"I know dark clouds will gather 'round me,
I know my way is rough and steep,
but beauteous fields lie just before me,
where gods redeemed their vigils keep,"
-Wayfaring Stranger, Reinaeiry
Moss flattened wetly under my feet and tangled weeds brushed against my shins.
"There are traps all over out here," Chojuro nervously warned us, standing at the end of a dirt path. The grass was stained bright red, like someone had started marking a way through and couldn't finish.
"They were for—from the war," he continued. "But now all they do is make it harder to escape."
Small, circular buildings were spread out around the field, bases or outposts from somewhere that'd tried to get a hold on Kirigakure.
The one closest to me was covered in so many weeds that I couldn't tell what color it used to be. Grass sprouted through holes in the roof.
Lightning was the closest, I remembered, think of Yahiko's map, and Konohagakure had been fighting Iwagakure.
I looked to the right when I saw movement. An older man was pulling up long stalks of grass from within another abandoned building, barely visible through the mist.
He hadn't noticed us, I knew, because he froze as Chojuro spoke. He abandoned pulling them up and quickly bent down, taking off his basket and hurriedly tying bundles of stalks together with string.
It'd be impossible to run with them if he didn't. His hat was big and round, hiding his face and part of the gray cloth hiding his mouth and chin.
Chojuro tensed and stopped. Yahiko was looking at something in the grass ahead, a hand on the handle of the nagamaki, something he thought he might need to cut.
"Do you know where the traps are, Chojuro?" Naga asked.
"I wish I did," he answered apologetically.
Naga had his eyes on the man as he started to shuffle away. "If you help us," he spoke loudly, making the other man freeze. "We'll pay you."
The other man pretended not to hear him.
Chojuro's eyes widened. "No—You shouldn't—" he sputtered quietly. "You can't trust them to keep their word—"
"We could try and make it through on our own, but we can't avoid any traps hidden below ground," Naga interrupted him, his tone patient, keeping his eyes on the other man. "But we can't stay here, and I can't sense them."
Chojuro went silent, taking a step back. "You're right. Sorry."
Hidan sat and propped his chin on his hand as he waited.
"Don't be," Yahiko said, hands behind his head. "You know more about all of this than we do. That's why we let you take the lead. Nagato here is just overly friendly. Though at the same time, I really don't want to wait around and meet those hunter-nin Mei blackmailed away."
"No, I know, but..." he trailed off, looking away. "You didn't even say how much you'd pay."
"Him being out seems like a trap," Yahiko thought aloud. "You know it and we know it, but we still have to do it."
Naga was fully facing the other man, who had finally stopped but didn't come any close. "I'm a sensor-nin," he told him, and the other man froze again, turning completely to us.
"Swordsmen," he named us, his voice hoarse and thick. "You all... had... it coming."
Yahiko tilted his head.
"But… fine," the man continued, sounding like he wanted to cough. He pointed at a patch of grass. "Step... there. Around this building... I disarmed them. Don't want… your dirty… money."
Me first, I signed behind my back, walking ahead.
The other man's stare lingered on me for a long second, and then he went back to eyeing the Hiramekarei.
The grass crunched as they followed me.
"If you're so bored, why are you here, gray hair?" Namekuji asked Hidan as he stood.
"A snail wouldn't understand," Hidan said lazily, cracking his elbow.
"No one forced you to be here. You asked to come."
"I don't speak insect—"
The other man shuffled back fast when I neared him, and I only saw why when the moss underneath my right foot flared a sudden bright orange. The weeds turned to ash instantly under the heat of the explosive tag and—
—the heat dispersed as I drained the chakra from it. The word explode faded to a dull black.
Chojuro sucked in behind me.
"You lied," I mused, a little impressed as he stared at me with wide, terrified eyes.
"I didn't even get to bet on how long it'd take," Yahiko lamented, stopping.
I shook my head and asked, "If I were a Seven Ninja Swordsmen, what would happen now?"
He fell back in answer, in shock, bundles spilling onto the grass behind him. "I... was dead... either way."
I paused.
He didn't do it because he hated the swordsmen or to escape. He'd done it because he thought seeing us was a death sentence and, if he was going to die anyway, he wouldn't go quietly.
I hummed.
"I'm not going to kill you," I said, and he looked guarded and confused and disbelieving as I stepped off the paper tag. "Because we're not the swordsmen. We're from Amegakure."
.
.
.
"Why'd you do that?" Naga asked quietly, too low for anyone else to hear.
I stopped, holding a ration bar stolen from Hidan next to his over a small, wispy fire in a cracked cup.
If I listened hard enough, I could hear curious murmurs from outside the alley we were hiding out in. There was less mist here than on the trap field, but more of it was above us.
It made spying with flying summons impossible.
We were at the bottom of Minakami, or it felt like it, because the path leading deeper in sloped up.
Yahiko was asleep on his side, half-using Namekuji as a pillow, half being used as one. It was hard to tell he wasn't fully healed from being poisoned except now, when his exhaustion forced him to stop.
Hidan was asleep too, slumped against the wall with his hands under his armpits.
Chojuro, I knew, was sitting against the wall behind me with his legs pulled up, gripping the scroll he'd reluctantly sealed the Hiramekarei into like a lifeline, watching people pass by every once in a while.
You didn't need to look harmless to blend into Minakami, or not like ninja. You just had to look like you didn't belong anywhere.
It had to have been around twelve hours since we left the ship, since it was close to dusk.
"Oka," Naga said quietly, drawing me back to his question.
Why did you tell him we were from Amegakure, Oka?
"Because we're not mercenaries," I answered, just as quiet, turning the ration bar over even though the other side was still cold. "When I talked to Mei, she didn't talk about the rebellion like it was ours, but just theirs. Their fight, their revolution, her chance. She wants us to care about Kirigakure because of what we have in common, but not because she wants us to see it as our fight too. And she's right. It's not. Kirigakure belongs to mist-nin. But people should still know we're here because a daimyo can change his mind. If we do what Mei wants and he doesn't agree, even with all the influence she claims she has, what did we do it for?" I asked, musing as I watched twigs crackle and burn in the fire.
Naga was watching me, taking bites out of his own lukewarm ration bar.
"Minakami is isolated," I continued, eyes drifting to the moss and green slime seeping through the cracks in the wall. "It's the only place that can know about us because they have no one to tell. They're not real mist-nin. Mei's clan died because they weren't. Her clan made her, with two kekkei genkai, but they were still all sent out to die. And if mist-nin fight for themselves, why would prisoners and traitors be any different? If selling each other out worked that guy who disarmed those traps would never admit to being able to do it, especially to who he thought were the Seven Ninja Swordsmen."
Naga tapped his bar against mine, and I blinked at him.
He was smiling. "You might not remember, but we used to make fun of each other for talking like that. We used to call them speeches."
I remembered.
Naga looked down at the fire. "But… you stopped doing them when we did. Or—no, you didn't stop. You still did them, but they were different," he corrected himself, voice even lower. "You were trying to imitate who you were before, but you didn't know who that was anymore."
He had a way of telling me about myself like his words were indisputable facts, like there was nothing to argue against or question. He could say my name was Hibiki and I wouldn't be able to find the words to tell him he was wrong.
There was something unsettling about it, the trust I had in my brother to know me better than I did myself.
"You used to give those fake speeches to me or Yahiko or Mamoru-sensei. Not about what the future should be like, or what we wanted to accomplish, but to get us out of our own heads. You shouldn't have had to do it," Naga said sadly, tapping my ration bar again. "I wish that wasn't something the three of us had in common. We should've been the ones comforting you. I'm sorry that I didn't stop you back then. I regret that I didn't."
I looked at him and didn't know what to say.
I wanted to do it, was my first thought, my most honest one, but I knew that wanting to do something didn't make having done it any more right.
I broke off a warmer corner of the ration bar and ate it as a test. The inside was still cold and hard to chew and I still didn't know how to deal with apologies.
If I let Yahiko's grief eat him alive, or if I left Mamoru-sensei to die quietly, or if I let you burst into pieces, who did that leave me with? I thought second, most tiredly and a little bitter, but would never say.
Who did it leave me with? Joji, who I hadn't let in for so, so long? Maho, who had blamed himself for being too weak, who had isolated himself to learn medical ninjutsu, who was my closest friend now, but not during the time when it mattered most?
Matsu and Enyo, before I really knew them? Hidan, all the way in Yugakure?
Maybe it was the absence of regret that kept me silent, because if I was sent back to the day after Konan tumbled down that cliff, even knowing how it'd turn out, I'd do it again.
It wasn't right, but I had been happy just being near them, just being in the same room as Yahiko talked about Kusagakure or watching Mamoru-sensei mutter about us or sort through scrolls.
I was happy to quietly exist, to be helpful where I could, to kill so they'd stay okay, but I didn't know how to explain it to Naga without hurting him, and it would hurt him.
He'd smile at me, but he'd hurt.
"I thought letting you do that was helping you like it was helping us," he added when I didn't respond. "I thought that you were working through how you felt and that was the only way you knew how. But it only taught you to push down your emotions even more than you were. And I didn't realize it until it was too late, until that day when you cried and you didn't even know you were crying."
He hadn't wanted to hurt me by making me stop, he meant.
Thank you for trying in your own way, I should've said, but didn't because it didn't feel right.
I know, I thought, abandoning politeness.
I understand why it happened, I thought, faintly.
I didn't stop Naga from quietly taking my ration bar, replacing it with his own, and holding my still-cold bar over the fire.
His was hot under my fingers.
"Is there anything we agree on, Naga?" I finally asked.
He looked amused. "Not to hurt each other, not to argue," he answered easily. "I brought it up not for that, but because I wanted to say that I was happy that you found another dream."
I took a bite of the ration bar, wondering what Chojuro thought we were whispering about.
"I never had a dream. I had everyone else's." I told him honestly, taking another soft bite. "After Yahiko lost his, I tried to take Mamoru-sensei's, but that only made me realize that I had to find out what having a dream meant on my own."
"And you did?" he asked quietly, giving me a look that wanted me to keep talking.
"No. Yes. I wouldn't say it was a dream but..."
"I would."
"I love Amegakure. I didn't think I did, even when I missed the rain or sat in the sun. For a long time I thought that all that kept me there was the Akatsuki."
Naga broke the ration bar in half, still watching me.
I absently ran my fingers through the ragged strands of my hair, working out the knots. "But the world isn't just Amegakure," I started, then paused, looking away as I tried to explain, "It was easier not to care about anything. To care about something is to let it have your heart and I… When I realized Amegakure already had mine, I couldn't pretend I didn't care anymore, even though I kept trying. But caring about Amegakure meant I have to care about the world outside of it, because other places affect us. They decide, and have already decided, how much we mean."
I didn't know if it made any sense, or if when I looked into his eyes, I'd see that he didn't understand at all—
"It's getting cold," Naga pointed out, bringing my thoughts to a halt.
I didn't move, still looking away as I said, "When we're stronger, I'm taking back Kusagakure."
He was silent, and then he said, mildly, "I'm happy that you had Yahiko when you didn't have me."
I turned quickly to look at him but he only calmly cracked the ration bar in a quarter, eating a piece and not looking up at me.
"We always hurt each other the most when we're trying not to," I said after a few seconds, looking away as I bit into the ration bar. It was cold.
He smiled, barely-there.
"His name was Might Duy," Chojuro spoke suddenly, whispering and full of a shame that wasn't his.
Naga turned, but I only held the bar back over the fire.
"What I said about the mission my mentor went on. Might Duy was the one who killed them," Chojuro said quickly, unsure sounding, and I finally turned around.
He rested his head on his knees, his arms wrapped tightly around himself. His glasses were off and he squinted tiredly at us.
"Is it important?" Naga asked, but not unkindly.
"No, but..." he trailed off. His eyes shut and he forced them back open. "But I know more about my mentor than I let on. I didn't lie about him not teaching me anything, but his clan—his kekkei genkai is how he didn't die when the others did."
I heard the strain in his voice, how hard it still was for him to tell us, like we'd think less of Kirigakure for it.
His eyes skittered away. "How can you talk so openly like that—being here?" he asked hurriedly, filling the silence where his admission was, "I only heard the beginning, but you talked about something so… soft, like it was easy, like it didn't make you weak. No one would ever tell you to be quiet. Lady Mei would never say you were green. She meant well, but—how are you so confident?"
"I used to ask that a lot about Yahiko," Naga said, and Chojuro looked skeptical, because Naga didn't avoid eye contact or tense when around people he didn't know. "Watching him taught me is that no one is really confident. Everyone pretends to be until they don't remember how to be like they were before. Sometimes it takes borrowing confidence from someone else until it becomes your own."
Chojuro looked away.
"If you weren't already doing that," Naga began quietly, realizing he was losing him. "You wouldn't have been on Nankai with Mei. That took confidence."
Chojuro tightened his arms around himself.
He didn't think that was enough. Not when he'd have to fight in a week or less, and not when Ao saw running as cowardly, and he valued Ao's opinions.
I took the quarters of Naga's ration bar, placed my slightly warm one in his hands as he blinked at me, and stood, brushing crumbs off my leggings.
Yahiko didn't stir as I stepped over him, because the alley wasn't all the wide, but Chojuro froze as I neared, peeking out from under his arms as I crouched audibly next to him.
"Experience," I answered, ignoring his reaction, "You were still trained, no matter how you feel. In a battle, you won't have time to think. Your instincts will take over, whether you feel ready or not, and you'll see how easy confidence comes to you when the lives of the people you care about are in your hands."
I held half of the ration bar out to him and his surprise made him draw back, his head jerking up as he shifted away.
"S-Sorry," he sputtered, squinting at the half. "I can't—" he gestured at his eyes and they flitted everywhere but at me. "I only have one extra pair and I can't risk falling asleep with them on and it's worse when I'm tired," he rambled on, embarrassed. "Were you—Did you ever hesitate? In battle?"
I only waved the half bar expectantly at him.
He squinted at it a little more but took it, tracing his thumb over a corner before he took a hesitant bite.
Matsu did the same sometimes, when his eyes were tired too.
"No," I finally answered, looking at the wall. "But I've lost, over and over. But losing doesn't matter as long as you learn to get back up until you win."
Chojuro looked at the half bar for a long time. "You're helping me even though I kept things from you. You're being nice to me for no reason. It... makes me feel weird. Nothing is ever done for free."
I hummed. "You can pay me by telling me about Hozuki's kekkei genkai."
He looked at me, then he lowered his eyes, and did.
静水
I heard Naga's sharp inhale, a harsh, shocked sound that woke me up instantly. I started to sit up automatically, still half-asleep when I saw the wrapped blade pointed at him through the suddenly thick mist around us, less than an inch away from his face.
Naga was propped up on his elbows but wasn't looking at the blade. His eyes were frozen on the face grinning down at him.
The foggy clouds circled us, like a ring we were trapped in.
"Well, well, it looks like a bunch of hatchlings washed up somewhere they shouldn't be," the figure said, stepping closer and melding out of the mist like he was made of it.
He was tall and blue and tall. He towered over us as. Naga tensed more as he fully sensed his chakra, his eyes going wide.
Watching him, his reaction was the only reason I didn't move. I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen him surprised by someone else's chakra.
The figure's eyes roved briefly over me and landed on Chojuro behind us, sticking there.
"K-Kisame," Chojuro quickly named him, scared and shrinking under the heavy weight of his gaze. "What are you—why are you here?" he asked, voice shaking.
Kisame's grin only widened. "I see," was all he said, darkly amused.
I looked up at him, seeing why Mei had been so intimidated by Kisame Hoshigaki. Why she had no plan to fight him, if it came to that.
His presence alone had its own pressure, like he made the air heavier by existing.
The bandaged blade quivered and Naga instinctively leaned back.
"So, hatchlings, which of you would like to go first?" Kisame asked, glancing between me and Yahiko, "If you behave and don't run I'll give each of you a chance to fight for his or her life. One on one, how does that sound?"
Naga shut his eyes while he was distracted.
"At least one of you can give me a good fight. Samehada says so. Did you tell them about her yet, Chojuro?" Kisame asked, lingering on him again.
Chojuro trembled, shrinking down more.
Before Kisame could speak again, Hidan yawned loudly and stood. "If you want to die so badly, I'll fight you," he said. He sounded bored, like he didn't care either way, but his eyes glittered. "I've been looking for worthy sacrifices to pay my penance for the pitiful ones I've been sending to Lord Jashin. Seems like you'll more than make up for my sins."
Kisame looked him over in mild interest. "You're no Zabuza, but even he could never beat me in our spars."
Hidan's eyes were brighter suddenly, wilder. "You're already pissing me off. Who the fuck was talking about him? It'll be my name you remember when I teach you the Way of Jashin you—"
"We give up," Yahiko interrupted him, and Hidan whirled around to stare at him, but Yahiko was staring at the mist. "Yeah, we could fight, and yeah, you'd probably win, but I think we can help each other out here. It sounds to me like you already know a little about why Chojuro is here, and that means that you know that we know where the leader of the rebellion is right now. It'll be easier to capture her with our help."
"No! You-You can't," Chojuro shouted in shocked outrage.
"Our client is just that," Yahiko said cooly, forcing himself to relax. "And missions change when the circumstances do. We were told you wouldn't be here, Kisame, but you are, so I think we can work something out."
Kisame listened to them both without interrupting, and then he flashed his teeth. "Strategy, eh?" he asked. He shook his head and said, "But you see, you've made one critical mistake. You think I'm here on behalf of someone else. It's the most logical thing to assume, but I came here to find a certain chakra that Samehada picked up. No more, no less. I want to fight because I want to. There are no orders compelling my actions."
Yahiko went silent, thinking, but coming up with nothing, because there was no reasoning with someone who wanted to kill you just because.
There was nothing for him to grab at to manipulate him and no amount of charisma that could trick someone like Kisame.
I watched Yahiko, humming quietly.
Samehada nudged forward, all on its own, and just barely tapped Naga. It made him gasp and his eyes shoot open, the blue lines down his arms fading into nothing as he bent to the side and coughed hard.
"Seems Chojuro didn't get around to telling you that Samehada is unique in that she's able to detect changes in one's chakra. She's especially attracted to other sensor-nin," Kisame calmly explained over the noise, staring down at Naga.
Samehada quivered again, and I realized then that it had eaten his nature energy, that she was hungry. She was bigger than before, her sharp spines visible through the bandages, but not tearing them.
I stood.
Hidan scrubbed a hand roughly through his hair when he saw me, glaring at the wall, but didn't demand to fight again.
"I'm Oka," I introduced myself.
Kisame gazed at me for a few seconds. "You're not afraid?" he asked curiously.
"No."
"Not cocky or arrogant," he said, tilting his head. "Angry?"
I glanced down at Naga. "If she'd eaten more than his chakra I would be," I admitted. "She surprised him, but if those spines hit him, I'd see blood."
For a moment Kisame didn't seem to know what to make of me. "I'm waiting for you to convince me to spare your life like your friend there, or to try and distract me so one of your other friends can misbehave and make me have to cut you down before I've had any fun."
"You'll be waiting a long time," I told him.
He studied me. "You're not offering to fight?"
"No."
Kisame looked at me for another second, waiting to see if I had anything else to say, and then he drowned me in Killing Intent.
I heard Chojuro jerk away and violently empty his stomach. Naga grimaced and squeezed his eyes shut, raising an arm instinctively like the Killing Intent was a physical attack, and Yahiko froze, suddenly as still as a statue. He didn't even breathe. Namekuji seemed to curl up on his stomach and fight doing so.
Kisame didn't take his eyes off me, but I had been counting on this, because I didn't think any Killing Intent could be worse than Sasori's, and I was right.
I knew that when threatened, or even just annoyed, ninja used Killing intent like a warning.
Kisame was not just the ocean, but the entire world, smothering, suffocating, making me feel so small that the air felt like it was his as I breathed in, that I stole every breath in his universe.
It was seeing myself being cut, meticulously, into tiny pieces over and over and over. It was feeling every careful slice as Samehada dragged my chakra out through my blood and turned everything red while he laughed.
It was nothing but his grin in the sky as he made me watch myself struggle and gasp and try to keep my insides in as he kept cutting again and again.
But that fear wasn't my own. It was the fear he wanted me to feel, that he thought I should feel, but it wasn't the soft, terrifyingly loving press of fingers in my throat, nails that dug in and in until I could feel soft hands pulling out my neck bones through the holes made in my skin, just as lovingly.
Kisame was painful and bloody and cruel, but Sasori didn't think of being turned into a puppet as something to be terrified of. He used it that way because he'd seen that fear, but he didn't feel it.
Not when I'd looked into his eyes and saw enough apathy for me to acknowledge it.
Sasori's Killing Intent was something he loved to do, and all he did was share it with me.
"It's always the same shit," Hidan was the only one to complain, plopping back down as he grumbled, "Killing Intent this, Killing Intent that. Can't anyone try new shit?"
I kept eye contact with Kisame and I released my own Killing Intent, the bottomless sea I used to see.
It didn't have the malice I'd thrown at Sasori, just the quiet promise of drowning, but I wasn't trying to threaten Kisame, only show him that his threats weren't working.
Kisame's Killing Intent abruptly stopped, and I heard Yahiko take a breath.
I stopped, too.
"You're one of them. The Uzumaki," Kisame said, grinning again like nothing had happened.
I blinked as Chojuro groaned behind me and asked, "You can tell?"
"You hold the ocean in your chakra," he explained. "An Uzumaki that can't be identified by sight can be by a certain feeling of the sea. Even I have more than that in my Intent."
"Were you taught that, or have you met one?" I asked curiously.
Kisame looked at me for a long time. "I didn't come here for this," he said. "For someone like you."
"If I asked you a question about why we're here, would you answer it?" I asked like he hadn't ignored me.
"Are you going to ask me to join Terumi?" Kisame asked curiously. He showed off his teeth again.
"No."
He didn't move.
"Have you met anyone named Madara Uchiha?" I asked.
He was silent.
Hidan, in the background, scoffed loudly at me.
I heard Naga let out a ragged breath as he tried to even out his breathing, but he hadn't been there that day with Sasori.
"If I have or have not," Kisame began. "Why would I tell you?"
"Because if you know him by that name, he's been lying to you."
"And if I have," he said, stepping around Naga and towering over me. "Why would I believe you, hatchling from Whirlpool's ashes?"
I let him, staring into his eyes until his grin weakened, until he realized that I meant it when I told him I didn't fear him. Confusion, so fleeting I almost missed it, flashed across his face. He didn't take a step back, but he stopped trying to intimidate me.
"Because Yagura is being controlled by him," I answered after a few seconds. "I know that he can make himself intangible and his sharingan looks like a three-point pinwheel. I've met him."
Kisame's expression didn't change.
"But if you find proof yourself, you don't need to believe me. All you have to do is ask to see his face. You don't even have to know what Madara Uchiha looks like," I told him. "If Samehada can eat nature energy, then a normal transformation won't hold up either, will it?"
Kisame lifted Samehada to my side threateningly and the blade curled back towards Naga, barely restrained by him tightening his grip on the handle. "True or not, what does him or the Fourth have to do with me not cutting you up into tiny little bits?"
"You want a fight, but I won't give you one until you prove me wrong. If it was enough to just kill us, you wouldn't have woken us up. You want to see us struggle and bleed," I answered easily.
His pupils wavered, shrinking a little, and he went still again. "And what if," he began, holding Samehada out at Yahiko without turning. "I kill him, and help you find the motivation?"
I blinked, and then I gave him a small, cruel smile. "Why would I," I began in the same menacing inflection. "Do anything I knew you wanted if you did that? I can be spiteful. I'd make sure you were disappointed, even if it was the last thing I did."
Kisame didn't speak.
I hummed and asked, "How do you know you're not under his genjutsu?" like nothing had happened.
"I'd know," he answered immediately. His grin was barely there as he looked away, lifting Samehada to lean against his shoulder. "If I have to hunt you down, I'll make you understand why my Killing Intent is the way it is."
"You won't."
Kisame stared at me again, another flash of an uncertain emotion in his eyes, and then he turned around. He made the ram sign and the circle of mist around us began to disappear.
"Word of advice, when you're on an ocean in a different country, check the water for sharks. It'd have made it harder to track you if you had," he said, and vanished into the fading mist.
A/N: 静水 - Still water
Hello, it me, the author who sets things up and only pays them off 30 chapters later.