Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ Fireflies over Rice Paddies ❯ Chapter 2

I awoke on the ground, sitting with my back propped against damp stone. My hands were still wrapped around a weapon the rational part of my mind should have told me was long gone.

 

I looked around out of habit, but found only the murky darkness that had hovered around me since a particularly harsh blow to the head earlier.

 

“Who…?” I started, but stopped at the sound of my own voice. Relieving one hand of its desperate grip on a missing weapon, I raised it to my head, finding a large gash there.

 

“Don't move, please.” A low male voice- possibly the person who brought me here- said from nearby. He paused before continuing. “Those men are gone. I'm not sure what's going on here, but I have things to attend to.” He paused again, moving with a scuffle of shoes on the floor of what I can only assume to be a cave. “Please stay here.” With that, he was gone, leaving me to silence and my thoughts.

 

*

 

It's not as if I was unused to sitting alone, or to waiting. My parents ran a shop selling herbal remedies and flavorings—and poisons under the table, of course---and spent hours or days out searching for ingredients while I was left to mind the shop. I could amuse myself hundreds of ways, and there was no shortage of things to think about now.

 

I was in a cave, more of less in the custody of the strange man who seemed to have rescued me. He could have associates, for all I could see. His voice didn't sound familiar, and it would be safe to assume he had no connection to Yama's group. Still, there seemed like there was a lot going on in the area ninja-wise, not to mention the traders that passed through the borders here all the time.

 

To a casual observer, and possibly a well trained one at that, I probably seemed to be asleep as I sat perfectly still for what could have been hours. He might have even thought that when he came back almost silently, with just enough of a footfall as he got close to make me look up in sudden surprise, hand gasping a rock to fend off an attacker, all before I realized that it was just him returning. I had so many questions for him, but I didn't have the voice or the energy to actually ask any of them. This thought scared me, making me wonder vaguely if I was hurt badly enough to die. It seemed like it then, near blind and broken.

 

“We have to move.” His flat words came suddenly, snapping me out of my thoughts. “They will find us here, sorry.” The sorry caught me off guard; the slight hint of regret in his words was more interesting than the words themselves. More interesting at least until I found myself lifted again, carried away from that camp as I fought to stay conscious, terrified that if I closed my eyes, they'd never open again. I dug my nails into my palms, feeling broken bones jostle in his pounding run, recently closed gashes reopening to gape into the clammy air.

 

 

~*~

 

 

“Stay here.” The man said in his gruff voice as he set me down remarkably gently. “I am going to get some supplies.” He was gone from my side before I could work up the strength to argue, his footsteps echoing around me, making it impossible to tell if he'd actually left, or was just retrieving things from the area. The place was not as damp, the mist not penetrating the air in here.

 

He returned to my side quickly, setting things down around him without another word. I sat up, trying to locate him among the noise he was making. I started speaking, only managing a meaningless word or two before I stopped. My voice was raspy, hoarse, each sound feeling like a knife twisted in my chest. Still, I needed to speak, to find a way to tell him.

 

I wanted nothing to do with his medical supplies, wanted to know why he would even consider giving them to me. He was a ninja by way of speaking, by his running gait and silent approach. A ninja, someone not overly given to kindness unless it suited their plans. “What… do you want…?” I finally managed, casually setting down the rock I had picked up to defend myself with. Any plan that involved attacking a ninja, especially when I was completely blind, seemed like a very bad plan.

 

“I would like your name.” My rescuer- or captor if you saw it that way- said in a commanding tone. “But right now you should stay still so I can treat you wounds.”

 

Not one to argue with such a business-like tone of voice, I leaned forward and wrapped my arms around my knees, letting the ninja get at my back. I winced, reopening many of the cuts as I moved, and the ninja was silent for a moment before he started working, his hands gentle but strong.

 

His gentleness somehow made me wonder why, why he was doing any of this. Bringing in an injured person to interrogate wasn't too strange, Yama's group had done it many times before, but using precious medical supplies on someone who could easily be a spy? I wanted to know why he was doing it, if maybe he was someone that I knew, but I also wanted to stop hurting as much. It was the second that won out and I kept my mouth shut, trusting my fate to the strange man.