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It wasn't hard to find a guitar once I was back. It was even less hassle to buy it, get it tuned, and start playing.

The difficulty began when my fingers landed on the string.

I was spoiled by my memories, by the knowledge of what it should have sounded like when I pulled that first string. The sound came off warbled and horrible, the rhythm I tried to put behind it was totally lost. My heart fell down into my stomach.

It hurt. Music had been a huge passion in my life before, and ever since I had been revived I hadn't thought to take it up again. I was either busy or sad, and sad was not progressive. I had never forgotten my love of music but it was just so far away. A life time passed, one that I normally did little to think about. In fact I went out of my way to avoid thinking of what I had lost.

What I didn't have.

It wasn't worth it to stay held up about that, I had more than just those people in the regular world to mourn. I was trying, desperately, to learn to move on with my life.

I had been afraid that music would keep me from doing it.

Now I realized exactly how much I had missed my passion. And still did, seeing as I couldn't play for shit.

The guitar was a magnificent piece of equipment, beautifully crafted by expert hands with a perfectly shaped neck and the best acoustics I had ever heard.

So the problem really was in my playing.

It was a major blow to my pride, a horrible blow. I set the instrument down after half an hour before I got too frustrated in myself. I was so good before, and my hands were a hundred times more dexterous than they had been.

So what was the problem?

I sat there, staring at the guitar, for hours. Until small feet pattered on the wood outside my room and a familiar voice called my name. Naruto was back from school.

"Come in," I ordered, reaching out to pluck a few stings in quick succession. That at least sounded okay.

Naruto pushed the screen aside, poking his head inside to see what I was doing. When his eyes landed on the guitar his brows pinches together in confusion. Ninja were not known to double as musicians.

The little blond boy, who was still little despite my constant provision of food, didn't look away from the instrument as he lowered himself to the floor. I had been meaning to get it redone. Put in thick carpet, maybe with bowling alley designs. I had enough money I could change it whenever I wanted.

"What is that?" Naruto asked, squinting at my new purchase.

I smiled a little at his obliviousness. He was wholly focused on two things. Ninja, and pranks. He had no room in his head for anything else.

"It's a guitar. You play music on it by pulling on the strings," I explained. I picked it up and pulled it into my lap before started to pluck a few cords. It just sounded so wrong.

Naruto seemed to think otherwise as he broke into a wide grin and scooted close, trying to see more clearly.

"That's so cool! Teach me!" he demanded. I laughed and little.

"I don't know if a guitar is right for you. It's a little… tame," that was definitely not the right word but it was all I could think of. Guitars just didn't seem like Naruto's thing. I'm not sure why, it just doesn't seem to be anything like the bright ,brilliant little boy.

My long dead brother had something that was a little more like him though…

"Come with me," I ordered out of nowhere, standing suddenly.

While he looked confused, and a good bit weary, my little friend rose obediently and trailed after me. Out of my room, out of my house, down the street and into the abode of one of my many, many dead cousins. It had a habit of raiding their houses whenever I needed something, or using them for general storage. As a dead person myself I was relatively sure that they wouldn't mind what was doing.

That is to say, pulling out a trumpet.

Personally, I never cared much for them. It was mostly my preference for strings and percussion that kept me away from woodwind and brass in general.

Trumpets, while not my favorite, were something I still knew well. Ish.

They were loud and cheery and full of energy, required a lot of breath too. Perfect for the boy following me.

I thrust the instrument into his hands and pointed to mouth piece. "Push your tongue here and blow as hard as you can."

Naruto got confused.

"What?"

I merely stared at him, expectant. He had perfectly good hearing, I didn't need to repeat myself for him. It took a minute before he obeyed, somewhat wearily. His hold was totally wrong, but the sound that came out was an explosion.

It sounded more like a fog horn than a trumpet.

Funny, I'd thought that sound only came from a tuba.

Naruto almost dropped the brass in his surprise, stared wide eyed at the creation. I watched him bring the trumpet back to his mouth and repeat the experiment, once, twice, thrice.

I would make a musician out of him yet.

The sun was warm on my back, heating through the rabbit fur lining. It was a sleepy type of heat, one that melted my muscles into liquid and pooled wonderful relaxation into my core.

There was a soft pressure on my lower back from Peter, who had shown up some time ago, and seemed content to lay there, curled up on the soft fabric of my jacket. I was going to get a new on, maybe something with a hood. White hair had a habit of sticking out in the middle of forests.

My eyes were closed, I was totally at peace.

The sweet smell of grass broken beneath my body was interrupted by a fragrance of Acacia. And pineapple.

I hate pineapples.

"I was having fun," I mumbled, opening my eyes to find myself on the floor of a room I hadn't seen in two weeks. Or that was what I expected to open my eyes to. It was, instead, a bit different.

The room was pretty, in some ways. A circle around a tree in the middle, thick red carpeting had replaced the nice green of grass. Intricate furniture, webbed in silver, surrounded me.

Lounging in a long couch with one end raised high than the other was an irritatingly familiar face, one of three that had been present when Hidan had tasted my blood. He was smiling, looking something awful smug.

I sat up, frowning at Jashin as much as I dared. A God of Death was a bad thing to have as an enemy.

"I'm more of a merchant of souls, really," he declared, flapping his hand in my direction. My skin started crawling. I had forgotten the whole mind reading thing.

I hated that more than pineapples.

"Sorry," Jashin said, sounding anything but.

"Merchant of Souls," I tried to get back on track, "What do you want?"

"We didn't get to talk much last time. I wanted to make up for that now," he explained easily, With a wave of his hand another chair appeared, over stuffed and marshmallow like. I squinted at it before taking a seat.

I almost slipped right off again.

"What do you want to talk about?" I quizzed irritably.

Jashin smiled a bit. "You must have a lot of questions," he guessed.

I thought about it for a minute before shaking my head. I had run over most of them on our way back, worked out with the information he'd given me before.

"You pretty much explained everything before, right? There's not a whole lot more for you to say. The rest is for me to do."

Jashin gave me a very odd look before he nodded a bit. "Yes. That's right."

The absolute panic I had felt had faded away by now, leaving me with exasperation and annoyance at being dragged in without my consent. That was all.

"You said I could send people to your mid-after-life, thing, how do you mean?" I asked after a second.

Jashin thought about it for a minute. "You saw how Hidan sends me people before, didn't you?"

I nodded.

"He is connected with me, and by consuming the blood of others he connects me to them by proxy. When we are all connected any damage done to one with be done to all. Because I am a god and Hidan, as my serf, is Immortal, neither of us takes permanent harm. The other, however, will be killed and their soul sent directly to my realm until the time comes for me to release them back into the arms of babes."

I nodded slowly. "If I were going to send them to you," As a ninja I would kill, no doubt about it, "Would I have to do it in the same way?"

Jashin's eyes were calculating as he sized me up. I was not a fan of death, I did not want to kill but it was necessary, it was going to happen no matter what I might as well help things stay balanced while I was doing it. There was no sense wasting a good soul, right?

I thought I might throw up.

"Yes," he said at last, "You would be."

I hummed softly, thinking it over for a long time. The pros, the cons, what it would mean and how it would look. There were so many things I needed to think of now that I hadn't before. So much that it was starting to make my brain hurt.

"I'll get back to you."

You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from – Cormac McCarthy