Relative Immortality

Abby Ebon

O.o.O.o.O.o.O

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, or Naruto.

O.o.O.o.O.o.O

- Balance-

O.o.O.o.O.o.O

"Mother…?" She stands between Harry with Kurama and Shukaku beside him and Orochimaru, the last piece of Voldemort's soul – and looks to the joining of Madara and Obito Uchiha with something akin to disapproval. She sighs, and the body of Obito goes limp and Harry watches his mother swallow their souls.

They will never return to this world.

Orochimaru shudders at the sight of it, stepping away from the woman Voldemort had once known as Lily Evans-Potter. What she has done - he fears. Orochimaru is a demon; it meant he had been a dead man's soul clinging to that of his familiar, the serpent Nigini. Such beings as he are unnatural, an imbalance, and he stands before Death the great balancer of life and death.

"Do you remember me, Tom Marvolo Riddle?" And how could either Harry or he forget the first meeting with her? Her words are curiously inviting.

It flashes through Harry's mind, like the lightning scar Voldemort gave him.

"Lily Evans, I killed you." Serpentine eyes don't flinch from the living green fire of death, he steps forward, wand raised as if to do it again.

"Tom Marvolo Riddle, do you think it so easy to slay what I am? I am not merely an idea, and whimsy element of nature – I am inevitable, I am the end of the beginning and the beginning of the end; I am Death." She stands, elegant and graceful with every sinister movement; she steps forward, shielding her children from harm. "I am their mother, and I am not a mere mortal; you will learn well what that means this day. You have hurt my sons. I end you now." Her finger pointed at him in this declaring, and he burned to embers – the wind scattering his still burning ashes. Like fire, it spreads and catches, and wizards and witches scatter, screaming – attempting to flee her wrath. None succeed. She spares one glance behind her, and smiles softly to see her sons' safety, and still smiling she fades – as if she had never stood there at all.

Harry shuddered at it, as if the memory were a scar not quite – never quite all – healed.

"You killed me!" Orochimaru shivers, recalling that parting, for his soul had been aware of the great loss of a greater whole, sudden and emptying. All he had had to cling to was Nagini and she had clung just as tightly to him as she hid as the world around her ended as she knew it and another began to beat and scream its way into changing creation.

Death's green eyes were both pitying and gentle upon him.

"Did I? I am not the end all you think I am - I thought you whole in soul and sought to heal you, to make and unmake. It was a mistake and the whole of your race paid for it." Harry wants to deny her claim, but he hasn't the words for it. It made twisting sense, bitter and biting.

Now that Harry knew this, what was he to do with it? Harry couldn't kill his own blood, his mother's son - even if that blood had been stolen. Harry did not doubt that Orochimaru could be ended, a severed bit of soul burned away into nothingness – like an amputated limb - but what of the bijū?

They would never be whole; they would forever be severed into nine personalities, nine identities. It was wrong. A limb severed from the body could still be felt, as confused nerves and a conflicted consciousness made the body – the awareness all the bijū had, that they should be whole – a phantom pain that would be unending.

Harry rejected outright doing something that would hurt the bijū – who rightly or wrongly – he had created. They were the only children he would have, if in spirit, not of body. Orochimaru had been lost and orphaned his whole life, with memories of another time and another way – and no one to turn to except Madara.

Madara who had somehow parted Voldemort's soul from Nigini…Harry looked upon the body of Orochimaru and wondered at it, if this was a Reanimation Jutsu. Whose body had been used? If Madara had done it, all that he would have needed to do once he had found Nigini and the soul of Voldemort was kill her – and it would send the soul on it's way – only to be Summoned back by Madara Uchiha.

Harry knew why his mother had done as she had – and a part of him approved of it. There would be no return for either Uchiha once swallowed up by Death.

"A mistake…? All of this…a mistake?" Orochimaru's words are soft and lost. It was his whole life and existence she had caused by her mistake. That is what it meant to have great power, not a reasonability, but a undeniable knowledge of what suffering doing anything could cause – but Harry's mother could not help but use her power.

People, both good and bad people, they died and were meant to die – everyday, and others were meant to be born. To stop would be not a mistake, but unthinkable. Like the moon and sun taken away. All the sky anyone would know would be the stars shining in the dark – and people needed both day and night, needed the moon as much as the sun.

"What –or who are you to me? My mother? My grandmother…? Lily Evans who I murdered – or who killed me?" Orochimaru asks of her, of Harry, of either of the bijū that might, or might not, answer. He yells and spits the words out as if they hurt.

Lily's red blazing hair is as wild and willful as if tossed by the wind, what it touches, it burns. The very stones and earth is afire, hot and molten. Yet it does not burn Harry or Orochimaru. Harry thinks he knows what she is doing; that his mother is proving a point – she can no more hurt herself than she can now hurt them.

The ring of red within Harry's eyes flickers as he watches the flames. If he sees something in the fire, he never says what he saw. It chimes through his ears, Orochimaru's claim upon him by Voldemort's deeds and the blood they now share.

"We share blood, for did not my servant take it?"

It can not be as simple as that, so simple and devastating that Harry could join Shukaku in his nervous giggles and never cease.

"All of these, and much more besides - am I to you." Harry's mother tells to Orochimaru, as undeniable as the fire that roars around them. It should consume and burn their bodies, but it does not. The unspoken message is clear – their mother could no more harm them than she can harm herself.

Death reaches out a hand for Orochimaru to take, and offers her other to Harry, it is their choice now – to take it, or not to. Neither knows what will happen if they do – or don't – no one but the woman who would have them join hands by her own.

"I can not unmake a mistake, I can not recreate what I have destroyed…but I can make you whole, my son." Death smiled the same smile she had given Harry when she had thought him freed of a soul not his own, of an enemy he had loathed and learned to love as kin.

"Do it." Orochimaru speaks, as if it's a dare he takes her hand into his.

Harry pauses to look to Kurama, who nods uneasily – confident enough to believe that Harry will do what is right for them. Or to get them out of danger if this is wrong and Harry tries it.

"Let us try." Shukaku urges, grinning but shaken.

Harry touches the husk of Jubi's body, with his hand that is marked by the Nine Tailed fox and One Tailed tanuki. Reaching out with Kurama and Shukaku he touches all the Tailed Beasts, joining them within him.

It is then that he takes his mother's hand.

Harry had had to use the Creation of All Things to part Jubi into the nine bijū. Madara Uchiha had used a Reanimation Jutsu to Summon a soul he had killed, and put into a body before the soul and could forget being Tom Marvolo Riddle.

What Death did was like and unlike either – she breathed, and Harry noticed that he had never seen her do so – why would she need to? She wasn't alive, or dead, she was death – and more – the ending and the beginning of a force of nature, personified.

In did she breathe - a single gulp of air that shook Harry as he felt the loss of the Tailed Beasts and Orochimaru in that single inhalation; he would had protested it, cried out at the unfairness …if his mother had not reassuringly tightened her grip about his hand.

The body that had been Orochimaru became ashes in the fire.

Harry shut his mouth tightly, blinking away what tears wanted to form from his loss. A loss he felt as deeply as any bone and blood within his body. Fire, he knew, was a force of both purification and of destruction. It had been the first tool of mankind, used to warm them – and later, make weapons and what was most often overlooked – it allowed the cooking of food and so made possible feasts and gatherings that built the foundation of civilization.

Death gasped, breath going out – and out, shakily as the death rattle, the telling breath of the soon to die; the first cry of the newborn was like such a exhale.

About her other empty hand a shadow formed, and at first it was like a mirage, something only seen distant and hazy, but became solid the longer Harry looked – became as real as anything in this world.

She kisses his cheek, in greeting, in the welcome of family welcoming family, and goes – fading from sight as if she had never stood there.

Tom Marvolo Riddle stood there, born again, the third time - with a soul made whole and anew. Harry could only hope that the old sang rang true – that the third time was the charm, that this time Tom would have a happy life. He was as tall as Harry, with blue eyes and hair as black as the night sky without stars.

Death had been his end, and his mother, his maker.

"Welcome, brother." Harry greeted, knowing the truth of it by his soul. It was true, that old warning of "you are what you eat", both in body – and soul. Voldemort had taken his blood, a sip of his spirit – what made him Harry - and it could not be undone.

Tom Marvolo Riddle was his brother by that blood, by the blessing of his mother.

Tom offers him a shaky and uncertain smile – and that is when the crash of a wooden door hits the floor as it is beaten down in hasty panic. Tom looks to it, wide eyed – and Harry stares with a raised brow.

Hidan with Shikamaru burst through the door, looking ready for war. Harry smiles and knows only Tom can see it, as he stands nearest to him and his vision isn't clouded by smoke or flame.

"Harry - you in here?" Hidan hollers, looking about wildly, as if he fears what he will find.

"I am." Harry answers, taking Tom's hand as he walks without worry to the exit Hidan had made of an entrance. TomRiddle follows him, his hands clod and clammy with nervousness, but otherwise docile.

"Well, what are you doing? Let's go, fire might not burn you – and you might not need to breathe…but that doesn't mean this building can't come down around you and crush you flat." Hidan scolds him, as if Harry is a child that can't take care of himself. Harry might be more mature – but Hidan takes his responsibility toward Harry as the most serious thing in his life.

Hidan with Shikamaru set up a camp, just within sight of the burning hideout and resolves to find the other places Akatsuki hid and burn them out within the week.

"Who's this?" Hidan asks Harry nodding toward the teen that has latched upon his younger brother's hand, once they are safely outside and watching the hideout of Akatsuki burn.

Tom tilts his head at Hidan as if surprised that he is not recognized, he hasn't said a word yet – he doesn't know what to say. He's done so much he never wanted to – and if his soul had been whole, his mind would not have been so shattered by his splitting of his soul so many times…he doesn't think he would have done the things he had, had he been whole, as now.

Yet it's true, Tom doesn't look much like Orochimaru – and looks less like Voldemort at his end. He is whole and healthy; a flush comes to his fair skin.

Shikamaru frowns at Tom, curious – not wary or hateful.

"Tom Marvolo Riddle, our mother's son. He's whole of soul and mind, not a jinchūriki of the bijū...simply, himself, normal" Harry answers as if it's as simple as that.

Hidan snorts, his hands tense and tight, but slowly he relaxes as he sees Tom doesn't react to the threat he'd made of himself. Harry might be too trusting of this new 'brother' for the sake of the bijū – but Hidan will watch and wait, just to see if all is as it seems.

"As normal as a wizard can get, maybe." Tom Marvolo Riddle says, teasingly.

Shikamaru finds himself laughing, as he sits by the fireside of three brothers who must find a balance between the living, the living who do not die, and the living dead that does not die.

If anyone can find that balance, Shikamaru Nara knows, it's these three.

O.o.O.o.O.o.O

End