A boy in the wood with yellow hair, expression cracked and leaning back against the tree with a mask in his hand.
The first mark, the pain was cold and deep.
The same boy again, face down in the forest bleeding from the shoulder and rib. She only saw him because the morning sun made his hair shine among the trees. He was heavy when she lifted him to try to carry him back to the village; half of his limp form, still lanky in adolescence, hanging over hers, the other dragging remorselessly behind. He'd thanked her when he'd awoken.
The second mark.
She saw him less after that, only fleeting glimpses until after she had become a chuunin. He stayed in the village for longer periods once he began to train as Hokage and they met on occasion. He had grown-filling out the angular shoulders she could still remember digging into her neck and his smile had grown as well, swelling all the way up to his blue blue eyes at her dry, pointed jokes.
The third mark, the pain of this one was a sudden rush as she felt her heart speed up as she remembered being twelve and trying to work out whether she was in love.
Their meetings became more frequent; the conversation flowed easily and with them came personal details, in depth opinions…secrets. His bravado became unnecessary and her cards fell from her chest and out into the no-man's land that their emotions seemed to be pushing them towards.
The fourth mark.
Him, drunk. She didn't ask why, just allowed him to hide his face in her shoulder. She asked the next day and he hadn't said a word, shrugging her hand off and marching out the door. They hadn't met for another year and the circumstances would be far more frightening then.
The fifth mark. Fear.
Her team were dead, her mask had been snapped underfoot, her elbow partially ripped off. She was cornered, trapped underground, and something had come out. Blackness-and then he was there.
The sixth mark.
The hunt began. Being a prey was a new sensation but it made her dreams a little better than when she had been the predator.
Both marks and memories began to blur together into the haze of guilt and panic they'd twisted around their eyes and ears, around their hearts and minds. The pain became all consuming and her focus turned outward, concentrating on the physical agony of the runes that began to rip themselves open all over her body to keep her self from screaming as the dark surged forward.
Her teeth pierced her lip at the same time as the kunai she had pressed to her abdomen slashed sideways and the second throwing knife sliced across her neck. A shallow wound at the throat, not enough to sever the vocal chords but a deep one for her gut, pressing through her, severing tissue to reach the womb and allowing the darkness and her own blood to gush out, intertwined.
She pressed her hands flat against the scroll open upon the altar as she sank down, and rested her head against the cool stone.
"Saikoro."
Yellow flashed before her eyes once more. Her breath stopped in a moment's respite.
Now for the difficult part.