Screams in Silence
The Break
The blood running down my palms wasn't actually there, but I could still feel it, could still smell it in the humid air. My skin was meticulously clean, and yet it was dirtier than the hastily dug graves I have been forced to create during the war. Any tremors that had remained had subsided, leaving me numb, and utterly calm. This was it; this was my break from the path my teacher had set me upon.
Death; I had felt its breath upon my neck as it seemingly randomly plucked the souls from the bodies around me. Kunai or jutsu, precise cuts or blunt trauma; I had watched so many die on all sides of the muddy battle ground. Some, who had known my name, had called out for me. They had asked me to put my life on the line in a show of prolonging the inevitable. Turning away as if I hadn't heard, I had felt the shift in my balance and felt the first effects of pulling back from everything Sarutobi had tried to pound into each of our dense heads.
Jiraiya had staid back to 'raise' those children, but it would have been kinder to kill them where they had stood. We were fast enough; they would never have realized what had happened. Now, they were out there suffering if death hadn't already taken them. Did no one else see how pointless this all was? We would all die sooner or later and we still struggled against this fate. It did not matter if we were civilians who simply minded their own business such as my parents or were sent on a mission gone wrong like Nawaki. Death was coming and we couldn't do anything about it.
Konohagakure looked so sweet, tranquil on the surface, but I knew that underneath she was a writhing pit of madness. Hatred and despair ran as thickly in the villager's veins as they did in any of the shinobi. Hiruzen claimed that this was a time of peace, that those of Hi no Kuni would be satisfied with our 'victory.' Obviously he did not see as I did. He did not notice the jerky movements that our paranoia corrupted shinobi tried in vain to disguise, or the sharp, hackle-raising glares the civilians tossed about carelessly. Perhaps he simply did not wish to see.
I, however, could not un-see what had been shown to me. There had to be another way out of this spiraling hell.
I lifted my head to stare at the dark clouds full of the promise of rain not unlike that of Amegakure. I knew I could not keep this charade up. Sarutobi would soon be looking for possible Hokage candidates, and I knew that my name was somewhere on that list, yet I felt nothing for that possibility. There wasn't anything in this world that could make me want to be in charge of a hidden village for any amount of time. I wanted no part in this endless bloodshed.
The cold, hard quality of Hanzo's gaze as he spared our lives still haunted my steps, leaving me to wallow in the unasked questions. What had he seen in us to spare the three of us unlike he had for any other shinobi of Konohagakure? What had made us so damn special that he had simply allowed us to walk away while we could still stand?
Why did he have to give me a chance to drown in this gut wrenching fear of dying?
My steps were silent as I turned away from the trio of logs my teacher had once tied Jiraiya to. There had to be something I could do to evade that bastard known as death. Somewhere, there had to be a jutsu that could help me stay alive for as long as possible. I would not be able to pull myself together again if I was faced with my own mortality again.
I would do anything to keep that from happening, even if it went against everything I had ever believed in. Even if it turned me into something I never wished to be.
Author's note: So, this really came out of nowhere. I was just thinking about jokes which moved to Orochimaru being a pedophile to this. I'm not sure if I'll make more chapters or not. It does seem to be able to stand on its own well enough. Anyways, I can easily imagine Orochimaru having these kinds of thoughts shortly after the Second Shinobi War; can't you?