Sun
When he looked at her, it felt like seeing the sun.
It's ridiculous really, and he knows it, but looking back it's the only way he can describe the feeling. Looking at her was bright and happy and vibrant. He had been denying it, until he sees her throwing kunai and when he looks away he could swear there were black dots clouding his vision.
Because she's spinning, jumping, flying, shining.
(Slashing, killing, cutting, murdering.)
It's something so mundane, throwing kunai and he can't understand why he stares at her like a blind man seeing the sun for the first time. She turns around, feeling eyes on her and her silver eyes widen for a second before discarding him and turning around to continue with her training.
The Kazekage isn't used to being discarded, so naturally, he makes it a point to cross her path as much as possible, until they are forced by circumstances to talk, which is awkward and weird and so damn uncomfortable.
Later, when she's a little less afraid and he's a little less cold, and the feeling of her soft lips against his cheek is a familiar feeling, she tells him that her team is a reconnaissance team, that she only practices direct combat three days a week and devotes the rest of her time to tracking and shadowing and following.
He finds it a little ironic, how someone so bright spends most of the time in the dark, but as their friendship advances, he discovers that her light is dimming, dying, so slowly that hardly anyone notices how her eyes are a little darker and a little sadder than before. It isn't that she's in the darkness; it's that she's being eaten by it, eventually she'll be nothing but a flickering flame.
He can save her.
(She will be his downfall.)
They talk, and laugh and she smiles and he smirks.
He ends up pushing her away, 'cause he may be a genius but he never really learned how to keep the things that are truly valuable. She lets him, because she never really learned how to force some reason into people.
There is talk about uniting the allies with a marriage. Names are being thrown around, clans, prices, bloodlines, trading deals, offers, compromises and the youngest Kage in history refuses to sell his brother or his sister and no other ninja has enough rank to satisfy the Hokage.
The Kazekage rejects every candidate and claims that his village will not accept their Kage marrying outside of the village as it had never been done before.
The relations become strained and suddenly the Hyuuga heiress finds herself turning to say something to someone that isn't there. She will think of telling him something next time she sees him until she remembers that there may not be a next time.
(There shouldn't have been a first time.)
She throws herself at missions and she throws away mountains of clothes because the damn blood just won't come out. She sharpens her weapons every day, because cutting through skin and muscle is hard. She learns to tune out the pained screams crying their loved ones.
Her teammates are not much better. They all start wearing solid black, red is so much easier to hide and god, the way Neji looks at her. He knows, he knows and she begins to sleep at the barracks and if her things begin to make her way there until she almost lives there, well…
(She never finishes that thought.)
There's a mission, there's always a mission and goddamit, she is in a reconnaissance team, she shouldn't have to deal with this shit but she's ankle deep in someone's entrails and there's so much blood. She's trying to keep up but she has to keep going; the Leaf is not as strong without its allies and their numbers have been falling to a point in which trackers get sent to assassination missions and dammit this isn't what she trained for!
You are never the best. There is always someone faster, stronger, smarter.
He's an Iwa ninja and he catches her eye because his eyes look so dead, so empty and she wonders for a second if that's how her eyes look now. She never manages to think the answer because he's on top of her, her throat feels cold and all she can see is green, pale green, and she can only hope that he cares as little as he made it look.
(He cares much more than he made it look.)
Suna falls.
There are enemies on every wall, on every house, killing every ninja, every civilian.
History may remember the redheaded Kazekage as the one that allowed his village fall to chaos while his mind broke. The mad Kage, he would be called. He sat on his council room while the village was destroyed; mind finally in pieces, gone mad for the love to an unnamed leaf ninja that tried to murder him.
He was sane, he fought alongside of what was left of the Suna ninja and the leaf ninja tried to save him in every way one can save a person on the brink of self-destruction.
(Looking at her was bright and happy and vibrant.)