| [May. 27th, 2009|08:40 pm] |
“I don’t—” Ryuichi started, but the door slammed down hard on his response, and there wasn’t any use in finishing the statement. I don’t want to die. There was a difference between being suicidal and being apathetic. A very big difference. Arai Saiyuri had been suicidal. She was dead and buried a hero. Ryuichi was apathetic about the subject. He was still alive and labeled as crazy by just about everyone who knew him.
That said too many things about shinobi right there.
He leaned back, felt the ache of broken bones dulled by morphine and whatever else medics were using for painkillers these days. Not nearly as strong as what Kaede-sensei had given him. If he was better, he wouldn’t need them, but not every shinobi was a genius. ANBU was like slow suicide in a way, or at least it was for chuunin. The jounin survived. Chuunin? Not so much. Ryuichi supposed he’d reached the expected time, and no one in HQ would have been bothered to find Katsuko the only survivor of their last mission.
Chuunin were expendable. Jounin weren’t.
Katsuko didn’t get it. Ryuichi couldn’t fault her for it, not really. Nothing wrong with trying to stay sane. It wasn’t a losing battle for everyone.
When it all came down, they weren’t friends. If he had died, Katsuko would have gotten over it, just like Ise would have. That took strength, and dedication to a cause Ryuichi didn’t have. If Ise died, Ryuichi wouldn’t have recovered. A mission would have killed him. It wasn’t suicide if it happened like that.
Despite everything, he wasn’t like his sister.
If Katsuko had died, then the mission would have been a failure. Ryuichi would have followed her trying to complete it, trying to do something a chuunin couldn’t.
That was what shinobi did. They kept fighting until they broke. Sometimes death made them heroes. Sometimes it labeled them the enemy. Circumstances were hard to control when you were reduced to something so small as a name on a rock.
Ryuichi had always been a shinobi. Not a genius like his sister or a truly powerful one like Katsuko, but a shinobi nonetheless. He intended to die as one. |
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