The Way Through Stone Village (Naruto)

2: The Spires

[OP: "Oh Sleeper"]

Finally, Sasuke spoke:

"You talk like everyone is the same, but we're not alike. We've made none of the same choices, and we don't have the same history. The Curse itself is proof."

"It would bother you more to be like everyone else than it does to be cursed," Shine said, candidly. "You at least can feel special this way. If I told you that you're not that unique, you'd be furious. But, if you look back there--" She pointed at Dabi and Shoto. "--you'll see two people who've known that love can become hatred, probably more, if we knew more of the others' backstories...and, of course, there's me."

She shrugged.

Sasuke knew that Dabi had mentioned to him a while ago that Shine had a darker past than he gave her credit for...but he didn't believe it.

"You?" he scoffed. "What could you know about it? You think 'love' is the solution to everything--and sarcasm."

"That was almost funny," Shine said flatly. "And it's true, both those things are very important. Even God is sarcastic, you know. Cuttingly so."

"And you end everything with that thought," Sakura said. "Don't you have an identity apart from God?"

"How could I?" Shine asked. "If you mean do I think God must justify everything I do, I guess that is true, in a way. If it's not of God, or at least okay with God, it would be wrong. Do I think about it every second of the day? No, but we're talking about our view of life, and that's going to come back to God for me. Why is that so odd? And you know nothing about my life or how I got here. And what annoys me about you is how you sure that you're the only one who can know these kinds of temptations. Get over yourself."

She folded her arms and walked faster.

Sasuke thought she might actually be offended for once.

He expected that to make him feel triumphant, but instead he more of felt he'd stepped on a landmine. Shine was scary when she wanted to be...

Quickening his pace after her, he went on.

"So what then? What big pain does your life have?"

"Oh, nothing at all compared to yours." Shine was cutting again. "At least genocide is not a part of it...directly. But my people were killed off by the millions less than 100 years ago and are still hated over most of the world I live in."

Sasuke was surprised to hear this. "What?"

"Didn't think I had anything in common with you or the Uzumaki clan, huh?" Shine said dryly. "Not only the ninja world is full of evils. Some, if I told you, even you would be disgusted at...but I prefer not to burden people with things they don't need to know. Even speaking of evil is shameful if it's not necessary."

Sasuke didn't know what to do with that.

"And you're okay with that happening?"

"What can I do about it? Most of the people responsible for it are dead," Shine said. "Many of them killed themselves. In the end evil hurts the people who do it almost as much as the ones they do it to... I would be angry, I guess, if I met them. It didn't affect me personally that much...but it's not a nice thing to know about. Still, everyone has had bloody history if you go back far enough. I can't say I'm special...but my grandparents...some of that haunted them till they died." She tugged her hair. "But you know what? On the other side of my family is the bloodline of the people who did those things. It didn't matter to my parents, and it doesn't to me. Things are different when you can't blame everyone for what their parents and grandparents and great grandparents did all the time."