How invisibly it changes color in this world,
the flower of the human heart.
-Ono no Komachi
I'm still here...I should have died so many times by now.
What a cruel place I've found here with you, that you won't let me escape it, even in death?
And as her hot, wet eyes gazed into the beautiful face of her enemy, Aburame still hadn't let go of her. He was silent and unmovable. His arms still locking like a cozy insect cocoon around her, like the bug dome he had formed to shield them both in battle.
And since stirring awake, she hadn't bothered to make him move either.
Everything hurt too much anyway.
Even moving the tiniest muscles in her shaking fingers, brushing them lightly against the blood she traced behind Aburame's ear and stained ninja band, was an unforgiving punishment to her.
His breathing so cool and quiet against the bridge of her nose, she couldn't guess if it was unconsciousness that kept him so still this close to her...or endurance. If he was awake and gazing back at her with the same hot-blooded confusion she felt, she never knew it behind the veiling dark mystery of his shades.
How angry she wanted to be with him for all of it.
This hellish bamboo grove...the endless fog...the Queen Bee Summon that would've killed her...the Leaf ninja who told her to stay behind him, because he'd never let it happen...
If he had just fought her the way he was supposed to from the very beginning, this fight would be over. This endless war going on inside her for the only one in this world who wasn't supposed to make her feel this way. Dragging her maddeningly close to the edge of her own crumbling endurance, the longer she lay there with her beetle rival breathing him in.
"I hate you," she whispered softly to him.
Because what other feeling but hatred could feel this passionate, simmering to the very tips of her fingernails, as she finally dragged her fingers away from the Leaf engraving on his ninja band.
And for longer than she should've done it, she laid still in the rubble left behind by their battle, gazing at her Bamboo-kun, who by some tragic misfortune of hers, had all along been Shino Aburame.
The name belonging to the face now left uncovered by his protective gray hoodie.
His charmingly boyish jawline, and fair skin, smooth like honey butter.
How safe and warm his arms made her feel now.
Honeysuckle...Even in the shadow of that damnful reality that was his true name, crushing her heart like a thousand wasps stings, he was still so beautiful to her.
But she couldn't...think of him that way.
Nothing about them being here this close should be this way.
"If I didn't hate you so much, it might actually be kind of cute how dorky you really are...If I didn't know you were an Aburame, who would I imagine you to be?...I bet you know a lot about whatever it is you do in your village...I bet you could even tell me everything I never wanted to know about those weird bugs of yours...I bet your friends would miss that about you if you were gone...If you never came home, someone would want to find you...that's more than I can say about myself."
And batting away the tearful blurriness in her eyes, she gently unwrapped Shino's protective arms from around her waist, and carefully wiggled herself away from his reach.
Having put a safer distance between her and the Aburame, the shivering Kamizuru faced the cold alone with the warmth of his solid chest gone, as she gazed at the swirling gray mist above her in the bamboo-tops.
What was she supposed to do now?
She'd prepared herself for anything when taking up her fight with Shino, except for him saving her.
Didn't he understand what "mortal enemies" meant?
How could he not see that given the chance, she would never have done the same for him?
'If I really were as strong as you are,' she whispered to her unconscious rival.'I'd have understood the pain my opponent was in, and made it quick...It's so cruel to drag this thing out, without understanding what it all means to me...If I don't fight you, nothing for me will ever change"
And if she hadn't failed enough times to kill him until now, failing to hold back the tear that finally streamed from her frustrated honey eyes was the most unforgivable of failures.
"But maybe you knew before I could understand it, that there are worse things you could do to your enemy than kill them...Because as I lay here, wishing you had just let me die...the thing I fear most is that you'll still look at me the same way you looked at Firefly...And I could never endure such a fate."
And as she looked up at the swirling fog again, trying to piece together everything that had led to her sudden exile from her family, none of it added up so perfectly anymore.
"I guess this means I've failed my mission again," she sighed. "How does killing someone like you prove that I deserve to be apart of my clan again?...Why did it have to be you?"
She turned her head to gaze at the unmoving Shino again.
"You don't seem anything like the violent and hateful Aburame they said you were...None of it makes any sense," she told him. "So, please help me understand why you threaten the people I love."
'But most of all,' she thought to herself privately. 'I need to know if the ninja who killed my teammates was really your father?'
If what she'd been told by her father and Akirabachi was true, and Shibi Aburame had been the ninja her team had faced that night in the Leaf forest, then it was only one more reason why she couldn't let this go.
Despite protecting Shino from being found by her teammates in the Leaf, he had failed to do the same for her.
Which meant, when it came to clan loyalty, not even their friendship could stand in the way of the Aburame following the orders given to him.
Why then should she allow these petty old sentiments to stand in the way of following hers?
Shino Aburame was her only way to taking her ultimate revenge against the Aburame Clan Head.
No matter how many times Shino saved her in this grove, he was still Shibi's son.
And she had to see his face.
For the sake of that young girl in the Leaf, who was still clinging onto the beloved and fading image of her Bamboo-kun, she needed to see if his face resembled the horror she faced in the Leaf, convincing that longing part of herself that he was always so much like his father.
If she could just get a glimpse of his eyes, maybe she would know if he had the same face she remembered in nightmares.
Forgetting to breathe, she slowly reached out her shaking hand toward Shino's sunglasses, inching closer and closer to remove them from his soft, why-is-it-so-damn-pretty-for-a-guy kind of nose.
But just as her fingers were within inches of his glasses, she squeezed her trembling fist closed.
Summoning every measure of willpower to pull her hand back from Shino.
No...I can't...not like this.
It'd only haunt her more to look her once Bamboo-kun in his eyes, just before shoving a kunai into his chest.
If you won't fight me, I'll just kill you now and get it over with.
And leaving his sunglasses untouched, she turned her attention to Shino's kunai bandaged against his thigh, unsheathing it into her hand.
Then straddling her body over Shino's hips, her hands shook violently as she tried to hold the kunai point steadily above him.
"All I ever wanted was peace in this shinobi world," she whispered to him. "If that's not the kind of world the Aburame want, then you give me no other choice but to stop you."
And then closing her eyes, she stabbed the weapon into his chest.
Holding it there in her swirling inner fog of warring feelings as she tried catching her breath again.
Until she was brave enough to open her eyes to a tiny squint.
Realizing she'd missed Shino's heart completely.
The kunai tip piercing the ground beside Shino's neck instead, narrowly missing him.
"Honeysuckle!"
She couldn't do it.
Outraged by her own weakness, she rolled off of Shino's thighs onto her back next to him again, in yet another defeat against her unconquerable opponent.
Knowing that, even if he was an Aburame flea, she was still a Kamizuru, and Kamizurus fought with more honor than this.
Sighing, she stared hopelessly into that perpetually frustrating fog.
'Aburame or not...did I ever have it in me to take another person's life?' she wondered.
Wasn't there a reason, after all, that she had abandoned the shinobi life?
Whatever the answer to that inconvenient little question was, she found a convenient enough answer around it.
It wasn't that she wasn't "shinobi" enough to take her revenge and kill someone like Shino.
It's just that restoring honor to the Kamizuru clan meant more than just taking out her enemies.
''I will kill you some day,' she vowed, as she studied Shino. "But not like this...What honor is there in killing you while you're unconscious and injured from battle? If you die like this, how will I know that I defeated you with my own skill? You must face me in a real battle, when I can finally make you acknowledge my name. Until you know that it was a Kamizuru who defeated you in battle, you must live...for my sake...At least, for now."
And grabbing Shino by his wrists, she began the demoralizing task of dragging his dead weight body back to their camp, out of the trenches and canyons left behind in their battle with the Queen Bee Summon.
Only stopping to drop him here and there, as she swatted off a Kika bug that crawled out to nip at her from under his sleeve.
Ouch! Just like an Aburame...a nightmare that keeps on coming.
She flicked off the vicious little beetles from her arm, but more and more of the leeches crawled out of Shino's jacket, jealously defending their bug master against her.
There's no way I'm spending another night with these demon bugs! I'll mix some antiseptic with that honey wine he's carrying around and leave him at camp. Then I'll make a run for it. What happens to him after that, I don't care anymore.
At least we're even now.