I decided to re-upload this chapter after rereading it and discovering a host of errors - they were all in the second half, so it was just evidence of the progressive fatigue that was plaguing me yesterday... Hopefully I caught them all. Enjoy~
1
She wanted to scream. Every cell in her peritoneal cavity was vibrating in resentment to her self-control; even her organs hated her.
She was left with nothing—no feelings, no direction, and no purpose. Her being wavered on the edge of existence and she floated through purgatory alone.
He was long gone, and with him he took all those things she once had only to stow them away with what he had already (knowingly or not) taken. That man had unwittingly stolen her hope, her innocence, her love, and her faith; he had carved out her insides and left her to be nothing more than an empty shell of her former self.
Giving up seemed to be the most alluring route. But what would she be giving up on? Her mission? Her efforts? Her life? Herself?
Her attempt to kill the demon had been thwarted by not only his flight, but also her emotional turmoil. She could continue to hunt him down for the next several decades until she found him again, but really, would it be worth it? Would she be able to overcome herself to sink the knife in his heart and walk away as he bled dry after all of those exchanges that had just taken place?
There was so much confusion and self-loathing poisoning her soul that it was suffocating. She hated it, and herself, and everything. She wanted to scream and, and break every bone in her own body just to sit through the painstaking labor of re-healing them. She wanted to feel something for the sake of knowing that she was alive and present and tangible.
"I have nothing…I am nothing."
She could hear herself, so perhaps that was a start. And wasn't living with nothing the sacred and respected way of the monks? She could possibly be on the cusp of some sort of spiritual enlightenment. But instead of feeling content, her soul felt parched.
She touched her lips together and parted them the minimal amount possible to speak and announced, "I need to reconcile with myself."
But what did that entail? She could return to Konoha and meditate for every waking hour she had physiologically available. Or maybe she could go home and start gardening. She always imagined that as being a soulful hobby. Perhaps she could go back and simply give away everything she owned and start from scratch.
No matter how many ideas she ran through, she rejected them just as quickly as they came. There was an unappealing flavor to each one, something that they shared. After a moment of consideration, she realized that there was a common faulty factor involved in each of them—and that was going home.
She needed to get away from everything and that included her hometown. And suddenly, such understanding sunk like a heavy weight in the sea of her stomach. It wasn't so much that she would miss it as it was what she would become when she did not return—a missing nin. She would be labeled a wanted criminal, and probably of the S-rank with bounties amounting to fortunes on her head. It would break Tsunade's heart to order such things, but it would break her sanity much more than that.
This was what she needed to do. She would leave her everything that equated to nothing behind. She would become a hermit somewhere in the mountains and build herself a humble home, and maybe the garden would come in handy, too. She would live peacefully alone.
The idea sounded so splendid that a smile twitched on her face. Not in a rush, but not wanting to wait around, she lifted herself into an alert posture and began to walk—not run—in the direction of the dense forest that would lead her to the mountains. She was on her way to a new life.
It would take forty-eight hours before she would be placed on the missing nin list. This would give her some time to cover her tracks and dig herself into her hermitlike hole.
She had decided to keep the pace that she had set earlier that day—slow. Even if she had only two days before she'd need to start fending off bounty hunters, it was relaxing to not rush everywhere all the time.
On her way she had wondered a few times if what she was doing was selfish. Was she simply forfeiting responsibility? Was she suddenly scared of the man she had set out to fight? Was she becoming lazy? It didn't take much thought to decide that the answers to each question respectively were "yes," "yeah, right," and "probably."
She was now at the foot of the mountains. As she climbed up their gentle stretching slopes, she planned to move to their back so that she would be shielded from any ill weather. Despite moving so slow, she had traveled far—so far that she wondered if Fate had helped by moving the ground beneath her feet. The wilderness smiled at her as she passed and offered her guidance each time she had a moment of doubt. This place was meant to be her new home.
She came to an abrupt halt when she noticed that the light wasn't just sprinkling between the leaves of the trees anymore—only twenty feet ahead of her was an opening clearing. Excited to see if this could be her new grounds of inhabitance, she darted forward and into the hole in the mountain's skin of leafy canopy.
It was perfect. There was a section covered by stone, but the rest was filled with grass, bushes, and small plants. Also, another important factor was that water was located nearby—if she listened carefully she could hear the crackling of a creek. She would sift through the flora later to determine which plants were edible and which were not, but overall, she had the two things that she needed most—food and water.
Which left shelter. She was going to have to build a sort of makeshift tent or house. This left her standing there with one frightening realization in mind—she had no idea how to build any sort of structure beyond a card pyramid. …she was doomed.
Regardless of her inexperience and lack of architectural knowledge, she decided to get to work anyways. She had begun to gather fallen branches and large leaves. She would strip the bark from the branches and use it to tie them together to form a wall. The leaves were going to be utilized to make a bed, pillows, and blankets.
For being a first-timer, she was feeling pretty proud of the ideas she had come up with…even if she hadn't quite put them into action yet.
Luckily, she could focus on building rather than gathering food and water because she had a week-long supply of those on person. As a ninja, especially one involved in the medical field, she always came equipped no matter where she went.
Living as a lone hermit was quickly becoming fun; those things that she had dreamed of doing as a young girl were now not only possibly, but also necessary. She had always wanted to build a playhouse—although this was a bit more serious, but maybe just as earthy—and here she was. It had always been a fantasy to live simply and off the land.
And yet, neither of these things were likely to turn out as fun as they seemed as a child.
This was her life, but really, it was her lack thereof. She was soul-searching. Both of these purposes were too easy to forget while she was immersed in her juvenile excitement, and yet the excitement was such a refreshing feeling that she didn't want to let go of it. She decided to embrace it while it lasted and postpone the contemplation and dark thinking for later hours when she would fall from the sky of fantasy and come crashing to rock-hard realism.
Carrying her organic supplies back to the clearing, she separated them into piles and began to strip the bark from the branches by using the edge of a kunai. It was a task that required a great deal of focus in order to make sure that the strips were neither too short nor too thin, otherwise they would be rendered useless.
Once she finished that, she lined up the bare branches and began to weave the bark through them and tying it once she was done. She repeated this several times until she felt certain that the branches were sturdy and well-connected.
By the time she had completed that task, the day was ending, the sun was falling, and it was taking her work-light with it. Using the remaining supplies for kindle, she started a small fire. She then lifted her eyes to the trees in search of the perfect spot to rest her self-made board on—she would be sleeping up in the trees tonight.
And there it was, right above her tiny fire—a thick branch sticking out of a trunk with another branch coming out of it. All she had to do now was carve a bit into the trunk and slide some of her board in for a bit of extra support; the rest of it would lie on the two outwardly extending branches.
It fit wonderfully and would give her an elevated, and hopefully safer, place to sleep for tonight. Tomorrow she would probably go about renovating it and making it a little homier.
For now, she climbed up and onto the board, made a comfortable pile with her leaves, and laid down. The fire flickered in every direction and cast shadows that loomed over her. It was eerie, but yet peaceful. It felt like she was sleeping amongst the dead because of the silence, but really, everything around her was incredibly alert and alive.
She thought back to his face as his mouth formed the words, "It is most unfortunate that in these tedious lives we are forced to live that we do not receive everything we want."
Unfortunate indeed.
Did he refuse to use his eyes simply to spite her? He probably could have won if he had used them. In fact, he could have won at several points throughout their battle; and then again, she could have, too. Why would he let her get away when it was clear that her intent was to take his life? …But, was it really clear even to herself? If there were moments when she could have won, why didn't she take advantage of them? Was she as sure as she had previously believed herself to be?
No, she wasn't. She knew nothing about herself. She knew the past, but understanding it was an entirely objective. There was a core to her true self that she had let go undiscovered for eighteen years; a part that she ignored, and cast away. She would rather scorn herself then make an effort to understand the logical reasoning behind her foolish actions and the selfish calculations behind her heroic ones.
Even though she believed she was strong, she didn't know it. That was part of why she went after him. She blamed him for so much—no, she blamed him for everything. For every weakness she felt and every tear she cried she labeled him instigator.
"Who are you?"—and yet, he didn't even know who she was. In all honesty, despite her years of researching his abilities, connections, history, and whereabouts, she didn't really know him either. He was only a name, but with no structured face to match it.
She now knew what she wanted to do; she needed to fix part of herself that was broken. She needed to speak to that man, and she had a feeling that by the time she was done that she would find he had a secretly lovely face.