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Ren holds his hands together tightly, trying his best not to shake. Akane watches over the two distantly.
———
“Don’t you ever wish you were capable of more? Capable of climbing the ranks, making a name, and going down in history?” Akane asks.
“Right now, I make enough money to sustain my sister and I, so why should I strive for more when I need not to?” Ren replies, a hand running through his dark blue hair.
“Just because your life is going well right now, doesn’t mean it’s at the best it could be.”
“You’re being hypocritical.” He scoffs.
“But I’m right, aren’t I?” And it’s a whisper like a promise never told—her voice, that is. Ren is left to scramble for words, so instead he opts to stay silent as he mulls over it.
Does he truly wish to put more effort and live lavishly? To take the risk of death, to leave his sister behind, only to provide a better life?
“You might be,” he says, “but I’m fine like this. I’m fine with standing in the back, looking through rose colored lenses, and living without the fear of leaving my sister behind.”
“But the benefits-!”
“—Not everyone is like you, Akane. Not everyone wishes to go out there to risk their life on the battlefield.” And as Ren explains, he lets out a shuddering breath.
“Not everyone has nothing to lose.”
———
“Akane, I’ve been meaning to ask, but, what’s your last name?” Ren asks, watching her braid her brown hair across her shoulder.
Akane grins mischievously at him. “Don’t you know, my dear Ren-kun? I’m a Hagiwara, just like you~” she sings, and Ren flushes at the implication.
“That’s-!” It’s a struggle for words. “Stop horsing around, Akane. It’s really not funny,” he whines.
“Okay fine.” Akane ties the braid with a, well, tie, and looks at the boy. “My full name is Nohara Akane, and as you might or might not know, I have a cousin who is a shinobi.”
“Wow.” Ren claps slowly, tone ever so dry and sarcastic. “Fantastic.”
Akane pouts, lightly hitting him on the shoulder.
“It is!”
“Yeah yeah whatever.”
“So, are we gonna talk about how you totally just, oh, i don’t know, forgot my family name?”
———
The girl had approached them, brown haired, brown eyed.
———
“I’m going to the frontlines.”
Ren’s cup clatters against the floor, its content spilling onto the wood. His shoulders are stiff and his eye bags have never looked so dark before.
“You’re what?”
“Frontlines. Me. Dispatched. Tomorrow.”
“I never agreed to this!” he exclaims.
Akane’s eyes narrow. “You’re not my mother, Ren. I can make my own decisions.”
“You’re going to die!”
“You think I’m that weak?”
Ren stands up suddenly from the chair he was sitting on, letting it fall from beneath him. “Yes! Yes, I do! We aren’t in the Genin Corps for nothing, Akane! We are weak!”
Akane pushes off the hands that settled themselves on her shoulders.
“Only you, Ren. I trained hard while you were out doing those crappy missions around the village because we are almost at war. I can’t stand by like this!” Akane is screaming by the end of her words, chest warm and face flushed.
“Why can’t you?! It’s not your job to go out there—to go out there and kill for the village! You were put here because it was your job to help the people in the village!”
Akane flinches and moves away from his furious face. A flash of hurt and surprise passes along Ren’s face, so brief she would not have seen it had she blinked twice that instant. Ren shrinks back, almost tripping over the chair still on the ground from having been toppled over.
“I just...” Ren puts his face in his hands pitifully, “I don’t want to lose you in a war not yours to fight.”
Fear licks at Akane’s heart, and for a moment her spirit wavers, but her resolve stands firm. “Ren, I get it, really. I don’t want to die either.” Akane bites her lip. “But I just wish you would put more faith in me, you know?”
And it’s like Ren’s world crumbles apart when he hears these words as they ring in his ears.
“Im your dad, kiddo. Put some faith in me, and we’ll be safe in no time.” He’d ruffled his dark hair with his dirt-stained hand, but Ren hadn’t minded—not when they had been in danger among mercenaries on the road back to Konoha.
“If I do,” Ren starts before Akane leaves, gaining her attention if even for the briefest moment, “you’d just die like he did.”
If the corps in the dorms they shared heard a certain dark haired boy’s sobs at night, well, then, it wasn’t their story to tell.
————
She’d mumbled her condolences, and for a moment he wondered if she were a stranger praying out of pity.
————
And like that, weeks fly by with Akane’s sporadic visits and fleeting face among the crowd. She came and went, often just to mumble a hello and have an awkward chat with him before leaving.
But most of all, she looked happy. Free. Alive. If ever their topic of conversation involved the shinobi way and co., her eyes would light up and they’d have talks long enough to last them a year.
A part of Ren felt relieved—relieved that she was doing something she loved and enjoyed, even at the expense of her own life. Despite their on-and-off friendship, Ren still found it in his heart to care about her, for she was his eternal buddy, wasn’t she? (Wasn’t she?)
And then one day, a whole month since Akane had last visited, Ren grew worried—agitated. He was restless, irritable, and bundle of nerves and then some. The smallest noise of footsteps kept him on his toes (and wasn’t that unnecessary, after all, shinobi were silent as the dark).
And then another day. Another day that started out with his usual worrying and apple for breakfast. Another day that was supposed to just be another day, was the day she came back.
———
“‘Not all of us have something to lose,’ you apparently said.”
———
Ren left his apple on the counter, foregoing his thoughts and plans for the day to meet Akane, who’d just come back, grime-stained and groggy, but alive all the same.
“You’re back-!”
“I’m revolting and dirty, don’t try to hug me you buffoon!” Akane grunted, but a soft smile had graced her face as Ren ignored her cries and hugged her either way.
“I thought—I thought you died.” Rem sniffed and let go of her, hand coming up to rub at his nose.
Akane gave a weak grin. “Unfortunately for you, I’m still alive!” Ren matched her grin, albeit with more vigor. “Now, really, I must take a shower. I stink of ash and metal and blood.”
Ren did not argue.
———
“I should have know. Should have stepped in before it was too late-!”
The brown haired girl patted him softly on his back, eyes holding a gleam to them.
———
“Hey, Akane,” Ren said, legs stretched across the springy sofa of the room. Akane perks up, looking from the scroll she had been reading to listen. “Have you heard?”
“Heard about what?” she wondered.
“The White Fang, man. Heard he killed himself and his son found him in a puddle of his own blood,” Ren said, feeling empathic towards his case, having lost his parents early on, too.
Akane’s blood ran cold, and a shiver ran across her spine. “Really? Quite a pity. He was a great man,” she mumbled, fingers curling around the scroll in her hands and heart racing.
“Right? Wonder what his son’s gonna do now that he’s the only Hatake. Not to mentioned he’s still a child, even as a soldier,” Ren breathed out, “children should be allowed to mourn and cry for their loved ones’ deaths.”
“Y-yeah, totally. Hatake must be quite shocked now, no?” Akane did not feel okay. Her stomach was churning and felt weird.
“Yeah,” he paused, “probably.”
He did not notice the look on his friend’s face.
———
“But you couldn’t, because what would you have done? Gone instead?”
Ren hung his head low and murmured quietly, but not quiet enough.
“Yeah, maybe.”
————
After the surprise that was the White Fang’s death, murmurs of his baseless sacrifice of a mission for teammates seemed much louder than before.
Ren walked along the streets of the market, lending an ear to the gossip of The Mission that ran across from lip to lip.
“Hey, hey. I heard White Fang’s kid hates his father now.” Ren flinched and wondered why the child would ever do so, but didn’t delve much into the thought because people would be people.
“Yeah? Well I heard one of the teammates killed themselves because of the guilt!” Followed by exaggerated gasps and a few “Omg no way” ‘s.
“Pshh, well I heard that that Hatake kid gets thrown shit at for what his father did, and, honestly, can you believe those bastards?”
Ren shuddered, because truly people can be cruel. He pitied the guy who’d killed himself among the chaos. Really, how could one live with the guilt of causing the orphaning of a child.
But Ren, for now, chose not to reside in these whispers, for for all he knew they could merely be and stay as just that, rumors.
He returned to the dorms, planting a quick kiss on his sister’s sleeping head and dropping the grocery bags on the counter. He saw a note on the back of the door just as he closed it, but hadn’t been able to check it due to his busy hands. So Ren went up to the door and pulled off the taped note, reading its contents.
It seemed Akane had gone on another mission right after recovering from the ankle sprain she sported from the last. Quite the quick recovery time, Ren mused. He threw the paper in the bin, missing the crossed out words on the back.
———
“You must be kidding.” Her voice is flat and unbelieving.
“I wish I were.”
———
It comes two weeks later after he decided to finally pay his overdue respect to Hatake Sakumo.
He holds a small bundle of lilies, and leaves his sister in the hands of his dorm-mates, waving them s quick goodbye.
He took his time walking to the graveyard, for he had no one waiting there or back. And as soon as he’d arrived, a cruel thought crept to his mind as he stared at the lone headstone. Did anyone really love the man, if even his son turned his back on him? Ren felt pity.
His eye flitted to the stones next to Hatake’s, briefly going over what could be his wife’s and family’s, when his gaze landing on a stone separate from the rest. His eyes couldn’t quite see the name, so Ren shuffled over closer.
Strange how his own beating heart seemed to thunder in his ears at that moment.
“Are you Ren?”
Ren’s soul almost jumps out of his skin at the voice. He turns around and finds a girl with brown hair and brown eyes, and find she looks scarily similar to- to-
“Akane..?” he croaks out, unsure.
The girl shakes her head. “No, Nohara Rin.
“I’m her cousin.”
———
“I wish I were brave enough. I wish I were able to convince her to stay-! Maybe then, maybe then—
“Maybe then she wouldn’t have died. Maybe then, she wouldn’t have taken my words to heart.
“Akane had me. She had me to lose. She had her life to lose. She shouldn’t have died for that goddamned Hatake-!”
“Hatake-san was an honorable man, Ren-kun!” Rin interrupted. “He failed to protect her and the team!”
“And yet here she is. Dead. Quite ironic, isn’t it? He died from the guilt and pressure, and she died from the guilt of his death.” Ren chuckled dryly. Rin is silent.
“So what are you gonna do, huh? Die like the rest?” Rin asked, fists shaking.
“No.” He smiles a hollow smile; Rin unknowingly shivers. “I have someone to live for, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to give up my only hope to live for a dear friend’s suicide.”
Akane’s spirit grins and dissipates in the wind.
———