I don´t own anything that Kishi-sensei created, I´m just a dork with a B.A. in anthropology and Latin literature who is currently studying medicine.
Everything must die. That is nature´s law. Nothing can live forever and nor should it. But somehow she thought that death could have waited just a bit longer, just a second longer. Just long enough to tell him that she loved him most of all. Just long enough to be granted forgiveness for the wrongs she had committed against the one she loved. Just long enough to see his face one last time.
Death was not kind nor unkind, it was what it was, and it came at its own pace. She had once thought that she could trick it or outrun it, Lord knows she had tried to do that but in the end it came and confronted her face to face and showed how much a mortal she was after all.
Once when she was a child she had imagined her death fleetingly, wonderingly, not really seeing it happening to her. Her imagination had conjured an image of her as old as her great-grandmother, lying in bed loved and surrounded by countless proofs of her existence. These proofs would be her children´s children, and their children´s children. Now only one of those is true, she lies in bed, but she is alone, and there is no one to see her off.
Survive, whatever you must do, do to survive another day, and so in that way keep on living. She had been told that by him so long ago. It had seemed like a curse, a punishment that she must bear for all her wrongs against him. Yet now she knew that it had been a blessing, a heartfelt wish from him for her to live. She understood now, when it was too late, that it had been his hope to be with her again that had made him say that all those years ago. She learned that too late, too damn late.
It had seemed not too long ago when it had seemed that life was dragging on too slowly, then in a flurry of steel kunais and a sharp blade it had seemed to speed up so much that she couldn´t keep up. In her foolish kindness, she had hesitated. Then that sharp blade with poison in its blade had made a wound that no matter how much she tried to heal it wouldn´t close. From that moment on, time seemed to flit by past her as her life seeped out of her, the only thing she had managed was to find a room where to die.
Death is not evil or petty, it is just lonely and to extinguish it´s loneliness it must take a human´s life and have it keep him company for a while. She just didn´t want to keep him company just yet and to her last breath she kept struggling against the inevitable.
A solitary figure walks into the room and looks upon the bed where he finds a familiar figure, a beloved comrade and an eternal flame. He´d sensed her life force leaving the world as death crept up at her, his tracking jutsu had alerted him, and he had rushed to where she was, to see her this one last time.
As he reached her bedside, he noticed that she was not dead yet, still stubbornly imposing her will as always, even against death. "You know, I hated you for making me love you. But I hated you most of all for walking away from us. Wasn´t it my promise to fulfill? Wasn´t it our promise to go together? Yet you left me to pursue him and I could do nothing even while I was the most powerful ninja in the village. Even when you were smiling at me and telling me ´I love you´ you had already left me."
Tears slipped down her emaciated cheeks and her once clear green eyes opened slowly. Speech was hard and yet she seemed desperate to tell him something. "I…I… am so…so sorry, hokage-sama." She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, "So sorry I hurt you… so…so sorry… I´ve loved you… best" She tried to lift her hand, but it was too heavy and so finally she stopped struggling against the inevitable. Death in the end had conceded her one last grace, she had seen him before she left.
Twin tears streaked down the cheeks of the man who perhaps had loved her most and longest. He had told her to survive no matter what she had to do, but more than likely that had been impossibility from the start, she was too kind no matter how hardened and callous she tried to appear. More than likely her kindness had been her downfall.
He bent down and wiped away the drying tears on her cooling face, and kissed her precious forehead. She had tried so hard to be the best ninja and she had lived a ninja´s life and lost it a ninja´s way. He had seen how hard that ninja life had hurt her, every time she had killed, her heart seemed to break just a little more. She had been the perfect ninja, yet at the same time not suited to that life at all. Every person she killed she remembered and hated herself for her inability to avoid the killing. Probably that dragging regret had caused her to hesitate a half-second and had sealed her fate in it.
He stood standing a little ways off from the burning house that served as her funeral pyre. He stood for hours, remembering their shared memories and finally finding closure for the pain that had always threatened to suffocate him for many years. As the burning died down he walked to where the bed had stood and from there grabbed a handful ashes that he gently poured into a pouch around his neck. In that pouch he held his two dearest people and with that pouch he would be buried so that even in death they could be together. Slowly and with reverence he bowed down and then turned just as slowly to keep walking ever forward with back upright until inevitable Death asked for his company.
THE END
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Well this is a piece that I´ve worked on for several weeks in between Anatomy and Embriology classes :)
It´s also a comeback piece after being on a writing hiatus of more than two years.
Please read and review