ii.

Chapter Two: Self-Sufficient (Loneliness)

"You don't need water to feel like you're drowning, do you?"

Nanami didn't know how old she was really; it's not like they celebrated birthdays (a lost concept that was only a distant, foreign one now) and the first few years of this life had a dim sort of recall that she supposed meant her undeveloped brain hadn't been up to the task of clear thought processes. She could walk, and speak simple things in the language here when she chose too. Some words she learned in passing, others she knew from her travels in the life before. (Japanese wasn't something she'd studied, although she'd heard it enough when she indulged in one of her few indoor hobbies.)

She thought maybe she was four. (She guessed.)

It was not long after she received her name that the day had come.

Nanami stood over her mother's still form in the darkened alley, and there was no swirl that came from her center. No ebb and flow of comfort and cool spring air. Just cold, stiff flesh. She said no words, for she had none to give, but she rolled the woman towards her when she would not wake. Her mother's body had become skeletal over the winter, what food they had she had selflessly given to her daughter. Nanami wasn't much better off, but then again she was alive. And her mother- clearly, was not.

Still… it was spring now, and they had been so close to coming out of it together…

She felt a pang of regret for… something. (everything) Maybe that she couldn't change the life her mother lead, or provide more for their little two person family unit, but she was young; barely outside of being a toddler. Her choices had always been few and she knew that this day would come. The day she would be left alone.

So she left, but not before placing a yellow wildflower in the woman's hands that she'd procured from a nearby drainage ditch. She bowed before the body, and silently thanked her in her last life's language for all the care she had provided, all the love she had tried to show her only daughter.

And then Nanami returned to the wilds where she belonged.

Nanami had more than her name she realized with some comfort a week into her sadly claimed freedom. (a victory as much as it was a failure)

She realized this as little hands gathered together wild warabi along a river's edge. She carefully and painstakingly cleared all of the leaves from the edible fern, and washed the stems in the shallows of the rushing water. A small fire crackled through a particularly wet bit of foliage behind her.

Yes, Nanami realized, she had a name, and she had knowledge.

There was no one in this place, she knew with some amount of relief as well as trepidation. (She brushed away the creeping loneliness as she had many times before, in more than one life without hesitation.)

She didn't know how far she'd left Wave behind, but after begging her way onto a small riverboat oared by a fisherman in exchange for a handful of wineberries, and traveling on foot as far away from any road as she could get for an entire week- she figured that she was probably a decent distance. She was a small thing, (just a child) but she'd burned with a single minded determination to leave and be away from that god forsaken place. Which had led her to walking as long as there was light to see by for seven days.

She was tired, her calves burned, and she was sweaty and dirty. Her feet bore the callouses of a hard life with no shoes, but even those appendages were at her limit. She stopped at dusk by yet another river- this place had a lot of rivers she thought distantly. (It sparked a dim memory somewhere, before that too faded.)

It was here, waist deep in the cold river that she came face to face with another thing in this life she didn't know how to accept.

The man came from the treetops. Jumping down from the high boughs to land at the water's edge like it was nothing- like it wouldn't have broken both the legs of any normal human being.

He felt like sun warmed but ridged stone arching proudly into the shade of an autumn tree.

Nanami skittered away, afraid. She wadded backwards, towards where she'd left her clothing to dry. The man didn't move, but his eyes followed her, reflecting a concern she wasn't used to seeing outside of kind old ladies and her late young mother.

"Daijōbu desu ka?" he called to her, and she thought she knew the words, but his dialect was heavy and the words spoken in a rush. She'd heard the words before, (maybe?) but never directed at her. The man looked confused, and Nanami thought it looked kind of fetching on his handsome face. He had deep raven black hair and milky white eyes. Those eyes looked around at the surrounding trees, as if he could see something she couldn't. She thought maybe… she should recognize them. It seemed… familiar?

He wore odd clothing, with hems wrapped in bandages and fishnet peeking out from the neckline. She thought he must be well off to afford anything other than simple kimonos or rags.

"Anata wa ushinawa rete imasu ka?" He called again crouching down in the gravel at her eye level, and the lit to his voice told her it must be a question, but she didn't know how to reply. He spoke to quickly, with an accent unlike the one in Wave. So she shook her head, newly cleaned sandy brown hair swaying around her chubby face, and reached for her still damp threadbare kimono that she'd left to sun on a relatively clean rock. She pulled it on quickly before exiting the water, not that it did much more than make her clothes wet again, the water was clear enough to see through.

"Watashi wa… yoku h-hanasu ikemasen…" She repeated the memorized words to the man, stumbling over them with childish lips and tongue. Words from a past life and past travels. I don't speak well… at least, she was pretty sure that's what it meant.

If anything the man looked even more confused. His brow furrowed beneath strange white bandages wrapped across his forehead, and took another look around the clearing, and when he seemingly didn't find what he was looking for he turned back to her.

"Daijōbu ni narudarou" He said slowly this time, and she picked it apart through his thick accent enough to recognize the simple reassurance. It's going to be okay.

"Watashi o shinjite," He said, holding up his hands so she could see his empty palms.

And then he walked across the surface of the water.

She couldn't help the gasp that escaped her in startled surprise. "What the hell!" She cried out, English heavy on her tongue as she sprang backwards- tripping in her haste, and scrambling with little hands and feet away from the… the-

Freaking- wizard! Or something!

He visibly hesitated for a moment, bobbing up lightly as the rushing water crested up and down. Nanami stared at him with wide eyes and mouth hanging open.

"Watashi wa Konoha no shinobi desu…" He told her haltingly hands still up in the air in a disarming gesture as he stepped onto the solid earth of her side of the river, a scant few feet away. Then he turned his arm so she could see the metal plate sewn into his shirt sleeve.

Konoha.

He had said Konoha.

He had said he was a ninja from Konoha.

What.

"I'm… dreaming?" She breathed staring at the swirled leaf engraving. Because, this had to be a dream. Or maybe after everything, after all she'd managed to live through this time she'd finally cracked. (or maybe she'd always been insane)

That had to be it.

But… then again…

Water country… land of waves… now she knew why it had sounded so familiar. The weird sense of things she had sometimes…

The man had just walked on water for fucks sake.

He had blind white eyes which he used to see just fine. Hyuuga. She realized her own wide eyes staring into his milky concerned ones.

"Konoha?" She spoke after a few moments. He seemed to be waiting for her to make the next move. She figured that was probably for the best, she felt pretty skittish right now. She hadn't heard another person speak in quite some time let alone had anyone declare themselves a native to a fictional universe.

Well… she had always wanted to travel.

"Yes." He reiterated softly. He took another step towards her, and she forced herself not to tense.

"Konoha is f-far away?" She continued to stumble childishly over the words. Even after hearing them coherently over the last few years, (although rarely spoken to her, she lamented not trying harder to learn now that she needed it.) she still didn't speak or understand it very well.

But she was curious to know, enough to attempt at the little Japanese she could speak to find out. That mythical place she'd only seen on hotel TV's and read about in glossy books while tucked deep into the far corners of nowhere.

A small smile tugged at the corners of his lips, and for a moment she was stunned to see some actually smile. At her.

How… novel.

"Sūjitsu" He said with that same smile, and she had no idea what it meant, but she liked the sound of his soft voice anyways.

He hesitated again, eyes sweeping out into the trees. "Tabun..." he amended himself, wide milky eyes landing back on her. She knew this word was something like 'maybe'

"Yori nagaidesu" He seemed to say more to himself than to her.

"Watashi to kite?" He added in a rush after looking up over them at a hawk that circled a few times in an odd pattern before gliding away beyond the tree line. It seemed to mean something to him, because his demeanor tensed slightly, he looked more haggard, stressed, like he had somewhere to be.

Nanami startled again at his words after taking a long moment to repeat them to herself out loud and much slower under her breath.

He wanted her to come with him? To Konoha? Why?

She felt the suspicion bred into her from this world rear its ugly head.

"Why?" She questioned him with narrowed eyes, bringing herself to stand again and taking a few quick steps backwards; undoing the progress he'd made towards her. His hands quickly came back up from where they'd come to rest at his sides. Palms out and facing her.

Nanami knew this meant nothing in the long run, if he really was a ninja, or shinobi as he called himself- he could kill her without any effort.

She was only a child after all.

"Doko ka safe." He said slowly, carefully as if catching the mistake to his rushed words earlier. There was the sound a crowing bird in the distance, and he looked up and away from her, murmuring something that she assumed was probably a cuss word.

She definitely needed to learn some of those.

He said something else to her, but she was too busy backing up and shaking her head in the negative. She didn't know this man, she wasn't going anywhere with him.

The only thing she knew about shinobi and the village hidden in the leaves was in a book from another lifetime, and Nanami didn't trust that anywhere but on her own would truly be safe.

The Konoha shinobi made a frustrated, strangled noise, he made a slow aborted gesture like he might reach for her, but stopped himself.

He sighed then, and swung a bag from one shoulder to place it on the ground. He crouched before it, and began to dig around through it. Nanami, despite what she knew was in her best interests felt her curiosity perk.

What was he doing?

She watched him warily from a distance as he began to draw out items and place them aside. A blanket, several little bars wrapped in dull foil, and what she recognized was a kunai. She tensed at the last item, watching warily as he placed it on the ground. He stood with his bag, and backed away from the pile on the ground.

He gave her a sad, pitying smile.

"Chūi shite kudasai," He turned, and added with a last casual wave, "Jā matane"

And he was gone just as quickly as he'd come.