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The end of the war comes fast. Santa is left, trudging through mud and corpses, pressed closely to other shinobi in his unit, all packed together like sardines. Santa doesn’t think it’s fear that glues them together, it’s the notion that the battle is over, and no one is quite willing to believe it.
All that's left is the messy clean-up, a few stragglers left to kill, but mostly, the battlefield is safe. Safer than it has been since the war started.
Santa can see injuries catching up to people, adrenaline wearing off, and now exhaustion settles in people's bones. It won't leave any time soon. Sometimes, it sticks with you forever.
The shinobi next to him - a shimogakure shinobi, Misaki - hard and battle-weary, but he hasn’t lost the brightness in his eyes, which Santa means it’ll take rolling him over hot coals to make a dent in Misaki. He pulls himself over another rotting corpse and Santa half-realises it's a shimo-nin.
Santa doesn't give Misaki the chance to look, just drags him under the arm around the body. (they're missing a head. There's a hollow cavity in the shinobi's chest. Santa can see the ground through the white specs of bone and blood.)
They wouldn't have felt anything, Santa wants to say. They wouldn't have been in any pain, but no words come out. He stares at the dried blood, crusted over Misaki's torso - not his - the dark blood stuck under Santa's fingers, old blood dusted along his forearms - not his either - and says nothing.
Misaki's eyes find the liminal gap between the horizon and the dirt and stay there.
"Sorry," Misaki says after another 10 steps, but there's nothing to apologise for. There aren’t many Shimo shinobi. Every Jounin, every ANBU like Misaki is a treasured resource that they can’t afford to lose, and with Shimo likely in shambles with a war having torn through it, well. Who is Santa to tell him how to feel, how to handle it all?
Santa hopes Misaki's team is still alive.
"It's fine," his voice breaks on the vowel, lack of use coming back to bite him, but Misaki is too well-trained to draw attention to it.
Santa knows Misaki's a lieutenant of an ANBU squad - nothing to sneeze at, not in a big country like Konoha and not in a small one like Shimo. He's fucking tough. But the prospect of losing squad members is a crushing blow, no matter how elite, how skilled you are.
Santa is a Yamanaka; he mostly lives in the T&I building. He has friends to worry about, but not teammates, not people he's fought with, shed blood with on a regular basis. Misaki is the lieutenant of a highly trained, highly offensive squad of ANBU. They are a small village; they have to be brutal, and they have to really fucking good.
Even if Misaki is doing a good job at squashing his visible anxieties, Santa's not going to pretend to understand the potential loss of a squad member would do to a group of people that close.
"We can look. I can help you look for them," Santa doesn't look at Misaki, just trudges forward and tries not to shudder under Misaki's stare, dark grey eyes, like a whole fucking storm is trapped inside them, inside him.
"You don’t have to help," Misaki says. His voice is deep, grates right along the edge of something inside of Santa that he can't place. Not fear exactly, something else, a little warmer.
"It's alright," there's a small crater they step around, there's a Kumo shinobi at its base. Half his skull is missing. Neither of them look at him for any longer than they have to.
There is a silence between them, perpetuated by the slow, but steady stride of tired shinobi around them, all spent, all just wanting to reach the nearest base.
Santa lays back, letting Misaki decide. Now the war is over, it's like the tentative treaty is up, and Misaki is waiting for Santa to stab him in the neck.
(Shimo was trampled all over in the third shinobi war, caught in the middle of raging powerhouse villages, and forced to pick sides to stay alive.)
"We need to ask the captain if we can separate from the group, then," Misaki says, surprising him with a response at all.
It wouldn't surprise him if Misaki just vanished into the fray when the opportunity presented itself, and Santa wouldn't see him again. He’s not sure why the idea of that upsets him.
At least he's doing something right.
Santa doesn't put the energy into smiling, knows Misaki would see right through him anyway and settles with a nod of acknowledgement.
Santa trudges forward, feels the cold press of Misaki's chakra touch the edges of his own, and hopes, a little inanely that whatever this is, will last.
He knows better than to imagine a future that probably won't last, but he thinks about the blood on his hands, the people whose brains he's rifled through like he's reading a book, the damage that does to someone, that absolute, total violation. Thinks of the ANBU operative standing beside him and understands that the things he has done are probably unforgivable to anyone who isn't a shinobi.
If this tentative future can last, then maybe, there will be less. Less violence. Less bloodshed. Less people like him, who work their way through life like there is a means to an end and don’t stop to smell the roses. That people like Misaki won't have to throw their life and morals away to keep a village afloat.
It's wishful thinking, but maybe here, on a battlefield is as best a place to start than any.