"Your Hair"
by Nezuko, Prince of Rats
This is a work of derivative fiction based on "Naruto" by Kishimoto Masashi. The characters and the world in which they live are the property of Kishimoto-sensei.
Most people don't want grey hair. They dread the appearance of the first wintery filaments that mark them as old, obsolete, nearing death. Even if the actual end is three-quarters of their lifetime still away, that unimpeachable symbol of age is a detested arrival. Especially for people with black hair. For them, the first white traitors are the most visible, the most horrifying. Dark-haired people are the first to reach for dye, the first to pluck the offending strands, the first to fear their impending mortality while they are still laughably young.
Not so for shinobi. They live with the inevitability of death staring them in the face every day. They need no subtle signs to remind them of what may come - by they time most are twenty, they have seen the blood of enemies and comrades, combatants and innocents, flowing in the gutters of their nightmares, spilled by their own hands. They are inured to it. So grey hair means nothing to them. They have much more important things to worry about than the illusion of mortality. Not a lot of hair dye is sold in the Hidden Villages.
So it is a little surprising, actually, to find one one of their rank staring deeply into the mirror, calloused fingers carefully brushing back deeply hued hair at the roots, to expose a spray of pallid aliens. The silver strands stand out like sunlit razor wire. Beautiful. Deadly.
What is even more surprising, perhaps, is that this man is weeping. Silently, steadily, he stares at the shocking white hairs amongst his raven tresses, while one by one salt tears well up in red rimmed eyes and spill down the rounded curves of his face, pausing to rest in the sharp corners of the scar that bisects his nose and dents his cheeks, before dropping onto the counter below him.
He disentangles his shaking fingers from the long, glistening locks, and the three or four shorter silver strands tumble away from their dark companions, twirl gently to the floor. Aliens indeed. For they are not his hairs. Not really. Unless you count them as a gift, for the man whose head grew them most assuredly left them on this man's pillow. And that is why he weeps.
Not that he could tell you even that. The tears are a shock to him, as they are a shock to his lover, who finds him, still staring blankly at his reflection, and at the one or two white hairs still resting in his black ones.
"Ruka?" the silver-haired man asks, "Are you OK? What's wrong?"
"Your... hair..." is all the dark-haired ninja manages in reply, before his breath catches in a gut wrenching sob and he buries his face in his hands.
Kakashi doesn't understand, but he knows what to do. He takes his shuddering love into his arms and holds him like a child. Rubs his back. Murmurs softly into his ear.
"My hair?"
"It's so... innocent..." Iruka can't go on, can't explain himself, but he lets himself be held, crying awkwardly, harshly. The tears of a man who seldom cries like this.
Kakashi doesn't understand, and yet he does. He doesn't know exactly what it is that Iruka saw in those sparkling strands of protein and keratin, but he knows the heartbreaking emptiness that fuels the chuunin's despair. These are the tears all shinobi weep, at one time or another. The tears of lost innocence. The tears of too much Death.
They stand motionless, heads bowed together, and Kakashi's silver hair falls into his lover's black, Iruka's black into his lover's silver. He, too, has cried like this.
ooo
Written for Naruto-500 Challenge #7 - Innocence
Reviews very much appreciated.
