Her hand kept forgetting how to move. She would go to brush the hair from her face—it was cold, and she couldn't see—but though her muscles would tense and maybe a finger would twitch, her hand remained at her side. After another step or four it would happen again, and then she'd forget for a while.
The sky was full of white wet fluff that stuck to her clothes and melted on her skin, plastering her hair to her face. Her hand twitched, moving haltingly, but faltered around her waistline. Water ran down her cheeks, pooling on the ground below. She was forgetting a lot of things.
She took another step, or two, or five. Everything was cold. The wind was everywhere. She'd never heard it scream like this before. It was like it was making words, whispering and wailing a message just for her.
You are weak, it said. You are small.
You are nothing, said the sky. Relent.
All comes back to me, said the ground.
Die, said the cold.
She took another step or three, or six, or nine. She knew where she was going. She'd get there, too, in another step or twelve, even if she couldn't see anything, even if she didn't know where she was at all. She'd earned a better death than this. Something with far too many swords, for preference, or at least an audience. Make a performance of it, take out an entire damn army, that was how she wanted to go. Not like this, not in the cold, not in a cage, and not alone. Never alone.
She almost didn't realize when she hit a wall. The stone was warm. There was a hole in the wall that blew out heat as well as air. She collapsed and it was all she could do to sit there and let it warm her, for a time.
She couldn't rest, not yet, not even if she tried. It wasn't done. She was closer than she'd ever been, as close as she should have been years ago, but she couldn't stop now. She'd rather die than have it all be for nothing. She got up slowly, the last in a long line of hard tasks and god did it hurt but she wasn't dead. She had a job to do. The scars would have to wait.
She wondered what they saw when they looked at her. She got more than enough stares as she walked along the city's stone walls; out of windows, from groggy shopkeepers waiting for that day's dose of coffee to bring the world into focus. She was glad she didn't know what she looked like. She didn't even know how much of the blood was hers.
In any city, any town, there are people who will provide for those in need when given the right incentives. It felt almost too good to be the one holding the blade again. They didn't even blink when she asked for a change of clothes and were only too happy when she suggested they leave for a while; the man even locked the door on the way out.
She drew a bath and stepped out of what remained of her clothes; the water masked the sounds she made. She was covered in old wounds, some she didn't even know she had, and she was so thin. It hurt to look at herself. It felt like it was someone else's body, and filled her with disgust and shame that it was her who had let this happen, her who had grown so weak, but the water was warm and safe. It took even that pain away.
The sun slipped over the horizon as she lay there, waiting for the water to cool. When she stepped out shivering into the bitter dawn light that streamed through the small window, she almost felt human again. The new clothes were clean and smelled of fabric and flowers. They didn't stick to her, weren't thick with dirt and sweat and god knows what else. They didn't smell of fear.
She carefully took a few things from the pile of old clothes and slipped them into pockets. She couldn't bring herself to touch them any more than that. She'd have watched them burn if fire didn't make one such an unforgivably bad houseguest. She left them there, closing the front door behind her, knowing as she did that she would never come back; not to the house, not to the city, not even to this part of the country if she could help it. But she couldn't leave yet. She still had a job to do.
She walked through the city openly, barely attracting the occasional glance, scanning the streets and stalls for little things, things that they hoped few other people would notice. A hand signal or coded markings, a colored scarf or a—
Ah. Him. She knew him. Not well, but... She walked closely, greeting him with a smile that was as fake as his merchandise. He grinned back for a moment—and her hand slipped behind him, dropping something into a pouch worn at his belt—but then his face went slack with shock. He called out after her, but she had already turned, was already leaving him and this place behind. Her job was done. She was going home. Her life was hers again, for a time.
But time passes.
He was glad that no one else could see him. He couldn't put on the face anymore, not even for himself, not right now. There was only room in his thoughts for her. He could remember the last time he saw her, but that was nothing special, just a glimpse of her hair as she passed out of sight. It didn't matter, though. He could remember every time he saw her.
His father had taught him that sometimes what a person presents to the world—his actions, his words, the feelings he allows himself to show—are the only weapons he has. He tried for a while, he really did, but now it was too much. He'd mourned because it was expected of him and then cheered up because that's what people do, they get over things and move on, but he had never truly felt the kind of grief that he'd seen tear so many others apart.
If he ever told anyone that, they'd say he never loved her, but they just didn't understand. He could sense the feeling, sometimes, accreting in the corners of his psyche. He could submerse himself in it, if he wanted to. He could lose himself. It would consume him, if he let it. The depth of what he felt for her would roll over him in a wave and leave him some pathetic mewling broken thing smashed against the rocky shores of a life without her in it. He'd never do it, could never be that selfish. What use was he to anyone like that?
People were looking at him, but he didn't care. He was allowed one night, right? He knew it would be a mistake if any of it got back to his father, but he didn't care. He couldn't care. Not tonight. His eyes flickered to Kazuo for a moment, standing on the other side of the road, but the other boy was looking at the sky and watching the sun set, ignoring him. That's all he ever did, these days.
Kyoji shook his head and started slowly pacing back and forth, his hand hovering beside his sword, though danger was far from his thoughts. The sword didn't mean that, to him. The blood, the masks, all of that came later. In the beginning, it was just an escape, an excuse to get out of that house because he couldn't just sit in that place, not then and not now. So many things were different now, but not that. It was just a different kind of pain. It was always funny to him how many people thought his own successes were because of his father's actions rather than in spite of them.
The truth was, the sword just reminded him of her. He had it with him when he first saw her, just far enough away from his house that he could start to think again. She was trying to master something at the very edge of that training area, almost in the forest. He didn't know what; he'd never seen her or anyone like her in his life, but even a deaf person would have had a hard time missing her frustration.
He went over to... introduce himself? To try to help somehow? He wasn't sure. It was years ago, now, but he knew they ended up fighting. Maybe she attacked him out of sheer rage or maybe he offered to spar, but it didn't really matter. What mattered was how it felt, how she felt. He could still feel echoes of the impact of her blades, travelling up his forearm. He fought harder than he'd ever fought before, and for the first time he forgot about everything—the life he'd have to go back to, the man waiting for him, all of it. There was only the fight.
And the girl.
Even if she hadn't turned out to be alive, if he wasn't expecting to see her again before the night was done, that was how he would remember her. Not as sadness, but as the ringing of steel, as hot pain shooting through his muscles, as the thing that took his breath away. She made nothing else matter, and that meant more to him than anything.
And there she was.
He couldn't breathe.
She looked startled, but he couldn't imagine why. Did she think they wouldn't be there? That he would ever let her go?
For a moment, he didn't know what to do or say.
Was she crying?
Why was...
"...I'm home. I'm here, I'm really..." she looked up at him, eyes glistening, staring right into his eyes. "Why didn't you come for me?"
And in that moment he thought his heart would burst.
"You... died. They told us you died. There wasn't a body, but when is there?! We buried you, we carved your name in stone, we—" he could have kept talking, could have let his lips keep spilling out words until something, anything, filled the hole he could see in her and made it right again, but the look on her face made him stop. He watched her eyes. He was hoping for understanding, for acceptance, for some way to make this horror go away, but he knew he'd likely see rage, or worse, betrayal. He wasn't expecting fear. Everything but the fear had drained out of her, and there wasn't even much of that left. She looked beaten, and she was looking at the sky.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, staring upwards. "I'll do better next time." She brought a ragged sleeve to her face, coughing or choking for a second, and began to wipe her tears away. "It's so hard to remember, to keep things straight when you... but you said not to make excuses." She stood still for several long seconds, as if waiting for something.
He didn't know why, but it was Kazuo, not her, that got the focus of his attention. Some part of his mind still expected him to have answers, back from the days when they exchanged more than angry looks, when they depended on eachother. But the other boy only watched her. He even looked calm.
"Well?!" she fell to her knees, her voice suddenly shrill. "I get it, okay? I know, just turn it off. I've learned my lesson. What are you waiting for?" Her eyes roamed over the two of them once more and then bowed her head, tears flowing freely. "Looking at them hurts. Is what what you want from me? Do you want me to say it? Fine. None... of this... is real."
"Let it end."
So many people think they know who they are. Their fathers, their mothers, their nations, their loyalties... they build themselves from history, placing date upon date upon story to form a pillar of concrete recollection. Their lives are bricks on a foundation of ancestors, a wall of humanity that stretches back to mud huts and sharpened bone.
They feel so proud, knowing who they are. It gives their little lives such glory. They would know too, if it were not inconvenient, were it not too troublesome to recall, that history has always belonged to the victors. It takes nothing at all for a little lie, a saving of face, a whitewashing of pages to get rid of all that pesky blood to become enduring truth, cementing itself in the identity of generations to come.
The Senju were among the strong, and that should never be denied. They forged the first village, tamed the beasts; for good or ill, they reshaped the world. Their values and influence still spread even further than their forests, with Konohagakure no Sato hidden at the heart of it all, a jewel in the midst of their self-proclaimed perfection. But their power, their "Will of Fire", that thing that makes them strong is nothing but a farce.
They know nothing of who they are, not anymore. They build their lives in thin air, suspended in a sea of lies and deified figures, scraps of truth and portrait souls. They skate on a veneer of textbook pride. They forget their monuments are stone, their forest a grown thing rooting through pebbles to stay alive. Konoha is a village built on rock, around mountains, riddled with caves.
It will belong to rock again.
A/N: It seems I didn't actually put this in the last note, but the first chapter that I posted wasn't complete, in the way I originally envisioned it. I posted it more as a placeholder and as a motivation to write more and to stay with this revision than for it to be read. It was, originally, more like the first half of the first chapter, not a thing in and of itself.
Well, this doesn't complete that section either.
My original draft called for all but the very last section of Chapter 1, a much shortened version of the first section of this, along with the second more or less as it is now, followed by a scene that's now going to take place in chapter three, and then, finally, what was originally supposed to end this chapter but didn't, because I ended up going somewhere else entirely.
So if this seems all over the place and incoherent, it's because it was supposed to be read as part of a greater whole, within the even greater whole of the story itself. I'm hoping Chapter 3, whenever I end up writing it, will tie things together the way they should be, and then go on forward with shit that hasn't been in my head in some form since 2009.
Oh, and this sure as hell wasn't supposed to take as long as it did, either. I have no excuses there, but I'm so happy that I was finally able to get this out of my brain that I don't even care. I'm not dead, though. I'm just slow and overly critical.
~06/03/12