Chapter 20
Anomie lost the ability to cry or feel something as remote as sorrow flood through her bones. If anything, she was numb to pain, but the flavor of blame stuck in her mouth when the night rose over a sorrowful moon as she stared into the depth of that blue sphere. The only thing that made any movements was the blood that dripped down her shoulder and soaked through her clothing by the time Orochimaru's form drifted through the opening of the trees.
Seeing Orochimaru limp through the leaves made Anomie feel something akin to relief course through her veins with untimely grace. It only succeeded in making her let out a sigh of relief that felt so out of place that she became sickened with herself for that same emotion.
Orochimaru leaned against a tree, his eyes darting over Anomie's form with a gaze vacant of his usual amusement. "You made it past the border," Anomie's words were swift and haunting as she watched Orochimaru stagger through the barrier of trees. "Did you run into any trouble?" She thought back to every Anbu Ninja she took down. "Was it an Anbu?"
"Only an old teammate. You are familiar with the Sannin Jiraiya, are you not?" Orochimaru said the name with full intent of bitterness that caused Anomie to slightly pause.
"Did you not absorb the Iburi abilities? They were ripe for the picking," she said instead and Orochimaru frowned, clutching his side even though the bleeding had stopped.
"I was interrupted by an annoyance. I only gained a small portion, it was enough to get this far at least," Orochimaru sighed, glancing towards the wound on her shoulders. "It seems you ran into trouble as well."
"More annoyances rather than actual trouble," Anomie sighed, leaning her back against a nearby tree as she gazed up through the partition of trees. "You saw Jiraiya..." She finally pushed the nerve to ask, almost fearful of the answer. She didn't know if she could handle losing another mentor, not yet anyway. It felt like she was walking on a thin set of ropes and the slightest tug would make her stumble and fall into the dark abyss.
She still couldn't forget the look in Kakashi's eyes and it was a look she could have handled from any other living person. Not him. Hatred and confusion.
In that single glance, she grew certain that his flimsy confession had been a lapse of judgment. Love was weak and it was as brittle as glass. One slight, and it would shatter and the pieces pierced her feet as tried to walk away over the shards.
But it was no less than she deserved.
"Not yet," Orochimaru finally answered, his eyes glancing over to the partition of leaves before his hand snaked around Anomie's wrist and tugged her foreword, nearly causing her to lose her balance. It was only his hand that steadied her shoulder as his golden eyes burned into hers while he used a blade to slice a small trail over her wrist.
The blood oozed out from the parted skin as he dipped his pointer finger in the seeping red and used it to draw a quick seal over the noticeable burn mark that had once destroyed her curse mark.
"Five seconds," Orochimaru whispered as his lips tugged down and his eyes darted back to that partition of trees. His action drew her gaze to the forest where Jiraiya emerged five seconds later.
All traces of humor were replaced with a haunting barrage of disappointment as the man glanced in between Anomie and Orochimaru.
"Jiraiya," Orochimaru greeted with a smirk as if he were looking upon a good friend. The smirk was arrogant, but the look in Orochimaru's eyes was ruthless and aloof. "Always nice to see old teammates," and with that simple comment, Orochimaru's amusement was back with full force.
"You've gone too far Orochimaru..." Jiraiya sighed, as if the words pained him to utter out, but Anomie could see the hunt in Jiraiya's searching stare. He was obviously trying to find some sort of kinship in his old friend's gaze, but Orochimaru was empty of all that and all that was left was greed. When the search came up fruitless, Jiraiya's gaze rested on Anomie's stiff figure. "Anomie, you still have options. If you follow him there's no coming back from that. I know you're not a malicious person."
Anomie wanted to laugh until she cried, but her chest was empty and numb with the echo of Kakashi's eyes, glinting on the steel of his tanto as he attempted to attack her. "Then you obviously don't know me very well," Anomie replied. "I'm getting tired of repeating myself. There's no going back."
"Well said, An-chan," Orochimaru's fingers lightly traced her arm as he smirked. "Are you going to try and fight, Jiraiya?"
"If it means I get to knock some sense into you," Jiraiya retorted, taking out the scroll from his back. "I will do whatever is necessary. You have to come back to the village, Orochimaru. What do you hope to achieve?"
"You can fight all you like. I am after only one thing: power and immortality," Orochimaru replied simply.
"That's two things," Anomie stated in a deadpan, causing Orochimaru's smirk to waver in thought as his gaze trailed to her eyes.
"With one comes the other," Orochimaru replied simply with a growing smirk before glancing back to Jiraiya. "But I'm afraid today is not the day you die, Jiraiya."
Before the Toad Sage could so much as purse his lips, Orochimaru's Chakra surged like fire through the curse mark made of Anomie's blood. Before she could make any involuntary movements to tug her arm away, she felt his grip tighten as his lips pressed against her wound.
His tongue flicked across the thin skin over her wrist as his eyes connected with hers. His lips curled into a smirk and he winked right before his body erupted into a trail of smoke.
She glanced back towards Jiraiya, feeling physically drained. It took all she had to keep her knees strong enough to hold her body standing.
"Anomie." Jiraiya warned, and Anomie was almost too exhausted to reply.
"I'm sorry," she felt like she wasn't even apologizing to him. It felt more like a lament and her voice was a distant murmur.
Her body lost form and became smoke. In her weakened state she was forced to leave behind only one object that she had clutched in her hand in such a tight fist that it almost seemed impossible to pry away from the stiffness in her fingers.
It was a small, square charm that she barley realized she had been clutching.
It held her memories of Rin and Rin's smile, casting out as bright as ever as the girl had stitched it by hand. But it was more than that. Before Anomie left her apartment, she had burned everything that could have kept her scent, just in case trackers were to follow.
That charm was more than a memory. It was more than Rin. It was the last thing she had that showed she existed in Konoha.
And she watched it drop to the ground as she drifted through that same partition of trees.
Now there really was no going back.
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Kakashi wasn't certain how long he stared at the place Anomie had disappeared. The only thing left were her bloody footprints in the grass and next to it was the dead body of the Anbu fox he had failed to save.
What was worse was that fox had died by Kakashi's choice. He had every opportunity to have saved his brother in arms and the reason for his death haunted the thoughts in Kakashi's mind. It was a meaningless death that was brought about through Kakashi's inability to separate emotion from reason.
He died because Kakashi had weighed Anomie's life more valuable than a loyal comrade of the Leaf.
The dead bodies of the Anbu that littered the ground were his punishment. But as horrible as it made Kakashi feel—as if the self-loathing couldn't get any worse—they didn't matter.
Kakashi pressed his palm into his eyes and felt his knees finally give out as his form fell to the ground. The blood of his brothers soaked into his clothes and his palms pressed flat against the grass.
It was sickening and looking at the slit throat of his brothers filled him with disgust.
The disgust was violent with the knowledge that the only person in the world that he had ever yearned and longed to touch was the same person who caused the disgust.
He began to wonder if it was safer to never love anything.
Maybe all love does in the end is make people suffer.
Perhaps instead, he should just focus on the things he was good at...fighting.
»»⎯⎯⎯¤⎯⎯⎯««
Anomie closed her eyes shut as she felt her body lose its strength and she felt her palms scrap bloody across the bark of a tree. She let out a hiss of pain as she shook her head and attempted to right her Chakra and regulate her breathing.
The grass flattened underneath her as she pressed her back against the tree and squeezed her eyes shut, squeezing the light out from her gaze. Her brows were furrowed and she was able to feel the wind against her cheeks as if it were sandpaper, scraping into thin skin.
"There you are," the voice caused her eyes to crack open a tad as she rubbed her back against the tree. She forced the exhaustion away as paranoia crept into the depths of her mind and she attempted right her blurry vision.
Orochimaru had managed to weaken her chi with his curse mark that covered her wrist in black kanji and spirals. She had saw its mark had lingered after her blood had wiped away, and the place where she had been stabbed still lingered with an old pain.
But the boy's voice was soft and she forced it all away so she could gather the bits of her scattered pride.
"Orochimaru sent me to search for you," the boy was small, younger than her and his hair was a pale white and his eyes were a crisp emerald green. "I'm Kimimaru, you must be Iburi Fuyu."
"Fuyu is dead," Anomie mumbled out, her voice cracked as she tried to speak. And Iburi Fuyu is a name I've never had the right to.
"Who are you now?" He asked, raising a thin brow past the two adjacent red dots just above his temple.
"Just Anomie," she whispered back. I have no right to a surname. I have no right to utter a family name.
Kimimaru only stared at her with a vacant expression before he held out his hand for her to take. She only stared at it as if it were a foreign object before she reached over to place her palm in his grasp. The moment her skin brushed against his, she felt something jagged protrude from his knuckles.
It was a pure white and it took her a moment to realize that it was his bone.
Their eyes connected and Anomie felt something akin to understanding. She had never met someone with a blood ability outside of the Sharingan and the Byakugan, and both hardly involved mutating and transforming their body. Kimimaru obviously had no intention of his bones emerging from his skin and she pursed her lips.
"Where is Orochimaru?" She asked instead of a question of curiosity.
"Waiting for you," Kimimaru replied with minimal effort in lifting her body from the ground as his bones locked back in place. "Can you walk?"
"For him I'll run," because I have nowhere else to go.
»»⎯⎯⎯¤⎯⎯⎯««
"Why are you giving this to me?" Kakashi had never truly spoken two words with Jiraiya, so it was odd to see the legendary Sannin cornering him after his mission, holding onto a familiar charm with the kanji of protection. He could practically picture Anomie's surprised expression when Rin had handed it to her.
Anomie always seemed to take even the slightest acts of kindness with a grain of salt.
"She's like a ghost. Everyone had something to say about her, as if her presence was like a haunting dream," Jiraiya said simply. "But no one really knew her here. She didn't make any footsteps with anyone, but the Third Hokage said that you might know her more than the rest. This is the only thing left of her here. I have no right to it."
"What makes you think I'd want it?" Kakashi asked simply, and Jiraiya raised a brow.
"Orochimaru was my friend. He betrayed and tore down bonds every step of the way, but he was my friend." Jiraiya shrugged, his voice toneless, but Kakashi was starting to think there was more in the depths of his gaze than that. "There's nothing wrong with admitting that."
"She wasn't my friend. I barely knew her. If I did, then I wouldn't have been surprised when she slit my comrade's throat in front of me." Kakashi adjusted the strap of his Anbu mask, taking it off in one swift motion. It always seemed to grow more and more uncomfortable every time he wore it. "I have no need for trinkets."
But the skepticism continued in Jiraiya's gaze when Kakashi walked away.
And when Kakashi looked on his doorstep again nights later, the trinket rested on the matt, just on top of a book of Icha Icha Paradise, signed by the Toad Sage. Kakashi couldn't help but stare at it for what felt like an eternity. He wanted to burn it and he wanted to cry.
He wasn't sure what to do and more than anything he wanted to forget and repress the memories that surged with it. He hated the longing at the memory of Anomie's smile as she handed him porn. He hated desire of her touch when she stroked his face with the tips of her fingers.
He hated that she had seen him without a mask. He hated that he had allowed her to wedge her smile into his heart.
But still, he couldn't burn it all away. It was as much a part of him as her.
Author's Note
Omg. I tried to add a bit of humor during the part between Jiraiya, Orochimaru, and Anomie. I'm laughing cause her "that was two things" was such a pre-death of Rin thing for her to say.
This chapter was short, but that's cause this will be the end of part 1, so the next chapter will be the beginning of part 2.
Tsutsuji (つつじ) or in English, Azalea. It means Romance, Short-lived passion, Infatuation, Quick and fleeting love (ephemeral), Symbol of womanhood in China, Take care of yourself for me, Temperance (self-restraint)
Azalea flowers grow very quickly and easily, and when they are blooming, they are massively blooming. Much like infatuation. However, like infatuation, if not properly taken care of, they will die.
Ah, and this is my reply to Nova's review. Since you weren't a user of , this is the only way I can answer you~ and cause your review was so sweet and long, I decided to include it in my Author's note:
Thank you very much for your comment.
I am very happy to hear that you found Anomie's character fascinating and I appreciate that my hard work that I spent developing her character was liked~! I feel like people enjoying a author's character (not necessarily liking or understanding them tho) is one of the highest achievements an author to hear.
You said Anomie's name fell into the trap of specifically naming your character to show their uniqueness, and while I agree the name is unique, I personally don't find it out of place in a Naruto fanfic. And~ in chapter 20, I explained why she was named 'Anomie'.
The reason I don't mind unique Japanese names (as long as the author doesn't name their character something ridiculous like 'Beth' or 'Shadow' or 'Desdemona' lol) then I don't think there's anything wrong with odd and more unknown names, because even as a native Japanese speaker (which I am), a name like 'Orochimaru' is really weird. Or a name like "Vegeta" is hilariously weird, and writers do it all the time if the name fits in with the world they are writing about.
I've never met someone who chose their kid's name to be 'Naruto' (unless the kid was specifically named after the character in the show) when I was in Japan.
I don't know, I think there's a limit to how much over the line a character can get until they pass into 'unique name because my OC is the 10 tailed kitty cat "meowmix". Aha.
BUT~ I love constructive criticism, so keep it coming~
And you're quite right, Anomie is more fitting for her because the aspects that made her Fuyu have wilted away. Fuyu's such an innocent name~
I'm not sure if her fitting the broken bird, TV trope is supposed to be a bad thing~ but I'll take it.
She's a bit different from a broken bird in a couple aspects that I have yet to publish, but they are in my notes~ ^_^
I love those personalities traits in female characters, and I feel like writers are sometimes afraid to make their character strong in fanfictions because of the fanfictions that pushed the limits of a Mary Sue Naruto OC, which kind of ruined the originality of many stories.
But I'm a huge feminist and liberal thinker, so I'm all about making the female characters human and complex with a very relaxed sexual preference. Anomie's in specific, I hadn't meant for her to come with a chillax sexuality in the beginning, but because I'm bisexual, I find rigidly straight characters difficult to write for lol
I actually didn't realize how many analogies I've had Anomie say until you mentioned it. I suppose I read too much Dante's Inferno while I was growing up. Aha.
And yes, I agree with you on Kishimoto's point of view when he wrote that he set his manga out to be idealistic view of the world, untouched by many true horrors that happen during war and that happen to girls during poverty. I also wanted to touch on the backlash of being a really pretty girl in society, because that's another thing that writers tend to dance around is depicting a beautiful girl whose comfortable with her body and her sexuality.
There are many stories where the girl has so many self-confidence issues in her body, and it's wonderful and touching to be able to read about people with your same issues, but I know many girls who are perfectly comfortable with how they look and their self-confidence isn't their main issues.
I wanted a female antagonist with a free sexuality who isn't moved by pretty words and deceptive lies. That's where Anomie derived from.
You are right about rape being a poorly handled topic in today's writing, and that's such a sad thing to read because a poorly approached rape topic is rather offensive and just unrealistic. I don't like when rape is used as a stepping stone for the female character and the male character to create drama and make the female out to be the damsel in distress.
Especially since the last thing rape victims think about is some hawt piece of ass trying to win them over.
I am so happy that my approach to rape was taken the way you took it. If someone had told me that I had poorly handled it, I would have done some serious rereading (more than I already do) and edited it until it became something that I could be proud to release. Rape is a huge component to this story, so if you had told me I did it horribly, I might of moved this story to drafts for a while lol :D
And you asked if she was going to get better and that she'd heal overtime, and yes, I am a firm believer of the healing process. I just don't believe that she needs saving to do it.
I agree, I find AnomeXRin to be my favorite pairing, and you're probably right. There was a part of Anomie that probably was in love with Rin. She loved Rin like a sister, she loved Rin like a friend, she loved Rin like a lover. Mostly, she loved Rin as a person.
A girl's gotta protect female friendships~ They are the most important relationships~! ^_^
Kakashi and Anomie are such an unhealthy pairing~ they have so many wrongs that the only thing that could possibly heal their broken bond is Anomie maybe being truthful to him for once.
I hate unhealthy relationships to be honest, so I would never force one together until their partnership became healthy.
So far, the only problem in their relationship is that Anomie needs to chill.
Dying redemption are rather fun to write, but I'm not sure how this ending will play out. I have possible lists of endings in my head.
We'll see how this story ends together I guess.~ ^_^
