Chapter one: Monotony

There is a tradition called Kintsugi, it is the practice of taking broken pottery and repairing it with a lacquer mixed with powdered precious metals. It is reminiscent of the philosophy wabi-sabi which embraces imperfection, impurity.

At the end of the day behind the beauty of a golden spider web there will always be a broken bowl.

It is ultimately what they were; a broken bowl among the roots thought grand only because of an old man's Kintsugi.

From the beginning, they were together. Born together, mirror images of one another tiny hands held and eyes unfocused. They screamed in the same desperate way, the sort of cry you hear from the mouths of dying men. Each movement they made was in echoes of one another, a response to the ripples their other half made. It was never I or me in their thoughts, only we, for it was all they ever knew.

They didn't mind.

They slept curled into one another, heads bowed and their dreams shared, trying to fix the seams they could feel pulling between them. They traced each other's features and babbled their own language in tandem, verbatim. Each breath every morning was shared as they laid blinking like dolls, so very blank like them too. One was never far behind the other. They were two unbalanced forces reacting on each other, forcing movement and transferring energy so that if one spoke their first word, a mockery of that spoken to them, then the other would soon follow. When one began to crawl, they pulled their other half behind them, dragging them along.

The moment their legs no longer wavered they began training. They stood side by side, shoulders pressed and fingers intertwined. The man before them was still with eyes neither half-lidded nor wide, a mouth titled neither up nor down. He was blank and they were cold. He introduced their first crack, he snapped and took the two halves of the bowl and repurposed them.

He called them "you" and "girl," they only knew they had bent and shifted their tired tired bodies just right when he turned his pale flat eyes away from them to demonstrate another. They liked it best when he wasn't watching.

"What is our name?" one whispered into the dark of their room her face pressed against the collarbone of her sister.

There was a pause, and for a moment she thought maybe she had misjudged and her sister was asleep after all.

"I can't remember." How tragic.

And oh, they learned so very quickly there among the roots. The world there was surreal for them, echoing yet so muffled. The slightest noise spreading throughout the hallways and rooms. Everything was said, nothing was said, they knew where they stood and were silent. It was there in those rooms that they sometimes felt heavy, their limbs unwieldy dragging sluggishly through the air, maybe they were coming to terms. They pushed through, they had too, for they were always watched.

"Your stance is sloppy." The strike was harsh on her skin and she let out a soft gasp. She didn't see him move. Her sister watched, holding her own stance with worried eyes. They knew if she moved to her side that it would just make everything worse, their trainers were never kind. They could never forget how the others watched. She quickly forced herself up again, stumbling slightly before sliding back into the stance stilling under his watchful eyes.

Tension, they supposed that is what you could call it. Whatever it was it made it so hard to breathe, to keep moving through it all and keep up with their training. It felt like they were in quicksand, sinking and sinking the more the struggled until they were living underwater.

"How do we know what it's like to live underwater?" one girl circled another, the sand in her hand sliding out with each arc and flick she made giving birth to a flat design with little definition. They thought it an apt description for themselves.

"I don't think we really do," said the other as she laid sprawled on her back counting the cracks in the rocks above their head, "but maybe we remember."

The sand stopped, a hand outstretched, "It's wrong, we feel so very wrong."

"I know." And they were still, watching and waiting for something, anything in a world beneath the waves.

Another aspect of their training was not truly formal, they knew their trainer didn't go out of their way to teach them, but still they learned how to survive, to be silent, to observe. Their trainer gave them their foundation, he taught them to twist and weave, how to scale walls and shatter rocks with a flick of their hands. There was so much and yet so little, and all they ever knew. They took it and fit it into their arsenal like Kunai and Senbon, one would be flexible and wild the other a fixed point for her to return. They learned and learned and learned but it never seemed to be enough for the others. They learned to be sharp, to embrace the chill in their veins. They were passed from trainer to trainer, like wild dogs forced into domestication, bred and bled to perfection.

There was a man who watched them on occasion, he was strange in the wake of the blank faces they knew. He was a tall man, or maybe they were just small, he watched them through narrowed eyes and dusted skin. They thought they might have known his face once.

"Do you think he is our father?" one asked as she stared at her sister tracing the lines of her face.

"Does it matter?" The other responded, they both knew it didn't. He wasn't there to save them.

They didn't know fear, he made sure of that, but they think if they could he would be the thing they feared most. He broke them, they knew that much, he took them from the moment they faced the world and changed them until there was only obedience and loyalty to him.

They hadn't been a person for a very, very long time.

Did he know, they wondered, that there is a risk, always a risk, when breaking things.

You can never predict how something will break after all. Will it shatter? Will it chip? Will it crumble? Horizontal, vertical, out from the center or from the side. Where are they weakest?

And so, they learned how to break, they learned how to break others in so many ways. In the body, it's at the joints. It takes too much energy to waste to break a bone when you could do just as well with a joint after all.

Or the neck, everything is awfully fragile there after all.

The mind was their favorite to break. It's in shining eyes, wide and rabid, with teeth bared in despair they learned how to feel. It wasn't bad, it was horrible and they knew and they mourned.

Candles for the dead and dying.

"I can't sleep." One hissed to her sister pressing cold hands to the others faces as she loomed above her.

"Why?" the other sighed pushing her hand away.

"Does it matter?"

"I suppose not." Hands blindly reached out in search of the other, "what do you want me to do about it?"

"Tell me a story." She finally fell to her side curling herself against her sister smiling against the skin she could feel.

"You know them all"

"You remember them better."

"What of the Scorpion and the Frog?" there was silence for a moment, it dragged on and on in the dark feeling like centuries rather than seconds.

"Well?" they had forgotten they could speak, the voice of one was jarring for them both.

"I was hoping you fell asleep. There once was a Scorpion, he lived in a burrow-"

"Do scorpions live in burrows?"

"Do you want me to stop?"

"No."

"There was once a Scorpion who lived in a burrow," she paused narrowing her eyes as if daring her sister to interrupt her again, "near a human village. Day in and day out the sun would set in the desert and he left his little home hunting for his food, skittering his many legs from place to place. He lived like this for many years, unchanging from one moment to another drowning in the monotony."

"Where is the frog?"

"What did I just say?"

"Sorry, sorry."

"The Scorpion lived his life until suddenly, one day he felt an inch. It was different and strange and he was afraid unused to something so different so he killed himself to be done with it. The end."

"That's not how it goes."

"I thought you didn't know?"

"Stop pouting and tell it right. Please?"

"The Scorpion unfortunately did not kill himself and instead pretended he didn't feel the itch. He continued on in his life until one night he ventured further out from his burrow. oh, thought the scorpion, maybe if I go a bit further this incessant feeling will go away. And so he did, the Scorpion walked and walked pausing only to eat and sleep feeling so very happy with this new change. He passed through forests and over mountains, through rain and snow traveling for miles and miles until he came to a river. The river was wide and the rapids rough, he knew he could not cross it alone and so he despaired. What ever shall I do, thought the Scorpion, I have traveled so far and now I must stop?"

"Why doesn't he go around?"

"He is a Scorpion do you really expect him to have thought of that?"

"Fair enough."

"The Scorpion heard a distinct splashing noise that drew him from his thoughts and there in the river was a Frog." She paused as her sister shimmied closer to her in excitement pressing her cheek against her sister's arm, "The Frog leaped and swam through the water twisting and spinning with glee.

'Hello?' called out the Scorpion to the Frog, 'Excuse me Frog.'

'Yes?' Said the Frog to the Scorpion as he turned to swimming closer, remaining a safe distance from the other's pincers and tail.

'Oh, Frog, I have traveled far and long from my home and cannot cross the River. It would mean a great deal to me if you would be so kind as to let me ride on your back to the other side.' The Scorpion tried, his voice soft and his legs sinking miserably into the mud of the river bank. But the Frog had heard of other scorpions, he knew the tales his brothers had told of their deceit and sting.

'How do I know you will not sting me if I let you upon my back.' The Frog said simply, nodding his head to himself.

'Because, Frog, if I do I will die soon after.' The Frog things for a moment, sees no flaw in the Scorpion's logic and so he swims up near the water's edge to let the Scorpion crawl onto his back. They set out across the river soon after, the Frog mindful of his passenger. When they had reached the middle of the river the Frog felt a sharp pain in his side. As they both begin to sink beneath the rapids he turns to the Scorpion on his back and gasped 'Why have you stung me Scorpion? Now we both will surely drown.' and so replied the Scorpion 'I cannot help it, Frog, for it is my nature."

"A scorpion will always do what is in its nature."

"Go to sleep."

Their first mission was simple, outfitted with blank blank masks to go over their blank blank faces they were sent out from the roots.

They knew many things. They knew they shouldn't stop, they knew they couldn't stare, they had a mission but they wish they could. They knew they were small, but leaping through the trees they realized just how small they really were.

It took five days to reach the land of birds, Northwest of Konoha through the rains of Ame do not stop.

It was so very strange.

It took another two to watch their mark, to study everything like they were taught. An hour to steal the scroll, five fell, and homeward they were again. It only took four days this time to reach the entrance for root, just off Konoha's east wall three steps from the hallow tree. They never thought they would find sanctuary in that place.

But they did, oh, they did.

Their seal thrummed and back under the earth they went, hiding from the ghosts that followed them home. They settled kneeling before the man who made his own Kintsugi art among the children of the roots.

"Did we have to kill those guards?" one whispered to another

"Quiet, they may hear." They were silent, waiting for monsters to come for them in the dark for the thoughts they could not stop. It never came. "He wanted them to know, he wanted them to know it was taken"

"Why?" they laid there staring sightlessly at one another for a moment.

"Does it matter?" another pause filled with the soft sounds of their breathing. "War. I believe we are at war and he wants them to know."

"Know what?"

"I don't know." They both already knew.

In this world, there are very few absolutes. Those who lived here liked to pretend there were but there were even fewer beneath the leaves of this tree. You may never find love, you may never succeed, you may never be who you wish you could be, and yet in the end we all know death welcomes us. She stands in our shadows, walking with us as we live our lives no matter how we may live them and await us to return to her arms.

Beyond death, there is only the intent and will of people. After all no matter how we are twisted and broken, the lacquer will always shine with our thoughts. Some intents are stronger, they knew, some ill and others kind. They wonder what their intent is, what the man with dusted skin's intent may be to bring them forth into this world of ice and shadow.

They were sweating in the wake of the illusion, they could identify it easily as one that turned your fears against you but still all's they could see were the face of one imposed over the dead while the other remained.

"Do you know the difference?" The trainer began, this one was strange with glowing eyes and tilted brows. They awaited the punishment for not knowing, silent and watching.

"There is a difference between us and those above. We are the foundation, the roots that hold the great tree up so that the leaves may grow. Those of ANBU pretend to be the darkness baring the weight of sins not meant for light but they are simply the underside of the leaf." She strung her next line of signs together as she stared at the two small girls. "Come now children, embrace your damnation," she continued her voice fading into a world where everything was just so slightly off from that in which they knew.

They disliked her above all their other trainers.

They didn't see her again after that session, but they remembered the woman with glowing eyes. They could never quite shake the fear that they were not still in a genjutsu, that maybe they had been in one all along.

In the wake of the success of their first mission they had many others. One after another they piled up; theft, assassination, spying, recon and sabotage they walked mirroring one another hand in hand. It was after their fifth success they finally earned a name.

It was an honor many Kintsugi never received, history rarely remembers failures anyways.

"You've done well." He murmured to the two children kneeling before him. He felt heavy on their senses, like a fog they could not think through.

"Of course, Danzō-sama." They responded in the same breath, eyes wide and staring, motionless like dolls. If you move the spider knows you are there, be still, be still.

"You have proved yourself well enough to gain a name. From now on you will be agent Roku, do you understand?"

No, they did not.

"Thank you, Danzō-sama."

"Listen, listen." She murmured flinging a kunai from her tiny hands.

"What should I be listening to." The other asked, she was tired, fingers singed by failing jutsu.

"Me of course."

"That is a given." For hours there was silence, they were content to listen to one another's unspoken words.

"We are Roku."

"Ro or Ku?"

"Ku."

"Then I suppose I am Ro."

And so, one named their other half Ro and took the name Ku. How simple, how quaint. No matter how much they were We, they knew they were now separate. They knew, they knew, and they adapted. They were never alone and yet their hearts no longer beat at the same rhythm.

First the bowl was taken and separated smoothly down the middle. Then it was changed again, with edges sharp, two halves of the same whole slowly being worn away so they no longer fit quite right.

But still they fit, they had to fit.

Ro was fluid. She was sharper, harder, colder. She watched for longer, moving ever so slowly unnoticed by her pray nothing but a branch swaying in the wind. Her hands curl into vital points so much faster, easier. Her mouth was full of silver words and poison. She was toxic.

Ku had a more solid stance, she could still remember what it was like to smile, her eyes still sparkled the same gleam as her teeth in the moonlight. It was there in the shadows underground that her flame flickers growing stronger. She was passion, she was an explosion. She was rigid and stubborn, but above all else she was never meant for this life.

Ro worshiped Ku, Ku cherished Ro, the gold lacquer held together what had been broken apart at birth so easily and sweetly that they always felt whole as long as one was near the other.

Their favorite trainer was Yon, he taught them how to pretend.

So that's what they did, they pretended.

They learned to emulate children, to be five and six and naïve. The learned to bow their head and cry on command, to make their face warm and smiles inviting. They learned to become poor and rich to be mist, rock, leaf, sand and so much more.

No matter what they did there was always an undercut of something wrong in the way they moved and held themselves. Unnerving, wrong. They wondered if it was because they were root or because they once were and always will be dying, dead, and decaying.

But they made for rather a beautiful ambush.

"When will it stop?" Ku whispered to Ro.

"When we are dead." The stars peaked through the leaves as they ghosted through the forest. They knew, they knew.

"Aren't we already?"

The thing about Kintsugi is if it isn't done just right the pieces will not hold and the only thing left is the broken remains of something horrible.

Notes:

After seeing some of the interest in my oneshot Golden Lacquer I decided to expand on the story. I don't know how often I will upload but I think the story will be around 5 chapters. It may or may not end like the one shot, probably will but you never know the character may decide against it since I am exploring her a bit more. What do you guys think of Ku and Ro?

Overall disclaimer for all chapters: I do not own Naruto