Unsaid
Notes: For Kaida who is a wonderful wonderful person far more talented than me and loves both these crack pairings.
'I am sorry Shino, I thought they were mission documents you had forgotten.'
He believes him of course. His father is not the type to pry through his sons belongings. Nontheless the damage has still been done, Shino is still humiliated, his deepest secret laid bare.
In retrospect he should have burned the letters after he realised he would never send them. But he couldn't bring himself to do it, because it felt like to burn them would be to acknowledge and accept it would never be.
' Do you love this girl?'
His father's voice is gentle, perhaps far gentler than Shino has ever heard it.
'I believe so.'
It occurs to Shino suddenly that one day his father will be a old man. He is not yet but in the weary sigh and the slump of his shoulders he feels like he is glimpsing the future, seeing an bent, tired old man weighed down by his regrets.
'You know your mother and myself had an arranged marriage.'
He does. It has never been something that was kept from him.
'It was good thing for me, I think I am one of the few who can say they ever found true companionship from such a forced arrangement. Your grandfather picked well for me and in time I grew to love the woman I married.'
Shibi reaches up sliding off his glasses, the charms tinkling loudly in the silence, and rubbing the bridge of his nose tiredly while his son waits patiently for him to continue.
'But I loved another before that.'
It comes as suprise, of course it does. It is difficult for anyone to think of their parent as once young, once perhaps as foolishly in love as they themselves were.
'The girl in the letter. Does she have a bloodline trait?'
Shino shook his head, not missing the slight look of relief on his father's face.
'That's good. I'm sure you're aware that it is impossible to marry into our clan if you have a bloodline that would possibly conflict and cause children to reject the kikkai infusion.'
'The woman you loved.... had a bloodline trait.'
His father nods staring down at the glasses in his hands. Perhaps he does not want to look at his son while he relates this story. Shino wonders if he does not wish to look at him because he does not want him to see that regret in his eyes, to have him see that he would have prefered to have been with this woman rather than Shino's own mother.
He thinks he should look at him anyway.
'She was beautiful. I know every man in love believes that the woman he has fallen for is the most perfect creature but she was truly extraordinary. But it was more than that. She was something wild, headstrong, commanding. I was years older than her but we ended up taking the Chuunin exams at the same time, her team were put forward when they were about the same age as you were. She managed to best one of my teammates in a one-on-one fight and while I knew I should be supporting him, I found myself....glad that she had won. I congratulated her on her victory, she smiled at me and I was in love.'
It is a bitterly familiar tale, Shino thinks. After-all the Chuunin exams were when he had first noticed her.
'But I never told her and though I watched her for years afterwards we only spoke on a buisness or rarely a friendship level. I could not even contemplate taking it furthur because I did not want to leave my clan but no matter how I tried I could not make myself stop loving her.'
His father's eyes are distant, looking back at memories that perhaps were better off hidden away and Shino feels a twinge of guilt. He wonders if he is looking at himself in twenty years time, someone who is happy but who's happiness has a certain hollow quality to it because of opportunities lost, because of words left unsaid.
'Of course she found someone else. It was inevitable. The boy she was on the genin team with, who progressed through the ranks with her. It was not unexpected. People often form relationships within their genin teams'
The letters crumple in his hands as he unconciously clenches his fists. He has worried she is already attached to someone within her team, there are signs that he cannot ignore, signs that make him feel sick and worryingly angry.
'They never married but they would have one day had his death not been so sudden. Whenever I feel angry or resentful towards him and what he unknowingly took from me I think, at least I knew my son, at least I got to watch you grow, to know the joy of being a father. That is a joy Asuma will never know.'
For a moment Shino is sure he has heard incorrectly.
'You....are talking about Kurenai-sensei.'
'Yes.'
They sit in silence for a long moment while
Slowly he reaches out a hand to rest it on his father's shoulder. It is the only gesture of comfort he can currently think of.
'You should tell this girl. This...TenTen. At least if she says no, you will have closure on your feelings.'
He thinks he will take this advice. Perhaps even today, he will track her down and hand her the letters filled with his thoughts of her, the ones he has been writing and not sending for five years now. Because he does not want to sit here with his own son one day, in a future more bleak than he hopes for, and relate a story of how a part of himself will always be hollow.
He does not want the regret that comes with leaving things unsaid.