obscure feelings. ( accepting. )
ellipsism: a sadness that you’ll never be able to know how history will turn out.
it’s only here, laying on the broken remains of a battlefield in a war that is a century after his time & started in his name that he feels his chest begin to ache.
his heart no longer beats, strangled in vines & thorns named bitterness & hate, but there’s a throbbing pain deep in the space of his ribs that he can’t put a name to.
it isn’t grief because he drained that so very long ago -- gave it a name (izunaizunaizuna) & wore it away from his mind. it’s a longing ache, one that scratches over his ribs until the clawing becomes a whisper.
he wonders, vainly perhaps, how the village will remember him. the old stories of him speak of a man who tried to destroy the first hokage’s dream on the word of a cursed clan’s writings. now he was someone who had dragged every innocent he could dig his claws into down into the same spiral of bitterness that he fell down.
he sighs, though his chest protests the movement. he may be dead, but his body remembers its pains. his face doesn’t twist in discomfort, however. he was birthed on a battlefield, so it seemed fit to die on one as well.
he hears voices, young & bold, before a small smile takes over his face. perhaps the world was left in better hands than his in the end. who knew?