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When a pot breaks, it shatters into pieces. Depending on the break, the pieces can be big, obvious as to where they should go when the inevitable repair takes place. Some pieces are smaller, but the pattern on it is clear, and with some doing, can be put back with its neighbors. Sometimes, a break is easy to fix, and the pot can be a pot again, perhaps even stronger for it.
Sometimes, when a pot breaks, its pieces shatter further. They break upon the ground and are ground into dust, never again to be part of the whole. The pot may still be put back together if these pieces are few; it may need patching up, but it can still be what it was. Too many, however, and the pot loses cohesion. Too many, and the pot will—
Ansi rolls out of the way just in time to avoid the missile of bird crap, nearly falling off the roof in the process if not for a surge of chakra to their hands as they clung to the tile. Figures this would happen during the rare times they allowed themself to reminisce. Something about the muggy summer heat forced these things to the surface, like gas from a bog, or sparring after a large meal, sour and biting. They swing their legs back and forth until they find purchase on the adjacent wall with another bit of chakra to their feet and unceremoniously pull themself back up onto the roof, scuttling like a beetle.
Sandaime’s words echoed in their head, at the moment empty of most things besides festering memories and stupid speeches that convinced idiot kids to do things they would regret. Ansi falls back against the wall of the rooftop balcony railing hard enough to knock the wind out of their lungs, and finds the dizzying sensation calming. Anything that wasn’t the deafening buzzing bouncing around their head at the moment was preferable. Or maybe that was the cicadas.
They’re sticky. Their skin, their hair, their clothes, their memories, all of it. Even on the rooftop, there’s no wind, which was what Ansi had hoped to find when they climbed all the way up here in the first place. They wonder for a moment if jumping into the nearest creek might have been a better idea, but on a day like this every kiddie in Konoha was jumping into creeks and Ansi would rather they didn’t run back home to their mommies asking why a grown adult was trying to drown themselves in broad daylight.
Not that they would’ve been. If they ever sank to the bottom of a creek it would only be that depriving themself of sensation sounded like a better deal than feeling anything at all. They’re too jittery, too jumpy, too full to bursting. What did normal people do when their memories bled? Did they let them sit and go rotten? Did they drain them, like an abscess?
Flies buzz around their head, barely even flitting away when Ansi bats a lazy hand at them. They think of corpses, of bugs, of maggots, and laughs, barely a huff of breath, at the thought of being a corpse melting in this heat. Even the bugs fucking knew. One lands on their cheek, and some hot poker, a jolt of electricity blooms bright and hot in their brain’s circuitry and they slap at it, hard, ignoring that while the insect was now dead, they had mostly just hit living flesh. But that was the point, probably. The skin there starts to tingle, and Ansi is satisfied with it, if only for that long.
A little flare of chakra on the same rooftop forces them to lift their eyes up at the haze of heat radiating off the tile where the overhanging roof of the balcony didn’t reach, where an ANBU guard had materialized, looking their way.
“Cat?”
Hardly anything about the ANBU uniform lent any favors to individuality, from the black mesh hoods that covered their heads to the black and white armor that bracketed their bodies. The only things that differentiated each one from the others were their masks and visible patches of skin, and this guard appeared to have taken the dress code seriously, if their pale skin had anything to say about it. This is Hound, not Cat.
Hound appeared to Ansi less often, apparently not sharing Cat’s curiosity as to their comings and goings, which Ansi still didn’t fully understand, but they weren’t about to complain about the diversion. They supposed Cat must have mentioned it to Hound, since here they are. That still does’t tell them why they’re here.
Hound’s body language gives away nothing about their intentions, and whether that’s because they weren’t there for a confrontation that day, or if it was simply due to ANBU training, Ansi couldn’t say. They squint at the guard against the sun’s glare. The guard stares, impassive as their mask, back, standing with their arms hanging at their sides and a slouch.
Having a curious Cat visit them sometimes was one thing. It was another entirely to be accosted by a quiet Hound.
At length, Ansi says, “If you’re not here to either snap my neck or take me somewhere air-conditioned, then leave me alone.”
Hound cocks their head. “The morgue is a brisk four degrees, I hear.” They sound amused, but their voice is several pitches at once, pushing through the distortion jutsu placed on the mask, making it hard to say for sure. Ansi is suddenly jealous of the distance that affords, and ignores the threat neatly lodged in it.
“Perfect. It’s a date,” they say dryly.
Fabric shifts against fabric as Hound stuffs their hands in their pockets, nodding in Ansi’s direction. “Henge.”
At first, the word whizzes by Ansi like stray kunai, and they blink wordlessly at the statement. Then it clicks. Irritated, they tuck a piece of hair behind their ear, hands already forming the release seal by the time they’re done dragging their fingers through the length of it. “I can’t even have this?” they mutter skyward.
“Who said you couldn’t?”
“The stipulation in my probation terms that says I’m prohibited from using any and all ninjutsu and genjutsu for the duration of the former.”
Hound’s shoulders shift in a way that suggests they’re raising their eyebrows. “Ah, so you have read it.”
“Are you here to make me dispel it or not?” Ansi scowls, their hands frozen in place in front of them. A bead of sweat rolls down their neck, not simply from the heat.
“If I was here to kill you, it wouldn’t matter, would it?” Hound shrugs. “But neither are on the agenda today, I’m afraid.”
Ansi exhales loudly. They’d call it a sigh if there was a reason for it, but as it is, they exhale, and stand up to lean against the railing at their back, taking a sidelong glance at Hound, who is still standing there looking for all the world like a person who doesn’t know a thousand different ways to kill. Not that it would matter to Ansi one way or the other right now.
Hound faces away from them, peering down at the village streets, a foot perched on the edge. “There are medical treatments, you know. Surgeries.”
“I do know, and there aren’t,” Ansi says blandly.
“Oh?” It sounds little more than a grunt in Hound’s throat. They’re amused, as if they were only watching a movie. “I could’ve sworn there were.”
Ansi runs a hand down their face to feel skin and meat pulling across bone instead of dull, throbbing anger. “You’re talkative today,” they say from behind teeth, and if Hound hears it, they don’t respond. Ansi scowls. “Why are you here?”
A pause. “Did you want to die?” Hound poses the question like they’re asking if Ansi wants chicken or pork for lunch. Hound spares a glance their way, and if they’re looking for an actual answer, Ansi doesn’t plan on giving it to them.
“It’s way too soon in our relationship to be asking those kinds of questions, Hound,” they say, picking at the skin around their nails, trying to feel less like a specimen under a microscope and more like someone who has anything under control. “Don’t you owe me a date?”
“Why are you up here?”
“Quit avoiding my questions, oi.”
“I’ll answer them when they’re ones you want answered,” Hound says simply, shrugging.
“Fuck you,” Ansi snipes, but the truthfulness of Hound’s observation cut too deep for it to have any venom left. It only sounded tired.
Hound’s gaze hangs silently from their words. Ansi picks up a piece of gravel from between the roof tiles, rolls it in their fingers to gauge the weight, and chucks it at Hound, who doesn’t dodge. It bounces off their mask with a small ping.
“I miss that mask sometimes,” Ansi says. Hound doesn’t react, but Ansi imagines that under the mask they blinked.
“ANBU?”
A one-shouldered shrug. “Hunter.”
“That division disbanded.”
“I know that,” Ansi scoffs.
“You want to go back?”
“Hell no, I hated it — eventually,” Ansi decides. There is no form of elaboration on that that wouldn’t draw vomit to their lips so they don’t try.
Hound says nothing, but Ansi imagines they know what they meant. The only difference between ANBU and Hunter was merely the symbol on their target’s hitai-ate (and sometimes not even then). In the thick of it, both ANBU and Hunter’s worlds narrowed down to a fine point, too small for even themselves to fit inside of it. They become shadow, become blade, become heartbeat, and leave behind not even a face.
“Is there no honor in protecting Konohagakure?” Hound asks, as though reciting lines of text. Ansi shrugs.
“Somewhere down the line, maybe I was,” Ansi admits. “But to me I was only ever hunting down and killing people I knew.”
Keep the pieces from shattering. Repair the pot. But they were one grinding the pieces into dust. Ansi presses their eyelids together, trying to force something into existence that wouldn’t come.
“I look around at it all and I know all this light and color is better for me than fresh blood and warm shit,” Ansi says, reciting a textbook of their own, “but back then it was simpler, at least. I knew what I was; I knew what I had to do. Now... sometimes I’m on the street standing next to people made of bones and meat and thoughts that make sense and I feel like I’m dust. I feel like a thing just pretending.”
Hound looms silently, slouch ever-present, hands hidden in pockets. Ansi is unspooled beside them, facing heavenward in unspoken prayer. Their hair clings annoyingly to their forehead, their cheek, down their back and front where yukata hovers over skin. They want to tear it off, hair and skin and all. There is no wind, and Ansi has not been breathing for hours.
“Oi,” Ansi says sharply, finding Hound in the corner of their eye.
Hound kicks a bit at the tiling. “Yo.”
“You didn’t hear any of that.”
“Not a word,” Hound agrees.
Ansi looks away. “Where’s Cat?”
No answer.
“Why are you here?” Ansi asks again, not expecting an answer to that, either.
“I’m figuring that part out,” Hound says, carefully. A pause, pregnant with anticipation, distinctly unlike any of Hound’s other pauses. It makes the hair on Ansi’s arms dance. “Sating my curiosity.”
“Am I just entertainment to you?” Ansi says, but finds they do not actually object to the inspection. They suspect that if they did, they would have left a while ago, and Hound wouldn’t have followed. It just so happened that Hound had questions and Ansi had answers, even if those didn’t quite fit together. It was truth as good as either of them would get today — maybe for a long time.
“Do you always do this?” Hound asks. It is several questions in one, and there are too many answers swirling in Ansi’s head to ever enumerate them all. They tilt their head at the horizon wordlessly, seeing nothing. Maybe they could be allowed their silence, this once, and for their part Hound doesn’t say anything about it.
“Is there honor in protecting Konoha for you?” Ansi asks, sidestepping the words that would make their meaning obvious, but they suspect Hound could find it anyway, if they tried.
At length, Hound inclines their head, just slightly. It is not quite affirmation; it is at most acknowledgment.
“What exactly does that mean?” Ansi’s voice is barely above a whisper, striking closer to the heart of the actual question. It was not meant as a challenge, but it is a dangerous statement to make to an ANBU all the same. Ansi does not know Hound — doesn’t know Cat, either, to tell the truth — and finds themself strung tight as a bow when the question finishes sliding from their lips and they remember that Hound might have an answer for it.
Hound doesn’t say anything for a long time. Their face is turned the same direction Ansi’s is: towards the distance; towards nothing. The truth dances around them like mosquitoes. The sun is low in the sky, and a breeze suddenly gusts across the tiled roof, cutting through them both.
“As long as the henge is minimal, and you’re not using it to disguise yourself for some reason, I won’t tell anyone about it,” Hound says eventually, crossing their arms and leaning back on the railing. The tension built up around them dissipates like drops.
“What a rebel,” Ansi murmurs. They find, after a moment, that there is a smile tugging faintly at their lips. “It’s not like it’s a difficult jutsu to spot. People whose job it is to know probably already do.”
“Then why were you so ready to dispel it?” Hound asks.
Ansi sighs, quickly forms the seal and lets the transformation melt away, their chest now flat, and says nothing. Hound observes.
“There’s control in shaping yourself,” Hound says philosophically. “Have you ever done pottery?”
They can’t help it; Ansi laughs. If Hound is surprised by this, taken aback at all, they don’t show it, and thank god for that.
The sun is low in the sky, and a breeze gusts across the tiled roof, cutting through them both. Ansi feels their lips pulled up into a grin, and wonders when it got there. “Nah. Never.”
“You should try it sometime,” Hound says, lightly, then disappears, leaving Ansi to their less turbulent thoughts.
Pick up the pieces. Gather the dust.
Make a new pot.