Theme: 26 HIDDEN
Fandom/Pairing: Naruto / KakashiObitoRin
Title: That Awful Sound
Author:
go_hifreann_leaRating: PG13
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.
Note: Inspired by Bang Bang. Man, this isn't a happy bit of ficcage, mainly because this song isn't particularly happy either. Mild gore. Death. Angst. I don't make it very clear, but Kakashi's on a mission to find this village, which is supposed to be hiding several missing nin.
i was five and he was six
we rode on horses made of sticks
he wore black, and i wore white
he would always win the fight.
Girls can’t play these games, I say loudly, my voice carrying across the large lot.
There’s a bunch of other kids surrounding us, each riding their own broom like a cowboy, their faces hard like those of buccaneers of old. I have to uphold my title as leader. I’m wearing the thick black coat and that makeshift forehead protector. I’m practically ANBU, with my father’s scent surrounding me and this sign of my friends’ loyalty.
“I’ll play if I like,” she replies with a huff, her small hand clinging onto the stick tightly. She’s nothing but a little girl, and her white dress is already soiled with dirt and grass stains.
I sigh dramatically, and I drop my horse with a thump. Look, I say, if you wanna play we can save you from a demon, or something. This is as far as I’m gonna go, and she better be happy with that.
Of course she isn’t. She’s just a girl. She doesn’t understand clemency or compromise. Instead she smashes her purple broom into the side of my face, and I don’t expect it, so I don’t duck. I’m on the ground before I can realize what just happened. In my mouth I can taste the dull dirt, and my left cheek throbs.
“Bang bang,” I hear amidst the yells of the other kids pledging their alliance to the new order.
All but one. All but this dark-haired boy with a stubborn expression.
“You’re just gonna take that?”
I smile up at him, a broken, dirty grin. The start of a new team. This boy is smaller than I am, and he wears dark colors. He looks right like that; it matches his eyes and his hair. He smiles a lot to make up for it.
Let the girl enjoy her warriors. We’ll get her eventually. Bang. Bang.
bang, bang
he shot me down
bang, bang
i hit the ground
bang, bang
that awful sound, bang bang,
my baby shot me down.
Rin huddled in the woods, and she felt the dirt hard underneath her bare feet. She knelt there, tired and scared and breathing too loudly. She was in bad, bad shape if she couldn’t even control her breathing anymore. Out of practice kunoichi made a dead kunoichi.
Still, though, she could make out his footsteps as they came nearer, step by step. Oh, definitely a shinobi of Konoha. Only they knew how to approach so carefully, without even shifting a leaf. As a former Konoha nin, she knew how to differentiate this noise from that of other nin.
At least the kids were out of the way. She’d been with some of the younger kids, scolding them for playing shinobi and biju. They weren’t even playing it right. Shinobi couldn’t fly.
Anyway, she’d heard him coming only seconds before the first kunai flew past her, cutting her cheek with its sharp edge. The blood slide down slowly across her pale skin, but there were more important things to do than to wipe it. She’d made the children scatter, to head back home before they got caught up in this fight.
Konoha could have her if they wanted, but they’d never get her home. They’d never find the village, not if no one led them to it, first.
There was a village, and it was hidden, but differently than those of the shinobi. Not hidden in the leaves or in the sand or in the clouds, but in plain sight. It was the only way a village like that could survive, really. It was a place of prostitutes without customers, a place of mothers without husbands, kunoichi without missions. It wasn’t better than the world beyond it, but it was different. It was the kind of difference Rin had always needed.
“I’m here,” she whispered, but this shinobi heard her, of course. Another kunai flew towards her, but she moved to the left, not a moment too soon. She knew that her enemy wasn’t going all out; if they had been she would’ve been sprawled on the ground already. No, they were testing her, the bastards.
She ran, her legs strong and quick under her. She flew, going further and further from the village. Gods no, they’d never get it. Never. And the weapons, scrolls, jutsu followed at her heels, always a mere second behind. Every near-miss was a step closer to-
She hit the ground.
Bang bang.
now he's gone i don't know why
and to this day sometimes i cry
he didn't even say goodbye he didn't take the time to lie
bang, bang
he shot me down, bang bang
That awful sound. It reverberates around, and it’s as if I can hear the very squish of your body being crushed beneath the immense strength of the forest. But I run away from you. I run away from that crushed red eye, I run away from the feel of your eyeball between my fingers. So strong, so weak. I could have squished it without a second thought.
And now here it is in Kakashi’s face. His darkangelavenger face.
Oh god. Where was our bittersweet farewell? Parting is such sweet sorrow. Not even a lie slid past your lips, not in your last moments. Only my name. Where was the blackimpcowboy kid, riding on that half-assed horse?
I killed you, and you only said Rin.
I held your hand, and you only pulled away.
That awful sound.
I let Kakashi take me. I watch him pull that blue lightning Chidori out of his ass, and I see him fall. See him use that Sharingan that belongs in your face, and then he falls. Yondaime saves us, but Kakashi falls.
It sounds like death, when he falls. I think he’s dead, too, and I want to hear that sound again, against my own skin. Bang bang.
seasons came and changed the time, when i grew up i called him mine
he would always laugh and say remember when
we used to play, bang bang
He approached carefully, despite the blood seeping through the back of her shirt. His hands had deadly, deadly aim. They were perfectionists, just like him. Bang bang. The missing-nin didn’t move, though, and Kakashi took the plunge.
He pulled the kunai out from her lower spine, and he heard her grunt on pain. Good, he hadn’t killed her, then. Kicking her onto her back, he opened his mouth for the first question.
“Rin?”
Her head was shaven, like deranged monk with a fairy face. Her eyes were dull with pain, but he knew her. He knew her, goddam it, his...
His.
Obito and his, but not officially.
She coughed up blood in reply.
Wife.
Bang bang.
“Rin.”
Her lips moved in some semblance of speech, but noises didn’t come out. Sharingan flickered into use, and he read her red, bloody lips. Like a letter, long overdue.
“You killed me, and you only say Rin.”
Kakashi knelt down next to her, and wiped the blood from her mouth, carefully. He was awkwardly tender, since this was his first chance in a long time to be so. “I’m sorry, it’s just been so long. I’ve...I’ve missed you. After you left, nothing was ever the same.” His voice cracked, wood cracking over a teammate. Bang bang.
Her eyes closed, eyelids fluttering down slowly. “Remember when we used to play like this? With those dumb brooms between ours legs? You stole my army from me, but me and Obito got it back. We let you be our wild, hostile, foreign queen and you hated it. You were always trying to take over again, but it never worked.”
Chest stopped rising, falling one last time. Falling was like death.
“You killed each of us at least five times, but the other always brought the other back by using a forbidden jutsu. Remember?”
Heart stop. Soul evacuating. Bang bang.
“Why the hell did you go off and hide in this place?” Anger replaced offhandedness. He slammed the kunai down at her face, and it sunk in deep, splitting her features into a morbid mess. He could see right to her bone, her eyeball in two pieces, half-crushed underneath his weapon. Blood rivulets rushed down her purple tattoos, and she was ugly.
The face that no longer looked like Rin didn’t answer.
“Remember when this was just a game?”
Bang bang.