![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Title: Enmugakure
Author: Evandar (yamievandar / hikarievandar)
Fandom: Naruto
Rating: M
Pairing: Hidan/Temari, mentioned Ino/Shikamaru/Temari love triangle and past Hidan/OC.
Genre: AU Adventure/Mystery
Warnings: Swearing, some sexual situations, violence
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto and I am making no profit from this story.
Summary: The secret to defeating the Akatsuki lies in the demolished village of Enmugakure, but only one person knows where it is. Pity he's in pieces...
Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If only there were water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand or lie or sit
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
The Wasteland
T. S. Eliot
Part VII
The Descent
Even Temari, who had grown up among the shifting red sands of the Wind Country desert had to admit that once they left the oasis, their path grew difficult. The ground seemed to sink beneath them as they walked, although they could see the mountains that formed the border with Earth Country rising up before them like gigantic, jagged teeth. The mountains were black granite, thrusting up from under the sandstone that most of Wind Country lay on to pierce the clear blue sky. They looked ominous, but nowhere near as ominous as where they were going.
Apparently, the most hospitable path into Enmugakure that didn’t involve a highly dangerous detour into enemy territory was through a valley. While it didn’t sound particularly dangerous to the Konoha shinobi, Temari knew better. Desert valleys were little better than sun traps, and this one in particular was especially dangerous. It had been formed by a long-dry river wearing its way through the sandstone down to the black granite that lay beneath. The sides of the valley, according to the map, were high and steep, and the grains of sand that would cling to the walls would make it difficult to climb out even with the use of chakra.
Temari was worried, going down there, but she trusted Hidan to know what he was doing. They had plenty of water, and while Sakura and Naruto especially were wearing unsuitable clothing, she knew that they would be fine as long as they obeyed instructions and kept themselves hydrated. If they combated the chance of heat stroke properly, then all they had to worry about was an ambush from intruding Iwa-nin, which wasn’t all that likely. Iwa was still licking its wounds after the last Great War when the Yondaime Hokage had pretty much obliterated them single-handedly. The threat of Akatsuki was small too, as Temari was pretty sure that only Uchiha Itachi had any idea of where they were, and she didn’t think he would betray them after going through all this trouble. After all, there had to be easier ways and more accessible places than the remotest corner of the Wind Country deserts to ambush and obtain the Kyuubi Jinchuuriki.
Even so, it was best to be on guard.
She let her eyes trail over their small party as they trudged wearily through the sand. Shikamaru was still being a moody bastard – which she really didn’t understand; he had chosen Ino over her, but he still got pissed off over her flirting with someone else? Hypocrite – Sakura looked tired, Naruto looked like he’d much rather be sitting in a ramen bar, slurping down noodles in the shade. Hidan, on the other hand…
Temari’s gaze lingered on him. He had a look of such intense concentration on his face that it was almost scary. She’d never seen him fight before, but she got the impression that he was the sort of person who would sneer and laugh as he fought, throwing his opponents off guard with sarcastic comments, Jashinist speeches and his inability to die.
She was still curious about his immortality. Was it a side effect from being related to a Bijou?
But the intense look he wore as he walked, straight-backed and fearless in the direction of Earth Country – and, undoubtedly, Enmugakure – was unlike anything she had ever seen on him. His eyes were narrowed, his jaw was set, and if it wasn’t for the fact that he was moving, she could easily have mistaken him for one of the statues of the Kazekages in her brother’s office, glaring down at the world in righteous distain. Only…it wasn’t quiet distain on his face, either. He was just focussed. Focussed on their destination, on ignoring Shikamaru’s hostility, on defeating the Akatsuki…
But it made her nervous. She’d know, instinctually, that Hidan was dangerous, but she’d never truly seen it on his face before. She’d never thought of him as being more dangerous even than Gaara before.
The look on his face had her placing him at a level with a Kage. She wondered what seeing him in battle would do to her estimation of him.
She tore her gaze away from him once more, fixing it on the jagged black horizon. She found herself hoping that she never would have to see Hidan in that sort of situation.
The silence of their group was broken by a loud gurgling noise. She half turned, incredulously, to look at Naruto who was blushing to the roots f his golden hair and rubbing his stomach. He grinned nervously, blue eyes creasing up into little slits as he did.
“Hey, is it time to stop for lunch yet? Only I think that if I don’t eat I’ll digest my spine, or something, and I kind of need that,” he said.
Temari rolled her eyes. There were times when he reminded her of Kankuro – or, at least, Kankuro when Gaara wasn’t around – not in speech, but in mannerisms. She’d seen that hungry, hopeful look on her brother’s face far too many times.
“I think Naruto’s right,” Sakura said. “We do need a break.”
“Okay,” Temari agreed. “That okay with you, Hidan?”
He looked at her. The intense look had vanished from his face, replaced by something she couldn’t quite describe. “Sure,” he said.
Temari felt something twist in her chest. She realised, suddenly, that this was painful for him. That he didn’t want to return to Enmugakure; that he’d hoped that the people and the village that he’d buried there in the wake of Shukaku, Iwa and Suna’s would stay buried. She smiled at him tentatively before lowering her pack to the ground. She caught Shikamaru’s eye as she did so, and found him glaring again.
She sighed. “What?” she asked. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw both Sakura and Naruto freeze halfway through rummaging their packs for rations. “What’s the problem Shikamaru?” she asked again.
He looked away. “Nothing,” he said. “Just…stay away from him.”
There was no doubt in Temari’s mind who the ‘him’ in question was. She glared. “Why?” she asked. “Jealous? You chose Ino, remember? I’m a big girl Shikamaru, I can take care of myself.”
“Not against him,” Shikamaru muttered.
“What happened with you guys?” she asked. “Or do I not get a reason for this bullshit?”
“He’s pissed off ‘cause I killed his sensei,” Hidan said from behind her. He moved, then, into her peripheral vision. He was smirking slightly, as if the memory of the death amused him. “Your buddy here is the only person in years to come close to getting rid of me permanently – apart from myself, of course. He fucking blew me up with a net full of explosive tags, right? Took the Hokage five days to figure out what fucking went where after Itachi insisted they dig me up to come out here.”
She swallowed. Her throat felt dry, as if she’d just swallowed a mouthful of sand. She’d met Sarutobi Asuma a couple of times. He’d been a good person, and he’d been very close to Shikamaru. But that wasn’t what bothered her; shinobi died in battle all the time. It wasn’t unusual; more of a fact of life rather than anything else.
“Why?” she asked. “Why are you on first name terms with a member of the Akatsuki?”
It was the second time he’d called Uchiha Itachi by his given name, something that most shinobi wouldn’t do. They either called him the Uchiha Traitor or by his full name. Never by his given name. It was some sort of taboo.
“Because he was one of them,” Naruto said quietly. Sakura closed her eyes, as if awaiting an explosion. Shikamaru looked away from her.
She felt anger boil up in the pit of her belly. Hidan was one of them? He was one of those bastards who was after Naruto? One of the utter, complete bastards who had killed her baby brother? A kunai was in her hand, pressed against the pale column of his throat before she even realised what she was doing. She snarled up at him, baring her teeth in fury and glaring for all she was worth. Killing intent and chakra radiated from her body. His grin faded, revealing the solemn expression he had been wearing before they had started to set up camp.
A thin line of blood welled up under the edge of her blade and trickled down his neck.
“Bastard,” she growled.
Something sparked in his gaze, and despite her anger she felt a thrill of something run down her spine. “What’re you waiting for Temari?” he asked. He dragged out her name, savouring every syllable on his lips and tongue as if it was rich chocolate rather than just a name. “If you want to try and kill me then do it.”
She stared up at him, the snarl falling from her lips. He looked so old, all of a sudden. His skin wasn’t wrinkled or liver-spotted; he didn’t suddenly appear frail – on the contrary, he looked stronger than ever – but there was something…a wistful twist to his lips; the look in his eye. He looked bleached out, apart from his eyes, which seemed to almost glow.
He wanted to die, she realised. He had nothing to live for except his religion.
Her grip on the kunai relaxed. She whipped it away from his neck, leaving only a shallow cut behind, and threw it down into the sand. She held her body perfectly still against his, the fingers of her other hand twisted in the warm black material of his shirt. She could feel his heart beating. She could feel his chakra – for the first time, she realised, he suppressed it so well she’d never felt it before – thrumming away beneath his pale skin. She raised the hand that had held the kunai once more, and used it to grip the back of his neck. His eyes widened, and for the first time since she had attacked him, he looked uncertain.
She pulled him down as she leaned up, and she pressed her lips to his ear. “I won’t kill you,” she hissed, “I won’t even try. Not unless you go back to those motherfuckers.”
“Why?” he asked, and the feel of his breath across her face made her shiver.
“Because you’re wrong,” she replied. “You do have something to live for, if you want it.”
“Temari…” she heard Shikamaru growl her name from somewhere behind her, but she didn’t care. She pulled away from Hidan slightly and met his gaze again. His confusion was palpable – cute, really, she thought. She lowered her gaze to the thin trickle of blood running down his neck. The wound hadn’t quite healed yet, though the bleeding had slowed. It pooled slightly in the dip of his collar bone, and the thick red liquid shone hypnotically in the bright sunlight. She looked up at his face again, met his gaze deliberately before she leaned in and licked the blood away from his collar bone, following its path back up his neck to the cut she’d given him. His breath caught.
Shikamaru hissed her name again, and she heard scuffling footsteps behind her as if someone was trying to escape another person’s grasp. She ignored them, and revelled instead in the metallic taste of blood on her tongue and the dusty scent of Hidan’s skin.
She pressed a kiss to the wound on his throat and stepped back. His blood clung to her lips like the sticky juice of an exotic fruit, but she met his incredulous stare proudly, silently challenging him. Akatsuki bastard he might have once been, but he was…Hidan. He was Hidan. And whether he wanted it or not, she was going to drag him back into the world of the living.
His lips twitched, and then stretched into a grin. “Well shit,” he said. “That was pretty fucking hot, blondie.”
She scowled. “Temari,” she corrected.
He laughed.
*~*~*
The walls of the valley rose up on either side of them, worn sheer by water and sand and wind. Hidan led them carefully across the dusty ground, carefully stepping around loose stones and skeletons. Small desert creatures, mostly, whose bones looked so frail that they might crumble at the slightest touch. Temari walked behind him, then Sakura, then Naruto, then Shikamaru; after her little display earlier they had decided that it would be safer for all of them to keep Shikamaru as far away from Hidan as physically possible. Not that, she thought, he really had anything to be jealous over. Yes, she had been his girlfriend once, but that was over; Hidan hadn’t stolen her. Yes, Hidan had killed his sensei, but Shikamaru had blown him up and buried him alive; he’d had his revenge.
Although, she thought, it was possible that his hatred for Hidan partially stemmed from a similar emotion as the one that made Hidan reluctant to return to Enmugakure.
A desire for the dead to stay buried and forgotten.
She watched the ends of Hidan’s fine, silvery hair brush over his shoulders. Ever since he had bathed at the oasis, he had worn it loose. He’d forgotten to pack hair gel, apparently; he looked better for it. She felt her cheeks redden – nothing to do with the heat of the valley; it was like walking through an oven – and looked away. Her gaze landed on the towering walls of the valley, and she frowned.
“Temari?” Sakura asked tentatively. “Are you alright?”
“Yeah,” Temari croaked. She cleared her throat and reached for her water flask to take a tiny sip. The water was warm, but it did its job. “I just thought I…can you see patterns on the walls? Up there, by the top?”
Sakura looked up and frowned. “I…yes,” she said after a moment. “They’re faint, but I can see them. Look! There’s holes too.”
Temari squinted upwards, shading her eyes with her hand. Around her, the others did the same; all except Hidan, who stood back and let them get on with it. “Oh yeah,” she murmured. “What are they?”
She glanced over at Hidan when she asked. He glanced up at them briefly, before giving her a rueful smile. “Tombs,” he said. “This place is a Jashinist graveyard, reserved for the priests of the order that used to live around here. The carvings are their names, details of their lives, stories and symbols of Jashin-sama. That sort of thing. They were old before I was born.”
“Can you read the writing?” Sakura asked.
Hidan nodded. “It’s the same language the Book of Jashin’s written in,” he said. “Not that I can read it from all the way down here, anyway.”
“You make it sound like this Jashin guy was pretty popular at one point,” Naruto said.
Hidan sneered. “Jashinism was widespread up until about a hundred years ago,” he said. “When rumours about that bastard Shukaku and what he had been got out, the priests were hunted down and slaughtered.” He looked back up at the tombs again. “It was a fitting end for them. People tried to forget about Jashin-sama after that, and the rumours passed into obscure myth. No one believes in anything anymore. No one gives a fuck about their immortal fucking soul. It’s all money and possessions and immortality.”
He paused.
“Everything changed, and everything that had come before that was forgotten. That’s why we’ve got fuckers like the Akatsuki and Orochimaru, thinking that fucking around with eternal life and demons if a brilliant fucking idea. Load of crap. Everything dies. Everyone dies. They should. There’s no fucking point in living forever.”
He turned away from them then, and began to walk away. He glanced back at them over his shoulder, and Temari saw that look in his eyes again: the weight of his life pressing down on him.
“Are you coming or what?”
Author: Evandar (yamievandar / hikarievandar)
Fandom: Naruto
Rating: M
Pairing: Hidan/Temari, mentioned Ino/Shikamaru/Temari love triangle and past Hidan/OC.
Genre: AU Adventure/Mystery
Warnings: Swearing, some sexual situations, violence
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto and I am making no profit from this story.
Summary: The secret to defeating the Akatsuki lies in the demolished village of Enmugakure, but only one person knows where it is. Pity he's in pieces...
Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If only there were water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand or lie or sit
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
The Wasteland
T. S. Eliot
The Descent
Even Temari, who had grown up among the shifting red sands of the Wind Country desert had to admit that once they left the oasis, their path grew difficult. The ground seemed to sink beneath them as they walked, although they could see the mountains that formed the border with Earth Country rising up before them like gigantic, jagged teeth. The mountains were black granite, thrusting up from under the sandstone that most of Wind Country lay on to pierce the clear blue sky. They looked ominous, but nowhere near as ominous as where they were going.
Apparently, the most hospitable path into Enmugakure that didn’t involve a highly dangerous detour into enemy territory was through a valley. While it didn’t sound particularly dangerous to the Konoha shinobi, Temari knew better. Desert valleys were little better than sun traps, and this one in particular was especially dangerous. It had been formed by a long-dry river wearing its way through the sandstone down to the black granite that lay beneath. The sides of the valley, according to the map, were high and steep, and the grains of sand that would cling to the walls would make it difficult to climb out even with the use of chakra.
Temari was worried, going down there, but she trusted Hidan to know what he was doing. They had plenty of water, and while Sakura and Naruto especially were wearing unsuitable clothing, she knew that they would be fine as long as they obeyed instructions and kept themselves hydrated. If they combated the chance of heat stroke properly, then all they had to worry about was an ambush from intruding Iwa-nin, which wasn’t all that likely. Iwa was still licking its wounds after the last Great War when the Yondaime Hokage had pretty much obliterated them single-handedly. The threat of Akatsuki was small too, as Temari was pretty sure that only Uchiha Itachi had any idea of where they were, and she didn’t think he would betray them after going through all this trouble. After all, there had to be easier ways and more accessible places than the remotest corner of the Wind Country deserts to ambush and obtain the Kyuubi Jinchuuriki.
Even so, it was best to be on guard.
She let her eyes trail over their small party as they trudged wearily through the sand. Shikamaru was still being a moody bastard – which she really didn’t understand; he had chosen Ino over her, but he still got pissed off over her flirting with someone else? Hypocrite – Sakura looked tired, Naruto looked like he’d much rather be sitting in a ramen bar, slurping down noodles in the shade. Hidan, on the other hand…
Temari’s gaze lingered on him. He had a look of such intense concentration on his face that it was almost scary. She’d never seen him fight before, but she got the impression that he was the sort of person who would sneer and laugh as he fought, throwing his opponents off guard with sarcastic comments, Jashinist speeches and his inability to die.
She was still curious about his immortality. Was it a side effect from being related to a Bijou?
But the intense look he wore as he walked, straight-backed and fearless in the direction of Earth Country – and, undoubtedly, Enmugakure – was unlike anything she had ever seen on him. His eyes were narrowed, his jaw was set, and if it wasn’t for the fact that he was moving, she could easily have mistaken him for one of the statues of the Kazekages in her brother’s office, glaring down at the world in righteous distain. Only…it wasn’t quiet distain on his face, either. He was just focussed. Focussed on their destination, on ignoring Shikamaru’s hostility, on defeating the Akatsuki…
But it made her nervous. She’d know, instinctually, that Hidan was dangerous, but she’d never truly seen it on his face before. She’d never thought of him as being more dangerous even than Gaara before.
The look on his face had her placing him at a level with a Kage. She wondered what seeing him in battle would do to her estimation of him.
She tore her gaze away from him once more, fixing it on the jagged black horizon. She found herself hoping that she never would have to see Hidan in that sort of situation.
The silence of their group was broken by a loud gurgling noise. She half turned, incredulously, to look at Naruto who was blushing to the roots f his golden hair and rubbing his stomach. He grinned nervously, blue eyes creasing up into little slits as he did.
“Hey, is it time to stop for lunch yet? Only I think that if I don’t eat I’ll digest my spine, or something, and I kind of need that,” he said.
Temari rolled her eyes. There were times when he reminded her of Kankuro – or, at least, Kankuro when Gaara wasn’t around – not in speech, but in mannerisms. She’d seen that hungry, hopeful look on her brother’s face far too many times.
“I think Naruto’s right,” Sakura said. “We do need a break.”
“Okay,” Temari agreed. “That okay with you, Hidan?”
He looked at her. The intense look had vanished from his face, replaced by something she couldn’t quite describe. “Sure,” he said.
Temari felt something twist in her chest. She realised, suddenly, that this was painful for him. That he didn’t want to return to Enmugakure; that he’d hoped that the people and the village that he’d buried there in the wake of Shukaku, Iwa and Suna’s would stay buried. She smiled at him tentatively before lowering her pack to the ground. She caught Shikamaru’s eye as she did so, and found him glaring again.
She sighed. “What?” she asked. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw both Sakura and Naruto freeze halfway through rummaging their packs for rations. “What’s the problem Shikamaru?” she asked again.
He looked away. “Nothing,” he said. “Just…stay away from him.”
There was no doubt in Temari’s mind who the ‘him’ in question was. She glared. “Why?” she asked. “Jealous? You chose Ino, remember? I’m a big girl Shikamaru, I can take care of myself.”
“Not against him,” Shikamaru muttered.
“What happened with you guys?” she asked. “Or do I not get a reason for this bullshit?”
“He’s pissed off ‘cause I killed his sensei,” Hidan said from behind her. He moved, then, into her peripheral vision. He was smirking slightly, as if the memory of the death amused him. “Your buddy here is the only person in years to come close to getting rid of me permanently – apart from myself, of course. He fucking blew me up with a net full of explosive tags, right? Took the Hokage five days to figure out what fucking went where after Itachi insisted they dig me up to come out here.”
She swallowed. Her throat felt dry, as if she’d just swallowed a mouthful of sand. She’d met Sarutobi Asuma a couple of times. He’d been a good person, and he’d been very close to Shikamaru. But that wasn’t what bothered her; shinobi died in battle all the time. It wasn’t unusual; more of a fact of life rather than anything else.
“Why?” she asked. “Why are you on first name terms with a member of the Akatsuki?”
It was the second time he’d called Uchiha Itachi by his given name, something that most shinobi wouldn’t do. They either called him the Uchiha Traitor or by his full name. Never by his given name. It was some sort of taboo.
“Because he was one of them,” Naruto said quietly. Sakura closed her eyes, as if awaiting an explosion. Shikamaru looked away from her.
She felt anger boil up in the pit of her belly. Hidan was one of them? He was one of those bastards who was after Naruto? One of the utter, complete bastards who had killed her baby brother? A kunai was in her hand, pressed against the pale column of his throat before she even realised what she was doing. She snarled up at him, baring her teeth in fury and glaring for all she was worth. Killing intent and chakra radiated from her body. His grin faded, revealing the solemn expression he had been wearing before they had started to set up camp.
A thin line of blood welled up under the edge of her blade and trickled down his neck.
“Bastard,” she growled.
Something sparked in his gaze, and despite her anger she felt a thrill of something run down her spine. “What’re you waiting for Temari?” he asked. He dragged out her name, savouring every syllable on his lips and tongue as if it was rich chocolate rather than just a name. “If you want to try and kill me then do it.”
She stared up at him, the snarl falling from her lips. He looked so old, all of a sudden. His skin wasn’t wrinkled or liver-spotted; he didn’t suddenly appear frail – on the contrary, he looked stronger than ever – but there was something…a wistful twist to his lips; the look in his eye. He looked bleached out, apart from his eyes, which seemed to almost glow.
He wanted to die, she realised. He had nothing to live for except his religion.
Her grip on the kunai relaxed. She whipped it away from his neck, leaving only a shallow cut behind, and threw it down into the sand. She held her body perfectly still against his, the fingers of her other hand twisted in the warm black material of his shirt. She could feel his heart beating. She could feel his chakra – for the first time, she realised, he suppressed it so well she’d never felt it before – thrumming away beneath his pale skin. She raised the hand that had held the kunai once more, and used it to grip the back of his neck. His eyes widened, and for the first time since she had attacked him, he looked uncertain.
She pulled him down as she leaned up, and she pressed her lips to his ear. “I won’t kill you,” she hissed, “I won’t even try. Not unless you go back to those motherfuckers.”
“Why?” he asked, and the feel of his breath across her face made her shiver.
“Because you’re wrong,” she replied. “You do have something to live for, if you want it.”
“Temari…” she heard Shikamaru growl her name from somewhere behind her, but she didn’t care. She pulled away from Hidan slightly and met his gaze again. His confusion was palpable – cute, really, she thought. She lowered her gaze to the thin trickle of blood running down his neck. The wound hadn’t quite healed yet, though the bleeding had slowed. It pooled slightly in the dip of his collar bone, and the thick red liquid shone hypnotically in the bright sunlight. She looked up at his face again, met his gaze deliberately before she leaned in and licked the blood away from his collar bone, following its path back up his neck to the cut she’d given him. His breath caught.
Shikamaru hissed her name again, and she heard scuffling footsteps behind her as if someone was trying to escape another person’s grasp. She ignored them, and revelled instead in the metallic taste of blood on her tongue and the dusty scent of Hidan’s skin.
She pressed a kiss to the wound on his throat and stepped back. His blood clung to her lips like the sticky juice of an exotic fruit, but she met his incredulous stare proudly, silently challenging him. Akatsuki bastard he might have once been, but he was…Hidan. He was Hidan. And whether he wanted it or not, she was going to drag him back into the world of the living.
His lips twitched, and then stretched into a grin. “Well shit,” he said. “That was pretty fucking hot, blondie.”
She scowled. “Temari,” she corrected.
He laughed.
The walls of the valley rose up on either side of them, worn sheer by water and sand and wind. Hidan led them carefully across the dusty ground, carefully stepping around loose stones and skeletons. Small desert creatures, mostly, whose bones looked so frail that they might crumble at the slightest touch. Temari walked behind him, then Sakura, then Naruto, then Shikamaru; after her little display earlier they had decided that it would be safer for all of them to keep Shikamaru as far away from Hidan as physically possible. Not that, she thought, he really had anything to be jealous over. Yes, she had been his girlfriend once, but that was over; Hidan hadn’t stolen her. Yes, Hidan had killed his sensei, but Shikamaru had blown him up and buried him alive; he’d had his revenge.
Although, she thought, it was possible that his hatred for Hidan partially stemmed from a similar emotion as the one that made Hidan reluctant to return to Enmugakure.
A desire for the dead to stay buried and forgotten.
She watched the ends of Hidan’s fine, silvery hair brush over his shoulders. Ever since he had bathed at the oasis, he had worn it loose. He’d forgotten to pack hair gel, apparently; he looked better for it. She felt her cheeks redden – nothing to do with the heat of the valley; it was like walking through an oven – and looked away. Her gaze landed on the towering walls of the valley, and she frowned.
“Temari?” Sakura asked tentatively. “Are you alright?”
“Yeah,” Temari croaked. She cleared her throat and reached for her water flask to take a tiny sip. The water was warm, but it did its job. “I just thought I…can you see patterns on the walls? Up there, by the top?”
Sakura looked up and frowned. “I…yes,” she said after a moment. “They’re faint, but I can see them. Look! There’s holes too.”
Temari squinted upwards, shading her eyes with her hand. Around her, the others did the same; all except Hidan, who stood back and let them get on with it. “Oh yeah,” she murmured. “What are they?”
She glanced over at Hidan when she asked. He glanced up at them briefly, before giving her a rueful smile. “Tombs,” he said. “This place is a Jashinist graveyard, reserved for the priests of the order that used to live around here. The carvings are their names, details of their lives, stories and symbols of Jashin-sama. That sort of thing. They were old before I was born.”
“Can you read the writing?” Sakura asked.
Hidan nodded. “It’s the same language the Book of Jashin’s written in,” he said. “Not that I can read it from all the way down here, anyway.”
“You make it sound like this Jashin guy was pretty popular at one point,” Naruto said.
Hidan sneered. “Jashinism was widespread up until about a hundred years ago,” he said. “When rumours about that bastard Shukaku and what he had been got out, the priests were hunted down and slaughtered.” He looked back up at the tombs again. “It was a fitting end for them. People tried to forget about Jashin-sama after that, and the rumours passed into obscure myth. No one believes in anything anymore. No one gives a fuck about their immortal fucking soul. It’s all money and possessions and immortality.”
He paused.
“Everything changed, and everything that had come before that was forgotten. That’s why we’ve got fuckers like the Akatsuki and Orochimaru, thinking that fucking around with eternal life and demons if a brilliant fucking idea. Load of crap. Everything dies. Everyone dies. They should. There’s no fucking point in living forever.”
He turned away from them then, and began to walk away. He glanced back at them over his shoulder, and Temari saw that look in his eyes again: the weight of his life pressing down on him.
“Are you coming or what?”
