Written for WRITING PROMPT #61 - A Silver Lining on Reddit.
It's been two weeks since her fingers were warm. An aching chill settles into her fingers and toes that won't go no matter the layers of wool she wears to ward off the cold. The birds trill in mornings; the birds used to trill in the mornings but only the kunai and the shuriken sing from the trees now.
Yamaguchi Kei curls into herself, back against the wet mud from a chunin's doton jutsu. The wild grass hides her as the battle rages beyond her, kunai flying by her head. A bud of fire blooms in the air and for a brief moment, she is warm. Then it dies, cut with a scream as the user falls. The cold ache in her toes returns.
Don't notice me, don't notice me, don't notice me please, she begs to whatever gods above. Please don't let them notice me.
They do not listen.
Sharp spinning stars rain down upon her from the heavens and she runs with all the chakra she can commit. Pain stabs up her left hip and she limps. She can't stop running. The rasp of grass against fabric, sharp green blades against her skin. She runs but they are following.
I'm going to die.
Dull metal headband with the Leaf insignia. A flak jacket. Dead, dead, she is dead. Yamaguchi Kei, ten years old, genin, ID-
He is bisected in half by the earth. His blood, his guts, spray on her face. Her voice has left her and she cannot scream. Whoever saved her is gone, they don't stop for her.
Iron and rust fills her mouth. Not hers, not hers this time. She spits it out back into the mud.
Her stomach is empty. Nothing left to give to the earth. Her throat contracts violently anyways and she panics, thinking it's how she'll die: face to the earth, puking bile and water from her mouth. Another faceless corpse left to rot amongst the grass and the trees.
Her feets stumble forwards again, behind the small bump of earth she can burrow behind. The pain in her hip flares as she hunches in but she ignores it. If she survives, they might send her off somewhere, to the farms maybe or the mines. Better a cripple than here.
The world screams in her ear and she is insulated from it.
Shit.
Explosive note; whose it was, unknown. She flies, a bird, before the flat plane of the earth meets her body again. Her stubby fingers, nails with a lifetime of dirt within them, curl around her kunai. Stabbed into the earth for support, Kei forces herself up. The sweet notes of lightning chirp through the air even from far away. She has to run.
Desertion, in Iwa, is rewarded with death. They tell them this with faces stern as the stones they're named for as they chant their loyalties to the Tsuchikage as children. No matter what she does, she will die.
A flash of brilliant yellow, a rare fleck of colour on the battlefield. There was a pet shop when she was a child. The orphanage never would have let them have pets, orphans were not worth the money, but she had passed by everyday. Everyday she would look at the birds: their brilliant plumage and bright songs startling against the dull greys of rock and stone. The yellow of the bird with the sweetest song.
Another bright flash-
-A man, Konoha vest, kunai in hand-
Please, no-
There is no trill, no chirps, no song for Yamaguchi Kei when her body falls upon her bed of grass. There is no grave, no funeral, and only another name.