I think I should start off by saying that most characters stated in the story(Sakura, Kakashi, Sasori, Deidara, Konan, Itachi) and most basic ideas such as the Akatsuki, and Naruto in general, belong to Masashi Kishimoto.
Also, I would like to tell you that not ALL original characters belong to me.
Allegra belongs to Cel, Sansuke belongs to Holly, the Apprentice(Genkaku) belongs to Jo, Yuki belongs to Uke and Yuuko belongs to ME.
I would like to include a warning to all readers of SUGAR AND TOMATO JUICE:
This chapter was desgined to show the END of Yuuko's life, thus the end of SaTJ. It's my wishes that you NOT read this story until I've completed all chapters of Sugar and Tomato Juice. Please and Thank You!!
Fye
She had fallen in the river. She had fallen in a forest. She had fallen in many places over time. She had fallen in love, she had fallen in a dark pit of hope and despair. She'd fallen for the intense feeling only profound loathing and killing could give. She had fallen many, many times over the years. But never once had she never gotten up.
Until now.
She was faced with several problems, yes, but not one that she had never been able to get out of on her own. She had faced many dilemas, not one that wasn't able to be cracked with or without a little help.
But this was different.
On so many levels.
She had lived in a certain place. For twenty-three years, in all. She had lived and loved and, somewhat, died there. She had come to THIS place. And this was her second time around. The first time was more more pleasant than this. It was much more calm. There were no wars, no blod spilled if only for the foolish accidents she caused.
It had always been her blood spilled.
Her own tears that fell on the ground with the rain.
It wasn't like that anymore. She was a killer. She was to be killed if ever fought against, or captured. Like the others she lived with and dared call good aquainances. They were more numerous than before, and, it seemed, their numbers kept increasing. Though so many of them had died in battle and been honored, two more came in to fill the spot of the fallen shinobi. In counter-balance, if one mystery was solved, three more appeared, making it impossible to get a decent night's sleep.
Sleep.
She used to sleep on the roof of her house, her home, before. She would look at the stars at night and wonder if there was an other world out there. If someone was willing to take her away, and just never let her go back home. She dearly wished that something of the like would happen...
Every night.
And it did, eventually.
For ages, she had hoped that, maybe, something would come get her one day. And when it did, it came under the most unexpected form. She had fallen in a river, carried in the arms of the shinobi she had loved most.
At the time.
She had woken up in Hatake Kakashi's bed; only thinking of the name, again, made shivers crawl up and down her spine. It was a name she had learned to despise. His team of insane little creatures had killed her beloved. They had masacred him in the worst way possible.
And that little pink tramp was the cause of his death.
She would never forgive the girl she had once treated as a daughter. She would never allow herself to forget his death. She had cried more than she had ever dared cry before in her life, for a simple puppet. The though made her chuckle, at times. Crying for a toy.
She was the toy of a toy.
Kakashi. He had just about killed the other 'love of her life'. The love of her closest friend. One of her only friends. He had cornered the man into comitting suicide. Well, that's what everyone had been forced to believe. The poor feline girl had been worried sick. Literally; she had refused to come out until she learned that the blonde man was safe, if only that he lost his arms. But that wouldn't take too much time to repair.
She despised them. Everyone. Everyone from Konoha, Suna... Anyone who hadn't rebelled against their villages. She, herself, did not wear any forhead protector. She was not, after all, a member of any village. She had worn a band around her neck for a while, during her training, but had abandonned it once she had starting wearing her cloak.
She had modified it, toyed with it, like many other she knew. Sansuke and Allegra had tinkered with theirs, and Yuki had carefully put together something that showesd off her body and curves.
She had none of that. She did not have a body to desire, not a particularly attractive personality, and not a very beautiful way of seeing and doing things. She was crude. She was, what 'he' called, pure, brute beauty.
Flawless.
Yet so flawed, that it was barely perceptible.
She had gone off on her own. Her apprentice was left behind. Her love was left behind. Her fears and anxiety were left behind with the rest. She had only carried her knowledge, her strongest weapon.
Her emerald orbs swirl in a flurry of color, imperceptible to the beholder's eyes. They had turned into a deep velvet violet.
Eyes that could see the wherabouts of everything.
But not the heart and soul.
She had dreamt, for so long, since she had discovered this strange ability, that her eyes would one day be able to see much more than just chakra. Maybe, just maybe, she would be able to see his wandering soul.
Just maybe...
Her senses flared up dangerously. Someone was approaching. She smirked. She had been waiting for this occasion for so long. She had been wanting to beat them all up to a bloody pulp for ages, it seems.
She wanted to slaughter them, feel their blood run down her hands. It was a twisted pleasure she sought in her sin. She could not stand killing an other human being, and thus she hid her shame, fear and regret in the pleasure she took from feeling someone else's blood donwn her hands, down her arms.
She rarely used big, superficial techniques. She avoided illusions and clervly tharted any attempt to trap her in a corner. She would sneak away and stab someone in the back, using treacherous actions and hypocritical techniques to obtain th result she wanted.
And she wanted death.
She wanted, desperately, to avenge.
To quench her thirst...
Thirst for what? She never wondered. She had always assumed it was a thirst for vengeance, blood, death, carnage. To show people how much pain she had suffered. To show them how much pain they caused her. To prove to them that she could be just as good... No, that she could be BETTER than them, even though she chose a different path.
She had a thirst to prove herself. To prove that she was alive.
They were coming closer and closer. Her heart was beating with anticipation of the upcoming battle. She would finally be able to prove to everyone that she could be better. That she WAS better than what she was before. She could finally prove that she had let go ofthat horrible past of hers, and that all the lives she took had served a purpose, that they had made her better.
They had thrown the first knife.
She smirked. The one who had too much ambition always wound up dead first. White and red hand-crafted masks seem to float everywhere around her. It was nearly a comical sight. They had bothered sending Anbu after her? She felt honored, and up for the challenge given to her.
Copies of the woman seemed to suddenly just, appear everywhere, attacking her assailants. One of them, most likely the one that had thrown the kunai in the first place, didn't take much time to kill. A few needles, tinged with a few drops of poison, and he fell to the ground. The other assumed that the other weapons she held in her possession were also covered in poison. How they were wrong...
One fell after the other. Her arms were, by now, covered by gashes, some deeper than others. She would get Itachi, or perhaps Konan, to heal those when she'd get back. She continued her ferocious battle, her pain dimished greatly by the flow of adrenaline rushing through her veins. Kunai and shuriken implanted themselves in her limbs, mostly her legs, incapacitating the woman slightly. Every time her steps were halted by some stuck nerve, she would howly in pain and throw whatever was in her hand. Be it a knife, a comandeered sword or simply a stake-like branch, she impaled whoever was in her way.
She had killed them all after a while. It had been fairly easy; a few kunai here, anger bursts there, and occasional poisoned weapons.
...But it had been far too easy.
Blood covered the snow-covered ground. It had started t melt because of the heated liquid, turning into some diluted form of the substance. She jumped up into a tree, on the highest branch she could find. From the ground, she could tell that something was wrong. She figured that, perhaps, things would be clearer from the sky.
She stared, wide-eyed, at the message below, a certain pride in her posture.
In a snarl and growl, she jumped off of her branch, landing onto the stained snow below. It had been a trap. A clever, well-executed trap. The Anbu hadn't been Anbu at all; only shinobi on death-row, meant to die one day or an other. The real ones had arrived already. Sh ehadn't had enough time to formulate a plan of attack, or even concocted a way to defend herself.
She was at nature's mercy, and nothing would help her now. No one would save her soul, no one would take over the fight she had chosen to ger herself into.
Worst of all, no one would care whether or not she died. She would be an other missin-nin dead, and that would be that. People would rejoice, breathe relieved sighs.
It wasn't like this.
It had never been this way until now.
She had always won whichever battle she fought.
She had always been saved if she was in deep.
Now, he wasn't around to save her anymore. Yuki was too broken to do anything about anything. And everyone else was convinced she was sleeping, this early in the morning. If only SOMEONE knew that she needed help... Even if it was too late, if someone took the time to care, she would let herself die.
But she couldn't do that. She was alone.
She fought, really, as best as she could. She used every technique that her sensei had shonw her, and even the ones she had written about so many times before. She had tried everything, from flames sent directly from hell to thunder and lighting brought from the heavens.
She tried.
She really did.
Though, after a while, all that blood loss, all that fatigue, that blind rage... She was starting to lose. Everything. Lose her sanity, life, friends, blood, family...
Love.
She had almost forgotten about love. They often say love is confused with hatred when the heart denies its desires for greater deeds. She refused to believe that her love for him was still an option, until then. She needed him more than ever, even though she had left him for dead. She hoped he was alive and well. She hoped that, for every blade in her body, he would hear her silent calls and run to her.
He never came.
In a desperate, last effort, she had started to perform the last-resort technique she had given herself the option of doing. Even her sensei had told her that doing that particular technique qould surely put her in the longest of comas. But she had to try. She needed to die by her own accord; she would never let her life be played in someone else's hands.
"Blossom is a term given to the flower of stone fruit trees and of some other plants with a similar appearance that flower profusely but for a short period of time. Blossoms are either pink or white depending on the species or variety."
She was a blossom. She had flourished at a surprising rate, and in numerous areas, all at once. But, she knew that it would be short lived. Her flowers would eventually wilt, petals would fly away in the wind, to give away their places for fruit to grow. Food for the soul and body, for everyone around.
Would her death really be so beautifully poetic?
A blossom. She had made one of fire; pure, blue fire. She never felt the heat of it not, not that she would ever want to. She heard the blood-curling screams around her and scoffed. Humans were so fragile, so vulnerable to pain and sorrow.
----
Just once, she wanted to go to a festival. Just that once, she had begged to go there with him. That was, really, all she wanted. Along with Hitaru, Kaili and the others, she had gone there with whom she, at the time, considered the best brother in the world. He was, after all, several years older than her. She didn't count, she didn't want to.
They sat under the Sakura trees, relishing the smell, and she inhaled it so many times. She never wanted to forget the moment, whilst it rained petals or fragrant flowers.
"Isn't this all beautiful, Yuuko-chan?" Kakashi asked the woman hwose head was resting on his should. She was truly tire,d after working hard yesterday and getting up early that morning for some last-minute shopping for food and clothes.
"A lot more than me, I can tell you that..." she snickered ,akwae enough to notice the arms that snuck around her shoulders, but yet too sleepy to do anything about it.
----
Yes, that really was one of the two single memories she could cling to to preserve her sanity. She was losing this war against herself, against her own strength. And with every passing second, she could feel her heart beat slower and slower...
She could feel everything around her wither and die, like flowers wilting in the intense summer heat. Plants and trees were left intact, though animals and humans alike suffered the most terrible death one could go through. They were burned alive, mercilessly. She had learned to deal with this. This... Guilt.
She burried it with even more guilt.
Killing more.
And more.
And more.
And eventually, all that guilt would be turned into lost, for some god frosaken reason. That lust, of course, would be taken out on the only person who would take it. Or, should I say, the only person who was greedy enough to take it all for himself.
Of course, sometimes, with his common accord, she would try other things. Different things, with Yuki and Deidara. Of course, they would have fun, but those childish sessions had nothing as profound as what she believed she had with him.
Her puppet.
Her Sasori.
----
Thunder roared outside of her window. She had always been fond of lighting and thunder, and especially rain. Though, on that night, she wasn't awake to marvel at the show of lights that splayed colors on her contorted face. She was dreaming about it, again. About how she had wound up, in some ironic way, near several members of the Akatsuki, at dawn.
The plane crash before that was what traumatised her most. The fire, crackling around her and Kakashi, who had passed out. His iron grip was still holding her in her seat, though she was begging for a way to get out. Something stirred to her right. The side of the plane was collapsing. Once more, she found herself falling.
Once more, she would vanish.
Once more, she would be dead to the world.
She had woken up crying, trying to convince herself that her friends and family were fine, perfectly fine. Though her tears and sobs were quelled by two strong, bitterly cold arms draped around her, a mouth whispering soft words to her ears. Blazing red hair tickled her cheeks and eyeslids, and both lovers remained that way, under the furious heavens, all night long.
----
She lay there, on the red-stained snow, crying.
She didn't want to die.
She didn't want to leave the world this way.
She would die and no one would care.
Her death would be an occasion to celebrate.
Her heart started beating a little faster, blood rushing out of her wounds faster than before. She was scared. Fear, childish fears, clenched at her heart. She didn't want to die. She was still far too young. She hadn't left any family behind. She would never get to say farewell to HER family.
The child in her belly would never see the world.
A dead silence clung to the air. Only to be broken by Yuuko's painful hiccups and sobs. Darkness was slowly creeping up on her, and her vission was blurring. She didn't have nearly enough chakra too keep up her doujutsu.
"I love you.
I love you I love you I love you.
I hate myself."
She whispered incoherent words, only to let herself know that she was alive. The sun was rising, slowly, little by little, above the trees. It was nearly noon... Not even near the time, the ideal time of her death. She had always wanted to go at the crack of dawn, or in summer, in that time of apparent unending twilight.
She slowly slipped away, the ring held in her once tight fists, rolling into a pool of clotted blood. The only memory that she would leave behind.
An old, dusty, blood-covered ring.
She smiled.
She heard footsteps, and muttered an apology, barely audible.
He took her pulse. One beat, two...
And then nothing.
"I'm sorry. I came too late."
A tear, a single tear, rolled down his cheek and into the ground, the bloodied snow below. It cleaned only a hair of the ring in it, but it was enough for it to be able to reflect the light of the noon sun. He smiled, and picked it up. Recuperating the chain from somwhere in the snow, he attached the ring around his own neck.
Another one of them had died.
Had it not been for the crimson message in the snow, he wouldn't have so much as slowed his frenzied pace.
She stared, wide-eyed, at the message below, a certain pride in her posture.
Heed my Dying Wish
Whether or not she had scrawled that mssage in blood purposefully or not remained a mystery to him. Though, if anyone, he thought he understood what she had meant by those words.
----
"If I ever died, what would you do?"
"I'd die with you... I think. Why?"
"Well, don't. Make yourself a new life! Don't EVER die for me. And... I want you to try to find a way to go to my world, to tell my parents, okay? And I want to be burried with YOUR parents. Get to know them, you know?"
A silence roamed throughout the room, only to be broken by Yuuko's clear, pristine laughter. Kakashi smiled lightly, pulling down his back so sweep in and steal a quick kiss on those overly-talkative lips of hers.
----
Her limp, cold body lay in his arms, fragmented glasses still before her eyes.
Crimson-stained silver hair walked off in the distance, ready to do what had been asked of him years ago.
He would build a new life...
Around her legend.
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