A/N - Those nameless people who support Konoha from the shadows should really be remembered. You know, as more than faceless evil people who had no emotions.
Disclaimer - I have come to the decision that as Kishi is advocating world peace and non-sneakiness and self-realization rather than good old-fashioned ninjutsu, he does not really like ninjas. Unfortunately, he still owns Naruto and the ninjas therin. I retire to sulk about this.
Shinobi
o
In any man who dies there dies with him
His first snow and kiss and fight…
Not people die but worlds die in them.
- Yevgeny Yevtushenko
o
It is not the first time that he has been hunted, but it is the first time that he has known the true desperation and terror of the animal, which, hunted, knows that the hunting will end in the victory of the hunter and in its own death.
He scrabbles for purchase on the rough bark of the oak because his left leg has been dragging since early that morning and the last few miles of ground he's covered have been nearly unendurable. Painfully, he draws it up and over the mass of twigs and stubble of branches and collapses against the trunk, gasping for breath as quietly as he can.
The leaves that surround him give the illusion of a safe haven, but he knows that it is a matter of minutes until his pursuers catch up to him. The only thing which gives him satisfaction is the knowledge that after they kill him they will be returning to their village with bloody but empty hands; his teammates are well away by now, with the information they came for and the reassurance that he would be drawing away a good half of the shinobi chasing them.
He runs his fingers lightly along his swollen leg and closes his mouth on a whimper, wondering if it would be worth the trouble to bind it. He decides it would not, and lets his head fall back, studying the way the sunlight is making patterns through the rustling green tent of leaves, and using the flickering light to clear his mind and steady his breathing.
It won't be long now, and he disdains the idea of allowing them to see a trace of the anger and fear pulsing through his veins.
What is snow?
He's wanted to know so long, built up such a picture in his mind of what this marvelous and legendary substance could be - that when he hears the explanation and actually sees the white flakes drifting through the air, he blinks doubtfully.
Frozen water. Not as romantic, then, as he'd thought.
And, as he discovers in a few short minutes, deadly for anyone who wants to cover their trail. The crisp footsteps he makes across the shallow drifts are so obvious that for the space of two seconds he can do nothing but stand and stare in baffled dismay until his teammate nudges his arm and points out "look, you idiot, they're already being filled in by the fresh snowflakes."
Best, then, to keep moving while the snow is still falling. The Land of Iron has more to teach him than he expected.
The next lesson is an impromptu one against ambushes when the other team accompanying them on their trip burst out from behind a huddle of fir trees with a well-aimed shower of handfuls of snow that have been packed tightly enough to hold their shape.
Their sempais watch indulgently as they scuffle across the white landscape and he could almost swear that he saw one take a step back and casually scoop up a handful of snow himself, but next moment his attention is wrenched back to his own battle as wet, icy coldness bursts across his face.
He discovers, with some surprise, that he is laughing.
Any ninja that has ever said 'I love you' eventually has to say 'good-bye, that's a truism he's known by heart ever since he was a youngster, and so all of his life he's been saying I love you as many ways as he can, holding on to everything he cares about so much more tightly because of that one piece of knowledge, that the day will come when he'll have to let go.
He's whispered it into his wife's hair, repeated it over and over again to his children as he holds their hands, guiding them along the same narrow walkways he traveled in his youth. It's been said casually, in play, and with a terrible kind of earnestness.
Looking back now, it seems that he could say it a thousand times more, and still never say it enough.
The scents of flowers and sake and fried food are mingling in the air and delicate strips of colored paper are rustling crisply in the breeze, laden heavily with wishes and vows of true love. The streets are full of people and noise.
He's never been so glad that his last mission finished earlier than he and his teammates expected, because missing the Tanabata festival in Konohagakure is not something he likes to contemplate. He leans back against the curved back of the bench, set back a ways from the bustling crowd, and takes the time to notice the last traces of sunset light that are bleeding from the sky.
The golden-haired civilian girl he's been spending the evening with doesn't know his name or what he is and doesn't particularly care about either, and he likes that. He likes the way he doesn't have to think about lying, or telling the truth, or pretending at either of those things.
He likes the softness of her lips, too, and the way she blushes when he tells her that.
He kisses her again.
He saw it last a bare few weeks ago, but now he misses the home he'll never see again with a sharp pain that pulses just underneath the sickening throbs of his leg. The streets where the branches of the trees grow close enough to scrape the windows of the houses, the tall line of the cliff which looms over the village, the cool of the underground with its walkways and caverns and its hidden village that resided inside the greater hidden village, the home that is waiting there.
What was that nickname he and his classmates had given Root's hidden quarters in their youth, the one the new generation of children had picked up with gusto - ah yes, the 'underneath of the underneath'. A silly play on words, and one that has come to hold the double meaning of 'looking beyond the obvious' and dipping into the world of hidden motives and layers of deception that every ninja has to enter.
He closes his eyes and tries to see his village in his mind's eye, then opens them again and reaches out, touching the sap-sticky bark of the tree that is cradling him, fixing his gaze on the swirl and dip of the leaves around him.
Another saying that he has never forgotten.
Every tree is Konoha.
A shinobi fights as a last resort, the line has been drilled into him ever since he was a toddler still clinging to his nurse-mother's skirts. He knows that it is his duty to try every other method before he resorts to the crudities of bone painfully thudding against bone, knife screeching across metal or biting deep into flesh. Up until now, he has run away a lot. He's good at that.
He has also been taught that when faced with a situation where he must stand and fight, he is expected to win.
The other boy is gangly and has a good few inches on him, but he doesn't fight quite as fast or quite as dirty. The handful of dust in his eyes is enough to make him pause, hands clawing at his face in an attempt to clear his vision.
Another thing he has been taught, is not to hesitate when given an opening.
He wipes his knife on the boy's shirt before he runs again.
In the end, few men want to die and even fewer manage to end their lives when they wish; and it has been effectively proven time and time again that samurai have a monopoly on the last category and have never felt like sharing, but even if this is not something that he wants, it is something that he has been learning to accept for almost as long as he has been alive.
All men die, but for a shinobi it is a completion of what he is, the last brush stroke in the kanji that speak of enduring that which must be endured. A running joke about the oh-so-noble samurai is the way that they never stop talking, they'll even shunt in their final say after they're dead, via the death poems that they prize so highly. They seem to believe that you can never say too much, and that even your death is only one last chance to get out a whirl of meaningful rhetoric before you're forced to shut up for good.
Ninja do not. They figure that by the time you meet the moment of your death, you'd better damn well have said all that you needed to say.
He considers this sentiment, and thinks that he never did say all that he wanted to. And yet - maybe it was what he needed to say.
The tree groans warningly. They've found him.
Reviews would be a nice thing.