Concerning the Nature of Souls
Summary: "It hurts, Elyse," she finally bites out, three years old and straining against a bond that was being stretched almost to the limit, with hands clenched at her sides and sweat rolling down her temple. Elyse, this time in the form of a coyote, whines at the pain, but keeps pushing on. "Come on, Kuro, just a bit more. I can almost reach the tree." Daemon!AU
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Being a ninja means being ready to sacrifice, all to the village that you swore loyalty to. Your body, your heart, your will… even your own soul. That's why in Kiri, and in every other Hidden Village, they recruit young, while the daemon is still unsettled, so that the dreaded ritual of Separation won't be as traumatic as it could be between an adult pair. There are steps leading up to the ritual, teachers at the Academy encouraging the children to try and stretch the bond as much as they could. Separation then would usually occur as the last test an Academy student had to undergo before being allowed to call themselves gennins.
But of course, it's hard and frightening to have to do these things. Separation is a long drawn-out process that is painful and, in the civilians' eyes, cruel, with very little rewards at the end. You and you daemon will be able to put miles upon miles between you. So what?
The civilians didn't understand just how much of a weakness their daemons could pose in the middle of a mission or battle. It is taboo for someone to touch another person's daemon, but what if your opponent in willing to break it? The Sage knows there are enough sick bastards in the world willing to try it. A good chunk of them lived in Kiri, a village well-known for its brutality when it came to Separating gennin hopefuls from their daemons. In fact, it was in the Bloody Mist that the word Intercision was first whispered, and other, even more inhumane practices like tearing, still existed.
It is in this constant fog of terror, paranoia and brutality that a pink-eyed girl and her daemon differ from the others. Unlike the other children in the orphanage, they seem to be almost eager to get away from each other.
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Nami, the matron of Kiri's Orphanage, knew that the girl was going to be trouble since she and her daemon were dragged to her doorstep, dripping yet, shivering in the cold night air and yelling loud enough to wake up the whole village.
For one, the man's otter daemon, who had been the ones to find and rescue them from the beach, was wrestling with a wolf pup, trying to convince the newborn daemon to stay quiet and still. When she tried to place the pup among the blankets covering his human, naturally thinking that the proximity would make both baby and daemon calm down, it only earned her a swipe to the snout, which caused the otter to let go of him.
And then the wolf pup, the baby's physical representation of her soul, turned around and ran away.
As if trying to get away from his human.
The matron Nami had never before seen anything like it, and judging by the way her dormouse daemon, Yoshi, buried his little paws on her shoulder in fright and confusion, neither did he.
Even when it was clear that the bond between them had already been stretched to the limit, the wolf pup kept trying to push the boundary further, as if deaf to the pain, the longing and the baby's wails. It was bizarre to watch. Unnatural.
Finally, the otter daemon caught up to the little hellion and dragged him back, ignoring the howling and snarling.
"She's been doing this since the moment we found them," the fisherman told her gruffly, handing her the baby with a relieved face. Probably thinking something along the lines of 'not my problem anymore'.
Nami blinked. She? Was the girl's daemon a… female too?
If so, then one more thing to set them apart from the rest. Not that it was rare to have a daemon of the same sex, but considering what Nami and Yoshi has just bear witness to, it would probably just aggravate the problem.
And so it was that Nami stood there, holding a screaming baby and a howling daemon, with Yoshi using her hair to hide from the girl's wolf, and wishing desperately to call back the fisherman and try to convince him and his otter to take them back.
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The pink-eyed girl's earliest memory is of Elyse, her daemon, teaching her how to say her name.
"Repeat with me. E-ly-se."
"E-ri-su," her one year old self repeats with difficulty, brow furrowed in concentration, trying and failing to get accustomed to the way her daemon voices her strange name. Yoshi, Nami's dormouse, tried to name Elyse something easier on the tongue when they had first arrived in the orphanage, only for Elyse to snap and almost attack the poor mouse.
"They won't change my name," Elyse had growled to her one day when she asked. "No one will ever change my name. They won't change who I am."
"You mean… they won't change who we are… right?"
Elyse doesn't answer.
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"What is my name?" the child asks her daemon one day. They are sitting under the shade of the Orphanage backyard's only tree, after Elyse turned into a polar bear and scared away the other orphans. The girl didn't mind, she liked her solitude. The others and their daemons were stupid anyway, always teasing Elyse for having an obviously foreigner name and the girl for having none.
Elyse, back to her preferred wolf form, sat back on her haunches and looked at her. "Why do you care? You can have any name you want. It doesn't matter for me."
But it should. And that's the problem. Elyse should care, but she doesn't. Sometimes the girl has to wonder if she is really her daemon. She looks at the other children, sees how they interact with their souls, and can't help but feel a spark of envy. She wants that closeness with Elyse. But the only thing her daemon seems to want is to put more and more distance between them.
"Do you have any idea?" the girl asks her wolf, almost imploringly.
Elyse must have noticed how close to breaking down she was, because, in a rare and unusual show of affection, she shuffled closer, nosing the girl's cheek and giving one quick lick before retreating.
"What about Kuro? It means black, doesn't it? You can call yourself that until we find a name you like well enough to keep."
And the girl –Kuro- smiles brightly, because it's the first time Elyse said the word 'we', as if they are a unit, a single entity, as if they really are human and daemon.
And slowly, shyly, she dares herself to hope they are.
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"It hurts, Elyse," Kuro finally bites out, three years old and straining against a bond that was being stretched almost to the limit, with hands clenched at her sides and sweat rolling down her temple.
Elyse, this time in the form of a coyote, whines at the pain, but keeps pushing on. "Come on, Kuro, just a bit more. I can almost reach the tree."
They are in the backyard again, in the middle of the night so that no one sees what they are doing. While it is advised for children who plan on becoming shinobi to experiment with stretching the bond between them and their daemon, it has to be under the rigorous supervision of an adult. It is to make sure that the children don't hurt themselves irreparably or push against their boundaries too soon.
But as Elyse said, what is the point of stretching if not to pull past the limit?
It doesn't change the fact that it hurts, but Kuro nods anyway, and stays rooted to her spot, while Elyse crawls the last few centimeters between her and the old gnarled tree, letting out a triumphant bark when she touches her nose to the tree trunk. Through their bond, Kuro feels her daemon's joy, and laughs, long and wild in the night, happiness bubbling in her chest when Elyse turns around and runs back to her, leaping in the air and turning in a frost-colored ermine to burrow herself in Kuro's arms.
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She sees the man's daemon before the man himself. It would be hard not to, when she has to be the biggest cat Kuro has ever laid eyes on. Her chest is deep and her waist's narrow, with an altogether slender build. The tan fur is short, and apart from her white underside her body is dotted with round black spots everywhere, from her small head down to her tail, which ends in a bushy white tuft. Black tear marks run from the corner of her eyes down the sides of the nose and mouth.
Beautiful, is all Kuro thinks.
She looks glorious, and Kuro can barely tear her eyes away from her, only doing so because Elyse has changed forms again, becoming an artic wolf with her lips peeled back, showing red gums and fangs longer than the girl's fingers.
If anything, the cat daemon looks merely amused by Elyse's aggressive display, showing not an ounce of fear that is the usual reaction whenever Kuro's daemon turns into one of her bigger forms.
"Don't try to pick fights with things bigger and stronger than you, little cub. That is rule number one."
"Shimi," comes a mildly reproachful voice from behind the cat daemon, and it is then that Kuro first sees the man whose soul settled into such a majestic shape.
All in all, he doesn't seem very impressive. That goes to show not to judge a book by its cover. But what catches Kuro's attention is the way Elyse stiffens at the sight of the grey haired man, backing away so fast is a wonder she didn't trip in her own paws. Turning into a moth, she flies to Kuro's shoulder, whispering in her ear, urgently "Run."
The girl can feel the fear making Elyse's little body tremble, and that more than anything makes up her mind. Elyse has never before show fear. Never.
And she is terrified now.
Dangerous, her daemon scream at her, and together they turn around and run. Or try to, before Kuro is dangling in the air in the man's grip and Elyse is a trashing, snarling wildcat trapped between Shimi's paws.
"Quiet now, little cub. We just want to talk."
"Let go of her!" Kuro screams, anger at the way her daemon is being trapped in place by the much larger cat turning her bold. "Let go of us!"
"Why should I let go of my daughter?"
Kuro freezes at the same time Elyse, still trapped under the cheetah's paws, lets out a low growl that sounds suspiciously like "You've got to be kidding me."
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AN: This is a gift for my good friend Kyuubi Sama, in commemoration for the spectacular play she performed last Saturday. I will piss myself laughing every time I remember how you played as the charioteer, or, my personal favorite, "This is a fallacy, Polly!"
You were amazing up there, really.
If you guys want more of this, review!