A/N: This one seems particularly appropriate to post today. It's my bestie, Laura's birthday. In October of last year, Laura passed away from complications related to her diabetes. There's a song that goes... I am free to run... I am free to dance... I am free.
This one's for Laura Kim, one of the bravest people I've ever known.
~Freedom~
He ran because it felt like flying. His feet barely touched the rooftops, and when he sprang from a ledge, somersaulting to the next surface, he never felt freer. They were one, he and his brothers, with the shadows. The darkness lay like a cloak, like a cape, shielding them from enemy eyes, and it set them free. Free to chase each other over the rooftops, daring each other with insane acrobatics, trying to out-do one another with every crazy stunt, seeing just how high they could jump, how far they could leap. They showed off, typical teenagers, while moving like wraiths through the night, unseen, unheard, unnoticed by the human population who bustled about, oblivious, below.
He ran because out here, in the twilight between the stars above and the City lights below, his brothers beside him, was his place, their place. Even with the caution that kept them within sight of one another, the danger that necessitated their skills in silence and invisibility, he was safest, because his brothers were with him and he was a ninja in his element, hidden in the shadows, cloaked in the darkness. When he was running, he flew, and he was free.