By Any Other Name
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I wrote this fic ages ago, as a present for Sakki, who asked simply for something Sano-centric. I've loved Sanosuke since we first met him, and I had just barely finished the manga, so I jumped at the chance. Slight spoilers for Volume 27.
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He had other names, sometime in the long-ago he only vaguely now remembers. No point in remembering it, after all, not in the here-and-now of flying fists and teeth and blood; he's never seen the point of a sob-story before the battle. And after, well, that's the time for getting drunk and searching out another fight, not dwelling on half-healed wounds and long-lost dreams.
But he still slings on his coat every morning, and even with his head splitting with a hangover he'll take that half-second to read the character he emblazoned on the back with a drop of blood and an oath of vengeance for every stitch. And for that brief half-second, he remembers the old times, and the old names, and the old oaths he never will forget.
In the oldest times, the times he seldom remembers at all, they called him by names no one has ever used since. Once a warm bright voice called for Sano-chan! Once a gentle patter of sandals at his side and a tiny hand tugging at his shirt were the prelude to a small, cheerful voice begging Sanosuke-nii-chan to look at a flower, at a butterfly, at a worm wriggling its wondrous way through its warm underground home. Once a harsh, deep voice cursed as Higashidani Sanosuke left his peasant home, vowing it would be forever.
By the time the next snow fell he'd already managed to shed those names like a fighter shedding his coat or a government its promises. For a few brief delirious months he was simply Sanosuke, an army cadet with no family, no ties, no bonds to anything but the Sekiho Army and Captain Sagara and the dream they all shared. A dream of a world where a farmer's son could chose his own name and bear it with pride in a new era of equality and freedom…
That dream shattered before he ever became Sagara Sanosuke. He took the name anyway, as he took the Aku kanji in defiant remembrance of all he was and all the Sekiho and Captain Sagara had been, but no one ever used it. In the darker alleys of Tokyo where he scrounged and fought and lost himself time and again, he was brat and punk and rooster-head, until he found his zanbatou and fought his way to the top and earned the name that now makes punks throughout Tokyo wet themselves in fear. Fight Merchant Zanza, Sano with the zanbatou, the skinny, cold-eyed boy who fights for fun and for pay and because it's all he has.
He seldom remembers the old times anymore.
Someday, though… When he'll look at the brat, all dark hair and defiant eyes and ardent longing to be strong, to be a man, to be enough and more than enough… When he'll drink with his friend, and lose himself for an evening in old dreams of an old war lost but never forgotten… When he'll fight against or beside his companion, flying fire-colored hair and fierce eyes and raging determination to protect all that anyone could ever hold dear…
Then, at last, Sagara Sanosuke will remember who he is, and who he was, and who he fights to become.
And fighting with all his strength and all his pride and all his heart, he'll make that name one of pride and honor once more.