A/N - Torune really needs more fics. Ah well - as usual, I stand relatively alone in a mostly cold world.

Disclaimer - I don't own anything.

Counting raindrops

o

"Trust one who has gone through it."

- Virgil

o

Father has always been one to drop things out of a clear sky, like sudden cloudbursts or claps of thunder, and over the seven years that he has been alive Aburame Torune has grown used to that. Still, he is unprepared for his father's latest announcement, and for a moment is not even certain that he has heard him correctly.

"What?"

His father puts his hands in his pockets and tilts his head, obviously a little annoyed that he has to repeat himself, and Torune ducks his head in apology. "I said that I will be sending you to Root. Because it will be an educational experience for you, and a chance to make some friends worth keeping. Also," he adds thoughtfully, "our relations with Danzo have always been reasonably good, and there is no need to put all our children onto the mainstream Academy track, especially with the way that they have been watering down the curriculum recently. The wise flesh fly does not lay all her eggs in a single dead rabbit."

Torune can feel a few beetles buzzing anxiously under his collar and quiets them with a wisp of chakra. "I am not sure that I want to go to Root, Father," he says uncertainly, scrambling his thoughts together in an effort to understand what that means. Leaving home, his cousins, his mother? "Because - because -" he stumbles to a halt. I don't know anything about it and I'm scared to leave home are not reasons he can support with any kind of logic.

"It is an excellent opportunity," Father says, and it is obvious that there is nothing more to say.

Kasumi is the name of the nurse-mother who introduces herself to him after his father drops Torune off (and it takes every ounce of his willpower not to embarrass him by clinging to his leg and begging to be taken back home) and tells him that he is going to belong to her group of children.

Torune peers tentatively up at her and thinks that she looks a little like his mother does. Maybe that's why he loosens up enough to allow a few of his bugs to crawl out onto his shoulder and scan the area too, and when Kasumi doesn't flinch or shudder and just gives him a little smile, he starts to think that he likes her, and that maybe, just maybe, belonging to her won't be so bad.

He clings to his long coat when she tries to make him more 'comfortable', though, and asks to keep it on a while longer, and feels very grateful when Kasumi only nods, because not many people understand the Aburame need for privacy and he knows that he's going to have to let that go a little now that he's here but he doesn't want it to have to be just yet.

He closes his eyes and tells himself that he would have started the Academy soon anyway, and that this is pretty much the same.

But inside he knows that it will be a different life.

It's been three weeks since Torune's been aboveground, and so even now, when a few of the other boys are grumbling because their anticipated trip is taking place on a gray, rainy day, the seven-year old drinks in every bit of the unfiltered, natural light.

Even Roots need fresh air, he thinks, and is tempted to giggle at his own joke, but then he keeps silent because he doesn't know the people around him well enough yet to feel safe about laughing in their presence.

Their little group of five is crouched underneath a tangle of trees on the edge of the forest, watching the rain beat down on Konoha. After a minute, Fu, a solemn orange-haired boy of around his own age who Torune has been cautiously growing closer to over the past weeks, gets up from where he's been crouching and makes his way to the other boy's side.

"Do you like watching the rain?" he asks a little too formally. Fu is awkward at making friends, if that is what they are doing, but Torune doesn't mind because it leaves more room for the shyness and homesickness that still cling to him.

All of a sudden, so close to home and yet so far away, he feels the need to confide something.

"I always kind of thought," he admits in a half-whisper, staring out from under the dark shelter of the fir tree, "that if I grew still enough that I could pay attention to every raindrop hitting the ground, hear every single one just when it landed, that I would be a truly great shinobi. Because - if you could do that, you could do anything."

Fu doesn't laugh. He doesn't ask stupid questions or turn around and leave. He sits down beside Torune, a little stiff, but a friendly presence in the middle of everything that is still so intimidating and new.

"I'll listen with you," he says, and Torune knows that he has found a friend worth keeping.

Around three years after joining Root, grown a little taller and more confident, Torune exchanges his coat for gloves and a mask.

"They're easier to move around in," he explains to Fu, "and I still get to cover up most of my skin."

He's discovered, to his surprise, that away from the more silent, restrained atmosphere of his Clan, that he's been elected the most easy-going, humorous one of his class. It isn't that he doesn't work as hard as the others - he has to keep up with Fu, after all, and his best friend drives himself so hard that it worries Torune sometimes - he just doesn't obsess over it like some of them do, or worry about keeping a perfectly straight face all the time.

Emotional control was invented for missions, he figures, and when you're not busy with one - or communicating about something serious - it's okay to relax a bit.

One of the easiest ways to do that is to listen to the rain. It's a meditation unlike any other Torune has heard of, but just closing his eyes for a minute and trying to separate the innumerable rush of drops from one another can clear his head and calm his breathing.

He's sure now that he won't ever be able to distinguish each from the other, but he tries anyway because it quiets his mind on the days when the dormitory is just a little too noisy and crowded.

Splash drop splash.

A dull roar all around Konoha.

Countless drums beating in time.

Somewhere, one raindrop falls.

Torune knows that if he had gone to the Academy, he would have eventually been placed in a three-man cell led by a jonin-sensei. The idea is interesting now, but only in the way that a little boy might be intrigued by the customs of the family next door, because it is different.

In Root, although the number of shinobi sent on any given mission could flexibly increase or decrease with ease - anything from a squad to a single shinobi was possible - the basic building blocks that were used to add and subtract were the two-man cells. These were usually formed during the early years of training, in order to allow the optimal amount of time for the children to grow and learn together, and it was widely known that the higher-ups of Root depended heavily on the nurse-mothers to tell them when and where natural inclination was already forming a team. On occasion, young Root trainees had even been swapped between classes if strong friendships had been formed outside of it.

So Torune is elated, but not exactly surprised, when Kasumi calls to him one evening and tells him with a smile that one of their instructors has dropped by their dormitory earlier that day to give her some news.

He yanks back the curtain that partitions Fu's bed off from the others, and babbles happily. "Fu! We're gonna be on the same team together! Isn't that great! Because that means they noticed we work really well together, and - and -" he gestures vaguely and energetically. He knows that this was something probably planned ever since the first few weeks they'd known each other, but he wants Fu to share his excitement over the official confirmation. It seems like something to celebrate.

Fu looks up from the strange little wooden doll he's been tinkering with over the past few days - something about a new trap he has an idea for, Torune thinks - and a small smile tugs at the corner of his mouth, although his eyes stay serious. "Good," is all he says, but Torune's gotten used to reading into Fu's concise, brusque way of speaking, and the quiet word is more than enough.

"So have you figured that out yet?" he asks curiously, nodding at the doll.

Fu looks down at it and wrinkles his brow slightly. "Almost. I think that I need to practice the seal a little more - or perhaps I do not have the one that is required." He taps the thick book beside him. "Danzo-sama lent this to me for reference, but I have not had as much experience with seals…"

Torune sits down on the bed, drawing the curtain again to give the illusion of privacy. "I can help you look it up," he suggests. "Just give me the requirements."

Fu nods and rattles off a short list that leaves Torune slightly wide-eyed as he turns over the heavy pages. "Wow, complicated…" he mutters. "But it'd be really effective if you could get it to work…"

They settled down to a companionable silence broken only by the clack of wood and the rustle of paper.

If anyone had asked the dark-haired boy then whether he missed his home, he would have blinked at them, confused. He was home.

Torune is cold and wet and huddled together under a rocky outcropping with Fu; he's bitten his lip almost clean through, he thinks, tasting the salty sweetness of blood, as he struggles to keep his hitching breaths under control.

The scent of his blood is almost lost in the thick stench that seems to rise from everywhere these days; the trees and the ground and the rain-slick rocks and the clothes that he's been wearing for a week straight now. The Third Shinobi War is well under way, and the last few days have been more like a bad dream than anything, gratefully sinking into the calm coolness of nothing and no-one as ragged screams and snarls of hatred fill his ears; watching Fu's face still and grow cold out of the corner of his eye, his movements sliding into machine-like precision as he cuts and hacks and stabs and sets his traps with all the patient attention of a spider forming a web.

Torune has never been so thankful for the skills that were drilled into them over and over back in the relative safety of Konoha and her surrounding wood, until they became second nature and as natural as breathing - breathe, he thinks, and allows his sore throat to gulp down air a little less greedily, to keep to a steady rhythm. Breathe.

"Listen to the rain," Fu murmurs, crouched beside him and one sleeve stiff and dark with drying blood, but he still manages to put one arm over Torune's shoulders, squeezing slightly. "Remember, each and every drop…"

Every raindrop. If I could hear each and every one… Torune closes his eyes, listening to the eager, shy voice of his younger self, then I could be a truly great shinobi.

Splash. Pitter. Patter. Splash. Splash…

He finds himself thinking that if he dies here, his life will be no more than one raindrop in the storm that is the Third War, something that in the end, so few will know of or care.

He looks up and wipes the rainwater from his eyes.

Each and every raindrop…

It's cold in the Land of Iron, a bitter deep-to-the-bone cold that leaves Torune aching for the warmer nights and sunnier days that he remembers from the Land of Fire. He spends most of his time off-duty curled in thick furs by a red hot brazier, trying to encourage his dismal, sleepy bugs into staying awake and alive.

Fu is always busy these days, off training with the group of samurai he managed to attach himself to, and though Torune misses him when he's gone he also appreciates the chance to be still, to think. Most of the samurai avoid him, it had taken him several tries to make them understand that yes, the strange shinobi boy did have bugs actually living inside of him, and yes, they could eat you alive or something of the kind - and when he had, they had left him severely alone.

Torune can't help but find this amusing; he points out to Fu, when he returns from his latest foray into the realm of the honorable and often dead, that it's the only occasion he can remember where his best friend has been more of a social success than he has.

Alone in the still, quiet time of the early morning hours - the time when embers are burning low and memories are burning bright - he tugs off his gloves to look at his hands; smooths the tough black material. Small, faint scars cover the backs of his hands and his palms.

He's only fifteen years old and yet he's already lived through one full-out war, something many men twice his age and more - some of them close friends - had failed to do. It will be an educational experience for you, Torune hears again, and puts his head in his hands. He closes his eyes and wonders for a minute whether he would have chosen to go if he had known what would follow, whether anyone would ever take the choice to follow the path of the shinobi if they could fully comprehend everything that lay ahead.

He wonders, with a small, ridiculous snort of laughter, whether anyone would take the choice to be born at all if they knew what lay ahead.

He wishes, suddenly and desperately, that he could hear a rainfall again. No rain falls in the Land of Iron this time of year, only soft, thick, white blankets of snow. The silence is maddening, driving him back to his thoughts and refusing to let him escape them.

It reminds him of the times when he was young and his father would refuse to let him get away with rambling, vague excuses for speech.

I don't want to hear excuses, Torune. Give me reasons. Explain. Make me understand.

Root has given him so much; taken so much away. He is left at the age of fifteen with scars and nightmares, a best friend he knows he can trust to the point of death and beyond, a character firmly grounded in purpose, duty and loyalty, the ability to kill quickly and quietly, the urge to take the little kids he sees training aside and tell them that it's the basics, not the flashy jutsu, that'll really save their neck out on the field, and right now, a hell of a lot of uncertainty.

He rubs his eyes wearily. He supposes that in the end what he's asking is, was it worth it. And that is a question that leads naturally and easily into, what am I fighting for.

Konoha.

And suddenly Torune finds that his shoulders are shaking steadily as he cries without sound or tears. He wants to be home, wants to see the trees quiver in the wind and measure out the streets with his feet and trace the lines of every beloved house with his hands, wants to make sure that everything he fought for, everything he killed for, everything he killed himself for is still there.

Because then - then I think I would have my answer.

In the absence of the rain, the silence is a dull roaring in his ears, but it no longer feels threatening.

Torune closes his eyes and dreams of rain on rooftops, and home.

It's been around six months since the last time he's seen his father, and the window of time they have is only around ten minutes; but the two of them have never needed many words anyway.

Sometimes, Torune thinks, it's all about listening to the silences.

To the spaces between the raindrops.

And that just makes each and every drop of water all the more precious.

"Tou-san?" he says casually, hands in his pockets and head tilted just a little to the side.

"Hmm?"

"Thanks."

His father nods and they stand in companionable silence for a little while, until the rain ends and they part ways.

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