Team Gai: Parents
Lee
Lee's parents were dead.
Or at least, that was the official story. However Gai knew and Tenten knew, and Neji knew, and most people knew that they were not. They had simply abandoned Lee as a child and moved to the gambling capital of the Fire country, leaving him at the official Orphanage (a collection of rooms where kids could come and go with a bare amount of adult supervision and food) with a piece of paper with a single name printed on it: 'Rock Lee'.
Everyone knew that Lee thought that his parents were dead.
No one was quite sure why this was. Maybe no one had told him. Maybe he was just oblivious. Or maybe he chose to be oblivious. It would hurt, thinking that your parents did not want you. That they found it fit to leave you behind, because as civilians they found things getting too hot around the collar, with all the pressures to become a ninja and fight tailed beasts and skilled enemies. That you had cowards and gamblers and pleasure seekers for parents.
Lee knew.
He had always known. No one at the Orphanage had seen reason to lie to him. Most orphans were either adopted and made into ninja, or stayed alone and became ninja anyway. Why lie? They were destined for a harsh life either way. So the moment he was old enough to comprehend, they told him that his mother was an alcoholic (no wonder the drunken fist came so naturally to him) and that his father lost money and gained money like a bipolar man switched moods.
Sometimes when he was younger, Lee imagined that reputations like that were enough to tell him they were already dead. He would quickly chastise himself after these wayward thoughts – Optimism is key! – but then again, he had never bothered to look for them either.
His parents were the exact opposite of what Lee was. And he was proud of this. While his parents backed down, ran away, were meek, afraid, he would never back down or run away. He would always stand tall and proud and strong and fight through his fears. In a way, his parents were his motivation, the fire under his rear. Lee never, ever, ever wanted to become his parents.
That was why he never told anyone he knew. Not because it was easier to have people avoid the subject around him, but because they were his private concerns. Family meant little to Lee, but strength meant quite a lot. He would face his problems on his own, not go whining around. Not abandoning his problems on other people to solve, just like what his parents did with him.
Even with his situation, Lee had never wanted a family to take him in. He had parents. They were terrible, yes. But they were his parents. His motivation. He lost his right to that if he found a new family.
Still, family seemed to sneak up on him, in a way.
In that vein, Team Gai was quite possibly the best thing that could ever happen to him. Not that Lee ever thought of their team as a family. No, that would be wrong.
Neji was most certainly not like a brother to him. The same for Tenten as a sister. And he had always, always thought of Gai-sensei as his mentor, his friend, his life compass, his hero, but never as his father. Lee had a father, and Gai-sensei was a zillion times better than that man.
So Team Gai was not a family to Lee, but they were a unit, and they did care for each other – even if Neji was too uptight to admit it, and Tenten too much of a tomboy for emotional stuff. Lee once made the mistake of telling Gai-sensei that he viewed their little team as something tight-knit and wonderful. Both Neji and Tenten could not look at anyone for weeks afterward without looking embarrassed, since Gai-sensei had all but shouted Lee's confession in public.
Despite all this, Lee knew that he had it good. In fact, what he had was better than parents. Much better.
TBC
A/N: Hey guys, this is just something I had lying around, and I thought I'd post it up to get it out of the way. Now it's one less story plaguing my mind, and I can focus better on Thumbtack, and the backstory oneshot for HFoC. It's completed, so don't worry about me not finishing it, but I will stagger the updates a little because I feel Neji and Tenten's chapters need a little revision. And no, there's no plot. Just a threeshot collection, mostly.