-1A promise made, an oath sworn, a bond made, a promise promise promise prom - The little boy is precious, precocious preternaturally talented. His little hand clasped firmly in your own. His hands are coated in blood - the little boy is a trained murderer. His clothes are black darker with blood and only his eyes are visible and from them shines the brightest ring of angels 'round heaven. Lucifer shone brightest before the fall.
The clock ticks, his eye reflexively blinks stinging with cold sweat. Paused above the creamy page his hand shakes as he stares at the ramblings. Ramblings he has written, ramblings he doesn't understand - that confuse him. These are not something he would write, but it is late and he has had a strange day. 'And they are watching him.' Pupiless eyes blue and pearl seeing through a thousand masks. A single bead of sweat rolls maddeningly down his spine. He doesn't want to be Hokage, but… The old man is tired and Orochimaru isn't right. 'The brightest angel fell.' It's still his choice right? Even if he refused surely… These last few nights he has dreamed of a world gone to hell; eyes like fire's desire all consuming.
"Sensei, what are you reading?" A promise made, an oath sworn, a bond made - a promise promisepromisepr- "Nothing", said with a growing grin, a goofy childish smile and the vanishing of a little read book not quite the orange of certain adult material. Something his sensei and student can share when he's gone - "eyes like fire's dark demand, desire desolation destruction unending", he whispers something to the wind eyes unfocused and guiless. The child's bright eyes watch him reading his lips. "Sensei you're weird." Embarrassed eyes closed a hand behind his head and behind closed lids a screaming gibbering mess. A thousand, thousand heartbeats traded for eternity in damnation. He fingers the paper in his pocket eyes closing tighter, smile growing wider - "but hey all Hokages are weird."
a bond made - promisepromisepromisepro- word is bond, honor in a ninja is a lie - idealist die and are not missed. Still, "Sensei I promise to take care of Kakashi." Never mind it's this white-haired git's job not his. "Of course, Hokage-sama - you have my word." At the monument, in the tower, graveside face like a death mask - I will watch your child. They stand on the bridge silence a lake about them. The child watches him eyes as deep as the question why and as complicated as how. "Never jump before you look, never look before you leap just have faith." Sensei always says such things especially at night when he sometimes stops by - more often now since a snake slithered by hair like night, skin like ivory burning brighter beneath sun, glaring by moon. Nephilim - A man will say that he saw him once and thought him not a man.
A snake and a fox and a shark and a weasel - colossal statues towering above him and yet they breathe, they move. 'This is a dream.' Black sky, white ground and a little boy in black eyes just visible and they are brighter then his hair, are clearer then the seas of time. And a spiral begins beneath he and this boy he ought to know running wider and wilder touching men without faces, bodies without souls. Somehow he knows this is all a very elaborate construction and behind the blood-thin walls are beings it would drive him mad to contemplate much less comprehend. A pawn is he, a puppet and something is jerking his strings. His head jerks forward again nearly landing on his work ink still wet.
"Arashi, what are you doing?" He doesn't really know, but it's important and check to knight's bishop or something. His little charge is lying beside him shoes untied. Six-years-old. 'Fathers bring their children…' He doesn't know how long he stares at nothing pen pressed to paper. Long enough for the shadows to cover his student, long enough for his sensei to encircle him carefully. "Go to sleep kid it'll be here when you wake up." Sensei is this really happening? He'll never say it, but it's one of the things he'll regret later about not asking. The scroll he holds is slowing being crushed and ruined as he realizes that men are honorless liars wolfs behind masks; hypocrites and failures. He shrugs off his sensei and reaches for his overshadowed child - he is not faithless.
Burning alive in the white cloth embroidered with flames. Summer when the leaves begin to glow golden in a heat like honey and sex. She is a pretty girl with teeth like an off-centered picket fence and a soul he can hide in wrapped up like a child in it's mother's love. He sits in a tree watching a child move two dolls together, makes them speak, laugh, love, kiss -" promise you'll never leave? Of course.' Promisepromisepromise ' He rips another scroll apart and the answer is somewhere before him. Somewhere before him is the meat of the thing and never mind how he shudders awake every night to non-bloody sheets and her still flat belly.
They're lying to his face - doesn't matter that this child is greater then them - maelstrom whirlpool, fishcake whirlpool - fortune's fool. "Promise he'll be a hero? Promise you'll care for him? Promise you'll look after him?" They promise, but it'll never happen. Never ever happen. The pretty girl who loved him lies blood-drained and sweaty arms loose around her baby. He knows she isn't anywhere near here anymore so he kisses her forehead snatches up the baby and runs. The world is black and red like an Uchiha's eyes and every bit as mad. 'who can look into a mirror without becoming evil? the mirror is not an instrument of enlightenment but of illusion…'
His own pale face stares back at him as a toothbrush hangs out of his mouth. Violent, Violet eyes stare back at him tracing his whisker-like scars panning slowing down his body to rest on the elaborate seal on his belly. Turning the taps on even as he finishes the last rune he washes the blood off his hands grimacing at the stinging. He needs to think, needs to figure out how to stop it, how to stop things, how… He stares at the lake before him confused at how not wanting to know why. The horizon is red the lake is blood and men, his men scream in terror beyond keen as they fight to die. The child is in his hands, the demon couldn't care less about him and he is the fastest alive. Eyes unbelievably blue lie upon him like Mercy's shroud suffocating and deep. He made a vow, a bond, a promise somewhere nearby a hundred birds begin to chirp.
He watches her belly round as he struggles to teach his sensei. He watches her face studies the way her skin pales under strain. He copies who knows how many techniques within the giant scroll finishing with Kage Bunshin a smirk on his face. Three scrolls of blue and green lie before him to be filled with final instructions. He stockpiles supplies within the caves, hides soldier pills about his body, and tries desperately to find Tsuande. His wife cannot die - no one else will heed his words will keep their promise. 'Let me hate both sides.' The worry, the nausea, the paranoia has all become such a routine that the day It's steps shake the village screaming renting the sky he can only look at Death seated behind his desk Her clod-stomping boots on the polished wood and say - "this is really happening?"
'And to the slaughter Fathers bring their children…' He paints the last seal on his child's tiny belly and blatantly ignores Despair as she runs a single thick digit over his son's face. "Careful, if he shivers and I ruin a rune it'll all be for naught." She doesn't smile, but she doesn't glare either. "My sister is kinder them most would give her credit… and Delirium only did what she had to… you survived." 'Until now.' "Leave my student alone if you're so sorry." She is beautiful in her weariness- "I cannot because he will not leave me." 'He will never leave me.' "Then I hope Delirium will be kind when he inevitably slips." Finished he walks away sealing the door behind him. If the boy's body fails him then at least he will remain sealed away for a time until a better option can be found.
Little girls dancing in charka-blasted fields among the ruins of buildings and dead men. Little girls with hair the colors of toxic rainbows. Delirium rejoices as Despair flies before him. He will make it back to the Tower if not the child. The Fox stands before him and It's eyes damn him because they both know how this will come about. Death's hand is cold against his back. "Whenever you're ready."