The Oni
By TwinEnigma
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, obviously, nor do I own any of the characters therein. Done for fun and such.
Warnings/Codes: Post-series, companion piece to "The Bride", one-sided and implied reciprocated SasuKarin.
In the mountains, there once lived a young samurai. His family was very powerful but they were arrogant, and had many enemies. One day, an evil warlord had them killed, all save the youngest, who fled from the house. And so, the family was ruined.
As he imagines him, the youngest samurai has a familiar face, pale and cold with dark hair and darker eyes. The sword he drags with him is too large for him to wield and the red and white mon on his back is stained with soot and blood. His tears are already beginning to dry on his soot-stained cheeks as the boy's thoughts turn to revenge.
But the warlord wished to destroy the family, root and branch, and so sent for a powerful onmyoji to find the child.
The onmyoji, too, is familiar, like a nightmare rendered in long black hair and rice-white skin, the yellow eyes piercing and predatory. Around him are countless scrolls and all manner of disturbing ingredients for his sorcery. At his feet are demons, twisted and misshapen humanoids, and at his side is his servant, glasses gleaming eerily.
At last, the young samurai was found, but the onmyoji could not kill him. Instead, he laid a powerful curse on the boy, turning him at once into an oni.
In his mind, he does not see the blue oni that graces the storybook's pages. The oni that snarls at him from the rocks has grey skin and ashen hair, claws like needles and eerie red-against-black eyes. He winces at the memory, chest aching with remembered pain, though the wound he recalls has long since healed.
The young samurai killed the onmyoji, but it was too late. He was an oni thus accursed and hated accordingly.
He imagines the oni standing over the bloodied body of the snake-like onmyoji, the other demons destroyed and the servant watching in breathless loathing. In some ways, he thinks that maybe this is what happened when Sasuke fought Orochimaru, but the Uchiha has never spoken of it, not even after the war and he will not press him into telling.
After a while, the cursed young samurai was strong enough to avenge his family and sought out the help of bakemono. Among them was a powerful red kijo. She was bewildered by love for him and thus used her magic to lead him to the man who killed his family. They traveled for many days and fought many terrible things, but always she cured him and soon they found him.
When the young samurai saw him, he at once despaired, for he immediately recognized the man as his long lost older brother!
The cursed samurai in his imagination already knew this and for years had been awaiting the confrontation with a terrible hunger for retribution. The bakemono and kijo at his side all look more human than him, unconsumed by the thirst for vengeance, and they watch with anticipation.
The brothers fought a great and terrible battle. At last, the elder lay dying and revealed that he had been the one to spare the young samurai's life. He, too, was an onmyoji and with his dying breath removed his brother's curse. But before he died, he warned his brother not to take anything from his master, for it was likely to be poisoned.
The form of the ogre is again replaced by that of a boy, now nearly a man, who clings to the bloodied robes of the dying man like a lifeline. He howls in despair and loss with the mania that only one for whom the world has been shattered completely to the core can manage.
And so they set out to find the warlord. But the young samurai was foolish and, failing to heed his brother's warning, drank the poison he was offered and was as one dead. In her grief, the kijo turned into a hawk and flew away. The bakemono returned to the lakes and trees from which they came, also saddened by the loss of the young samurai.
"He can't die," his daughter manages, her large green eyes blinking sleepily.
"Why not?" Naruto asks. "This is my story."
"It's my story, too," she says and her chubby little fingers drum against his arm one by one. She pauses, stumbling over the words as she finds the ones that go with her imagination: "He hasn't kissed the girl yet."
"He can't, she's turned into a hawk and flown away, see?" he tells her, pointing the illustration.
"But why?" she asks, not understanding.
"Because she's very sad. She loved him very much," he sighs.
In that, reality reflects the story most glaringly, though the circumstances of Karin's real life departure were far more terrible than those of the red kijo in the story and things nearly did not end as well for her or the subject of her affections. No, he thinks sourly, it certainly was a disaster – and very nearly an irreconcilable tragedy, instead of the promised happy ending of the storybook lovers.
"But she can make him better," she scrunches up her face in thought. "Why doesn't she give him medicine?"
"There isn't any medicine left."
"Oh."
He skims the next part and his mind drifts, somewhere else and years ago, towards the war and its mad conductor, Madara. Inevitably, it turns to the haunted and shaken shell of his former teammate, a man who even now cannot completely hide his shame and guilt when he walks through the village.
"Why did you stop?" his daughter whines. "You always stop at the best part!"
"Because it's time for you to sleep," he tells her. "I'll tell you the rest later."
It is better than the truth.
Sometimes, these stories remind him of things he'd rather have forgotten.