Title: Vindication
Author: Sparklehunter
Summary: Vengeance is the art of hate. Hate is the art of destruction. Iruka doesn't know how to let go.
Part: 2/4 (?)
Author's Note: Number eleven, part two in a series of snapshots about the aftermath of an almost-death. Sequel to Breaking Symphonies/Underestimated.
Author's Note: Sorry for the mix-up -- accidently uploaded Ways to Die, instead of this. Hmm, s'what I get for rushing before class.
Vindicatiom
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by sparklehunter
It goes like this:
Iruka drops Isas where he stands. Isas crumples. His hands have been hacked at the wrists - they're still attached to his arms, but only by skin and muscle. Isas stares at his fingers and palms, trembling, hurt, it hurts, and tries to pull his limbs close. Instead, he collapses unconscious.
Iruka doesn't notice. He's found the door, one he saw months ago, one he used to get into this hellhole called a prison. Chakra keys are needed to open the door from the inside. It's a safety procedure Iruka would approve of, in Konoha. Here, he feels fury ride his veins as he stalks and staggers to the door, and uses Isas' blood to implode the wood. The markings glimmer and darken, look both wet and dry, seem red and brown, as the wood splinters and shudders. Maybe it's his anger, maybe it's his hate, maybe it's his pain, but Iruka can feel the wood wrenching, can feel the power of the jutsu, and it makes him smile.
Outside the door, it is twilight. Iruka approves. His coloring is made for night and shadows, all dark skin and eyes, unlike Sa - Ka - NarutoNarutoblondNaruto. He chokes on a sob as he stumbles past the threshold. His skin, newly healed of cuts and scrapes and slashes and burns, is hot against the cool air, but that could be the blood covering him. Iruka takes a moment to scan the area. He already knows where to go - the same route Naruto took, the path he memorized so long ago, a road to freedom that does not exist.
Iruka doesn't know if he can run that far. Iruka doesn't know if he can run.
But dying is better than staying.
It goes like this:
There is a fence around the prison. It is made of wire, and set with jutsus. Iruka plans not to touch the wire, to avoid the barbs and spells that could be so devastating. He already knows it will be hard; the wire is difficult to see at night, he isn't used to distance vision, his night vision is in shambles after months of torture. He knows it will be harder because of the figure pacing in front of the fence.
All the poetic irony in the world dictates Saburo should be the one to stop him. He even wishes it were Saburo standing before him, but there's half of him that wants to kill and kill and bleed Saburo until there's nothing left of the man. Iruka doesn't think about the other half.
Saburo is away from the prison, though. Iruka knows this, that is why he has seized this opportunity of surprise and timing and madness.
And life is not poetry, so Goro is standing, all five foot two inches of scar tissue and no apparent weapons, before the fence Iruka must cross.
It goes like this:
Iruka moves first, because he can't give the prison guards a chance to come support Goro. He can't give Shiro a chance to help his brother. He can't stand another moment waiting, rotting in this hell of his own flesh and blood. He's spent months in chairs, on the floor. He spends the next moments moving swift and silent toward Goro.
There are nin that use words while fighting, use language to infuriate their opponents and trick them into giving something away or making a mistake. Iruka is not one of them. He once told Ibiki (half-drunk, because that is the only way to talk to Ibiki) that he only has nightmares about the people he kills if he talks to them. Goro and Iruka fight in silence. Iruka hopes this bit of history holds true.
Goro is scarred from his battles, which indicates, Iruka knows, extreme skill or extreme ineptitude. As they fight, Iruka decides Goro is more than competent, but has an odd habit of leaving his left side unprotected. Iruka is tired and sore, running on terror and a fury so powerful it conquered the atrophied muscles of his body and gave him strength, but he taught children to take advantage of such an elementary mistake for eight years.
The blood makes the blade too slippery to hold, so he leaves it buried in Goro, slides his hand out from the lungs and intestines and other organs he pushed aside to find the heart, and moves away from Goro's spasming body.
It goes like this:
Umino Iruka kills 13 escaping the prison. Shiro is the one who finds Goro's body. No one knows anything beyond that.
TBC in 'Unentitled.' Which is a completely tentative title. Also, review, please!