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“Eugh… not again,” Karin muttered, boots sticking in the softened dirt as she plodded her way towards the Eastern Hideout.
Not that this pair of boots was particularly new - she was probably due for a change soon, anyway. Nonetheless, Karin wasn’t all too fond of the idea of soiling her only pair of footwear on this trek with muddy water.
...Water.
She could sense them - those sharp, tempestuous tones that seemed to echo the choppy undulations of the ocean itself. There was only one person Karin had ever known whose chakra felt like this. Taking a deep breath before breaking into a sprint across the final cliff face, she focused on the pool of energy as it drew closer and closer. It felt weaker, somehow. Unnaturally subdued. Given, it had been a fair amount of time since she’d been close enough to this shinobi to feel his chakra, but she could have sworn it used to be more intense. More… irritating.
Jumping down from the stretch of rock, red hair whipping as it fought for stability against the gusts of wind that blew her way, she finally came face to face with the person whose chakra had filled her senses.
There he stood before the hideout’s entrance, long white lab coat draped haphazardly over his shoulders as he leaned against the jagged rock. She could see spots of dried blood below the collar, whatever that meant.
“Karin?”
He looked older, Karin thought immediately. Well... he was. So was she. After all, how many years had passed since they’d last been in each other’s company? Two? Three? Not long enough, teenage Karin would not have hesitated to mutter under her breath. But she was twenty, and she didn’t.
Violet eyes etched with genuine surprise locked on Karin as she dragged her heels on the ground, trying to scrape the mud off her boots in vain. Thinking about how annoying it would be to have it all dry up on the leather, she kicked harder to no avail - before a jet of water landed at her feet, washing the muck away with an unceremonious splash. Karin looked up just in time to see Suigetsu’s arm congealing back out of its liquid state.
“Thanks,” she stammered, tripping on the word harder than intended.
“You were struggling a bit, there,” Suigetsu drawled, snaggletooth glinting in the half-light as he sneered in her direction. “Orochimaru told me someone from the Southern Hideout would be coming today with the mandra grass, but to think it’d be you…”
“Got a problem with that?” Karin snapped, reaching into her satchel for a glass tube which she handed to the man across her.
“Not at all,” he chuckled, taking the vial from her outstretched arm. “It’s just been so long, I don’t know what to make of it. You know what happens to Orochimaru’s lackeys most of the time. You could’ve been dead, dismembered, who knows? Not like anyone would’ve been kind enough to tell me.”
Suigetsu turned to face the mouth of the cavern.
“But then again, you’re not that weak, are you, Miss Jailer?” he added, waving his hand over a protruding piece of limestone which concealed a scanning pad. At this, the hidden doors within the rock face rumbled open, exposing a long, dark hallway illuminated by serpent-shaped lamps.
Suigetsu turned back to face the scowling Karin with a smirk. “Come on.”
********
Orochimaru had been focusing his operations at the Eastern Hideout for the past few years, a fact which reflected in the sheer opulence of the place as it looked currently. A far cry from Karin’s base in the South, which had barely seen renovations past its prior status as an offshore prison, the walls of this expansive laboratory had been lined with teal blue tiles and the floors with honed marble. Thick hoops of neon strung upon central columns provided pivots of light throughout the facility, while tall wooden doors blocked off entrance to a series of small rooms. Experimentation units, no doubt. Karin was all too familiar with the dubious things that had to go on inside this place, but that didn’t make it any less grand.
“So? What are you making with the mandra? New serums?” Karin inquired, as Suigetsu led them through a brightly lit corridor to a room filled with monitors. The door slid shut with a barely audible tap, as LED lights flickered on the multiple screens.
“Eventually,” Suigetsu replies, leaning over one of the larger monitors. “That’s not my problem, though. There’re other workers who deal with the whole making business. I’m just in charge of the database.”
Karin watched with piqued curiosity as Suigetsu placed the tube of grass into the upper cavity of a clunky-looking machine. With a twist of a few knobs, it whirred into action, generating a series of graphs on the opposing monitor as the sample underwent analysis. It all just looked like a bunch of numbers and wavy lines to Karin, who had never actually used these contraptions before. As a sensor with minimal background in chemistry from back when she had worked alongside Kabuto, Karin had always been tasked with security, human resources, or mixing basic formulas. The analogue side of things - the ‘whole making business’ Suigetsu had mentioned before. Never technology. Never computers. And that was perfectly fine with her.
Even so, she had to admit that these processes seemed interesting enough, if only for their unfamiliarity. Karin remained fixed on Suigetsu as his hands flew over the keyboard, scanning and scrutinising the graphed results while typing out his findings into what looked to be a digital spreadsheet. It all looked very professional, especially at such a furious speed, and spite of herself, Karin couldn’t help but feel a little--
“Impressed?”
Snapping out of her stupor, Karin found herself staring into the eyes of a very smug Suigetsu, who had stopped typing and was now leaning one arm over the counter as he slyly returned her gaze. She turned away quickly, clenching her fists.
“Fuck off.”
“Hah! Hey, I can’t blame you. Don’t suppose they’ve got many of these on the island,” Suigetsu laughed, extracting the grass from the machine before shutting down the graphing program with a click of his mouse. “And even if they did, you probably ain’t got enough brain cells to use them.”
Karin huffed and pulled a sour face, crossing her arms but otherwise staying put. At the sight of Karin moving her arms, Suigetsu instinctively ducked away as if preparing to liquefy his upper half.
“Whoa there, I’m only kid--- Hey, you didn’t hit me.”
“What, did you want me to? Fucking masochist.” Karin spat, grabbing the vial before stomping dramatically towards the door. “Where to next?”
“Really setting the pace, aren’t we?” Suigetsu smirked, shrugging off his lab coat onto a nearby chair. The spots of blood below the collar, crusted and brown, looked out of place against the pearly whiteness of the room.
“Next is the second floor greenhouse,” Suigetsu continued, striding his way over next to Karin by the door and twisting it open.
“Ladies first.”
********
The upstairs installation was just as impressive as the rest of the facility, if not even more so. Suigetsu had really been holding back when he called it a ‘greenhouse’, Karin thought. This was more like… well, like a green floor, seeing as it seemed to occupy more than three quarters of the space. Thick glass walls stretched into the distance, with each square meter housing a different plant specimen, carefully labelled. Only a narrow path in the center of it all allowed the two of them to squeeze their way through in single file. Since when had Orochimaru’s interests turned so acutely to botany as to devote an entire level of his lab to it? Karin wondered as she followed Suigetsu to the top end of the place, where an overhanging glass balcony overlooked the cliffs below.
He squatted down next to a shallow wooden crate filled with soil from which sprouted various saplings, all of which bore different labels but were otherwise indistinguishable from the rest.
Karin watched as Suigetsu poked a few holes in the dirt before haphazardly sticking individual blades of grass into them, upright. As he placed the now-empty vial into the pouch strapped upon his waist, she noticed the glint of the evening’s first stars reflected against the glass. The sun was setting fast.
“Are you sure that’s how you do this?” Karin questioned, raising an eyebrow. The blades of grass had almost immediately begun drooping within their flimsy confines.
“Eh, someone’ll come and fix it.” Suigetsu shrugged, liquefying his fingers up to the knuckle and spraying the resulting water jets onto the wilted strands of green. This earned another eyebrow raise from Karin. “My job title isn’t exactly gardener.”
“And the rest of this crate is full of saplings. Why are you putting grass in there all of a sudden?”
“Everything in this crate is used to make numbing agents,” Suigetsu answered, undeterred by the barrage of questions. His fingers trickled back into shape with an all too elegant spurt. “Have some faith in me, Karin! I know what I’m doing here. Somewhat.”
Karin snorted with laughter in spite of herself, then quickly covered it up with a few coughs. That crazy optimism of his really hadn’t changed - but to think that it’d spread to her, too.
She walked over to the edge of the balcony and stood there, leaning against the foggy glass as she stared out over the rocky cliffs that made up this barren stretch of the Hidden Sound. Night had well and truly fallen by now, though wispy clouds still obscured most of the stars in the sky. Behind her, Suigetsu fiddled with a few other plants before seemingly giving up and turning back towards Karin.
“Not quite so violently inclined today? I’d have expected a few more jabs by now,” he chuckled, walking up next to her. “Or maybe you get a bit nicer when we’re not with Sasu---”
Karin decided to wait for Suigetsu to finish that sentence before hitting him with an almighty punch to the jaw, seeing as that was what he so clearly wanted from her.
But the rest of the sentence never came.
Instead, Karin turned her gaze upwards to see a wide-eyed Suigetsu staring up at the sky, face having turned almost as white as his hair. She furrowed her eyebrows, hit by a sudden wave of concern. It couldn’t be an attack - no, if intruders were coming, she would have sensed them by now. Did he feel sick? Dizzy? Suigetsu had never been afraid of heights… Had he?
“Hey-… Are you---”
Suigetsu shook his head furiously, as if attempting to snap himself out of whatever trance had overcome him.
“Shit, Karin, I…”
He staggered back from the ledge, the dazed look remaining in his eyes, which were now darting between Karin and the clouds. Attempting to catch his footing, Suigetsu reached aimlessly out behind him, but it was too late. He crashed backwards into several crates of seeds, which triggered a domino effect causing the row of vases next to them to topple and shatter in a jumble of petals, ceramic and soil.
“Suigetsu?!”
“What day is it?”
“Huh??” Karin sputtered, balking at the mess that surrounded them.
Back when they were on a team, she would not have hesitated to punch his head in for an antic so dumb. But Karin liked to think she had matured, and now even she knew that this meant something was off. Suigetsu was a lot of things, but he had never been clumsy. And he had certainly never worn an expression as serious as what was painted on his face at this moment in time. Clearly something was on his mind.
“...It’s Wednesday.”
“Day of the month.”
“The fourteenth,”
Suigetsu exhaled slowly, appearing to sink deeper into the floor. Upon noticing Karin still staring down at him, confused, he composed himself and patted the space to his right. Brushing away a smattering of orange petals, Karin took a seat.
“...Sorry,” Suigetsu laughed breathily, after a brief pause. “I’ll clean this up later. These are replaceable.”
But that wasn’t what Karin was worried about, and Suigetsu seemed to know it, because he continued.
“It’s his birthday tomorrow.”
“Birthday...” Karin echoed, thinking about how uncharacteristic it was for someone like Suigetsu to bother himself with the concept of birthdays, let alone so dramatically. “Whose?”
When no reply came, she followed his gaze up to the night sky. The curtain of clouds had finally parted, revealing a boundless blanket of blinking stars.
And in the middle of the cosmic painting, the point to which his eyes were drawn, was a full moon.
“Mangetsu,” Karin whispered.
She hadn’t meant to say that out loud.
Suigetsu drew back at the mention of this name, at the name he had been thinking of but hadn’t yet expected to materialise as sound.
“You know him?”
“Yeah,” Karin retorted, before making a conscious decision to tone it back with the sour attitude. “I mean, yeah. Not a lot, though. Only what Kabuto told me. I know he’s your brother. And that he was part of the Seven Swordsmen. And that for all the experiments, Orochimaru had originally wanted him instead of you, that they only took you because he’s---”
Karin stopped herself before she could utter the final word. Empathy was something she had picked up on after making friends with Sakura and all the other kunoichi from the Leaf - she had learned to reel in her fists and her tongue, to not say or do things in fits of anger that could be hurtful to other people.
At first she told herself it was just another rule, a polite convention of Proper Society that she had to follow. But somewhere deep inside, Karin had a feeling that she just genuinely didn’t want to see Suigetsu sad.
“Dead. You can say it,” Suigetsu laughed, marvelling at her constricted expression. This newfound self control was really something else. “I already know.”
Karin left it unsaid, anyway.
“It’s Mangetsu’s birthday tomorrow. February the fifteenth. That’s when we would always come home,” Suigetsu began, a nostalgic glimmer in his eyes. Karin saw him take a quick, sharp intake of breath as if preparing to continue, but he didn’t. Instead, he leaned forward to lift himself off the ground, a few jagged shards of terracotta falling from his lap as he did so.
“...I’ll get the dustpan.”
“No. Keep talking,” Karin blurted out, grabbing onto Suigetsu’s arm. It had almost been a reflex, and she snatched her hand back as soon as she realised what she had done.
Suigetsu glanced back at her, and now it was his turn to raise his eyebrows. Not in a look of ridicule, though, as much as honest bewilderment - as much as Since when did she care about what I have to say?
“About what?”
“About anything,” Karin spluttered. “About Ma-... your brother. Home. Whatever… you were gonna say.”
Suigetsu grinned widely at this, putting those pointy goddamn teeth of his on display.
“What a pain,” he chuckled, barely able to mask the true eagerness behind his dismissive words.
“Alright, Karin. If you insist.”
********
“Remember what we went through. You stand shoulders out like this- that’s right, just a bit closer to the guard there. And then you--”
“Mangetsu-nii!!!”
Mid-instruction, the young chunin dove off the branch of the tree upon which he had been standing, running at full speed towards a familiar sight.
Still fighting to catch his breath following the mission he had just returned from, Mangetsu allowed himself a weary smile as his younger brother sprinted towards him, all snaggleteeth and straggly blue hair. The sword he had been wielding, a shiny practice model, trailed across the gravel behind him.
“What did I say about taking care of your swords?” Mangetsu chided as Suigetsu began swinging his blade with haphazard enthusiasm, clearly eager to show off what he had learned in training that day. “If you keep dragging them on the ground they’ll get dull, and then you won’t be able to--”
Mangetsu staggered to the side as a flash of silver flew past his ear.
“--do that.”
Suigetsu burst into laughter, exhilarated by the strike he had almost managed to inflict on his brother. “Aww, I wanted to see you do the hydrification jutsu!”
“Later, kiddo,” his trainer called out from the foliage above. “Your brother’s in a vulnerable state right now. Any further exertion and he might not properly coagulate.”
“Kisame-senpai…”
Suigetsu frowned, thinking back to the handful of times he himself had turned to jelly following overexertion while working on his kekkei genkai. To think that Mangetsu, who seemed to have perfected the technique long ago, could fall to such a rookie mishap. This mission must have really taken its toll, he thought.
“Thanks, Kisame-san,” Mangetsu nodded upwards, shoulders heaving. “I owe you for always taking care of him.”
“Not at all. I see the same potential in Suigetsu here that good old Jinpachi sees in you,” the Swordsman chuckled. “We’ve been going over advanced formations like effective stances for above-ground combat, but other than that, it’s almost as if he was born with a blade in his hands. Give it a few months and they’ll be sending him off on A-rank missions in no time.”
“Finally!!!”
Invigorated by the praise, Suigetsu gave his empty surroundings a few more excited stabs. They were a good five years apart in age, but Mangetsu had taught him everything he knew, as well as introducing him to the Seven Swordsmen who had taught him even more on top of that. Mangetsu was his idol, and the prospect of finally being able to join him on A-ranks had the budding shinobi on cloud nine.
“Shall we leave it here for the day, kiddo?” Kisame smiled, finally jumping down from the branches above. “I’m sure you two have a lot to talk about. Mangetsu’s been gone a while.”
“Alright, Kisame-senpai!” Suigetsu called out over his shoulder, his grin twisting into a mischievous smirk. “You’ll let me play with Samehada tomorrow?”
Kisame only chuckled as he retreated back into the mist, hoisting his bandaged weapon up over his shoulders.
“Now whoever said anything about that?”
********
As the years went by, Suigetsu continued to juggle school with external training under Kisame and the other Swordsmen of the Mist - one of whom was now Mangetsu himself. When discussions surrounding a potential successor for Hiramekarei had originally begun, despite Suigetsu’s reputation as a child prodigy, many of the village elders agreed that Mangetsu’s experience made him a better fit for the open sword.
Far from being jealous, Suigetsu was proud of his older brother. Becoming part of the Seven Swordsmen had been their joint dream for as long as he could remember, and the fact that Mangetsu had gotten there first only meant that he had to work harder.
And work harder he did. With every new day bringing another chance to complete a mission or hone his skills, Suigetsu knew no rest. The B-rank missions he had often been assigned became A-ranks, which became S-ranks, and before anybody knew it, the thirteen year old had four successfully completed top-ranking missions under his belt - an achievement befitting of one of the two brothers his village now called The Second Coming of the Demon.
Mangetsu was much the same, dedicating his life to the prestigious group into which he had at last been initiated. His days were a blur of travel, training and missions, but much like his younger brother, he wouldn’t have it any other way.
Despite this hectic lifestyle, however, there was one tradition that the Hozuki brothers refused to let fall by the wayside. Every year, from Mangetsu’s birthday to Suigetsu’s - the fifteenth of February to the eighteenth - no matter where they were or what they had planned, they would come home. They would cook, swim, play hide and seek, do regular teenage boy things that had never been on the agenda for shinobi like them.
They may not have had their parents, both of whom were Mist Anbu and therefore had obligations year-round, but they had each other.
For a span of three days, they had each other.
That was, until Mangetsu’s eighteenth birthday.
Suigetsu wanted to do something extra special for his brother’s coming-of-age. The Seven Swordsmen had been dispatched on a mission just one day prior, but both of their busy schedules meant they hadn’t been in contact for far longer than that. He had bought Mangetsu’s favourite yoghurt at the corner store, arranged heaping spoonfuls in the fanciest cups he could afford, and even went out to pick blueberries from a nearby bush for decoration - the ability to differentiate poisonous species from those that were safe to eat being one of the more useful points of knowledge he had learned at the Academy.
However, that afternoon, instead of his tired brother at the front door, Suigetsu heard a tap at his back window, perching on the ledge of which he found a messenger hawk. It flew away silently, disappearing back into the sky as soon as the scroll was untied from its leg.
Hastily unraveling the loosely rolled scrap of parchment paper, Suigetsu took an unwitting glance at the words scrawled upon it in splotchy black ink.
Mangetsu is dead.
The words don’t register at first. They flicker past his eyes as casually as letters on a billboard, as a shoddy advertisement for cheap leather shoes.
He glances back at the kitchen table where the cups of yoghurt had been laid out. The heat of the evening sun was starting to make the blueberries sink to the bottom of their vessels, and he wondered if Mangetsu would be coming home for dinner soon.
Mangetsu is dead.
And then he is angry. He begins to wonder if someone is playing a practical joke, if this was some sort of sick, twisted prank designed to get a raise out of him, if Mangetsu himself had gone to the fucking trouble of summoning a messenger hawk to pull this stupid trick, as if his older brother had ever been the type to find entertainment in such a thing. But no, he knew his mentor’s handwriting all too well, and although he had seen him write technique abbreviations more often than declarations of death, there was no doubt in his mind that this note was from Kisame.
Mangetsu is DEAD.
Suigetsu remains angry, because he isn’t sure what else to feel. He remains angry as he snatches his sword and barges out the door.
He remains angry as he leaps into the trees, aimlessly following the line of foliage far beyond the village gates.
He remains angry as the sun begins to set and he realises he’s lost his way, the very mist that gave his village its name turning upon him as it thickens, clouding his vision. And even as a masked figure bursts out from behind a nearby branch, hitting his seething, vulnerable, blinded form with a burst of lightning so strong that it renders him incapacitated - a burst of lightning that he could have dodged had he seen it coming, had he been in his right mind, which he hadn’t, because Mangetsu is dead.
********
“I woke up in a tank, and, well… You know what happens next.” Suigetsu laughs. He didn’t know how long he’d been talking for, but it was probably way too long, seeing as his throat was well and truly parched and even the owls had stopped hooting in the distance.
He was honestly surprised Karin hadn’t told him to shut up yet.
“Right, Karin?”
No reply.
“Karin?”
“Ah---”
“Spaced out again?” Suigetsu grins.
“You did it worse,” Karin retorts, peeling her fingers off the tinted glass floor. “That’s why there’re like, twenty different flowers plastered all over my legs and the palms of my hands.”
“My bad, my bad,” Suigetsu laughs again. He thought it looked quite pretty in an abstract kind of way, like some sort of living collage, and maybe if they weren’t in such an awkward position he’d try to pluck one off and place it in her hair.
“Didn’t mean to be that dramatic about it. Maybe because this is the first time I’d almost forgotten, in what, seventeen years? I remembered every time back when Taka was a thing. Hell, it wasn’t like I had a calendar in that tank and I still never missed celebrating February the fifteenth. And by celebrating, I mean something simple - looking at the sky, the clouds, the roof, whatever was up there, and just telling him I’m still here. You know?”
Suigetsu caught himself rambling and trailed off the sentence.
It had been ages - forever, really - since he’d been able to talk about his childhood with someone who wasn’t Orochimaru trying to grill him for knowledge about his kekkei genkai. But as gratifying, and admittedly cathartic, as the little monologue had been, Suigetsu fully intended to shut up now. He wasn’t particularly interested in further recounting it to a girl like Karin who’d already zoned out and probably had half a heart to keep on listening. It’d just be wasting his breath and her time.
So he was surprised when she spoke again.
“What happened to your parents?”
She’d been listening the whole time, after all.
“One of the old science guys said that the Anbu were called in for reinforcement after the situation escalated - after what happened to Mangetsu. Almost half the forces, and half of that got killed. Apparently they were two of them,” Suigetsu shrugged, putting his hands behind his head before leaning back against the wall. “Never found out if he was telling the truth, but hey, I was just a test subject. I don’t think they’d have any reason to lie to me.”
“...And what about your dream?”
“Huh?”
Karin gave an exasperated sigh.
“Your dream. You were going to join the Seven Swordsmen.” How did you end up working here, in the lab where you were captured, for the person who captured you?
Suigetsu laughed again.
“You sure didn’t seem this supportive back then. You used to call it, what, ‘sword collecting’? Suigetsu, stop your pathetic sword collecting and get back here!” he said, imitating the shrill sound of her teenage voice. “I mean, that’s really what it was, but hey. You didn’t have to be so harsh about it.”
“Maybe if I’d have known how much it meant to you I wouldn’t have been so harsh about it,” Karin muttered, ignoring the crude imitation. Another thing she hadn’t meant to say out loud.
“What was that?”
“Nothing.”
Karin knew that for Suigetsu to seemingly have given up just like that, given up the one thing he’d been fighting for all his life, something must have really snapped inside. A part of him that used to be so strong, so all-encompassing, and was now just… gone.
It reminded her of her own broken ‘dream’, the only reason she’d ever agreed to go along with Taka in the first place. But compared to something as noble as Suigetsu’s attempt at carrying on his brother’s legacy, the thought of her dream being Sasuke felt kind of stupid now.
She remembered how much weaker Suigetsu’s chakra had felt when she’d first sensed it earlier this afternoon, and how much weaker it still felt now that they were sitting across from one another. Could it be that the impact of his concession had filtered all the way through to his chakra system, paring it down?
“Alright,” Suigetsu chuckled. “Keep your secrets.”
He bared his gums at her in a sharp-toothed grin. The same sharp-toothed grin she’d seen an infuriating number of times throughout the course of this evening. That had always met her in response to every glare, punch or snarky insult she’d ever thrown his way.
Yet somehow, this particular grin irritated Karin more than any of the others ever had.
“...Why are you smiling?”
“Hah?”
Karin clenched her fists, staring up at the man before her with a mixture of rage, pity and disbelief.
“I said. Stop fucking smiling,”
“I- Huh? Wh- Hey! Why are you crying?”
Karin wasn’t sure where the tears came from that suddenly threatened to spill out from the corners of her eyes, but before she knew it, they already had. She could sense her cheeks flaring, shoulders twitching with involuntary force as she struggled to hold back a series of raw, heaving sobs. It shouldn’t have ended up like this. He was the one who’d lost himself after living through more bullshit than she could possibly imagine. He was the one who should be crying. Not her.
“Karin...? Y-You good?” Suigetsu stuttered, slowly shifting backwards towards the other side of the balcony, shards of terracotta digging into his skin as he planned his swift escape back through the greenhouse door. He’d never been good in emotional situations, nor had Karin ever been one for emotional outbursts - not of the sobbing kind, anyway - and he was at a complete loss for what to do.
He didn’t get very far, however, before a firm hand and red eyes reached out to grab on to the sleeve of his shirt. “Get back here,” Karin seethed, inexplicable emotion reflected upon her face, and Suigetsu figured he wouldn’t be going anywhere, after all.
They sat in silence for what felt like an eternity, Karin struggling to hold back the sobs that wracked her body while Suigetsu’s eyes traced the stars in the sky, darting back and forth, left and right, anywhere but her direction.
When her shoulders no longer shook as violently and her breathing had calmed down, Suigetsu hesitantly turned towards a red-faced Karin, offering an awkward but no less toothy smile.
“You all good, Karin?”
“Hardly,” she scoffed, wiping at her eyes with a rough hand.
“Care to tell me what that was about, then?”
Karin stilled at this, because she wasn’t entirely sure, herself, except for the fact that the wave of emotion had overcome her after listening to Suigetsu’s anecdote - and there was no way in hell she was about to tell the man before her she’d been crying over him.
“I thought it was dumb that you were smiling. That you’re always smiling,” were the words she settled for. “I thought you should have been angry.”
“...That?”
“That someone killed your brother and you got the message through a fucking bird. That they put you in borderline solitary confinement for three fucking years in a stupid fucking tank. That you had to give up on… on your only fucking dream.”
It was Suigetsu’s turn to be still now, as he briefly wondered how Karin was able to string so many swear words together to make a sentence that might even be described as compassionate. This new, empathetic side to her had already caught him off-guard on several occasions this evening, and it certainly hadn’t been part of the Karin he knew, but who was he to complain?
“You know, if I hadn’t been so angry on the day my brother died, I might have been able to avoid my capture,” Suigetsu replied, the introspective words flowing from his lips more naturally than he thought they ever could. “It was anger that got me caught in the first place. It blinded me. Made me weaker. Mangetsu wouldn’t have wanted that.”
“It was anger that got you…” Karin echoed, the words reverberating inside her head.
It was true that back in the days of Taka, she’d never seen Suigetsu get mad. Belligerent, yes. Extremely fucking annoyingly confrontational, yes - but not mad. Even his battles were fought in a state of bridled aggravation, only letting as much wrath leak out as would allow him to inflict his preferred amount of damage on the enemy. And judging from how the majority of those who challenged him ended up dismembered, beheaded or both, that was a great deal of damage, indeed.
Karin thought back to the few close combat situations she’d ever been involved with as a healer-nin, all the battles she’d fought in varying stages of hysteria because that had always been her default. The chakra chains she could now effectively control but once seemed to only be summonable in bursts of red-hot temper.
The trauma he’d manifested as tolerance, she’d manifested as rage.
It was then that Karin wondered what her own anger had blinded her from, all these years - and whether perhaps it was just how amazing Hozuki Suigetsu really was.
“Aren’t you even a little bitter that your brother was killed? You never tried to go and… and avenge him or anything?” she questioned, still unable to entirely wrap her head around his future-focused, irrational yet all too rational way of thinking. “You didn’t even get to say goodbye.”
Suigetsu paused for a second, eyes shifting back up to the stars as he thought this through.
“When I was a kid, I idolised Mangetsu. He’d always been there. Of course I knew that he could die, but more in a hypothetical sense. Like he could, but it’d never happen, he was too strong.”
His voice became tinged with the nostalgic colour it had taken on during his earlier monologue. “I was naive, Karin. Everything has its time.”
“The Mist always taught me that battles are about winning and losing. Mangetsu lost. Whoever got him, they won.” Suigetsu continued, matter-of-fact. “The only thing I could do is try to master the swords and achieve what he never got to.”
“And hey, I’ve killed my fair share of people. So have you,” he chuckled, a remark which Karin wrinkled her nose at. He was right, of course, but it was also just like him to butt in with inappropriate truths at inappropriate times. Something else about this man that hadn’t changed.
Not willing to let him off the hook quite yet, Karin prodded at the final hole in his explanation.
“Why did you give up on the swords, then?”
Karin thought she knew the answer, but she wanted to hear it in Suigetsu’s own words. To know that he’d come to terms with it himself.
Suigetsu’s eyes widened, if only for a split second. It was the first question she’d asked that had struck beyond his defenses, but, well. He still had an answer.
“Giving up is part of what it takes to survive. I didn’t know that then, but I know that now,” he smiled.
It was a different smile, though. Less teeth. Shallower, and Karin saw right through it, because Hozuki Suigetsu had never been one to back down.
She had no doubt that had Suigetsu not found himself backed into such a corner after the war, he would still be out there completing missions for money and collecting swords. Maybe a couple of assassinations here and there. Swinging around Kubikiribocho as he had always done.
Not cooped up in Orochimaru’s hideout dealing with plants, paperwork and God knows what else.
She knew his heart wasn’t in it.
She knew that he’d lost, too.
“Karin...?”
The droplets welling behind her eyes were back, saltier this time. She didn’t even want to think about the state of her face, red and contorted, as she stared into the guilty, questioning eyes of a man who was no doubt wondering what he had done to set off her waterworks twice in one day. Goddammit, why did she have to be so emotional?
“Suigetsu.” Karin choked, the syllables catching in her throat. “You’re so fucking strong, did you know that?”
It surprised them both when she crumpled forward into his arms, but neither of them pulled away.
“Yeah, I know,” he grinned, drawing Karin closer as he brushed soft petals from her softer hair.
The full moon shone down upon them, fragments of light reflecting against the glass, Suigetsu taking in the smell of her sweet perfume as hot tears soaked through the fabric of his shirt.
He leaned down, placed his lips against her ear and whispered.
“Thank you.”