"Yeah, so, they say that boys don't cry,
'Till we say it's okay, I guess it's bye bye bye,
But someday you'll realize your way,
In a song like a dream, come tell me what you find,"
-Sand Planet, JubyPhonic
Kisame and Mangetsu were alone in the alley.
"Where'd they go?" I asked.
Mangetsu, drinking from a beige, kidney-shaped canteen bag, hooked his thumb to the right, back where I'd come from. I hummed. They were probably around the ruins that I'd found that first time, near the path up into Minakami.
Mangetsu watched me curiously, like he'd heard something interesting about me from someone else.
I glanced at Kisame, and Kisame, who hadn't moved from the wall, just grinned.
Mangetsu lowered the bag and asked, "We're not good enough company for you?"
"Not really, no," I said honestly, pulling a brown-spotted orange out of the bag.
Mangetsu blinked.
"Told you she was strange," Kisame said to him, but didn't take his eyes off me either.
"Still—" Mangetsu caught the orange automatically with his other hand when I tossed it, then blinked at it, then up at me. "What's this for?"
"I don't know what to do with them," I answered, digging out another one.
He stared at the orange like it might give him a different answer. "Today has been full of surprises," he said, seemingly to himself.
I considered Kisame, holding a second orange, and his grin turned sharp enough to cut stone.
"They left us here alone. That doesn't concern you at all?" Mangetsu asked, picking at brown spots.
I paused, and spoke to Kisame as I said, "Knowing them, you were asked to go with, but said no."
Mangetsu didn't say anything, his eyes darting between us as he used his fingers to dig out an inner piece of the orange.
Knowing that Kisame would watch it hit the floor or the wall if I threw it at him, I walked over Mangetsu's legs and stood in front of him, holding out the orange.
Kisame had the kind of presence that made him feel untouchable, like Minato had. But even that didn't matter, because I didn't want to walk on eggshells around him. If he was going to stay, I didn't want to spend days, or weeks, or longer, learning the language of his grins, or thinking and overthinking what I should say until I figured out how to talk to him.
I did that enough with Hidan, was doing it enough with Sasori. I had enough of it.
"What do you think this is going to do?" Kisame asked, staring down at me.
"I'll have less oranges," I answered.
He didn't respond.
I stood there for a while, and then I hummed and pressed the orange to his arm.
He went rigid.
I doubted that, before our spar, he'd let me do it.
"I'm not afraid of you, Hoshigaki. I told you that before," I told him, looking him in the eye. "You're not my friend, but you're not my enemy. You don't have to trust me, or them, or even Chojuro, but we're not your enemy either. We can both stand here forever, or you can take it and believe me."
His eyes looked a little wider, and the only sound after was Mangetsu eating orange slices behind me.
He still didn't take it.
"Fine," I said. I reached up, dropped the orange in the space between his crossed arms, and he tensed more.
Samehada was starting to respond to his agitation, waking up behind him, but I only pulled out another orange and balanced it on his arms.
His eyes were wider. He looked baffled watching me reach into the bag again. "I could just drop them. What then?"
"Then I'll have to pick them up," I answered, dropping another orange on his arm.
His pupils shrunk. "Words are cheap," he said, suddenly harsh. "The only thing that matters are actions."
He quickly reached up and yanked Samehada off his back. He swept her down and jerked her to a stop above my shoulder, right next to my head, blowing my hair back.
I didn't move. He'd been expecting me to flinch. Someone who was afraid, or even just cautious of him, would've at least tensed or broken eye contact.
Kisame had surprised Yahiko, so his tenseness showed, even as his voice stayed steady, even as he lied through his teeth.
Scales poked through the bandages even as they remained tight around Samehada, stopping just short of cutting my cheek. He was giving me the same feral grin he'd worn right before he'd charged at me.
I stared into his eyes as I put my hand in the bandaged space between scales and nudged Samehada back so I could bend down and pick up an extra bruised orange. I held it out to him again as I stood.
He lost his grin, just staring at me.
Maybe he hadn't heard me when I said that intimidation didn't work on me. Maybe he hadn't believed me, even after our spar. Or maybe, after not-Madara, he'd stopped believing in truth. All truth.
"Can Samehada eat oranges?" I asked, staring back, not moving even as Samehada shuddered hungrily and bent around behind me, wanting to cut me, only held back by Kisame's grip.
Kisame didn't answer, but for the first time, he seemed confused.
His hand rose slowly, palm up, and I dropped the orange in it. He stared at it like it was a foreign object as I picked up another one.
"Let me guess, I'm next?" Mangetsu asked, having eaten all of the orange except the skin.
I put the orange in Kisame's frozen hand, then turned to him and said, "You already took one, so I don't have to, but want another one?"
Mangetsu held up his hand and I pulled my last orange out of the bag and tossed it at him.
Kisame had put away Samehada when I turned back, and I gathered up the other oranges off the floor, forcing him to use his other hand to hold them all.
"Feels like I'm in a genjutsu," Mangetsu spoke, peeling that orange open with his fingers too. "You're really not the Hoshigaki I know."
Kisame tore his gaze away from me, arms full of oranges as he said, "I can show you the Hoshigaki you know, if you'd like? He'd be happy to show you how ineffective liquification is against Samehada."
Mangetsu dropped a piece of skin on a growing pile on the ground and said, mildly, "I think it'd be plenty effective."
"You can be the first of your clan to test it, then," Kisame said, grinning at him.
Mangetsu leaned back and took a long drink from his canteen bag before he said, warily, "You need to get a sense of humor. You could use it, Hoshigaki."
"I have one. You'd know, if your jokes were funny."
I neatly folded the bag, put it on top of Kisame's orange pile, and left them to bicker. Even as they did, they both watched me leave.
.
.
.
I followed a half-buried stone path leading east, trailing my fingers along the wall of one of the ruins I'd looked in before.
It was tall and maybe before the war it had touched the sky. But now the top was only a few feet above me and blackened with the memory of fire. It was a colorless gray and had no clan graffiti anywhere on or near it. The plainness made it feel like it wasn't part of Minakami, like even they'd abandoned this place.
My hand fell away as I reached the end and it faded into the mist behind me as I kept walking.
I distantly heard shouting, which vaguely sounded like Chojuro, and turned blindly to the right. I passed what had probably been a lookout tower, but was covered now in bushy patches of grass.
And then I was looking at Chojuro and everyone else scattered around a cliff, sparring.
Hidan rolled out of the way of a blue hammer three time his size as Chojuro slammed it down, caving in the earth underneath it. It was made of pure chakra, and enveloping the Hiramekarei.
Chojuro's feet touched the ground two seconds after his hammer did, and the chakra shrunk back into the Hiramekarei as he turned to stare, panting, at where Hidan crouched. I watched the chakra become a blue outline around his hands, and then be absorbed into his skin.
"You're fucking slow," Hidan told him, looking bored. He wasn't wearing his cloak.
"You keep saying that, but you're not showing me how to be faster!" Chojuro shouted back, hefting the Hiramekarei sideways like a giant fan. A blue outline formed around the blade and it never left his hands as he swung it at Hidan as hard as he could, his whole body moving with the swing.
Hidan was wedging his sandals deep in the dirt, and I saw why as the chakra shot from the sword and took the shape of blades, carrying with them tunnels of wind that ripped up grass and carved deep lines in the dirt.
Hidan raised an arm to protect his eyes, but most of the wind blades dissipated before they reached him. A bone deep cut opened across his arm, but it was the only one. As the wind died down, I looked at his feet. So much of the ground had been thrown up by the wind that his sandals were showing. It was only by burying them that he'd stayed rooted in place.
I hummed.
Chojuro might not be fast, but he had power.
He was on his feet, but barely. He'd stuck the Hiramekarei in the ground and was leaning heavily on it.
"Doing that while you were low on chakra was fucking stupid," Hidan said, waving his injured arm and throwing his blood around. "You didn't even have enough left to cut it off."
"If you collapse the cliff, only Oka can use earth style," Naga mildly reminded them from where he stood facing Yahiko.
I waved.
"Oh! S-sorry!" Chojuro said, looking guilty at the marks. He frowned at the blood on the ground around Hidan. "Shouldn't you try to stop the bleeding? Even if you think, or uh, you're immortal?" he asked.
Hidan shook his head and stood, ignoring the blood dribbling down his arm. "The most sinful heathens are the nonbelievers."
"I-it's just—I've never heard of the Way of Jashin, or anything like it—" he sputtered. "It's hard to accept something like that."
Hidan mocked him in a higher-pitched voice and I tuned him out, looking towards Naga.
Naga was in the middle of raising his hands to make the dragon sign and Yahiko was running, crossing the distance between them in two seconds as he swung the nagamaki up towards the middle of his hands—
—and froze, the edge of the blade just below Naga's palms, because he'd already finish the dragon, tiger, and hare sign.
Yahiko lowered the blade and took a small step back, wiping his eyes with his sweaty shirt. "Tell me how that samurai did it again."
"If gods are real..." Chojuro trailed off and frowned. He was sitting, cleaning dirt off the Hiramekarei. "N-Not that I don't believe you, I do! But why are they—that'd mean they're just watching. Why don't they help us?"
Chojuro looked up at Hidan for an answer.
Hidan scratched half-dried flakes of blood off his arm as he said, "Goes against the Way of Jashin. No nonbelieving heathen would need help if they got over their fears of pain and death."
"But you dodged my attack," Chojuro said hesitantly, like he thought it would just earn him more insults.
"Nothing to do with pain," Hidan told him. "Healing takes too damn long to let everything hit me. Red-head over there won't heal this shit, and I can't feel this arm or move my fingers. It's fucking useless right now," he said, waving his injury again.
Chojuro lowered his gaze and said nothing.
"Maybe it's because of the barrier between the living and the dead," I answered Chojuro. "If there wasn't one, the dead would still be here helping the people they love."
"You think the gods are in the pure lands?" Chojuro asked me, sounding grateful to not have to touch Hidan's beliefs anymore. His lenses were smeared with dirt.
Pure lands?
"If that's the afterlife, then not exactly," I said. "I think Jashin isn't on our side of that barrier, but not dead."
Chojuro went quiet again.
"Lord Jashin," Hidan corrected me, suddenly completely serious.
I'd forgotten. I met his eyes. "I think Lord Jashin is on the other side of that barrier," I amended.
Hidan blinked. He dropped suddenly into a crouch and scrubbed through his hair with his working hand.
"What?"
He didn't answer.
I walked closer and saw that he was glaring at the ground.
I leaned down, and Hidan looked sideways at me as strands of my hair fell on his shoulder.
"Feelings are stupid as shit sometimes," he finally said, sounding deeply annoyed at himself. He scratched at the side of his head, like he could dig them out, and closed his eyes. "Wish they'd fuck off."
"Feelings... about what?"
He didn't say anything, and I knew.
"I don't know why you like me," I said abruptly, and when he didn't respond, wasn't sure why I said it.
I straightened, looking away, at nothing, wishing I hadn't.
He tsk'ed loudly, opening his to glare in the opposite direction. "You're… pretty," he said through his teeth, so low I almost didn't hear him, like he was being tortured into admitting it.
"Mei is pretty," I pointed out.
He squinted at me. "You trying to sell me on her?"
"No." I didn't know what I was trying to do.
Hidan glanced quickly at, then away from, the loose strands of my hair, plopping back so he was fully sitting, "That too," he said under his breath.
I pinched hair between my fingers and raised them to eye level, as if the long strands could explain what was likeable about them.
"Hey," Hidan interrupted me. He crossed his legs, leaned his elbow on his knee, and leaned his cheek on his knuckles. "I don't know what you're doing, but it's not going to work."
I dropped them. "I'm not doing anything."
He stared at me like he was trying to figure out a puzzle. "You're trying to get me not to like you, aren't you?"
"No?"
"Why the hell would I have kissed you if I didn't like you?" Hidan asked like he didn't hear me, like he didn't understand me.
I looked at him for a few seconds, and then I said, "I just don't... get it."
He blinked slowly at me. "Didn't ask you to fucking get it," he told me. "I like you, and that's it. Why the fuck are you making it so complicated?"
"It is complicated."
"Why?"
"Because..." I trailed off.
Hidan slow-blinked again. "Because," he mocked me, making his voice high-pitched and flat.
I pressed the heel of my foot to his shoulder and only pushed hard enough to shove him over.
His expression didn't change. "Still doesn't make any fucking sense," he said, laying on his side on the ground.
"It feels like it should be," I finally tried to explain. "It shouldn't just be. There should be something else. More."
"You're making my head hurt," he said blandly, rolling onto his back.
I didn't look at him as I tried again, "I could tell when Yahiko told Konan he liked her. I didn't realize it then, but she was different after. They both were."
Hidan laughed hard, holding his stomach. "Fuck, you—you think I put some kind of genjutsu on you? What the fuck did that red-head teach you—shit, my side—" He leaned his bloody arm on the ground as he grabbed his side. "I pulled a muscle. Shit."
"I don't think it's a genjutsu," I tried to defend myself, finally looking at him.
Hidan tried to speak and instead shoved his face to the ground, hissing and holding his side tighter, still shaking with laughter even as he gasped and tried to stop.
I watched him, and didn't say that Yahiko and Konan was the only romantic relationship I'd seen from start to end. Mamoru-sensei knew we'd tease him endlessly if he showed any affection for Etsudo in front of us, so he didn't, and I'd only seen the end of Matsu and Urakawa, after he outed her.
What was I supposed to be doing?
"The hell do you think I want from you?" Hidan asked, strained. "Why are you treating—treating this like a fight? You need a strategy or some shit? You think you need to win?"
I realized that's what I'd really wanted to ask. What do you want from me?
But... he didn't want anything.
"I don't like dealing with my feelings," I admitted to no one.
He laughed harder, wincing louder, "Fuck—stop."
I turned my head to look at him.
"You're such—a pain in the ass," he said, still facedown.
I watched him, saying nothing.
"You need to take a break," I heard Naga say, quietly, like he'd said it many times already.
I turned to look as the nagamaki slipped out of Yahiko's shaking hands and he fell to his hands and knees.
Naga bent down and put a hand on his shoulder, only to freeze in place when Yahiko batted his hand away, coughing into the dirt.
I immediately strode towards them, walking past Chojuro. Namekuji had paused in the middle of teasing Chojuro to look too.
I crouched on Yahiko's other side as Naga stood still. "You don't get to do that," I told him quietly, staring holes into him. "We don't do that to each other. You're angry, or frustrated, or something, but that's not fair."
Naga moved back to give him space, but I knew he'd been hurt by it, even if his expression never changed. "You don't need to do that," he half-heartedly protested.
I ignored him.
Yahiko didn't move for a long time, until he let out a big breath and dropped his forehead on his hand. Wordlessly, he pointed at his side.
Naga stepped closer, wordlessly, obligingly pressing a glowing hand just below his ribs, and froze again. "You idiot," he hissed, quickly pressing his other hand there too. "You should've told me."
Yahiko laughed weakly but didn't lift his head. "This is why I didn't want you to touch me."
I glanced at Naga.
"Half of his liver is necrotic," he explained. "It's mostly dead tissue. The poison is gone, but it didn't heal right."
"That sounds bad," Yahiko spoke, forced cheerful. "But, to get ahead and defend myself, it didn't hurt as much as it did when I was poisoned, so I thought I just had to wait it out."
Naga's response was to give him a dirty look.
"What are you going to do?" I asked.
"Cut off the dead tissue. Make an incision so I can remove it all. Stimulate the cells to start regrowing naturally," he muttered, his voice becoming clinical and automatic as he fully focused.
Yahiko shuddered. He turned his head to look at me. "Recovering really sucks," he managed. "Sucks more when your body doesn't do what you want it to. A few months ago, I'd have that move down by now. I've been at it for a few hours."
His smile was self-deprecating, and I knew there was nothing to say that he didn't already know, so instead I told him a story.
I fully sat. "There was a fox on the moon once, a long time ago. She lived there all alone, collecting rocks and building pretend friends out of them," I told him. "But they couldn't talk back, so she was still lonely, and she was sad all the time. But one day an owl crash landed on the moon and was hurt. Her ship was too damaged for her to leave. When the fox found her, she became happy, because she wasn't alone anymore. They spent a lot of time together while the owl healed. The fox showed the owl all her favorite things and wandered the moon with the owl looking for materials to fix the ship."
Yahiko silently stared at me.
I poked his shoulder and said, "When it was finally fixed, the owl asked the fox to come with her, but the fox had never left home before, and was afraid. But the owl wouldn't leave her and said that she'd never go back home unless it was with the fox. That convinced the fox that their friendship was real, and she got on the ship."
Yahiko was quiet, waiting to see if there was anything else. "Was there a lesson in there?" he asked slowly.
"No," I said.
Yahiko blinked slowly. Then he ducked his head and started laughing. He tried to keep it contained but couldn't. He laughed so hard that his shoulders shook. He tipped onto his good side, still laughing, and rolled onto his back.
"Hey," Naga said, annoyed at being broken out of his medic-nin trance.
"Ow," Yahiko winced, but still shook with laughter as he looked at me and said, "You don't know how much this hurts."
"You're the rabbit," I told him.
"Rabbit?"
"Fox," I corrected, and he grinned. "Stubborn, even when it hurts you," I added.
His grin widened. "When was the Fox stubborn in the story?"
"In the version I was told, where the rabbit stays on the moon," Naga answered.
"So you told me the wrong version," Yahiko concluded, looking back at me.
"I told you the better version," I said.
"Debatable. But I haven't laughed that hard in a long time," Yahiko said. "So, thanks. And sorry," he said to Naga.
"You don't need to—"
"Stop being nice and accept the apology. Or I'll get up and give you more work when the rest of my liver explodes."
Naga sighed, pressing his glowing hand back on his side. "Okay."
"You didn't—That's not—"
"I don't forgive you, carrot-hair. Is that better?" Namekuji asked, crawling up Naga's back.
"No," Yahiko said, blinking.
"I saw her again," I told them suddenly, before Naga could fully focus again, looking away from them. "The ocean girl, or the seaweed girl. Or—"
Marie.
I could feel her hands abruptly on my shoulders, her nonexistent nails digging into my skin. I could feel how much she didn't want me to tell them.
Ruiner.
But I was aware of it now, what she was doing. It was easier to ignore.
Sad ocean girl. Why won't you go to sleep?
Or maybe I was imagining it all, that presence that had always been there, and she was already gone.
"She was there. Actually there, I think. She wanted to—" I stopped.
get back at me, drown me.
"What did she say?" Naga prompted when I didn't finish.
I thought of that endless ocean, that wide, lonely space, and what she called me.
Ruiner, ruiner, ruiner.
"She said I was using her," I answered, barely aware of it. "That—That Yahiko should've died."
They were both silent.
I felt sudden warmth. Naga's glowing hand was on my forehead and his other hand was on my shoulder, steadying me, and I didn't know when he'd moved.
"Did she say anything about not-Madara killing me?" he murmured gently, like I was a scared animal that would run if he was too loud.
I looked at him and I remembered—
He'd already known that I knew things I shouldn't, because I'd told him all those years ago about that genjutsu, or that memory. Which meant Yahiko had known too, because I didn't ask him to keep it a secret or expect him to, at least not from Yahiko.
I turned to Yahiko. His hands were behind his head and he was staring at the sky, but he didn't look particularly surprised.
Oh.
And I understood, suddenly, the real reason why Marie hated me so much.
How unfair of me, the shinobi with hands caked in blood, to be loved like this when you spent your entire life being unloved when you never did anything wrong. Only your dog had ever loved you, and it wasn't enough.
Yahiko suddenly had his hand around my wrist, half sitting up, staring at me with a frown, anchoring me, and the water feeling of her nails faded. The hallucination of her, maybe.
You saw that love, and you wanted it, but you couldn't undo the choice you made not to wake up. To let me live for you.
"Did she apologize anytime when you saw her?" Naga asked mildly, dropping his hand to his lap.
I blinked up at him uncomprehendingly. "For what?"
"You don't think she's done anything wrong?" Naga asked after a pause, just as mild, but with an undercurrent of something like anger, like surprise.
I looked at him. "Not that, but she helped me more times than she hurt—"
"No," Naga said so firmly that I stopped talking. "You don't have to find fault in what she did, but I do. Every time you used to see or talk about her terrified me. I never knew, if the next time it happened I would be able to pull you back from whatever she was doing to you."
He was terrified?
"You never said—"
"Because it wasn't about me. It was about you," Naga said simply.
Yahiko let go and lied back down. "You might not feel the same, but when you see her next, tell her your oldest brother hates her," he said, giving me a small, playful grin, trying to make me smile.
I looked at him for a few seconds, and then I flopped down on top of him, and he only made a small grunt as I fell over his collarbone.
Naga moved back to Yahiko's other side. "I'm going to have to make the incision now," he murmured. "It'll be easier if you're unconscious for it."
"Going to be soon anyway," Yahiko grunted, spitting out hair.
I smiled.
How dare I use and use and use you, just like everybody else.
But I didn't care, because I was happy.