Just A Memory (Naruto)

I

Step.

Step.

Stop.

He wasn't alone.

He hung back at the edge of the clearing, a brow arched at the scene as though he was waiting for someone to give him some kind of explanation.

He didn't normally like having this particular location shared with another individual when he was around – although everyone has right to be here anytime they wanted – selfish reasons, but one he had right to use to justify himself. With people around, it always like rubbing in his face to face the fact that he wasn't the only one with the loss– that he wasn't the only one with regrets and laments that will never be fixed. Normally.

But seeing it happen again for the fifth time in the week was almost akin to gaining an unwarranted neighbour. The one you cannot help but dislike for no good reason than the one you have already established in your mind.

But this was a very, very, young neighbour.

He was starting to see a pattern. Punctuality beyond what her age warrants. To be able to arrive at 10 as though getting any late will bring her under the scrutiny of the dead she was visiting. Staying until her tiny legs groan, weak and so fragile that they could shatter if handled wrong– Standing, staring, mourning as her routine goes, until her body clock strikes at 11, signalling her to leave without a delay.

One hour of grievance in silence isn't something unheard of in a place like this; his gaze wandered across at the rows of tombstones standing erect in silence to her left and right, stretching in front and behind, and here, the little rose, among the sea of those dead.

The cemetery. A place where once living return their matter to become part of the earth. The place echoes with bitter grief and the emptiness of heartfelt loss that it should be the last place for a child barely of age five to stand.

Yet here was she, in a dress so striking and hair so pink that it would disgrace any true Shinobi. But she wasn't a Shinobi, nor a Kunoichi, or even close to being a child hailing from a ninja clan. She was, but a civilian.

A child, not even an academy student, in the middle of the graveyard where the smell of death hung like a thick fog in the winter at its coldest. It tells you a sick joke, of the beautiful lie. Life. And in its wake, a reminder of the horrible truth. The permanence of death. A place too cold, too cruel for a child of her age to be in.

But here she was, the only life amongst the dead, wallowing in her loss.

A small part of him – the part which makes him a killer machine – argued that she wouldn't know of true loss, that she, in spite of her age, cannot know – wouldn't know even in her lifetime – of the misery he has seen her feigning for almost a week now.

One, which he noted, was not unlike how he thinks he looks like when he is in her position; empty and shattered.

From the top of the nearest tree, he settled and waited for her to up and leave, as she does inevitably. One hour of silence, of stillness, of waiting for some kind of resolution made within. A breeze really.

With her standing so still that you could confuse her for a humanoid statue without minute observation, it was hard for even a Shinobi of his genius to not give in to the sweet lure of sleep, especially with only a very silent, very still civilian girl around. Usually, he'd have no problem to avoid human interaction or observation altogether with his beloved book at hand that pulls him into a world of its own, but this was one place he couldn't bring in himself to disrespect.

So that's why...

That's why...

His head jolts upright when he feels the slight shift in the breeze. Pulling in and out of the sleep is easy and harmless when you've got the acute senses of a veteran ninja. Shaking his head off the sleep, he figured the time was up and looked down just in time, as he anticipated, as she jerked a movement from her immobile position, like she was just realizing where she was, who she was and all the obvious.