This story is about an unnamed girl, so imagine it to be whomever you want. (Just ignore the hair color part waaaay down there.) If you don't get it, she somehow got stuck with the Akatsuki for a while in the past, and now they won't leave her alone.
Unwanted Memories
Even after I left them, left Akatsuki and all the violence and needless deaths that I hated, and left them, I knew they were watching me, never leaving me alone, and, dare I say it – protecting me.
Whenever I went out to the park near my apartment to sit under my favorite tree, armed with a book, always a new one every week, I saw it. Always, always, there, perched on one the branches of my favorite tree, would be a small crow, seemingly looking away into the distance, but I could always feel them like lasers burning on my skin – those red, red eyes stained with blood and spotted with black death swirling around in their cursed crimson depths. They brought back troubling memories of darkness and screams and pain… and of warm, strong arms carrying me to bed, and those same comforting limbs steadying my throws. And sometimes in my mind those red eyes of death and deceit melted away to reveal tender pools of soft black ribbons.
Every morning when I woke up, I would spot a little tan-colored bird that looked not quite right, as if it were a little doll, and not a real live bird – but every time I thought this, the bird always moved from its eerie stillness by cocking its head or flapping its wings a bit, as if to try to reassure me that it was, indeed, alive. But by the end of the day, it would always be gone, with only a little heap of splattered clay left in its place, reminding me of deafening explosions and the smell of blood and a maniacal laugh resounding from the walls around me. But the clay also reminded me of times long past – of flying through the sky on a warm mass of brown, teasing little licks from mouths other than the ones on the face, and clear eyes bluer than any ocean or sky. And sometimes, when the memories wriggled their way into my soul and hurt my chest, I would open the window and grasp the little pile of clay, taking deep breaths for the comforting smell I'd once grown to love.
On my walks around town, my well-trained eyes caught the flickers of movement from the dark depths of suspicious alleyways, and if I ever sat down to rest anywhere near one, soon an animal would come out, usually a cat, sometimes something different. But the one thing they all had in common was their eyes, which were always haunted pools of a hard, steely gray, ringed by lines of black, like ripples on a pond – a pond of stone that cut and slashed and killed until there was no one left. But sometimes those intimidating puddles of apathetic coldness would burn into my soul and I would drift away to thoughts of burnt orange strands of hair and heated embraces in the middle of the night and a feather-light touch tracing a line from my cheek to jawbone. After those moments, I would always raise a trembling hand and let it rest on the furry creatures head for a moment, feeling the heartbeat thump lightly underneath, before continuing on my way, leaving the rippling ponds of grey behind me.
The second Saturday of each month, I clean my apartment completely, not leaving a single corner left uncovered, and I always discover dozens of little symbols. They're always small circles with an even smaller upside-down triangle fitted neatly inside, painted with something dark red and crumbly, bringing me back to the sickening smell of blood and a gleaming scythe and pitch-black skin with strange white markings. But they also fill me with a feeling of safety and the prospect of undying love. Hard violet eyes with underlying emotion burn into my memory, and so I would leave some of the symbols left untouched, and sometimes I would reach out to stroke one softly with the tip of my finger, wondering whose blood it was – and then I would know immediately: it was his.
In the market, from time to time I would spot a man who looked completely unfamiliar walking by, striding with a slight jerk in his step that only my sharp eyes could detect. He never spoke, and the one time I saw him would be the last, to be replaced by a different person every time, and the only similarity I saw in them would be their same peculiar way of walking, as if someone was tugging them along with strings, like puppets. That, and the cold steel of their eyes; eyes that looked dead and unfeeling. Whenever I made eye contact with one of these strangers, I would be forcibly brought back to recollections of dead bodies and his dreadful "art" of turning living bodies to puppets, and his inhuman, apathetic gaze… But with those memories would come flashes of silky strands of burnt red, elegant fingers dancing with bright blue strings, and powerful tugs on my body that pull me against the body of someone I had once trusted. After one of these onslaughts of the past, I would run to the stranger, not caring about the crowd around me, but without fail, before I ever reached him, he would disappear, and I would be left all alone, berating myself mentally for giving in to my secret longing.
Occasionally I'll spot a golden eye surrounded by black staring up at me from the ground. It always stays or an instant before flickering immediately out of sight, leaving me behind with horrible memories of nauseating sounds coming from the room next door and a giant plant affixed to a black-and-white body rising eerily out of the floor in the middle of the night… And of the color green, of long walks along a hidden forest path, of the thrill of rushing underground in the way only the holder of those golden eyes can, and of the sights and smells of various exotic plants that hide amongst patches of vegetation. After such moments, I would stand completely still to wait and stare at the ground, but the golden eye would never reappear to watch me again until I looked away and continued on whatever meaningless deed I was performing. It was in these moments that I almost slipped and let the past rush back into me, every bit by painful bit, until I could wallow in my emotions and wishes, but I always stopped myself and walked on with as much indifference as I could muster.
As time went on, every now and then I would be stopped in my tracks by the unnerving feeling that someone was staring at me intensely, and I would whip around quickly. If I was lucky – or unlucky, I called it at first, when I was still denying everything that I'd ever felt for him – I would spot the corner of a cloak flashing out of sight, or, if he wanted me to, I would be granted (or cursed with) the view of a swirling orange mask before it disappeared. And I would stand there, struck with mental pictures of a sky streaked with red, of hours and hours of unimaginable pain, of the cold gaze of eyes stained crimson, dotted with black. And yet I remember also the feeling I had when the mask had first come off, the shiver of excitement when I first encountered the evil behind the mask, the burst of surprise when he attacked me with the first kiss of many. And so I would stand there reminiscing, until I felt that gaze again, although he himself remained invisible, telling me to walk on. And so I would.
Sometimes when I make my way up to a certain hill that no one ever goes to, (my hill, I call it in my head) when I gaze over the village with unseeing eyes, staring instead at the sun rising to start another day, I am attacked with visions of ten shadowed figures standing as a group. I imagine black cloaks spotted with red clouds and multi-colored rings, each with a different character. I see face-concealing straw hats with a single small bell ringing eerily, and village headbands slashed through the middle. I stare off into the dawn with far-away eyes, and the ten shadowed figures become seven, each very clear in my eyes. Red, silver, black, yellow, green, and orange flash through my head, followed by my own hair's shade of brown. And in my haunted, haunted eyes, they all converge on my brown to swirl around and around like his orange mask, and become one. And so I spend my days, held back by unwanted memories, because they are watching – always, always watching.
End.