She felt trapped.
Her body was stuck in its place, blood running cold and freezing in her veins. Her head pounded, that same ice cold blood feeling hothothot, burning, burning, BURNING--
He stood there, just within arms reach. His yellow spiked hair reflected the low sun's rays like strands of pure spun gold, oceanic eyes sparkling with confusion and...worry?
It was almost taunting, how close he was. It was as if she could reach out and touch him - but she couldn't touch him, couldn't feel him, because... because he's dead. Her father is dead.
Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead.
But, he's not dead, right? Because she went back. Everything was gone, so she went back to - to when? When was she? Where was she? She wasn't home. This wasn't her Konoha. This... this wasn't her home. She didn't belong in this time - this Konoha.
Something within her shook, creaking with pressure and tension - something inside that felt as it would snap. Darkness crawled at the edges of her vision, rising from the depths of her soul because - because--
'I...I dont belong here. I don't - I dont belong here. I shouldn't - shouldn't be here, I SHOULDN'T BE HERE-'
"KIT!"
She jolted, Kurama's booming voice echoing painfully in her skull, "Kit, calm down. You can't panic here. Not now."
"Mirai-san?," Rin's soft, worried voice broke through the cold fear, and...
...and Mirai realized that she couldn't panic. She couldn't. Not here. Not now. These - these emotions could be pushed back, shoved away, because she couldn't handle them. She couldn't.
Not here. Not now.
•••
He'd seen a lot of things in his life. Good things, bad things, beautiful and ugly things, evil and... more evil. He'd seen so many things.
He wasn't old and wise and experienced in many ways, but... he wasn't naive either, and he most definitely wasn't innocent.
Minato was... he liked to think he was a relatively good person. Of course, he'd done many things that most would consider to be unthinkable, but he was a shinobi. It was his job to do what nobody else would so that he could protect his village and his loved ones. It was his job as a shinobi to do the unthinkable, so that others didn't have to. He fought and killed for them, every breath of exhaustion, every bead of sweat that formed on his brow, every drop of blood spilt - it was all selfless.
He tried, of course, to be merciful. Even on the battlefield he did his best to keep as much blood off of his hands, because he knew that with every kunai that hit its mark and every ounce of blood that splattered on his face and dripped thickly from his fingers - it changed him. The more lives he took, the more he changed.
And he didn't want to change.
But he knew that he was tainted with blood, and there was no going back from that.
So he tried. He spilt as little blood as he could, and the blood that he did spill was only to protect those things that are precious to him.
YOU ARE READING
Drifting the Temporal Dimension
General Fiction"It's... incredible, the things that humans can do when you push them hard enough. What would normally be considered impossible could be made possible with willpower alone." "...And is that what led you here? Willpower?" She laughed, hysteria and he...
