A little, dark exploration of the young and long-lost Yahiko and Konan, in honour of my one-year anniversary here on FanFiction(which was actually July 6, but anyway). Much love to all my readers!
Points if you can guess who's introduced in the end.
Disclaimer: I own most of this, just not any of the Naruto parts. Lyrics at the bottom are by Semisonic ("Closing Time").
Derelict
by LutraShinobi
War, she knew, was not a fight.
War was at first a rumour; a fascinating foreign concept for parents to discuss in dining rooms, sliding the doors closed after them. War was a precaution - no more running freely in the streets unsupervised, no more stopping to pet stranger's dogs, and a harsher scolding if you were caught breaking the rules. War was an atmosphere, a tinge of fear with a perpetually rushed, insecure feeling, and the smell of rain every day - not just rain, but rain with thunder.
War was a brutal reinforcement of all life's most basic, easily forgotten lessons.
She was thinking about everything she'd learned as she lay face down in the rubble, sobbing quietly to break the silence.
War, he knew, was not a fight.
War was at first a doubt; a thought that everyone ignored and pushed away in favour of more pressing matters. War was a judgment - alley thieves and law-abiding citizens alike cowered from it, each doing, respectively, more bad and good in the world than before in an attempt to pretend that nothing was changing. War was a season, the longest of the year, a combination of all the worst weather.
War was an excuse for some higher power to take stock of all the sinners in the human race and punish them in a way that was neither appropriate nor deserved, but very effective.
He was thinking about everything he'd done as he lay face up in the ruins, sleepless and alone.
It was either the second or third morning when she remembered that she could move, and she pushed herself up, heaving one last sob before swallowing all the rest. She was lying in a heap of fragmented wood, furniture and most likely corpses, the results of an entire neighbourhood becoming a battlefield. She wouldn't look down for fear that she might see a piece of something she recognized, but she stood on shaky knees, staggering forward precariously.
By the seventh step, she had fallen to a crawl. But she kept going.
She couldn't think clearly, but she could feel clearly, and she was hungry, hot and sore. The scratches on her bare arms, legs and cheeks were just barely starting to scab over, and tears smarted at the corners of her eyes each time she dragged herself forward. She couldn't rest - the pain and movement were her only distractions from the surrounding devastation.
When she finally reached the end of the never-ending rubble pile, she collapsed, pressing parched, bleeding lips to the ground, sucking a tiny drop of moisture from the cement street. Her senses were overcome by her exertion - she could see nothing through the sweat that dripped into her eyes, hear nothing besides her own laboured panting, smell nothing but her own nauseating odour of burnt clothes and death residue.
Then there was a voice.
"Just a bit further."
It was cracked, hoarse, exhausted, but somehow contained more energy than she could have hoped to summon up in her entire body at that moment.
She strained her neck on the pavement, blinking until she could vaguely make out the lump of a body slumped against the remainder of a brick wall, a metre or two away. A shock of hectic, dirt-encrusted auburn hair stunned her with its contrasting brightness, and a young, round face, streaked and cut indistinguishably, was turned her way. The only unmarred part of the figure seemed to be, in fact, the eyes - brilliant eyes, not as dark as sapphire but equally deep and rich. They stared at her, very aware of the black circles underneath them.
The simple sight of him jolted her into the next level of awareness, and as her mind spun faster in an attempt to take in more of him, she realized that he was talking to her. He was encouraging her. Just a bit further.
With a nearly inaudible groan, she scraped her elbows on the ground forcefully, struggling onto her knees once again. With one final lunge, she threw herself against the wall beside the boy, resting on its sun-baked surface with relief. The horrible carnage was still in plain view, but this was a tiny safe haven, a small part of a community still standing among the countless fallen.
He was the most beautiful thing she'd seen in what seemed like forever.
They didn't speak at all just then.
It was enough just to feel the presence of another warm body with a heartbeat and a face nearby, enough to know that war couldn't kill everything. Every breath was hard for him to take, his heart a crushing weight on his lungs, but it was easier when he knew that there was someone else making the same effort.
He was awake, so he felt the rain first. There was a drop on his upper lip, too cold to be a tear. His tongue felt too swollen for his mouth, but he managed to flick it out and lick the damp spot. And then, the downpour began. He'd always liked the rain, but this was a heaven-sent shower - the fresh, leafy smell washed out the acrid fumes of leftover battle, and the tiny pattering noises of water on pavement, designed specifically for careful listeners, were like the true sound of life.
He stuck his tongue as far out as it would go, catching delicious globules of fresh water in the crooks of his taste buds. The rain had no tangible taste or texture, but he could distinguish it from his natural saliva - it was sweeter, somehow, lighter and more soothing to his coarse, rough throat.
She woke at that moment, and her dark eyes met his light ones as soon as they opened, two gazes drawn together by life. She could feel the rain too, drenching her, seeping into the wall behind her, making the streets glassy and slippery and clean.
He had never thought it would happen again, but he smiled. Blood popped from the cracks in his dry lips, but the raindrops washed them away, sparing his tongue the metallic taste. It was a real smile, the kind that you didn't have to think about beforehand.
She didn't smile back, simply staring at his lips as if they had just destroyed all her beliefs in one fell swoop. She swallowed, finally gathering enough moisture in her body to cry.
The tears came in a torrent that put the rain to shame.
She cried, sometimes in silence, sometimes in open, loud admission of her anguish. She cried until her heart was completely ravaged, its contents coughed up and strewn all over the wet pavement, and they were both sitting on top of and inside the remains of everything she used to love. For every two drops of rain, a single tear fell. She was crying; he was counting.
She finished, slowly; and quickly, an agreement was forged.
They wouldn't cry again.
"I'm Konan." It was her turn now; he had been the first to speak, the first to save her.
"I'm Yahiko." She was never afraid that he wouldn't respond.
There was a moment of nothing, and then she leaned over carefully, resting her ribcage on his knees and pressing her head to his chest. She reached up to put a hand on his shoulder and positioned her ear right on his heart, listening to its steady beat. It didn't speed up at her contact - a few days ago, her proximity would have been awkward, intimate, overly personal, but this dawn, it was natural; it was even necessary. They both needed reassurance, and if his heartbeat was enough for her, then her warm weight on his legs was enough for him.
Eventually they moved, when they were so dry they couldn't speak or cry anymore. They carried each other, and she was no less strong than him, and he no more than her; for their strength came only and entirely from each other, and there was nothing else that could make you so concretely equal, regardless of sex, age, or anything.
The food that they scavenged from the ruins was less than enough but more than they could have imagined, and they shared it without squabbling. And when they finished what they had to call their first meal, they lay back on the blood-washed streets, watching the stars, face up.
"Is everything ruined?" she asked.
"We haven't gotten very far yet," he answered, and the words, odd as they might have sounded, were comforting. "There's more out there. A lot more."
"But what about here ?" she wanted to know.
He suddenly rolled over, burying his face in her hair. "We're here." She didn't say or do anything that could shred the hope, but she thought she felt moisture on her scalp, where his eyelashes and forehead and warm breath were. It wasn't tears. It was rain.
As it turned out there, there was more. There were people, and some of them gathered together, but nobody was very friendly to two orphans who couldn't fight, couldn't provide, couldn't live very long under these conditions.
But the people were wrong. Yahiko and Konan had survived. They would live.
The war wasn't over at all. More buildings burned each day, and soon nothing would be left. Those who had never been soldiers were now attacking, and so few could defend. Sometimes the two of them crouched behind cracked pillars where they couldn't be beaten or rejected and watched the adults bicker and starve and try. I learn faster than you, she thought sometimes, watching them. I will outlive you, he thought sometimes, watching them.
I wish I could help you, was what they thought most often.
But it was hard just to get enough for themselves. It was so hard. It never got any easier, and nobody else seemed to want to help anyone. It was hard to do, but it was harder to understand.
Maybe that was why one night he couldn't move at all, still and cold as stone in yet another destroyed alleyway, as two figures fought in front of him. They grappled, the most ungraceful, horrible, violent thing he'd ever seen - just two people, two fighting people, and so much worse than all the carnage of war, and he was frozen until the kunai was plunging towards one man's heart and he saw the whole trajectory mapped out in his mind -
He ran, he wanted to run away, but he was running towards the two men, and it was too late, the blood was pouring out and he'd seen it all. By the time he reached them, there was just the one left, lying there. The night wasn't dark enough to mask the liquid staining the motionless chest.
He fell to his knees by the body, tearing the kunai out of the wound with both hands, taking breaths like huge gasps, like he was sick or exhausted or maybe dying - he was so out of shape, in no shape to see this, and he jumped up again and ran away this time. He ran and ran, and he could hear Konan yelling after him, but she hadn't seen and he was never going to tell her and he was never going to see her again if the world kept going on like this -
Then he'd reached water, a lake or something, and he dived in, plunging to the bottom. He shoved the kunai into the murky mud at the bottom, pushing it in deep up to the hilt, further, further, until the skin on his hands was beating against squishy dirt and there was no metal to be felt or seen. His lungs were bursting and he floated up to the surface.
Then she was pulling him out, as strong as him as always. Stronger just then. He lay on the bank, shaking from the inside out. Eventually the gentle rushing of the water calmed him, and he could look at her. He told her.
The whole time, she listened and bathed his bloodstained fingers in the lake, not afraid to touch his tarnished hands. She didn't seem afraid, at least. "Are you afraid, Konan?" he finally finished.
"No. I'm...sad." She didn't need to cry anymore, now that she could simply say her emotions out loud.
He was silent for a bit after that. She would always be a little sad, he would always be a little angry, and they would both always be afraid. There would be no real end, no real solution. But they could live with it. They had to.
"We're going to become ninja, Konan," he said suddenly, determinedly.
She looked at him carefully. "Are you sure you want to live that way?"
"I want to live, " he insisted. At first he hadn't been sure that he was glad the blood on the kunai wasn't his, but now he knew he was. There was a lot to be said for survival. There was even more to be learned about it, though.
It was afternoon, and it was so hot that the very memory of rain seemed to wither and drift away on a stale wind. But they tramped on, over and under and around and in rubble. She was watching the sweat drip down the back of his neck, and he was watching the sun's reflection on the ground.
"Yahiko!" she said sharply. He stopped and turned, ribs moving aggressively up and down as his lungs worked to process the heavy, humid air.
"Do you hear it?"
He wiped his sweaty palms on his hair, listening hard. Then he heard it; a plaintive cry, a call for help, faint and muffled but alive. He and Konan didn't exchange a word before clambering up onto the rubble and beginning a concentrated dig.
They were both smiling. This was what they'd longed for; someone who could be saved, someone who wanted to be saved. Someone they could save. You could always share everything, even life itself.
"We're - stronger - now," he said forcefully, pausing and grunting with the effort of lifting. He tossed away a chunk of scorched cement, letting out a huff of joy when it revealed a small, squirming, blackened hand.
"We've got you now," she said firmly, to the trapped soul and to the broken world, and together they pulled.
Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.