Why We Fight: Shino
A series of shorts on why our ninjas... are ninjas. Spoilers some of them up to recent manga. I'll put an asterix () in the chapter title when there is one so you can pick and choose. Multi-part fic. Many shorts.
A/N: has decided to eat my spaces and punctuation... I will come back and fix it... never fear!
Shino fights because he was made for it. When he was three weeks old humanity was sacrificed for it. He never had a choice about accepting the kikkai but he wonders now what life would be like if he had been able to say no. He doesn't resent the bugs, but he finds himself wondering more and more what he would have been like without them. Especially now that he spends so much time with three people and a dog who persist in showing him that life is so much more than the simple linear route he'd previously envisioned it to be.
You are born, you live, you feed your kikkai, your kikkai help you, you fight, you die. A reality simple and elegant and uncomplicated - ideas Shino finds comforting, though he hesitates to use the word. But now, he sees something more. He sees divergence, he sees the future imperfect, and he sees hopes and dreams and other unfamiliar things in his teammates as Kurenai-sensei guides them through their fledgling steps as ninjas of Konoha. And now he wonders about his own inflexibility.
Hinata can change. Kiba can change. He cannot change. His fate was sealed the moment he was born an Aburame.
After three months in their company, fighting and training and learning with them, Shino makes a decision that does not befit the Aburame heir and makes the kikkai in his body buzz angrily at him for days. His own children will not be given to the kikkai. He has learned that much about choice and change and freedom from Kurenai-sensei, Hinata and Kiba and Akamaru. And he watches them always to see what else he might learn from them.
Certainly they are more educational than any Academy classes.
But then, a few days later when Hinata comes to training crying over her father's harsh words, he realizes that depriving his children of their inheritance and their bond to the kikkai... that's just the same as forcing the bugs on them. It's making a choice they should be allowed to make for themselves. Its catch 22.
Shino does not confuse easily, but - wonders never cease - it has happened. So he just reminds himself of why he fights and everything becomes linear again, though perhaps the line he can envision is a little shorter than it once was.
Shino fights because he has bugs to feed and a sensei and two teammates to watch and there's nothing he can do to change it.
He's not all that certain he would if he could anyway.
As always please criticique if you feel like it!
This chapter dedicated to my ant-farm.