Fight (a Naruto reborn fanfiction)

🔥🥀 XXVII 🥀🔥

The german came through in me with this one. Love to this song, it's such a melancholic and yet hopeful song I can't. All the love to Henning May, whose voice is the nicest thing I've heard if you ignore the whimper audios tiktok keeps throwing at me. 

Update: My top two songs are from Henning May, I can'T! Man's voice is so majestic like for what! And of course, Spotify felt the need to call me depressed in multiple ways again this year, because why the fuck not! At least my taste in music is objectively good, because I showed my Spotify wrapped to my therapist and she wrote down a few of the songs. My therapist! What a weird situation.

________________________________________

Kisame wakes to the smell of roasted meat, feeling strangely warm. When he opens his eyes, he discovers yet another of Himari's blankets draped over him, but unlike the first time, she's still there, a few feet away, grilling fish.

She didn't leave. He asked her to stay, not through words but action alone, and she listened. 

When she notices that he's awake, she gives him a smile that carries more warmth than anything his mother has ever graced him with. She's more at ease now when compared to the last time they met, muscles no longer tense, eyes no longer pained, lifeless. 

The soft morning breeze brings with it a feeling of calmness, a brief respite of the horrors this world has in store for its inhabitants. 

Kisame has lived through many cruelties in his short life, has experienced things that most could never even imagine. And yet, in the presence of the girl that stayed, even when he has nothing on him to stay for, he feels so understood, so cared for. It's as if a heavy weight has been lifted off of his shoulders, has left him with what he should be. A child.

Every human has needs that have to be fulfilled in order to stay alive. There's the obvious, no one can survive without water, food and sleep. But that's not everything there is, it can't be, because sitting there, a smile stretched across his face so wide it hurts, showing sharp teeth that would usually scare people away, he feels more whole than he has any recollection of ever being.

It's a feeling he could get used to, he thinks, as he joins Himari at the campfire.

Time flies by, and when at one point, you stop and look back, you realize how much the world gradually changes. Himari has left behind the worst of her days and with it, her occupation that brought so much pain. Even in times of war, there are enough opportunities to find work, enough to buy necessities and not much more, but she doesn't need more.

She travels the lands with Kisame, the boy she might as well call a son. She teaches him about nature, about the plants of the forests they traverse, about animals, humans and more. She passes on her knowledge about various subjects, never dwelling too long on one, ever changing like the breeze.

He knows how to defend himself, at least the basics, truly a far cry from the abilities she knows him to be capable of during his prime, but that's okay, that's to be expected, because he's a child. Having just celebrated his sixth birthday, there should be no need for him to learn how to kill, there shouldn't be the need for anyone to learn how to kill.

Himari knows she can't save every child out there, because that would endanger the little lift that she has built for herself far away from humanity, in the tranquil forests that tell tales of old. She doesn't have a place to call home yet, no house, but the sharp-teethed smile of Kisame is more of a home to her than the elaborate mansions of the Kaguya ever were.

She is no longer a weapon of mass destruction, no longer forced to take many lives just to save hers. And while she knows that her sins might never be forgiven, she seeks solace in the small things she has come to adore. Sure, the occasional skirmish still plays out too close to them for her liking sometimes, but they mostly end quickly, at which point, silence washes over the ground once more to tuck her in its calming embrace.