Demons at Night
It isn't the act of killing that haunts Sakura, but rather, living with herself afterwards.
She sees her victims (but they weren't really victims; they were killers too) in her dreams at night. Their arms reach outwards, but it's never her that they're grabbing for. It looks as if they are grabbing for memories they've lost, or family members they will never see again.
She tries to remind herself that everyone she kills is a shinobi, that they've probably killed innocent people, or they wouldn't be in a bingo book somewhere.
Sometimes her victims (they're not victims, really) look so young that she can hardly bear to bring the knife down. She specializes in medical-related deaths; stopping someone's heart, or cutting a crucial vein.
Most of the time, they bleed to death. She hates when they die with their eyes open, because then she has to close them, and see the terror there.
But sometimes she is generous. Sometimes she uses anesthetics and painkillers, so her victims (not victims) can slip away without feeling anything.
No matter how they die, though, she sees their faces at night.
The first nightmare nearly destroyed her…she couldn't remember ever crying that much out of guilt. But then the nightmares came easier and easier, three people here and five over there, all of them dead.
The dead used to form in lines inside her head, but now they form in piles that waste away. Her victims (mothers, daughters, children, loving fathers – they really were victims) reach out, reach past the bodies that bury them, and suffocate them to…death?
Surely they can't die again…
But she relives their deaths every night.
There are so many of them now that she can't recall their names. She doesn't know which villages they hailed from, or what crime they were responsible for.
She kills criminals so that they can't kill anyone else, but it's gotten so bad that she doesn't even remember who is a criminal and who is not.
Is she a criminal too, for ridding the world of those who after all, are just like her?
Every shinobi is a criminal. –She's just one of the few who stops to think about it.
Author's Notes: I plan to continue this. It should have about seven or eight chapters, each from a different character's point of view. I can't guarantee that I will update soon, but just know that I do intend to.
Demons at Night - inner demons, guilt, nightmares. All of that good stuff.
