Chapter 31
The sun was still in slumber when Anomie awoke. Kakashi's back was to her and she found the action of reaching towards him to touch his shoulder to be much too difficult. Instead, she reached into her bag and pulled out a summoning scroll. It was such a simple item, but she knew a single touch would send him back to that forest where Itachi was likely waiting for him.
When she went to grab his hand, his body disappeared in a cloud of smoke. The actual Kakashi made himself known as he walked into the cave, book in hand. She glanced towards him, slightly ashamed that she couldn't tell he had been a mere clone. "If you don't trust me, then just say so," Anomie stated with a cold bat of her lashes.
Kakashi sat next to the fire, his skeptical gaze lingering on her for a moment longer, "I don't trust you."
"I'm only trying to send you back. Are you not home-sick?" she said and when Anomie stood, the bags under her eyes became more apparent.
"You misunderstand—nothing has changed and I won't leave without fulfilling my mission," he replied and Anomie chuckled, her disheveled hair bobbing over her shoulders. She wanted to touch him when he spoke. Her fingers spoke for her when they twitched and fisted the material of the blanket.
"Do you want to kiss me as badly as I want to kiss you?" she asked and Kakashi frowned.
"Don't play games with me, Anomie," he commented.
Her smile disappeared and he saw her face go blank. "You know you want to kiss me. Who is playing the games here?"
He let out a sigh, "you are exhausting."
"How long have you pined for me Kakashi? Be honest. Is Orochimaru's location what you actually want cause I could make some rather juicy fantasies come true," she slipped her shoulder from her top, leaning forward as her white hair scattered over her skin. "I heal incredibly fast, you can thank Hashirama's Chakra infusions for that."
Anomie hadn't meant to admit to that, and she saw Kakashi's eyes slightly widen as the wheels in his brain began to put together what she said.
"You were one of Orochimaru's experimentations," he commented and she felt her face turn into a tepid frown. He had asked her if she had been in contact with Orochimaru in the past, before her life came crashing down. When she told him she had nothing to do with any experiments or theories about her Chakra she had, of course, lied.
"I am offering you what you wanted," she replied. "Is Orochimaru really taking up your mind? Careful Kakashi, I am starting to get jealous."
"What ever happened to killing everyone I loved?"
"Whatever happened to 'I would never read filth'?" She replied smoothly.
"Be serious," he replied.
"I'm 100 percent serious, Kakashi," the way she said his name made him have to actively fight the shiver from going down his spine. It was soft like velvet and it sounded oddly seductive.
He didn't answer her and she struggled to hold in just how many things she wanted to say. Anomie had never been good with communication, so the extent of what she was feeling for him was likely to never be revealed.
"At least sit next to me for a few more minutes before we both come to our senses and the day is ruined," she said with a small smile, sitting down next to him.
"Do you will think Rin would have wanted this for you. You think she wouldn't want you to be happy?" his question broke the mood she was trying to create and it all went cold around them. She placed her head against her knees and just stared him down. He noticed her eyes were a bit more cat like than he remembered.
"It doesn't matter what she would have wanted. Rin is dead. Nothing but her ashes is left," Anomie's eyes were too cold when she spoke so monotone about the girl she would have once died to protect.
No. They were narrowed and resembled a cobra. She wasn't Koneko anymore. She resembled something far more sinister.
"Do you think you can make me happy, Kakashi?" she asked and he frowned, thankful for his mask for hiding emotions he would have never been able to conceal from her.
"I don't know what would make you happy, Anomie," he replied with a slight hesitation. It didn't matter how much he tried. He would never be able to bridge the gap that she had created between them. "But I don't think it's me."
That wasn't what she wanted him to say. She wanted him to love her as much as he claimed he had in Konoha, that day so long ago. Her fingers tightened into fists. Ah, there really is no going back.
She felt silenced by her own mistake. Why had she done any of it? Again, she knew there was nothing to be done about it now.
"Have you realized the useless feelings you hold?" she asked and he wanted her to be silent for just one more minute.
As if it were so easy to stop loving someone. He couldn't even if he wanted to, and this time around he truly wanted to. He tried. He tried to hate her the day she sliced open that Anbu ninja's throat from ear to ear. He tried the day Jiraiya had given him back that charm of protection and told him it was okay to call her a friend. He tried the day she mocked him and told him that she was in Konoha.
He tried when he found the broken bodies of Naruto and Sakura, two children not even Genin. Or when she stabbed her palm through his side as if they never knew each other.
He tried every second of every day without any hope or chance.
To be honest, he was done trying. Everything made him love her more and it was foolish and stupid but since when was love rational or poise. All he wanted was to protect her and make her smile. He wanted to cut all that bullshit and just be with her. He would leave the village if she asked. They could live somewhere, far and away, and he could try every day to make her as happy as she made him.
She knew—even if he didn't—that she could never make him happy. She could never make him smile or give him children. She could never lie down next to him and touch him with her filthy hands. She could never love him the same way he claimed to love her. His love was loyal and innocent and clean. It was beautiful and warm.
She was in love with his perception of love, maybe not necessarily him. Maybe people like her weren't made to love. Maybe there was something broken inside her, a wire crossed, a piece missing, parts backwards. Maybe that would explain why everything felt so wrong and incomplete. Maybe people like her weren't meant to love all the way. Much like a dying tree, stricken with disease, her insides would rot long before her beauty. Much like a tree that must continue to produce sound wood on the outside to hide the death and decay on the inside.
Her grip on the scroll grew tighter. She controlled that disgusting expression that wanted control over her face.
"Iwagakure..." Anomie whispered, feeling annoyance run up her spine. "I hear Orochimaru has been spending a lot of time amongst the Tomohiko tribe west of here. He does like to move around a lot so I hope to catch up to him soon."
Kakashi froze at the lighthearted and traitorous words that spewed from her lips.
I won't let you betray your village for me Kakashi.
"What are you doing?" he asked, and she stood up, facing him with a slight smile. Her hands were trembling so she hid them behind her back to hide them.
"Call it a goodbye gift," she said with a brighter smile.
"Goodbye...?" his voice was a soft whisper.
"This is it Kakashi. One day you are going to be a hero to Konoha. If you stay by my side you might become a villain."
He stood, facing her with a slightly narrowed eye. "Can you stop deciding everything by yourself."
She wanted cry but doing so would be pathetic and weak and if this was to be the last time she saw him, she'd be damned if he saw how weak she could get. It wasn't like she was wrong. Everything she touches became rubble and ash. She could never hold onto something beautiful and not taint it. Her body was the prime example of such taint.
"Goodbye Kakashi," she faced him head on and gripped each side of his flak jacket and pulled his face closer so she could rest her lips against his cheek. He smelt like vanilla and lavender and ink and all those scents strictly him.
She opened the summoning scroll and pressed his hand against it. He disappeared from her lips like smoke, leaving nothing to rise from the ashes. The fire that had been crackling and warm enough to last the night was burnt out and she stayed there, covered in bandages until the last flare was put out.
"You are wasting our precious time, child of smoke," the voice of the Phoenix rang all around her.
"What do I need to do to get your power?"
"Are you certain you are ready? There is no going back," the Phoenix whispered, coercing Anomie forward towards the cave exit.
"I have nothing to go back to," she said and she heard their laughter.
"Very true, child of smoke," the Phoenix said and in moments the entrance of the cave went up in a wall of fire. It blazed so hot, and yet it burned black.
Anomie had never seen a black flame before, and the fire seemed to burn apart the rain itself. She could feel it against her skin, even from her great distance from the flames.
"Do you plan to kill me," Anomie asked, holding her hand near the flames. The voice of the Phoenix was silent.
"Walk through it, Child of Smoke," the way the bird said her new branding was far more forceful and she could feel its sting up her spine.
She didn't think about it. She didn't turn her body to smoke. She just walked through the flames like it was nothing.
She didn't necessarily believe she'd burn to death. She didn't believe anything. They told her to walk and she did. She felt nothing but the euphoria and the blackness of feathers surrounding her.
And then she heard them, "power comes hand in hand with pain."
"So does everything," and then the moment she spoke, she felt her body erupt in fire that burned so bright she felt her blood boil and the acid in her stomach sizzle through her skin.
She liked to believe she was never one to scream, but her lungs erupted in that noise for what felt like days as her body collapsed into ashes.
And an eternity later, she arose from the ashes.
»»⎯⎯⎯¤⎯⎯⎯««
She felt reborn when she returned, finding the world around her wasn't much different from when she left. She sat, perched on that tree, finding that some of the water droplets that had come from Kakashi's Jutsu were still apparent.
How long had she been gone? Even her blood against the tree branches were still wet. Apart from the fires that she burned, touching everything felt cold. The world itself was cold.
She stood, brushing back strands of stray hair, the naked feel of her skin brought her back from euphoria. It looked like, indeed, the fires the Phoenixes subjected her to had torched her clothes. She reached over to the seals that settled up and down her arms, only to find that they were nowhere in sight.
"You have got to be kidding me," Anomie whispered, finding that all her sealing marks had been, quite literally, burned off. Her skin felt brand new and everything felt odd. She glanced at the seal on the base of her wrist, finding that of all of them, that one stayed in place. The Chakra of it was infused in her bloodstream. She felt a moment of pure thankfulness, knowing she could never live long without Jiraiya's mark.
She jumped to the ground, finding the thorns and rough grass to be a lot more uncomfortable without the presence of shoes. She stood, allowing her body to straighten before she turned into smoke.
Oddly enough, she did it as easily as breathing. She didn't feel her Chakra struggle to keep up with her nor her life force start to shake.
She felt brand new.
As if she had been reborn from ashes.
»»⎯⎯⎯¤⎯⎯⎯««
Kimimaru was inpatient. Perhaps it was worry that coursed through his mind as he glanced over at Karin with a look of apprehension. He wasn't certain how long he should wait for her, and he had hardly been in a situation where he had to be wait for her to come back.
Was he worried? He realized with stern disillusionment that yes. He was quite distraught and he couldn't get his hands to steady. Around that same time, Karin's eyes cracked open and her body snapped up as it she had just seen a ghost. Those same beady eyes darted over to him and her lips gave way to a childlike scream that made his eye twitch.
"Can you not?" His voice came out far more calm than he thought it could, especially considering his heart was beating out through his chest.
"I'll scream however much I like thank you," she cried out, moving backwards and crawling away. He vaguely wondered how she must be feeling, being all alone in this world now that he and Anomie effectively slaughtered all her friends.
"You would think you would be far more grateful, considering I didn't leave you on the ground," he commented and she glanced up, wiping away the small tears that crowded through her eye ducts.
"Where's the scary girl...with white hair," Karin asked slowly, narrowly missing his scowl.
"Anomie isn't scary," he commented, and his voice came out far more defensive than he would have liked. "If anything it's your fault for being so weak."
"I am not weak!" Karin rose to her feet with her tears halting in anger as Kimimaru felt a rush of annoyance that he was letting himself get sucked into such an emotional argument with a girl.
He was certain that Anomie would never let emotions cloud her judgment. The dejection of that thought filled him with a cloud of anger. He needed to grow up already.
He lifted his hand, flatting his palm so it pointed straight out to her. The white of his bone pierced through his hand and flew through his skin. Karin screamed while she flinched as the bolt shaped bone punctured the tree bark next to her face.
"Look at that...I missed," Kimimaru whispered out and Karin shivered out her surprise.
"Why are you doing this?" Karin asked, furrowing her red colored brows.
"Don't worry. He just gets pissy when I'm not around," Anomie said, her lower half of her body misted in a hue of smoke.
"I don't get pissy," Kimimaru muttered, fighting back his embarrassment by his shameful actions towards a noisy girl.
"Kimimaru, could I perhaps use that sealing scroll I had you hold onto for me," she said, her voice soft and buttery. Kimimaru didn't ask why and only handed her the scroll. Her body became corporeal once more, revealing her naked. "Lovely."
Kimimaru's eyes traced up and down her arms, finding them lacking the seals and the Anbu mark that had once resided on her skin.
"What happened?" he asked as she poured a trickle of her Chakra into the scroll, revealing a set of clothes. It was nothing too fancy, mostly because as Anomie had never expected to need it. After all, who could foresee that her seals would become burned off from her bones.
"Complications with a summoning animal," she answered, glancing up with a smile as she pushed her arms through her long sleeved top. "But don't worry, I took care of it."
"Your Chakra..." Kimimaru had always noticed the slight decrease in Anomie's Chakra as days went by, and if he wasn't always with her and he didn't watch her so intently...he likely would have missed it. Her Chakra was steady and vibrant, if not too vibrant. It seeped from her pores and felt odd, like the way a summoning animal felt, like pure Chakra, unconfined.
"I told you," Anomie's smile was as bright as her Chakra. "I took care of it."
"And the enemies?" he asked in a slight muse.
"Dealt with accordingly," she answered and he didn't like that she was vague. However, she had never given him reason to mistrust her, so he only nodded.
"What shall we do with that?" Kimimaru glanced over his shoulder towards Karin Uzumaki, who had frozen in fear at Anomie's presence. The girls's face had paled considerably even when Anomie was being civil, and Kimimaru couldn't imagine what would happen if she decided to be more...well.
"Has it been noisy?" Anomie asked, glancing at the child with a closed cresent smile.
"Only as much as you'd expect," Kimimaru said slowly, finding Anomie was a lot more...smiley than usual. It was odd, as most people who smiled a lot gave off warmth and kindness, but Anomie did not. Her smile seemed amused, but not happy. "We have to go."
"Oh I'm not going with you, Kimimaru," she said, nonchalantly.
"Why is that?" he didn't want to believe that she'd just abandon her mission to take Karin back to the base in the sound, but with the way she was acting it was difficult to know where she would turn.
"I'm going west," she said with amusement, walking over to Karin and kneeling down. The leather of her top squeaking as she did. She pulled out a flower that she had found on the ground the way there. It was beautiful and it likely would have made Anomie cry in the past. "It's a Hēza flower remember."
"I know what it is," Karin snapped.
"Of course you do," she said with that same smile. "It means protection, but things like this, trinkets and charms, they don't protect anyone. See, Kimimaru over there is better than any charm. If you behave, he will protect you instead."
"If I don't?" Karin asked, finding her hands had started to shake.
"Protection is a double edged sword," Anomie dropped the flower on the ground. "It can cut into the one your trying to keep safe."
"Are you going to kill me?" Karin asked, glancing between the two Shinobi as her eyes filled with tears.
"No. Blood is much more precious when it's still warm," Anomie said with a light chuckle, glancing over to Kimimaru.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"Orochimaru promised me something," she replied, holding her palm over her neck. "I'm going to collect."
Before he finds out I've done something unforgivable.
»»⎯⎯⎯¤⎯⎯⎯««
Anomie felt something she hadn't felt in so long that the force of the emotion nearly made her stumble as she saw Orochimaru's face. Nervous?
It wasn't the time to get nervous now that Kakashi and Itachi were likely planning to destroy this hideout. She had no doubt that Orochimaru would escape, but at what cost to his...projects, and he was not one to forgive abandoning yet another experiment.
Of course, he would either suspect me or Kimimaru for the reveal as who else knew about this base.
"Aren't you quick to kneel," Orochimaru chuckled as Anomie bowed her head.
"I've just been on long and annoying mission," Anomie responded promptly. "I am in no mood to uphold dignity."
"And the Uzumaki child?" he asked, although he didn't sound that interested.
"With Kimimaru, heading towards the north base," Anomie said.
"And why aren't you with them?" Orochimaru asked.
"I was ambushed not to long ago, and I could not win. Even at full power, I do not know if I could ever win," Anomie found this hard to admit, but Kakashi was so much stronger and faster and even smarter than her. He knew battle strategies that she had never had the chance to think of, and she knew that much within the short time she had been in Anbu with him.
Itachi was ferocious and his Jutsu skills were flawless. She knew he practiced everyday, much like she did, but he had his eyes as advantage. That was a blood advantage that she never had.
The only thing that made her special was the ability to suppress her emotions and run away. No. She needed more than that if she was to live on.
She didn't need it...but the ugly truth was that she wanted it and he had it. "I don't care that the Jutsu is experimental or dangerous. My body can break or bend in every direction if you want."
Orochimaru was oddly serious when he stared down at the girl waltzing towards her death. "And what is it that you really want?"
"I want to be strong. Wherever that strength may come from I don't care," Anomie moved her hair from her neck, revealing her pale and slender skin, so unprotected and undamaged. It was the benefit of being reborn. Even the tattoo of an oiran was washed away clean. "My body is yours, to do with as you will."
"You might die, surely you know the risks," he warned.
"When you offered it to me the first time, I might have hesitated, but I have nothing to live for if I'm not strong," she said, her vibrant bright eyes staring straight through him as if he were as transparent as glass.
Orochimaru's lips curled into a smirk. He doubted this girl ever saw anything past her own greed. She was like a puppet in his hands. His teeth resembled the fangs of a snake as they pierced into her neck.
She winced, feeling his fingers dig into her upper arms, bruising her skin as his Chakra molded into her skin.
This was okay. She had to take the power of a devil to crawl out from the claws of a monster, even if that monster was herself.
Author's Note
エーデルワイス(Eedouwaisu) named for the Edelweiss, meaning courage or power.
