Author's Note: So this is a side fic to "Minato Namikaze and the Destroyer of Worlds" and if you haven't read that you'll miss a lot of the finer details of this. Seriously, since this is about the misadventures of a clone. Also, for those reading this, I'm torn on whether or not I want to say this is canon to the main fic so... it's up to you? It really could be either.

"Oh, I'm still alive, imagine that." She said this weakly, water still in her lungs and the touch of death still on her lips, but she still said it which was more than she imagined possible.

The river was strangely gentle as it lapped by her, having deposited her on the sun baked river bank, the black stones warm against her back in the summer sun, and in the sky there wasn't a single cloud in sight but instead only blue and that single blinding eye that was the sun.

She was too weak to move, to either roll herself back into the river or else climb up the bank and into the trees so instead she stayed and stared at the sky and wondering what aspect of this fracturing thing called reality was actively working against her.

She did not necessarily believe in fate or God or destiny but she did have the suspicion that she had only managed to survive thus far because something still wanted her living. The other clones did not have this problem. Most in Orochimaru's service were short lived at best, either dying in his experiments, or else being fed to his summons.

There were a few that had lasted longer, but whose purpose lasted longer. The clone who acted as a lab assistant would be needed for years to come and that clone had come to terms with the situation because the job was half finished but one day would be. The clones who had survived Orochimaru's experimentation faced similar situations, they survived, but one day Orochimaru would dispose of them when they were no longer necessary.

But she was different. Her purpose had no end, where the others had signs to mark their progress towards a definable goal she stayed and stagnated, because it was clear that Orochimaru could not be made to change.

The greatest nightmare to a clone was not death, was not a lack of existence, but a life whose purpose is both meaningless and infinite.

In her case, upon realizing the futility of her task, upon looking into the future and seeing an eternity badgering the snake sannin without hope of him ever hearing her words she had stared into the face of madness.

She had stood above him, looked down into those indifferent golden slitted eyes, and realized that she could not hope to kill him with her power (and that killing him was not a solution only an act of desperation), if she killed herself then another clone would be created to take her place, and so she had done the only thing she had left.

But it hadn't worked.

Because if she had succeeded then she would be dead already, gone, back to whatever it was clones were before they existed.

And she was lost, meaningless and purposeless, an existence without a foreseeable end to it, staring at the sky and feeling lead in her limbs and a feeling emptiness welling within her. Because now she must ask herself that question that humans asked so frequently, but one which never crossed the lips of a clone, what do I do now?

"Oh God," She began in a hoarse voice, closing her eyes and reaching out to this ineffable being which warped the universe to his demands, "I have long since reached the end of my usefulness and necessity. Do not let me wander in the dark without meaning. Please, end me."

Only the sound of the river and the cries of birds answered her.

"Hey, are you alright?"

It had been one day.

She opened her eyes to find a boy looking down at her in concern, adolescent probably around Minato's age or perhaps a little older, he was in that awkward transition phase where baby fat stubbornly clung to his face while parts of him grew faster than others making for a half-baked look.

Dark hair, skin tanned from working in the sun, dark eyes and a weak chakra signature at best. A civilian in the land of fire, but given that when she had first thrown herself in the river she had drifted for some time it might still be quite far from Konoha.

He looked concerned, on edge, not quite sure what to do and how to help and her silence was making him uncomfortable. Orochimaru always preferred silence, the ability to sink into his work and forget the world twisting and turning around him, and it had always been maddening to watch because every time he did so her goal was further and further from reach.

(All he had to do was leave. Meet up with Jiraiya, go get lunch with Senju Tobirama who always showed his face in the laboratory, just show some sort of effort or will to step forward… He never did.)

Finally, she said, "I am waiting to die."

She didn't like causing others discomfort, her reason for existing after all was to push others (Orochimaru) forward emotionally, to see them through difficult times in their own lives. However, having already failed miserably in her objective, she saw little harm in being honest.

"What? Why would you…"

"I have no reason to exist." She interrupted calmly, "I am without purpose or reason and I find it unbearable."

She regretted the words almost as soon as she said them.

(Regret, she didn't like it, but she felt it so often if only because it is her purpose to be aware of the feelings of others and to take them into consideration and it was so very easy to misstep and say the wrong thing. You can never say what you mean or what you feel, only what you must, and now that she had more or less given up on her existence she found this grating.)

"You must have something worth living for! I… Everybody has something… Family, friends…" He seemed almost desperate for her, but he was still uncomfortable, there was a basket of fish over his shoulder. He had been returning from fishing in the morning, he had not expected to find what he saw as a little girl expressing her wish to die. He was tired, sore, he wished his day wasn't going like this, she was inconvenient, it would be best for them both if he simply left but his morals wouldn't stand for that.

She cut him off once again, "I am without father, without mother, without brother, without sister. I have no kin, I have no friends, I have no ties to the material world beyond a single solitary mission which I have no hope of accomplishing."

"I'm not going to leave you here." And there was a steely glint in his eyes, as if he truly meant this, and it probably would let him sleep at night better. There was also that nagging suspicion in her own head, that once again something was intervening, something was refusing to allow her to follow through.

"Suit yourself." She said finally, closing her eyes once again and waiting for death to come to her.

"Aren't you going to sit up?" He asked.

"I didn't say I would help." She commented drily before adding, "It would probably be better for you in the long run if you just took the fish home instead; if you can't carry us both."

"You are not worth less than fish!" He spat, as if this was the most insulting thing he had ever heard.

She opened her eyes with a sigh, stared at him once again, and tried to think of a way to convince him that she really was. "I'm not human."

"What?"

"I'm a replication of a human, a clone." She waited for it to sink in, this shinobi concept of copying a person to a shallow degree.

"What are you talking about?"

"I may have the heartbeat, the lungs, everything you need to be human but ultimately I'm just an imperfect facsimile designed for a single purpose and disposed of afterwards. Unfortunately, I've been handed an impossible task and am thus completely and utterly without worth. So, yes, I would expect you to take the goddamn fish and go home because I am supposed to be dead already!"

The son of a bitch put down the fish and carried her like a sack of potatoes all the way to his home. When he left and returned with the fish, half of them had been eaten by wild animals, although it went against her very nature to point out his flaws she couldn't help but say, "I told you so, dumbass."

He insisted she eat, wasted the food on her saying his father wouldn't be home until the month was out so it would be alright even when he could have sold it at the market. On the one hand, eating would prolong what should have been inevitable, but on the other hand every time she tried to die something intervened.

After realizing how much distress it would cause him if she refused it with great trepidation she began eating, feeling the nourishment running through her and hating every moment of it.

"So, what's your name anyway?" He asked with his mouth half full, staring at her as if he was truly interested in the answer.

She was about to answer with her standard, cheerful, proclamation of "I'm Eru Lee and I like supporting Orochimaru through emotionally difficult times in his life!" but something stopped her. That feeling of dread in her stomach that, no, she didn't like doing that because it could not be done. How could you have feelings about the impossible, so instead she decided to be more or less candid.

"I don't have a name."

"You have to have a name, everyone has a…"

"I'm a clone." She responded, cutting him off before he could finish, and when she saw that this still failed to mean anything to him she added, "We don't have names."

"Clone, you keep saying that, what does that mean?" He asked.

"Shinobi can create images of themselves out of elements, they use them for various tasks, and they call them clones." It was the closest she could come to explaining the concept to someone who wasn't already a shinobi.

"Shinobi… You're a shinobi then?"

Her eyes narrowed, and if she wasn't designed for emotional support she would have long since lost her temper, "No, I'm a clone of a shinobi."

"Does she look like you, then? With the hair and the eyes and…" He trailed off, waving his hand and trying to fit all of Eru Lee's distinctive features within it and failing miserably. She didn't bother to respond but he apparently answered himself because he asked then, "Does she have a name?"

"Eru Lee."

"Eru… Lee, that's not, well it's an odd name for a girl." He smiled then and said, "Should I call you Lee-chan, then?"

She wasn't supposed to have feelings about that sort of thing, but then, who had ever asked her what she would prefer to be called? Shinobi didn't ask their clones those sort of existential questions and she referred that; it was easier that way. But this boy, the closest thing she had to Orochimaru and supporting him, desperately needed for her to have a name.

But she wouldn't… couldn't, go by Eru Lee. There was only one Eru Lee, and she was brilliant and blinding, a cosmic center that they all orbited from the moment they were created. To use her name, to take her name, would be equivalent to slandering the name of god.

"Her mother was called Yuri, you can call me that." She said, rather than explaining English and the name Lily to the boy.

"Yuri-chan, alright, it… I think it suits you."

The next morning she insisted she leave, if only because being around him while waiting for death was exhausting, because she kept itching to provide emotional support.

To reassure him that his father loved him, that his mother who had died in childbirth had loved him without even needing to see his face, that he was doing well and that his life was worth living.

That he was kind and simple and good in a way that most shinobi would never learn to be and he only had to see it in himself.

It was a constant need, push forward, help them, let them see in themselves what you can see.

But at the same time she did not want to be that pillar of strength, not when she needed to crumble, so before he could become attached and she could offer unwarranted advice she left and started walking in any and every direction.

A week later and she still was not dead.

Without food, water, or a map the clone made her way into the mountains where she would most likely be promised solitude and possibly a means of death. Certainly she felt it aching in the soles of her feet, dancing behind her eyelids, just waiting for them to close and let go.

But she was wary of the worn road, of those who traveled there, and while some might show no hesitation in slitting her throat the vast majority would be uncomfortable with that situation and she would end up comforting some fisherman's son again and eating his dinner.

So with what little will power and energy she had left she drove herself deeper and deeper into the wilderness leaving the path and all of her dreams of supporting Orochimaru behind.

Even if some small part of her, her shadow, still longed for that day when she might fulfill the purpose she had long since abandoned out of desperation. Some part of her, when she dreamed at night, still saw what he could have been if he had only tried and seen himself as she saw him.

You can be more than you are, Orochimaru, more than this lonely barren shade of a human being wasting his life in a laboratory. You, too, can find meaning if only you know how to look up from your experiments and search for it.

She wanted to scream it at him, did in her nightmares, but as in life he never did seem to hear her in the wilderness.

(And with every footstep she brought herself further and further away from that place, towards death and enlightenment, where she could wait for emptiness while staring into the sunset on the highest peak.)

The landscape changed, became rougher, barren, a stark and unforgiving place that was far different from Konoha. Sometimes, when her eyes met the trees, she felt as if they were watching her, out of dark eyes with gnarled fingers made of birch.

But for a while they were content to let her keep wandering deeper and deeper into the mountains.

Until they weren't.

"You are very far from home, Konoha nin."

It was dark, her hands were bound and seals had been etched onto her skin, the buzz of chakra was a distant hum and in the darkness she could hear the rustling of leaves. But in front of her she didn't see the trees who dreamed of being men but instead a worn aged man with a spinning red eye.

Behind him a great black monolith loomed, a statue, or something that looked like a statue. Whatever it was it oozed menace and ill intent until the cavern seemed to be filled with nothing but that feeling.

"Are you going to kill me?" She asked, cutting to the heart of the matter, but he did not seem fazed if anything he was amused.

"No, I had planned to but recent political developments have caused me to change my mind."

"Then I have no interest in you." She cut him off, before he could say whatever it was he meant to say, this gave him more pause.

"You want to die?" He asked, to clarify.

"I have no meaning, no reason to exist, I must die." She was so very tired of explaining this and at seeing the stupefied horror on the faces of those she explained it to. And then feeling the ache of their own pain, the pain she was designed to prevent. This man was more stone faced about it, had suffered so much that this seemed to be nothing to him, but even he paused at it.

"And if I could give you meaning?"

That was new, she looked up at him, this worn frail man on the verge of death and long past the verge of madness. There were so many things she wanted to say to him then, that he needed to hear, and each ached desperately on her tongue but she held it.

"It would be artificial at best." She said with a small smile as his face dropped and then as if a wind was blowing through her and releasing all her tension she said what she meant to, "Of course, that's the beauty of humanity. You don't know what you want; you have to look for it. And it will hurt, you will suffer, you will grieve and bleed and watch everything die around you; but that's what you were built for. Because beyond all grief and anger and hatred there is something worthy of that pain; if you can find it."

He said nothing, looking suddenly shaken, as if she had said something he didn't expect to hear and not from her.

"Do you know who I am, Eru Lee?" He finally asked, a rhetorical question because he answered it himself, "I am Uchiha Madara and I know that there is nothing this world can offer beyond pain and hatred. There is only one path to salvation; and Konoha is not it."

And all at once, in spite of his name, she saw what this man represented. Haru had been the wrong choice, he was young and still yearned to prove himself, and in that he was so very different from Orochimaru. This man, who had betrayed his greatest friend and attempted to destroy the village, who now lived alone in the wilderness with madness in his eye; this man could play the part of Orochimaru.

"I'm Eru Lee and I like supporting Orochimaru through emotionally difficult times in his life…" She whispered to herself and then with new resolve, with new determination and hope, she faced this man again.

"Whatever it is you're looking for, Madara-sama, even you know that you won't find it here. There's no such thing as going too far in this world, you can always turn back, and even if it hurts you will always know that it was real." She smiled at him, her brightest grin, and though it wasn't quite the result she was looking for perhaps it didn't need to be. Perhaps Orochimaru didn't need to leave his laboratory or Madara his cave, perhaps they only had to realize that someday they must, that they could not endure like this forever and they must return to what they turned their backs on.

Senju Hashirama would always be waiting.

"There was a dream that was Konoha. You could only whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish, it was so fragile." She leaned in close, intent, "I know that you won't listen to me today. That whatever task you had planned for the true Eru Lee will not come to fruition through me and that you will still seek to fulfill it through her. I know that you won't leave this place today or tomorrow. But you must remember, in your darkest moment, when all hope seems lost that you can still have faith in that dream. Konoha can still exist, so long as one person wishes for its existence it is not gone from this world."

She continued, a sigh on her lips, having said all she needed to say and seen all she needed to see. It was not Orochimaru but it was enough, it must be enough. She leaned back and closed her eyes, reaching out with her suppressed chakra for loose stones on the floor, "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time… like tears in rain..."

She opened her eyes and with extraordinary concentration used the grabbing jutsu to slam a rock against her head and deliver the killing blow, "Time to die."

Author's Note: Written for the 400th review of "Minato Namikaze and the Destroyer of Worlds" by MizerE who asked for a fic about the life of one of Lee's clones who escapes clone purge. This ended up being a bit darker and angstier but then clones are very philosophical, particularly when the meaning of their existence is impossible to achieve...

Anyway, thanks for reading and reviews are much appreciated.

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or Harry Potter.