Chapter 18

The sun was dim upon the balcony on the eve of winter when I met Ohashi. I remember staring into her eyes and trailing down the supple softness of her neck, uncovered without fear. I remembered the curvature of her breasts, the tips dipping in a perky nature from underneath the silk of a well-crafted kimono. If I hadn't already been informed, I would have never expected someone so beautiful to be a courtesan.

I remembered when I met her she had been smiling. It was odd, to see a smile after being taken by force from an older gentleman who had never been with a girl younger than 12. I doubted he cared that I was unable to cry, but I believed that tears would have spurned him even worse.

Sakimono Haji was the man who took my hand, spurring me with sweet whispers as he whisked me away from one brothel to another. He had said my potential was being wasted in the presence of the lowly filth of the poor districts. He said my beauty was meant to be spoiled in wealth and gold.

Being the naïve 10 year old, I of course believed him. A part of me still believed that I would catch someone's eye and they take me back to their home and raise me.

That naïve part of me still believed in a fantasy where parents would happily adopt a sullied whore from Nichijou's district. It was a belief that turned to ashes in my mouth.

I believed so many lies by the time I met Ohashi Hana. The beautiful Tayū that still had it in her to smile whilst she was pelted with wealth and affection. She looked upon me like that of a mother, catching sight of their child for the first time. She looked upon guests as if she were the temptress, waiting in the shadows to show them a piece of heaven on earth. She looked upon enemies as if they were a speck in the dark, swallowed whole as the moon went down.

I wanted to be her.

The thought was so incredibly stupid when I thought about it now. As if affection and wealth made a whore anything more than a whore.

Even now, I am not naïve enough to forget what I am, even if I'm free to think otherwise. The chains have been branded on my skin and embedded around my neck so that their markings never disappear. A ninja is nothing more than the village's whore and killing doesn't feel much different from fucking. They both give me the same kick of adrenaline that a 10 year old shouldn't have known.

But Ohashi was kind.

The kindest whore I had ever met, and no one had a bad thing to say about her. She was the first one to rename me 'Anomie' and mentioned that I looked like a freshly planted Sakura Blossom. It was a compliment I never knew, as the leaves that fell always regrow to beautiful splendor.

"It's easier to smile when you've accepted your place in the world," she had told me that mid winter. Her smile was sweet, like the first taste of chocolate melting against your tongue. She would run her fingers over the strings of the koto in such a elegant melody that I knew I wanted to one-day match. Her music always managed to sound like the soft weeping of a thousand Oiran.

"Do any Oiran ever escape? Do any live free lives in a distant land?" I remembered asking the naïve question and watching as Ohashi's eyes flickered up towards me with a smile so angelic and warm that it could have melted ice.

"There is no such thing as a free Oiran," Ohashi's voice was so delicate that it would take me years to realize the undertone of rage, just waiting beneath the brown hue of her irises. "Once you've become one of us, it follows you everywhere."

"I had a dream where my mother was still alive...she was stroking my hair and telling me that this was all a nightmare and that she never died and that I was never branded."

Ohashi's eyes hardened, but she continued playing the melody of Soutanshi on her koto with such brilliance that I wondered if her fingers were as nimble as magic. They were thin and her nails were bare, contrasting the ruby red of her lips and pale white of her face.

"You haven't seen the nightmare yet," Ohashi whispered as she stroked the cords as one would stroke a lover. "The nightmare comes with the shame when you realize that..." Her words faded into a dull muse over the musical strings. "When you realize that even if you were free, you's step right back on the threshold of this house because there is nothing else you can do and nowhere else you can go. We are the same...Anomie...and this all we will ever amount to...because this is all we are good at doing."

I never realized just how true her words were until I lived through them first hand.

The shackles of a whore still chained me into a groveling mess on the ground. Every time I tried to stand on my own, it was like the weight grew heavier.

Perhaps that was why Ohashi smiled so easily. Even after she was raped on the open market stalls, screaming for everyone to help, but they all just watched and ignored her cries. Even after she lost her daughter. Even after she was slapped and beaten by the man who had aided in seeding that same daughter. Even after a ninja stabbed her through her ribcage, she still had it in her to smile at me and whisper her last wish like some martyr just waiting for the sweet release of darkness.

I had begun to realize that perhaps the weight, crushing me to the ground, would only disappear when I die as well.

Ohashi was always kind.

Ohashi was always self-sacrificing.

Ohashi was always trying to do the right thing, but look where that got her.

The truth is, this world has no place for kindness. It has no place for mercy. It has no place for love or affection. Even if I make all the right choices, I will still die down in the mud where my feet trampled in the bog, tracking filth everywhere I step.

What use is any of it when all my paths lead to the same destination?

And now, as Anomie watched the folder of documents on her linage burn in the small fire she made with her bare hands, she finally felt nothing.

It was freeing, in a way, watching the black smoke trail up over the partition of leaves and to the sky above.

"Are you done?" Kabuto's voice was cold and she glanced his way through the thickness of her lashes and in that moment she vaguely wondered how she must have looked to him. Her hair must have been tangled and her eyes no doubt held the remnants of bags from the lack of sleep since the Hokage's untimely visit a couple days ago.

"Patience is a virtue that must have skipped a generation seeing as you are an uptight four-eyed freak," Anomie stated in return and noticed his lips were still pulled into a smirk, but his eyes were so far from amused that she almost wondered if he was moments from taking her life.

Death didn't really sound so daunting.

"My clan...Orochimaru told me they were all dead. Those documents I just burned showed me otherwise," she stated, feeling the smoke whisk and swirl next to her face like a brother in arms as the scent of burning ink settled in a flare through her nostrils.

"They are as good as dead. They are still alive just in case Orochimaru needs their abilities to pass the borders. We all don't have your abilities to turn immaterial and travel wherever we want."

Her lips stretched into an unnatural smirk that felt like a part of her body, "So what? He's going to absorb their abilities or something?"

"He's the only reason they and you are alive right now," Kabuto's words were like poison and Anomie felt its weight against the chill in her chest, flickering with a forgotten and heated rage.

She bit it down as easily as she had once let ugly men touch her and she smiled as easily as she had the morning after a rape.

"Quite correct," she said smoothly, controlling her breath and keeping her hands unclenched as she ignored the fact that she was seconds away from strangling the breath from his four-eyed face. The only reason I am alive is me. No one else but me. "I only meant that there is still uses of a dead clan walking. I would like to tap those uses before the dead clan...stops walking or floating. Whatever incorporeal men do these days. You'll find I'm rather out of the Iburi inner circle."

In a way, my snarky attitude was the beginning of a façade that I took up so I could cover up the fact that I was moments from falling apart. I'd rather have my body cave in on itself than show a weakness to someone I didn't trust.

"You want me to take you to them?" Kabuto's lips curled into a smile that seemed a little bit fake, as she was a master at picking up when she was being made a fool.

"I don't want anything from you. I want to see Orochimaru. I assume he's on the run after all the alleged accusations the village has thrown on his shoulders," Anomie stated simply.

"Alleged?" Kabuto's smirk didn't miss a beat. "You are quite perceptive."

And here the lies come.

"Who was the cause of the experiments? As I know it wasn't Orochimaru," Anomie said this smoothly, and took a step forward.

"Danzo. A village elder that I'm sure you of all people should know of," Kabuto answered and she raised a brow with vague recollection of the village elder who had successfully managed to undermine the Hokages before him and send her on some of the most controversial missions of her Anbu years.

"Quite...Danzo is quite the man," was all she said, and Danzo's name tasted strange in her mouth. He tasted like iron and steel, merging in between a salty ocean drowning out the sunlight and deep into the earth where roots formed in between thick bogs and wet wounds.

His name tasted like decay and desperation and defeat in the arms of broken children crying out for their mothers that are long dead from a war that never really ended.

"Is it wrong that I am curious of my linage and abilities that they might know and I have yet to learn?" Anomie asked, and it wasn't a complete degraded lie, but it was just enough to spread a sickness over her belly and through her lungs, suctioning them off like a vacuum. It was just enough. Her lungs became a plastic bag, full of air and squeezed with tight fists.

But she was used to the absence of air and her lips spread into a calm smile.

"Any abilities they could teach you, Orochimaru could over shadow. You have no need for bonds with a dying clan who can offer you nothing." Kabuto answered shortly.

But Anomie obtained the information she wanted. "He's going to kill them...every last one?" She pictured the scene in her mind, and the only thing that would drive a man to that was between life and death.

He was injured.

"I see...I'm back up, aren't I? Just in case he's unable to absorb their abilities? That's what I'm for?" She asked and she found herself smiling.

"Is that a huge issue? As far as I can tell, you are practically begging for death. You followed me without much question and here you stand, as if you could die at any moment and you don't care," Kabuto's response made her smile disappear as quickly as a moving ripple in water.

"It's like you said. I am only alive because of him. My life is for him to do with it as he wills. I'm not too concerned with you to be honest," she replied after no hesitation. "You are like smoke from a tiny candle. Everything about you screams small and insignificant."

"You have quite the mouth on you."

"I've had years of practice and you are just not very impressive at first glance. Now enough talk. I would like to get out of the land of Fire."

"I can only lead you in the general direction. I'm undercover and working my way to Anbu and if I'm caught with you...well, your reputation couldn't be good for my image."

"Is that jealousy I hear? I can understand that. You're as bland and reflective as a mirror," Anomie's response made him show the first most visible motion of anger and it made her lips curl into a small and insignificant smirk. "There it is. There's no need being false with me, Kabuto. I'm like a mirror too. I just reflect what others see."

"Continue going north. You will reach the boundary between the Fire country and the Land of Rice. You'll know you're in the right place if you find the great chasm near a small river. There you will know you are close to the Hidden Sound village."

"I've never heard of the Sound village."

"That's why I called it hidden," he answered without a trace of kindness.

"I can't expect that's all you want me to do. Out with his orders."

"This forest is crawling with Konoha ninja, looking for him. You are known for your assassination tactics. Be useful and quiet about making this forest as easy for Lord Orochimaru to escape through."

"You want me to kill Konoha ninja."

"We have full faith that you will be more than up for the task."

Or die trying. There's no coming back from this and I can't imagine that the Third will be happy about my actions.

"I understand. There's really not much else to talk about. Goodbye, four-eyes," Anomie winked, an action that had a bit too much sass for her liking, but it succeeded in making Kabuto break his mask once more and let out an uncharacteristic snarl that could have come from a rabid beast rather than a man.

Her body went up into smoke and in that moment of incorporeal hue, she was free. She was unshackled by her stupid fate and her actions.

There was no going back from the blood of Rin's village on her hands, but she wasn't entirely sure she cared anymore.

»»⎯⎯⎯¤⎯⎯⎯««

Kakashi wasn't certain how to react to the fear that clapped in his gut when he met the legendary Sannin face first. It didn't seem to matter that the man was injured from his fight with the Third and that blood was soaking through his vest just over his shoulder.

After all that, Orochimaru's blade still cut through Kakashi's mask with such ease as if it were paper. In that moment, Kakashi was certain he was going to die. It was as clear as the sky was blue.

"I like the look in your eye," Orochimaru's voice was like a snake. "However I do not need a fake." His serpent slithered out from next to him, coiling around his form like an innocent pet as Orochimaru's tongue grazed against his kunai and licked up Kakashi's blood. "Do you want to see his blood as well?"

The fear spiked in Kakashi's lungs with such certainty that he began to wonder if this was going to be his last moment. To leave the world now felt like a last act of regret of things he had yet to do. He thought about a lot during his continued stare between himself and the Sannin.

He thought about Obito's obnoxious laugh and empty threats.

He thought about Rin's obvious crush on him and her caring smile that revealed too much of her thoughts.

He thought about Gai's pointless dribble and petty rivalry.

He thought about Kinoe, the boy with his wood technique that could one day save this village if he got out from Danzo's clutches of Root.

And yes. He thought about Anomie and just the memory of her rare smile brought an ember to his throat, setting his mind on fire with the smell of her hair and the taste of her lips. It was a bitter and cruel memory that made him wonder if the last thing he had see from her was a frown and a heated scowl. He could still remember her deadpan humor that never failed to break his usually iron mask. He could still remember her fingers ghosting against his face after Rin died when she held him in her arms and didn't let go until sunset.

Before Orochimaru could bring out the final attack, his snake opened its giant gaping mouth and on its tongue was an explosive seal that nearly froze both Kakashi and the Sannin before they snapped into motion. Kakashi felt the force of it hit him with a wave that sent him flying on his back, but nearly unharmed while Orochimaru was not so lucky as to come out unscathed and blood leaked over his vest with such splatter that a puddle began to form on the forest down below. It looked to have only hit his side, and it didn't seem to be a fetal injury, but Orochimaru was more so surprised that the Third Hokage had planted such a trap.

Kakashi could still feel he was no match, but he refused to become a coward and he forced his body up, "don't move!" Orochimaru didn't so much as twitch as he continued walking closer, holding his side in his fist.

Blood trailed down Kakashi's head, and he was vaguely aware of his forming concussion, but it was Orochimaru's snake like eyes that weighed heavily on Kakashi's heart and paralyzed him with a crushing fear as the yellow of the Sannin's eyes glared him down.

And Orochimaru walked right past him as if he was nothing and Kakashi couldn't move because at that moment, he felt like nothing.

By the time Kakashi finally regained a sense of control to turn around and fight, the Sannin was gone.

»»⎯⎯⎯¤⎯⎯⎯««

The bandages covering Kakashi's eye wound tight as he stood with his fellow Anbu as the Third Hokage set out his orders to begin looking for Orochimaru, who was currently on the run an injured. Kakashi doubted he'd be able to make it far in his state, and he knew by the sound of urgency in the Third's voice, that they would have only this fleeting chance to capture the Sannin before he escaped into territory where Konoha ninja wouldn't be welcome.

"According to Intel reports, Orochimaru is seriously wounded and he will not be able to leave the land of Fire easily," the Third's eyes were shadowed under his hat, and Kakashi vaguely wondered what it must feel like to fight against someone he trusted. "Know this. The knowledge, data, and Jutsu that Orochimaru possesses are a valuable asset to the Hidden Leaf. If possible, bring him back alive. If he leaves the Land of Fire...it will be a fatal blow to those in Konoha. This must be settled before he crosses the nations borders." The Third's voice rose with urgency. "Do your best.

"Scatter." And with the Hokage's last word, everyone did as ordered.

It was only after the Anbu were all gone, that Danzo, who had stood by the Third silently before, spoke up. "You must love your former student quite a lot if you had failed in apprehending him before. And you must have already realized that some Anbu were missing during the meeting."

The Hokage glanced his way, his eyes slightly narrowed in exhaustion.

"I found two Anbu bodies, butchered outside the smoke child's apartment. Perhaps she went to follow her master and if she did, it was in fact your fault for being so lenient with her suspicion."

"Of all people, you should be grateful I am so very lenient." The Third said no more as he continued walking forward.

"Everything I have done has been for the Leaf." Danzo said simply.


Author's Note

キンレンカ (Kinrenka) In English, or rather it's scientific term, it's called Tropaeolum majus or Indian Cress or Nasturtiums. I swear, who names flowers and why can't they stick with one name?

Plants in this genus have showy, often intensely bright flowers, and rounded, peltate (shield-shaped) leaves with the petiole in the centre. The flowers are bisexual and zygomorphic, with five petals, a superior three-carpelled ovary, and a funnel-shaped nectar spur at the back, formed by modification of one of the five sepals.

And according my Flower meanings chart, it means resignation.

Nasturtiums were once known commonly as "Indian cresses" because they were introduced from the Americas, known popularly then as the Indies, and used like cress as salad ingredients. John Gerard called the plant "Indian Cresses" in his herbal. He wrote: "unto the backe part (of the flower) doth hange a taile or spurre, such as hath the Larkes heele, called in Latine Consolida regalis.[8] He was comparing the flowers of Indian cress to those of forking larkspur (Consolida regalis) of the buttercup family. J R R Tolkien commented that an alternative anglicization of the name was "nasturtian" rather than "nasturtium".

Anyway, this chapter was depressing to write cause I've put my character in a place I personally would hate to be in, but I have began the healing process of her character as healing was always something she's actively fought against. I've also divulged a bit more into Ohashi's character, which is something I've wanted to do for a while now since Ohashi was one of Anomie's only parental (I feel gross calling it parental since they had a very different relation in my notes) relationship and it will eventually tie into how she acts in the future.

So far, I've made her like a doppelgänger in the sense that she is just a shadow of everything else and she's never really had much personality before Rin showed up. So her character will be going through a shift so she's stronger in the future.

Ah, Kakashi x Anomie will be in the next chapter~ I promise.

Sort of ^-^

Thank you all for reading! .