Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.


The rain that crashed against the stone buildings of Amegakure has now reduced to a soft, dripping drizzle; the sun is starting to come out again. Spots of light, long, shimmering beams, glitter through lavender-gray clouds. It's called the border time, the time between a rainstorm and the sun, and it has long been used to represent a division in someone's soul.

I am alone again. Completely and utterly alone.

Not alone as when my parents died and I was left to scrounge dark alleyways and dense muddy forests for food. Not alone as when Yahiko died and Nagato fled away from my tearful eyes and twisted face to grieve in solitude. Not alone as when Nagato slipped away and Pein emerged, dominating all others.

This is new, different. This loneliness is unlike any that I have ever felt before. It is the loneliness of one who knows she has the whole world standing against her, one against a great black cloud of adversaries.

Our choices were not always the right ones. Oh, yes, I was never the one who led; it was first Yahiko than Nagato who did that. I was as ever the one who followed, a sort of errand girl, maybe even a lackey. But I was in a position to influence them; I held both their ears.

Yahiko I never had to worry about making decisions that would negatively impact our village; his main, driving focus was always the welfare of Amegakure above all else.

Nagato was more vulnerable, Nagato was more fragile and more easily manipulated. His hate of other villages, particularly Konohagakure, blinded him and left him open to an assault on the mind. My whispers in his ears could have had altered the path, prevented so much death and destruction (things I have always hated), if I had simply timed them correctly.

I can still remember the day Uchiha Madara first approached Nagato. I disliked him from the start; there was something dark, something inherently wrong about him. Darkness hung like a caul about his shoulders, a roiling storm cloud threatening to spawn lightning and strike those close to him. But I said nothing. Nagato listened, Madara corrupted, and I tarried. By the time I realized that something wasn't right, it was too late, and Nagato had turned his ears away from my counsel.

I was readily accepted among the Ame as their leader. I was "God's Angel", and with "God" gone, they were willing to settle for the "Angel".

I still wonder.

I always followed, never led. Nagato was leader, and I accepted his will without question because he was my leader. I put every last scintilla of faith I had in him, because I was certain that my faith could not be misplaced. But should I have done that? I was blind to my shortcomings and his until it was too late, and then I simply gave up hope. I did nothing, and watched as the world crumbled and burned.

Should I have sat back and watched as Madara twisted and twisted and Nagato's heart, mind and will were subjugated to that man's black heart? It never occurred to me that I might be wrong or that Nagato might be wrong, or that Madara's intentions and ours were divergent? I might have done better to have killed Madara on sight.

I was weak; I was blind; I was foolish; I was the Devil's hand instead of God's. I contributed to the fall of my world, to the terrible fall into darkness of my leader, my partner, my friend. In the end, I could do nothing but pick up Yahiko's body and Nagato's (so, so pitifully small!); I could not raise the dead as Nagato could, I could not reverse the past or the terrible damage that I had done.

I am alone. I stand alone, to build the future, and put away the past.

Because if I can not do that, then I am irrevocably damned.