Chapter three: Melancholy
Humans find comfort in routine, there is something intrinsically calming about having at least one constant to cling to. It was one of the first things that Roku learned when she was first being trained by Yon.
Farmers tend to walk with steady paces, civilian children her age still run with a little bit of a stumble, and everyone had a routine.
Every person worth being called a person has at least one thing they do daily as a way to ground themselves. It natural for civilians and a part of coping for the general shinobi populous, a way to humanize yourself for the others around you.
Root did not have a routine.
As an agent, you couldn't even be sure you would wake up in the morning let alone anything else, this made a routine fundamentally irrelevant. They were not people. Roku would never be a person, not like Kyoko would. It took a while for her to understand and accept that facet of her life. With this it was easy to conclude that Roku and Kyoko were not mutually exclusive, Roku was a part of Kyoko but Kyoko was not a part of Roku.
She was neither Ro nor Ku, she wasn't Roku, she wasn't even Kyoko, she knew this and yet it was so much easier to lie to herself at night. She was here, she was here, she had to be here.
It had to mean something.
Kyoko leads with her left foot, right hand, she kept her fingers and nails fanatically clean and proper, these were the things that Roku shared with her. Kyoko was also a shy girl, she blushed under the weight of the stares of others and cowered in the face of the loud and brash, she was kind and thoughtful and above all else, she had a routine. Roku was and did not.
The separation was imperative for those who could so easily become what they pretended to be.
Who was she? She didn't know, she didn't know, maybe she was the ash in the air maybe she was a rotting corpse, a death rattle from dry lips.
Roku's lack of identity had to be kept so she could perform properly as an agent, and as an agent she had to accurately play the part of Kyoko. She understood all of this, it was conceptually simple, and she found that the entire processes grossly overestimated the flexibility of a human psyche.
But Root were never human anyway. They were puppets and dolls and weapons with cracked images embedded on their skin. They were anything but human, they were nothing.
It was the tea house that she made the key to her routine, the center of the life of Kyoko. It wasn't particularly out of the ordinary for a shy girl to make her way to the traditional tea house on her way from the academy. It would never be considered something to make particular note of, nothing that would be deemed important.
North of the orphanage, the others do not follow, leave the report in the seal under the table. Bow your head, don't meet their eyes, she knows they know.
It was only in the little tea house on the market corner that she is content, it is quiet there, everyone moving at their own pace, their lives held separate from your own. There she is in a place all her own where she might be able to shoulder her own deeds. Her sins clinging to her, in her hair and on her hands and she searches for them in the mirror. The shadows are omnipresent and she knows, oh, she knows she will always be found lacking.
She particularly liked to watch the others there. She never really understood it all, the flare they had, the smooth transitions and sweeping motions. But still everyday she stood, eyes down, eyes always down, in the threshold.
The owner was an older man, his skin paper thin like his hair and his voice, but he always welcomed her.
She didn't understand how he could pretend he couldn't see right through her.
There were so many things she didn't understand in that place. She particularly didn't understand that when there was a shattered cup, the edges jagged, her eyes never left it, its pieces scattered over the wooden floor. It didn't happen often; the shattering of cups and bowls were rare in such an establishment and should it ever happen it was always the fault of a clumsy customer. Still the girls in elaborate kimono and willowy limbs shouldered the blame, heads bowed.
She didn't understand why she asked, just this once she watched the cup shatter and asked if perhaps she could have it. She had no money, had no means.
"If you could, just this once, let me have the pieces?" Her eyes never left the ground, her hands were shaking, this wasn't a part of the plan. She didn't know what it meant, why she felt she so adamantly needed the shattered cup.
They were kind, so very kind, the paper man dipping forward with a smile. And so, Kyoko left, in a takeout box there were shattered pieces, in her hands they were precious.
The room was dark, it was so dark and cold and they could feel it in their chests and across their skin. There was movement everywhere, the underground was awake, the others crawling along the walls and ceilings watching and waiting for one wrong move, waiting for them to fail.
The seal on their tongues burned.
"Perhaps we should have tried harder?" Her voice was pitched questioningly, a desperate sort of panic wedging itself between the wavering octaves.
They knew this would come, they could taste it in the air like ozone before a storm. It was time, it was time.
"You and I both know it would not have mattered."
It took her time to gather what she needed, a stray cup of flour, a painter's pallet knife. She didn't understand why she did it, none of it mattered. Sandpaper and lacquer from the shop down the street hidden in a waistband. She couldn't stop herself, all her training, all her conditioning was slipping through her fingers, and all she could do was watch. Golden powder held in a small jar.
It took her weeks and yet here she sat, legs tucked under her the pieces of a broken cup laid methodically out. She stared and stared and the sun rose then set again, yet she remained.
It wasn't really a surprise, it was something every root operative knew. Each agent was a team, the team was cultivated and grown together and then the operative was pruned of the excess growth.
The plaster was crumbling, it hurt, it hurt.
And perhaps it was a bit wasteful, perhaps it didn't matter as long as it got results. In the end, if one didn't bow both would fall.
Her fingers were long, the ends of her hair jagged and skin ashen. It was obvious she should have been tanned, the base for it was there, but instead she was sickly and sunken with dark bruises and flat eyes. Sometimes when she was still and the world caught up to her, she could feel her bones creak with weariness.
She was cold, she was thin, she was so very tired.
Water and flour, mixed evenly, neither sandy nor watery.
She could remember when they had been younger, when the other would still wonder why they were the ones taken. They would look at one another, sat knee to knee, eye to eye, tracing the features they saw there, wondering and searching and yearning. They searched for the features they saw, in the reflection they could see inside wide eyes. Was it happenstance? Were they given away? Taken, stolen, buried, hated, forgotten. Did it really matter?
Add in the lacquer carefully as to not let it touch the skin.
She had decided long ago that they were simply unlucky, it didn't matter. It wouldn't matter. They were already buried, dead in coffins three feet tall under a pile of spider lilies and snapdragons. The how was over and they were living in it, she was living in it. There was little time left for such speculation, the energy had a better use.
Line the edges of the broken pieces and press them gently, firmly, together. Scrape away the excess and be careful, take time to ensure the lacquer will hold and then let it sit somewhere safe to dry.
And she knew she was poorly made, she knew this in how she felt like she was choking, when her breath came a bit harder and faster every time she saw her own reflection, every time she thought she saw what she knew was no longer. She knew all of that man's art was just a little bit wrong, that they never quite turned out right. She didn't blame him, the medium he chose was always unpredictable in how it would respond to the lacquer, to the break, to the process.
After a week or two or three, clean up the edges. Wet the sandpaper and carefully smooth away the lacquer in layers.
She didn't notice much in the academy, she didn't bother to interact with her peers beyond what was necessary, but still, she saw. Peripherally she noticed a girl whose very presence set her teeth on edge and a boy who trailed that girl. She wondered, absently, mindlessly, if perhaps this girl and boy were anything more than her mind conjuring something to punish her with. Like the other boy with hair like precious metals and steel eyes, like how her hands shook and she saw familiar faces everywhere she turned.
Take new lacquer and mix gold, or copper, or silver, into it. Carefully, so very carefully, add it to that which already held the pieces together. Let it rest, let it dry.
She remained average, she was neither best nor the worst in taijutsu, didn't particularly excel in ninjutsu or genjutsu, did not find her niche in the theories and thoughts she was taught to write and repeat. She especially, specifically, did not notice the recruiting. Kyoko was too innocent, too trusting, to notice the ANBU with their puzzles and tests skulking around corners and in shadows on ceilings. She was simply average, unassuming, practiced.
Carefully cover the entire piece in a clear coat, something that will hold and protect the pottery keeping the lacquer from leaching and flaking, from being toxic.
It was funny really, how in her unfailingly average act she became undeniably unique. She didn't notice how the Academy teachers watched her with narrowed eyes, how her disregard for their approval unnerved. They notice how she floated exactly at the center of the crowd, hiding behind other children's enthusiastic babble, she was a ghost untouched and unfazed by the world at large.
Two years in the academy came and went, three as Kyoko, and she found herself kneeling again her head bowed, her eyes so very blank, blank, blank. She reported to him, recounting the important, recounting Kyoko.
"You've done well, your written reports have shown how integrated you have made yourself." He said, it was nice, horrifying, relieving, nauseating to be back here. She felt safe, she felt hunted, she felt cursed and cold and horrible all at once. Had she really done well? She couldn't tell, she simply did it and lived and lied.
"Thank you, Danzō-sama."
She was to do everything she could to endure, to ensure. So, she slipped into the records and doctored her files, she carefully aligned it so her sensei would be her target, she could not fail she would not fail. And it should have worked, would have worked.
But it didn't.
That was how one made Kintsugi art out of the broken and useless.
The day before they announced teams, she knew she had failed. Her team was made up of two civilian born boys, meant for the Genin corps, meant for fodder and maggot feed. She was ten and short and punished, of course she was punished, she could still taste the metal of her own blood and the bitter ache of screams swallowed.
But she was still salvageable.
Kyoko finally allowed herself to take notice of a sweet girl with brown hair and purple markings. As they were released to speak with their teammates she ghosted her way past the crowds acting as the other girl's shadow, their steps echoing as one, the sway of their bodies in tune.
There were far more creative ways to make Kintsugi art deadly than to simply be careless. That was how she and her sister were made after all, by an expert in the art of turning Kintsugi into a weapon. For instance, there are some lacquers that are made from the sap of the poison oak, with the right treatment it would do rather nice to weaken an immune system.
"Rin!" Kyoko called, her feet tapping loudly on the ground as she rushed after the other girl.
"Hello?" The girl turned, her smile polite but confused, it would be the first time they had ever talked in the time they had been in the academy after all. Kyoko forced a blush to rush across her face as she jerked into a messy bow her body nearly parallel with the ground.
"I know this seems strange but I have always admired you and have been trying to find a way to say this," she said in a rush pausing to glance up from in between the strands of hair she had flung into her face with the force of her bow, "congratulations on graduating and being top girl, will you please have a cup of tea with me?"
A weak immune system makes even the weakest of poisons deadly.
Rin wasn't the type to refuse such honesty, Kyoko knew that much. She could read it in how she moved, how she spoke, how she held herself. The underlining flattery certainly didn't hurt.
"Oh!" Rin said before her demure smile shifted again, keeping track was so tiring. "Of course I will have tea with you, which tea house do you prefer?"
Kyoko laughed awkwardly squinting her eyes as she dragged an awkward smile onto her lips, "I kind of spent my allowance, would you mind coming to the orphanage with me? I have some really nice tea, I promise!" She darted forward to take hold of one of Rin's hands with both of her own, her hands were dry, "I really want to get to know you a little, please accept my invitation!"
Rin jumped in surprise from the intensity of Kyoko's request, the hand the other girl was not holding coming up to press against her own cheek. "That sounds fine, don't worry about it!"
Beaming Kyoko immediately began to lead Rin by the hand to the orphanage, chattering about everything she could think about excitedly.
"I'm really sorry," Rin interrupted Kyoko sheepishly as they entered the orphanage, "I have been trying to remember your name for a while now and just can't at all!"
"I'm Kyoko!" She laughed in response, unaware her overjoyed smile bared one too many teeth to be considered polite. "Here is the kitchen, give me a moment to run to my room and get my tea!"
She had two Kintsugi cups she has made, one a gold of fallen oak leaves, the other coppery like blood. Maojian Tea was a sweet tea, it would pair well with the equally sweet arsenic.
And a weak immune system makes a stronger poison so much deadlier.
"Oh! Those are beautiful, where ever did you get them?" Rin gasped as she reached forward to take hold of the cups, her eyes wide and searching.
"I made them, it isn't particularly hard. Maybe I will teach you some time?" Kyoko laughed again as she set the teapot to heat up, her fingers slipping into her sleeves to trace the packet of poison. It wouldn't do to ruin all of her tea leaves after all.
"Would you? It's so rare to see someone practice Kintsugi outside of the capital, I have always wanted to learn." Rin squealed happily her dark eyes shinning excitedly. Kyoko watched a strand of hair drift slowly onto the counter.
"Of course! You have been to the capital then?" Kyoko asked sliding carefully by Rin to pick up both of the cups to rinse them in the orphanage sink.
"Once or twice with my family, my father is a merchant and my mother a medic at the hospital." The tea pot screeched, calling for their attention. Kyoko carefully poured tea into both cups and stared for a moment as the tea traced the repaired cracks.
"They must be really proud of you!" She started abruptly as she picked up the cups, powder slipped into the cup with golden lacquer dissolving quickly, it wouldn't do to give a dying girl anything but the best after all. "Do you plan to follow in your mom's footsteps and become a medic?" Kyoko continued as she passed the Golden cup over to Rin, pausing a moment before she took a sip of her own tea.
"I'm not really sure, I don't even know what Minato- sensei is like! We are supposed to meet in an hour so maybe I will mention it to him." Rin sighed rolling her eyes slightly with a huff.
"I can understand that," five minutes was how long it took for arsenic to take effect, "are you nervous at all? About your team, I mean."
"I wasn't really, I think it's just hitting me now!" Rin laughed awkwardly as she pushed some of her hair out of her face.
It looked like it might storm.
"Oh, I am sure everything will go fine!" Diluted like it was the arsenic wasn't truly deadly, especially with the dose Kyoko had used. It was undetectable like that, no one would notice, no one would care.
"I don't know, being in the academy is different than being out in the real world." She was clearly uncomfortable now, a fly unware of the web it was caught in.
"Well, I might have something to help you? It's an herbal remedy I take every now and then when I am nervous, it certainly helped me." Arsenic in small doses causes the one poisoned to panic, to feel the walls slowly close in on them as their stomach crawled its way up their throat pressing back on their lungs choking them from the inside.
"Oh, please, if you think it will work I am willing to try it! I don't think I will be able to last at all if I go meet my team like this!"
It was a trick used sometimes by poison masters, to slowly layer poison after poison to make a deadly concoction that mimics the effects of common illnesses. It makes the normally undetectable poisons even more unnoticeable.
"Don't worry about it! Here let me put it in your tea so you can go ahead and take it, it should help in around ten minutes." Kyoko smiled sweetly as she dumped the new poison into Rin's tea. "It tastes absolutely horrible though."
Aconite for her anxiety, may she great Mother without fear
Rin tilted her head back to drain the cup as quickly as possible, her nose wrinkling cutely as she made a face at Kyoko.
Porcelain shattered as it fell to the ground a body staggering before it steadied against another. Her hands came up to rest on either side of the others mask, eyes already glassy and distant.
"Will you," Her voice cracked the words fading on her tongue, "Will you do one thing for us?"
"Anything." The other replied in a whisper, it was raining where no one else could see.
Kyoko watched Rin leave, the skin on her face felt just a bit too tight. It was a shame, she had such pretty lacquer. She couldn't help but notice that it was raining again.
"Agent Roku, complete protocol." Her trainer was there, the first one with flat bright eyes and a face as blank as her own. She did as she was told, she always did as she was told, the fire was bright but she was cold.
The room smelled foul, heat and sulfur and burning bones.
Kyoko stared blankly ahead shoulder to shoulder with the other children of her graduating class, each of them dressed in black with eyes cast down. They were not yet needed on the field, not yet ready, who would mind if a few children mourned one last time.
She died in her sleep, they said the lines around their eyes and mouth deep with the weight of a death. But Kyoko knew, she always knew.
It was war, it was war, it wasn't personal.
Kyoko will know that in her last moments Rin saw hell, her body a prison that snuffed out its own flame.
She did not mourn.
The man was Golden, he stared and stared and stared and she watched.
The ash collected on her skin, on her mask, on her clothing, and in her hair. She was a girl with dusted skin now, like the man who stood over two who now stood over one.
Ash to ash, dust to dust.
"Well team, this is the new addition I was talking about." It didn't look like he had slept for quite some time, his voice was hoarse and the skin under his eyes bruised.
He was blonde, his eyes were blue, his smile hurt but she couldn't afford to look away. She had nothing to hide, she had done nothing wrong. It was a lie she had to believe because it was rather obvious he knew, perhaps he even knew she knew he knew.
She was so very tired.
"This is Kyoko, Kyoko this is Obito," he paused long enough to wave vaguely towards the boy who hid behind goggles and strained smiles, his own grumbling around the edges, "and that is Kakashi." He dropped his hand and the boy made of metal and silver and everything similar in color but softer than the steel he pretended to be staunchly ignored her.
The training field was full of silence and dandelions, their white seeds twisting around them as they stood watching each other.
In the silence she remained, in the silenced she had always lived.
Their training began with teamwork, the silver boy who lied as much as Kyoko herself snapped his teeth like a rabid dog and the other spit and hissed like a feral cat. The man looked at her expectantly and she simply stared back eyes so very blank behind drooping eyelids.
She thinks that perhaps he was disappointed but maybe she saw resignation there instead. She didn't think she would ever get used to the micro-emotions everyone here seemed to have. How they could hold so much she would never understand.
People were too much like clouds, they could only hold so much before it began to storm.
Notes:
Kyoko is a whiny brat, I hate and love her simultaneously. It's so hard to get in the right mindset to write for her. I have a poll up on my profile about a few other stories I am thinking of writing once I finish this one, please vote so I know what you guys might be interested in.
As always thank you for reading.