Falling Apart
I don't really understand what happened, but Shikamaru explained it to me once.
He said that, from the very beginning, shinobi are falling apart. From the second a child is born to a ninja family, they begin breaking.
Because a shinobi's life is never pleasant.
I know that.
I know that really well.
Most of us grow up with only one parent, and those are the lucky ones. Quite a few of us never even meet our parents, but those are still the lucky ones; Sasuke and Iruka knew their parents before their parents were killed. Sasuke had to watch it happen.
He's not the only one; most of us have seen someone die with our very own eyes before we reach chuunin, and half as many have killed someone before then. We all grow up with secrets and we're all messed up.
Gaara had the Shukaku, Sasuke had his older brother. Sakura had an inner self, Shikamaru had abusive parents. Shino had insects crawling beneath his skin.
Shikamaru once speculated, over a curl of smoke from his cigarette, that we were made to fall apart.
He had a point. By the time we're ten we know that many ways to kill a person silently, in their sleep. By the time we're ten they've taught us twice as many poisons and their affects. By the time we're ten we can throw razor sharp weapons with deadly precision.
Actually, most of us know all that long before we're ten.
He told me we're only tools. Said that that's why protecting the village and following the Hokage and orders is ingrained into our heads the second we're born, until we chant it in our sleep.
I reckon that I'm the last one alive now because I never gave in to that stupid idea. But I'll never be sure, 'cause I'm the last one of us still here and I still don't understand what happened, and now I don't have anyone to ask.
But really, I don't think anyone has ever understood what was happening to us.
Except that we were falling apart.