Kin hated her bed. It was soft, far softer than any bed she'd had before. Better than the street she grew up on, better than the bunks everyone slept on in Otokagure, even better than the ambassadorial quarters she'd been in the past few weeks. The sheets weren't silk, but they were close enough. It was the kind of bed a younger her would have fantasized about sleeping in.
Now all it felt like was a traitor's bed.
Traitor. The word itself caused her stomach to churn, because that was what she was. A traitor. Pathetic scum. That was all she was. All she had left were her failures, whispering in her ear that she was too weak, too worthless. A task she was set up to fail, that she hadn't been good enough to succeed anyway. The smug half-grin on the clan kids face as he explained how he was better than her. She was pathetic excuse for a kunoichi, worthless...weak.
Weaknesses were always purged.
The room didn't help. It was well-furnished besides the bed. A television, the couch she now sat on, a nice wooden coffee-table in between, they were all there. A painting here and there, decorative plants, all to give the image of wealth and culture. No windows of course, couldn't have that, and the door was metal and guarded. The scarred man she 'd been put in here by, after...that night, had said something. She hadn't listened; the purpose of the room was totally clear. It was a room for traitors.
Traitors earned death by existing.
Kin very much wanted to live. Even if she was a weak, pathetic excuse for a shinobi, she didn't want to die. So she had run, she had told herself that that was a desperate attempt to prove herself. Maybe she had even believe it too, that she could do something, anything, to show she wasn't as weak and useless as she knew she was. She saw what happened to failures. She just didn't think it would ever happen to her. She was strong, she always told herself, until she wasn't. Her skills made her a useful asset, she always told herself, until they didn't.
The thoughts swirling round and round in her head, sinking deeper and deeper. Worthless, pathetic, useless, traitor. All she had to do in this fucking room was think. Think and talk to the people with leaves on their forehead about her failures.
They're from Leaf a part of her argued, they're the enemy. That part of her was growing quieter and quieter. Now she just wondered what they wanted with someone like her. Even if they were a weak village full of sentimental fools. Even they had to have standards.
She'd answered their questions, not like she knew anything important. That had been made abundantly clear by Dosu, when they were sent off to die to test some Konoha brat. Worthless. Expendable. She was already a traitor, just by being in this room, just by accepting that hug from that girl. If she went back to Sound her reward would be a quick death, if she even warranted that.
She tucked herself deeper into the soft leather of the couch, curling into a ball, her face tucked in against her knees. Something she hadn't done since she was a child. She could feel the tears stinging at the edges of her eyes, but she wouldn't cry.
She wouldn't.
Only of course she did, because she was weak, because her life was a lie. She had gone her life without tears, until she couldn't.
A woman had come, with blond hair and eyes without pupils, and the aching pain of her memories had faded. The woman had given her a strange look when they returned. She hadn't been killed, so she could only assume they hadn't found anything worth killing.
It was only later she realized the look had been pity.
A knock sounded on the door. She didn't answer.
She never did.
It always opened anyway.
But this time someone new entered, heralded by the faint swish of robes brushing along the wooden floor of the room. She glanced up from where she had buried her face in her knees to see white robes and gnarled face recognizable to any shinobi.
Hiruzen Sarutobi, the Sandaime Hokage, one of three men ever to earn the title God of Shinobi. One of the greatest shinobi to ever live, a towering legend and the leader of Konoha through three Great Wars. A doddering old fool whose sense of mercy and naivety had infested the whole of Konoha.
What did someone like him want with someone like her.
The question must have shown on her face, because the Hokage's lips quirked upwards slightly. "I see I am unexpected."
Kin could only nod dumbly.
"Good." He made his way to one of the chairs arranged across from her, settling down into it with an audible creak. "You'll have to excuse me, these bones aren't quite as young as they used to be. Not like you young ones."
"What-"
"What am I doing here?" He stroked the gray hair coating his chin, a soft twinkle in his eyes. "Well, I thought I'd come and visit the person who is causing so many reports to appear on my desk. There's something to be said for reports, but nothing beats meeting the subject of them for yourself yes?"
Wait, she's causing a stir? Why? How? She asks as much.
"You've done more than you know, talking about one of our most famous missing-nins and his...organization."
"Organization? But Otokagure is-"
"A village? Oh, I think you'll find me and my erstwhile student have much different ideas of what constitutes a village. He understood many things, but never that." Kin didn't know a smile could get that bitter. "Never that."
"I don't-"
"I've found that villages are often a reflection of those who live in them." He chewed thoughtfully on his pipe for a moment, looking every one of his seventy odd years, "And often indicative of who leads them."
Kin blinked, tossing that notion around her head, reflections. A thought struck her "Do...you want me to tell you about Sound?"
The Hokage's pipe made a clicking sound as he knocked it against his teeth, "Do you think you should?"
Because it was the right thing to do.
The words of the girl who had caused all this bubbled up, they always bubbled up, no matter how hard she tried to ignore them.
Kin didn't understand that, not really, or why she had done what she did but she was tired. She was so tired. Tired of being weak, tired of hating herself and what she's become. Tired of this room, and tired of pretending she cared at all.
And so Kin began to talk. About Sound and traitors and failures, and what the former did to the latter. About how they had found her on the street and took her away from that wretched life to give her purpose. Stripped away all the weakness they could, until she felt strong, until she felt powerful. How it was all a lie, she was weak, too pathetic to prove she wasn't expandable. How she wanted to live even when she deserved to die. It all came spilling out.
After all. She had nothing left to lose.
