empathy (rewritten 2019)

epilogue

Keiko Senturen

A great friend, comrade, and kunoichi.

She stood over the grave, minding the yellow lilies scattered amongst it. And, with a clearing of her throat, she looked upon the people, beginning, "I knew Keiko when I was a Chunin. I met her in a time of my insecurity, my, um, doubt, and in my time of need of a friend. And, as my friend, she filled the role as a sister, a mentor, and a guardian. She trained me, taught me, and helped me become the person I am today.

"And through all our years together she never failed to remind me of my worth. Some days, when she somehow knew I just..needed it, she'd tell me, you are beautiful, you are strong, and in your weakest, you've always triumphed and i know that right now, you are more than enough to get through this, she'd tell me, and through all the change we went through, those reminders remained constant. She always wanted me to know how much I mattered, how valuable I was to everything and everyone, how all I belonged to was myself.

"And some part of me believed she told me all this because it was part of her deepest regrets. And, during the last days of her life, she told me about this woman she once trained, like me, who became a medic and trained under one of the legendary Sannin. And that woman was so powerful, she could heal an army and treat poisons and cause earthquakes with her feet. Her name was Sakura Haruno, but as legendary as she sounded, I couldn't ever find a book to her name.

"And Keiko told me about Sakura, a woman so strong but lived with so many doubts and so many people doubting her worth. People forgot the meaning of her name. And even in death, they couldn't remember the kind of hero she was. And Keiko told me that she wanted me to live and die better," she continued. "And looking after a woman like Sakura, telling her the same thing she's told me, trying to remind her of her worth, I guess that, while people forgot who she really was, she was beginning to forget herself too. And Keiko wanted different for me.

"And seeing her in this grave, it just, ah, really, hurts, but really, I'm glad all the same," she tried a wavering smile. "Because now she can go knowing she's helped me in the way she couldn't help her friend, and she can finally be with Sakura, after being left alone all this time. But with year after year of her reminding me of my worth, I really wish I took the time to tell her how much she mattered. I didn't want her, after those years of telling people their worth, to forget who she was to the world."

And she looked down in the grave, caressing a yellow bud on the podium. "So, I guess, now, I can say: you are beautiful, you are strong, and in your weakest, you always triumphed, and i know that...you were more than enough to get through all this."

The funeral service ended with the Hokage's speech and yellow lilies and the lowering of dirt and yellow and red. And Sayaka, watching and now content, held onto her wife and children before the grave. And the four of them walked home, two children asking for stories and two women offering those of a legendary medic, with eyes hardened to the green, and her comrade, one with such loyalty and love.

And in that cemetery laid in yellow lilies the legacy of a woman who could heal a thousand men, the two of them buried only five feet apart in the dirt but living none in the skies. Two graves of dresses and books and blue bottles and pink and yellow, only two lifetimes apart and a grave buried too early. But somewhere in the white there comes a laugh as bright as a girl and her mother in the morning's streets, and a smile as real as the heaven could ever allow.

And somewhere out there, in a village as prosperous and keen, after a winter so frigid having donned the skies in a pale white fog, there comes a spring of greenery and new life and new bloom. And, amongst all that beauty, there comes a fragility born in a name, in a child and in eyes as green as the new. As fragile as they can be, as young as they are naive, the only choice left is to fall.

But I am not the one to decide.