Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to the genius mind of Kishimoto, not myself.
Summary: Ashes to ashes and dust to dust. Less than a decade later, all that is left of the once-mighty Shinobi nation is the memories and rubble that it has left behind.
A/N: I'm really not sure how I got this idea, but it came to me one night when I was working on another chapter of Redemption and after it refused to leave me for five hours, I decided to go along with it and this is was resulted. I'm not exactly sure what my muses were go after when they came up with the idea that resulted in this one-shot, so I'll leave it to you to decide. Please read and review!
Ashes to ashes and dust to dust
Slow footsteps approached the ruins of the once-mighty buildings, now little more than a pile of crumbling stones and ashes that, scattered about by a gentle breeze, were pushed into piles in the nooks and crannies of the ruins, the ground itself permanently stained by the blood that had been spilled there, broken weapons peeking through the thick layer of ashes and dirt that covered most of the ground.
"Why do we fight?" the children had asked, eyes wide as they stared up at the speaker, childish innocence adorning equally childish faces as the figure who had been a steady presence in almost all of the battles that had ravaged the surrounding lands turned towards them. Sapphire eyes regarded them for a few silent moments, a gentle breeze playing through the stray strands of silky blond that escaped from the loose ponytail as he considered the question. Innocent eyes looked up at him in awe – a hero, they whispered amongst themselves, remembering snippets of conversations that had been overheard between the warriors. The older children could still remember times when they had heard rumors of the figure before them as a demon, but those times had passed as the fires of war had consumed them, the village too desperate to risk losing such a key persona.
"Why do we fight?" he mused to no one in particular as he repeated the question, a wry half-smile playing over his lips as he considered his answer. "The answer depends on who you ask…the older generations, the eldest of our fighters, will tell you that we fight for the future, to ensure that the youngest of the children will not have to fight. My generation, the generation that lived when the fierce fighting began – we will tell you that we fight to honor the memory of those that had fallen, those who died in the first and second invasions, in the cowardly sneak attacks, the battles that broke the treaties and ceasefires…we will tell you that this is what we fight for. We fight for revenge, revenge for all of those who were murdered as they fell from injuries, revenge for our comrades, tortured to death. And you…the youngest generation, you fight the hardest battle of all…you fight to survive." He turned away again, facing the Hokage Monument – four full faces, half of the Godaime's face, the other half forever remaining unfinished, with the Godaime perpetually busy, the artisans all working on reinforcing the walls and the buildings. He had left the children behind as he once again headed towards the front lines as alarms sounded, all thoughts replaced by the ever-burning desire, the need to get his revenge against the enemy that had hacked Chouji to pieces even as he lay dying on the ground, the enemy that had returned the tortured body of Raidou – silent until the very end, never giving in – to the front gates, impaled to a tree with his own weapon, blood dripping down to soak the parched ground with the rich, crimson liquid.
The footsteps continued on, past the ruins of the once-mighty village center, past the monuments, past the ruined buildings, until they reached a bare swath of ground, stretching as far as the eye could see, nothing but bones crumbling to dust and the ashes of the forests that had once grown there. There were signs of great battles that had been fought there, the footprints of giant creatures imprinted into the ground, craters where the bodies had fallen before disappearing, and a harsh, cold laugh emitted from the silent figure as the footsteps continued slightly, walking over to a patch of land devoid of anything save the dry, cracking soil.
"Heh…looks like even nature is clever enough to avoid where that vile creature died…"
He mused to himself, the words escaping his lips and floating in the air before they were blown away.
"But you…you never could bring yourself to turn away from the lure of power…no matter what the price…"
Even the children knew to avoid him now, he wryly mused, almost saddened by the prospect as he gazed down at the village from his perch on the forever-unfinished Hokage Monument. They avoided all of the veterans of that last battle, filled with monstrous creatures, now – giant creatures, snakes and slugs and toads, towering above the walls of the village as they fought, trees crashing down onto the ground, the earth itself shaking as they landed from the air, a never-ending battle that had lasted for the duration of a generation now. The original three Sannin had always locked in a constant struggle, none of them stronger than the other two, and now the new generation, apprentices to the Legendary Three, would continue the fight.
Less than a day later, bloody crimson pinwheels met emerald and sapphires bleeding into violet, a low feral growl filling the empty space between them as the blond spoke first, his voice a cross between that of a human and that of a beast. There was no love between the three of them, nothing save the desire for revenge – their childhood dreams abandoned, hopes cruelly ripped apart by war, until all that was left was a heartless warrior, a weapon unto the bitter end. They had been the ones who began the fight of the next generation, and they wished to be the ones who would dominate the battle for this generation, refusing to pass the burden onto the next generation – save the children's innocence no matter what the cost – but it had all failed in the end.
The male turned away from the barren circle of land, his gaze now directed towards the mountain face upon which the faces of the Hokages had once been carved, proudly watching the village they had created. Those faces were in ruins now, cracked and broken beyond repair, small mosses taking up residence on them as they lay on the ground, the bones of those crushed beneath them long since turned to dust. He could remember when the faces had come crashing down upon the enemy, agonized screams ringing in the air as the battle had pause momentarily, lightening, fire, wind, everything meeting together in an explosion that left them all blinking and just as suddenly as things had stopped, they began again.
"What would you think if you could see the world now?" he absently mused to no one in particular, addressing the broken monument dedicated to the Hokages of the past. "If you could see what is left of the village now…if you had seen your dreams disappearing in fire and blood?"
He laughed softly, a bitter sound, and turned away to stare towards another patch of earth, a few weeds poking through the dusty ground around the stump of the once-mighty tree.
"Heh…a spirit of fire indeed…in the end, even the civilians became warriors…"
"Tsunade-sama!" The messenger dashed in as though the hounds of hell were on his heels, panting for breath, his face pale despite the flush that covered his cheeks, and everyone in the room instinctively knew that the time for the last of the great Wars had arrived at last. Battle plans that had been made years ago – they had laughed, never really thinking that they would need to fight that war, made the plans, all the while joking about – were implanted, the eldest and youngest civilians evacuated as the shinobi readied themselves for the upcoming battles. As soon as the fighting had began again, the red dawn rising behind the snakes, the corpses of so many of the dead, crimson liquid staining the ground, forever serving as a reminder of why they were fighting. Forbidden jutsus at work resurrected so many of those better left dead, ghosts of the past returning to life – no matter what they did, they simply couldn't gather enough troops to stem the never-ending flow the enemy had at their command. In the end, they had recruited the civilians to fight, young teenagers and men frightened but determined to do what they could, and the general consensus of those who had been present at that devastating battle was that it had been heartbreaking to watch, helpless, as they were sent to a slaughterhouse, unable to do anything as they were hacked to pieces, utterly destroyed, only the sheer mass of the corpses preventing the enemy from entering the village.
The male turned again, walking in a different direction, his feet silently falling on sparse patches of grass and rusted weapons, carrying him through the maze of stone chunks, nothing but a ghost in an abandoned, destroyed town that had started and ended a war that had remade the entire world. He paused once he reached a square block of ebony stone, firmly embedded into the ground; the remnants of the monument scattered all around the surrounding area, and lifted his face slightly to gaze up at the sky, shadowed by dark grey clouds that warned of the looming storm.
"A monument for the dead…remnants of the past, ghosts forever haunting this place…"
Less than a month into the War and there were already so many dead bodies, so many unsung heroes who died in the service of their village, fighting until their very last breath, devoid of all weapons and chakra, a husk of their former selves. It was a war that swept the entire world, Shinobi nations clashing with each other, destroying each other, and all the while crimson fires burned, fires of revenge and anger, fires that demanded more sacrifices, more deaths, until there was nothing left of the world. The monument of the dead heroes had remained untouched since the fighting began – there were too many names to possibly fit, too many dead and dying, and there was never enough time to properly honor them – and it was no longer needed – they all knew who had died, even if no one else remembered, because those were the ghosts that haunted their sleep, the ghosts that demanded blood for their blood, deaths for their deaths, and eye for and eye until the whole world was gone, blind and consumed by the fighting.
"What does this stone stand for?"
It had been another funeral, another death, and the children followed all of their elders as they silently trooped towards the irregularly-shaped ebony stone, leaving behind crimson, obsidian, and pristine white flowers in their wake as they all stood there. Sapphire eyes had remained fixated on the stone, refusing to look away as he remained silent, his answer coming long after the children expected to be ignored. "The ghosts of the past return to us here…they haunt us, demanding revenge, and give us a reason to continue living, to continue fighting. If you asked the jounin before this war began, they would have told you it was a monument to honor the dead and the heroes. Now, it serves as a reminder of all that we have lost…a reminder that we can't not fight, because we're trapped in a never-ending cycle of death and revenge." When he turned away from the stone to look at the children, his eyes were violet, crimson and sapphires burning in his gaze, and when he opened his mouth to speak again, his voice was far lower, rough and reminiscent of the wild predators of the mountains and forests, a demon's guttural growl.
"You who are so young, you will never survive long enough to discover what this place means to us, to the fighters of the past and present. To you, the names are little more than names, something to look at whenever you are brought to this location, and we fight with the dream that it will remain that way."
He had turned and left, the memories threatening to overwhelm him as the names ran through his head, and he remained aware of all those eyes fixed on the direction he had disappeared in long after he had disappeared out of sight. Less than a week later, another attack came and the children – their innocent eyes staring up at him in adoration, childish expressions of glee on their faces, with giggling voices and sticky fingers – no longer had to worry anymore, no longer questioned why the world was the way it was, because they were nothing but ruined, bloody bodies now, more names to be added to a mental litany, sightless eyes staring up at the sky as fire and blood rained down on the remnants of a mighty era.
The male turned and began to pick his way through the ruins again, until he had reached the edge of the ruins, the boundaries of the ghost town forever marked by dirt and blood and etched in stone. He half-turned, his eyes sweeping over the rubble once again, taking in the complete and utter lack of life, before he lifted his head upwards as the long-awaited rain began to fall, droplets of water soaking the parched ground.
"It didn't have to be this way" he murmured, a bitter half-smile playing over his face as the voices of all those lost in the battles echoed inside his mind – hopeful, cheerful, full of desire for a bright future where there would never be any fighting and everything would be perfect, with everyone living happily ever after in a fairytale world with a fairytale ending. "All that you had to do was say no, turn away, and we could have gotten that fairytale ending where good defeated evil."
He lowered his head and began walking again, his feet aimlessly traversing over ground that was slowly becoming little more than mud, until hours and hours had passed and the roaring sound of water plummeting over the edge of a cliff to crash into the river hundreds of feet below met his ears. He paused, glancing behind himself, and a small smile made its way over his lips before he turned and followed the winding river, disappearing into the distance, far away from the ghosts of the past and the remnants of a life that would become forgotten, far away from a world that had heralded his arrival with fires of death and destruction, far away from the world that would fall apart and crumble into ashes and dust once he left.
Far away, sheltered from the pelting rain by a precarious shelter of sticks and rocks, a single flower bloomed, pristine petals speckled with droplets of red that once could have been blood, the only sign of life in the desolate landscape. The male's words came floating back, as though the wind had recorded it, storing it away for future use, soft, murmured words that were barely audible over the pitter-patter of the rain and the wind.
'It didn't have to be this way.'
A/N: Please read and review.