Gen fic part 2
Title: Apropos of the Wet Snow
Rating: PG-ish (K+)
Genre: General/Drama
Characters: Naruto, Sakura, Kakashi, Sai, Pein, Kurenai, Shikamaru, mentions of various others, strong references to Sasuke, Obito, Minato, Itachi, Jiraiya, et al (no pairings, really, unless you count implicit Pein/Konan)
Spoilers: For the recent manga chapters, though at this point, the whole story could be alternate timeline-ish [as in, assumes Naruto to have come back in time to, uh, prevent any entire catastrophe].
Disclaimer: Naruto is the property of Kishimoto Masashi. Standard fanfic disclaimers apply. See notes at the bottom of the 'fic.
Summary: Sixteen days: That's what you have. Sixteen winter days of sunlight and snow during which you must make peace with life, death, and yourself. There are many who should have died in the invasion. One is Naruto. Now it's time to cope. Ghosts of the pasts and pieces of the future. Assumes the invasion of Konoha went somewhat differently, with Naruto getting home sooner and chapter 429 not having happened.
On the eleventh day, Naruto is summoned to the Hokage's office, and he's only surprised that this didn't happen sooner.
She looks meaningfully at a chair near her desk until, finally, he guiltily shuffles over and sits down. He's still twitching with energy and excitement.
“Three things,” Tsunade says - raising three fingers, as she once raised one to thrash him with it. “One: I apologize, but you can't leave the village right now. We're recovering from a crisis, in a state of disrepair and emergency, and all of our important shinobi are needed here to protect the village for as long as it's this vulnerable.”
“Yeah,” Naruto answers. “I understand.”
“So no looking for Uchiha Sasuke.” She sighs. “I'm sorry.”
She stands up, looks out the window, then turns and faces the door - slams her palm onto the desk as if it's done something to offend her. Coffee sloshes from the mug, spills a few droplets onto the wood, and Naruto has this suspicion that she's already had more than a few cups.
“Two: Uchiha Sasuke is preoccupied right now. There's a --” The sides of her mouth pinch with the effort of suppressing a frown. “ -- a situation with the Raikage of Kumogakure.”
Naruto has already heard a little about this. Maybe, in a way, he's not been wanting to hear it, and so he's not heard more than a baseline account.
“I'm dealing with this from a distance as best as I can at the same time as I'm writing up plans for how to rebuild this village, and at the same time as I'm . . . handling other, more internal . . . situations.”
Long fingernails taptaptap polished oak.
“Uchiha Sasuke is a citizen of Konoha, Naruto, and I know what he means to you, but I'm afraid his predicament is on hold right now. I have to ask you and everyone else to stay out of this and let me handle it, for now. It's a matter of diplomacy, not shinobi business - documents and carrier pigeons and envoys, not kunai. Do you understand?”
Naruto nods, and he thinks he must have on his best “kicked puppy” look, because his hands are clenched in his lap and Tsunade's eyebrows raise way up, as if to ask: What? No lip from you?
“Well, then.”
She turns to the side, and her long hair swishes like two horses' tails behind her. Naruto thinks he knows from whom Sakura learned to throw her weight around.
“Third matter of business: Naruto - Jiraiya's will . . . “
Her laugh and smile seem so unutterably bruised.
“You're in it.”
I bet I know who else is, he thinks, a little wryly.
“And listen.” Hand to fist, fist to hip. “I know who you've been visiting.”
When Tsunade approaches his chair, she crouches down, and for a moment, Naruto thinks she's going to take one of his hands into her own. But she does no such thing; she only looks at them. Marveling, maybe, at the strength he's developed, or maybe her thoughts are on another plane.
The distance between them is friendly, but careful. This is how it is between them. She isn't his mother. She isn't his grandmother. She won't act like either.
And he knows - they know - it'd be weird if she did.
“I understand. What you're going through, and what you've gone through. I understand. And if you want to talk to me about it . . . “
She fidgets. Frowns. “Well.”
“Four,” he says.
“Wha --?”
“That's four things.” He grins. “You old hag.”
So the next thing he knows, she's got his head shoved down, fingers digging into his hair, and the yell he hears goes something like,
”Don't think that you're too big for me to kick your ass, you little brat!”
--
Ero-sennin was a wandering hermit, and as such, he didn't have a permanent residence.
What he did have, Naruto finds, is stuff. Lots and lots of stuff.
It's early on the twelfth day when the gatekeeper accompanies Naruto to the storage shed and unlocks it, leaving Naruto to boggle over a mountain of boxes and dusty crates overflowing with paraphernalia and pages of tattered, yellowed writings, some on lined paper and some on white, with the rare handful that never found paper and had to settle for parchment instead.
Here are a lifetime of rough drafts and stories that were just never good enough.
Here, more importantly, are memories.
Among the strangers which greet Naruto's gaze as he sifts through the belongings are: a broken antique lamp with a gilded body and a heavy blood red shade, a pouch of scratched shuriken that look as if the wind and the elements have nipped at them (they look, Naruto thinks, a bit like giant metal snowflakes), a katana carved with the kanji 變 (decorative item, Naruto suspects), a canoe oar, shakers filled with grains of spices ranging in colour from burnt orange to perfect white to a suspicious kind of lilac, a set of timpani drums from the western lands (probably . . . if he remembers right), no less than eight miniature frog statue idols, and countless books of dubious content.
Well. Not all that dubious. Dirty, dirty, filthy content, more like.
Naruto has most of the “stuff” relocated to his apartment and is thinking about the fact that his cold is mostly gone when he hears a knock on the door and opens it to find Kakashi-sensei with one hand raised - frozen temporarily in a wave that becomes more of a salute on the way down.
“Hello,” he says.
Naruto blinks and steps aside, but his former teacher seems reluctant to leave the doorway.
He steals a look over Naruto's shoulder at the mountain of clutter which is sprouting up within the back of the room and says, in an unusually serious but even tone, “If you don't mind, there's something I'd like to show you.”
--
There are bluebirds at the grave.
Bluebirds and robins, too; bouncing around leaving prints in the snow - of which a fresh sheet fell the night before - oblivious and happy.
Kakashi, masked like always, has his face upturned, watching the blue-grey sky. “It's been snowing a lot lately,” he muses. “Funny. Winter here is usually so mild.”
Naruto agrees; he's all bundled for this winter: orange sweater, orange mittens, orange coat. And he's pretty much totally over the cold now; only a sniffle or two remains.
By and large, they stand in silence.
Silence is still a strange fit for Naruto, but it's gotten easier since the end of the world. There are moments when silence feels almost too easy, and he wonders at those. He used to hate the silence so much. So much.
But he and his old sensei have never had as much to say to one another. Kakashi talked with Sasuke; Naruto understood this, from the start. There were days in which he would've killed for it to be different, but this was the way he understood the world to work. People liked Sasuke. People talked to Sasuke. People saw something in Sasuke.
And what hurt the most - what made it the hardest, Naruto guesses - is that he saw something in Sasuke, too.
“Every time I almost die,” Kakashi begins, “I remember. I always almost die.”
He kicks at the snow. “They've been building new graves - many of them, for those who died recently. Someone has to bury the dead.”
“You've been different, recently,” he continues.
“Uh-huh. Training with frogs'll do that to you.”
“You know that's not what I mean.”
Kakashi is staring at him, sidelong again, with that lackadaisical look he always manages regardless of his concealed face. “Coming back and finding that everyone calls you a hero - now, I remember that. It's something, when perceptions shift so that men who were once hated are now regarded as the most virtuous of shinobi. The world changes. We old people have to change with it, or get left behind.”
Naruto is sitting on a small hill, puffed up with moist earth, twigs, and snow. The words cause him to wiggle; his face feels like it must look red and wind-burnt, because the air isn't being too amicable today.
“When you return from a battle in a war, you'll find that people you cared about are missing. What you have to get used to is that a part of you will be missing, too.”
Naruto hugs his knees. “Is a part of you buried in that grave, then, Kakashi-sensei?”
“It is. I grew other parts, to compensate. That's what you have to learn to do.”
He does not say what happens to you if you do not, but thinking upon the people he's known in life, Naruto supposes he has some idea.
The quietness is not so uneasy anymore. It's puzzling. Perhaps the last twelve days - though abnormal - haven't been entirely bad. It's just . . . puzzling.
The two of them watch Obito's grave, where the tombstone is sheathed in white, and years of things unsaid soak through them - a wound not healed, but healing.
For now, that's enough.
--
The moon is full that night.
Konoha snow-covered beneath a moon like this is a brightly-lit dream. The wind shakes the branches and dislodges clumps of ice that crash to the ground.
Naruto still hasn't gone through all of Ero-sennin's possessions. Barely started, in fact.
He isn't sure why. It just seems daunting.
(Daunting, though? After what he's done? What the hell?)
Okay, so. No. That's not all there is to it. That's kind of a lie.
It's more that he's thinking about the memories. All those memories.
He'll tackle them, soon.
The Hokage monument seems to glow.
Years ago, he painted that mountain as a prank, because he wanted attention more than anything. He's shed blood for this village, now.
One face in particular makes him gulp, to see - to feel everything which he must live up to.
Being a hero is a credit, Kakashi-sensei said, but it's also a kind of burden. People expect things of you. Everyone in Konoha sees you, now. And most of them will expect things from you for the rest of your life.
Naruto wonders if Itachi ever played with Sasuke in weather like this. A pale moon and a pale land; pale as ghosts with creeping feet and lifeless eyes and unkempt black hair.
He looks at the monument, remembers the grave, and Sasuke, and wonders:
What do you do with all your ghosts?
--
The thirteenth day is the day when everything comes together, but it does not start this way.
It starts like the last twelve days; timeless or time-stilted, with the seconds forgetting themselves and growing into minutes, then hours are lost in pursuits unknown, and Naruto has begun making his way through the writings of the grandfather he adopted.
He's been squinting at the same page for about an hour when he hears a knock on the door.
The hell? Again?
“Naruto!”
It's Ino, of all people.
“Yeah? What's up?”
“Get out here, now! Kurenai's gone into labour!”
He swallows hard. For an instant, his body seizes itself.
An instant later, he's out the door.
--
Birth isn't pretty. It's downright ugly, in Naruto's opinion, but he doesn't say all this. Not that he sees the birth, of course. He just hears about it, and hears in plenty enough detail, and hears people talking frantically and yelling and screaming while he sits in the hospital, in the lobby, eating candy bars with chocolate and nuts.
Most of their friends are there. Sakura and Ino talk, arguing half the time, and half the time, Naruto can't tell when they're being serious and when they're not. Naruto's main companion is Chouji, who downs more candy bars than he does, and who gets red-faced and puffy and sweats and seems more nervous about this than Naruto remembers seeing him with regards to a battle. But he's pretty nervous himself.
So they discuss this and that; essentially meaningless things to pass the time.
Sakura opens the door with her hands behind her back and this wide, dopey grin on her face.
One by one, they're ushered into the room.
“It's a girl,” are the first words they hear. “It's a girl. Come in.”
And there she is, hair dark and wet with perspiration, spread all over the pillows, eyes tired but filled with this rare, soft look.
Steel is valued in shinobi. You don't see a look like this very often. But it's this completely open expression; her eyes are letting the world in, and through them, Kurenai is letting all of herself out, and at first, Naruto can only stare.
Shikamaru has been at Kurenai's bedside throughout the labour. He's the first to hold the child, besides her mother.
Born somewhat preemptively, ahead of schedule, but she's healthy, and Naruto looks down at her, and her little moist face with the tightly shut eyes and the tiny, shaky fists, fingers curling and uncurling reflexively, and she - this baby - emits this cranky, grumbly noise that isn't anything like normal sobbing: no tears, just raucous unformed dialogue in a steady stream.
The room is sterile and smells of medicinal supplies. Kurenai looks thinner and lighter already; it's taken a toll on her body, these hours, but the contentment in her eyes says it's worth it. In the space that follows, there's a moment of peace and pausing: no quarrels, no disagreements.
Konoha gathers to witness the first baby born after the end of the world, and the first of a new generation.
In the daze, Naruto eventually finds her passed to him; this warm bundle in a fuzzy out-of-the-dryer blue blanket. Kurenai's baby has a head of fine, downy brown-black hair which will surely thicken as she grows older.
Her almond brown eyes crack open a peep, gaze bleary and unfocused.
Naruto never thought he'd be trusted with something so fragile.
It's about then when it hits him. He's holding her, still in that trance of awe that the scene calls for, when he looks up, and looks at the faces one by one, and he knows, knows what Shikamaru meant, before - knows what his father felt the day he was born.
It was in the midst of that terrible conflict that nearly tore Konoha to shreds, loss and suffering abundant, losing those he loved, but Minato found hope and something to protect, and Naruto is seeing all his friends and seeing them, and thirteen days of words and experiences slide into place, and he knows, he knows: this is what I have. You. All of you.
He's always known. It's just that now, it hits him like a sledgehammer.
It hits him like it must have hit his own father, and like it must hit Kakashi sometimes when he thinks about his genin team.
Naruto understands, finally, what to do with his ghosts.
He also understands why the silence no longer bothers him.
Once upon a time, he needed noise to validate his existence, even if the noise was yelling or berating him.
That time has gone.
--
Late on the thirteenth day and into the fourteenth day, the snow is melting; it's all around in slushy, goopy piles that are now more grey-silver than white, deeply broken by tracks and footprints, and the air has that smell of cool water to it. It is now that Naruto attacks Ero-sennin's legacy with full force; so for hours he sits and reads, dedicating himself to the words as he has dedicated himself to training with jutsu.
Because of the weather, he loses light on three occasions - once for a couple of hours in the dead of night - and when this happens, he pulls out a flashlight, reads what he can by its light, and pieces together the rest.
The twilight before dawn has crept into the sky and Naruto is reading by lamplight when he finds it.
Beneath a pile of papers in an indistinct box: there's no marker, no indicator of what he's stumbled upon, no big red sign to say, “Here I am! Look at me!”
But maybe he's had the sense that there was something like this, amid all the lost years.
Some things are meant to be found.
--
What catches his eye first is this:
A drawing.
It's not a fancy drawing; no one's definition would deem it “art”.
It's crude. It's not so different from how he'd draw, Naruto has to admit. The hand that made the sketch was obviously that of a child.
There are seven figures portrayed.
The tallest two are the parents. Four are smaller. Children. Children with black hair.
It's hard to say, because the style is so basic - sticks for arms and scribbles for hair and shabby colouring out of the lines with jags and loops - but the smallest child looks to be holding a baby.
The line at the top:
My family.
The second drawing, on a sheet of paper beneath the first, shows one child, alone.
It says:
Now.
--
--
--
I keep thinking how they could come back.
I'm scared.
I was talking to Jiraiya-sensei. He said to think [paper torn]
--
In heavier, black ink that has dripped onto the page and stained it:
Yahiko keeps telling me not to cry. I think he's right, because I cry too much.
We went for a walk today, while Jiraiya-sensei was fixing food. I Konan was making up a song. I keep thinking maybe - [ink spill]
I wish I could be like him. He's brave, and he doesn't cry. I haven't told them I was keeping this journal. I don't want them reading it, just in case. But I keep crossing out things, anyway, because I think, what if they find it?
I think I love her. [heavily scratched]
(I wish I could tell her.)
I'm so scared.
--
I wonder about ghosts. We were out today, walking, and Yahiko poked this woodpile, and all these snakes slithered out, and I thought some of them might be my brothers and sisters. Jiraiya-sensei doesn't understand it, but my mother told me that snakes are spirits of the dead, finishing business on earth.
I was laying lying (?) on the rolled out blanket on the floor of our house, and Konan was holding my hand. We were pretending to be asleep.
The wind was loud. I heard the door hitting the wood, knocking around. I heard a whistling sound. I thought it must be my baby sister coming to visit me.
I remember she had blue eyes.
--
Jiraiya-sensei says you can't tell love for sure a lot of the time, but I love her.
He says we look like we could be brother and sister. She's from my village. We met when the soldiers had us walking to move us, but they forgot about us. The adults said they'd come back with food, but there were bright lights, and they didn't come back.
Konan . . . we were in the place they'd put us in to hide. The adults told us not to make a sound, or we'd get killed. It was small, like a box, so we couldn't stand up. It was wet and raining on us. I kept crying. They told me to shut up.
Shut up. You stupid kid. You'll get us all killed. Shut up. Be a boy. We'll stab you, if you don't shut up. You're another mouth to feed, and we don't need you anyway. You want to end up like your brothers and sisters?
I hated myself, but I couldn't stop crying. I just kept thinking of Mommy and Daddy and my baby sister, and First Sister and First Brother and Second Brother.
I was alone.
I got quiet because Konan talked to me and told me it would be okay. She wiped my face with her sleeve and gave me a hug and I eventually hugged her back, and we hugged each other all night, and we watched the lights. The noises made us jump.
The adults didn't come back.
--
She made me a paper flower.
It's a water lily. Jiraiya-sensei told us about the stories they have in other lands. There are beings called angels, and they have big white wings, and they watch over children like us, who have no one else to watch over them. I was talking to Konan. She told me she would be an angel, for me.
I kissed h--
We kissed.
She was pulling my hair out from in front of my eyes and smiling and she looked kind of nervous. I felt kind of nervous. I had this thought. I wanted to kiss her, like Mommy and Daddy Father and Mother kissed.
I just thought it seemed like the right thing to do, but we didn't know how to kiss. I leaned over. She put her hands on the back of my head and we rubbed our lips together. Her skin is soft. She smells nice.
I dunno if we kissed well, but I liked how it all felt when she kept kissing my forehead, and I kissed hers back. I kept my cheek against her forehead. It felt nice. It was cool.
Yahiko knows. He just kind of laughed at us.
He's our friend. He saved us. I keep fearing thinking --
Please don't take them from me.
Please.
--
I killed a man.
I feel so bad.
--
Jiraiya-sensei told me he couldn't say if it was right or not, but I did it to protect Yahiko. My friends saved me from being lonely, and I'd do anything for them.
I still have nightmares sometimes. I dream about my family being alive, and I wake up crying, or I dream about a world where everyone is dead, and I wake up crying.
I still hate how much I cry. I don't want to cry anymore. I have to be an adult.
I watch my friends, and I love them, and I keep thinking how bad it'd feel if I lost them. I don't know what I'd do. I can't stand losing anyone else.
Please . . .
Please, don't take them from me.
I'll do anything. I will!
I got on my knees today and closed my eyes and put my hands together, and I thought about who to talk to. I'm not sure.
I don't really know.
--
I just want to keep them safe.
--
There's something in me. I think. It scares me.
I'm so scared. I don't want to be alone.
Konan, Yahiko, please don't let me --
--
don't leave me......
--
--
--
It is the fifteenth day.
Naruto has finished a lifetime of someone else's memories and ghosts; two journals' worth, accompanied by drawings and pictures - pictures depicting his sensei in a different time, in a different country with a different set of pupils: two smiling, one with orange hair and one with blue, and one unsmiling, with black hair, sunken in on himself.
There are patches of snow on the ground. For the first time in days, the clouds are few; fluffy, cotton-like blobs rather than oppressive, dismal grey so weighty as to become one with the sky. Naruto walks down the streets at a brisk pace, waving to the passersby.
Kurenai named her child Nozomi. It's a traditional, old Konoha name from an older era, and it means hope . . . which she is.
Under one arm, Naruto holds the journals. He's careful not to drop them.
From the looks of things, the rebuilding is going well. It will still be a while before Konoha is fixed to the point that it was before all the carnage began, but looking around now, there's no doubt left in Naruto's mind that the will of fire still burns.
And his own will of fire burns, as it carries him back to the prison, back to the cell which has now ceased to be ominous, icy, or insurmountable. Back to the man who came to take it all away.
Because two were pulled from the ruins, and both of them should have died - you could say - but neither did.
And they have had fifteen days to make peace with the fact of being alive, and everything that living means.
“I know what you want,” he says, breathlessly.
He holds up the papers, even though he's not talking about the papers, and he knows Pein knows he's not talking about the papers.
Pein is standing up this time, looking on intently.
It's building. That thing. It's been fifteen days, and fifteen days of emotion and three years of emotion and a lifetime, no, two lifetimes, of emotion, of gains and losses.
Naruto squeezes the journals hard, harder than he means to, so loose papers slip out and fall.
“I know who you are. I know you.” He laughs, shakily; runs his fingers through his hair, and stumbles forward, heedless. “I know you -- “
He bursts into tears.
Fingers wrap around the bars. Naruto hears the thud of the journals as they drop. He falls to his knees, and shudders with sobs; great, bubbling, shameless sobs that crash through him.
And he makes no effort to hold them back.
--
“I used to cry,” Pein says. “Then I decided I shouldn't.”
The voice falters.
“Now, I can't. Not even for -- “
He does not continue. There is no need.
Naruto feels the brush of a hand on his cheek and looks up to see wetness shining on Pein's fingertips. The black polish has faded off. He rubs two together, so the tears slip between them, then, with the same awkwardness as before, lifts them to his mouth, to taste the salt of all that has been lost to him.
--
“Sasuke -- “ he starts, after a moment.
“No,” Naruto says. And through his tears, he grins, because how good does it to feel to feel?
There are, evidently, prisons worse than those enforced by iron or steel, and once locked inside of them, you can never leave.
“No. Don't bother. I'll find him. I know I will.” He knuckles his eyes. “My way.”
He realizes, as he says this, that he's known for a while now that he did not need any information about Sasuke that Akatsuki could give him.
What he's needed has been something else.
--
By the sixteenth day, the snow has melted.
Sakura comes over, and Naruto lets her in, and they hang up holiday lamps together. Afterwards, they relax on the sofa, with her lying on her side and Naruto flopping all over the pillows in mock-exhaustion. She blinks and chuckles and he says, “It's been a weird . . . two weeks? Sixteen days, maybe?”
In reply, Sakura yawns widely, stretches her arms, then picks at a pillow covering with her fingernails. “Yeah.” She grins. “It has been. Want to get into the sake?”
”Sakura-chan!” he teases.
But she gives a sly look and reveals that she's brought a bottle over.
“Well.” Naruto eyes it, cautiously. “I guess if we survived the end of the world, uh -- “
“A little alcohol won't hurt?”
“Yeah,” he mumbles. “Maybe.”
“Let's do a toast to being alive, then.”
“To living,” Naruto corrects, and clinks their glasses together. “And a toast to all our friends . . . “
He lowers his eyes, for a moment.
“ . . . and to our friends who aren't here anymore.”
Her eyes narrow in that pretty, affectionate way. She nods, and they drink.
A little later, they're a little drunk, and the lights are a little foggy and the windows have this nice, frosted look, and everything seems to be in tones of warm silver and pale yellow. Sakura falls asleep on the sofa, and Naruto takes her to the bedroom and tucks her in. She sleeps like someone who hasn't slept for ten years, and Naruto looks at her face and knows he's not the only person for whom the last sixteen days have been a lifetime.
He has taken the journals he found back to his apartment. They sit amid the piles of useful things and junk -- reminders of someone else's life, memorializing it; he looks at them, and wonders, did it even mean anything to you that he kept them? Did you even feel anything when you learned that he hadn't forgotten you?
A paper flower, spread open but pressed flat, amid the pages of a book (made, it looked like, from something clear and plastic) - this is the one thing he does leave in the cell, because he could tell from the look in Pein's eyes that he wanted him to.
He was holding it when Naruto left.
--
Sasuke,
Don't think I don't still remember.
I found something out. Do you know what?
Everyone is kind of human.
And so are you. I've figured you out. Next time we see each other . . .
I'm waiting, Sasuke.
-- you know who
--
He puts the pencil down and looks at the note (which is, honestly, to himself).
Remembers Nagato, who wrote so passionately about the love of his friends, and remembers thinking, before, that he'd reminded him of someone. Now, he reminds him of someone else. But. He taps the paper with the lead point. You're not who I thought you were, and I'm not who you became, and you're not who I'll be.
Two letters of difference in their names.
--
By the end of the sixteenth day, the cell is empty of any inhabitant.
On one piece of paper within, in harsh, torturous letters that read like knife scratches:
PEACE
in 16 days
-fin
__________________________________________
notes: + title comes from Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
+ the stories about snakes and serpents being seen as manifestations of spirits -- actually, I heard about this in a Korean story called The Rainy Spell by Yoon Heung-gil and I thought it was neat
this fic effort was made hilarious by the fact that, while writing it, I realized I have no idea how to write Naruto, Kakashi, or basically anyone else!
requiem for a Pein, if you will. because i keep thinking if he ever realizes he's not god, he would realize how wrongly he's lived his life. sooo.
and yes ... i spelled it Pein the whole way through, because i suck. so sue me. gah, where the hell can I even cross-post this thing? :B the stupid formatting won't even transfer on FFN. /woe. XD
I had a definite Point . . . a Thesis, if you will, in mind when I wrote this. Something lame and artsy and pretentious, obviously. And I'm not sure if The Point even transferred. I kept nearly bluntly stating it in the narrative, but then I remembered that'd probably be craptacular of me because, uh, better to show than tell, ya? So I like some of this story. Some of it didn't come out as I'd hoped or planned. But it is what it is. And I'm just glad to have written at least one complete fic over my vacation.
Happy Holidays. ♥
Rating: PG-ish (K+)
Genre: General/Drama
Characters: Naruto, Sakura, Kakashi, Sai, Pein, Kurenai, Shikamaru, mentions of various others, strong references to Sasuke, Obito, Minato, Itachi, Jiraiya, et al (no pairings, really, unless you count implicit Pein/Konan)
Spoilers: For the recent manga chapters, though at this point, the whole story could be alternate timeline-ish [as in, assumes Naruto to have come back in time to, uh, prevent any entire catastrophe].
Disclaimer: Naruto is the property of Kishimoto Masashi. Standard fanfic disclaimers apply. See notes at the bottom of the 'fic.
Summary: Sixteen days: That's what you have. Sixteen winter days of sunlight and snow during which you must make peace with life, death, and yourself. There are many who should have died in the invasion. One is Naruto. Now it's time to cope. Ghosts of the pasts and pieces of the future. Assumes the invasion of Konoha went somewhat differently, with Naruto getting home sooner and chapter 429 not having happened.
On the eleventh day, Naruto is summoned to the Hokage's office, and he's only surprised that this didn't happen sooner.
She looks meaningfully at a chair near her desk until, finally, he guiltily shuffles over and sits down. He's still twitching with energy and excitement.
“Three things,” Tsunade says - raising three fingers, as she once raised one to thrash him with it. “One: I apologize, but you can't leave the village right now. We're recovering from a crisis, in a state of disrepair and emergency, and all of our important shinobi are needed here to protect the village for as long as it's this vulnerable.”
“Yeah,” Naruto answers. “I understand.”
“So no looking for Uchiha Sasuke.” She sighs. “I'm sorry.”
She stands up, looks out the window, then turns and faces the door - slams her palm onto the desk as if it's done something to offend her. Coffee sloshes from the mug, spills a few droplets onto the wood, and Naruto has this suspicion that she's already had more than a few cups.
“Two: Uchiha Sasuke is preoccupied right now. There's a --” The sides of her mouth pinch with the effort of suppressing a frown. “ -- a situation with the Raikage of Kumogakure.”
Naruto has already heard a little about this. Maybe, in a way, he's not been wanting to hear it, and so he's not heard more than a baseline account.
“I'm dealing with this from a distance as best as I can at the same time as I'm writing up plans for how to rebuild this village, and at the same time as I'm . . . handling other, more internal . . . situations.”
Long fingernails taptaptap polished oak.
“Uchiha Sasuke is a citizen of Konoha, Naruto, and I know what he means to you, but I'm afraid his predicament is on hold right now. I have to ask you and everyone else to stay out of this and let me handle it, for now. It's a matter of diplomacy, not shinobi business - documents and carrier pigeons and envoys, not kunai. Do you understand?”
Naruto nods, and he thinks he must have on his best “kicked puppy” look, because his hands are clenched in his lap and Tsunade's eyebrows raise way up, as if to ask: What? No lip from you?
“Well, then.”
She turns to the side, and her long hair swishes like two horses' tails behind her. Naruto thinks he knows from whom Sakura learned to throw her weight around.
“Third matter of business: Naruto - Jiraiya's will . . . “
Her laugh and smile seem so unutterably bruised.
“You're in it.”
I bet I know who else is, he thinks, a little wryly.
“And listen.” Hand to fist, fist to hip. “I know who you've been visiting.”
When Tsunade approaches his chair, she crouches down, and for a moment, Naruto thinks she's going to take one of his hands into her own. But she does no such thing; she only looks at them. Marveling, maybe, at the strength he's developed, or maybe her thoughts are on another plane.
The distance between them is friendly, but careful. This is how it is between them. She isn't his mother. She isn't his grandmother. She won't act like either.
And he knows - they know - it'd be weird if she did.
“I understand. What you're going through, and what you've gone through. I understand. And if you want to talk to me about it . . . “
She fidgets. Frowns. “Well.”
“Four,” he says.
“Wha --?”
“That's four things.” He grins. “You old hag.”
So the next thing he knows, she's got his head shoved down, fingers digging into his hair, and the yell he hears goes something like,
”Don't think that you're too big for me to kick your ass, you little brat!”
--
Ero-sennin was a wandering hermit, and as such, he didn't have a permanent residence.
What he did have, Naruto finds, is stuff. Lots and lots of stuff.
It's early on the twelfth day when the gatekeeper accompanies Naruto to the storage shed and unlocks it, leaving Naruto to boggle over a mountain of boxes and dusty crates overflowing with paraphernalia and pages of tattered, yellowed writings, some on lined paper and some on white, with the rare handful that never found paper and had to settle for parchment instead.
Here are a lifetime of rough drafts and stories that were just never good enough.
Here, more importantly, are memories.
Among the strangers which greet Naruto's gaze as he sifts through the belongings are: a broken antique lamp with a gilded body and a heavy blood red shade, a pouch of scratched shuriken that look as if the wind and the elements have nipped at them (they look, Naruto thinks, a bit like giant metal snowflakes), a katana carved with the kanji 變 (decorative item, Naruto suspects), a canoe oar, shakers filled with grains of spices ranging in colour from burnt orange to perfect white to a suspicious kind of lilac, a set of timpani drums from the western lands (probably . . . if he remembers right), no less than eight miniature frog statue idols, and countless books of dubious content.
Well. Not all that dubious. Dirty, dirty, filthy content, more like.
Naruto has most of the “stuff” relocated to his apartment and is thinking about the fact that his cold is mostly gone when he hears a knock on the door and opens it to find Kakashi-sensei with one hand raised - frozen temporarily in a wave that becomes more of a salute on the way down.
“Hello,” he says.
Naruto blinks and steps aside, but his former teacher seems reluctant to leave the doorway.
He steals a look over Naruto's shoulder at the mountain of clutter which is sprouting up within the back of the room and says, in an unusually serious but even tone, “If you don't mind, there's something I'd like to show you.”
--
There are bluebirds at the grave.
Bluebirds and robins, too; bouncing around leaving prints in the snow - of which a fresh sheet fell the night before - oblivious and happy.
Kakashi, masked like always, has his face upturned, watching the blue-grey sky. “It's been snowing a lot lately,” he muses. “Funny. Winter here is usually so mild.”
Naruto agrees; he's all bundled for this winter: orange sweater, orange mittens, orange coat. And he's pretty much totally over the cold now; only a sniffle or two remains.
By and large, they stand in silence.
Silence is still a strange fit for Naruto, but it's gotten easier since the end of the world. There are moments when silence feels almost too easy, and he wonders at those. He used to hate the silence so much. So much.
But he and his old sensei have never had as much to say to one another. Kakashi talked with Sasuke; Naruto understood this, from the start. There were days in which he would've killed for it to be different, but this was the way he understood the world to work. People liked Sasuke. People talked to Sasuke. People saw something in Sasuke.
And what hurt the most - what made it the hardest, Naruto guesses - is that he saw something in Sasuke, too.
“Every time I almost die,” Kakashi begins, “I remember. I always almost die.”
He kicks at the snow. “They've been building new graves - many of them, for those who died recently. Someone has to bury the dead.”
“You've been different, recently,” he continues.
“Uh-huh. Training with frogs'll do that to you.”
“You know that's not what I mean.”
Kakashi is staring at him, sidelong again, with that lackadaisical look he always manages regardless of his concealed face. “Coming back and finding that everyone calls you a hero - now, I remember that. It's something, when perceptions shift so that men who were once hated are now regarded as the most virtuous of shinobi. The world changes. We old people have to change with it, or get left behind.”
Naruto is sitting on a small hill, puffed up with moist earth, twigs, and snow. The words cause him to wiggle; his face feels like it must look red and wind-burnt, because the air isn't being too amicable today.
“When you return from a battle in a war, you'll find that people you cared about are missing. What you have to get used to is that a part of you will be missing, too.”
Naruto hugs his knees. “Is a part of you buried in that grave, then, Kakashi-sensei?”
“It is. I grew other parts, to compensate. That's what you have to learn to do.”
He does not say what happens to you if you do not, but thinking upon the people he's known in life, Naruto supposes he has some idea.
The quietness is not so uneasy anymore. It's puzzling. Perhaps the last twelve days - though abnormal - haven't been entirely bad. It's just . . . puzzling.
The two of them watch Obito's grave, where the tombstone is sheathed in white, and years of things unsaid soak through them - a wound not healed, but healing.
For now, that's enough.
--
The moon is full that night.
Konoha snow-covered beneath a moon like this is a brightly-lit dream. The wind shakes the branches and dislodges clumps of ice that crash to the ground.
Naruto still hasn't gone through all of Ero-sennin's possessions. Barely started, in fact.
He isn't sure why. It just seems daunting.
(Daunting, though? After what he's done? What the hell?)
Okay, so. No. That's not all there is to it. That's kind of a lie.
It's more that he's thinking about the memories. All those memories.
He'll tackle them, soon.
The Hokage monument seems to glow.
Years ago, he painted that mountain as a prank, because he wanted attention more than anything. He's shed blood for this village, now.
One face in particular makes him gulp, to see - to feel everything which he must live up to.
Being a hero is a credit, Kakashi-sensei said, but it's also a kind of burden. People expect things of you. Everyone in Konoha sees you, now. And most of them will expect things from you for the rest of your life.
Naruto wonders if Itachi ever played with Sasuke in weather like this. A pale moon and a pale land; pale as ghosts with creeping feet and lifeless eyes and unkempt black hair.
He looks at the monument, remembers the grave, and Sasuke, and wonders:
What do you do with all your ghosts?
--
The thirteenth day is the day when everything comes together, but it does not start this way.
It starts like the last twelve days; timeless or time-stilted, with the seconds forgetting themselves and growing into minutes, then hours are lost in pursuits unknown, and Naruto has begun making his way through the writings of the grandfather he adopted.
He's been squinting at the same page for about an hour when he hears a knock on the door.
The hell? Again?
“Naruto!”
It's Ino, of all people.
“Yeah? What's up?”
“Get out here, now! Kurenai's gone into labour!”
He swallows hard. For an instant, his body seizes itself.
An instant later, he's out the door.
--
Birth isn't pretty. It's downright ugly, in Naruto's opinion, but he doesn't say all this. Not that he sees the birth, of course. He just hears about it, and hears in plenty enough detail, and hears people talking frantically and yelling and screaming while he sits in the hospital, in the lobby, eating candy bars with chocolate and nuts.
Most of their friends are there. Sakura and Ino talk, arguing half the time, and half the time, Naruto can't tell when they're being serious and when they're not. Naruto's main companion is Chouji, who downs more candy bars than he does, and who gets red-faced and puffy and sweats and seems more nervous about this than Naruto remembers seeing him with regards to a battle. But he's pretty nervous himself.
So they discuss this and that; essentially meaningless things to pass the time.
Sakura opens the door with her hands behind her back and this wide, dopey grin on her face.
One by one, they're ushered into the room.
“It's a girl,” are the first words they hear. “It's a girl. Come in.”
And there she is, hair dark and wet with perspiration, spread all over the pillows, eyes tired but filled with this rare, soft look.
Steel is valued in shinobi. You don't see a look like this very often. But it's this completely open expression; her eyes are letting the world in, and through them, Kurenai is letting all of herself out, and at first, Naruto can only stare.
Shikamaru has been at Kurenai's bedside throughout the labour. He's the first to hold the child, besides her mother.
Born somewhat preemptively, ahead of schedule, but she's healthy, and Naruto looks down at her, and her little moist face with the tightly shut eyes and the tiny, shaky fists, fingers curling and uncurling reflexively, and she - this baby - emits this cranky, grumbly noise that isn't anything like normal sobbing: no tears, just raucous unformed dialogue in a steady stream.
The room is sterile and smells of medicinal supplies. Kurenai looks thinner and lighter already; it's taken a toll on her body, these hours, but the contentment in her eyes says it's worth it. In the space that follows, there's a moment of peace and pausing: no quarrels, no disagreements.
Konoha gathers to witness the first baby born after the end of the world, and the first of a new generation.
In the daze, Naruto eventually finds her passed to him; this warm bundle in a fuzzy out-of-the-dryer blue blanket. Kurenai's baby has a head of fine, downy brown-black hair which will surely thicken as she grows older.
Her almond brown eyes crack open a peep, gaze bleary and unfocused.
Naruto never thought he'd be trusted with something so fragile.
It's about then when it hits him. He's holding her, still in that trance of awe that the scene calls for, when he looks up, and looks at the faces one by one, and he knows, knows what Shikamaru meant, before - knows what his father felt the day he was born.
It was in the midst of that terrible conflict that nearly tore Konoha to shreds, loss and suffering abundant, losing those he loved, but Minato found hope and something to protect, and Naruto is seeing all his friends and seeing them, and thirteen days of words and experiences slide into place, and he knows, he knows: this is what I have. You. All of you.
He's always known. It's just that now, it hits him like a sledgehammer.
It hits him like it must have hit his own father, and like it must hit Kakashi sometimes when he thinks about his genin team.
Naruto understands, finally, what to do with his ghosts.
He also understands why the silence no longer bothers him.
Once upon a time, he needed noise to validate his existence, even if the noise was yelling or berating him.
That time has gone.
--
Late on the thirteenth day and into the fourteenth day, the snow is melting; it's all around in slushy, goopy piles that are now more grey-silver than white, deeply broken by tracks and footprints, and the air has that smell of cool water to it. It is now that Naruto attacks Ero-sennin's legacy with full force; so for hours he sits and reads, dedicating himself to the words as he has dedicated himself to training with jutsu.
Because of the weather, he loses light on three occasions - once for a couple of hours in the dead of night - and when this happens, he pulls out a flashlight, reads what he can by its light, and pieces together the rest.
The twilight before dawn has crept into the sky and Naruto is reading by lamplight when he finds it.
Beneath a pile of papers in an indistinct box: there's no marker, no indicator of what he's stumbled upon, no big red sign to say, “Here I am! Look at me!”
But maybe he's had the sense that there was something like this, amid all the lost years.
Some things are meant to be found.
--
What catches his eye first is this:
A drawing.
It's not a fancy drawing; no one's definition would deem it “art”.
It's crude. It's not so different from how he'd draw, Naruto has to admit. The hand that made the sketch was obviously that of a child.
There are seven figures portrayed.
The tallest two are the parents. Four are smaller. Children. Children with black hair.
It's hard to say, because the style is so basic - sticks for arms and scribbles for hair and shabby colouring out of the lines with jags and loops - but the smallest child looks to be holding a baby.
The line at the top:
My family.
The second drawing, on a sheet of paper beneath the first, shows one child, alone.
It says:
Now.
--
--
--
I keep thinking how they could come back.
I'm scared.
I was talking to Jiraiya-sensei. He said to think [paper torn]
--
In heavier, black ink that has dripped onto the page and stained it:
Yahiko keeps telling me not to cry. I think he's right, because I cry too much.
We went for a walk today, while Jiraiya-sensei was fixing food. I Konan was making up a song. I keep thinking maybe - [ink spill]
I wish I could be like him. He's brave, and he doesn't cry. I haven't told them I was keeping this journal. I don't want them reading it, just in case. But I keep crossing out things, anyway, because I think, what if they find it?
I think I love her. [heavily scratched]
(I wish I could tell her.)
I'm so scared.
--
I wonder about ghosts. We were out today, walking, and Yahiko poked this woodpile, and all these snakes slithered out, and I thought some of them might be my brothers and sisters. Jiraiya-sensei doesn't understand it, but my mother told me that snakes are spirits of the dead, finishing business on earth.
I was laying lying (?) on the rolled out blanket on the floor of our house, and Konan was holding my hand. We were pretending to be asleep.
The wind was loud. I heard the door hitting the wood, knocking around. I heard a whistling sound. I thought it must be my baby sister coming to visit me.
I remember she had blue eyes.
--
Jiraiya-sensei says you can't tell love for sure a lot of the time, but I love her.
He says we look like we could be brother and sister. She's from my village. We met when the soldiers had us walking to move us, but they forgot about us. The adults said they'd come back with food, but there were bright lights, and they didn't come back.
Konan . . . we were in the place they'd put us in to hide. The adults told us not to make a sound, or we'd get killed. It was small, like a box, so we couldn't stand up. It was wet and raining on us. I kept crying. They told me to shut up.
Shut up. You stupid kid. You'll get us all killed. Shut up. Be a boy. We'll stab you, if you don't shut up. You're another mouth to feed, and we don't need you anyway. You want to end up like your brothers and sisters?
I hated myself, but I couldn't stop crying. I just kept thinking of Mommy and Daddy and my baby sister, and First Sister and First Brother and Second Brother.
I was alone.
I got quiet because Konan talked to me and told me it would be okay. She wiped my face with her sleeve and gave me a hug and I eventually hugged her back, and we hugged each other all night, and we watched the lights. The noises made us jump.
The adults didn't come back.
--
She made me a paper flower.
It's a water lily. Jiraiya-sensei told us about the stories they have in other lands. There are beings called angels, and they have big white wings, and they watch over children like us, who have no one else to watch over them. I was talking to Konan. She told me she would be an angel, for me.
I kissed h--
We kissed.
She was pulling my hair out from in front of my eyes and smiling and she looked kind of nervous. I felt kind of nervous. I had this thought. I wanted to kiss her, like Mommy and Daddy Father and Mother kissed.
I just thought it seemed like the right thing to do, but we didn't know how to kiss. I leaned over. She put her hands on the back of my head and we rubbed our lips together. Her skin is soft. She smells nice.
I dunno if we kissed well, but I liked how it all felt when she kept kissing my forehead, and I kissed hers back. I kept my cheek against her forehead. It felt nice. It was cool.
Yahiko knows. He just kind of laughed at us.
He's our friend. He saved us. I keep fearing thinking --
Please don't take them from me.
Please.
--
I killed a man.
I feel so bad.
--
Jiraiya-sensei told me he couldn't say if it was right or not, but I did it to protect Yahiko. My friends saved me from being lonely, and I'd do anything for them.
I still have nightmares sometimes. I dream about my family being alive, and I wake up crying, or I dream about a world where everyone is dead, and I wake up crying.
I still hate how much I cry. I don't want to cry anymore. I have to be an adult.
I watch my friends, and I love them, and I keep thinking how bad it'd feel if I lost them. I don't know what I'd do. I can't stand losing anyone else.
Please . . .
Please, don't take them from me.
I'll do anything. I will!
I got on my knees today and closed my eyes and put my hands together, and I thought about who to talk to. I'm not sure.
I don't really know.
--
I just want to keep them safe.
--
There's something in me. I think. It scares me.
I'm so scared. I don't want to be alone.
Konan, Yahiko, please don't let me --
--
don't leave me......
--
--
--
It is the fifteenth day.
Naruto has finished a lifetime of someone else's memories and ghosts; two journals' worth, accompanied by drawings and pictures - pictures depicting his sensei in a different time, in a different country with a different set of pupils: two smiling, one with orange hair and one with blue, and one unsmiling, with black hair, sunken in on himself.
There are patches of snow on the ground. For the first time in days, the clouds are few; fluffy, cotton-like blobs rather than oppressive, dismal grey so weighty as to become one with the sky. Naruto walks down the streets at a brisk pace, waving to the passersby.
Kurenai named her child Nozomi. It's a traditional, old Konoha name from an older era, and it means hope . . . which she is.
Under one arm, Naruto holds the journals. He's careful not to drop them.
From the looks of things, the rebuilding is going well. It will still be a while before Konoha is fixed to the point that it was before all the carnage began, but looking around now, there's no doubt left in Naruto's mind that the will of fire still burns.
And his own will of fire burns, as it carries him back to the prison, back to the cell which has now ceased to be ominous, icy, or insurmountable. Back to the man who came to take it all away.
Because two were pulled from the ruins, and both of them should have died - you could say - but neither did.
And they have had fifteen days to make peace with the fact of being alive, and everything that living means.
“I know what you want,” he says, breathlessly.
He holds up the papers, even though he's not talking about the papers, and he knows Pein knows he's not talking about the papers.
Pein is standing up this time, looking on intently.
It's building. That thing. It's been fifteen days, and fifteen days of emotion and three years of emotion and a lifetime, no, two lifetimes, of emotion, of gains and losses.
Naruto squeezes the journals hard, harder than he means to, so loose papers slip out and fall.
“I know who you are. I know you.” He laughs, shakily; runs his fingers through his hair, and stumbles forward, heedless. “I know you -- “
He bursts into tears.
Fingers wrap around the bars. Naruto hears the thud of the journals as they drop. He falls to his knees, and shudders with sobs; great, bubbling, shameless sobs that crash through him.
And he makes no effort to hold them back.
--
“I used to cry,” Pein says. “Then I decided I shouldn't.”
The voice falters.
“Now, I can't. Not even for -- “
He does not continue. There is no need.
Naruto feels the brush of a hand on his cheek and looks up to see wetness shining on Pein's fingertips. The black polish has faded off. He rubs two together, so the tears slip between them, then, with the same awkwardness as before, lifts them to his mouth, to taste the salt of all that has been lost to him.
--
“Sasuke -- “ he starts, after a moment.
“No,” Naruto says. And through his tears, he grins, because how good does it to feel to feel?
There are, evidently, prisons worse than those enforced by iron or steel, and once locked inside of them, you can never leave.
“No. Don't bother. I'll find him. I know I will.” He knuckles his eyes. “My way.”
He realizes, as he says this, that he's known for a while now that he did not need any information about Sasuke that Akatsuki could give him.
What he's needed has been something else.
--
By the sixteenth day, the snow has melted.
Sakura comes over, and Naruto lets her in, and they hang up holiday lamps together. Afterwards, they relax on the sofa, with her lying on her side and Naruto flopping all over the pillows in mock-exhaustion. She blinks and chuckles and he says, “It's been a weird . . . two weeks? Sixteen days, maybe?”
In reply, Sakura yawns widely, stretches her arms, then picks at a pillow covering with her fingernails. “Yeah.” She grins. “It has been. Want to get into the sake?”
”Sakura-chan!” he teases.
But she gives a sly look and reveals that she's brought a bottle over.
“Well.” Naruto eyes it, cautiously. “I guess if we survived the end of the world, uh -- “
“A little alcohol won't hurt?”
“Yeah,” he mumbles. “Maybe.”
“Let's do a toast to being alive, then.”
“To living,” Naruto corrects, and clinks their glasses together. “And a toast to all our friends . . . “
He lowers his eyes, for a moment.
“ . . . and to our friends who aren't here anymore.”
Her eyes narrow in that pretty, affectionate way. She nods, and they drink.
A little later, they're a little drunk, and the lights are a little foggy and the windows have this nice, frosted look, and everything seems to be in tones of warm silver and pale yellow. Sakura falls asleep on the sofa, and Naruto takes her to the bedroom and tucks her in. She sleeps like someone who hasn't slept for ten years, and Naruto looks at her face and knows he's not the only person for whom the last sixteen days have been a lifetime.
He has taken the journals he found back to his apartment. They sit amid the piles of useful things and junk -- reminders of someone else's life, memorializing it; he looks at them, and wonders, did it even mean anything to you that he kept them? Did you even feel anything when you learned that he hadn't forgotten you?
A paper flower, spread open but pressed flat, amid the pages of a book (made, it looked like, from something clear and plastic) - this is the one thing he does leave in the cell, because he could tell from the look in Pein's eyes that he wanted him to.
He was holding it when Naruto left.
--
Sasuke,
Don't think I don't still remember.
I found something out. Do you know what?
Everyone is kind of human.
And so are you. I've figured you out. Next time we see each other . . .
I'm waiting, Sasuke.
-- you know who
--
He puts the pencil down and looks at the note (which is, honestly, to himself).
Remembers Nagato, who wrote so passionately about the love of his friends, and remembers thinking, before, that he'd reminded him of someone. Now, he reminds him of someone else. But. He taps the paper with the lead point. You're not who I thought you were, and I'm not who you became, and you're not who I'll be.
Two letters of difference in their names.
--
By the end of the sixteenth day, the cell is empty of any inhabitant.
On one piece of paper within, in harsh, torturous letters that read like knife scratches:
PEACE
in 16 days
-fin
__________________________________________
notes: + title comes from Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
+ the stories about snakes and serpents being seen as manifestations of spirits -- actually, I heard about this in a Korean story called The Rainy Spell by Yoon Heung-gil and I thought it was neat
this fic effort was made hilarious by the fact that, while writing it, I realized I have no idea how to write Naruto, Kakashi, or basically anyone else!
requiem for a Pein, if you will. because i keep thinking if he ever realizes he's not god, he would realize how wrongly he's lived his life. sooo.
and yes ... i spelled it Pein the whole way through, because i suck. so sue me. gah, where the hell can I even cross-post this thing? :B the stupid formatting won't even transfer on FFN. /woe. XD
I had a definite Point . . . a Thesis, if you will, in mind when I wrote this. Something lame and artsy and pretentious, obviously. And I'm not sure if The Point even transferred. I kept nearly bluntly stating it in the narrative, but then I remembered that'd probably be craptacular of me because, uh, better to show than tell, ya? So I like some of this story. Some of it didn't come out as I'd hoped or planned. But it is what it is. And I'm just glad to have written at least one complete fic over my vacation.
Happy Holidays. ♥