Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ Returning ❯ One Promise for Another ( Chapter 15 )

One Promise for Another

 

 

The next morning, still damp from the previous nights rain, Aza awoke, feeling chilled to the bone, and confused. Slowly, she pulled herself up, wincing as sore muscles called out in protest to the movement. Raising a shockingly thin arm to a door, she pushed it open, listening to the creaking and groaning that suggested old age. Once the door had been opened, she walked into the room, slowly, unsurely. Her previously downcast head rose up slowly as she faced herself in the mirrors surface, forcing her to face what she had become. Was she really only twenty-nine, or had she aged far more than she thought? “It's certainly seemed like an eternity,” she rasped as she touched her reflection, bony fingers almost skeletal in the half light of the room.

As she examined her sunken face, her limp hair, and overall appearance, she ran the other hand through her hair, a moment of nausea hitting her like a wave from the ocean. Crumpling the floor, she drew her knees up to touch her forehead. After a moment of calm, yet mildly panicked, deep breaths, she struggled to stand, clutching the surface of the sink so hard her sun tanned fingers turned white.

“I have to cute my hair…” she muttered, in a tone suggesting it was just a casual observance, when really it was a long ignored need. The long hair she adored was the one thing she could keep, in honor of her beloved.

But Toku liked your hair long…are you ready to give it up? “No…” She chocked out, doubling back a moment later and nodding slowly, “Yes…”

Then find the scissors, and do away with those chains, which keep you weighted down with the knowledge of your sin…

“Yes…that's what I need to do…” She whispered, and began looking through the drawers near her for the scissors which could liberate her from that which she'd carried for so long.

After walking around the rooms in a half dazed state, Aza had found that which she needed most. Freedom. Freedom in the form of two silver blades, closing down over each other, ready to cut her ties to the past.

 

“Aza?” A voice she knew to well, but seemed to be rapidly forgetting. A black, sleep rumbled head rose groggily from Toku's shoulder, and her large eyes blinked as she yawned. “Hmmm…?”

Smiling, he ran a hand through her hair, taking time to twirl the ends around his fingers. “Nothing…” He conceded, looking towards the sky above them. That was the night of the Cherry Festival, the night that Aza had fallen asleep on the yondaime's shoulder, like a child on their parent.

Scooting herself into sitting position, and wrestling her hair away from him, she prodded, “Come on! Tell me…”

As though to make a large show of it, he sighed loudly, smirking off handedly. “I was just wondering…”

“Yeah?”

“Your hair…would you keep it long, for me?” It started as a giggle, small and quiet, but with time it grew into full out laughter, filling the area. After a moment, the laughter stopped, and Aza looked at Toku in surprise. “O-oh! You were serious…?”

 

The sound of the scissors and the memory in her head competed for center stage as she began to cut, tears filling her eyes, but not falling.

“Of course I am.” He took a strand and twisted it around his finger, “Your hair is so beautiful…”

Aza blushed, “Alright then…I'll keep it long, just for you.”

“Until the end of time?”

Laying back down on his shoulder, she nodded, “Until the very end…”

 

The ponytail fell silently to the floor, as Aza greeted herself, her new self, in the mirror. “I had to do it… I made another promise, and as long as I'm stuck on the past…I'll never be able to carry out my duties as a mother…”

This time, as she waited for one of the voices in her head to reply back, she was greeted with silence. Smiling forlornly into the mirror and touching her hair, which fell just past her ears, she turned, closing the door behind her, ponytail in hand. “It's time to fulfill my promise, yondaime-sama.

 

 

Kougasmate- I know, it's short, but my uncle died on Saturday, and I am really not in the mood to write a long story. And to those of you who have addressed the issue, yes, consensus does have it that yondaime's name was Arashi, I just felt like calling him Toku. READ AND REVIEW!!!