Sensei Says
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She is ten years old when she realizes that the world is nothing but idealized, spurious lies, fabricated by intermingled ambitions, and aspirations and hopes and dreams and desires. Especially desire.
(And everything, she realizes, boils down to two things: fear and greed. And everything else is just bullshit.)
One: Fear.
She is slicing through the throat from ear to ear of a man she does not know, or care to know (knowing someone's face and name is a dangerous thing—knowing leads to recognition which leads to awareness which leads to familiarity, which ultimately leads to attachment. And these are all things to avoid, sensei says) when the blade nicks the lower most portion of the atlas cervical vertebrae, and a clean decapitation suddenly becomes a very messy one. There is warm, sticky blood bubbling over lightening white knuckles and slipping down skim-milk sallow skin and there is a wide, gaping mouth, opening and closing, like that of a fish. And sensei says—
—That one day, we will all die. That other than death, there is no such thing as assurance, or conclusiveness, or definitive, ultimate, unchallenged certainty. And he tells her in juxtaposition to this, to kill all vying origins of taught frivolity and notions of silly academy teachings, that there is no such thing as redemption, or salvation or dying honorably. God forbid. There is just death. And only death and—
Anko sees fear in the dying white-washed eyes of the first man she has ever killed, and there is blood, warm and sticky, bubbling over lightening white knuckles that are holding on to the metal blade so hard that her fingertips are bleeding. It's strange because she cannot discern her own blood from the sheets slipping from the paper-perfect line grinning from the man's neck and this, too, is fascinating. Everything is red. This she is certain. And with sensei watching (judging, enjoying, teaching) she sees desperation and hopelessness and inanity and madness and total and utter pointlessness as the man mouths "no", fish mouth opening and closing, blood bubbling, and fearing death, the only thing in life, ever, that is consummately and entirely assured.
(And he wants life; he wants it more than anything he was ever wanted unceasingly in the entirety of his short, pathetic existence, and he is terrified of losing it.)
She gets sick to her stomach, and tells herself that she hates this man for being so weak (weakness—failure—incompetence is not a option, sensei says), because he should have been ready for this, for this very moment, but he wasn't, dammit, and somehow, she feels as though he should have been.
(You have known this has been coming since the day you were born.)
So she jerks the blade forward, and the bone breaks, and the head lops off with a mind-numbing splat. He is still grinning, mouth wide open, and in those final, infinite moments of life, she swore there were tears.
Then, he is (was, always will be) dead.
Sensei doesn't smile or reach to hold her, or even mouth words of congratulations (condolences?)—no, he simply takes a step forward, leaning down, touching the blood, observing the decapitated body and its equal counterpart. He frowns.
For a moment, he does not speak.
Then.
Then he tells her that her form is weak and that she should stop crying, because he is pushing her to her limits; and no he's not impressed she killed someone, that isn't something momentous, this is the rest of her life. The. Rest. Of. Her. Life. Stop crying. I will push you to your limits; to the point where you will fail and no, this isn't it. STOP CRYING.
He wipes a tear from her eyes and his thumb smears blood across her cheek, wet and shining. It almost looks pretty in that morbid, offensive sort of way.
"And once you do fail," he tells her in a voice that is soft and safe and everything she needs to hear, "We can say this is where your limit is, and this is what you need to improve on. Don't worry little Anko. Things will get better."
(things don't, but sensei says otherwise.)
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And later, when she is stony eyed and waiting (for many things, like her parents to come home, and the war to end and sensei's next lesson), he tells her that people are scared. They are scared of dying and scared of losing themselves, and their humanity and their sanity and their self-purpose and their loved ones and ones who they hate and everything they ever had and ever will have until they are nothing but crumbling husks of their former selves, wasted away and worthless.
"People are terrified," he tells her with a smile. "And that is why there is greed."
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Two: Greed.
Sensei tells her that without war and without conflict and without things like fear and greed and madness, they wouldn't exist—that they are tools that are the product of a systematic throwing to the fires to be melted and remolded in the name of chaos and human suffering.
"Everybody wants something," sensei says with a sick-sweet smile. "And that is to live. We kill because people know they will die, and in their lifespan, they want everything they can have. Money, land, power, sex. Everybody dies, Anko. Some die violently. And there is no such thing as honor and integrity and the self-sacrifice of shinobi heroics. That is all just idealized lies they teach at the academy to make it seem that the terrible act you're committing is justifiable. There are no heroes, only hired help for personal self-gain and satisfaction."
And this, he tells her; this isn't something momentous, or profound or relatively extraordinary. No. This is the rest of her life. The. Rest. Of. Her. Life.
Her parents don't come home, but the war ends, and people still go on fighting and killing and crying and—sensei says the wheels of the war god go round and round and this is how things are.
She is ten years old when she realizes that the world is nothing but idealized, spurious lies, fabricated by the intermingled ambitions, and aspirations and hopes and dreams and desires of everyone who is trying to deny what the world really is. Especially desire.
(Because everybody wants something and some want things more than others.)
Everything comes crashing down, all around her, into broken irrevocable little, tiny, unfixable pieces and when sensei says—
(he says many things, all of which are true)
—That he is looking to end all the fear and greed in the world.
(I want to live forever)
And she thinks to herself, this can't be all that bad. This isn't what it looks like. This is an answer; an answer to all the false idealizations and the war and suffering and hate and chaos and madness and dead bodies of little children who die at the hands of trained killers. Sensei isn't so bad and what he's doing isn't so wrong. Sensei says—
"Come now, Anko. We're going on a mission. We'll be gone for quite some time."
And she goes, willingly. Just. Like. That.
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AN: Thoughts?
EDIT: Now beta'd.