It was nice to know what all of you felt about the first chapter.
Thanks to every single one of you that read it and commented on it: Yung Warrior, Karkoolka, maryeemeeh and Lady Katherina.
Thanks to another person who very honestly reviewed the first chapter for me. That gave me a better sense of direction where I wanted to go with this. And where I did not want to go.
This time around, it is Tori's voice. So, over to Chapter Two…
Tori
You and I, blurred lines,
We come together every time
Two wrongs, no rights,
We lose ourselves at night
From the outside, from the outside,
Everyone must be wondering why we try,
Why do we try?
Baby in our wildest moments,
We could be the greatest, we could be the greatest,
Maybe in our wildest moments,
We could be the worst of all.
Wildest Moments,
Jessie Ware.
The dry leaves break under my feet leaving the woods to echo with their sound. The surroundings have considerably darkened over the last few hours with the thunder clouds gathering fast.
I like this weather: I like walking through the woods in the faint light with the incessant chirping of the birds resonating around me. I have always enjoyed walking through these woods; their surreal serenity and calmness always manage to overwhelm my senses.
As I approach the Wind Ninja Academy-
The erstwhile Wind Ninja Academy.
- the sound of the waterfall becomes more distinct: making itself heard over everything else.
I do not know why I have been unable to embrace this particular change in my life. Referring to the Academy as the Wind and Thunder Ninja Academy still seems foreign; the words still sound alien on my lips.
The waterfall looms up in full view. I stand there for a few minutes, drinking in the majestic regality of my element.
Water.
My element had always fascinated me: right from when I was a child to now. I was six, perhaps seven, when I realized that I could make water flow backwards, that I could stop it in midair, that I could use it to do anything.
Initially, I had kept my mother in the dark about it.
My father had been too drunk to notice. Or care.
Finally, I had discovered something that made me feel special; unique. And, in my childish realm, I was afraid that if I told anyone about it, if I so much as let the words slip out of my mouth, I would lose my powers forever, leaving me with nothing but ash and dust.
But when I used my command over the element unknowingly on my sister, one day, my mother grew worried. She realized that it was everything but normal. That it could mean only one thing: yet another person had been born in the family with the traits of a water ninja.
This control over water had been present in the maternal side of my family for years. But it had been erratic: some generations had seen more than one person gifted with the power whereas it had been entirely missing in more than one generations.
My mother never seemed very happy about the things that I could do. There had been no one born with the traits in her generation, or the one before, and slowly, over time, I realized that she had hoped that it had been lost over the years; lost in the pages of history, in the battles marked with bloodshed and violence.
It was with a long face and terse words that she eventually enrolled me in the Wind Ninja Academy. The first time I entered the Academy, I had felt a strange sense of acceptance. Sensei Watanabe had taken me under his wing and had taught me things which my parents should have taught, but never did.
He was the one who explained my powers to me, made me understand that what I had was a gift, that I was different: special. He was the one who led me to accept myself for who I was.
I had never been particularly close to my family.
I had never had a family.
After losing his job, my father remained sloshed on most days. He hardly noticed me. In the wake of my father's failure, my mother had been burdened with the responsibility of providing solely for the four of us. She did everything that could be done but there is only so much that you can do as a receptionist in a hospital. My sister grew up to be a rebel ultimately to leave home at the age of fifteen, with nothing but a letter on the dining table which told us not to find her. I was ten when she left and although it should have affected me, it did not.
Because even in the years she was there, she was not really there. She was nothing but a ghost, a ghost that spent the night beside me in the tiny bed that we could afford, a ghost who wordlessly walked to school with me, a ghost that I feared.
My family was broken. I had always known that but the dysfunctionality that had severely bothered me when I was a kid slowly ceased to be important as I found another family, as I found another place that felt homelier than home had ever felt.
The clearing of the woods suddenly turns quiet. The chirping of the birds has stopped. An incongruous calm spreads across the woods. I know what that means.
I have come to know it over the last few months.
The unmistakable sound of Hunter ninja streaking through the woods comes to a stop as he slows down beside me.
"You scare the birds everyday," I tell him, a hint of anger in my voice.
He shrugs guiltlessly.
I sigh.
"Just for the record, you look like shit," I tell him.
"I had a late night yesterday," he replies, looking away from me. "I didn't get much sleep."
I feel my face flush at his words. I know what that means.
I hate moments like this. I hate Hunter for creating moments like this. I hate him for taking every girl he lays his eyes upon home.
I think he senses my discomfort and tells me, "I was at the beach this morning. Didn't find you there."
I have to clear my throat before I can speak.
"I wanted to sleep in," I say, injecting as much normalcy as I can into my voice.
He nods his head.
"What were you doing at the beach anyway at the crack of dawn?"
He runs a hand through his hair and eventually whispers, a sense of finality in his voice, "I couldn't sleep."
The remnants of my already vanishing anger towards him disappear completely at his soft admission.
I tentatively reach out for his hands. He takes them into his without a moment's hesitation and brings them to rest against my cheeks.
I move in closer to him and ask, "Again?"
He nods, settling his eyes on me.
I free my hands from his grasp and wrap them around his waist, my head resting against his chest. I can feel the heavy palpitations of his heart.
"They'll go away."
"Yeah?" he asks, his voice breaking.
"Yes," I nod.
I feel his heartbeat slowing down, returning to normal.
We stand there in silence, in the clearing of the woods, the chirping of the birds that had resumed a while back, surrounding us and tiny droplets of water splashing onto us occasionally, from the waterfall.
Mid afternoon finds me in my office, thoroughly worn out after teaching two classes. I am in the middle of correcting the Ninja History papers of the beginners when there is a knock on my door.
Before I can answer, Dustin barges in and closes the door behind him, a huge smile plastered on his face.
"What's up?" I ask him warily.
"I caught Shane red-handed," he grins at me.
"With Kapri?"
"Yes," he declares emphatically.
I have to laugh at his excitement.
"Dude, he almost had his tongue down her throat-"
"Dustin," I cut him off. "No details, please."
"Sorry," he grins apologetically.
"But would you believe it? They wanted us to believe that they were not banging each other-"
"Gee," I cringe. "What's with the words? Banging?"
"Dude, whatever," he shrugs. "Point is, he wanted us to believe that the two of them did not have a thing."
"Well, given your reaction, I can't completely blame him."
"Tor," he groans. "We are friends! He should have told us."
"Maybe, he had a reason not to."
He rolls his eyes at me.
"Why am I even talking to you?" he complains playfully. "Where's Hunter? He owes me a pizza."
"That bet was serious?" I raise my eyebrows.
"Hell yeah."
"Unbelievable," I mutter.
"What?" he asks as he scratches his head.
"You guys placed a bet on whether a friend of yours was dating someone or not!"
He looks at me with a confused expression.
"Big deal?"
"Yes, big deal. It's outrageous."
He frowns.
"And, you wonder why Shane did not tell you about it."
He shrugs.
"You know, you are no fun, Tor."
I narrow my eyes at him.
He sticks out his tongue at me before he opens the door and turns around to leave.
"I'll go find, Hunter, and get my pizza."
I shake my head as he leaves the room.
I try to go back to my work, checking the Ninja History scripts but somehow find myself unable to do so.
Dustin's visit has left a fair share of questions and doubts gnawing at me.
It has been three years since we defeated Lothor.
Soon after, Blake left with promises of keeping in touch, with promises of making a long distance relationship work. It took me six months to realize that those promises were empty: lifelessly empty. We reached a stage where we did not talk for weeks and when we did, it was awkward exchanges of formalities.
It was my decision to break it off because I knew that no matter how much I wanted things to work with Blake, it just was not possible.
Things ended abruptly, with Blake begging for another shot but I refused that because I was certain that if I had to live through such tumultuous complications yet again, I would break down.
But, a few months down the line, I found myself thrown into the vortex of complications once again with the other Bradley.
Everything with him had started on my eighteenth birthday, with him calling me a little girl. I feel a ghost of a smile finding its way onto my lips at that thought.
And before I know it, I have turned back the clock and have started my journey to the day when it all began.
It did not feel right to remain at the beach after Shane left. With Sensei not around and Shane as disturbed as he was, I thought it would be better to go back to Ops.
But Dustin protested. And, Blake quickly followed suit.
Against them, my voice stood no chance and we remained at the beach.
I had been fidgety the entire day and the only one who noticed was the one I least expected to and, in a pathetic attempt to get me back to my usual self, he had called me a little girl.
It had worked.
I had been irrationally angry at him and had chased him around the beach until I had managed to push him into the water.
We had collapsed on the sand together, laughing hard at the preposterity of the situation.
That is when I noticed it: a deep gash on Hunter's inner arm.
"How did that happen?" I gasped, unable to mask my surprise.
He followed my eyes and realized what I was talking about..
"Battle scar," he replied, avoiding to meet my gaze, staring out into the ocean.
I did not believe him. That looked like everything but a battle scar. It was definitely a stab wound. It was longish, tapering on one end, wider on the other.
"Hunter?"
"Yeah?"
"How did that happen?"
He looked at me, eyes suddenly steely, impenetrable, body tense, defensive.
"I told you," he hissed.
I sighed.
Hunter and I were perhaps not the best of friends but we were part of that team that stood between the survival of humanity and its complete massacre; that counted for something.
"I won't push you, Hunter," I whispered. "But you should let someone in: you can't carry the world alone on your shoulders.
I did not receive a reply.
Not that I expected one.
"We should go back," he said abruptly, rising up.
I stared at him for a moment before reluctantly whispering, "Okay."
And, on the way back, I realized that there was a lot more to Hunter Bradley's story than the murder of his adopted parents.
That was three years ago and I still haven't received an answer to my question. Over the years, with Blake gone and an irreparable bond formed in both our lives, we had bonded: grown in each other's shade, faltered to be steadied by the other, counted on each other, trusted each other.
But if there was one thing that remained unspoken it was that day and that scar.
I cannot pinpoint the exact moment when things between us took a turn and ventured into unprecedented territories. It happened noiselessly, insidiously, subtly, and gradually, developed into something that shaped my life.
It is not a relationship. It is not a friendship. It is a twisted sinuous mess: something that I voluntarily walked into and something that I allowed myself to fall in love with.
It is the worst kind of situation for two people to be in: we know yet we don't know, we see yet we don't see; so close yet so far away. We have pretended for far too long and the day one of us try to remove this thick cloud of pretense, there will be no turning back and thinking things through, it will be rash decisions taken by two people craving and longing for each other.
There are moments when questions come to my mind and refuse to disappear: moments like this.
Dustin's visit was a reminder that three years later, I was the only one with no sense of direction in her personal life.
Shane and Dustin seemed so quietly confident of where their lives were placed that sometimes I questioned my involvement with Hunter.
It was the strongest of all my relationships yet was nothing but something severely abstract.
Fragile.
There was nothing that cemented it: there were no emphatic declarations of love, no extravagant gifts, no words exchanged that could establish it but even then, there was something.
Something so powerful, so full of life, colour and sparks, yet so intangible, so invisible.
It is with relief that I end my class in the evening. The clouds had been hanging around, threatening to come down at any moment but they had held up.
I watch in silence as the students leave the woods in clusters. The sound of their chatter is soon lost, only to be replaced by the sounds of the forest and the occasional booming of thunder.
"Planning to get soaked?"
I turn around at that voice, and cock a smile at him.
"Please tell me you were not shadowing me for the last two hours."
"I was."
I groan.
"That is creepy. Did I ever mention that to you?"
"Yes," he shrugs.
"Don't you have students to teach?"
"My classes got over in the afternoon."
I can see that the effects of the nightmare have died and that, in some strange way, floods me with relief.
"Did Dustin find you?"
"Yes, and robbed me too," he quips. "Do you know how much I had to cough up?"
"Well, it would not have happened had you not got mixed up in a bet, Sensei Bradley," I tell him flatly.
He rolls his eyes at me.
There is another loud sound of thunder.
"Let's get back to the Academy," he suggests, looking up to see the clouds.
"Yes, please," I reply and we start walking back together.
A silence transcends upon us as we make our way back to the Academy. The sky has now almost turned black with thunder clouds completely covering it.
"Tor?"
"Yeah?"
"Could I spend the night at your place?"
His words come out as a hoarse whisper.
I look at him.
"I just don't want to be alone tonight after yesterday's-"
"It's fine," I cut him off, wrapping my hand around his.
"Maybe you could tell me what you saw last night."
The first drops of rainfall descend on us as he nods at me.
In the darkness of my room, in the comfort of his arms, watching the newly cleansed atmosphere, I doze off to sleep: my hands on his chest, his arms around my waist, our bodies plastered together, the feel of his heart beating underneath my hands.