I do not own Naruto or its characters in any way, shape, or form_______________________________________________________
She stared at the note, transfixed and unmovable. Sighing, she shoved it in her pocket, concealing it faster than it had taken to expose it. Sometimes, you have to be the strong one, you have to help your friends in time of need. You have to... or so they say. She wasn't this time. She was retired, and she couldn't waste her time on such things now. She had grown too cold from the training of being a Yama warrior. There was no turning back after all of this had unraveled. After the betrayal of her sister, ratting her out to some criminal organizations. Sakari had hardly wanted to quit. She hadn't, in fact.
She was tired of being the rock, tired of being there for everyone but having no one there for her in return. When she came across someone so rundown and fragile, afraid to help, fearing they might break, she felt broken herself, and she forget the pain that had been burning inside for months. She'd push it aside thoughtlessly to take on someone else's problems.
Why? Because that's what being an anchor is all about, for them, you're too impossibly strong and fearless to have any problems yourself. They never give you a second thought, its them they have in mind. But yet again, you banish this from your mind, and you help, painstakingly pasting all the pieces back together. And for what? Another reminder of your own pain?
That's not enough though. You can't just leave them there on shaky knees, they beg you to continue your kind practice, to do what you can. But all you can do is push them forward, to not leave them behind, or frozen in their pain in present time. You push them to a new beginning, a better start. You aren't just the anchor, you have to be the sails too. When all they want to do is stand still in time, or go back to a happier past, you must push them forwards, and have them not look back.
The only thing that leaves you with a self-satisfied triumph in the end is the large smile on their face, the one you know is genuine, as they walk away from you on their own two feet, without you to be supported by. And pride overwhelms you.
But why? Why bother doing something so selfless, something you don't get anything in return for? Because you care, you remind yourself, shameful with your treacherous and jealous thoughts.
Then, you are suddenly overcome by your own fears and problems, and you are lost in a sea of anger and frustration. You had been there for them, but they didn't offer you anything in return, nothing. You were heartbroken at this treachery, but remind yourself it is your own doing. But you stop and think, is it?
Common sense begins to seep back into you at a slow rate, and all you can do is watch in horror as your own mistakes unfold before your eyes once more, and you leave behind your problems to be dealt with later. And then you could hit yourself, soaring into your own ways of selflessness like a fly into a spider's web. And you are caught.
You are too strung up with helping them, that you cannot help yourself. Or is that really it? Perhaps it is just because you don't want to deal with your problems, so you deal with someone else's. Now it isn't the selflessness that was originally implied. Guilt creeps into you as you realize you were merely using them as an excuse, but complained about your self-appointed responsibilities to only cover your facade.
Shame floods you, and you feel yourself slipping away into some unrelenting pit of ignominy. This is where self-pity comes in. You are drenched in dishonor, so you figure it can't get any worse, right? Wrong. Self-pity does come, and without its mercy as well. You are too consumed with your own idiocy of putting off everything that could have changed your course of life, you no longer have a will to live it, instead you are swallowed by it, afraid for one of the few times in your life.
And what happens when you are afraid? Why, you hide it behind a laugh, a smile. Commiseration too great to share, and so you rot in your own trap, stuck until you are strong enough to save yourself. It's hard at first, faking your movements, and you feel at fault with each lie. But it gets easier every time you tell it.
Rotting in your own lies, you begin to believe them. This is where you can no longer decipher the fine lines between truth and lie, and simply have grown into the habit of lying. It's second nature now.
This is the point where you can't go back, or heal on your own. This is where you need those people to help you, to reach out to you, but they aren't there, are they? No, and if they were, in all your lies and denial, you would deny all the help you needed, though you truly needed a shoulder to cry on and a hand to hold. You are stuck, timelessly in a web of your own working. Now you aren't the fly caught in the web, you are the spider.
And what do you do from here? You wait. You wait until someone as kind-hearted as you were steps in and pieces you together. No, you are not the rock any more, you are the broken mirror, or the puzzle with missing pieces.
And if they don't come? Then you live off your sorrow and the sorrow of others, your heart becoming cold. What happens when it gets too cold to bear? You become your fears and you lay on the borders of living and non-living, no longer desiring life, but feeding off it, and too afraid to die like this.
Completely and utterly lost.
She snorted, scuffing her foot against the dirt. So they want my help? After they refused to give me the refuge I needed? she thought.
She scoffed and continued down the streets, ignoring the chaos all around her as salesmen cried out for service and women fantasized about jewelry and the young man selling it at the stand nearby.
As she walked past, she caught someone's attention. A young woman, blond with sparkling blue-green eyes, stood apart from the crowd. Her cloak billowed around her in the slight breeze, alighting in the air to reveal her feet.
Sakari slowed down, genuinely curious at the strange pattern on the garment wrapped around her frame. Her eyes caught on the red shapes on the cloak. She couldn't look away or blink, thinking it might disappear, as if it was never there.
She had seen this sort of apparel before, when she had worked with the government, yet it was not quite common. She blinked, trying to remember where she had seen it last. Trying to be discreet about her staring, she sped up slightly, but not before her eyes made contact with the woman's.
There was something in those eyes, something suspicious. And the way her head followed Sakari as the teenager walked. The girl's pace quickened, her eyes daring to look away for only a moment, but then switching back to staring through peripheral vision.
She blinked, stopping when she was hidden efficiently behind a carriage as it trailed down the street. Sakari peered out from behind the ox pulling it as it came to a stop.
Blinking rapidly, she desperately raked her brain for anything that would guide her, swimming in confusion. The woman was gone, as if she was whisked away by the light breeze. Sweat dripped off Sakari's face under the hot desert sun, and she considered finding some place nice and cool to rest. She looked up at the sky in contempt for the weather.
Perhaps she was imagining things from her old fighting days? Or maybe her anger was causing her to see things that weren't there? She tried to find a logical explanation, but that was about all she could muster up.
Sighing, she dragged herself off the hot sand and into a local bar, hoping for a nice, cold drink. It took several large strides to get to the bar counter. She stepped confident with her alias, but awkward, feeling several pairs of eyes on her. It was rare that a woman as young as herself stepped foot in the place, filled with drunken men and the sort.
At only fifteen, it was illegal to have an alcoholic beverage, but in this case, she had a fake ID. Her card said she was twenty-three, but her short height made that hard to believe. The bartender asked for an identification card, and she handed the fake to him. He looked unsatisfied with the answer, and decided to ask for her age, card still in his hand.
"Twenty-three, you have my card, you shouldn't have to ask," she replied haughtily as she slid into an unoccupied stool, catching interest of several young men at a table not too far off. In their drunken minds, she was easy game. She snorted in contempt, rolling her eyes dramatically.
She raised an eyebrow as one approached, slumping into the stool next to her. He began talking to the young lady nonchalantly, trying desperately to strike up a conversation, but becoming truly frustrated when she proved too great a challenge with verbal jabs and prods. Soon enough, they were indulged in an argument, verbally sparring. She was laughing coldly on the inside at the idiocy of his words as compared to her ingenious reason. Narrow-minded they called her, bah, she was never such a thing.
She took a swig from the bottle that the bartender had placed in front of her on the counter, finding the taste cool and refreshing. She let out a sigh of content and satisfaction. She waved away the man that had come to speak with her, trying to savor the taste of every drop on her tongue.
The door opened once more, but she didn't bother to turn around to see who had come in. It wasn't her business, she concluded. She yawned, finishing a second bottle and giggling.
Maybe she was a little tipsy. She swore under her breath, she should have taken better care to watch out, if she had gotten reckless so easily at a minuscule moment, what might happen if the situation were more dire?
She spun on the barstool, trying to stand and finding her foot caught behind the leg of the stool. She fell to the ground with an 'oomph' and growled angrily at the laughter as it echoed through the room. Someone stuck out their hand to help her up. She scowled, craning her neck to stare up at the person.
What she saw... surprised her, to some extent, at least. The same one that made her try to scramble to her feet only to end up getting knocked over again. The man stared down at her, brown eyes sparkling with amusement. Hand rejected, he ran it through his red hair as an alternative move and pushed past Sakari to take a seat at the counter.
She pulled herself up using one of the chairs. His good-looking appearance wasn't what had shocked her. It was that design on his cloak, the same as the woman's.
She breathed heavily upon bursting out into the street. She needed a place to take cover for the moment, but she didn't want to lead any unwelcome guests towards her hiding place.
She ran a hand through her own hair, mind searching desperately for a place safe to go. She concluded being in public was the safest thing, that or staying with some of the more elite warriors in the village, but that would make her seem cowardly.
Figuring she could lose them, Sakari weaved in and out of the streets, finding it to work most efficiently in the marketplace. The vast amount of people swallowed her into the crowd, she smirked as she was enveloped in the bunch, well hidden.
Now all she had to do was maneuver from here. She grabbed the note that had been written to her, ducking behind a rug that was strung over an adobe arch. It hid her well, keeping a nice portion of light out, but letting just enough in.
Swiftly turning towards a wall and placing the note against the hard surface, she scrawled on the back of the note after crossing out what had already been written.
She had chosen this place because it was familiar to her, as she had come here often, or as often as she could, while in her younger teen years. Being a Yama warrior had meant little rest and even less time to oneself.
She took an audible breath through her mouth noisily, remembering something utterly painful from her childhood. She looked down absently at her hand as it raced up and down the paper, smudging the ink with it, considering she was left-handed. Shaking her head frantically to clear the evil images creeping up on her, she whistled a few musical notes, taking a deep breath.
She bit her thumb to draw just enough blood, smearing it on the wall. She muttered the summon. There was a small white poof and a ruffle of feathers. She smiled and turned to see a beautiful bird flying lowly around the domed room.
Sakari whistled, holding out her hand. The bird, a messenger hawk, landed gracefully on her outstretched arm. She attached the note to its leg holster, making sure that the holster was tied on nice and tight so the message would not fall out.
Satisfied, she raised her hand, stepping back against the wall and watching the bird take flight, escaping from the small building through the only exit. She sighed, leaning against the wall and trailing down it into a sitting position. Now all there was to do was wait.
She drunkenly stood, remembering something, using the wall to support her. There was a bathroom around here, if you knew where to look. She scrambled to the far wall, the only wall with stones instead of adobe. It was next to another home, only that one was stone, which is why the one wall was different from the others.
Her hands searched feebly around the stones, feeling for something familiar only to those that had been in before. Finally, hand tracing the underside of a smaller stone, she shot chakra through her finger into a small opening.
There was a creaking sound, but the noise was filtered out by the ruckus in the market place. The stones along the wall began to move backwards, fitting more closely together to reveal a short passageway. Sakari stepped through, sending another chakra stream through a different opening to close the 'gate' as she called it.
After the entrance closed off, she was encased in darkness, the last of the dim light sealed off by the stones. She continued on down the hall, left hand feeling for something along the wall. She knew where it should be, but it didn't seem to be there. She frowned, cursing under her breath, trying to form an idea in her head.
Though it was basic technique it was helpful, she concluded, focusing chakra to her hand once more, only this time in the form of light. Now, with the slightest light, she began to move more quickly before coming to the end of the hallway.
She cursed silently, she must have passed it. Turning back, she stumbled over something that hadn't been there before. She groaned, feeling saliva spreading over an exposed area of skin on her arm. She laughed suddenly, running her hands through the mud-brown fur. "You must be hungry," She finally realized, and stood. "Come on, Doro, let's get you something to eat."
