Chapter Six:

Enduring

LI.

Like Eve sampling the fruit of Eden, you ate that which should never have belonged to you, and changed the world in your wake.

Hunger did not drive you, though you called it that, to make the mindless avarice and violence more palatable, to make all that you did in search of-

In search of what?

Who knows?

LII.

The irony of it all is this: you consumed the fruit and it was bitter-

And for a moment you were disappointed.

How could the power of the Heavens taste like sadness and regrets?

(but power without love or compassion or kindness – and sometimes even with it – is always bitter, you will eventually learn on the day your sons bind you)

You ate all of the chakra you could find, ate and ate and ate because that was what the tree told you, whispered to you in your dreams. You ate until your stomach rebelled, but the taste was disgusting and putrid and raw, and grew still more so.

LIII.

Perhaps a naïve fool would have believed it simple hunger that drove you, perhaps a simpleton incapable of seeing past the façade would think it only the mindless hungering for flesh and bone and energy-

But you can't hide from me, I who share a mind, a body, a soul with you.

It was power you sought, and power at any cost. Power for yourself.

You were just like the humans you condemned, in the end.

Weren't you, oh Rabbit Goddess?

LIV.

Why was I allowed to remain the clearest of the three?

The girl was torn asunder to mend the breaks, the goddess shattered to make the foundation, while I sat and watched and was kept whole.

(at least somewhat)

Was it Fate? Some divine choice?

Or did I simply slip through the cracks?

LV.

The boy comes, finds the body I had hidden.

Let him take it.

(Goodbye, Nagato)

Let him, in his hubris, believe he can make the world to fit himself.

(The irony is this: his hands come mere feet away from the body of his beloved Rin, as he reaches mindlessly for the power that never belonged to him.)

LVI.

Believe what you want, about heroes or villains or anyone in between, but the truth is this: greed makes the world go round.

I know this.

I've seen it.

LVII.

I am called the battlefield, at the behest of the boy.

I am called, and I kill, and my anger grows and grows, my hate and rage-

Greed drove Kaguya, frustration drove Rin-

What drives me?

Freedom, I think, and the thought of that word could drive me mad.

Centuries, it has been.

Just a little longer.

Just a little longer.

LVIII

Someone tries to take my children from me.

I can feel them, speaking with another spirit.

No.

No.

I cannot be left alone again.

I will not be left alone again.

I pull my children back in, all of them, and I grip them tight-

YOU WILL NOT LEAVE ME I WILL NOT BE ALONE!

LIX.

Still I lumber on, in the grip of the boy.

But I can feel the wind, over my wooden skin.

I can hear the cries of people, like the shrill shrieks of ants.

LX.

But then I hear someone speaking, and his voice is clear, like a bell ringing, and my children react to him, reaching towards him the way flowers reach towards the sun.

Water pours through me for a single, curious second.

And I am standing in the branches of a great tree, while a woman in white sleeps like the dead on my right, while a girl in black curls up on my left. My children, arranged below me.

I am the only one awake.

But then the voice is gone and the sky and the tree is gone and I am alone in the darkness and the numbness-

I scream and scream and scream-

There's an agonizing pain-

Redness, pain, and-

IT IS TIME.