30CHAPTER 15: AWRY
Karasu Ren is proud that his kids—when did he begin to consider them his kids?—are now chuunin. Indeed, he is proud of many things. Their achievements. Their deliberate compassion and their measured resolve. Their unwavering loyalty to the Leaf.
Most of all, he is proud of their unconditional loyalty to each other. He sees how they have learnt to read each other in the heat of battle, each always one step ahead of the other, predicting their movements even without the crutch of the Sharingan. Some words, he is reminded, are best communicated not with words but with two backs pressed against another, muscles tensed and coiled and ready to spring. Ready to protect.
Some bonds are forged through fists and fire, and linger with the smell of smoke and iron.
He scrubs his hands in the river until the skin is raw. Fuck, he is proud of them. Fuck, fuck, fu—
Fuyu's hands are trembling as she settles them on top of his. They're so small in comparison, but already too calloused and scarred for a girl so young. How many times has she seen him like this, bent over a body of water with his fingers scrubbing at blood long gone, skin so raw and tender that it looks newly burnt?
"It's okay, Ren-sensei."
Her reassurance comes in a quiet whisper, barely audible in the background of the ringing in his ears. She's barely ten. There is not a world in which it is normal for a ten-year-old to be comforting a grown man, twenty-four and—
—and nothing is normal about this to begin with, is it?
His eyes snap shut as he withdraws into himself.
"You saved me," she continues. He doesn't remember having sunk to his knees at the base of the tree, but his fingers have dug themselves into the dirt and his forehead leans heavily against its bark. Fuyu's short arms slither by his sides, and before he knows it they coil around his waist in a hesitant embrace. She's stepping on eggshells, but he doesn't have the strength to push her away. He sinks lower into the ground and she with him, knowing that if she lets go he will find a way to dig his own grave.
He's sunk to lows the likes of which he had managed to avoid for more than a decade. If Hell exists—yes, this pure agony—he imagines this is what its Ninth Circle feels like.
The empty eyes of a twelve-year-old imprint themselves behind his eyelids. It sears into his memories—the way the boy's murderous glare slowly morphs to pained shock as Karasu Ren's sword rams into the side of his ribcage, bursting through the other side of his body and—and—and staking him to the tree. The boy's lightning jutsu dies clutched inside his small palm, singing his fingertips and sizzling into oblivion—inches away from Fuyu's side.
He's just killed a child.
A Mist shinobi—but still, a child. It is unfortunate, a mishap, a misunderstanding—that's what Fuyu keeps telling him. In her eyes he is not a murderer who slaughters people by the hundreds—who now kills children for a living. No, in her eyes: he is a hero.
This is certainly not misfortune, he dwells. Misfortune is the fact his team should've never been assigned this mission—originally, it had been given to an older chuunin squad. But their leader has broken his arm during training and the hospital had been too overwhelmed to heal him in time to leave, leading Team Karasu to take on a last-minute assignment in the Land of Snow… with the most efficient route right through the Bloody Mist.
His kids are so young that he forgets, sometimes, that they have already forged names for themselves in the bingo books. Why are ten-year-olds in the bingo books? Of course, he should have predicted this would happen. He should have never taken them through Mist. Not when he has two Sharingan wielders and a kid who spawns adamantine chains through her back. They are hunted—first for the large bounties on their heads, and then for their bloodline limits, notoriously outlawed and hounded in the Mist.
He has no issues disposing of bounty hunters who target ninja of the Leaf.
But he forgets that sometimes, bounty hunters can be children too. Especially in the Mist—where poverty prevails, and violence is the only way that some are able to survive.
He gazes at the night sky that night, unable to sleep. The stone floor is cold against his back, his damp sleeping bag far too thin to bear the foreign weather en route to the Land of Snow. He stares up at the sky and traces constellations light years away, wishing for a life far, far away—in space and through time. He entertains thoughts of peace. Fresh air without a tinge of iron. Unscarred flesh. Minato's golden hair a mess as it blows on top of his head, wide sparkling blue eyes rounding with joy and Hokage hat tucked under his elbow while they stroll through Konoha for lunch. Yuki's soft eyes boring into his own as their limbs intertwine with the sheets. Kushina fetching Naruto from the playground, "—I'm so excited that I made you ramen little Naru-chan! I know you'll love it, 'ttebane!"
"—what're you thinking about, Ren-sensei?"
The past I can't escape.
The future that was just within reach, if only...
But escaping implies he wants to leave it, which—
He doesn't. The past is all he wishes for. Sometimes, it is all he lives for.
Karasu Ren focuses on Uzumaki Fuyu's hushed whisper the way a father tries to imprint his child first's words in memory. He hopes her high-pitched voice chases the ghosts away and anchors him to the present. In this present, he has killed a child—
—but he has also saved his own.
This is the voice of someone he cherishes. It is not the present that he longs for, but it is the one he has to focus on if he wants these kids to live.
A cold wind blows from the south, carrying the scent of rain. The stars above them glisten, but he can't ignore the stormclouds that ajourn in the distance.
"I… I never got to say it earlier, Ren-sensei, but—thank you, 'ttebane."
His stomach ties in a knot.
This is the present.
It's February 7th. I'm five kilometers south of the border with the Land of Snow. Three allies surround me, only one of them awake. They are my team.
He'll have to rouse them from their sleeping bags before the rain reaches. He estimates another two hours before the torrential downpour descends upon them.
Until then... let them sleep.
He'd take care of everything.