Author's Notes: Just a series of drabbles in direct relation to Forlorn that formulated and will strictly remain a side project. Some are dark– may include perspective, but the majority of them tend to be random ideas that were spawned from our main story. Reviews are welcome.
Flicker
What am I searching for anyway? It isn't something like the conventional sort of acknowledgment people take for granted daily. I feel that any hope of an identity or legacy that I might have had, died along with my parents– nameless and desperate.
It became far more clear after that- when I had learned how to sleep in an apartment empty of all except for myself, and those cold, decaying shadows looming in the places where my family used to titter around and live life the way it should be lived– without the fear of death.
So now, I suppose, that may explain why I have no fear of death- but of the harsh penalties that accompany it, rather. I am an echo of something long gone– something that should have been wiped clean from the earth the moment their hearts stopped beating. I linger– but it's only a matter of time before the beat in my own chest is extinguished.
It may be simpler to say that you could understand, if only a margin, death's cruel intentions for those who remain alive. You may just barely recall a person you bumped into on the side of the road a month ago while returning home from work. Certainly the memory flickers around in your head if you try to resurface it. But like a passing beam of light, time erases them from the recesses of your mind with ease. In a few months the flicker is reduced to a bright dot, which then dies in a year's time. And what about after that? The person falls out from the history of the world, with no documents or personal accounts to justify their existence– or bring about some type of closure for something that may never have been there.
Death, in truth, is when a person's life disappears from the earth– when it is carelessly forgotten and brushed aside. This fate was the fate of my parents– the fate I share with them. And if I know I can in no way avoid this inescapable doom, helpless and defenseless against it– no matter how I strive to become memorable and highly regarded, I will remain the echo of some unknown memory long since destroyed by the ignorance of the fleeting, living world.
I am the last of the nameless family that never belonged– the final product of a meaningless effort. And until I ebb away, after moving up in ranks and living with a fervor that no other can ever fully understand, my desperation blazes like an uncontrolled fire while on the earth, the last writhing flame that shines on in the memories of two Anbu who struggled to find a way to assimilate into Leaf without being obliterated– and failed.
Die nameless, perhaps, but live if you can. Find what is living, as I have, and find Fate is not at all some kind of divine plan, but and ends to a means, a means that is the burning fire that dies in all of us– unrecorded. While the struggles of many are listed as historical complaints, my toils are the fruits of truth, where the struggle and sacrifice receive the ultimate just reward–
darkness.
I was once called Tenten while I flickered on the earth.
A/N: Some allusions to Neji and Lee, I think, if you squint. Tenten's past isn't something brought up often– and there may be good reason as to why.