cleaning up your messes," he muttered.
"The best friend a guy could ask for, really," Yahiko said airily.
Nagato half-heartedly glared at him for a few seconds, then went over to Chojuro.
.
.
.
Pebbles and small rocks dug into the bottom of my feet as I walked up old steps. Long tuffs of grass stuck up through the cracks, or they were filled with moss, and a slimy, rotten residue clung to the corners of the stone.
Minakami sloped up, like I'd thought, and we'd been at the bottom of it.
The higher I went, the easier it was to see. The mist wasn't thinner, but spread out more.
The bottom of Minakami had a handful of buildings scattered around that were abandoned, or supposed to be, because they were all damaged in some way. A hole burned into a roof, a slanted wall of earth that had been used to bash in a wall, deep cuts in the ground from a wind jutsu that still felt warm to the touch, even months, or years, later.
The buildings down there were the same circular shape as the ones in that field, and the inside of one that had a still-smoking fire pit dug in the dirt had markings on the walls like the ones that I thought had been marking a path in the grass.
I'd looked at them, and I'd thought, I'll never stop seeing signs of the war, no matter where I go.
I stepped over a group of ants and glanced to the left, at a row of houses, some square, some rectangular, built so close together it looked like they were clinging to each other.
Another row of closely built homes was half a step above the rest, with only a narrow, dark alley separating them. If I looked to the right, I'd see an identical row, boxing the path up between them.
They were all muted browns or chalk gray, but some of the roofs were different. If they weren't covered with wild plants, they had streaks of color painted on, or had symbols covering the walls, representing a clan or a village that wasn't Kirigakure.
I stopped for a second to look at a word painted over a rusted, cloudy window.
舟戸
I didn't know what it said, but it was what I'd come here to see. I wanted to see who, and what, we were supposedly fighting for.
If I was going to care, if I was going to look at the people here and want to save them, I didn't want to hear more about them from Mei, or about the war from Ao, or about the swordsmen from Chojuro.
I wanted to see them all for myself.
I kept walking.
Words weren't enough.
I thought they had been, that Mei had convinced me, and she had, mentally.
But my heart, the part that she really wanted to appeal to, hadn't, couldn't, take in anything she'd said. How could it, when all I'd ever done was separate it from myself?
How could it, when I'd spent so long wrapping it in steel that I didn't know how to take it off?
How could it, when I was always the last to know how I was feeling?
I'd listened to Ao about the Mizukage and the genjutsu slowly killing him, but I couldn't say that I felt any way about it, separate from how I felt about not-Madara.
But I wanted to try and care, and I thought that counted for something.
A woman was leaning out of a window from a newer looking house that had been built on top of an older one, pale skin and with dark tattoo's covering her face and neck, frozen in the middle of hanging a shirt on a line of ninja wire between roofs. She stared at me, watching me walk past with a small frown.
Maybe she was looking at my cloak, or maybe it was just me that stood out.
I heard sudden, near-silent footsteps to my right, like more than one person was moving quickly towards me, and I stopped mid-step, turning to blink up at the man standing two or three steps away.
It wasn't the reaction he'd been expecting, I knew, because he'd stopped, half-crouched like he'd been about to lunge, a short sword in his right hand. He was five, maybe ten years older than me, and his clothes were streaked with old dirt. His eyes were a bright, unnatural green, and I saw his pointed teeth the longer he hesitated.
I still felt the woman's stare behind me as I studied the symbol on his shirt, a vase shaped like a jar with a black line down the middle.
Behind him, half obscured by the mist in the alley, two others had been following him but stopped too, looking at each other or frowning at his back.
A bead of sweat slid down the side of his face as I met his eyes again. And then, just as abruptly, he backed off, taking quick steps back until he was standing in the alley again and shoving the other two back as I watched him and stayed where I was.
He lowered his blade, another bead of sweat sliding down his face as the other two disappeared into the mist.
And still he kept his gaze on mine, like I needed to give him permission to disappear too.
I half-smiled at that, and it seemed to unnerve him.
"What's your name?" I eventually asked.
He didn't answer, but his mouth turned down more, showing off more of his sharpened teeth, and I hummed.
"That's okay," I decided, turning away, and he sagged as I kept walking.
When I glanced back, amused, he was gone.
It seemed like Kirigakure wasn't that different from Amegakure after all.
.
.
.
Minakami and Gengetsu were separated by a flat, wooden bridge.
Standing three steps from the top of the path, I looked first at the water under the bridge, which had a layer of mist too dense to see through on top.
If hunter-nin were sitting on the water, or lying under the bridge, I'd never see them.
If summons were in the water I'd never know either.
I let out a cold, cloudy breath, glancing to the left and then the right, but no one was on this side of the canal.
The grass was wild, curling over and around itself, but kept low. No one could use it to hide.
There was a dense forest on the other side of the bridge. The trees were small and brown and spread all over, but the bushes were as tall or taller than a person. Mangled, moss ridden roots grew out from beneath them, curling up the trees and stretching out over the grass and into the water like a web.
I eyed them and thought it was enough to make someone who wasn't supposed to be here hesitate, to take one glance at all the roots and see a trap.
Beyond the forest were circular towers, some far enough away that they looked like hazy outlines, and some tall enough to pierce the mist in the sky.
They made Minakami feel small, like Gengetsu was towering over it.
I kept staring up at them, trying to count the shadowy towers, knowing, probably, that I was being watched.
Knowing what they'd think when they saw my cloak, because Minakami didn't hide who they were before they'd become mist-nin. Because the clouds of the Akatsuki weren't recognizable outside of Suisai or Hyozen or Amegakure, no matter how much I wanted them to be.
Because being overlooked meant that I looked like someone from a clan. I might look like someone who might be planning something, who might be holding a grudge, but I couldn't be the first, not when Minakami was full of war prisoners or thieves.
Or I looked like someone who wanted to cross, some girl with weird eyes, a cloak of a dead or dying clan, and a stare that wanted more than what she could have.
I didn't take another step up, knowing where I stood to them.
I knew that with the long sleeves of my cloak hiding my scars and the calluses on my hands, and with the way it draped over me and hid the pouch at my side, with my bare, dirty feet, I didn't look like much from a distance.
Not when I hadn't seen a single person so far that carried themselves like a civilian.
I looked a little more, and then I turned around and started back down the steps.
Knowing where I belonged, I mused.
I looked to the left at a house with a pale yellow hook painted on the side, with the curved end in the shape of a fin, and stepped down—
—and fell.
It happened in an instant. The steps were suddenly gone as I tumbled forward and down, a dark hole in the earth where the ground had been.
It was as much of a shock as having cold water thrown in my face.
I made the half-snake sign automatically, turning fast to re-orient myself and... stopped, because the rows of houses and the rest of the path had all disappeared too. Because the sudden dark abyss above me looked like it was moving, like little waves, and it didn't feel like a genjutsu.
It felt familiar, almost like—
My back hit the water hard, but it didn't hurt, waves splashing up around me for a second before they crashed down on me like an embrace and I sunk under. And then the water resettled, smoothing out like I'd never fallen in at all.
I couldn't look away from a few streams of light that poked through the top of the water, numbly watching them dim as I was pulled down by the current. My arms hung limply above me and I wondered about all the bodies that had been swallowed up by the ocean and never found, wondering if in a hundred years they'd find me buried under the sand, some ancient skeleton from a dead society.
I smiled, bubbles drifting up as I breathed in water, thinking that it was okay like this, that I was okay with this.
It wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be, really—
I opened my mouth and screamed, filling the water with bubbles as all the air left my lungs.
Because I had always fought, with everything I had, to live—
I sat up fast, breathing hard, and stared at the endless ocean in front of me.
"You're the worst."
I turned as she spoke, eyes landing on the woman leaning back on her hands on top of the water next to me.
"I really hate you, you know?" she asked, looking up at the cloudless sky.
I wordlessly reached under my cloak and into my pouch as I observed her. She had skin like milk chocolate and dark freckles across her neck, up her arms, and down her legs where her shorts ended. Her hair was dark and wavy, like seaweed, and tied into a loose braid behind her.
I spun a kunai into my hand, wordlessly grabbed her by the shoulder, and shoved her down on top of the water as I held my kunai to her throat.
Her brown eyes blazed fearlessly at me. "That pissed you off, huh?" she asked, her voice shaking with sudden, barely restrained rage. "Well, good. Now you got a taste of what I've felt your entire life."
The longer I looked into her eyes, the more I knew things I didn't want to know.
She had been twenty-seven when she died. She'd lived alone on the beach because she'd loved the water and sea air.
I blinked when I felt liquid on my thumb.
She'd grabbed the kunai while I'd been distracted, but I hadn't budged, and red drops stained her tank top from trying to move it.
"I'm sick of you," she hissed. "I'm sick of you ruining the thing I love."
She'd had a dog, a big brown one with floppy ears, and she'd propped the door open when she left.
I looked at her steadily and said, "Go back to sleep."
She laughed at me, a wet sound that broke halfway into a choked sob. She pressed both hands against her eyes, but it didn't stop the tears leaking down her face. It only tinted them red.
"I—I can't," she said, taking shuddering breaths.
I paused, and then I pulled the kunai back, the initial anger fading into something that was more... I didn't know. Tired?
"I wanted you to stop. To just stop. This is my favorite—I love this world, but the way it's supposed to be. I didn't think you would—" she made a frustrated noise at herself, "I thought that if I was stuck here, I could watch like I did before. But you—"
She broke off and I shifted off her, letting her curl up on her side.
"You're so damn stubborn. I couldn't do anything. No matter how hard I tried you—you wouldn't stop."
I looked away at that, my kunai hanging limply at my side as I said, "It wasn't stubbornness. It was because I had people that loved me."
I had Naga, who accepted it without question when I talked about drowning or girls in the sea, and I had Yahiko, who brought me back when the sky turned to water and never made me feel different or wrong for it.
They were why she couldn't 'do anything'.
She stopped, and then she surged up, her face right in front of mine and red smeared around her eyes as she spat, "You—You don't know what love is. Because you're you, and all you're good for is taking loved ones away from other people."
I only looked back at her. She was angry, and she was hurt, and had been both of those things for a long time. Long before I was born, I knew.
"I don't know how to feel a lot of things, and I don't know romantic love," I agreed. "But I know platonic love, because I love my brothers, and I love my friends. You were alone, and I wish you hadn't been, but—"
She grabbed the front of my cloak in her fist. I automatically clenched and forcibly relaxed my hand around my kunai as she hissed, "Don't look at me like that."
And I realized I felt... sad.
I opened my mouth and said, without thinking, "You were here for fifteen years."
Her grip loosened. "What?"
"I was thinking about how alone you'd been," I told her. "I think I'd be angry too."
She stared at me for a few seconds, and then her expression crumpled and she dropped her head on my shoulder, sobbing again. "I don't want to be here," she said, deeply muffled. "I never wanted another—I couldn't do it."
I didn't move and stared out at the water, but I felt heavy. I wondered how long she'd spent curled up here, unable to move, unable to live again, until I became her ruiner.
Until she couldn't ignore the water trickling in from the outside, slowly smothering her.
If she died again, she might've come back, again, and then what would she do?
I looked down at her and couldn't find it in myself to blame her for what she'd done, what she'd tried to do to me.
If she had stopped me, she would've had to live again, but it would've been worth it to her, to preserve her favorite thing.
Not because she was blameless, or because I felt sympathy for her, but because—
"I want to live more than you do," I told her.
She slowly raised her head, staring at me with reddened eyes.
—because when it really came down to it, I was just as selfish, just as clingy about the things I loved too.
"Which means I'll keep ruining the thing you love," I continued, and she let go, reeling back from me. "I feel bad, but it's been a long time since I was you, if I ever was."
She sucked in a breath and said, in one big rush, "If you were never me you wouldn't have made things different. It was me who knew what would happen to Yahiko, not you. It's me who knew not to lie to Kisame. That wasn't you. That wasn't instinct or intuition. You had no right to any of me, and you still used my memories to—"
I stood, done listening, and spoke over her, "I think if you let go of your favorite thing, you could sleep again. Even if I lose you, I'll still be me. I like me, and there are a lot of people who like me, too."
I met her wide eyes and saw a girl twenty years younger in her place, hands over her ears, screaming at two adult shadows to stop.
I saw a flash of a girl under a blanket fort in a closet, rolling a wooden car across carpet and happily kicking her feet.
I closed my eyes for a few seconds, and then I turned around, letting her go.
No matter what she said, I wasn't her, and I didn't want to leave the people I loved.
They weren't here, but they were still why she couldn't stop me now either.
"You can't just go. If it wasn't for me, you wouldn't be here. You owe me everything!" she shouted at me, sniffing and trying to muffle her ragged breathing.
I heard her desperation, her hurt, and underneath it all, her loneliness.
I still didn't turn around, starting to walk away as I said, "I don't think I'll see you again, but still, I'm glad we finally met."
"Oka," she yelled after me, getting to her feet, but couldn't follow me. I still heard the rage as she ducked her head and screamed, "Oka Uzumaki!"
I stopped, looking back over my shoulder. "That last name doesn't really mean anything to me. But my brother, Naga, would tell me that people wouldn't want to hear that. I've always been just Oka," I told her, and began walking again, lifting my hand in a high wave as I left her behind.
"Goodnight, Marie."
A/N: 舟戸 - Funato
Oka: we're from Amegakure
Yahiko: :) *internally screaming*