Chapter Text
It was not a single, self-enclosed moment in which Shokashi fell in love.
Years had passed since he first was introduced to the healer who had saved his brother’s life. When Izuna had near fallen in battle, dragged back on death’s door by their only other surviving brother, shaking with his breaths and sweating and hardly conscious, it had been a scene so familiar that Sho felt his vision tunneling. The sight of them - Izuna sagging, Madara’s wild eyes as he snarled for a healer, blood dripping from a wound hidden behind Izuna’s clothes - it sent Sho reeling even as he stood frozen, the familiar pit of not him threatening to swallow him.
He sat and held Izuna’s hand as Madara fretted around the compound, seething over their lack of medical supplies and how limited their knowledge was of the healing arts. Listened to the labored breaths become worse, tried to soothe the fever as best he could by wiping Izuna’s forehead with a cool, damp cloth, humming some tune that in his worry hazed mind he couldn’t quite place the origin of.
No one from their clan could save him. Their father had died of an infection not a year before, taking the proud Uchiha and tearing him down until he was nothing but a fevered and ill mind, shaking and tossing in his sleep until he couldn’t move any longer.
Sho was not there when the healer came. Left alone with Izuna while Madara was throwing himself at clan duties to keep himself occupied, he found himself unable to breathe, and despite it filling him with guilt Shokashi slipped out of the house and the compound entirely just to have a moment away from the horrors of his world.
In the woods, he could breathe. They were shuddering things, hard to keep control of, hard to stop from being too fast and shallow, but he just managed. Followed an aimless path that lead him further and further from home, away from the noise and the pain and all the reminders that this would always be his life.
A shinobi was meant to be strong. Meant to follow orders and do whatever was necessary to keep their family both safe and successful. Competition, blood, war, hot anger coursing through them - felling their enemies and whoever else money told them to off, stealing, lying, hurting.
It didn’t matter that he wasn’t meant for this, because it was the life he was born into.
His breathing was the one thing he could control, and he fought with it well into the night. Morning found his back pressed against a tree, the branches moving in the breeze around him, birds giving him strange looks as if they couldn’t figure out why a human would take up residence so high in a tree alongside their own.
Sho did not want to go back.
It was cold without his own arms wrapped around himself, keeping his legs close to his chest, but he unwrapped them anyway and slipped off of the branch towards the ground.
Every step felt like a sentence. But the sentence would not be over his own head.
Within an hour at his slow pace, the compound was in sight. The guards stationed nodded in respect as he walked passed them, stiff respect earned more by birthright than by courage on the battlefield or demanded through innate skills of leadership. It was nothing like the looks they gave his brothers, nothing like the way they would all fall in line and die for Madara’s beliefs despite how tired they all were.
Sho was not one to envy another, and even then he didn’t. Not really. He simply felt as small as the world saw him in that moment, walking towards the inner compound, knowing Madara’s mental strength - what kept him going despite the horrid state his father had left the clan in after his death, despite the horrors they all faced when each battle only meant more bodies to burn and more children left without fathers and mothers - knowing his strength could crack. No weapon crafted by the hands of humans could bring his brother to his knees but Sho knew exactly what could.
Madara could not lose another brother, and Sho was in no position to help the clan if he cracked the wrong way.
As luck would have it, Madara would need no such help.
His clan had no name. Shadow masters in a way unlike the Nara, a small clan of warriors that the Uchiha had allied with for their tenacity and their healing arts. It had not been the first time Sho had seen one, nor would it be the last, but he was the first Sho had seen within their compound.
Within his chest his heart tensed at the healer leaving his home, knowing he’d been in to see Izuna. There was no blood on the healer’s hands but his face was stern, his tone sharp as he addressed Madara, who was stomping and sneering up at him while heatedly snipping right back.
Sho hurried over, cutting through the side garden, stepping carefully around the flowers and herbs he’d planted there. It was a good sign that Madara was able to argue so heatedly with someone but the last thing he needed was his brother making enemies with one of their allies, especially considering the man had to be a high ranking healer in order to be the one sent to heal Izuna. These were allies they needed on their side, no matter that their father had looked down on the no-name, smaller clan - they could not afford any more loss while at war, and nor could Sho’s heart take the thought of even a single body more going up in flames to join their ancestors.
“--a single dose to him. Not a single dose!” The man snapped as he turned back to Madara, coming to a halt on the path leading away from their home just as Sho reached them. “Let alone the dozen he’d need. Are you really that daft to believe he could just power through an infection? Was he supposed to swing his sword at it until it went away?”
“And where, pray tell, was I supposed to get the medicine?” Madara bit right back, glaring up at the man as if a challenge. “It’s not like we’re healers, I can’t exactly just make the shit.”
“Oh that was made abundantly clear. Did you even wash your hands before changing his bandages, or were you hoping to exasperate his wounds?” Without waiting for a response, the man’s gaze cut to Sho, none of the frustrated anger leaving his face or tone. “And I suppose you’re going to try to tell me how to do my job as well?”
He was tired. Sho did not know this man, but he could tell that much. The stiff way he held himself, the pinched look on his face, some tint to his tone. Beyond the travel required to get here (no doubt on short notice), the work healing must have taken, and the general fact that just about every shinobi in the land was tired from the war - this man was tired even beyond that, and though Sho could not put his finger on the why he was not going to fault him for his sharp tone.
Instead, desperate to know, he simply asked: “Is my brother going to be okay?”
The man squinted back at Madara as something like pride tinted his next words. “No thanks to your clan’s stellar medical knowledge.”
Sho’s whole body felt instantly lighter. Madara’s snappish snarling at the healer didn’t hardly register as the smallest ray of hope finally lit the world back up, and he couldn’t help but soak it in for a few moments while the other two bickered right next to him.
He was going to be okay. Izuna was going to live. Just this once, no one was going to die.
“Thank you.” The other man paused in his bickering, blinking back at Sho as if he’d forgotten he was there amidst his verbal jarring match with the Uchiha clan head. “Thank you so much for healing him.”
Apparently that was unexpected, if the awkward clearing of his throat was anything to go by. The man scratched at his rather messy curls, looking off somewhere other than the two Uchiha in front of him. The grumbled statement of it simply being his job was barely heard before Sho was turning away from his brother and the healer, heading off as quickly as he could to go see the beloved brother he’d thought he might lose far far too soon.
‘The healer’. As Sho slid his brother’s door open, kneeling on the floor to scoot closer and peer at the precious face of his loved one, he made sure to commit the healer’s face to memory. Job or not, this was a kindness he would never forget, and Sho would be doing everything within his ability to share some of that kindness right back with him.
For now, he sat with his brother, thankful for every single breath Izuna took, and counted the blessings he could finally see with the light peeking back into his world.