Disclaimer - Don't own em, never will. Inspired by Dorkish Donna's Darkness Rising, CHECK - IT - OUT. Also thanks to Chibi Rose Angel for the beta! Loves ya chica!

A.N – This is set after 'Bad Day' and a logical assumption has been made.

It Should Have Been Me …

I'm not angry at them, though I should be. I should be furious with them for what they did to me. They exposed the lie; they showed me what family was and then had the audacity to ask me, the daughter of Oroku Saki, to fight with them. To turn my back on the man that trained me? The man who gave me everything? Of course I rejected the invitation; my Father still lived and I had my duties, did I not?

I believed so.

Dishonor? He called me dishonorable and in that moment there was nothing I desired more than for him to strike. Was this how I repaid a kindness? To turn on my Father because the fight was over and we had not won? To love the man who shaped me? I held to my creed and then waited for death because I thought he was right. I'd acted out of love simply because my Father returned the notion. We could have left …

I should have left. Allowed my Father his hollow victory.

The saying 'ignorance is bliss' is so much more than a cliché. In the moment my Father was to smite me I believed his words unquestioningly. Dishonor was always repaid by death, and they exiled him. Exile?! A part of me died; everything I'd learnt, everything I knew, every order I'd acted upon, every part of me that I had ignored or shut down in order to be a good daughter screamed in rage. I could forgive the fact he was less than human, he was the 'man' who saw the good in a street urchin after all. But to not practice what you preach? To stand over me enraged when you know you've murdered thousands? And I lack honor? It was all a lie! A fallacy and I cannot have the opportunity to right that wrong.

So you see, its not them I'm enraged with. It's not even Leonardo, it's what he represents. The burning fury that churns inside, a tempestuous torment that won't be quelled. I know what my Father proposed – and had it been successful it would have been a good match. It could have been him, it should have been him. They are not meant to exist and yet they have what should be mine.

Why do you think I had the mystics attack?

His Father … had he known of my act he would have been proud. A piece of vermin has the wisdom, power and capacity to forgive past transgressions. Did he know the city would not survive our combined furies? It makes you wonder. A rat, a lowly rat, could tolerate such wrath, and such pain and still have the ability to demonstrate love. Where was my compassion? My forgiveness? We both suffer from the same sin, and performed the same crimes.

One of us still does.

And it all boils down to this. It could have been me, it should have been me … and in the absence of that kindness there is only one possible course of action. They represent all that I should have had, all my Father should have given me.

It should have been me.

It should have been me …