A/N: Hey guys! I thought you might want a little (really, really little) something to read since I'm working on the my next chaptered fanfic and I haven't posted anything in a while. Also, just so you know, I'm working on a longer one-shot that I should be finishing up anytime now. Subscribe if you'd like to read it when I finish. The summary's in my profile when I get around to writing it. BD
This fic sprang up when I got the sudden urge to write in Second Person point of view, just because I never see it used and I wanted to find out if I could pull it off. Did it turn out okay? Did I totally fail? Do you not care either way? Leave me a review and let me know! ^.^
Summary: Your world shifts, narrows, focuses, rushing you away from the vast forest that calls to you to forget what you have to do. Your world shrinks, until there is only the objective, the mission.
Disclaimer: Don't own Naruto. Or Kiba.
And The Rain
All you can see is gnarled trunks, shivering leaves, a worn path. Foliage, vines, undergrowth. Mossy logs, mossy roots, everywhere.
And the rain, the rain sprinkling softly, the rain misting your face, the rain cooling the hot day.
The rain slips from the sky, plopping gently down to earth as if afraid to harm delicately blooming flower petals, or the calloused palm of your outstretched hand.
You see the rain, the way it moistens the dusty ground one drop at a time, quenching its unbearable thirst. You see tiny craters in the dirt, here and here and here.
Your hear the rain, its soothing lullabies and enchanting melodies more than welcomed in your ringing ears, your pounding head.
You smell the rain, inhale and fill your lungs with the fresh air the breeze brings. Smells flood your flared nose, damp musty earth and wet trees and vibrant, suddenly-alive vegetation. All around you, smells like rain.
You tilt your head back and feel it, feel the rain trickle onto-over-across your tan face, down your cheeks like colorless, saltless tears. Feel it land lightly in the tangled mess of your hair, dampening your scalp a tiny bit more with each drop.
Your lips part ever so slightly, allowing the rain to enter the cavern of your mouth, and you taste the rain, tastes its sweetness and tanginess and nothingness, taste all its –nesses that your words can't begin to describe accurately.
You stand motionless like this for a few peaceful moments. Relishing the quiet, the still, the natural. You've been called loud and brash and cocky and defiant and wild, but the truth is, you love this silence. You love this silence most of all. All your arrogance and your harsh words, they melt away when faced with this part of the world. Here, raindrops dripping from leafy green faces, shadowed by swaying, creaking twig fingers. The world, so endless, so immense and complicated compared to one tiny little human boy. Because that's really all you are, when you step down from the high place you sometimes stare at everyone from. Not a warrior, not a ninja, not a proud jounin of Konohagakure. Just another human kid, an animal, like all the rest of them on this planet.
It's refreshing, somehow, to be so small. You're by no means insignificant—you're still needed, but you're needed just like the rest of the world is, just a cog in a machine. There's no rush to grow up, to be thrown out into war, to fight and murder and slaughter, all the while closing your eyes and turning away and pretending you don't see or understand what you and your comrades are doing to innocent lives. Pretend you don't see the fear and horror in the child's eyes as you cut down his mother, pretend you don't feel your own heart twist and break with his. Pretend your reasons and excuses are enough to force down your conscience and follow your orders like a good shinobi, an obedient shinobi. Pretend, because it's all you can do.
But sometimes you think maybe that's not right, that your life isn't wasted and that you haven't killed for nothing. For every person you assassinate, for every life you rip away, there are a hundred more you are fighting to protect. And so you fight, and so you survive.
You lower your head, look away from the clouded sky and forward, down the winding path that you know will open into a small village rumored to be hiding the enemy. Your thoughts tumble incessantly around inside your head, shouting and screaming and pleading and whispering, all at once.
A cool, moist black nose pokes its way into the fist you hadn't realized was clenched. You let your fingers relax, let them comb through white fur without thinking. A low whine, a hesitant inquiry, reaches only your ears, too soft for your men waiting behind you to hear. Your fingers still in response, then smooth down the ruffled fur on the mutt's head. Your breath rushes in, holds, and then sighs slowly out.
Your world shifts, narrows, focuses, rushing you away from the vast forest that calls to you to forget what you have to do. Your world shrinks, until there is only the objective, the mission.
You have your orders.
Your hand slides the porcelain mask down, hiding dark, feral eyes, sharpened canines, and the crimson, tattooed fangs that give away your identity. You lower the mask, and you become a soldier once more.
All it takes is one simple hand signal, and the men behind you leap forward with chakra-enhanced strides, towards the small village that doesn't know they are coming.
*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*
All you can see is heaps of rubble, cracked concrete, smashed wood. Carnage, corpses, twisted bodies. Broken houses, broken people, everywhere.
And the rain, the rain pouring down, the rain soaking your hair, the rain merging with the blood.