Chapter Text
“I’ll be fine,, Nagato told him with a smile and a patchy tan that hadn’t quite faded yet; Nagato looked less stooped, more confident, and Yahiko couldn’t keep him to himself even if he wanted to. “I promise to write, even if we’re divorced”, his friend says with a laugh in his voice, and Yahiko shakes his head; when did Nagato become such a pain in the neck?
Konan laughs as she pushes her way between them and hugs Nagato; her anxiety is clearly less than Yahiko’s, and he’s a little jealous of her.
“He’s not leaving forever, just to Konoha and back”, Konan reminds him, and Yahiko looks at her skeptically — are they talking about the same Nagato? Because, last time Yahiko checked, their friend had gotten lost at their own base.
“I want to meet our kohai and his wife. Sensei said she’s from the same clan as me”, though Yahiko was glad Nagato had found a family, part of him fears Nagato will leave them. It’s silly, irrational, and so unlike Nagato, but Yahiko can’t help himself.
He doesn’t know what he’ll do if Nagato and Konan leave him; Yahiko simply lacks the imagination to picture it; it sounds like a world in which he would have no purpose.
“See you later”, Nagato waves to them once more, and Konan’s hand grips his tightly so he doesn’t take another step forward.
Yahiko is anxious and worried, and he’s unlikely to find his footing in the coming days.
He consoles himself only with the thought that Nagato is strong.
Nagato isn't entirely sure what the compass is showing him; he doesn't think the Land of Fire had such a scorching sun or desert dunes, but he kept walking straight ahead, hiding under his straw hat and regretting that his cloak was black.
Part of him is thinking of using some Rinnegan techniques to replace the sun with rain clouds, but he isn’t sure how that would affect the local climate; even in the Land of Rain, he doesn’t dare turn off the downpour for long; he still remembers all the reports Yahiko received, which mentioned the extent of the fauna’s destruction, and then the flora’s, as soon as the sun came out for two weeks.
On the other hand, Mizukage calmly altered the climate of the Village of Mist, clearing the fog from it for the entire summer, but Mizukage is a madman; it would be unwise to emulate such a person, even if he is their ally.
Nagato walks for several days before reaching the Village of Sand; Suna is clearly not Konoha, but he’ll rest for a couple of days in the settlement before heading back out into the open desert.
The village of Sand is an extremely arid place; people cover their skin to protect it from the wind, which carries grains of sand, and the markets are full of foods he has never seen before; it turns out that some types of cacti are edible. There’s a tension in the air that he can sense with the naked eye; the shinobi are tense as strings, and the ANBU are too conspicuous for his taste; no one pays attention to his eyes, just as they don’t to his face (he chose to remove his headband upon entering; it’s better to just be a wandering Uzumaki, as he’d learned during several months of traveling with Jiraiya-sensei). Nagato takes a bite of some fruit; it looks like a pear on the outside, but tastes like a persimmon and a kiwi; a strange combination that excites his taste buds, unaccustomed to such flavors; fortunately, he learned that hardly anything can truly poison an Uzumaki’s body; Nagato didn’t even have a hangover, much to the chagrin of his mentor, who was suffering that morning.
The smell of blood sharply pierces his senses, and his hand reaches for the kunai on his hip; he senses no attack; the wind stirs the sand, and— no, it’s not the wind. There is chakra in the sand, and he looks sharply to the left: there is Sun’s ANBU, buried in the sand; the sand creeps, creeps, and creeps over him before clumping together, and the smell of copper envelops the entire deserted street. Across from the dead man sits a child, trembling as he presses himself against the wall, and the sand moves slowly, returning to him, but the sand’s chakra does not align with the boy’s, and Nagato watches all of this with great attention.
Nagato channels his chakra into the Rinnegan, and the sand freezes in midair; for a split second, nothing happens, but in the next, the sand surges toward him like a hungry wild beast, like a predator with a will of its own. Between the second and third seconds, Nagato raises his hand and repels the sand in the opposite direction of the magnetic force, in the third second, the sand splits, swirling around him, seeking to drag him into the same mound as the dead ANBU — the Rinnegan glows, and the sand scatters in all directions from him. Nagato dodges, bouncing off the walls and landing on the roof; the sand follows him, filled with even more chakra than before — fortunately, Nagato can keep this up for a long time, fending off the sand and gradually breaking its connection to the chakra, piece by piece, grain by grain.
Sun's ANBU watch him but don't intervene, and Nagato can barely restrain himself from asking if this is how things are done in the Sand?!
The sand runs out — which is both striking and ironic for a desert—just as Nagato casts a genjutsu, penetrating the very essence of the sand, the very essence of the chakra of the one trying to kill him. The place he finds himself in resembles a prison, a cage; there is no light, and it is so dry that his skin, as a resident of the Rain Country, shrinks.
“Who are you? Who are you?!” a high-pitched, hysterical voice rings out, echoing off the walls. “Why do you have his eyes?! Why?!”
Rinengan peers into the essence, and a seal spreads out before him; it is enormous, covering the ceiling, walls, and floor, surrounding a large gourd in which travelers usually carry water. Nagato knows what good seals look like; he remembers the seal of concealment on Uzu; he remembers the seals he saw in the Uzumaki scrolls; he remembers the patterns the Mizukage drew as if playing a game; compared to everything he’s seen, this looks like a thoughtless drawing by a child — or a true sadist. The seal is weak; it doesn’t drown out the voice that keeps screaming at Nagato himself; it doesn’t protect him from anything, and it doesn’t even allow him to be a normal vessel when Nagato realizes what — or, more precisely, who — he’s looking at. The Rinnegan continues to burn as he forces Ichibi to sleep.
He returns to the real world in the blink of an eye, taking a few steps forward and falling off the roof; the sand muffles the sound of his landing, and Nagato realizes he’s lost his hat; the child is still huddled against the wall, hugging his knees, while the man’s body continues to grow cold.
The child’s hair is red—red—red, and Nagato can only think of the couple who took him in in the Land of Tea; their grandchildren were older than this child.
“What’s your name?” Nagato asks, dropping to his knees; for some reason, the ANBU don’t approach them, watching from a distance, making no attempt to stop some stranger from speaking to a small, frightened child (do they think the sand will kill him again?).
The child lifts his head; he has soft green eyes and dark circles from lack of sleep more pronounced than Yahiko’s ever were. How loudly must Ichibi have been screaming inside the child’s head for him to look like this? No, that’s not right — did Ichibi ever keep quiet, given the seal he’d seen? Nagato tries to keep a peaceful expression on his face, even though he wants to grind his teeth.
“...Gaara”, the child says, and Nagato can’t even be sure how old he is. Three? Five? Older? Nagato had never dealt with children before Shisui, but the boy was twelve, and he was already a jōnin.
Nagato smiles, recalling that name in his memory and reaching out his hand.
“Hello, Gaara. My name is Nagato. I want to help you. Will you let me?” The child looks at his hand suspiciously, uncertainly, clearly expecting the sand to pounce on him again; Nagato stands still, waiting; he could stand there forever if that’s what it takes for the boy to work up the courage to say hello.
A small hand takes his fingers, gently, timidly, and Nagato thinks it feels like a precious treasure.
The Sand ANBU still don’t move, not even attempting to protect their only junchuuriki; his gaze falls again on the corpse behind him, which he shields from Gaara’s eyes with his body; Sun’s clothes and mask tell him everything he needs to know.
The idea comes suddenly.
Oh, damn, this is going to be so reckless. Yahiko would surely turn gray, and Konan would condemn him. But those big green eyes look at him as if no one had ever shown him kindness.
That’s what an Uzumaki would do, Jiraiya-sensei’s voice echoes in his head, and all hesitation vanishes from him.
Uzumaki Nagato leans toward the jinchūriki of the Hidden Sand Village and asks him in a quiet, cheerful, and confident tone:
“Want me to steal you away?”
(They run and run, run, and the sand, now golden, follows them; fortunately, Nagato can stand up to an entire country if necessary, and it was necessary; moreover, he may have overstepped his authority and declared war in Amekage’s name, even though he had promised himself never to start one (he wanted all too badly to break Kazekage’s nose once again, for he had sent assassins to kill his own son; Nagato refuses to understand this monster, even though they are the same age); in one hand he holds a child, in the other a compass, and he is certain that there was no ocean between the Land of Fire and the Land of Wind, but perhaps the east and west have switched places, and he wasn’t told.
He walks across the water, while Gaara listens to all the ridiculous stories he recalls from his childhood, as if they were the most fascinating tales in the world.
Their red hair is the only splash of color on the ocean’s horizon.)