Ria

"I never thought it would be you."

I look up, my mind a blur. "What do you mean?" I ask.

He turns to me with a look a pure peace on his face. He says, "I never thought it would be you I would fall in love with." Then he leans down and presses his lips to mine. My mind swarms with fluttering butterflies. I know what we're going to do. I want to.

"Denieru…" I murmur.

The image fizzled out. My mind flung me into a different place, further ahead than the place before.

"You're the one who killed hundreds! You're the one responsible! That's why you're here! That's why you do not deserve to LIVE!…"

The boy's face before mine is so close. I can see the pain so plainly written on his face. He's a ninja, isn't he? Doesn't he know emotions get in the way of what he is supposed to be? He's supposed to be unshakable. Looks like the Earth quaked one too many time for him to handle.

My mind flashed. I was back in time.

I wake up to see Deni lying next to me, holding me close. How am I supposed to leave? I love him. Now how am I supposed to leave?

Knock…knock…knock…

I must have spaced out. That boy had shut the divider only a few minutes ago, yet my mind had traveled back months and seconds within all that time. Had I regained a memory?

I pushed myself to my feet, brushed myself off, and left my room. I needed to find some sort of mirror. Why did I have such an urge to see my reflection?

All these people are just a bunch of stupid dogs chasing their tails. This village and its inhabitants, all of them, they chase their tails. Yet the moment they manage to catch their tails, they cry out in pain, stop for a moment and forget all about the pain. Then they forget about it all. They chase their tails once more. They continue on in their struggle.

I laughed out loud at the thought. Such an eloquent thought for one who couldn't even remember simple addition. The door beside me caught my eye. I pushed open the door. It swung on its hinges with a creak, as if from disuse. The room was built with a wall entirely of mirrors. On the opposite side of the room there was a horizontal pole hooked to the wall. The room seemed pretty abandoned.

I stepped in front of the mirror to see myself. My hair was long and orange. It hung to about my waist. I wore a pair of black shapeless pants and a black shapeless shirt. My eyes were a mixture of gold and brown. This was me. This is me. My appearance represented me.

I pulled back my fist and smashed it into the glass.

The mirror splintered underneath my punch. It splintered off in several directions. My fist was the epicenter. I was the earthquake. I pulled back my other hand and punched it into the mirror. Another indent. More splinters. Another earthquake. Blood dripped from my fists. I stayed completely still.

"You disgust me," I whispered. "You're selfish and cruel! How could you do that to Deni? How could you put him through all that? How dare you!" I was yelling at myself, but not at who I was at that moment. I was yelling at my past, at who I had been. That me was gone. I never wanted it back.

My eyes didn't brim over with tears. My body didn't quiver with rage. I was so still. I didn't move a single inch as I had yelled at myself, scorned myself, scolded myself. New memories flashed through my mind. Denieru, holding my hand as we walked down a crowded street. Denieru pulling me close as we laughed over some long lost joke.

"Stop it! Go away! Go away!" I pulled back my fist again and struck the mirror once more. "No more! I don't want to know anymore!"

"I love you, Ria. I will always love you."

"But I won't ever love you again!"

"I never thought it would be you I would fall in love with."

"Stop saying that! You can't love someone who is dead!"

"Ria, promise that we'll always stay with one another. Promise that no matter how much we lose, we will always have each other."

"Leave me alone! Just leave me alone!" I pounded on the mirror. Kicked it with my bare feet. Slammed my head into it. I threw the entirety of my body into smashing that wall of mirrors. I wanted it gone. I wanted me gone.

When I stopped my attack, I was still once more. The only noise was that of my blood hitting the floor. So much glass mixed in with so much blood. It was beautiful, in a sick way. If someone else had been there they would have agreed with me. There was beauty in the wickedness of it all.

I pulled back from the shattered wall. I dragged my feet through the room, its floor scattered with bloody glass. All the pieces of glass that snagged in the skin of my feet gave me no feeling. I was completely numb to it all.

I walked back to my room and shut the door behind me. When I was there, I sat on the ground and stared at the wall., completely still once more.

Neji

He wasn't sure about how he was supposed to handle everything. He had completely lost his cool earlier with Ria. It had been wrong of him to yell like that, Neji knew this for a fact. It had never been his place to play God. Though he was a Jonin, that meant nothing to someone who was completely foreign. To someone who had no idea what the world was like. Neji couldn't help but feel slightly relieved that he had gotten all the rage he had towards Ria out of the way. Now he could focus without any other thoughts of that girl clogging his mind. No, that wasn't true. Neji still wondered why Ria didn't remember anything. He still wondered what had caused her to kill so many. Again, though, it wasn't his place to know. He was simply there to keep watch over Ria. To make sure she remained stable.

"Good lord!" he heard a nurse exclaim. He turned the corner as he headed to his room. He had just received some new clothes. A pair of plain black pants and a black shirt. He was still allowed to wear his headband, but he had to wrap it around his forearm to prevent lunatics from taking it. The psych ward was very particular about what the patients were allowed to be near, especially when it came to things they could strangle themselves with. Like…say a headband?

Neji stopped suddenly. A trail of blood ran the entire length of the hallway. He looked to his right and his left. The blood ran up and down either way, but did not come from his path. He turned to his right, towards his room, and followed the blood. When Neji reached the end of the trail, he saw several nurses crowded around a door. To be specific, the door to Ria's half of the room.

"Miss, you need to open the door," one of the nurses said. The others tried similar strategies to coax Ria to open the door. It didn't really work out.

"What's the matter?" Neji asked one of the nurses.

"Neither the other nurses nor I know for sure, sir."

He nodded. "I'll let you in to see her through my room."

She nodded and turned to her fellow nurses to let them know. He went into his room and pulled on the divider. It slid open with little effort on his part. It made him wonder what the people thought they were preventing by putting up the slider. Any human of average strength could pull it back. He sighed. The silliness of the world still astounded him.

The nurses bustled into Ria's room through the opening. Neji peaked through to see what was going on. He couldn't help but gasp at the sight. Ria sat, completely and utterly motionless, staring at the wall with her back to him. Blood had pooled all around her. What had she done that had caused such intense injuries?

"Get a doctor now!" one of the nurses ordered. A few other nurses hurried out of the room. Others grabbed anything they could to staunch the bleeding. A new face came rushing into the room.

"Hey, what happened to the dance room?" he asked. Naruto stood, out of breath, in the now open doorway of Ria's room.

"Uzamaki," Neji said in surprise.

"Neji? What are you doing here?" he asked, obviously puzzled.

The main nurse snapped her fingers. "That must be where she did this."

"Did wha-" Naruto began then gasped. "Damn it! How could a mirror do this much damage to her? It looked like it had just shattered on its own."

"No…"

"Huh?" Naruto asked.

"No…" Neji said once more. "It hadn't shattered on its own. Ria…this girl…she destroyed the glass."

"Oh…" Naruto was silent for a moment. So much like Ruin, yet so different. Ruin was in absolute control of what she was doing. She cut herself to bring herself peace. Naruto shook his head. He hated thinking about his girlfriend's self-harm, but he had no choice. It was a part of who she was. But that wasn't the point. From what I saw in the dance room, this girl Ria had lost all her control. There was no real reason behind her actions. Only rage.

"I don't understand how someone could just lose it like this," Neji thought out loud.

Naruto smiled softly at that comment. He finally understood something Neji didn't. "I can't help you there, my friend. You'll figure out on your own, just like I did."

Neji looked at him. "What does that mean?"

"Oh! You haven't heard yet, have you? I have a girlfriend and a daughter!"

"WHAT? This is a completely inappropriate place to be discussing your personal life!"

Naruto's wide smile instantly disappeared. He was somber once more. "Of course, excuse me. Would you mind coming with me, Neji?" Neji nodded and the two left together.

They wandered around the village for the next hour or so. It was a sobering image. Smoke still billowed from the smoldering ruins of their home. There were still many people who had not yet been found. It was disturbing to see flowers strewn across piles of rubble, as if someone was laying flowers on a grave. Pictures of loved ones were left next to some of the wreckage as well. Naruto didn't seem very fazed by it all. Neither was Neji. They both tried to act as if nothing were amiss.

Naruto gushed about his new life with his girlfriend and daughter. "She has made me so much better than I have ever been before in my life! She's been what I've needed all my life. My daughter, Luxe, is just a plus to everything. She completes the circle of happiness that is my family. Ruin and Luxe are everything to me."

Neji looked at his friend. "You sure have matured in all the time I've been gone, Naruto. How long has it been, anyway? A year?"

Naruto nodded. "Yeah, you're been on a mission that long, huh?"

"Yes, I have." Neji paused for a moment. "What did you learn from all this, Naruto? How did her cutting affect you?"

Naruto looked pained for a moment. "It hurt me a lot to see her do something so destructive, but I can't help but understand it, you know? I mean, she was completely and utterly alone for so much of her life. Everyone she had ever known had told her she was worthless. She wanted some way to have control over her life, to make a choice. To calm herself, she cut. To bring some semblance of control into her life, she cut. She taught me that nothing is pointless. Everything has worth, even her self-harm. It had saved her for so long. It had kept her alive long enough to meet me. It may sound vain, but I know that without me, she would probably be…she would still be dead." His eyes were distant the entire time Naruto had spoken these words to Neji.

"What do you mean 'still be dead?'"

Naruto grinned uncomfortably. "She had been cursed and died a few months ago. I traveled into the spirit world and brought her back. She helped me through it all." Naruto continued to look distant.

He knows all this because of one person. It's incredible. "Do you think…" Neji began, pulling Naruto out of his thoughts. "Do you think I'll ever find someone who needs me so completely?"

Naruto laughed. "It doesn't work like that, Neji. I completely need her and she completely needs me. There has to be balance. Without balance, the entire world would come crashing down."

The rest of the day and the entirety of that night, that last statement of Naruto's hung in his mind. Even as he and his friend parted ways, even as he wandered back to the hospital, it still continued in his mind on a constant repeat.

"Without balance, the entire world would come crashing down." How was it that at that exact moment, he knew why Ria had done what she had done. He knew why Ria had broken the mirrors. He knew why. She had no balance. She was crashing down on herself.