There's someone new in the classroom today, a woman sitting near the window in a spare chair, one leg crossed over the other, her hands folded neatly in her lap. The children—the brats, the naïve little humans who will grow up so soon—are understandably interested, because she's so much bigger than them, so much older, and she's got a worn, scratched, beat up hitai-ite tied around her forehead. As the children all file in—or run, or jump over the desks, or cause commotion and knock over chairs—to their seats, they all take a moment to look at the woman, even if it's just a passing glance. None of them quite notice the slight trembling of her hand, or the way her smile is just a little too tight, almost pasted on her face.
She's there to talk to them about being a ninja, their teacher says, and they'd better behave, because it's really an honor that she's here at all. There's chatter from the children, still, and their teacher barks at them to quiet down. Eventually, the woman stands up, her smile growing just a little bit as she thanks the teacher. And then she turns to the kids, to the children, to the students, to the soon to be genin. If her smile is a little sadder now, they don't notice.
She stands before them, her hands clasp before her, and she just looks at them for a moment. Her gaze is enough to make a few of the children squirm in their seats, and when they do the corners of her mouth twitch a little, whether into a smile or into a frown, neither is apparent. Her hair's pulled into two buns, secured on either side of her head, and if it weren't for her eyes and the weariness in her face, it's almost like she's a child herself. Almost.
She talks to them then, her voice strong, and she looks out at all of them, and it strikes her once more just how young they are. Just how innocent, how naïve, how idealistic they are. They aren't all quiet as she speaks, and she can hear the girls in the back whispering, and she sees the bored expressions on a few of the boys faces, and she can tell that one or two of the children aren't paying any attention at all, engrossed in books or daydreams, or staring at a boy or girl two rows down from them.
She talks about missions, about teammates, about weapons. "You'll be graduating in a few weeks," she says, "and you'll all be placed on a team. Three genin and one jounin sensei."
"Do we choose our teams?" a girl asks, and she shakes her head. There's muttering and grumbling around her, and the girl casts a longing sort of look at the boy who sits in front of her, and the woman's mouth twitches against, because the look is so familiar and it makes her remember when she was younger.
"Do we gotta be on a team?" another one asks, a boy with dark hair and a snub of a nose. The question almost makes her laugh.
"Yes, yes you do. And I cannot emphasize teamwork enough." Because teamwork...teamwork is what carries you through. Teamwork, your teammates...her teammates...
"What are you good at?" It's put so bluntly, and this time a smile that's a little more real spreads across her face.
She shows off a little now, because she can. One of the scrolls that rests on her hips is plucked up and unfurled, and a moment later she's holding a rather deadly looking weapon, a long black sword.
"Weapons specialist," she says, resting the dull side of the blade on her shoulder, standing with an ease that belies anything she's feeling inside.
They're all so young, and they ask her questions, and she answers the questions, but there are so many things that she wants to tell them, so many things that they don't want to hear.
She does, though. She tells them—warns them, attempts to scare them—about loss, but they don't understand. It's still fun and games to them—they're still young, still too, too young to know.
But she knows. She knows why she wants to tell them to get out now, to run and run and run and never look back. To become a florist, or a baker, or a blacksmith.
They don't understand what the memorial stone means yet, they don't know what it feels like to etch the name of your friend on its cold, hard surface. They don't know what it's like to have their side torn open and their arm crushed and to watch their teacher bleed in front of them, still smiling, smiling, smiling, and saying don't worry, Tenten. This isn't going to kill me.
They don't know about the broken bones and the broken dreams and the broken hearts, and even if they think they do, even if they can imagine what it might feel like, they don't know what it's like to press their hands into a persons stomach and try to hold them together, to keep the guts inside, to watch the blood bubble at their mouth and just to scream out for them not to die, not to die, captain, Raidou, you can't die! Stop bleeding, stop bleeding, don't die!
They don't know what it's like to stumble into the village, to collapse in the dirt between the gates, to have a white eyed teammate fall next to them, to wait for the medics to come and save them.
They don't know where she got the sword that rest on her shoulder, with it's black steel and the worn leather wound around the hilt. They don't know that she picked it up out of his cold, dead hand, that it was smeared with blood and blood and more blood when she held it that time.
They don't know why her hands shake, or why the smile isn't ever real anymore, or why she feels like crying whenever she looks at them and sees their ruined futures before them. Because when she looks at them, it's like the boy in the back with the long hair is Neji, and the one with the too wide smile and sparkling eyes is Lee, and the girl's fighting in the back are Ino and Sakura, and the one who looks so bored and half asleep is Shikamaru, and that one, and that one, and that one, and that there's shadows of everyone she's known superimposed over their faces.
You'll run away, and you'll break down in the middle of a mission, and you'll come home missing your arm one day, and you'll kill a patient in the hospital and vomit outside in the bushes, and you'll be forced into a mission you don't want to do and end up broken and bleeding and pregnant when you finally get back, and you'll die alone in the forest and they won't find your body for weeks.
But she doesn't tell them everything, and eventually she smiles and thanks them for their time. And then she passes their one armed teacher, with his spiky hair and the stench of the cigarettes that always clings to him, and there's this shared look, because they both understand all too well how it doesn't even take that much time to break a person, that he's twenty-two and she's twenty-three and look at them, can't you see?
But they're still just young children, who might read about the things, or hear about them. They might know, but they don't understand.
They don't understand, and she didn't understand when she was as young as they were, and maybe she doesn't even understand now. Maybe they never will, maybe she never will.
But the black sword in her hand smells like blood—will always and forever smell like blood—and soon her hands and hair and skin will smell like blood too, and another body will drop and another life will be over, over, over in a pool of blood. And someday they'll stand by their own pool of blood, with their own bloody hands and face and sword, and maybe then they'll understand.
End