I dedicate this to @tricneu who never let these guys die and @temahri who breathed life into the old cast once more.

It’s been two years since she settled with her choices and Ryuishi feels…old.

It’s a sensation in her bones; a weight, a hollow sort of density that sits in her ribs like lead. The number of years on her soul hangs across her shoulders like a shroud, constant and pressing. Sometimes it lingers in the line of her jaw, touching ever so faintly in the corner of her eyes. There are lines there now, faint ones she never grew old enough to see in her past life, and each one feels like it carries a metric ton.

It so much more than her body’s age, instead of something ephemeral and intangible that somehow takes shape in the heart of her. How many years has she been living now? How many in this world, and the one before?

She doesn’t know. Stopped counting things in years, only events.

She was born. She lived, she loved, she grew and played and learned. She died.

She was born. She lived, she loved, she grew and fought and fought and fought and learned.

Fights. Learns.

And still, somehow, with all that fighting and learning, she ends up here. Staring at the orange glow of a fire that will take days to burn itself out, eating its way across the plains of Grass Country, ravaging the countryside and laying waste to crops and homes alike. The heat of it prickles at her cheeks, and the ash falls from the sky like a gentle rain, sizzling where it lands on her damp skin.

There is no trail to find. There is nothing left but embers, she thinks passively, her heart weary but unmoved. Clever Hanako. Clever, clever Mumei.

She should have seen it coming, really. She taught them this trick decades ago when Kiri burned.

Her body shifts, unnatural chakra pooling at the base of the feet submerged far below her. It’s like finding grip midair, and the liquid solidifies into something that will hold her weight. Though the current still tugs at her clothes and hair, she rises steadily, smoothly ascending from the waters into the fiery night. Her movements are practiced and smooth, as old as she is in her soul, and there is no noise to give her way. No sound to speak of from her.

Nor is there any sound from the man already on the bank.

She turns to look at him anyway, his silhouette cast in dancing red and yellows. A strong build, sturdy and tall. He looks fierce, she thinks, the jutting lower half of an Oni’s jaw -all teeth and wicked snarls- covering the lower half of his face. Combined with his cutting eyes, it’s quite the picture. But not enough of one to stop her gaze from flickering just a further down to his chest. Even in the unsure light she can see it, that pasty paper white flesh keeping Zabuza alive, the remnants of a deal made with a trickster to pay for her mistake.

Something oozes inside her head, sloshing around a bit. The faded spark of a rage not just her own, accompanied by loss. The niggling sensation that there should be a smaller figure beside him, all ice and composure and a piece of her heart.

Ryuishi turns away, toward the fire once more.

There used to be a village here, several hundred yards from the edge of the river to allow for the flooding that naturally occurs every season. It was small, a stopover town built up over the past few years. It produced little other than agricultural goods, but there was a glass shop on one of the beaten dirt paths. The crafter in there used dye to turn sand up from Suna into works of art, twisting the molten material like taffy into creations and colors that could take your breath away.

Idly, she wonders if that’s where they started the blaze. It would be a tactically sound, the glass ovens kept hot near constantly so the glass inside did not destroy them, and wood placed out back to feed those ovens. The powders and minerals that brought out such rich color could be added to and tweaked to make something a bit more destructive. Something not what it was meant to be. Another errant thought ponders if that crafter is dead, while a third yet asks how the Mumei knew. How they figured out that she was close.

A heavy hand rests itself on her shoulder, warm despite the chill of the water. But, then again, almost everything feels warm to her these days, contrasting with her uncomfortably cold skin. A symptom of a deeper shift.

“I will put it out.”

The voice is deep and warbling, the presence at her back towering over her smaller frame. Kisame is, as ever. a behemoth of a man, his eyes reflecting light in the night the way no human’s could. His presence is a shroud against her back, solid and sturdy and so, so careful still.

“Suiton on that scale is a dead giveaway. The Mumei aren’t the only ones being hunted,” Zabuza grumbles from the bank. His voice is coarse, rough, even half muffled behind his new mask.

Ryuishi doesn’t make a face at the pronouncement, simply accepting the truth of the statement. The three of them have forever been targets in some shape or form, but these days the number of those who wish to see them stopped has grown exponentially. The semi-regular opportunistic bounty hunter and enemy nin has morphed and stretched into entire nations worth of ninja on the lookout, waiting for a word, a whisper of The Kaijuu. 

Of the Ryo.

It is not wholly undeserved, she thinks. In most ways, she has earned it.

Conniving and deceiving your way into power for around three decades will do that. Especially when one of your factions goes rogue and lights the fuse of a long-standing silent grudge by killing off a despot who was implied to rule by divine right. That single action, in turn, igniting a ruthless civil war and rampatting up tensions between civilian, noble, and shinobi across the elemental nations.

All that’s to say nothing of the undead menace with a too powerful eye and the literal eldritch horror mucking about.

“Only really have to worry about Konoha this close to the border. They’re the only ones with the skill and attention to spare right now,” Kisame returns.

“And Suiton of that level would get them to send who?”

Ryuishi’s stomach twists oddly, and she’s unsure if it’s her own reaction or a ghost of anothers. There’s a flash in her mind’s eye of silvery hair and the smell of ozone, a man leading a sunshine child -her heart, her child- away on a beach that is melting into a graveside.

She blinks and it’s gone, but her distaste for a mixed headspace lingers.

“Doesn’t matter. We have shook him before, we’ll do it again.”

“But they will know where we were. Useful information.”

“Not something they can do much with.”

Zabuza grunts. It is, she supposes, true in some ways and not in others. If someone does figure out where they were tonight, not much would change. Another sin might be added to their long and sordid list of them, but at this point, that scroll is so long it would take scribe weeks to right anyway. Not that scribes are a thing, here. They are unneeded, even among the rural towns these days. The population is growing past that, learning in new schools, rapidly outstripping previous generations with innovation and development. So quick, so clever. These days, people just know things.

Maybe things that make they shouldn’t, like tonight.

“The Mumei knew they had a tail. I can’t say if they knew it was us, but they knew something was up. They shouldn’t have. We need to know how.”

The men shift, her husky, ruined voice drawing their attention. The hand on her shoulder tightens its grip briefly, broad fingertips pressing in to the corded muscle of her shoulder. For a moment, the only sounds following her words are the steady crackling of flames, the soft drip of water from her clothes, and the running river beneath them.

“We’ll get them, Ryuishi,” Kisame says softly. His voice is closer now, and she can feel the rough material of his traveling cloak brush against own clothes. “People can’t run forever, not even nameless ones.”

Her eyes stray toward the flames, a part of her already thinking of cargo to be moved and calculating the loss of product in the harvest, crunching numbers as it recalls the direction of the wind and close by settlements.

“Monsters can,” Zabuza answers, and Ryuishi looks at him once more. She doesn’t know how to feel about that distinction, what to think of it.

Uhm. Probably barely get along, or one of those ‘opposites attract’ sort of things.

Maly is pretty quiet and uncaring of her appearance. She doesn’t care much for socialization, has trouble with people, and actually is just a sort of ‘it is what it is, get through it.’

So! I don’t usually do art for fanfiction unless it’s my own, but here’s my exception. Of the River and the Sea by AlleyCat4eva is something I stumbled upon by accident while pretending to be doing something else. More rambling about the story under the cut because I’m sure a lot of you don’t care.