Title: Uneven Path
Rating: PG
Characters are not mine I'm just borrowing.

Kanae Ohtori did not feel like herself. She was not sure who she really was at all, being so young, but she was definitely not feeling normal. There were things, feelings she had buried that kept rising to the surface of her mind. Fears, anger, and hatred towards certain people, her own family, and she was not sure what to do with the emotions. She was used to burying things. She was used to enacting a lively type of suicide that came from not wanting to sound like a whining spoiled princess.

She moved through the Ohtori Academy like a puppet, a doll. Being the chairman's daughter she took classes that her father and mother felt were appropriate. She was already engaged and she was not even out of high school yet. College was not going to be a choice. She was what she was expected to be.

Akio was a good man. He was kind to her and he spent as much time as he could with her. He was, and yet, lately his attentions seemed to be waning. She shook off the odd feeling of neglect as she always had. She went about as she normally did, but for some reason she felt different.

A strange sensation of memory tugged at her. She felt as if recently she had changed. Kanae thought she recalled acting differently than she normally did. Acting out, expressing her true feelings, her dark thoughts rising to the surface, and she felt quite certain she had acted on them. But it couldn't have been real, could it?

There was no way she would ever do anything other than what she was told and expected to do. No way she would take a sword in her hands and fight with such fierce and raging anger to draw someone's blood. No way…Not a chance because she was…she was…

Kanae shut her eyes and steadied herself against the trunk of a tree, a sudden wave of dizziness over taking her. She blinked and shook her head. For a moment, before she moved on, she wished she could really be that free, but her destiny was elsewhere. Her wishes were unheard mumblings. All she wanted was something for her self, to be selfish. To claim something as her own or at least to do something that was just for her.

She continued walking. She tried to do what she normally did when she felt such things. She tried to repress it. She tried to forget she had ever thought it.

It would not go.

The more she fought against it, the more she willed it to disappear, the stronger the feeling came, bringing with it other things she had long since buried. Things she thought she had silenced years ago reaching out and calling for her attention. Reminders of things she did, and, yet, did not want to forget.

It was making her angry because she couldn't stop it. Even worse, she did not want to stop it. She wanted to feel something that was real, something that was not what she forced herself to feel, or what others told her to feel.

Kanae stopped walking and realized that she had taken a wrong turn on the path. She looked around and tried to establish her position. She had not realized she had walked so far off course.

The two closest buildings near to her were partially destroyed. It was the old part of the campus where two incidences of fire had claimed lives. There was the old fencing hall and then, just up the way, there was the old student hall. She tried to remember its name but could not.

She moved towards it not noticing the strange shadows the trees made along the path, like hands pointing the way. She stopped at the doorway. The place felt so familiar, but an unwelcome familiar. Nothing good had happened in that place.

With some care she approached the handle of the door and then moved swiftly away from it to the other side of the path. She shook her head and tried to remember the best way to her house from where she was. Her green eyes kept moving towards the blackened remains of the building though, lingering over the dark scars left from the fire, imagining the smoke and flames billowing up around its grandeur. How terrible it must have been, and the lives lost must have been in the hundreds, and the thought of destruction filled her with an odd sense of joy and minor accomplishment.

"You too, huh?"

The question pulled her attention. She looked over to her right and noted a shorter girl standing on the path next to her, and then, before she could think, Kanae replied, "I was the first."

The answer had come from somewhere deep inside her. She did not really know what the girl next to her was talking about, but of course that was, in a way, a lie. She knew, and yet, she did not. It was something to do with the way she had been feeling all day, memories that were not memories playing at her mind and her true feelings, her dark thoughts, moving towards the surface and sitting with impatience just beneath her skin.

She blinked, tilting her head slightly to look the girl over.

In every way Kanae understood that the girl next to her had more purpose than she did.

The girl, short azure hair and defiant in her stance, knew who she was. Even more, the girl next to her knew what she could become. There were endless paths and opportunities at that girl's feet, and Kanae felt a surge of envy as she understood that she was a doll and a puppet only because she allowed herself to be one. Kanae allowed her choices to be ripped away from her and what was left behind was so black and white it made her sick.

Despite the minor epiphany she was too well trained at burying her true feelings and instincts to do anything but try and repress what she was thinking and feeling in that very moment. Normally, it would not have been such a difficult thing to do, but something about the place she stood in and the girl next to her fractured her thoughts.

"I should go." Kanae said, shutting her eyes briefly as she pinched the bridge of her nose. The darker parts of her mocked her choice of words. She shook her head and looked over at the girl, meeting ocean blue eyes for a second and seeing within them a flash of something familiar, the false memories of swords and anger barraging her for an instant before she took a step forward.

"Was it darker versions of us or just our true nature shining through?" The girl asked, blue eyes narrowing as she answered herself, "I think it may be different depending on the person, don't you?"

"I don't…I don't really want to think about it."

The girl shrugged. "I don't remember ever coming here before, but I know I've been here before. It's instinct." She stopped and looked away focusing on the dome of the tower in the distance before gritting her teeth. She chuckled then and said, "If I were you, and I'm nothing at all like you, but if I were… I would cherish the remembrance before you forget again."

"I do not want to remember." Kanae said not quite believing herself, fighting the anger the girl seemed to inspire.

"You're terrified of yourself aren't you?"

"No!" Her eyes widened at the raised level of her voice.

She shut her eyes, irritated with herself. Was she really that pathetic?

Yes, she was.

She opened her eyes and folded her arms across her chest. The girl was watching her intently, almost hungrily.

"No, I guess you're right," Kanae finally said. "Are you here because you want to remember?"

"No, I'm here because this is where the path took me."

Kanae swallowed nervously. It was ludicrous to think that the path had somehow magically weaved its way under her feet, but it had, hadn't it? Didn't it always?

She felt herself staring blankly forward and then shook her head. The girl across from her wasn't even looking at her anymore, and had moved over to the door of the burnt hall.

Why was it so easy for people to ignore her? Forget her?

The girl touched the handle to the door and jiggled it experimentally. Nothing happened and Kanae felt a wave of disappointment over take her as she sighed in what might have been mistaken as relief.

"What had brought you here do you think?" The girl then asked, probably not truly asking Kanae.

An answer once again spilled from Kanae's lips before she could think, "I was angry." She pushed away from the tree and narrowed her eyes as she moved back to approach the door. "I was irrationally angry at the wrong person." She sighed as she touched the handle of the door, moving her hand slowly over the other girl's, lost in the swirls of her repressed emotions, her eyes vacant as she said, "This is how it begins."

"What?"

"Fairytales." She looked over into blue eyes and shook her head. "Except this is the part of the story you never get to see because no one cares."

"About?" The girl seemed interested now; there was a wild look in her eyes, which Kanae couldn't really see because she was too lost.

"Where the evil queen comes from, what made the witch, why the wolf stalks down the path." She pulled away slowly and stepped back onto the path. Her stomach turned and she wasn't sure what she wanted to do.

"Which are you?" The girl asked, calling after her.

"I don't know," Kanae said, and then her tone changed, and it was dark, "but tales beget tales."

The girl eyed her curiously and then nodded. She slipped away from the building and stepped over the path and began to walk along it, skirting the edge.

Kanae remained where she was for a long time, until finally she shut her eyes, took a breath and began the walk home. She wanted to forget everything, knowing that one day she'd remember again, and hoping that when that day arrived she would know who she really was.

End…