Whispers
Faces, so many faces, blurring into a single, warped image from which details were impossible to distinguish. They'd never been told to expect this, hadn't really been given any instruction on the matter at all, but somehow, perhaps unconsciously, they had thought it would happen, this generalization, the way everything blended into a singular, continues blob of thoughts, words, and details that melted together so thoroughly you could no longer tell one from another.
I'm sorry.
Whispers, like the wind over open territory before chaos appeared and reigned down over it, crushing everything in its path, unable or unwilling to distinguish between friend and foe, between one side or another.
Sorry? Yes, she supposed they were, for any death is always a cause for sorrow. Hinata was sorry, very sorry indeed, for the girl whose funeral she was attending had been a member of her squad. A nice girl, with a pretty smile and eyes so blue they reminded her of the noonday sky. She had been so young, so happy, that it had made the older (but only by a year and a half) kunoichi a bit depressed whenever she had worked with the ANBU whose grave was in the process of being dug.
Etsu, her name had been, the rookie with the tiger mask. The constantly smiling rookie who had chosen not to move, not to dodge the knife that had slammed into her chest. Hinata was very sorry for Etsu's death.
You two were friends, weren't you?
This voice could have been possessed of any number of traits that she, a veteran ANBU, should have been able to recognize, memorize, and categorize in a heartbeat. Should have, but couldn't. This voice was only one of a hundred, all blended together until only the words could be distinguished with any accuracy.
Friends? She supposed they had been, but not in the way the speaker meant. They had been comrades, Captain to rookie, kunoichi to kunoichi. Hinata had given the orders, Etsu had followed them. Their relationship had ended when they removed their pale, snarling masks to reveal their pale, dead faces. At least, Hinata's had been dead, a stalk contrast to Etsu's, which never seemed to loose its glow, even when covered in blood and gore, some, but not all of it hers. So yes, they had been friends, but not in the way the speaker meant. ANBU had connections that were mutually beneficial to both parties, connections that could be broken as easily as they were formed. Those of the Black Ops didn't have friends in the way civilians understood the word.
She lived with honor.
This one was louder than the others, a firm resolution in it. Not a question. A statement of fact, or at least the one who had spoken thought it to be a truth, but truth was a fickle thing, bent and twisted as easily as it was concealed. Words made things uncertain like that.
Had she lived the way the speaker claimed she had? Hinata wouldn't know; her connection with the girl had ended once they left the battlefields they had so skillfully painted scarlet. The rookie whose name they had carved upon the Hero's Stone had been a decent fighter, deliberate, and almost artistic in her dance, the beautiful, flowing dance of spinning, shining blades. Many onlookers had shed crimson tears when ANBU Squad Five had given them the special opportunity to witness the spectacle. The girl with the tiger mask had been a dancer, and hers was a dance of death. A good kunoichi, but had she been honorable? Etsu's captain thought that was a matter of opinion. Not all thought those who wore the masks to be possessed of that reputation. Fewer still when they knew what ANBU actually did. The one who had said that must have been a shinobi, then. Or delusional, and Kami knew, Konoha had a fair amount of that sort.
She died the death of a shinobi.
A whisper, and yet not. Meant to be kept private, and yet spoken in such a way that all could hear it. An attempt to comfort those who bled salty tears, and one with such a blunt lie concealed within it that Hinata thought it strange people clung to it with such desperation. Stupid, but she had learned grief made people do strange things, see matters in an unrealistic light. A weak attempt at comfort, yet one that was stronger than any shield could be in this situation.
A shinobi follows the orders of their captain, the eldest heir of the Hyuga Head Family thought, and if she had chosen to speak aloud, her voice would have been cold and resolute, like the katana sheathed at her back. The pale-eyed girl shook her head, long mane flying out behind her a tangled wave of locks a shade of black so dark many mistook it for blue. She had told Etsu to kill the target, and the dancer had hesitated. A good shinobi didn't hesitate. Perhaps then the dancer hadn't been a good shinobi, and had died because of it, and Hinata, though she was no one to judge, truly, knew the truth, knew the facts of the matter.
The blue-eyed rookie with the pretty smile had died a civilian's death, unwilling to kill a child, and allowing the target to kill the assassin instead of the other way around. Etsu hadn't posed the right temperament, and had died because of it.
Did you know her well?
This was a question, aimed at the captain with cold eyes and a stony disposition, and none other. More than a whisper, the hint of desperation ill-concealed within it. Hinata didn't answer with words, for that would have changed nothing, and it was beyond the ability of civilians to understand the way shinobi lived. Still, she thought, and answered the question, in her way.
The rookie had been a newly-promoted jounin, specializing in armed Taijutsu, following closely with Genjutsu, weak in Ninjutsu, and optimistic to a fault, a trait neither tactically sound nor desired in a shinobi. Etsu had been a promising jounin, but it had been obvious to anyone with half a functioning brain her stint in the mask would be a short one. ANBU were murderers, and the rookie wasn't cold enough for that. Hinata had known what she had needed to know about her teammate, nothing more and nothing less.
She stared ahead, seeing everything; the Hero's Stone, a name freshly carved upon its glassy surface, the sky a watered-down blue, a dead sky, and the dry brown grass drooping to the earth listlessly, and yet seeing nothing at the same time. Faces, for there was a group here; Etsu's family was a large one and all had come, flashed by her, molding together into a single, continues stretch of colors melted together like wax to form….nothing. There was everything before the captain of Squad Five, and there was nothing. Nothing but the whispers that battered her like the wind would have, had it not been dead.
Why did she die?
Desperate, and infused with a slight fear; the unnaturally high and quick voice of one frantic to grasp onto something, anything, to make the situation better. They would find no comfort in Hyuga Hinata, for ANBU were not taught how to give it. The Hinata of the old days would have been able to find a way to ease the pain of Etsu's family, but the old Hinata was long dead, her skull burned into crumbling gray ash by an enemy's katon blast. The Squadron Commander of ANBU Squad Five was a woman of little sympathy; for both others and herself. Not a truly undesired trait for a shinobi, but civilians could never really understand that.
The rookie had died because she had hesitated when she should have acted, showed mercy to an enemy who had shown none in return. It was hard to slaughter children, but in times of war, it was a necessary business. The boy had been young, only seven years old, face still round with baby fat, and short, barely reaching Hinata's waist, and the kunoichi was not a tall woman.
The veteran had sent the rookie in to do the dirty work while she and the others took care of the messy work. They slaughtered the parents while Etsu killed the boy, or was supposed to kill the boy. The dancer had hesitated as the boy's eyes grew wide with fright as his parents hit the floor of their small cabin soundlessly, eyes wide and glassy, reflecting everything from the blood pooling under them to the gleam of the unsheathed katanas that had ended their breathing. Their killers hadn't given them time to scream.
Etsu shouldn't have either, but she did, and the boy, the only child of the two rouge shinobi they had been sent to eliminate, had screamed, keened like an animal, and he had charged, pulling a kunai from his small belt-pouch. Of course the spawn of two traitors would know how to fight, if poorly. They, the other three of the squad, the veterans, should have known, should have seen it coming.
The rookie should have dodged; the child's mad charge was nothing short of suicidal, and lacked the necessary finesse to execute such a move if the intended target had possessed the mind to move but a few inches to the side.
But Etsu had not dodged, and the dagger, long and pointed, the gray gleam reflecting brightly, too brightly, in the dead eyes of the man and woman lying on the floor, had sunk into her chest. The pale white armor all ANBU wore hadn't protected her at all.
She died because she wasn't cold enough to kill a child, Hinata whispered in her mind, but not aloud, no, for that statement, had it been overheard, could have been turned into a weakness, a pressure point, and the captain didn't need that. Besides, it wasn't like the truth would comfort the living who wailed for the dead, for dear, foolish little Etsu as the rookie was lowered into her tomb of earth and stone. Though they professed to want the details of the girl's demise, the truth was that they didn't want to know. They didn't want to know their daughter, sister, cousin, niece, had been a murder, and a good one at that. They were civilians, and that was their way, Hinata knew, and their ways didn't have to make sense to her.
Couldn't some one have save her?
A drawn-out question, the qualities held by the speaker blurred and melded together with the wind screaming over the clearing. But the leaves on the nearby trees were still, like stone. The wind raged only in the mind of Hyuga Hinata.
Why did people feel the need to ask such questions? Didn't they know there was nothing to be gained from questioning the events of the past? It wasn't like it would change. Etsu was dead and buried, her name freshly carved upon the Hero's Stone, and had left in her wake a pair of broken swords, a pouch of bloody kunai, and a family of civilians who would never understand the life the rookie had led.
Hinata shook her head at the folly. They would cry, scream, and cry some more, but they would never comprehend the truth if she told it to them. Fools, with their tears and soft goodbyes for one who was too far-gone to hear them.
Why?
Hinata could not tell if it was a whisper or a scream. The wind was too loud, howling like a wolf, and it blurred the details that she would have ordinarily been able to discern from the voice. Gender, age, health, village. Threat or non-threat. Not now. Only the question, the single word that could be heard over the screaming of the wind in the captain's mind.
She wouldn't tell them why, for it was beyond the ability of a civilian to understand the way of the shinobi. The men and woman who defended Konoha from the shadows, seen and yet invisible, whispers of a threat, and a battle cry screamed for all the world to hear. Shinobi, the heart and the sword, faceless and heartless warriors of the shadow. No, civilians would never understand.
Etsu, the daughter of a blacksmith and a weaver, had been the first in three generations of her small clan to enter the Academy. The first in three generations to earn the rank of chuunin at age fourteen. The first in three generations to make jounin at seventeen. The first in the history of her family to join ANBU, and the first to die wearing the mask and scarlet spiral tattooed on her left bicep.
Etsu, the oddity in her family, had died because she hadn't been cold enough, because she had given in to the whispers her conscious had spoken, hadn't been able to find it in herself to take the life of a child. She had died because she had been weak.
Hinata sighed, and the wind stopped screaming. There were only whispers now.