"So I just sit in my room after hours with the moon,

And think of who knows my name,

Would you cry if I died?

Would you remember my face?"

-Fine on the Outside, Lizz Robinett

I stopped on the bottom step, glancing back at the inn.

It looked the same. It was shaped like an upright rectangle, all dark, rotting wood. The path up was lined by the same rickety fence, but it was painted white. It was slowly peeling, revealing scratches of tan wood beneath.

Naga stopped, halfway up, turning to look back at me.

A lone board blocked the open, wide doorway. I went back to the inn and ducked underneath it. The only light that came in was from the moon. Grass sprouted from the seams in the floor, overtaking parts of the wide, open space and snaking up the walls.

A curved desk sat alone at the back of the room, wrapped in weeds. The wallpaper was either in rotten heaps on the floor or curling off the walls.

Naga climbed under the board behind me, blocking out the moonlight for a few seconds.

"They fixed the gate, the fence, but left this?" I mused.

A staircase against the wall on my left led up, out of sight, but the bottom stair caved in when I pressed a foot on it.

Naga tilted his head back, eyeing a hole in the ceiling. "They couldn't," he answered. "They repainted, but I don't think it was anyone here who cut the arches off the gate."

I stared up into the dark. A centipede crawled along the wall and disappeared into a hole.

"The shinobi that come through don't have a reason to help them with this, and I doubt they'd want to stay here any longer than they had to anyway," Naga went on.

What must it be like, watching shinobi pass through that pretended not to see the cracks in the steps, the towering, abandoned building in the middle of town?

But they have a nice road now.

I smiled without humor. "Could we help?" I asked, turning to face him.

Naga shook his head. "I'll see if we can send someone when we get back. We can't stay here for too long, Oka, and there's no salvaging this place. It has to be rebuilt."

Would it take weeks? Months?

It would have to be put together by hand, and we still needed to go to Yugakure. I looked down at the broken pieces of the stair again, at a small anthill underneath, and wondered if being a shinobi meant only doing more than they had to if paid for it.

.

.

.

Naga knocked twice on Haruto's door.

I looked down the path at the other houses. The ones that had been marked were repainted a lighter shade of brown, or cream. A plank hung in front of a shuttered window, a fox drawn on it in black ink.

Another hung off a wall, behind me, and had sloppily painted on wings.

They didn't know that Konan was dead.

"Do you sense Haruto?" I asked when no one answered. I tried to ignore the ghostly afterimage of the five of us and Hidan standing here, years ago.

He frowned. "I sense Hanako," he said, and knocked again.

A few more seconds, and I saw dim orange light flicker through the window. A door opened across the road, the second-to-last house, and an older man peered out, gaping at us.

I looked back as the door rattled open and Hanako stood in the doorway, holding up a lantern, dried wax pooled at the bottom. She wore blue and gray pajamas that fit, her face rounder than I remembered.

"It's nice to see you again, Hanako," Naga said.

Hanako looked at him for a moment, then turned and went back inside, leaving the door open behind her.

Naga's smile fell.

I stepped around him, inside, and noticed that everything looked the same. Moonlight spilled in from the window in the corner, the two couches were still there, and a new, thread rug was on the floor between them.

Hanako put the lantern down on a counter in the kitchen, and I saw cracked plates piled in the sink. She picked up an old pot, wiped it with a rag, and filled it with water. I watched her turn a knob on the stove and used a match to light a stovetop.

Naga closed the door behind him.

I stepped closer to a couch and saw the dust on the cushions. It felt cold, somehow.

"Want tea?" Hanako asked, putting the pot on the stovetop.

The rest of the house was dark.

"If it's not too much trouble," Naga said. "I liked the tea you made last time we were here, but I don't remember what it was."

"Hmm," Hanako said back. She added leaves to the pot but didn't turn around.

I looked upstairs, then at Naga, and he shook his head. No one there.

Hanako wiped down three cups and put them on the counter around the lantern. She didn't speak.

I looked at Naga again and he shrugged.

"Where's Haruto?" I finally asked as the pot started to boil.

Hanako didn't move. She didn't do anything as the water bubbled and popped, or when it spilled over, hissing as it ate away at the fire.

And I knew.

Naga winced. He crossed the room and took the pot off the stove himself.

I waited and waited, but it didn't hurt. I just felt tired.

I cared about him, didn't I?

Not as much as Konan. Not as much as Kota.

He was like Osamu, but less, because I hadn't known him for that long.

I should feel sad, I thought, but didn't. I'd wrapped my heart up in too much steel to be hurt every time someone died.

Hanako stared down at the embers of the fire and Naga quietly, carefully, poured water into the cups. She turned to stare at him.

His sadness wasn't as obvious, but it was there. I saw it in the way he wrapped a cup up in the rag and held it out to Hanako in offering, the way he stared down at the murky surface when she didn't take it.

"I'm sorry," he murmured, because that's what people said when someone died.

I didn't feel grief, and that meant, when Hanako's eyes slid towards me, she looked angry.

"How'd it happen?" I asked.

Naga's gaze shot towards mine. The wrong thing to say, but there was nothing else to say, no question that would make this better.

And Hanako screamed at me. She batted the cup out of Naga's hands, and I watched ceramic shatter against the floor, heard Naga gasp.

"I hate ninja," she shouted, faltering at the end.

I looked at the growing puddle on the floor. There was just enough light for me to see the reflection of her clenched fists.

"He let you stay here. He helped you. He kept everything quiet so no one would find out that I—" she stopped, shaking in the reflection. "And you don't even care. You're not even sad that he's dead."

"That's not fair," Naga said quietly.

Hanako rounded on him and her reflection wiped her eyes. "You know what's not fair? That I lost my dad."

Naga didn't move, didn't shrink back, and she looked angrier.

"Would it bring him back?"

Hanako's reflection turned fast and I thought of staying quiet. I watched Naga take a step back and lean against the counter. He ran a hand through his hair, grieving quietly, in his own way.

She didn't see it, because she didn't know him that well, because he didn't show it.

"If I was sad, would it bring him back?" I asked, finally looking up at her.

And the look she gave me made me feel like I eleven again, watching her draw back, away from me. Except now her wide-eyed stare was meant to burn.

Didn't you know, Hanako? You can't hurt me with mean looks.

I looked down at her reflection again as it was stepped on, liquid soaking her sock as she ran at me.

"I hate you," she shouted.

I caught her wrist as she threw a punch. "So?" I asked, and her pupils shrunk.

"I hate that I ever wanted to be like any of you," she said, faltering again, and I saw her grief, up close. She tried to tug her hand back, but I didn't let go.

"What happened?" I asked.

Hanako grit her teeth. Her other hand went for my hair and I jerked her towards me, pulling her off balance. Shock and fear flashed in her eyes as I grabbed her shirt, turned, and threw her over my shoulder.

Naga winced as she hit the ground but didn't move to help as she gasped and groaned.

I threw her hand away. "Konan is dead," I told her.

Hanako stopped in the middle of curling up to stare at me.

"You're not the only one who lost someone," I added. "Neither of them will come back, no matter how sad we are."

Hanako's eyes slid down to the floor. She wrapped her arms around herself, grimacing, shaking. She squeezed her eyes shut. "It was my fault."

Her fingers dug into her shoulders. "I wanted to be a kunoichi," she whispered. "I had it all planned out. I would live with my uncle and his family in Konohagakure. I'd find someone to teach me if the Academy wouldn't accept me. I wanted to have the power to help smaller towns like you helped us. I begged and begged dad to take me with him once enough of the wheat was harvested to be processed in the village. He didn't want to. It was still wartime, and no one could be spared to escort us."

She sniffed. "That was the excuse, anyway. I think they just couldn't be bothered," she went on, bitterly. "Dad, he—he made his own team of the strongest people he knew. We had to deliver the wheat, or the honorable Daimyo would pull back on the deal he made with Chief Ren."

She tucked her head down. "Why did we ever think it was going to work?"

She was there when it happened. She watched him die.

Naga slid down against the counter. He pulled one leg up so he could rest an arm on his knee. He stretched the other out, then rested a cup on his upper leg and stared at it. He'd angled his body to avoid the broken cup shards.

"Konohagakure is so close, but we still didn't make it," Hanako continued, barely a whisper. "I don't know who they were. Bandits. Missing-nin. Dad offered them what we had if they let us leave, but they didn't want us to tell the village what happened."

I walked to the kitchen and picked up my cup. It was lukewarm.

"I was at the back with him when they started—" she stopped, took a breath. Her legs were tucked tight against her chest. "He pushed me, and I fell in a bush. Dad ran away, made sure they chased him, and I was too scared to move. But I heard—the sounds—" she gagged.

Naga tilted his head back and closed his eyes.

I drank from my cup and didn't speak because war was terrible and cruel and always unfair.

Hanako shuddered all over. "Seeing you again was like having it thrown in my face."

Naga winced again.

The lantern light was dim, nearly out.

"Konan died three years ago," I said before Hanako inevitably asked. And then I went to the staircase and walked up to the second floor.

The room was the same, if not emptier. The big bed against the wall was neatly made, a quilted, multicolor spread over the top, but it looked unused.

I sipped from my cup. The tea was cold, but bitter. Hidan would've liked it, I thought, even if he pretended not to. I heard Hanako's quiet sobs through the floor.

The boards creaked as I went over to the window at the far end of the room and sat beneath it, looking out at the moon, a half-circle.

I glanced down at a house across the road and I thought about what the people here believed about us. They only thought us messengers because Haruto kept it a secret that Hanako contacted us.

Because he wanted to protect her.

I slipped a hand in my pack, pulled out the note Gou gave me and unfolded it. The handwriting was messy, slanted sideways, and I could only read some of it.

'For I-na-ri,

You helped crops be strong, and de-liv-ered lots food I never had.

Thank you saving everyone!

p.s. tell mom miss her and love her lots.

-Gou'

I refolded the note, put it back in my pouch, and my fingers brushed against something smooth and round at the bottom. The rock Enyo gave me for Kota.

If Kota was in some other place, maybe Gou's Mama was, too.

月

"What happened to your arm?"

I twisted away from the sun, the early morning light, to where Hanako sat in the doorway. She leaned back against the door frame with her legs pulled up.

I raised my right arm and looked at the scar, a splotchy, red-pink burn from my inner wrist to my elbow, a line following my chakra pathway.

It was smaller at first, a thin white line after Shido Valley, less than a third as long, but it became worse after the water dragon.

I thought of the blood that had coated my hands, so much of it that it could've been mistaken for skin, and lowered my hand. "It's a chakra burn," I said.

Hanako paused, but I didn't tell her it happened because I used too much chakra, because I was willing to hurt myself to kill.

"I'm sorry about what I said last night," Hanako said eventually. I watched her cross her arms around her legs and turn her gaze to the floor. "Dad would've been happy to see you again."

How long ago did he die? Months? Years? Did it matter?

I looked back at the window. "Where's Bashira?"

Hanako didn't answer right away. "She didn't have much time with dad," she said quietly. "As soon as she was all the way better, he was gone. This room, this house—a lot of the time I can't sleep here either."

She was in the palace, or somewhere else.

"I'm sorry about Konan," Hanako said when I didn't respond. "She was nice."

And I turned back to her. I leaned forward, elbows on my legs. "Why? You weren't there."

Hanako tucked her chin down, mouth hidden behind her arms. "It just means I empathize with you," she said, barely above a murmur. She was trying.

Trying to be friendly, trying to understand, even a little.

I could've dropped the conversation, could've pretended I understood when I didn't.

"Why?" I asked again.

Hanako squeezed her legs. "Why what? Why do I care that someone who helped save us is dead?"

"You empathize with me," I repeated. "What do you know about how I felt when she died?"

Hanako stared at me for a few seconds, then shifted her eyes back down. "That's not what it means," she tried. "It's supposed to mean—it means I understand your grief—"

"You don't," I interrupted.

Hanako buried her face in her arms again. "You weren't—" she stopped. "You really don't feel anything about his death, do you?"

I knew what she wanted me to say, and I knew what would happen if I said the opposite. "No," I answered. Because I wouldn't pretend to be someone I wasn't, even now.

And I watched her shake slightly, watched her push herself up and quickly turn away from me. I listened to her hurried footsteps down the stairs and reached into my pouch, rubbing Kota's rock between my fingers.

.

.

.

Naga was outside, kneeling in the dirt, in the shadows under the side of the house. A scroll was open next to him, a lily caked in dirt in the middle.

"Where'd Hanako go?" I asked, watching him carefully lower another lily into a hole.

"She didn't tell me," Naga answered, sitting back. He shot me a small, rueful smile. "She did say that you were too hard to talk to as she walked by."

I looked at the two other holes next to the first, then at his dirt-caked hands. "Do you think I'm hard to talk to?"

He smoothed clumps of dirt over the roots. "Not to anyone who knows you."

Maho was easy to talk to, and he was the closest to civilian.

"I'm the Wolf of the Rain," I mused.

But he wasn't one. He might've been raised in a special unit, but it was still for shinobi.

Naga paused at that. "Maybe, but that only caught on because those who support us accept you for who you are, even if they might not understand you."

Gidayu watched me kill and still looked at me like I was something 'other'.

I thought of Inari, of the foxes and what the people here believed, and thought that he'd looked at me like I was a god.

I hummed. "What do they call you? Other than Taiyōkage."

Naga froze. He ducked his head, muttering under his breath.

I crouched next to him and he kept his eyes solidly on the summoned lily as he put it in the other hole. He didn't repeat it.

"Something bad?" I asked.

"No one calls me Taiyōkage outside of the Akatsuki," he said.

"Something embarrassing," I decided.

Naga covered the roots with dirt and sighed. "You know how I helped decide what you should be called? Yahiko took it as a personal challenge to do the same to me."

I watched him wipe his hands together, semi-cleaning them, and sweep dirt off the scroll. He pressed a hand to the middle and summoned another lily.

"Storm God," he finally muttered. He checked the stems, the petals.

"We don't have storms," I pointed out.

Naga sighed deeply in agreement. "It's because of what I did with the rain."

"Then they should've called you a Rain God."

Naga poked my knee. "I didn't have a choice," he reminded me. "And I don't want anyone to see me as a god, rain or storm."

I hummed. "It's better, I think, that Yahiko did it as a joke," I said. "You shouldn't take it too seriously, either."

Naga moved the lily into the last hole. "But the village will."

"When I heard Wolf of the Rain the first time, I didn't think about what it meant to them," I began, watching him push the last of the dug-up dirt in the hole. "I thought of you. Sometimes I think of Yahiko and sometimes I think of Konan, because they called me a wolf too. I know it means more to them, but that doesn't matter to me."

Naga stared at me. And then he ducked his head again, shoulders shaking with laughter.

"What?" I asked.

"Bad habits," he answered, smiling softly. "I was doing it again, wasn't I?"

He was caring too much.

Naga rolled up the scroll. "I don't know if this is the best place for them," he admitted. "But I needed to stop carrying them around."

I looked at the lilies. The first one had already started to sprout green-white petals, while the other two were only long, curved leaves. For Konan, Kota, and Osamu. "Will they survive?" I asked.

The soil was dry.

"Not done," Naga answered, and pressed a hand flat against the ground next to them.

I watched the dirt under his hand darken, heavy with sudden water, and spread slowly outward, until the ground beneath the lilies were wet. "Will it stay?"

Naga shrugged. "It shouldn't dry easily. It's chakra water. But even if it does and they die, that's okay, too," he answered. "It won't change my memories of them."

I looked at him and realized that he hadn't found lilies, or a substitute flower, for the Root members he killed.

"I don't need them anymore," Naga mused, reading my thoughts. "That might be a good thing or a bad one, but I realized it when my hands didn't shake. I accepted I was a shinobi before I consciously knew it, and there was nothing I could do to change that."

His eyes were sad.

He still didn't want to kill, I knew, but he would anyway, again and again and again.

There was no such thing as peace.

"As long as you don't hold it all in again," I eventually said.

Naga shook his head, smiling. "I won't. I can't. The only way I can live up to my title is if I let the storm out, sometimes."

And then he stood and held out his hand.

ウサギ

I traced a finger down the tail of a golden fox. It was clean, polished, while the wall around it was dusty.

Beside me, Naga pressed both hands against the double doors of the palace and pushed them open.

The inside was almost the same as I remembered, except stone had been packed in the gaps of damaged columns, the floor was warped in places, boards cracked or bent from old water damage, and Bashira stood in the middle of the room in a light green robe.

Naga was stunned.

She looked like a person. The skin of her hands wasn't so translucent that I could see the veins beneath and her hair wasn't so stringy it might break off if I touched it.

Her smile was light, careful. She bowed slightly and I saw a dark green clip holding her hair up. "Welcome, Fox-Kissed."

I thought of Gou and the note in my pack.

Naga paused. "You knew we'd come?"

Bashira raised an arm, hiding the bottom half of her face behind a long sleeve. "Your arrival was the worst kept secret in town," she answered, humored. "By sunrise, Rini had her hands full with those who asked after you, who wanted to know what you said, what you ate. There's enough respect for you not to ask you these things directly, but not so that they won't seek answers elsewhere."

Was this how messengers were treated? Or gods?

I stepped into the room and Naga let the doors close.

"Do you think us messengers of Inari?" I asked.

You called us Fox-Kissed.

Bashira gazed at me. She had the same brown eyes as Hanako, but hers were sharper and gave nothing away. "How is Hanako?" she asked instead.

"Better," Naga answered, like she knew what happened the night before. Maybe she did. "But I haven't seen her since this morning."

She looked at him for a few seconds, but I couldn't read her eyes.

"Chief Ren is upstairs," she finally said. "We'd best not keep him waiting." Lowering her hand, she inclined her head and walked to the staircase.

Naga didn't follow. Instead, he let out a quiet breath.

"He might be Chief, but he's still Ren," I said, only loud enough for him to hear.

"It's not that," Naga said back. "The closer we get to Ren, the more pressure I feel."

"You shouldn't," I told him.

He looked at me, frowning, and I shrugged.

"If Ren says no, we can always use Joji to trade with the Land of Iron," I added.

Surprise flashed across his face and he burst out laughing. He tried to cover it with the back of his hand when Bashira stopped at the base of the stairs and glanced back, but it only made him snort.

I watched his face go red. Bashira's eyes didn't change, but I wondered what she thought of us.

.

.

.

The second floor was the same, but different, too.

The walls were still the color of eggshells, the floor still dark, smooth wood, but the screens had been taken out. The hole in the wall had been patched with wood boards and sunlight came in through the gaps.

The screens had separated the space into sections, but now it was bigger, emptier.

There was only a low, light brown table in the middle of the room.

A grid of black lines had been painted on it and there were white pieces in different places on top. Four dark blue cushions surrounded the table.

Ren sat with his back to the hole, facing the staircase, legs crossed. His hair was tied behind him but still long enough to pool on the floor. He slid a 'pawn' a space forward, a small smile on his face. Chakra burns circled his fingers, paler than his skin.

Naga bowed slightly, only as much as Bashira had. "Thank you for seeing us, Chief Ren."

I didn't bow.

Ren didn't wear a robe, but a green shirt with long, robe-like sleeves and black, baggy pants. "I'd prefer not to be called Chief by my friends," he said. He didn't look up as he gestured to the empty seats around him.

Bashira didn't sit but moved to stand behind him. Naga knelt on the cushion across from him, and I sat to his right.

"Where did you put all the screens?" Naga asked mildly.

Ren slid another piece at the front forward. "This was once where the first Daimyo of the Land of Fire lived, before the First Shinobi World War made it too dangerous to live so close to Konohagakure," he answered. "This floor was for the guards. The screens were to separate the space into rooms. That Daimyo took the furniture with him, but my father thought to use the screens for the same purpose. I don't need them."

I watched him reach out and move a piece on Naga's side. "What are you playing?"

"Shogi. Do you know how to play?" he asked.

"I don't," I said. "What happened to Abhuraya?"

"There are a few basements that were used to store seeds, wheat, and lavender. My father was kept in an empty one, along with those who acted against everyone," he answered. "He's the only one still there."

"And you're okay with that?" I asked. He would've died for him back then.

Ren moved another piece. "He's alive," he said lightly. "Not everyone is so lucky."

Bashira wordlessly raised her sleeve to hide her mouth and nose again.

"Will you let him out?" I asked, leaning back.

Naga's fists were clenched on his knees under the table.

"I haven't decided," Ren said, capturing a piece with another and putting it off to the side. "It took a long time after he was captured for me to realize that he wasn't the best father, or the best man. He's threatened more than once to reveal the truth to Lord Aoki."

"I'm sure our honored guests didn't travel all this way for small talk," Bashira said lightly.

Naga stiffened slightly, barely noticeable.

Ren closed his eyes. "You're right," he agreed, and sat back.

"I want to offer a trade between Amegakure and Suisai," Naga said immediately. "Amegakure would offer our shinobi and kunoichi, and they'd help out where they could, disguised as civilians. Like providing an escort to Konohagakure, or rebuilding."

It would be Kanae, Shinnai, or one of us.

"In return, Suisai would sponsor us. With whatever you can give," Naga continued.

Ren's smile widened and he shook his head. "I refuse. I'll sponsor Amegakure for free."

Naga faltered. "You'll...?"

"How much do you think the life of a man is worth, Fox-Kissed?" Bashira asked, her gaze sharper than before. "A hundred thousand ryo, perhaps? Two hundred thousand? What about eight men? Eight hundred thousand? Double? Triple?"

Naga frowned. "You were paid for their deaths?"

"Many of the families who suffered losses during that time refused to accept such honorable compensation on behalf of our Lord Daimyo," Bashira went on. "And that incident was not the first, nor, when the seasons change and it becomes warm enough to plant again, do I expect it to the last."

I watched Ren move a shogi piece on his side. "Lord Aoki views it as a proper way to atone if he has a hand in a death, directly or indirectly. It's only being on the receiving end of that mindset that I see how flawed it is," he said ruefully. "It would feel like less of insult if I could refuse it, or if he knew any of the names of the dead."

"What could you possibly mean by that?" Bashira asked, mock confused. "I, for one, am grateful to the honorable Lord Daimyo for putting a vague monetary value to my husband's death."

Ren smiled without humor and dropped another piece off to the side.

"Are you sure?" Naga asked.

"The honorable Lord Daimyo can always be petitioned if we need funds," Bashira answered.

Naga hesitated, and I knew that wasn't what he meant.

"Are you sure the other families don't want it?" I asked.

"They weren't happy with me when I asked the first time. I'd rather not try again," Ren said in answer.

Naga relaxed slightly. "How many scrolls would we need to transfer all of it?"

"What about your Daimyo? Lord Shohei?" Ren asked. "Is he not funding you enough?"

And Naga froze.

Ren only smiled again. "I see. You haven't asked."

"Why should we?" I asked. He has no power over us.

Ren looked amused. "I should've expected nothing less."

"You should speak to Hanako," Bashira suggested. "Kuu would be quite helpful in this endeavor of yours, I think."

"Play a game of Shogi with me," Ren said to my brother, absently massaging his wrist. "In return, I'll teach you how to negotiate."

Naga sagged. "That bad?"

"Even the lowest-ranking noble would've talked circles around you, and you'd have left without ever asking what you went for," he answered.

Naga looked at the board as Ren started adjusting pieces. "I don't know how to play."

"You'll learn," Ren said.

Bashira looked at me.

"Hanako won't want to see me," I told her.

"Would she want to see either of you?" Bashira asked lightly.

I thought of how she didn't get the reaction she wanted out of him, either.

I stood. "Where is she?"

"While you were with Rini, did she tell you about Rie?"

A/N: 月 - Moon, ウサギ - Rabbit

Hanako - 16, Ren - 25

I have a very specific image in my head of what Ren looks like and everyone must know.

Bashira wears a komon kimono. Oka doesn't know the proper names of things unfortunately.

Nagato's line about letting the storm out is the cheesiest thing I've ever written and I offer no apologies.