Burn The Orchard
Prompt: Hanahaki disease prompted by Tuliharja
Pairing: Mei Terumi x Zabuza Momochi
She had eyes for him since their Genin times. Since he was put into her team, two years older than her and Kisame, with history of being unable to fit into any squad. They've just lost their third member, a too kind-hearted girl from Hōzuki clan, and were both still in mourning. But Zabuza did fit in, nevertheless. He formed a camaraderie with Kisame, on a level Mei could never understand. And Mei, herself… At the beginning he was just so cool. The allure of his hidden face, and those short glimpses when he would unwrap the bandages. The air of danger surrounding him, the fact that everyone was trying to avoid him and still not let him notice that they do. It was attractive and it was something to connect over. People were keeping their distance from Mei as well. She had been deemed too useful to eliminate - a child of two kekkei genkai users - but it didn't mean she was accepted. Raised in a place that was a cross between an orphanage and a prison, not knowing her parents who were killed in a purge, drilled into being a loyal tool of Kiri…
But, most of all, he was the reason why she wasn't required to kill her classmates to graduate.
It started as an ache in her chest. At first, she was concerned that it had something to do with her kekkei genkai. That the corrosive elements she could produce were burning her from the inside. She went even a bit paranoid about it as there was no one there to explain the nature of her abilities to her. She had to discover by herself that the lava and acid never made any harm to her own flesh. Magma would spill out of her mouth, and her lips remains unscathed. She could wipe the last drops with her fingers and they wouldn't get burnt.
Yet her lungs were burning and the breathing was difficult. When she coughed out the first petal, it was in spring and she honestly thought she had accidentally swallowed it. But then there were more.
It was spring and these vague sentiments of a young girl were morphing into something else, into something more substantial… She wanted… She wanted to get closer to him. She didn't know exactly in what purpose but the images of Zabuza holding her, taking her into her arms were flooding her dreams. In her night-dreams they kissed, oh so gently. In her daydreams, more sober, she wondered if his teeth, freshly filed as a sign of his acceptance among The Seven, were as sharp as they looked. If his kisses could even be gentle now.
He never showed any sign of interest. And each time she 'accidentally' sat too close to him he would respectfully move away.
Soon it wasn't only the petals that she was coughing out. It was entire flowers, sometimes in pairs, sometimes in bunches. And, to add more salt to her wound they were now clearly recognizable as peach flowers. 'Or course,' thought Mei. 'Of course. How cliché.' As if she needed to have it spelled out for her.
A year passed and she grew, no longer a girl. But Zabuza would never look at her as she was looking at him. She was pretty, she knew it. Very pretty, she was told. A true asset for a kunoichi. Whenever she went on a mission, men's heads were turning after her.
But people who knew the power that she held… They were scared. Openly afraid or reasonably cautious, but always dead-set on keeping the distance. Zabuza was in the second category. She knew that he wouldn't be afraid to face her in a fight. In fact, he would probably rejoice at a strong opponent. But the idea of being close to her, of being - Mei was even ashamed of the word – intimate with her was out of question for him. She was untouchable. Maybe not exactly disgusting, but something sinister. Something to stay away from. He would even avoid exchanging casual touches. Greeting her he would nod - the longer they knew each other, the deeper was his nod. At some point Mei realized it was more of a bow. But, except from their very early teenage years, when her power was mostly unknown to them both, he never shook her hand, never patted her on the back, never embraced her.
They weren't close the way she wanted. But they were close on a completely different level. Their lives were bound in a way even lives of a married couple weren't. Because they shared a dream, all three of them. A dream about a village that wouldn't prey on its children. A village free from a rule of tyrant. And they were rebels. They were the core of the resistance movement against the rule of Yondaime Mizukage.
Their plot was advancing, but it was advancing slowly. More supporters needed to be won. The clans, especially the grounding ones, were of paramount importance. It was a very delicate business – to feel out if the clan's head would be inclined to support a change in power. It wasn't always the case. Yagura, as feared by general populace as he was, was nevertheless viewed as a guarantee of the old ways. And influential clans wanted to keep the old ways. Keep their grasp on power. So, often in was an ambitious son or nephew who was their liaison within a clan. But it was a minefield to walk on.
They also needed support of the masses and it was so hard to achieve. How do you convince crowds if you need to keep your plans absolutely secret?
They waited for Kisame to defeat his master. It was essential that they had more Swordsmen on their side. The common people worshiped them, saw them as embodiments of spirit of Kiri.
But the wait was too long for Zabuza. He tried debating with them – something Mei knew never came easy to him. He tried to move them to action over and over again. Over and over again the consensus of the group was to wait. In the end, he didn't wait. He never told them anything. Mei was woken up by the sound of bells. She didn't know what happened then. Only the next morning she learned that Zabuza went after Mizukage by himself – ninja-style, all alone in the dead of the night. He failed. For the briefest of moments Mei saw all of them on the executioner's block. But that didn't happen. Zabuza managed to flee. She didn't hear from him for the next two years.
She hoped he was fine. She went to the shrine every other day and said all kinds of prayers because it was all she could do.
She was coughing out twigs by then. She couldn't draw a proper breath and on every mission she wondered when would a coughing fit surprise her in the middle of a fight. Or when she wouldn't be able to keep up with her team because of lack of oxygen in her system.
Two years later they made their move, just after Yagura's new decree raised a wave of discontent in the village. They rode that wave.
The night before the coup, Mei filled her lungs with lava and acid, pruned the tree growing inside her. Breathing was easier afterwards, and so was the thinking. She couldn't risk facing Yondaime unfocused and weakened.
And focused she was. No thought about Zabuza troubled her mind that night.
They came at him, all twenty-eight of them. The Uzumaki girl - that they had acquired exactly for the purpose of this battle on a slave market in Suna and smuggled with great effort onto the island - fell first, within the first five minutes of the clash. But Sanbi was unsealed. Raging, but raging blindly. Exactly how their intel predicted – the Tailed Beast didn't stand by its container. Yondaime was weakened and he knew he had nothing to lose. There was nothing sane in his behavior, even less so than during those few public appearances Mei had seen.
Six of them survived. Mei was elected new Kage.
First thing she did after getting internal situation under control, was to decree a pardon to all of Yagura's opponents. The third, after establishing her council, was to quietly send a squad in search of Zabuza. A week after her enthronement she coughed out a still unopened bud. The tree inside her was recuperating.
She waited half of a year for the squad to return until she sent another one, in search of the first. That squad returned, bearing news about a slaughter. The bodies of search-squad shinobi had apparently been chopped into small pieces. Her disease sped up then and Mei needed to cast a silencing jutsu on her office thrice a day to cough out those damn flowers. They were coming out with shreds of her tissues. Her airways were bloodied and so was her windpipe. It was then when she started to wear dark lipstick – to cover the blood stains she kept leaving on every glass. But she couldn't afford to call for a medic. Her rule was not set in stone, she couldn't show a weakness.
She filled her lungs with lava over and over again, and it was helping for a while. The times after the 'pruning', as she came to call it, were also the times when she was the most effective in the village matters, most focused and when decisions came the easiest. Zabuza was in a corner of her mind and not at the forefront. Nevertheless, she never touched the roots of the tree. She knew what that would do to her feelings, and she didn't want to part herself from them, even if those were only feelings, forever without the object.
She was a Kage. People bowed to her and listened to her. She could change the reality now, shape it the way she found right. And yes, she had opinions about what the reality should be. All the injustice, all the stigmatization could now perish once and for all. She was changing world for the better.
She heard he got himself a kid with kekkei genkai. For a briefest of moments, she thought that is was some form of homage to herself. That he finally recognized that kekkei genkai were nothing unnatural, nothing to be disgusted of. For a briefest moment. Until she remembered that above all else, he was always just so damn pragmatic.
She sent another squad bearing a message of pardon. She included one of the few surviving comrades from their conspiration group. None returned. A note saying: 'Not going back to be a dog on a leash.' was found on one of the corpses. Behind the closed doors Mei alternately raged and cried at her ineffectualness, wrong judgment, at loss of her men and at another rejection.
Kisame defected. It broke her heart, but she understood why. She couldn't change everything. She ended up giving same type of order that she once hated. But it had to be done. Someone had to have guts. Kisame saw it differently, he perceived it as betrayal of their ideals. Mei could only be glad he chose to defect and not to come at her.
She had a freaking orchard in her chest. And no peaceful night since as long as she could remember. She had to face it – he would never come back. And he would never take interest in her. It was all doomed from the start.
And she had work to do, she had a village to lead and protect. She was a Kage and she finally should decide where did her loyalty really lie.
One lonely, cold night she filled her lungs down to the very bottom with her lava. She kept it there until all that was inside her was incinerated, down to the very root. When she finished, she was burning inside and out; she had to undress and stand by the open window to cool down. Her own lava would never hurt her, the flames from the timber lodged inside her might have had.
When she learned that he joined some petty criminal in the Land of Waves, she felt only a mild contempt. For one of The Seven to fall so low. It was funny, she knew exactly what her reaction would have been if she hadn't burnt her disease out, and even though she knew, even though she could almost see herself pacing nervously around the office at the single mention of him - now she felt nothing. Complete detachment.
When they brought the news of his death from the hand of Konoha's Copy-Ninja, she ordered a small team to be sent to retrieve Kubikiribōchō and continued through the budget report of B-ranked missions from the last year. She really needed to think through the pricing – those missions took valuable manpower while the money they brought was laughable.
.
He was dead and so were her feelings. And she would give everything and anything to feel love inside her once again.
Thank you for reading, and please tell me what you think!