The sun rises
Summary: War is a child bred and born by humanity. Nothing worth is gained and everything worth lost. OneShot.
Warning: Angst and Death. Last chance to run.
Set: Story-unrelated.
Characters: I specifically designed this so different characters would fit the description. Tell me who you think they are.
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
When the sun touches the world in the morning, it reaches into the depths of the forest slowly.
They're not quite awake yet, both the sun and the forest, and damp mists start rising. Dewdrops fall quietly, suddenly ablaze in a fire of myriads of colors until they leave the small paths illuminated by the sun. Dust dances in the little, golden streaks leading earthwards. Birds start their early-morning songs. Slowly, slowly, the world starts to wake.
Shadows and light dance above a clearing, far off the well-worn path used by eventual travelers heading for or past the village of Hidden Leaf. Casting her glance as well as her watchful eye through the canopy of the huge, world-old trees, the sun slowly takes in the details of what she sees.
She sees:
There are broken branches and twisted twigs and the once-green grass is stained and smashed. The little stream running through the clearing trickles softly, a soft lament on the loss of something essential while a new day begins. The water is crimson.
As soon as she rises higher, she can see the first body lying there.
It is a tangled mess of clothing and flesh, of stained hair and broken skin. Corn-yellow hair is matted with blood; sightless eyes are staring at the sky accusingly. The figure still clutches a kunai in one hand; the other one has been pressed to a large gash in the side. There's no need for it any more. The last, precious drop of blood has spilled from the wound, along with a life irreplaceable by anything else.
Another two figures lie there, too, gravely still, close to each other. A spur of blood and smashed grass shows the person – brown hair, long and curly, once maybe tied up in a ponytail – has desperately tried to be near the other person even in death. She has almost reached the last person, another man, badly cut and bruised and burned. It seems his left arm and his torso have been blasted away by an explosion.
The sun continues her ascent. There are more of them, all with the same symbol somewhere on their bodies – sometimes on their headband protectors, sometimes around their necks; one even carries his as a tattoo on his forehead. Death has come this night; while the moon shone it has claimed lives never to be replaced in this world. War is a child bred and born by humanity, nursed by insanity and anger, fed by dreams of revenge and power and terrifying grief.
Nothing worth is gained and everything worth lost.
Higher and higher the sun rises and then there are more – beaten and bruised and burned and bloody, human beings, frail and powerful and determined and dead. Whatever dreams they carried, they are lost now, forever, drowned in the pools of blood slowly trickling into the ground beneath their still bodies. Whatever they left – whomever they left – whatever they promised when they left, it's lost, crushed in the cold, blue light of the moon. They died to protect their village, probably, but where is the sense in dying if war grows up faster than mankind?
The sun sees:
Three people lie there, apart from the other dead, as if wanting to demonstrate even in death that theirs is a different cause, something else entirely. There is no difference to the rising sun. The dead don't fall into categories once they left the paths of life.
Hair, matted with blood and sweat and mud.
Bodies, burned, cut, bleeding, broken.
Eyes, staring at the slowly coloring sky without expression.
The sun supposes these three shinobi have fought the whole group of enemies all by themselves, being helplessly outnumbered but still willing to fight. They have succeeded. It doesn't matter anymore, neither to them nor to the sun. It's not her business to know what happened here, which silly and pointless fight has taken place and what excuses mankind has for sacrificing people good enough to fight a little army. She doesn't think about what she doesn't know.
She does not know:
The sun doesn't know that the first protector went down, bleeding and injured to death, and was brought here by his teammates.
The sun doesn't know the team medic tried to heal him until the moment he died, right under her hands, smiling at her one last time while choking on his own blood. This man wasn't allowed to die there.
The sun doesn't know the second protector fought until no enemy was standing any more, and that both he and the medic returned to their fallen friend then.
The sun doesn't know the moment they turned their back on the enemies, one last one of them managed to raise his arm and throw a kunai, with pinpoint accuracy, and hit the team medic.
The sun doesn't know the last shinobi killed the last enemy within seconds and hurried back to his friends, only to find the medic dying. She, also, smiled at him a last time and told him to take care.
The sun doesn't know the last shinobi just sat there, feeling his life bleed out of him, holding his one teammate and staring at the other until he, too, died, peacefully and silently.
The sun doesn't know all of that, and she doesn't care.
The follies of humanity have long ago stopped to concern her and even though she might feel a little bit impressed about the feat the three lone protectors fulfilled she turns away and continues her routine. There will be a lot of mourning and crying and swearing in the village. There will be threats and promises to prevent further slaughter like that from the enemy village. There will be open threats and veiled decisions and the war will continue because it's the only thing mankind seems to believe in.
Now fully awake, the sun slips over the treetops and continues to rise above the forests of Hidden Leaf. She gazes down into the awakening town, sees the people and the animals and the children. They don't know what has happened a few miles from their gate yet and she doesn't deem it necessary to tell them. Mankind has to be able to swallow what it chooses to chew. She only feels a tiny, tiny little bit sorry for the three dead shinobi in front of the village's gates. They would never have managed to fight so many enemies if they hadn't believed in something. Maybe they believed in their village. If that was so, she feels sorry for them. Maybe they believed in each other. No one will ever know.
The sun rises above the world and sees it with the eyes of someone waking up anew every day, realizing with chagrin nothing has changed from the last time she set her eyes onto the panoramic view displayed before her. The village awakens.
The three shinobi in the woods will never open their eyes again.
Two days later, the cenotaph on the training ground carried three new names.
Tsunade would never have believed being Hokage would be so damn painful.