SMOKE
煙
We stared at each other for a few moments, my heart beating madly, and I couldn't breathe because I am staring at a man who has been dead for almost two years, and I don't know how to comprehend this. He reaches for me, desperate when I move away to leave, betrayal pulsing through my veins.
"Kaguya-Hime, please-"
"Y-You're missing something." I joked shakily, still creeping out the door by the second, my eyes on the space where his left leg should be, and he moved to grab a piece of stone carved into the shade of a leg, the feet and ankle cut in and defined, and I stare at him in horror as he used soft, tough leather strips to strap it onto the nub that's left of his original leg, and he stands up shakily, taking a step forward as I take a step backwards. "You were supposed to be dead."
"You were supposed to be thirteen." He joked back, like he hadn't made me believe he was dead for so long, and I just kept trying to keep my heart working. "I guess we were both wrong." He uses the new leg like he's had months of practice, and perhaps he has, and I take a single step towards him, just for a better look at it. Most of the soldiers had wood for their prosthetic sand just pieces of cloth, but that is real leather and a nice, marble-like stone. It's the exact size of his real one, and I just stare at him because it's been almost five years since I've seen him, and it's been that long since he's seen me.
When I last saw him, he still had round cheeks and a voice that broke, and he still had that older brother feel to him, but this was different. His hair was ruffled and bright, and his cheeks were defined, with more of a chiseled face. He's taller than I am at least five inches, and I stared up at him, looking almost ashamed I was so short, and I glared up, conflicted about what I wanted to do. He was watching me like I was an alien (and if Naruto Wikipedia said anything about it, I become classified as one), because the last time he had seen me when I was an awkward, long-limbed thirteen year old whose skin was too pale and tangled hair.
I looked at his leg again, "How long have you been here?"
He wanted to say something, and then he looked away like he was ashamed. He was silent, and I took another step forward, "How long, Asahi?" I almost shouted; moving closer again and again, anger pulsing where the confusion had been.
Asahi looked at me, "I'm sorry."
"How long-"
"I didn't want to-"
"HOW LONG?"
"Since Ishii came back, Kaguya-Hime." He admits, and I paused, looking at the ground, my eyes darting from one place to another I thought about what Ishii said to me then.
"He's alive."
It was then that I realized that she never had actually answered me if he was okay; she had told me he was alive, not okay. His leg is gone. A part of him is gone. A limb is no longer there. The thought didn't process through my mind the way it needed to, and I kept staring at him like he had just slapped my grandmother across her face, and I just gaped, not quite enraged or happy about his return. I was a swirl of emotions; a tornado of feelings that didn't stop or ever completely combine. "You didn't tell me for a year and a half?"
"I-"
"I thought you were dead!"
He looked as guilty as a twenty four year old could, without just bursting out whatever he could in his defense, but I challenged his stance, but crossing my arms, glaring. "Well?"
Asahi didn't respond, and I don't think he wanted to, but he couldn't just tell me no because now I'm his leader now, even more so then when he would just protect me, and he doesn't have to now, because as his clan leader, I had to protect him. He took a soft breath, like he wanted to stop breathing.
"I saved your uncle." He explains, avoiding the question just like Ishii did when she lied, and I hate being treated like a child, like I didn't need to know this. "I got my leg half cut off when I dove in and it got infected, we had to cut if off in the field. They sent me back with Ishii, and Ōtsutsuki-sama had the imperial doctors tend to me to make sure I didn't die. I-I asked them not to inform you. I didn't want to worry you." The softness in his voice did little to sooth my anger, and in almost added air to the flames. I suppose the heat in my cheeks were out of anger, and I glared up at him, rising onto my tip toes.
"So letting me think you were dead was a better alternative?" I raged, clenching my fists, one pressed against his chest to prove a point. "I was upset! You lied to me and Ishii did the same, and I trusted both of you!"
"Kaguya-hime, The Emperor has promised to tell you when he thought I was ready and obviously he thought I was prepared to go back to my duties as your protector-" He tried to sound cheerful about the situation or perhaps he just wanted my attention to stray to something happier. "H-He deserves our thanks and perhaps you can forgive both of u-"
"The Emperor is dead!" I shouted.
His face dropped, looking uncomfortable for a moment, and then looking apologetic, before settling on neutral. "I apologize. I didn't realize he has rejoined with the Sun Goddess. This means you are the-"
"Clan Leader, yes, and you get to tell me about why you didn't feel I wasn't important enough to tell you were injured. It wasn't like you've known me since I was born," I snarled, quietly and holding my head up like I was better than him, like I was something important and I am, because I'm the Princess and the clan leader and this betrayal was too much, so I waited for him to respond with a step backwards. I slid the rice paper door shut, so no one could watch this. He moved towards me, still staggering a little, but I couldn't even pity him at this point after what he and Ishii did (she would get it later, I will make sure she is dropped from her position), and he takes a deep breath.
"I wanted you to not seem me in weakness, Kaguya-Hime. I was supposed to protect you and I couldn't when I was lying in bed with a fever. I didn't want you to see me like that." He looked pained, looking at his false leg where his pants were still rolled up, and he shook his head. "I wasn't the same person, I was bitter at the world and you wouldn't have liked me. I was broken and I didn't want you to look down on me because of it."
That was enough to soften me up, just a little, and I paused, looking down at his leg too, then back at Asahi, taking his hand and swinging it. "I wouldn't have minded," I reiterated, "Because you would have been alive and I would have been happy."
Asahi ran a hand through his hair, "I wasn't alive. I was just there, I was surviving, but I wasn't alive. I was angry and upset and I just moped around there." He shut his eyes, like the world was too much. "The Emperor came to see me to thank me, and told me he would send for you. I think I woke up again, like my mind came back, and I begged him not to. I needed to learn how to survive again, to protect you again like I was supposed to. He got me this," He knocked the stone leg. "As a gift for my efforts, and told when he thought I was ready, he would tell you, Kaguya-Hime, and I wasn't aware he..."
I was quiet for a few moments, my anger turned into smoke, and I was just hurting myself at this point, so I nodded. "Alright." I told him.
"Alright?" He repeats, looking for more of an answer on my face.
"Alright."
I turn around and walk away.
煙
The Empress is given a new name again, she is Gekkō now because she is no longer a wife, and she takes her role as Empress Dowager in stride, happy and content to avenger her daughter with my image on the throne. I go to her immediately whenever I have issues because she is wise beneath the panic-induced craziness, and she is happier than she has in ages. Her hair is glossy and her pales eyes have more a spark to them, and she wears plain clothing now like me. She wears kimonos while I continue the sleeveless kimono and silk pants, and we both wear our hair down plainly.
"So what do you plan on doing with these women?" The Empress- no, Gekkō asks with mild interest, looking over the list of women that my father had as his concubines, including my mother and Lady Murasaki. I glance over at her before skimming the lists of things that need to be fixed with in the clan written by the monks and eunuchs who oversee most of the smaller parts of our clan, and I rubbed my temples to avoid the headache coming to attack my mind.
"How many are there?"
"Thirty-eight, or so."
"You don't know?" My eyebrows rose, and she nodded, looking frustrated with everything, just like I was, and she looked out towards the small cut in the room where it was supposed to be a window. It was a rectangle, and I couldn't even fit my arm out of it, let alone use it for anything else. The fireplace crackled, when Gekkō spoke again.
"Some of them are worried they may have to be married off to someone else or had lovers; they ran off from the Palace of Women. There cannot be a correct estimate." She hummed, sipping tea out of a clay cup, except it wasn't something she feared like herbal tea or anything else, and I enjoyed her brews, despite hating tea. "I assume your mother is waiting for you to bring her in as the Honored Mother?"
I made a noise, thinking back to our last conversation, and then shook my head slowly. "I don't suppose she wants to see me, I did make her lose her son, or so she believes." I murmured, crossing my arms, as I sent down the scroll, and Gekkō frowned, setting down her cup next to my untouched one, and looked at me.
"You were sitting here just like you are now, besides, it was the husk all those things that burn. I tell all of them to never burn husk, it causes miscarriages, but they didn't listen. It will be fine, dear. You won't have to see her. All of you need to do is dismiss these women, let them marry who they want or stay there if they please." Gekkō advices, and I nod into my open hand, leaning over my to look at another few scrolls and scraps of delicate parchment, poorly written messages on it, because this world was illiterate and I couldn't quite help it yet, so I just sign in, putting it into my I better deal with this crap pile, and looked over towards the window slit again, feeling someone staring, but I saw nothing, so I let it go, but the Empress Dowager didn't. She smirked, "You're boy is back again!"
"My boy?"
"That redhead, with the kind eyes that stands outside the window every day, since a few days ago. He peeks in every now and then, and I caught him." The woman tells me with a sparkle in her eyes, "I knew you would get suitors soon, but this soon? Astounding."
I glance towards the window again, contemplating my next move with my stalker, "Asahi? He's not a suitor." I look again towards the window, wondering if he heard me, but I get no response or movement, so I assume not. I huffed, glaring back down at the annoyingly large amount of parchment, and the familiar dread trying to figure out what in Kami's name Kaguya would do. Every single move I made, every breath I took, everything I did affected this world. It could be ripple effects or paradoxes, ruining things that didn't need to be ruined in the future. It was terrifying, because I was the one in charge. I could be anyone, but I was Kaguya and I could screw everything up. "Do you ever think that maybe you weren't born to do something special and you got the part by accident?" I questioned the older woman to my left, who looked at me with strange eyes- no, not strange, almost calm and not even close to the crazy I've seen, but it looked wrong on her.
"Are you scared?"
"No, I'm not."
"I've placed upon your shoulders the peace of this world, and you aren't even upset? It is a huge burden to bear, and it isn't something to be taken lightly."
I'm only going to have two children and then let them seal me away until I get a chance to kill the reincarnation of my grandsons and then fail- I am gone. Sealed Away! I don't want to.
"I'm not scared; you said yourself this was my destiny."
"It is."
"Then I am not afraid."
The ex-Empress looks like she wants to say something else, like she wants to tell me that she knows I am afraid, that I don't want to be Kaguya if I really think about it, because I hurt everyone around me, including Asahi and my futures sons and grandsons and their reincarnations, and I don't want to do that. I don't want Zetsu to be my will, and I don't want to go to the elemental nations and live there and cause peace. I wanted someone else to take on the responsibility, and the more I thought about it, the more I wanted- needed- someone to tell me it would okay, because it wouldn't be, and I knew that very well.
The more I thought about it, the more I began to feel my stomach twist inside my stomach. I didn't want any of this, and I just wanted to be back where I belonged, back with my sister and my friends, and I wanted more than this. I wanted to be free from this.
But with every day that my life goes on, getting closer to when the Shinju will be ripe, I see my past life go up in smoke, and it is terrifying.
..
I gradually become a better leader, Asahi coming back to my side, and I do my best in the few weeks to associate myself in the clan, but something kept tugging at the back of my head; it was dark and consuming and it told me it wasn't fair that I had to be the one to do this, why did I have to bring peace or whatever the hell it was that they wanted me to, because I didn't want-
Except I did, because I wanted them to love me and I wanted the bloodshed to stop and whatever it was in the back of my head was so very wrong, and it needed to be gone. It was my voice- Kaguya's voice- seeping into my head whenever I thought too hard on Hagaromo and Hamura, or chakra.
I don't have to birth to them, they'll steal all of my chakra and seal me away. I don't have to love anyone. It isn't my duty to act like... The voice mused, and it was me thinking it, except it wasn't and I knew that it wasn't, but the voice echoed in my head obnoxiously whenever I had doubts, and it hurts. My head pounds, and I sink to my knees onto the white stained floor stones, half way to my office, and the voice is ringing, breaking down my head.
Shut up, no, no, I don't want to change the future. Shut up. Shut up! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!
Indra and Asura don't get to steal away what is ours, they and that little pink girl of theirs. They don't get to win. Not again, I can win! I can win again. We can-
-we?
I groan against my arms, curling up into myself, trying desperate to tune out the world, looking at the cracks and crevices in the stone walls, and I know that no one will come find me, not until Asahi comes to check on me in the next hour, and I don't even want him near me because I can't handle being around people, because this voice in my head has claws, tearing it down my brain, almost as painfully as being crushed under a car, and it just hurts.
Laying on my side, the tears burn my eyes, running down my nose, and I realize that the times I felt myself be shoved away and faded out as I grew and thought more of the future, and now I realized why, because I was the New Kaguya and the nameless young woman I was before, but I also wasn't either, because I couldn't fully be one or the other. There was so little room for both in my head, and as more and more happened, it was to my utter horror that I realized CANON Kaguya was pushing us both out of my head.
A flash of memory of getting sealed- a blinding feeling of having your entire entity being ripped out, then shoved in, and the process going at such a high speed, and it hurts, it hurts, and stop stop stop stop.
I just started to scream.
煙
For seven days, I stay inside my mundane chambers, the once brilliant mosaic tiles that shined with sunlight were dulled, and the silk curtains were drawn, so I lay in complete darkness, and I am no longer alert to the world around me, condemned to my mind, and I am afraid, so very afraid and lonely, and I cannot even tell Asahi, though she sits obediently by my side, holding my hand like I may become a bird and drift away in the winds of Time.
Pavilions, trees, scrolls all looked so dull in my eyes. If anything, they furthered my pains, they burned my eyes because I see them in my head in different angles, in different ways, and I see it through the eyes of the Kaguya of another time, one who does not exist in this timeline, only she does because her consciousness fights mine in a battle of wills that may cause me to crack, and I do not want to lose myself. I can no longer bear the burden of eating; everything tastes of sand, and I become lighter and lighter, so small I feel myself rise into the cloud like smoke, light and poisonous, and so much underappreciated. The world is gone into a familiar darkness, one that I had once experienced in death the first time, and I am no longer in the pain of no longer being a person of many lives, for I am dead. I stare into the abyss of darkness; the voices around me no longer mean anything to me. I am at peace in the silence, in the void of life fallen upon me, and perhaps I will be Kaguya again or perhaps I will be...
I shut my eyes peacefully, no longer needing my sight. I hear the softest calling of my name (was it Kaguya or did they say my other name?) in the tone of a man, and then the ice is thrown against me, the painful force of air being yanked into my chest as only a glimmer of light sparks. A wave of heat surged through my veins. I borne again by extraordinary force, one that I imagine is my soul being too stubborn to blacken from my body, because it once even too stubborn to die. I toss myself up into a sitting position, looking around in terror of the force that awaken me to the world again, and a soundless scream sits in my throat, firmly in place for a readily delivered shriek.
With wide eyes, I look over to my most loyal of friends, with Asahi soundly sleeping against the edge of my bed, the Empress in my silken chair, and Ishii on the floor around Gekkō's soft seating, and I am awakened for the first time in a week, because I have won.
Whether of my own madness or by some force, the Canon Kaguya was defeated by own will and that of a force unknown to me or to this world, and I am still on top of the mind battles, still Kaguya and a nameless modern girl, I am both and neither.
I am the perfect Yin and Yang of spirit, and while my own madness and threats loom, I need to save the world from my own early and earthly wrath that can be inflicted just to prevent Naruto and Sasuke's victory in a peace that hurts the nursery that becomes this earth. I will be the savior of my own time, but I will not be a willing villain. She doesn't get to- I don't get to have my way, because I am Kaguya and she is Kaguya, but I am also someone else and I cannot allow her to hurt me. She will remain in my deepest pits of sanity, away from my mind and thoughts, because I want more and will be more, but now with her invading my mind.
I need to be more than a villains thrown in for the dramas that couldn't be produced by Madara Uchiha, which was the main reason for such a horrible, wicked, and vile woman to be born into this world, to be born to a family where her insanity is almost hereditary and power-basis is encouraged.
I won now, and I must win again if darkness swirls around my thoughts again in such a violating and horrific manner.
It will be terrible, but Peace has not cost too high, and even I know that with broken mind, and tired bones.
煙
A/N: I have been plagiarized by a girl with nothing better to do that steal the hard works of others, and I am sickened to see such things, and this author (more like account) is called Seishun Kyousoukyou and I didn't want to use names, but they have also stolen from an author of whom I am very fond, and finds us to be unfair in our assumptions. If anything is every published, I advise you to read and then check your own, because it could be copied. Also, this may be my last post for some time, because I have had a particularly bad seizure, and I am always tired. I will update when I can.
Enjoy and Review, I know it's confusing, or more "filler" but you will understand later (okay, so Asahi is kind of filler), but please bear with me.
