empathy (rewritten 2019)

五代目火影

綱手

Tsunade thought, for a while, she was the only one who knew. But then, one Sunday morning, she braced herself with a bundle of white roses and stalked into the cemetery for the grave she so dreaded to face. But, three steps in with her heels squishing the dewey grass, she caught the backs of two jounin sitting before the very grave she anticipated to see.

Kakashi was not surprising. He was her mentor. And most likely, the loss of another female student of his (if Rin counted as his 'student,' since he lead the team for quite some time) irked him to pay another ten for another bundle of sad, yellow flowers--a sunlit yellow, the kind that belonged in the fields, the kind of yellow that matched the yellow scarf Rin gave him for his birthday. Tsunade, behind her impassive line of lips and apathetic hazel eyes, nearly pitied for him.

The redhead was, though, surprising. Tsunade knew not of this jounin save for the fact that she avidly picked up Sakura from the hospital after her shift with a bento box for lunch. Other than that, she was a mere stranger. Tsunade hardly knew an inkling of this woman's life to begin her list of pity.

She decided to wait until they both left. Her presence was, surely, already acknowledged by both of those nin, but perhaps they had the sense to give the Fifth Hokage the last talk with her student. And they, indeed, did, leaving without passing a glance to the blonde waiting by the tree.

Tsunade set the white flowers down, amidst a bouquet of yellow chrysanthemums and a jar of daffodils, and stood quiet before such a young, small grave. And perhaps the weight of dread and guilt was a tad bit lighter, with her knowing that there lived two souls built with the same guilt and dread akin to her own. And so she stood taller, a bit lighter.

"You were so young," she whispered, her voice only a breath from disappearing into the rising wind. She could speak and belt and shout so tough, so loud with her student--in the training room, the operating room, the office--but this, a grave and a stone and three different flowers laid on such a delicate one; she could barely manage a whisper. Death was not so kind to such a grown woman like her, working in such a field as a medic, but the only death that could break her was the death of her own.

"I should've been gentler, shouldn't I?" Maybe. "I just wanted you to live in a world like this."

But maybies are nothing. They matter none, like doctor appointments every Sunday telling her the same dreadful thing week after week, like cries of loneliness and whys and neglect, like death of young kids when their mentors live to teach another thirty.