A/N: Well… Thanks to those who wished me a happy birthday, I had a blast at my party. :) Um… Yeah. Reviews piling up again. ;; Didn't reply to any because I didn't want to accidentally give spoilers, like I said.
Oh, and I lied about being back on the regular schedule. You'll get an interlude on Thursday, and then be back on schedule. ;p Hm, I'm running out of chapters… DX
-o-
I didn't say anything to Isane until we reached Suna, its sentinel cliffs glowering down at us for bringing a traitor into their midst.
A traitor… Was that what she was? Technically, I suppose. A traitor to her village. What would that make her here?
"What about Hitotsu and Onaji?" I remarked without really paying attention.
She looked startled, then flashed a halfhearted grin. "Meh, they'll be just fine. In fact," she went on brightly, "Hit-kun's probably happy. I bet he's plotting to get rid of Ji-kun next."
I glanced at her to see if she was joking. I couldn't tell.
We entered Suna with heavy hearts and were converged upon by jōnin and medic-nin. Chie-sensei had carried Eiri home; the rest of us had offered to do it, had wanted to do it, but a body carried by three children was… slow-going.
I caught sight of Gaara standing a little ways away, a large, dark bundle at his feet. I disentangled myself from the medics—though I greatly wished to let them have their way with me: They were prescribing pain-killers and sleep—and trudged over to him.
The bundle was a person, covered in blood. He had dark hair and eyes glazed over in death, sightlessly accusing me of betrayal.
The fake Abura.
"What a lovely welcome home gift," I said, and turned my face away.
-o-
When I got back to Isane, she was staring at something in the palm of her hand. I peered at it, trying to figure out what it was. It seemed to be some sort of dried plant—something leafy and green, at least, though with a poisonous orange tinge.
"Kori-chan, do you know what I'm supposed to do now?" she said quietly. "Poison the Council member. Throw your village into chaos, so mine can succeed." She wouldn't look at me. "My last mission."
Silence, for a minute. Then she dropped the plant to the earth and deliberately ground it into dust.
"I've already given them up once today, eh, Kori-chan? Once more can't hurt."
She turned away. I didn't know where she was going to go.
I suddenly had very different problems.
"You lied to me," Abura snarled, staring me straight in the eye. "You told me he was alive!" Incandescent sparks flickered and danced around his fingers; I eyed them warily.
"Abura-kun," I said quietly. "I'm a liar. And if you'd kept standing there, you would've been dead, too." I took a deep breath.
"I've seen you dead once today, and Kami help me, Pyro, I could not handle it."
His shoulders sagged; the sparks winked out. "The fake me," he mumbled. "Who… Cheh, how did he die?"
So he hadn't noticed. Good. "A jōnin spotted him hanging around, trying to make sure Gaara didn't leave and spoil their plans. His stories didn't hold up understand questioning." His jutsu had, though. I wondered why.
"Are they—Cheh, it's your fault," he spat suddenly, anger rekindling in his eyes. I just looked at him, startled. "You needed to stand around so we could explain, instead of—cheh, instead of leaving and not giving them time to come attack! Or… or if you had cared more about—about, cheh, common sense and your village and your friends than that damn monster, you would have checked and—and saved us—all of us…"
Dark, smoldering fury raged in his smoky blue eyes. I knew why he was blaming me, I think. Because if I wasn't to blame, who was? Whose fault could it be?
In Abura's mind, only his. After all, Eiri had sacrificed those few precious moments to save the pyro instead of himself.
So I stood there. I stood there while his gaze rained fire down on my bowed head and I took the blame.
"OK," I said. "It's all my fault."
-o-
I don't know what they said at the funeral.
It was unusual. A funeral for a ninja—it was unusual.
Because the bodies—they never came home.
That's why everyone was there, I think. Every shinobi who'd ever lost a squadmate, every civilian who'd ever lost a friend. This was a tribute to every shinobi who'd died alone with no one to mark their graves.
And they talked. They all talked and talked and talked—even the ones who never said a word, they all talked—their expressions, their faces—oh, their eyes.
I tried to file it all away in my memory, to record it for—for Eiri—but I couldn't. I don't even know what I said—yes, I spoke, I spoke, I said something out loud but it was all lost in the crying and the sobbing and the roaring in my ears.
I remembered.
I remember—I heard someone say he was the greatest among us, and I almost laughed. I choked instead.
He was a genin, a genin, thirteen, he wasn't the greatest among anyone.
He might've been. He could've been.
He wasn't.
I didn't cry.
I wasn't allowed to cry.
Twenty-fifth rule of Shinobi Conduct. 'No matter what happens, true shinobi must never, ever show their emotions. The mission is the only priority. Carry that in your heart. And never, never shed a tear.'
I remembered that.
And then I cried.
I stood there and watched them carve his name into the Hero's Stone, acknowledging he had died in battle like a true shinobi.
He was a genin. A child.
Just like the rest of us.
Abura lit the funeral pyre with a spark that twisted and grew and raged, consuming our teammate, our friend, our brother in a rampant storm of fire. He fed chakra into that blaze like it was life-force that could bring Eiri back.
Most people stepped away, rebuffed by the intensity of the flames. Abura didn't. Chie-sensei didn't. Isane didn't.
I didn't.
His family didn't either, his mother and father and little sister, none of whom I could bear to look at it. The teachers from the Academy—even the ones who hadn't known him—they stayed, too. They looked into Eiri's quiescent face and wondered how many more students they'd see go to the grave.
I knew the answer: Too many.
That pyre burned for days. Abura sat there through it all, feeding it, making it grow. I don't know where he found the chakra; after two days, he was the only one who could take the heat, impossibly intense. Isane stood as close as possible, too, gazing; I brought them both food every day, watching Eiri burn.
Of course, Eiri was long gone. What Abura burned now were his weapons, casting chakra into the fire until the steel softened and melted and finally drifted away into the empty desert air, chasing Eiri's ghost.
-o-
After the funeral, Gaara followed me home.
I knew he was there, and he didn't make much of an effort to hide himself. I didn't acknowledge him; I kept hoping he would give up and leave me alone to cry myself to sleep.
He didn't.
So instead of entering my house, setting him on my mother—or my mother on him, depending—I climbed to the roof and lay on the cold stone and stared at the clear desert sky. Gaara sat nearby, cross-legged and quiet, as he'd been every night I'd seen him when I was little.
"Abura-kun said once," I mumbled, "that Eiri was a point-and-shoot ninja. We just put weapons in his hands and send him on his way."
"All shinobi are like that," Gaara pronounced quietly. I didn't say anything.
"That… girl," he said finally, and from the concentration in his voice, I knew he was going to be asking some hard questions. "The one you… brought…"
"Isane?"
"Yes…" He frowned. "She… loved him?" The word sounded odd coming from his mouth.
"Yeah," I said. "She does."
He was trying to form a question, so I saved him the trouble. "Young people… don't usually love the same person really long periods of time." I sat up, looked at him, made sure he was listening. "Yes, we're thirteen. But we're also ninja. We grow old early and don't change a whole lot. With a few obvious exceptions, of course."
"That is… strange."
I lay back again, looked up at the stars. "I know, isn't it? We adapt and alter and modify ourselves every day to save our lives, but we've already molded ourselves to our orders and our fate and we never really grow without… emotion…" I was silent for a moment. "I was never good with that rule."
It suddenly occurred to me that I was having a conversation with Gaara—and no arguments or threats of death hung over our heads. It was… It was actually quite pleasant, but it made me nervous.
I opened my mouth to protest it, but he cut me off.
"Why did you… become a shinobi?"
"Because my mother made me," I said promptly. The reason I joined, not the reason I stayed. "Why did you?"
He was silent a moment. I thought he wasn't going to answer.
"To be… the demon."
No surprises there. What else was he going to do with that chakra, run an animal shelter?
We were silent for a time, me plotting my escape. However, I had no chance to put my plan into action, as he, surprisingly, spoke again.
"My mother… wanted me to kill."
I froze.
"Gaara-sama," I said carefully. "Do you really want to tell me about your mother?"
He looked confused. "Isn't that what's… fair?"
I sat up, blinked at him. "But… I didn't tell you anything about my mother. I just said… she made me become a shinobi."
"That says… a lot."
Slumping back down, I returned my gaze once more to the stars. "Yeah, I guess it does."
