Interlude: Together in the Swamp of Death
Only doom lay in her future, Kei reflected as she lay on Tenten's bed, seeking the comforting scent of her Companion. Not the kind of doom that involved Hidden Rock descending on the village and tearing it to shreds in its weakened state (probably). Nor the kind of doom that involved being mentally and emotionally crushed by her continued association with a would-be genocidal empire whose bidding she willingly carried out in exchange for practical benefits (that was still to come). No, this was a very personal kind of doom that no other being on this earth could suffer as she could.
She was, once again, to be without Ami.
More significantly, she would be without Ami at a time of chaos and confusion, when the Hokage's brilliant, revolutionary ticket idea would force the KEI to fundamentally review its policies, operating principles, and future goals while simultaneously being stripped of whatever superior cadres would become the foundation of AMITY. Naruto, in theory, possessed the necessary training to navigate these murky political waters, but the Leaf that the Third and Jiraiya had prepared him to rule bore precious little resemblance to the complicated mess made of it by the chain of cataclysms that began with the Battle on the Beach and ended(?) with the Fourth Shinobi World War. Kei, of course, was a logistician half-trained for a different village, and it was an open question when her various subordinates and supporters would recognise her for the fraud she was. There was no possible way she could bear her share of the burden.
As such, it was incumbent on her to prepare herself emotionally as best she could, and with Tenten unavailable, what better succour for her battered soul than some choice literature—in this case, due to be personally delivered by Akane,
a bribe for her silence whose publication had been tragically delayed by the iniquities of war. The notion of so much as hinting at Kei's reading preferences was nothing short of mortifying, but alas, in Akane's case that ship had sailed as thoroughly as her ship with Ino (with the benefit of hindsight, even Kei was able to recognise Hazō and Ino's past behaviour as blatant flirting).
And then, there was the other matter. In defiance of all precedent and possibility, perhaps there was something only Kei could do.
"Akane," Kei greeted her sister and potential sister-in-law-twice-over as she sat up. "Thank you for coming. I trust you were undetected?"
"I told Hazō and Noburi I was going to visit you," Akane said, "and the Nara I met at the gate and on my way up here were very polite. Some of them were giving me strange looks, though. You don't suppose they've heard the rumours?"
Kei did not facepalm, but only because she was a mature adult. Apparently, the cavalcade of atrocities perpetrated by the Leaf rumour mill included, of late, the notion that she was dating Akane. Like any rumour that was both salacious and personally inconvenient to her, it had spread like wildfire.
"Pay them no mind," Kei said, "and for the record, I am not in romantic
or sexual relationships with Kei Anko, Hyūga Yumenori, Tachibana Wakaba, or Gōketsu Yuno, much less a combination of the aforesaid, not that it would be anyone's business but my own if I were. Except possibly in the case of Anko, for then I hope I would be urgently incapacitated by my loved ones pending de-lupchanzening treatment."
"Noted," Akane said with a mischievous smile that provided Kei with heartfelt relief given Yuno's reports.
"Say," she went on, "is that today's broadsheet? Fifi stole ours before I had a chance to read it."
"You missed little, I assure you," Kei said. "Team Rame has struck again. In the past week, it has defeated three Rock jōnin teams and foiled a dastardly plot to poison Tanzaku Gai's water supply. With exploits such as theirs, Tower analysts anticipate that Rock will be forced to sue for peace within the fortnight, lest its mounting losses leave it unable to conduct even basic chakra beast extermination within its territory. Needless to say, Leaf remains at its peak of power despite Rock's underhanded means of warfare, courtesy of superior leadership, extraordinary feats of medicine, and the blessing of the Will of Fire."
"Captain Rame has been one of my heroes since I was a little girl," Akane said, looking wistfully into the distance. "I wanted to be just like her all the way until I met Rock Lee and learned about the Spirit of Youth. Thinking about it, it's strange that I haven't come across her in all my time as a Leaf ninja."
Kei was startled, and more than a little disturbed, by the fact that she found herself reluctant to explain to Akane about Deta Rame, and what it meant that the heroic chūnin was not only the star of Leaf's propaganda publications, but had been ever since the days of the Second Hokage. Was this a consequence of her changing relationship with Akane, or had Kei herself become somehow warped by her experiences with Team Uplift?
"More importantly," she hurried to change the topic, "Akane, there was an issue I wished to raise with you today, while we have an opportunity to speak in private."
"Oh?"
Kei hesitated. She was in no way qualified for this. Realistically, she was the person in the world least suited for this kind of intervention. Unfortunately, with Mari incapable of accepting responsibility for her past actions, and Yuno's moral compass missing its lodestone, she was also the only one available.
"Yuno informed me about your mission," Kei said. "I understand that you are having difficulties coping."
Akane sat down heavily on Kei's bed (which was when Kei realised how stunningly embarrassing her choice of location was, and how it was too late to offer any kind of excuse in a natural fashion).
"It's not something you have to worry about, Kei," Akane said. "I brought it on myself."
"On the contrary," Kei said. "Family bonds aside, I am indebted you in a way that is immediately relevant. You offered to be by my side in my inner Swamp of Death, and your support has been precious. There is no better time for me to respond in kind."
Akane gave a weak smile. "Thanks, Kei. That means a lot to me. It really does. But this isn't something that anything can be
done about. I'm seeing the consequences of my actions because they're the consequences of my actions. Running away from them won't make anything better."
"Running away?" Kei asked. "Allow me to guess. Hazō, unable to stand your distress, attempted to convince you that your actions were not your fault, and thus not your responsibility. Doubtless he belatedly acknowledged the cruel nature of the shinobi world, the true culprit behind the incident, and reiterated the promise of an Uplifted future where such tragedies would no longer occur."
"Something like that."
"Hazō has never felt responsible for his part in the Pangolin War," Kei said. "To him, his tally of innocent deaths runs in the mere dozens. He is in no position to imagine your feelings or mine after dooming thousands to death or to undying despair. Unlike you, I am unable to put numbers to the civilian casualties I am indirectly responsible for. On the other hand, I have a vague grasp of the size of the Condor Clan, and know that every one of its members is subject to the cultural genocide I have facilitated. Next to that, some mere civilian vessel is barely a scratch upon my soul."
"What are you saying?" Akane asked. For a second, Kei was afraid Akane would attempt to comfort her, which was the diametrical opposite of Kei's intent.
"You and I cannot escape our sins," Kei said. "Even if Hazō succeeds in flinging open the gates of Death, you cannot offer the resurrected the homes that you reduced to ash, nor restore the time they lost while this world left them behind."
Akane nodded. Her head did not come all the way back up.
"The same applies to the denizens of the Seventh Path, should Hazō even consider whether and how they may be resurrected. Uplift, even at its finest, is a gift to the future, not a redemption of the past.
"I do not believe that the way forward, for either of us, involves making peace with our pasts. It is not possible for the people we are to perceive those actions as acceptable."
"Who
are the people we are?" Akane interrupted. "I thought I was someone who'd never kill innocent people like that. I thought I could kill people for the good of Leaf, or to save my life, or to save my loved ones. I thought that was within the limits of the Will of Fire. But there were thousands. I killed more people than Leaf has ever had ninja. My life isn't worth that. My loved ones' lives aren't worth that. The good of Leaf isn't worth that, not when all those deaths barely make a difference to anything back home.
"How can I say I'm someone who can't accept these actions when I
chose to set the fires? I
chose not to stop them, even though there must have been a way."
"This is a crisis I have anticipated for years," Kei admitted. "The world is not so kind that it would allow any of us to keep their hands clean in deference to our moral purity. I will admit, at times it has been like watching a bird plummeting even as it believed it was flying, all while knowing that there was no possible way to break its fall. Now, it is finally over. You have crashed into the same world as the rest of us.
"I can offer you nothing to solve your crisis of identity. My own remains an appalling mess despite concerted effort. However, if you are filled with regret and loathe the person you have become, there I am entirely on familiar ground."
"I…" Akane looked at her for a few seconds, choosing words. "No offence, Kei, but I don't want to be the person you think you are. This isn't about hating myself. It's about realising what I've been like all along. Hollow. Hypocritical."
"As I say," Kei replied, "that is not for me to solve. That I should presume to offer any advice at all is staggering in its arrogance, and rest assured, I would gladly hand this task over to another if anyone at all were available. However, here we are. Hazō is mistaken if he believes absolution is possible for either of us. Nothing we do with our lives from here on out can change the past, and the balance sheet of karma to be calculated only at the end is a naïve delusion for those unwilling to take responsibility."
Akane gave something that could theoretically be described as a smile. "You really do have a unique way of cheering people up."
"At least I am good for something," Kei said wryly. "No, my point is that you must accept your actions and their consequences. It is futile to seek to escape them through self-justification, even as others might exhort you to do so in order to save you from your suffering. You already have my respect for refusing to turn away as some have done from theirs. However, and please correct me if I have misunderstood, since I recognise I have psychological insight to humble the most brilliant duck, there you have stopped. Your hypocrisy, inevitable for a holder of beliefs
no one could live by in a world so dark, is now apparent to you. So is your hollowness, inevitable for one who has poured their entire being into these impossible beliefs, and thus has nothing left without them. Is it enough for you to recognise these truths?"
Kei could see the pain in Akane's eyes. It was heartrending. Kei hated herself—more than usual—for knowing no other way to handle sensitive emotions than with the bluntness of a sledgehammer. Yet were she to attempt subtlety, or to hold back with kindness she did not know how to wield, in all likelihood she would fail to express herself altogether, or even be too timid to try when unable to leverage her strengths.
"What else is there?" Akane asked. "This is me now. Someone who burns down towns full of innocent people because the mission says so."
"This," Kei exclaimed, raising a finger, "
this is the essential part! Here is where I hold the advantage over you, as one who has hated herself for many years and was surprised by the
scale of the atrocity caused by her irresponsibility, not the fact. Akane, this is not 'you now'. This is who you have always been. You are not a fallen paragon of morality, for your morality was always impossible, always waiting to run into a wall.
"The corollary I must convey to you is that all of your actions thus far have stemmed from this hypocritical, hollow self. Your love for Hazō and your choice to enter a relationship with him—twice, even, to our collective shock. Your dedication to Uplift. Your various passions, great and small. All of them belong to the same Akane who incinerates thousands of innocents at a word from her superiors, not to some ideal self that, you now learn, never existed."
"So you're saying," Akane concluded, "that I shouldn't feel bad, because I have always been a terrible person."
"Not exactly," Kei said. "I can hardly recommend that you accept your flaws and love yourself in spite of them when I have never succeeded in that herculean task myself, and suspect strongly that the concept is a fiction intended to energise the ignorant for greater productivity. Rather, having accepted that you are Akane who incinerates thousands of innocents, and that this does not represent a reduction of your existing nature or capabilities, only your self-image, you are free to ask what
else this Akane does.
"I cannot provide you with a moral impulse to guide your future actions, should you abandon Youth in all its forms. I am barely cognizant of the motivations behind my own. If you wish to join the KEI, or even to take more extreme steps, I have no authority with which to convince you otherwise. However, should you choose to continue to act as a Gōketsu and to work in the name of Uplift… rest assured that in this of all worlds, there can be no rules to prevent a mass murderer from doing so."
For a while, they sat in silence, Akane processing and Kei praying that her untrained intervention would not shatter Akane's soul into tiny pieces. It was necessary, she believed—according to Yuno, Akane was suffering from flashbacks, and Tachibana had once informed Snowflake those were a high risk for death in combat
and suicide—but anyone who had so much as met Kei would agree that she was more of an exploding tag than a surgeon.
"This is a lot to get my head around, Kei," Akane said eventually. "I've never heard anyone talk like this before, and I don't think I'd ever have come up with it on my own either."
"On the contrary." Kei dared to smile. "I do not believe I could have developed this line of thought without you. You offered to be with me in my inner Swamp of Death, at a time when the others demanded that I step into the light. I learned this form of acceptance from you—though I admit that, for all my exhortations, I myself am but a stumbling and awkward student.
"I will be with you in your inner Swamp of Death, Akane, if you will have me. I will be there as you explore your pain, and master it, and someday integrate it into a new Akane that neither of us can yet imagine. We cannot escape our crimes. We cannot deny them if we wish to grow. However, there is no need for us to face them alone."
Akane's eyes were glistening, and Kei could not tell whether she had driven her to tears with unintentional cruelty or whether the excess of emotion meant that something had struck true. She sensed that something more was needed.
Physical contact was not Kei's forte. She could sooner convince Yuno to embrace polygyny than convince herself to embrace Akane—not in the casual way normal people did, and not at a time when failure and a panic attack would be unacceptable. However, she had not wasted her time with the world's most patient partner.
Kei focused. She steadied her breathing as if preparing to snipe an unaware Condor Summoner, at which she would only have one chance. Then she reached out and placed her right hand on Akane's shoulder.
She left it there as long as she dared, which was an eternity by the standards of her early days of training. Akane sat still, rewarding her trust, and gave her first true smile of the day.
It was only hours later, after Akane left and Kei had spent sufficient time calming herself with export tax calculations, that she realised she had forgotten to take her signed copy of
Enslaved by the Pirate King II: The Kraken Wakes from Akane, and that the possibility of it being discovered by her family was about to rise astronomically. Still, even as she scrolled through her mental catalogue of means of suicide, Kei decided that the meeting had been worth it.
-o-
What do you do?
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