Bamboo Hearts Firefly

A Shinobi's Debt

I long for the sound of your voice.

The face I see so clearly, doesn't say a word.

-Ink Dark Moon

'So. I wasn't just misreading things,' Shino thought, as he studied the face of his captive. 'Her eyes are the same as hers.'

But still...if she really was the girl he met in his village years ago, why didn't she seem to recognize him? 

After risking her life to protect him when they were kids, why would Firefly now want to hurt him? 

Had he mistakenly confused her for someone else from her clan?

"Have we met before, by any chance?" Shino asked her. "What reason do you have to kill me?"

The kunoichi said nothing, confirming nothing but what Shino already knew. 

No matter her haunting resemblance to the girl he knew as Firefly, he couldn't let his guard down around this rogue ninja. 

And he didn't like the hungry way she looked at him either. 

Like every time she looked at him, she was seeing his corpse.

A look that would've given his title of "village creep" a run for its own ryō! 

The Beekeeper had to have made a mistake.

How could a creepishly bloodthirsty little mosquito like her ever be an ally to him in helping him find a way out of this fog? 

'She's so...bee-ish...in all the worst ways.'

And there was no way in a Bee's Nest she could ever be Firefly, which meant Shino had no use for her.

"It looks like the Beekeeper's antidote worked. You'll live. I've decided not to kill you," Shino told her. "Why, you ask? Because even if you don't deserve it, I wasn't ever doing this for you. We're finished here."

And having done what he promised the Beekeeper, Shino turned to walk away. 

"Please. I beg you to reconsider."

And the silence suddenly broken by the soft plea in her voice made the Aburame stop again. 

Her accent lightly Iwagakurian, much like the Earth shinobi from the Hidden Stone Village he'd fought alongside in the Fourth Shinobi World War. 

"I beg you to take my life in battle instead. I wouldn't be able to live with myself otherwise. If we don't finish this fight, I can never return to the outside," she said to the Aburame. "And so, I ask for the honor of another match."

Shino's brow perked. 

Hadn't the Beekeeper begged him for death too during their fight?

Who were these people, and how was life so meaningless to them that dying in battle was such a gloriously romanticized alternative?

"Why should I give you that honor?" Shino asked. "I'm not interested in another match with you. Neither of us will gain anything from you losing to me a second time."

"Which means you have nothing to lose by finishing this fight with me?" she refuted. "If you had nothing to gain from letting me live...why didn't you let me die?"

"Why?" he answered her quietly. "The reason is because you remind me of someone I knew many years ago, and I have been in debt to her ever since."

"A debt?" she repeated, surprised that a test so important as proving her true skills to an Aburame had been unceremoniously derailed for a reason so trivial. "You're forfeiting this battle...because of a debt?"