Notes: Drabble-fic made entirely of word vomit. I'm on a roll.
AT THE EDGE
Where were you, when you met the man who would kill you?
One.
He is standing just outside the Nidaime's office, smoking a fag he'd bummed off Koharu – quality smokes, if terribly girly – and he is still a little out of it, ears still ringing with yesterday's explosions. It's a little stuffy, so he taken off the flak jacket, making sure to flex a little because the Hokage's secretary is just this side of cuteness, and wishes for something cool to drink, something with edge. He's fanning himself with a makeshift-fan of kunai and exploding notes, much to the chagrin of the administrative staff who are going steadily paler with every wave, when the boy walks in, silent as a tomb, wearing a traditional yukata in slate blue and carrying two books with cracked spines and somber air that made a precise little bubblesphere of dignity around him.
Sarutobi is unimpressed. That is, until Orochimaru speaks.
Two.
He is huddling from a downpour and, to be honest, more concerned about his rain-spotted sandals and slightly swollen left cheek than anything else, even these kids left in the dust (or, to be technical, in the mud because the rain refuses to let up enough for there to be dust). But Tsunade's humming a little carnival tune to, and he knows this for certain, stave off her impatience and Orochimaru looks like he wants to gobble them up, so Jiraiya is left with no choice but to spread the goodwill of Konoha on his own. And, to be more honest because he is admittedly a blunt, boorish lout, he is more fixed on the orange-haired boy with a strange twangy accent and stars in his eyes, than on his quieter, darker friend with hair over his eyes like he doesn't know how to care for himself.
It's all eyes to the sun on rainy days.
Three.
He's just finished breakfast, and is sitting at the kitchen table, doodling over previous doodles – because he thinks stars don't look right –on a jutsu scroll his father had been looking for for over a year. He's practicing multi-tasking, though he doesn't know it, so he's also got a toothbrush and the taste of spicy mint in his mouth when his mother marches in, all hair and flash and little-boy-scarring-gentleness, looking like she's announcing something gloriously important. He and his father glance at each other, wary, and he affects attentiveness with all the gravity of a three-year-old. It's dull news to him – a new cousin, so what if it's Aunt Mikoto's and his future clan head – and he stops listening until his father elbows him and scoops him up to visit down the street and offer their sincerest congratulations. Itachi the baby is chubby-cheeked and quiet and a bit wrinkled. Shisui leans over him, spares a (goofy minty) charming smile, and goes home to take a bath.
Four.
He's standing before a funeral pyre, watching the wind carry his sister's ashes heavenward. Temari's grubby (a stark contrast to the lofty, ceremonial silks she is made to put on for the occasion, but effectively complements her bushy little pigtails in portrayal of little-girl-gone-wild) little hands are clasped around Kankuro, who is redfaced with crying and the heat of the desert sun. They are young and confused and oblivious perhaps of what they've lost. Yashamaru is all too aware of it, the staggering loss of his only constant, and already at home there are jugs upon jugs of sake with his name on it. In a sand castle several dunes and many fortifications away is a nursery, half-furnished in cedar and mahogany and rich dyes, half-furnished forever now, a crib of pale yellow cotton blankets for the demon who was currently left lying on the hot sand, sharp and shiny like crushed glass, shaded only by the rare desert cloud, wailing its own lament, waiting to be comforted. Yashamaru admits this: he let the baby cry a little while longer.
Five.
He's outside the hospital door, inhaling the aseptic scents of the furiously-white hallway, so different from the meaty smells of the morgues, where Uchiha eyeballs were being harvested like summer tomatoes, reveling in the assurance that Konoha will not fall. He is here because, back at the tower, everyone is really giving their best to make the state of affairs more chaotic and hellacious than it already is. There have been inane suggestions of sending hunter-nin after Itachi – as though Uchiha Madara wouldn't dispose of them immediately – and, on the other side, welcoming him back with open arms, boost him up to elite jounin and ply him with adoration. Danzo knows Itachi wouldn't return; he was unashamed to admit that Itachi was as great a ninja as they come, if not for the little brother he leaves in tatters, who sleeps a wall across – sedatives pumped into his system to keep the nightmares away – sick-pale against the sheets and cold as a corpse.
Six.
He's before all, announcing the rules for a match – slowly, even though he knows there aren't any idiots here save one - and Baki only gets a little more attention from him because he's a foreigner – an ally, sure, but still a foreigner. In the back of his mind, he thinks about Yugao, and how pissed she was going to be – if, by chance, she gets home first – when she finds the two nights' worth of dishes still standing dirty in the sink. He'd promised her, hadn't he? while they were toasting Genma's questionable homemade beer, as he'd gingerly traced the soft skin marred with the ANBU flame in slight inebriation, that he'd wash them. Hayate worries because they've just got the curtains replaced and the wallpaper free of holes shaped mysteriously (or not) like katana stabs and he's not sure if their joint paychecks could take any more abuse just to keep them in house and home and jolly good food. And, yeah, medicine too.
Seven.
Hidan's still facing a damn good sonofabitch heathen and dismisses him – a backup Chuunin, probably still sucking his mother's milk by the looks of it, a commonstock shinobi who'll live and die and go to hell and be fucking forgotten.
End.
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