Naruto © Masashi Kishimoto and Company. No profit has been made on this fan-made fiction.
A/N: Ok. Here it is.
You and Me
"Hey! Hey! Say something freak!" a blond taunted Tsukiko. He shoved her back into the slush of early autumn and his posse laughed. "What are you? Mute?"
"Say something! Say something! FREAK!" the others chanted. She took it all silently, her eyes blank, staring past them.
"Freak!"
"Freak!"
It was all a horrible mantra, a broken record. "Freak! Freak!"
They were nothing. Why would their opinion matter? It didn't. They didn't.
"Are you deaf too, freak?" the blond, Haru, said, scooping up a snowball and hurling it at her.
"Go away," she said. Her voice was hollow and rang clear in the late afternoon. It was cold, she should've worn her coat like Kisame told her to.
Haru grinned as he realized the significance of the simple act of getting her to speak. It meant she was afraid, that she was breaking. "What'sa matter, freak? Can't handle the snow?" He threw another projectile at her, packed hard this time to insure maximum damage.
She flinched as the ice coated snowball hit her chest with a low thump. It stung, especially since the snow was melting and dampened her clothes. "Go away," she said again, persistent. Black rimmed her vision, and she was getting very light-headed.
"Why don't you make us?" A pretty girl with long blue-black hair followed in her leader's footsteps and hurled a snowball at her. It hit her forehead. "Huh, you freak!"
"Yeah, yeah!" Silhouettes of children, both younger and older than her, floated around in front of her eyes. Tsukiko wiped away the ice water that dripped into her eyes.
"Go away," she said, but her tone lacked the forcefulness of her brother. They weren't affected in any way. She was trembling now, very violently.
Haru, a budding twelve year old thug, mistook this for fear. He grabbed the back of her collar and sneered. "What? You think that just because your brother is one of the Seven Swordsmen you get to tell us what to do?"
"Call the others!" the blue haired girl said. "We'll string her up!"
"Yeah!"
"Yeah!" They cheered. The Village of the Bloody Mist were proud of their children. "Get Daisuke! And Hitomi! Hurry!"
The words floated into her ears and quickly left. They were worthless. Everything was worthless. Tsukiko closed her eyes as the blackness consumed her.
OoOoOo
Crunch, crunch. Crunch, crunch.
She woke up and found herself being carried through the streets. She was grateful for her body hurt all over. Tsukiko tried to recall why she was bruised all over, but thinking hurt too much. She resigned herself to being piggybacked. She laid her head on his shoulder and breathed deeply.
"I know you're awake."
Who was that? It hurts to remember. "Yeah," clear and hollow.
The boy turned his head and now she could see it was Suigetsu. "Why didn'tcha protect yourself?" he asked with all the curiosity of an eight year old.
"That would have made them angry."
Suigetsu snorted and turned back around to skirt a broken pike that was jutting out of the snow. Kirigakure was largely a battle field of past Ninja Wars and relics of the past still littered the ground. In the innocent whiteness of the snow, any misstep could be lethal. "Looked like they were plenty angry already."
They continue in silence for several meters. Crunch, crunch. Crunch, crunch. I closed my eyes and listened to his footsteps. Crunch, crunch. Rhythmic, monotonous. She got yawned sleepily, and buried her face in his shoulder.
"They called me a freak," she murmured on the edge of the darkness again. But this time, it was a warm darkness.
Suigetsu smiled, a flash of shark-like teeth. "You and me both kid," he said to the girl half his age. "You and me both."
She fell asleep. Crunch, crunch.
OoOoOo
A/N: Yay for random Suigetsu fluff! I had originally put this on Snow Angel but I didn't think it fit there.
If you haven't already, please read Snow Angel, the companion fic to this starring Kisame!
Ja ne
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