Author's note: Just in case you don't read summaries, this switches pov at the line. :) Just to warn you...
Sometimes I cry. Tears come to my eyes and I don't know the reason. Except to clean my eyes. I sit down and let the rivers become a waterfall that drips from my nose to splash on my husband's papers. I like to watch the words smear and magnify, held above the others in a salty orb. Then they pop and leave a jagged edged circle.
And it's so beautiful.
Maybe that's why watching them fall makes me cry harder: I want to see more soundless explosions and make the words as distorted as my thoughts. Or maybe I just want someone to find them later. Find them and know it's me and feel so sorry for me and my secret waterfall.
But it's so beautiful.
I wonder: Am I that selfish? So the rivers get even stronger. And now I know that I am crying for myself. My thoughts go in a circle: can anything that hurts me so much, deep, deeper than skin or muscle or bone, be for my own needs? But I'm crying for myself, I know. Why hurt myself if I actually am so self-centered? I'm crying for myself, I want pity. I want to see the tears fall from my nose and feel how wet my cheeks are as I try to smear tears away. I want to see that little drops of beauty can still rain down in a world so void of good things. But they only magnify the bad. And clean my eyes. So I don't know the reason. Sometimes I cry.
Sometimes I cry. And I hate myself. Not for the tears, they're my right. Shinobi I may be, but I am always human beneath that, regardless of what you might think. A shinobi can stop emotions: to them an emotion is nothing but a word. But in the dark of night I get home late and I know that you're in bed because part of you is running away from me and that, even now, you are not sleeping. You're lying alone in a bed meant for partners and crying yourself to a sleep just as painful as you waking hours.
But you can't cry enough for both of us.
And I cannot bring myself to fill the void beside you, not now, but, my dear, I can cry for you.
Me.
Us.
All of this condemned clan. I cry where I can dry the tell tale spots off our cold, wood floor when I'm done and I know you're asleep. Such a coward. Unlike you, my love, you left the blotches on a piece of paper for me to find. You're not afraid. Not afraid to cry at least. But you fear other things. Like the monster you married who can talk all day to "real men", intimidating leaders, potential murderers, but finds his tongue unable to move, lips unable to form words, kind, loving words a child needs to hear from their father, when I'm faced with my son. My sons.
Mikoto, you married a monster, one you'll soon be rid of. But monsters, like shinobi are sometimes only human, only me. And I hate myself. Sometimes I cry.