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Maybe, as a medic nin, you should’ve known better.
It’s impossible to die from blood loss. As long as your chakra remains, no amount of blood loss can kill you. The problems that arise from blood loss so severe might make you wish you were dead, but you don’t die.
No matter how much you wish you would.
Again, you try, and again, you fail. And again, the consequences are worse than death itself. Again, again.
At nineteen, you are a part of the only medical ANBU team. The tattoo feels wrong on your shoulder. They were ANBU. It feels wrong to be here without them.
Another ANBU member is introduced the same day as you. They call him Cat—but you know exactly who he is. You wish you didn’t. It’s his nephew. So cheerful and kind and . . . you hate him.
(But you always heal him first. Always.)
Another year goes by, and in comes Weasel. A cousin of his, and Cat’s cousin as well. He’s quiet.
Every time you go on a mission with him or his team, you wonder. How could he be ANBU? He hesitates when he kills, he has panic attacks late at night. One day, he vomits immediately after he’s made to kill a young child.
(You wonder if you would be the same way if you weren’t a medic nin. You are pacifistic, after all. But, maybe . . . Weasel is too.)
Your heart aches for him, and you make a point to befriend and train him in less violent methods of murder.
(Because that’s what it is. Murder. No matter how the government likes to glorify it, you are no better than a civilian serial killer. This is just a bit more legal.)
He gets better after that.
Then he leaves a mission early. “Because something doesn’t feel right,” he said. You aren’t sure how you feel about that. You finish the mission for him, feeling queasy as you head back home.
When you get back, ANBU holds a short and simple funeral for Cat. You see an ANBU squad leader spit on his mask.
He killed himself. It is illegal, they say. A dishonor. The Uchiha clan will hurt from his act. And yeah, they revealed his identity.
They usually don’t, but in the case of suicide, they always do.
(You feel sick as you watch Weasel cast a particularly painful genjutsu on Shisui’s squad leader but you smile. He deserves the pain.)
(Suicide is not the act of a coward, you think. And the state of his body makes you wonder if it was actually his choice.)
Two weeks go by, you watch Weasel turn thirteen and you watch him have anxiety attacks on every mission for a month.
And you watch the aftermath of the Uchiha Downfall.
You are quickly removed from your team, assigned a few permanent (they didn’t say that, but you think it might as well be) roles in-village. For four years, you watch over Uchiha Sasuke and Uzumaki Naruto. For four years, you train and attempt to rehabilitate . . . Tenzō.
(You don’t like his name. Whoever let this kid be named after a rank . . . He deserves a real name. Tenzō disagrees, but you’re not about to listen to a kid who has been in ROOT for nearly his entire life.)
A year into this, you learn, by accident, that the reason you were removed from your ANBU squad is that some doctor claimed to have diagnosed you with psychosis. You have none of the symptoms, and you’ve never met this doctor in your life, but you leave it alone. At least you don’t have to—well, you won’t worry about it.
Another year goes by, and you are on the jōnin-sensei roster. You don’t remember being a jōnin, but you do your job anyway.
The council tells you to fail them, and you don’t want to. You do, anyway, when they fail your simple test.
You have to test another group the next year, and the next and then—
Then you get Sasuke and Naruto. And—a girl named Sakura.
She reminds you of yourself and you cry yourself to sleep the night you pass them.
You promise yourself you will protect them even if it ends your life.
(That’s what you want anyway, isn’t it?)