A Shinobi is a high school student like another: Sidelines
First Cut
Because one can't say everything. Because one alone doesn't see everything. Because one alone doesn't know everything.
Short texts exploring the Alternative Universe of 'A shinobi is a high school student like an other', using the theme list from fanfic100.livejournal.
Beginnings (Kakashi/Iruka, during 'A Shinobi')
Technically, one would say it began the day an unexpected third zombie made his appearance in class. Others would say it began when two young men sat on a porch outside a very loud party, one lending his vest to the other. It could have began in a fight in the hallway at school too, a fight where one won a blackened eye and an address when helping the other. Or maybe the beginning really happened in a studio upstairs a comfy-feeling pub, when those two men shared a strange silence. Very very technically, it began a Saturday night in an unlighted corridor at another party to end at one of the guy's house, into his bed.
But this was just the beginning.
Ends (Obito/Kakashi, before 'A Shinobi')
I saw. I saw it many times. I brought it. I gave it.
I didn't do anything , this time. He just saved me, once more - for the last time. I saw his eyes, behind his mask's visor, his red eyes that he'd told me many times jokingly that they would be mine if he didn't have anymore use for them. He wasn't joking.
It wasn't different from the times I had brought it, in the end. He just ...stopped, like any other.
Insides/Outsides (Iruka, before 'A Shinobi')
He's screaming, inside. Screaming for help, screaming for his friends to see, to see what's done to him, to see that he's being used, treated little more than like an object. He want them to finally look at him in the eyes and see. Emily had done it, once. But then, she seemed to have forgot, or to have brushed it off. They are the perfect couple to the outsider eye after all. Nothing that happen between them can possibly be bad.
He smiles, to the outside. But it is nothing else than a facade.
Hours/Days/Weeks/Months/Years (Kakashi, before 'A Shinobi')
Hours spent in shell shock soon turned out into days. Once he snapped out of it, he distanced himself from those who where like his family. He was feeling guilty, the most abominable and loathed guilt was eating him inside. He only let Tsunade approach him from time to time.
Then the days turned into weeks, and as quickly in months. He couldn't look Rin in the eyes anymore. He couldn't just see her - or Raidou, or Sensei, for all that mattered, nor anyone else. He just couldn't.
So he went down.
Months had led to other months. The months had turned to a year. He had put his head out of the mud he had willingly went through. He had spoke to Rin, about what he had and was still feeling; of the guilt. All of his surrogate family's members had helped him. At the beginning of the term, he had gone to the city public high school. He had agreed with Sensei that he couldn't go back to service like before now. He was still training, and taking his share of assignments, often going with Raidou and Genma now, but his life had stopped from being one-tracked. He knew it had been a while since Sensei had wished him to have at least a part of his life that was close from normalcy. But it had taken this event to make it happen.
It had been one year since Obito died.
Red/Orange/Yellow/Green/Blue/Purple/Brown/Black/Colorless (Kakashi, during 'A Shinobi')
The world around him was full of colors, he just had to rest his eyes somewhere, and all the colors from the rainbow where there.
Red was an easy one. Kodia's and Vincent's eyes were of that strange shade of dark blood red. Haku's favorite dress was red. Iruka's cheeks were turning red to the most interesting promptings.
Orange was an easy one too. If one was looking at Naruto, orange was the first thing that was jumping to attention.
Yellow was unmistakingly making him think about his Sensei's hair, and then, Naruto's one.
Green, blue and purple could easily be spotted at school. One because clashingly bright green was the favorite color of a bouncy and loud guy in his class, the following was the color of one's full-body tattoos, making his skin appear blue and the last was Itachi's girlfriend's hair color. Or maybe hair dye color, but he had never seen her without it once.
Lots of people had brown hair or eyes. Rin, Raidou, Genma had eyes and hair of various shades of brown. Though his favorite shades were the ones displayed on a certain dolphin.
Black - he could see this color a bit too often. After all, their uniforms were black, and half of Konoha population was black haired. The streets at night were black too. But where he could see black the more often was on Emily and Izumo ; they weren't the 'goth leaders' for nothing.
White was in the HQ's and high school's corridors. White was the infirmary too. White was Rin's work apron. White was his visible chakra.
Then why, with all those colors around him, why did all he ever saw watching him back in the mirror was a colorless figure?
Family/Parents (Kakashi, no timeline)
His family is not really a subject he likes to think about. When he thinks about his family, to tell the truth he only thinks about his father because the man was the only member of his family by blood that he had ever known. By blood and in blood he often thinks when in one of his dark and sick humor phase. After all, the man gutted himself the door next to his son's room.
But deep in somewhere, he knows he has another family, one bound by strangers' blood and alcohol spilled on his uniform, by sweat and grim and training, by restless nights in the warm and safe circle of someone's arms, by friendship and honor, by death shed and witnessed.
And, as much as he doesn't want to admit it, they're his family by and in mind.
Triangle (Rin/Obito/Raidou, before 'A Shinobi')
There had always been some sort of connection between the three of them. It had took longer for this connection to get a proper definition, but once it had it, things went a bit awkward. Raidou and Obito could take down anything and anyone together, and none of the two trusted someone else more than Rin to watch their back. Well, Genma could be trusted for anything, but not with alcohol.
Rin and Obito were what one could call 'an item'. They fitted each other quite nicely - sure, they had their share of yelling and all, but one could feel that one was everything to the other.
What one couldn't know, was that Raidou had literally pushed Obito to Rin. That Raidou loved Rin. And that maybe he loved her as much if not more than Obito. That he wanted her happy, and Obito was making her happy. So there.
Raidou still loves Rin deeply, but it feels wrong to him. He feels guilty to just think about his best friend this way, just to think that now he could finally say what he have to tell her.
So Raidou swallows his feelings back and waits, silently comforting the weeping woman he loves, the smoke of the incense slowly raising from the cold stone of the grave.
End of First Cut