Chapter 562: Tranquility
"You recognized me even like this?"
Naruto's voice came through the mask.
"Heh... Lord Menma, you must be joking." Kisame's laugh was low and resonant, and not at all threatening. "How could I possibly not recognize you?"
"Though -- why is the organization's leader walking around in disguise?"
Organization's leader.
Young Sasuke's head came up sharply. He stared at adult Naruto's back.
This organization... Naruto built it? This underground base, all these Uchiha clan members moving through its corridors, this entire place that he couldn't begin to see the shape of -- all of it Naruto's?
"It's like this," Naruto said, raising one hand to gesture at the disguised young Sasuke standing beside him. "I need to take this kid to meet some people. Can't draw too much attention while I'm doing it. You know how it is -- if people find out I'm wandering around down here..."
"I understand."
Kisame nodded once. His gaze passed briefly to young Sasuke, rested there for less than a second, and came back without comment.
He didn't ask who the child was. Didn't ask why Naruto would bring a disguised child into the base. He simply took it in and left it alone.
"Apologies, Lord Menma -- I hope I haven't caused you any inconvenience."
"Kisame." Naruto's voice shifted, carrying something more earnest. "Don't say things like that."
"You and I are comrades."
He looked at Kisame. At a face that used to be covered in danger and coldness, now significantly more at peace. He was quiet for a moment.
"Speaking of which -- you've been with the organization for quite a few years now. The wish I promised to fulfill when you joined. How has it been?"
Kisame didn't answer immediately.
His expression changed. Something very soft moved into it. Those eyes -- the ones that had always made people feel like they were being sized up -- narrowed now, curving into two gentle arcs. The lines at the corners smoothed out.
Like a shark that had finally gotten enough sun, lying unhurried on warm sand with nothing to calculate and nothing to watch for.
"...Every time I think about this, I don't know what to say."
A pause.
"...I still don't know how to express what I owe you."
After that, a smile came to his face.
Not the smile he used to carry -- the one that made something cold move down the spine of anyone who saw it. This one had his eyes nearly closed, his mouth lifting at the corners, something genuine and warm behind it that came from somewhere real.
That kind of smile on that kind of face should have looked completely wrong. But right now it looked like the most natural thing in the world. Like the face had always been capable of this expression and had simply never been given the circumstances to use it before.
The life Kisame had been living these past years was something the person he used to be could not have imagined.
He had finally found a peace that was unlike anything he had encountered before. Not the peace of hiding away in a mountain somewhere, cut off from the world and everything in it. The kind that came from having solid ground under your feet. Knowing what tomorrow held. Knowing what you were alive for.
He had things to look forward to. Not only the larger ambition of knowing he was working to change the world -- but the smaller things too. If the weather was good tomorrow, maybe he could go somewhere with a few of the others. In a few days there was a mission in a village nearby -- delivering grain. Once that was done, he wanted to find Zabuza for a drink.
No deception. No falsehood. No need to raise a blade against the people beside him. That was what he had wanted most his entire life. And it was the thing he had been most certain he would never have.
He lived in the light now.
What he did every day was no longer assassination. No longer infiltration. No longer cleaning up damage caused by people who treated other human beings as pieces on a board.
The only killing he did was killing the people who genuinely deserved it. The bullies who pressed their weight onto the weak. The rogue shinobi who came to destroy villages. The sources of suffering that persisted in the world.
But killing was no longer the center of it.
More often, he carried the strange things Orochimaru kept developing -- seeds of all varieties, vegetables and grain and crops that could take root in depleted soil -- to places where people were starving, and taught them how to farm. How to work the earth. How to pull food from ground that had nearly given up producing it.
He went to drive off the bandits and rogues harassing villages. He used shinobi capability to dig wells for people who couldn't access clean water. He went to small countries that the great nations never bothered to look twice at, and helped them build roads, put up buildings, establish schools.
And as his reputation spread, something unexpected had started happening. When he arrived in some of those small countries now, the local villagers received him more warmly than they received shinobi from their own villages.
Children would crowd around him, bringing out whatever their families had that was best to offer. Old people would hold his hands, eyes wet, saying thank you, saying if your organization hadn't come, we wouldn't have survived this winter.
Kisame sometimes thought: is this something I'm actually allowed to have?
Someone whose hands had been covered in blood for so long. Someone who used to think he didn't deserve to be alive. Living in the light. Needed by this many people. Thanked by this many people. Treated as a good person by this many people.
But if anyone ever tried to take this away from him -- Kisame would fight until there was nothing left of him.
This was the first time in his life he had felt what "it's good to be alive" actually meant. Anyone who moved toward taking it from him would find out exactly how hard he was willing to fight for it.
"Knowing what you should fight for. Knowing what your purpose is. Knowing where you stand." Kisame's voice came out slow and careful, each word given its full weight. "That peace -- the kind that fills you from the inside -- it never leaves."
"All of this is because of you."
"I'm glad to hear it."
Naruto nodded. He looked at Kisame and wanted to say more -- something like "this is the path you built yourself," or "there's still a long way ahead of you" -- but before he could find the words, something caught his attention.
Young Sasuke.
The disguised young Sasuke had been standing beside him the whole time without speaking. Completely still.
But his eyes had been giving him away. Occasionally flicking down toward the deeper part of the corridor. His fingers invisible inside his sleeve, but the tension in his arms legible from the outside. He had the look of a string pulled past its limit -- something on the verge of snapping.
Kisame noticed. His gaze moved to young Sasuke, settled for less than a second, and came back.
He didn't ask. Didn't pursue it. Didn't allow himself to be curious about who this child was or why Naruto had brought a disguised child into the base today.
"Then I won't keep you any longer, Lord Menma."
He stepped back half a step, clearing the corridor.
"If you're looking for Shisui, he's out right now -- went to pick up some household things. I've just taken on a mission myself."
He paused.
"Land of Hot Water. Eyewitness accounts indicate a shinobi from Konoha has been moving through the area and asking questions about our organization. Background unknown. And apparently this Konoha shinobi is a member of a bloodline limit clan."
"I'll head out and see what this one is actually after."