Chapter 11: Living Without HIM

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or the characters, but I do own a piano to play a sad song.

Marie held onto his cold dead body, trying to hug him so tight that he'd scream in pain from how tight the hug was, but he didn't and she cried when he didn't. She brought her head to look at him, tears flowing down her cheek like rain drops, and she kissed him deeply, something she had wanted to do for so long, but only now did she realize that the wanting for him had always been there. The rain started to pour down, as if the heavens were mourning the death of one of the blessed people. Her tears flowed even more with the rain and she was still kissing him, as if she could give him some of her life force. When he didn't return her hug she cried more and she realized she had been wrong when she thought that the death of her parents would be the saddest day. Now she knew that this day, the day when Renji died, was the saddest day of her life.

"We should probably get out of the rain, Marie," said Tsunade sadly as she went to help Marie up with outstretched hands.

"No I want to stay with him," shouted Marie, not wanting to leave the side of the man she loved, who had died right before her eyes. "I don't want to leave him, I want to be here when he wakes up. He's not dead, he can't be dead because I love him."

"Marie you should go," said Orochimaru who stared at her with teary eyes, much like her own. He had just lost a son that he had wished to reconcile things with. "I need his body if I am to resurrect him from the dead, but I must be quick or else his soul might have moved on."

Marie looked at him for what seemed like forever and then she motioned for him to take Renji's body and do what he needed to do. Orochimaru signaled for three men to take the body and place it into a black Convertible. Orochimaru ran his hand through his hair as he saw the car drive off with the son he had doomed to the curse that caused his death. Arashi had his head slumped down as he looked at his own failure of not stopping the blade before it pierced Renji. He should have known that Renji would have trouble moving as soon as he hit him with his thrust punch, which could penetrate a man. If he had stopped it like he should have, Renji would still be alive, but he hadn't and he looked at the woman who now crying her eyes out. His heart was sinking into his stomach, with all his strength, and he felt like shit, the kind that uses their reputation and what they did before to save themselves. He wanted to rip his Hokage robe off because he didn't deserve it if his mistake killed a man and caused so much hurt.

"Arashi, don't blame yourself, I'm the one who made him that way," said Orochimaru as he looked over his shoulder at the Yondaime. "It's my mess and I should fix it, no matter what the cost."

"But I could have stopped him, I know I could have," said the Yondaime looking down into his regrets. "Why did I let him go forward? I should have known that my thrust punch would have disoriented him, but I didn't do anything to stop him. On the contrary I let him go to fight him without even a second thought!"

Marie walked over to him and he wondered what she was going to do when she hugged him.

"We all can't help our mistakes that we make, it's just something we have to accept as our being human," she said as she softly wet his shirt with her tears.

"Next time, I'll stop the fight before anything else happens," promised Arashi, not to the woman, not to Orochimaru, and not even to the late Renji. He promised that to himself, whom he had let down.

Marie laid down on the soft warm bed after taking a shower to wipe off all the blood that was on her, Renji's blood, and she let her thoughts wander to the wedding, trying to forget that she was all alone. She knew she had to get the tuxedo's ready and then she realized that there needed to be a replacement band for Renji's band. Renji. That name crawled into her head and she knew that she couldn't help, but go back into the memories of him. Some where of the times he was kicked out of onsens for trying to peek into the women's side, but there were others. The memories of him being kind and when he helped people and the memories of him saving her from a certain danger that she couldn't prevent. Even though those moments had made her feel helpless, she loved it when he held her in his arms and made everything that was wrong go away, she missed that now. She could feel the tears falling from her cheek and she could tell that it was going to be along time before she was over him. She remembered what he had done for her that one-day when some gangsters kidnapped her.

FLASHBACK BEGINS

"He should be here soon or else we'll have to make good on our promise to kill you," said the man in red to Marie. "You better hope he cares about you enough to show up or else we're going to have fun with you bitch."

"He'll come and kill all of your cowardly asses," she said, spitting in his face afterwards, which earned her a kick to the stomach.

"That better not have done any serious injury or else I'm going to take my time in killing you," said a voice in the shadows of the ceiling.

"Are you Renji," asked the man in red.

"The one and only," replied the voice and then it started raining shuriken causing the men with red to flee, some being killed by the deadly hail of shuriken.

The man in red flung a kunai at the spot where the voice had been coming from, but a flash sent the kunai flying towards another man. Down came Renji who was soon circled by men with swords, all ready to tear Renji apart. He simply took out his windmill shuriken and sent flying around as the men charged him. He unsheathed the sword by his side and started cutting through the wave of men, all the while spinning out of the way of their swords. No one could find the right moment to strike and pretty soon, they were all dead, leaving only two men and the man dressed in red.

"I will give you this rare opportunity to walk away right now, but if you want to stay and die then please come forward," said Renji with a devilish smirk on his face as he shifted into a cat stance and held his sword behind his back.

Red and the others threw kunai at him as he moved forward, some piercing him, but not doing as much damage as they should be doing. Renji got to the first man, who was trying to pull out his sword when Renji gave him one good cut to his midsection. The next man had his sword out and was about to give Renji the same type of cut, but Renji slashed him diagonally on his chest. Next was the man in red who was able to parry the attack and the next one, keeping up with Renji's pace. After being blocked a few more times Renji saw the man's weakness in his foot work and then exploited it by forcing him to defend on his right leg, his weakest leg. This caused him to lose his balance long enough for Renji top slip the blade into his stomach.

"Now, perish," said Renji in a creepy murderous voice as he pushed the blade up, cutting open the man. He looked over at Marie and walked over to her. "This is why I carry a kunai on me on all the time."

"You keep more than a kunai with you," muttered Marie, who was torn between the fact that he saved her and the fact that he did that creepy voice. She could only help that it would change in time before it did any damage.

FLASHBACK ENDS

She felt over to his side of the bed, hoping that he'd be there, but he wasn't and she wanted him to be there so bad. Marie was so lonely with him not there; she realized that he took away her loneliness, and that she had wanted him to make love to her as she had seen him do to that woman. To know that he cared for her, that he would want her to be his and only his. It was then that there was a knock on the door, which she knew was just one of the gang coming to invite her somewhere to cheer her up.

"So what happened here," asked Orochimaru not hiding the fact that he was pissed as his eyes looked over the fiery wreckage of the car that his son's body was in. "Where is my son's body?"

"The driver lost control of the wheel do to some interference and crashed into a gas tank," replied the oto ninja that was there. "I'm afraid your son's body is now just ashes sir, my apologies for having to bring you this tragic news."

"No one can blame the messenger," said Orochimaru bitterly, not at the fact that he couldn't blame the messenger, but at the fact that he felt like if he had been the one driving the car, it would still be in one piece. He just took out a strange device that looked like something that would separate things. "Bring me the ashes that were found please."

"Here they are," said the messenger, handing him aan urn.

Placing the ashes into the device, it immediately assorted the ashes based on person, waiting for the process to finish and when it did it left a question. The cup for his son's ashes was empty and the device gave both of the other two an equal share, so where was his son's ashes.

"Are you sure that was all there was in the car," asked Orochimaru.

"Yes sir," replied the man in the car.

"Well now I have one question," declared Orochimaru. "Did you check everywhere for the possibility that it had rolled out of the car."

"Yes we did sir," replied the messenger. "We even traced the path of the car."

Then what happened to my son's body, thought Orochimaru.