The Odds are Definitely Not in My Favor

Flint: Chapter II

Flint - Chapter II:

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Solanum's mouth let out tortured gasps as the latest memory ran its course and plagued her mind. She couldn't bring herself to cry or scream out since Papa's death, and barely a sound had passed her lips for days.

She just felt tired. Wrung out.

Solanum didn't know if she wanted to live anymore.

"Rin." she whispered bitterly. "If I gave up like you did, would it make things okay?"

Closing her eyes, Solanum smiled dolefully. She wasn't Kakashi anymore. No. She carried his sins, his memories, his nindo, but Solanum knew she was more than that. So although she loved the people her previous self called precious, she also saw them in a different light.

(They were not the saints Kakashi saw them as. Exceptionally kind people perhaps, but they were humans all the same with their flaws, mistakes and capability for horrible, horrible decisions.)

Like kind, gentle Rin. Rin is- was lovely. She was the love of Obito's life. The medic. The healer. The mediator.

(Kind, gentle Rin in all her supposed kindness shouldn't have jumped in front of her attack. She shouldn't shouldn't have killed herself on Kakashi's hand. Solanum understood that she must have had her own reasons, but did Rin even think about how bad of an idea it was to saddle her the guilt on her – the image of her hand through Rin's chest, ripping up her heart until there was nothing left but a broken body?)

Rin was one of the few people her previous self had left, and she didn't trust Kakashi- Solanum enough to save her. She gave up just like that, thinking that she was doing something good.

Good. Something good.

Perhaps, in a way, it was good. Rin effectively put down the threat to the village and, in a way, saved the citizens of Konoha no matter how undeserving most of them were.

But it left Solanum's previous self a husk of a person as Rin used him- her as an instrument for her death.

(There were times when, as much as it made her feel repulsed, she couldn't help but wonder why? Why didn't Rin used a kunai if she wanted to die so badly? She was a kunoichi, wasn't she?)

Solanum was already defective before it happened. She could function, yes. But she was still cracked. Wrong. Broken.

And Rin had made it worse.

Not that being called "Nakamagoroshi no Kakashi" helped.

There were previous memories of hateful whispers. First was "The Son of Stain." Second was "The Dojutsu Stealer." Then–

"Friend-killer."

It was quite a miracle she hadn't quite snapped yet before.

But she supposed that was Konoha for you. Hail to the power of the so-called Will of Fire and the innate duty she couldn't quite discard.

...But Solanum didn't have that now, did she?

(Solanum asked sometimes.

What was the point of living if they were all gonna leave anyway?)

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Solanum stared at the wall blankly.

She hadn't eaten properly for who knew how long, but she couldn't quite bring herself to snap out of her slump.

Solanum vaguely remembered getting dressed by a pleading Katniss and attending a ceremony that was supposed to honor her father's death, along with the other families of the coal-miners who were also killed in the accident; but hours passed by and bled into one another with no defining change in pattern until she didn't know what was happening anymore.