Variation of a Theme
Summary: History repeats itself. But that's nothing new to Chouji. As always, he can only stand by and watch. OneShot.
Warning: turned out to be angstier than I thought it would. But the ending is a happier one than I wanted to write… Shesh.
Set: future-fic, story-unrelated
Disclaimer: Standards apply.
Risa is a cute girl.
Though there is something definitely strange to her – for example, she never seems to be able to remember where she has put her lunch box, and she can flatten any boy of her age with one kick – her smile and her laughter make up for it. She doesn't smile often. She doesn't laugh often. But when she does, the world lights up. Normally, she is pretty quiet and doesn't stand out. But, other than girls of her age Chouji has known (take Ino as an example) she is neither petty nor childish. If he had to pin her down on one word, he would call her proud. She doesn't back down. She never allows herself to show weakness. She is a quick learner, though not as effortless as her brother. She will be a decent shinobi of Hidden Leaf once.
Shirogane reminds him of Kiba, sometimes.
He has this endless, tiring energy to call upon, this really annoying habit of always being in a good mood. It is the more annoying because he doesn't let himself be drawn into the rivalry normal boys in his age show. When Rinji challenges him he grins and finds a way to slip from it. He is like water – he cannot be caught, cannot be held. He is a fierce fighter, though, and it is in him Chouji can see the will of the fire burn strongest. What is strange is that he never showed interest in becoming Hokage, like every other boy in Hidden Leaf has at one point in his life. (Maybe except Shikamaru, but one has seen where it has lead his best friend – being Captain of the ANBU is probably as tiring and troublesome as being Hokage himself.)
And Rinji… is Rinji.
Risa's twin is one of the brightest genin Hidden Leaf has to offer. He is skilled with genjutsu, ninjutsu and taijutsu alike to a point in which he only has to watch Chouji demonstrate a technique once and, after a day's practice, is able to perform it flawlessly. In a way, he has many qualities Chouji attributes to a Hyuuga – he is lethal, intelligent, secretive, deeply loyal and totally screwed up. The weird thing is he is in no point related to the Hyuuga Clan. But really, he could be. His rivalry with Shirogane is both friendly and dead serious from his side. His devotion to Risa and his will to protect her is what keeps them going. And herein lies the problem.
Chouji watches as history repeats itself.
His first genin are intelligent and strong and grow up in a world without war and danger. In this world, they are allowed to be children longer than he himself was. Of course, all they want is to grow up as fast as possible.
It's no secret Risa likes Shirogane and it's no secret Rinji would do anything to protect her. So, somehow, they are tangled in a web of unspoken promises, friendship, shared secrets, rivalry, devotion and love and Chouji knows they won't be able to untangle themselves on their own.
Never.
It's fine as long as they are mere genin, playing and learning and learning playfully. They train and go on missions and bicker a little bit and Rinji challenges Shirogane, and Risa brings lunch for both of them, and Shirogane makes them laugh, and Chouji takes them out for dinner on warm Wednesdays. He is full of pride at their sight: his own, very first genin team. He wants everything to be perfect.
They grow older.
They don't all make it chuunin at the first attempt and yet Chouji is proud of them. He knows Risa and Shirogane are able to succeed next year and the fact that Rinji receives his first chuunin vest is not as surprising to him as it is to some other jounin instructors. He congratulates them and promises Risa to ask Ino about some extra training for her. And when they leave, Shirogane hitting Rinji on the shoulder and Risa looking at her brother, her eyes bright with admiration and love, he smiles.
And years pass. They take missions and train and pass the chuunin exam. Finally, one day, Shirogane and Rinji are both nominated for jounin.
The next day, when Chouji invites them for dinner to celebrate the occasion – he's not their Sensei anymore, but he still feels like it – they don't talk to each other. The conversation made by him and Risa is strained and awkward and they part early. Chouji watches Shirogane almost run from the restaurant and Rinji walks three paces before Risa, his shoulders stiff and angry. The following day, he is gone.
It goes downhill from there.
He doesn't notice right away. He's not their Sensei anymore and there are weeks in which he doesn't see his old students. He is training a new team of genin now and his days are full of work. First Rinji is missed at the regular morning meetings, then Naruto receives a formal missing person's report. He asks Chouji. Chouji asks his former students. What he is able to deduce from Risa's clipped answers and Shirogane's unhappy story is that somehow, they have fought, and somehow, Rinji has decided to leave. And the way her face is pale and unhappy and yet determined and from the way his shoulders square and his lips are pressed into a thin, thin line, Chouji knows that it is happening again.
It's like a variation of a well-known theme.
Why – why, oh, why, is he the one who has to deal with it now? He never was a great shinobi. He isn't intelligent like Shikamaru, he hasn't got the determination it needs to become Hokage, like Naruto. He's not proud and strong like Ino, not loyal and fierce like Hinata. He is nothing like Kiba or Shino or Sakura. Of all the shinobi of his generation, he probably is the least remarkable. So why him?
Once again, he watches two people fall apart.
It is horrible in itself, maybe even more so because he has already seen two people shatter and he thought he never would have to witness it again.
He can see how much Risa would like to enjoy the fact that her strict, protective elder brother doesn't stand between her and Shirogane any longer. He can see how much Shirogane could revel in the fact that the person who always was better than him finally left. And he can see the strain with which the two of them are holding together. They can't hold onto each other anymore, obviously. Had someone asked him years ago he would have placed sure bets on the fact that those two, one day, would get together. They were so close – and there was something else, something like the link he always felt between Ino and Shikamaru – that made them good together. But whatever it had been, it obviously had broken.
Without Rinji, they fell apart.
And he, of all, had to be their former instructor. Suddenly, he knew what Kakashi had felt, what had made the jounin return to the ANBU after they had failed to retrieve Sasuke for the fifth time only to be killed a few months later. That was no option for him, obviously. But he deeply envied the silver-haired man who now didn't have to watch his students bury themselves in work anymore, falling apart piece by piece.
They never talked about it. They didn't need to, because Chouji knew.
Risa felt guilty.
Shirogane felt horrible.
Together, they felt like they weren't allowed to be together anymore, now that they obviously had driven Rinji from town. When people started murmuring, once-so-proud Risa silently slipped away to hide behind an ANBU-mask and once-so-cheerful Shirogane disappeared with a blank face in a crowd of loyal, hard-working shinobi, travelling so much he most likely had forgotten what his apartment looked like.
They're not your students anymore, Ino reminded him and Shikamaru nodded his consent. But it didn't change the fact that Chouji felt responsible for them. Kakashi never had ceased the responsibility for Sasuke's defection and he was sure Asuma would never have stopped feeling responsible for them, either. So now was his turn to be tortured by the universe. He didn't succumb to it, didn't let it rule his life. He refused to forget.
Naruto had at least tried to bring Sasuke back, hadn't he? It wasn't his fault that the bastard had sided with Orochimaru and later with Akatsuki and had worked himself up until he couldn't set a foot into Konoha without half of the inhabitants screaming for his head. Shirogane tried, too. He had promised, like Naruto had Sakura, to bring back Risa's twin. But like Sasuke, Rinji remained unattainable. He had disappeared completely. Unlike Sasuke, he didn't appear in crowds of missing-nin or tried to attack his home village. He merely vanished from the surface of the earth.
One day, they carried Risa though the gates, severely injured and hallucinating. Victim of a new poison a new enemy had developed, she fell into a delirious half-coma from which she didn't wake. Chouji sat at her bed often and held her hand, listened to her begging for forgiveness, asking her brother to return. She told him more then than she had in her entire life. Her crippled sentences, her sobs and pleas were more than he could handle. He forced himself to listen to her love for Shirogane that hadn't been diminished in all those years, her guilt that she had wanted Rinji to stay away so she could spend more time with her other team mate. At the same time, she begged her twin to return, to forgive her and to come back. When her screams rose to a crescendo and tears ran down her face, he gently patted her hand and talked to her in a low voice but if she noticed him, she never showed any sign of recognition. She was gone somewhere in a shadow world of guilt and sorrow and Chouji wondered if that would have happened if Sakura had been pressed like Risa had been.
When Shirogane heard about her state, he refused to visit her in the hospital. Nothing Chouji could say would make him change his mind. Chouji eventually gave up and wondered what he had done to be punished like this.
And why the hell he had given them that much of his heart in the first place.
He was one of many jounin instructors. He couldn't possibly feel responsible for every single one of his students. Another batch had just won their chuunin vests and Chouji took them out for dinner, laughed and ate and watched them boast with their new title while he was secretly wondering whether similar fate would be awaiting them. They seemed so normal, so happy. Just like Risa, Rinji and Shirogane had been before it had started to fall apart. In a few weeks, the new genin would graduate and be placed on new teams, and most likely he would receive a new one. The three ones now in front of him would go out into the world, learn and fight and get hurt. That was the way life went. He couldn't afford to give them too much room in his heart, like he had done with his first team. It had been a mistake. But then, Asuma had cared for him, Ino and Shikamaru in a similar way, Gai left no opportunity to meet his former students, Kurenai was a regular visitor in the Hyuuga mansion and Kakashi had seemed to love Naruto, Sakura and Sasuke just as much as Chouji loved Risa, Rinji and Shirogane. That was just the way it went: it was impossible to untangle from the first people that were placed under your protection. They were part of you wherever you went and however many students would follow them.
Life should have been so easy. All he ever wanted had been a few good friends, a good meal twice (or trice) a day and a good job. A peaceful life. Maybe a wife and children.
Instead, they had become his family, his children. They had grown on him the same way a little puppy grows on you when you adopt it while it cannot even walk properly. Now, he was responsible for them the same way he would be responsible for his children.
But there was nothing he could do.
Sometimes it happened, didn't it? Sometimes people disappeared from the face of the earth and nobody ever saw them again. Sometimes, people left the ones precious to them and never returned. Sometimes. Sometimes…
Sometimes, Chouji felt he was getting angry. Really angry. He hadn't felt that angry in years. He couldn't even remember the last time he had been that angry.
History was a bitch.
He didn't care about circles and variations, about repetitions and fate. The only thing he wanted was to have his team back, his proud little Risa, protective genius Rinji and kind, uncompetitive Shirogane.
It didn't seem his dream would come true in this life.
Maybe he should go, talk to Naruto. Maybe Shirogane should talk to Naruto. Then, Risa could talk to Sakura – if she ever got over the fever that had plagued her lithe little body for months now. But all talking wouldn't do any good. He would call forth ghosts that had long been laid to rest – or had been tried to banish – and he knew the Hokage and his former team mate still fought their inner demons when it came to the person that had been Sasuke Uchiha. And secondly, their problem was a bit different. Sasuke had left because he craved power, because he nursed hate and wanted revenge. Rinji had left – why had Rinji left? Because he hated Shirogane? Because he couldn't stand the sight of his sister with his greatest rival any longer? Because he was angry, sad, desperate, lonely? What had it been that had driven the genius away from them? Chouji didn't know. The more he thought about it, the less he understood. Thinking was no good. He had to do something.
Only what?
There was nothing he could do.
He couldn't leave to search for Rinji personally. He was a jounin instructor, had already received another genin team to lead. He had duties, he had his job. He had an old mother he took care of since his father died. And he had Risa he had to visit, since she had no one else left.
It was absolutely futile, but Chouji prayed.
And life went on as it always had, never-ending, unchanging. Risa recovered from the comatose state she had been in but she never was the same again. Returning to ANBU was out of question and Chouji feared she would finally break when they told her. Shirogane eventually forced himself to visit her. What they talked about, Chouji never knew, but at least they had started talking again. Besides that, nothing much changed.
Months passed. Years.
So this was what it felt like, he realized, when one spoke about time and scars.
It didn't heal. It didn't change. He just went on slowly, taking each day as it came and was left tired, worried or smiling. There were things to smile about, as strange as it seemed. Shikamaru's daughter adopting a puppy from Kiba, driving her father crazy by only thinking about the size it once would have. Naruto refusing to work on a beautiful summer's day, inviting all his old friends for a picnic. Anko and Tenten sparring and cursing each other with language so colorful Sakura had to send some children away that were listening in awe. Gai and Lee making up new challenges. Hinata's and Neji´s marriage and birth of their first daughter.
He still visited Risa. First it had been every day, then it became every week. Every other week. Every month. Finally he only met her occasionally, once in a while. She was pale and thin and she resembled a ghost more than her former self. Her smile seemed to have drained away from her permanently, it seemed it even cost her too much energy to speak. But one day Chouji saw her crossing the plaza and stopped to talk to her when she spotted an old guide dog that was being harassed by a few teenagers. Bits of her old fire seemed to return and seeing her with the dog was an image that burned itself into his mind. He talked to Ino and Ino used a few connections of hers and Risa started working in the over-worked sanctuary. It suited her well and sometimes – sometimes – one could see her smile again. Shirogane, in the meantime, was slowly – and quite unhappily – working his way up the career ladder. One day Naruto told Chouji that he could very well be handled as the Eight Hokage if he continued like this. Chouji thought about his former student who only had wanted to be left in peace and almost suffocated on a piece of barbecued meat.
Variation.
That was the clue.
Life went on, life changed, times changed, people changed. Nothing ever stayed the same.
Naruto and Sakura got married.
Maybe, Chouji thought. Maybe. Because – who knew?
Summer came. And fall. And winter, and spring. And summer again.
His fourth genin team took the step into the wide world. Since Risa, Rinji and Shirogane, none of them had attempted to break his heart again. He went on a date. He started to feel like himself again. He watched as life started to take on colors. One day he looked outside and saw the snow coating the village in a beautiful, crystal white. A little bundle of Christmas roses was standing in a vase in front of his door, along with a carefully wrapped gift and a handmade card bearing two names only. Then and there, he knew he could go on.
Three days after the snow had melted away and left Hidden Leaf awakening to the first rays of spring sunshine a lean shinobi with dark hair, well-worn clothes and the weary eyes of a traveler crossed the threshold of the great gates to Hidden Leaf and, upon request, identified himself as Rinji Katamura.
And yet another variation was introduced into the symphony of life.