Chapter 4. Love
Age 14.
Sakumo is fourteen, and he's never been this popular before. He's a handsome teenager with dark eyes and hair like moonlight, an easy smile and a pleasantly deep voice. The girls think he's fantastic.
But Inuzuka Ran still calls him geek and dork and Michiyo pretends to vomit when someone mistakes him for her boyfriend, so in the end nothing really changes.
xXx
Michiyo and Natsume are chuunins like Sakumo, so when the Second Great Shinobi War breaks out the three of them are deployed. Danzou-sensei hasn't shown himself to them since their promotions, but they occasionally hear his name mentioned by other chunin. Sakumo isn't sure why, but it's always accompanied by a sneer.
Sakumo is injured in the very first week at the frontlines and wakes up bathing in cold sweat two weeks later, only to hear the chunin he was trying to protect was not as lucky as him. He looks at his brand new scars and wonders what the point of them is, if he got them protecting someone who was already dead. Ran, who is there as well, gives him a weary smile and tells him that at least he tried. It's not enough.
Karasu-sensei shows up a few weeks later. His katana is covered in blood and his face is colder than Sakumo has ever seen it before. He beckons Sakumo in the middle of battle and leads him on a long and exhausting charge into enemy lines. Sakumo follows his teacher's example as well as he can, tanto swinging left and right as though he was hacking his way through thick vines. He tries to forget it's people, instead.
At some point he sees a Kumo shinobi channelling chakra through his blade. Two days later, Sakumo has worked out how to do it himself. Now his blade glows white as he enters the fields and opponents are starting to keep away.
xXx
His platoon gets permission to visit a nearby town not long afterwards. There's a festival going on, and all the shinobi make an effort to wear their nicest clothes. Some of them end up going in their spare uniforms, the only outfits not tarnished with blood. Sakumo himself ends up in someone's old (and oversized) nightshirt and his uniform's pants. He looks like an idiot, but he doesn't care.
Michiyo has borrowed a dress and looks much prettier than he remembers her to be. She looks for Sakumo and just as they've found each other, a teenage couple comes by snogging each other senseless.
There's an awkward moment and an even more awkward kiss behind the dango stall, after which Sakumo and Michiyo both decide to never try again because wow, who'd have thought it'd be that slimy?
Sakumo smiles as she searches for their blond teammate, and makes his way up onto a roof. He watches the festival goers and marvels at their careless joy when a war is going on only a few miles from here. He touches a hand to his lips and decides not to fall in love.
A few weeks later he watches one of the older jounin's break apart when she's told her husband has been killed, and thinks he's made a good decision.
Ran shakes her head when he explains it to her, and says that you can't choose who you love. Sakumo disagrees; he loves Michiyo and Natsume and Ran and Danzou-sensei because he wants to, not because they overwhelmed him with their virtues. He gives Ran a sceptical look and she just sighs.
Karasu-sensei gives him a weary look and tells him it's the stupidest thing he's ever heard. Sakumo doesn't love Karasu-sensei.
xXx
Age 15
He's fifteen years old and Ran's blood is all over him. She's nineteen and called the most talented Inuzuka of her generation, but her dog companion lies slain at her feet and there's a katana through her chest. Sakumo chokes on a sob and asks her not to go.
His sister frowns a little and shakes her head, and tells him not to be so stupid about love.
Behind him, Danzo sighs and tells him to 'come along already, she's done for anyway,' and it's the first moment he suspects he might not love Danzo-sensei, after all.
Karasu appears as he always does when Sakumo needs him, and together they sit and watch as the light leaves Ran's eyes. Karasu places a heavy hand on his shoulders as he grieves, and awkwardly tells him that it'll be alright. But it won't be, because Sakumo's sister has just died and now they have to dispose her body because they're in enemy territory.
And yet.. He thinks perhaps Ran was right about love when Karasu-sensei awkwardly proposes to stay behind and bury her for him. He shakes his head, because as much as he doesn't want to love Ran right now to make the pain go away, he can't. He loves her even when they activate the katon jutsu that destroys her body.
xXx
Fifteen years ago
"You know," He says on the third day of their acquaintance. "I probably couldn't have killed you anyway,"
She jumps up, startled. She thought she'd lost him in the ice canyons.
He smiles that lop-sided smile of his and taps his nose. "My nose is better than any dog's," he says.
Her eyes widen. Konoha's tracking squads are well known- and deservedly feared. "Even out in the snow?" She asks.
"Especially in the snow. You're the only other human around for miles and miles," He sighs and sits next to her. "You're not getting rid of me so easily."
She sighs, too.