CHAPTER 28: Awakening

She was lying on the ground of their former prison cell. But that was all that remained. The stoned cobbles. The walls hadn't been able to withstand the force of the explosion. Rubble surrounded the peaceful forest clearing. Yes, now it was peaceful.

Rubble and three human bodies. Two of which were lifeless. The third fast becoming so.

The spirit wondered vaguely why he was alive. Why he wasn't even wounded.

The last time he had been out there, in the physical world, he had been dying. Enemy spirits had ambushed him, had clawed and torn at him and he had only survived because of a young human girl.

Tsunade had let him into the physical world again, for that last act.

For that great act.

And both of them had been resigned to die. He, of his weakness in the physical world, his wounds; she of the pain of the immense power she was releasing from her body. And of the ensuing explosion, of course. But that had not hit her quite so hard as they had thought, not like the other two..

..the Great Snake didn't, it seemed, shed his skin like his namesake, after all.. it was red and blistered and barely recognizable, a singed long tongue hanging limply out of his open mouth.

The boy, who had now died twice was still wearing his mask, nearly black now, and severely cracked. But he was no longer breathing either. No longer bound to this world, no more a feeble ghost in a world of the living. He was where he belonged now.

Tsunade didn't show any sign of the explosion he had caused, which was probably due to the energy he had released while leaving her body. Although that energy was killing her now. Too much for a frail human body.. She was dying.

She was dying, and he would live. He would become a full and true spirit again. The twenty-five years in her body seemed to have cured him of any trace of his once so deadly wounds.

He would be able to soar through the air again.

Tsunade was dying.

He would be able to take credit for the people he healed.

Tsunade was dying.

People would rejoice, call it out into the night, The White Dragon lives!

And all the while, part of him was dying.

She had been his saviour at first, and nothing more. A human whose body kept his essence safe and unharmed and away from death, a death that he feared. For he was no human. For humans, death came with birth. Death was natural. Death could even be a relief. But few spirits ever died. It happened sometimes, not often, but occasionally. Very, very rarely, but enough to provoke a great fear in all of the otherworldly entities. For spirits, death was unnatural, uncanny, to be feared beyond all else. So he had felt grateful for this human, this convenient human, but nothing more.

That had changed, though.

Now she was him, and he was her. They were one. And he couldn't let her die.

And now he was a boy, a young boy of about twelve, his human body surrounded by a blueish glow, because he was something not human at all, and he walked towards the place where Tsunade was lying, and knelt down beside her. She was too far beyond the power of ordinary healing. But that didn't matter much. He preferred it that way, and a little smile flicked across his child-like lips, that didn't belong to a child at all.

She had once saved his life, by allowing him into her body. Now he would return the gesture. Now he would be saving hers.

The boy, who was not a boy put his small hand on the dying woman's forehead. The hand vanished. Followed by the rest of the spirit's human shape.

The moment the boy had disappeared, the woman opened her eyes with a start.

She hoisted herself upright, wincing slightly at the pain, although that pain that had seemed so much more unbearable only a few seconds ago, and looked around.

The forest clearing was silent and peaceful, the early morning sun just forcing its way through the leafy trees.

A voice in the back of her head spoke to her.

You didn't think I'd let you go that easily, did you?

Thank you, she thought, with tears in her eyes.

Thank you.