guardian of the storm | ✓

Chapter Thirty-Six ~ Talk

~Chapter Thirty-Six~

Jafar found Winter sitting beneath a towering oak tree, her knees pulled up to her chest, and her chin resting on her kneecaps. Her arms were encircled around her legs loosely, her eye distant and her hair shifting with every movement of the wind, although most of the long, inky black strands were curled up on the ground. As she sat there Jafar was struck by a sudden realization. Winter was younger than him. It'd been awhile since he'd thought about her age, but now that his mind was on this track, he remembered that she was just barely sixteen.

She was nearly two years younger than him and yet she acted as if she was the older the one. He supposed that all the others had forgotten this as well. It was rather easy to forget that Winter was the youngest Original, and one of the youngest in the village, simply because of her mannerism and her accomplishments.

Now Jafar wasn't the best at comforting people, in fact he usually would tell someone to deal with it and get on with their life, but he wasn't that callous. Mustering up any gentleman like skills he might have left, Jafar sat down next to Winter, clasping his hands together. He doesn't talk. He just sits there, looking at the scenery around them and observing the way the sunlight dappled the leaves, the way a small bunny twitched its nose before darting deeper into the forest, how the clouds moved ever so slightly with each passing minute. Despite being relatively reserved around others in a way that made he come off either cold, rude, or humorous, Jafar did care about a handful of people. He just didn't show it very well.

He didn't show a lot of things actually. He was a lot smarter than he let on, and could tell quite a bit just by observing. Like how he could tell that while Winter's mind was here in the Storm Village, her heart was far away. Or that Emiko and Daiki had been secretly seeing each other for quite sometime, which would make sense seeing how those two were the primary pillars that supported Winter and spent plenty of time together. Or that the war had already started but Winter had yet to make a move, simply because the Storm Village wasn't ready yet.

"I was really confused when I woke up all those years ago." Jafar breaks the silence after a while, keeping his gaze trained on a seemingly interesting blade of grass. "I woke up amidst the smoke and ruins of the village, covered in ash and blood. At first I thought it was a nightmare of sorts. It took about an hour for the reality to sink in, by that time I had gotten to my feet and was wandering around. As a shinobi the dead aren't supposed to scare you... but when it's your neighbors, your classmates, friends, family... well any rational thought escaped my mind. All I knew was that I had to get out of there now. So I did. I ran and ran and ran and never looked back.

It was only later on that I realized that I never saw you. I tried not to be foolish and hold onto too much hope, but somewhere in my heart I just knew that you were still alive. So I wandered around. I trained in forests, abandoned villages, deserts, jungles, pretty much anywhere. After all you were my best friend when we were younger, and I figured I should grow strong before I saw you again.

I was about... oh eleven or so when I met my sensei. Well I suppose I shouldn't call him my sensei, he was more of a supporter than anything. He was really weird, a total perv, and not all that attractive. But I was starving, on the brink of death, and had just attempted to pickpocket him." Jafar chuckles softly. "He treated me to a simple meal but it was heaven for someone who'd been living off of grass for the past few years. He noticed my bruised knuckles as well and told me to stick with him, only for a little bit. He was a writer apparently, and he wanted some company. I traveled with him for a month, and in that month he helped me hone my skills with my blades. Then we parted ways. Neither of us were too upset about it, and to be honest, we both knew that we weren't going to stay together for a long time. In fact we never told each other our names. But that month of training, that month of counseling, was enough for me to get my head on straight. I started going around and taking on small jobs, I started earning money instead of stealing it, and... well eventually I got sucked into being a bounty hunter. I had conditions, I'd only take certain targets and they'd have to be pretty bad people." He runs his left thumb over his knuckles as he pauses to gather his thoughts.