Bleed to White

Summary: There is nothing to look at in a white room. Minato never wanted to be Yondaime. OneShot. Companion to "Contradictory".

Warning: Angst.

Set: companion to "Contradictory", can be read as a stand-alone

Disclaimer: Standards apply.

There is nothing to look at in a white room.

Not that it matters because Minato isn't sure he's actually seeing something. The whiteness dances in front of his eyes, mingles with a deep red, a wine-red (blood-red), suffuses and comes together in a whirl of colors that bleed to white.

Because white is a mixture of all colors, isn't it? And Minato is a mixture of many people, and all of them are dead.

(Because he killed them, every single one of them, and he'll carry their faces with him for the rest of his life.)

This is not a hospital room. There are no hospitals on the battle field. There are no hospitals on the fields on which people need them most; of course if wars didn't exist people wouldn't need them here at all. But everything around him is white, starch white, angrily, frighteningly white and he desperately tries (and fails) to make out any other color in his surroundings.

He wonders whether he is still alive at all and then thinks that even if he is dead it wouldn't matter. Most of the people he knows are dead and they'd probably kill him again for what he has become. Minato never wanted to be a prodigy. Minato never wanted to be the future Yondaime, Minato never wanted to be the Yellow Flash and, most of all, he never wanted to be the one who sealed the fates of that many people. Somehow he has become an executioner, somewhere along the way he became a murderer. He kills with his own hands – whether he puts his signature under a scroll or whether he actually uses a kunai to slit throats doesn't matter – and, by right, his hands should be tainted red. His entire body should be covered in blood.

Though right now, it probably is. He just can't see anything except the whiteness around him.

He desperately tries to see something, anything, because the absence of colors scares him more than anything else. There is nothing that catches the eye, nothing to look at. He lies on his back – at least he knows that much – and he stares up at something but he cannot say at what. His glance flickers back and forth while he searches but there is nothing. Nothing. Whatever this is it is empty, as empty as he feels because most people he loved have been killed by or through him, in either way, and all that is left in him (and of him) is the emptiness in his heart, the whiteness in front of his eyes and the knowledge that for the sake of a village hidden behind the leaves he should want to continue on. There are people who wait for an order, who wait for the signature on a scroll that will end their lives as well and who believe the undersigned won't let their sacrifice be without meaning. But what can he do? He can't keep them alive. He can't protect anyone. He can't save anyone because he can't even keep alive his students; he can't even protect his best friends and much less the people of Konoha. And, finally, he can't even save himself. He is useless, worthless, and the knowledge blends into the empty white that now covers his entire senses. He has failed his children – Obito, Kakashi and Rin – he has failed his teacher, his predecessor, his family, his friends and his home.

If he doesn't make it home tonight, who will mourn?

Minato smiles, because smiling is what he always does. It's the only way to fool the people around him. And oh, how do they want to be fooled! They see what they want to see and they want to see what they need most. They need a genius child who, despite his modest origins, makes it through the Academy in only two years. They need a muster student who masters all of the genin-level techniques in no time, already able to take on a chuunin at the age of ten. They need a prodigy who creates new jutsu, who defines new borders for future handling of newly developed techniques, they need a shinobi who fights their fights for them and who protects them and, last but not least, they need a leader who can sentence people to death because other people need protection. Nobody cares that the genius child has to leave his family at the age of four, that the muster genin never has many friends because he is put into a chuunin squad and that the prodigy almost kills himself twice when testing a new technique.

(He still has the nightmares the techniques caused. Perhaps the only good thing of the story was that he and Kurenai became good friends, since she knew the side effects of genjutsu only too well.)

As a shinobi, he had taken children to war, losing one after another (Obito to Iwa, Kakashi to guilt, Rin to loneliness), and now, as a leader, he rarely sleeps with the knowledge of what a single one of his signature causes. The only thing that always stays the same is his smile because something has to stay with him otherwise he'll end up going insane. Maybe he already is. Maybe that is why he smiles.

Their faces flicker before him – Obito, Kakashi and Rin, his children (he will never be a father again), Manabe and Suzuran, his team mates (he's the only one left), Hikare and Shinobu and Durea and Fire, his cousins (dead because they wanted to be just like big cousin Minato), his brothers (dead because they believed in him) and his parents (dead because they never forgave him) and his friends (dead, of course, and anyone who isn't yet probably will be soon). At the rate this war is going there won't be anything left, no shinobi to protect, no ANBU to fight, no father to rage and no mother to mourn. No child to bring into the war, to teach and to groom and, ultimately, to kill. He shouldn't have been born, should never have been allowed to live because the only thing he does is bring pain to those he loves and that isn't the way it is supposed to be.

The faces distort and morph into one single expression. If he dies today, maybe the war will end. Maybe, the people he loves (and lives for) will be able to continue on living.

He won't have to sign death sentences anymore.

The world turns blood-red. This is the way it is supposed to be, he thinks with a certain amount of amusement. Of course, only the ending would present itself in the right colors. The red is pretty enough to end the illusion of blood. It's like the sunlight of the dying sun over the Hokage's cliff. Like the red of the last leaves of fall. A dark, almost cherry-like red just as…

… A red that resembles Uzumaki Kushina's hair.

And there she is, screaming at him with her eyes wide open, her lips forming words he cannot understand. Her red hair falls over her shoulders like a halo and he thinks if she's here he is in heaven and that isn't the place someone like him should be. (He's a killer, a murderer, executioner of death sentences.) But she is there and maybe that's fate spitting on him – showing him what he lost one last time before damning him to eternal whiteness – and so he smiles at her weakly while a painful thorn tears another wound into his heart because seeing her here means he failed her as well.

Another name is added to the list of his victims.

"Don't you DARE smile at me like that!" Kushina screams and her eyes blaze with fury. She's angry with him; he doesn't need to understand her words to realize that much. He can't stop smiling now because she is exactly as he remembers her. And suddenly he realizes he loves her, even though it hurts so much he can't breathe.

"You didn't make me fall in love with you to now watch you die on a battlefield!"

More words follow, angry and rushed and somehow breathless while the pressure on his chest increases and honestly he can't breathe. And if he's dead why does it hurt and why is the scary whiteness fading away behind the red of Kushina's hair? His ears only take in a steady buzzing. Her words flow past him like a stream – threats and pleas and things that don't make sense because he never made her fall in love with him purposefully, especially since she never seemed to take particular interest in him. At least he can't remember something like that. He can remember, though, that she dislikes his smile for a reason he isn't aware of right now. And he would like to stop for her sake because if he killed her he owes her at least that much. So he tries and it results in a painful grimace that's not his usual smile but still something he is familiar with. Kushina seems to be, too, and she stops screaming almost instantly and something wet and hot drips on his face. She's crying – Kushina is crying and that's definitely wrong because tough, strong Kushina hasn't cried when children mocked her on her red hair and people looked down on her because of her missions and because she is what she is. She hasn't cried at her parents' graves, either, so why is she starting right now. And even though she does look beautiful Minato wishes she wouldn't cry, desperately wishes there was no need for her to cry and his voice is tight (because the pressure in his chest doesn't lessen, rather increases, and he can literally see all the people he has killed closing in and cutting off his air) and choked and doesn't sound like his.

"Who made you cry? He's a dork."

He hasn't got enough air left to tell her she looks beautiful and he has always watched her from far and she has been the only one who has been able to look past his mask of smiles and therefore she deserves to live a happy life, preferably someplace he isn't because he'll send her on a mission one day that will kill her like everyone else. His breath resounds in the empty space around them, oddly wheezing. He tries to take another one but something still is blocking his chest. All his dead friends, family members and students dance in front of his eyes, their expressions blending into each other. He can't read them but he knows they want him to suffer, that is why they sent Kushina and didn't let him die immediately.

Kushina laughs.

It's a short, choked sound, more a sob than a laugh, and some of the pressure on his chest loosens as her eyes become softer. He wonders what has happened to make her look like that – it can't be his presence – but maybe she thinks he is joking. But his thoughts don't go farther because something racks his body. He arches upwards in pain and his throat constricts and something runs down his chin as he tastes blood. Coughs shake his body and Kushina is gone again and the bleeding white is back, everywhere around him. He dimly wonders if it's okay to feel afraid of whiteness. He is not afraid of dying but this endless, open loneliness is terrifying. Something is pressed to his lips – cool plastic – and he breathes in oxygen and the only still functionary part of his brain thinks this has to be a hospital only he knows where he is and there wasn't anything like that in sight. He remembers the blood and the field of fallen enemy shinobi he killed by himself (and he feels sick) and the hit he took straight on when an Iwa nin tried to attack a little cell of Leaf nin who were supposed to cover his back. He remembers the feeling of suddenly being sick of it – of those people dying because they were supposed to keep him alive. He knows the Council sees him as their strongest weapon but he is so sick, so, so, so sick of fights and wars and casualties and of executing his people and he doesn't want a single shinobi to die anymore for his sake no matter what.

He blinks past the huge, beautiful eyes of Uzumaki Kushina and finally is able to make out the white walls of a field lazaretto. His first thought is that he must be alive. And when he realizes the realization is so bad he feels only icy numbness. Then he feels like laughing because he can't even die correctly, he's an even greater failure than he always thought. But he can't laugh so he smiles again and Kushina's tears stop immediately. She glares at him so angrily he almost feels scared.

She's yelling again – he never knew she had such a loud voice – and most of the words get lost but he gets the gist of it. And he feels small and lost because she tells him to live on and he can't. He knows how but he just can't. And she should know about that, about living and suffering and going on, she is the kyuubi's host – and yet. He owes her – her and all the people he already killed – to die, to free them, to pay for the one great failure he has been and still is.

But she doesn't let him.

She glares and shouts and sweet-talks and shakes him awake as soon as he feels his eyelids shut and the whiteness close in. And again and again and again it is blocked out by the color of her hair and the look in her eyes and the feel of a cool hand on his heated forehead and after a time that feels like eternity he is too tired to listen to her, too tired to fight her. So he gives her a last one of his crooked smiles – not the ones he reserves for everyone but the one he uses when he looks at himself in the mirror (because the irony of the fact that a blind person is supposed to be leading a village is not lost on him) and she suddenly quiets.

He closes his eyes and gives in to what she wants him to: he gives in to life. Her soft hair suddenly caresses his skin as she leans down to kiss him on the forehead and mumbles "Dork!" and he sees it again, only now his eyes are closed. The whiteness surrounds him, and, one by one, the faces of the people he has killed dance in front of him.

Only this time, they are smiling.