And So, I Wait
Chapter 5: Reprieve
oOo
His skin was tightly pulled by the angle at which his head had come to rest. The lightest pressure would rupture a major artery, spilling his lifeblood across the forest floor, eliminating one of the few ninja in Konoha capable of facing my Lord face to face. The elimination of a man like Naruto should have had me trembling with excitement.
Saiyuna was trembling. But I felt no joy as I approached.
I knelt by the youth laying defenseless in front of me, kunai held ready. One slight motion would end his life, end his might. He would be a corpse, instead of the indomitable threat he represented. Saiyuna allowed herself to rest her forehead on the blond boy's chest, weeping tears into that fucking bright orange. Saiyuna was weak... but I couldn't overpower her. After all this boy had done to protect his homeland, she couldn't just cut his throat in cold blood.
I stared down into closed eyes. In Genjutsu-induced sleep, he was totally relaxed. Someone so trusting shouldn't exist. He should have been killed on his first mission. No man this gentle and kind could possibly survive the dark existence of being a ninja. No man this kind could possibly exist in our blood-drenched world.
He'd been doomed the moment I became his opponent. He was one of the weak, meant to be exterminated like the open-minded idiot he was.
Saiyuna refused to accept it. And apparently, so had he.
Watching him, I made excuses. He would be trapped in my genjutsu for hours. For all the innocent lives he'd saved, for all the good he'd done in our shadow-blackened world, he deserved a few moments more of peace before I ended his tumultuous life. A man like him deserved the quiet, if only for a few moments in the company of a foe. Gods knew he had never had that peace in his waking moments.
I was still making excuses when he began to rouse, hours later. My hand had long ago become numb from the iron-hard grip I maintained on my kunai while I watched his slow, even breathing for all those scattered moments. His eyes fluttered, finding mine as he fought off the last, lingering effects of the genjutsu.
"Oneechan? You've... You've really given up Orochimaru?"
With those words my heart broke: I realized he'd known all along who I was. He'd known that I was Orochimaru's servant. Perhaps he'd not remembered my name, but he knew. And despite all of that, he'd spent his scarce free time joking around with me, carting me from one place to another in my wheelchair.
And if he'd known... So had Sakura. And despite the fact I was someone who'd sworn to see Konoha destroyed, despite the fact I'd helped kill one of the greatest men in the village's history, she'd not only trusted me, but restored me to my former deadliness based solely on this young man's trust.
Despite all this terrible shit, he'd willingly trusted his life to me, despite the fact I was his sworn enemy. And staring into those bright, fluttering blue eyes, I hated the fact he'd proven himself victorious against all odds once again. The purity of his actions made my Lord's goals tainted, just by simple comparison. He made me feel disgusted to wear the emblem of the hidden sound, made me feel dirty by being associated with them.
Somehow, he made Lord Orochimaru and his dreams seem impossibly wrong. He made me want to protect my adopted mother from my Lord's wrath, made me want to save the weaklings of his village from the revenge they deserved for following one who had cast out my mentor.
The blond bastard was totally helpless. My kunai trembled inches from his throat.
And right then, I remembered Kazahana Douto dying at the hands of a genin so that an oppressed country could flourish. I remembered that this fragile-seeming youth had carried his hopes and dreams to an entire country, fighting the greatest, the strongest, so that the tromped-upun could once again raise their heads to the sun without flinching.
People with hopes and dreams no greater than my own, freed by the helpless individual alive solely by my hesitation. People with no more ambition than love, a family, and the means to make both things their own. People just like I'd been before I'd been bitten by my Lord and survived the hideous odds to become one of the few capable of matching the most powerful ninja.
In another life, in another country... I could be just one of the thousands who owed their happiness to this man. Only my Lord's blind ambition made me his enemy. And if my Lord's ambition was only the happiness of his subjects, we would have never been enemies. It was only in threatening this blond's loved ones that I was thrust into conflict with him.
And I knew just how dangerous he was that the conflict made me feel guilty.
His power was not just his ability to fight, but his ability to inspire. He grabbed every ninja around him by the scruff, dragging them to extroadinary heights simply to try to match his own commitment to an ideal. His every action exemplified the concept of the Will of Fire. He couild not have been more a paragon of the concept if he'd been the one after which it was modelled.
Because he always strove to do more. He always needed to do better. Even in victory, he found reason for himself to do better. Any moment in which he achieved less than total victory was a complete loss for him. This was a man who'd defied a demon capable of rendering entire countries helpless, from a man who'd now fought my Lord Orochimaru three times and survived to tell the tale.
It was maddening to remember I'd once thought anyone who ever fought my Lord would be dead. He'd defied my Lord three times, each time proving my lord inexorably right in his caution: The Will of Fire is an incalculable threat to any plan.
The Will of Fire will drive a ninja to defeat a superior foe. It will drive him or her to face down opposition beyond imagination in defense of the people they have sworn to protect. It will drive them to pit a genin against a jounin, and drive that genin to prevail against experience, against strength, against fate. It is the reason that their country has risen from the clan wars of our world's history to become the strongest force in existence in four terribly short generations.
None dare face them, for to fight one Konohagakure ninja is to fight them all. Each one embodies the unstoppable might of their nation, an arrogant pride which has allowed three of their number (none ranked above CHUNIN!) to fight Akatsuki members and not only survive, but eliminate those members forever. It is that reason that the hidden leaf's emblem is considered a death mark by the lesser clans, who dare not confront any member of the village for fear of annihilation.
For Konoha is the only village which dares to pit genin against jounin and expects success.
With genin like Uzumaki Naruto, who could deny the strength of their will? By all rights, he was considered the least of them. Yet in spite of the technical allocation of his rank, he'd risen to become an example to them all.
I dropped the kunai from my trembling fingers. His disappointed eyes frightened me more than my Lord's most terrible wrath. Thus, I fled.
I fled from Uzumaki Naruto.
oOo
Author's Notes:
It might interest you that Winamp played Avril Lavinge's Girlfriend three times in a row (from a four hundred plus songlist) while I was writing this chapter. The odds, for those counting, are exactly one in seventy million, four hundred and forty four thousand, nine hundred and ninety seven.
Those odds are exactly the same as my chances of producing triplets, should I ever decide to have children. This fic has now made me eternally paranoid.
One more chapter, kiddies!
Cheers,
Gaming Ikari