Breaking Faith | Hatake Kakashi

Chapter 130 ~ I Don't Know Who I Am

He didn't reply but she continued anyway. 

"Promise me...you won't hate konoha."

"What?"

"I know you'll want to, and i'll know you will. But please...don't hate konoha."

Sasuke, knowing what they had done to both her family and his own, sneered.

"Why do you stick up for them!? Have you lost your hatred this much?! Do you even hate them at all for what they did?!"

For Sasuke, konoha committed the worsts crimes a village could.

They betrayed their people.

They would tear apart families, and scream about "the needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many" while they murdered innocent men, women, and children.

Some of which were Sasuke's cousins, aunts and uncles. And some of which who could have been Rieka's own cousins, aunts, uncles, grandmothers and even grandfathers.

The worst crime in his eyes was to rob a child of the family they never even got the chance to love.

So how could she say this?

Rieka had a bittersweet smile across her face and she didn't blink the tears back as they fell.

"Maybe I have...and maybe I haven't..." She spoke in almost a whisper. "If hate is what defines you...then I don't know who I am anymore.."

Sasuke frowned, he looked as if he wanted to step forward, to step closer, but he didn't. He turned back, and pulled on his black cloak.

"Well when you discover who you are again...come and find me."

And then he was gone.

::

"Now what, Obito-kun?"

The masked man cringed at the nickname. "When will you stop calling me that?"

Sachihiro grinned, "i'm thirty-six and you're thirty-one...so never."

Obito sighed, refusing to reply to such idiotic reasoning. He looked back to the seven jinchuuriki behind him, the purple ringed eyes of the rinnegan staring straight back.

"..We head to war."

And so they did.

::

Rieka was standing, hands pressed against the glass as she stared into the mirror, and it stared right back.

The woman she saw was barely recognisable anymore.

Her once bright sea-foam greens eyes were clouded and sunken into her skin, even more prominent with the dark bags etched underneath. A few faint wrinkles could be seen on the outskirts of her lips and eyebrows, no doubt from all the frowning she did.

Her body was small, sickly small. Was she always so thin? She was always thin, but not this thin. Rieka could see the outlines of her ribcage. Her skin was pale - way more pale than it should be - and blotchy, covered in marks.

And of course the scars, they were everywhere - but they weren't new. 

She looked so sick. Is this what people saw when the looked at her? The half-dead looking depressed old hag.

Rieka was thirty-one already. It seems like yesterday she was just a child, so youthful and happy. Surrounded by Obito, Rin, Kakashi, Minato, Itachi, Shisui, Kushina, Jiraiya, her mother and her father.

And Naruto. God did she miss that ball of energy. That little blonde blob that used to wake her every morning by announcing himself, leaping onto the bed with a delighted squeal.