A Boy in a Helmet
Kabuto never had anything to his name for as long as he could remember. Ironic, really, because he didn’t even have a name. That, too, had been given to him. Just like his last name. Just like the glasses on his face, because without them, he couldn’t even read the clock. He supposed he should be grateful for that.
Later in life, even his identity was handed to him. He hadn’t chosen it, hadn’t shaped it. It was simply placed upon him like everything else before. And he was grateful for that, too. Not because he particularly liked being a spy, but because it was the only sure thing he had. A purpose, even if it wasn’t truly his own. When everything else about him felt uncertain, when he looked too long at himself and found nothing staring back, it at least was something. It at least gave him shape.
Kabuto did have a hunch that he liked being taken care of. The thought had lingered somewhere in the back of his mind, unexamined, for years. But the only real experience he had with it was Nonō, and that had been so long ago. That memory of a life that had since turned cold felt faded, foreign. He couldn’t be sure if it was the care he’d liked or simply the nostalgic familiarity of it.
Until he met you.
You’d patched him up after his retreat from the Chūnin Exams, working as a medic for the participants. For you it should have been routine. It should have been impersonal, just another injury, just another ninja in need of tending. And yet, it wasn’t. You weren’t sure when, exactly, the shift of your heart happened. Whether it was the way his silver hair fell messily over his forehead, or his smart, dark gaze that made it impossible to look at him for too long. But you knew the moment your fingers brushed his skin, lingering a fraction too long, that something about him unsettled you.
You were always professional. Always. But for some reason, the thought of him kept creeping in where it didn’t belong. The realization burned in your cheeks, an unwelcome heat you tried desperately to hide by focusing on the wound, on the practised motions of your hands, on anything but him.
But Kabuto noticed.
He wasn’t used to being looked at like that. He wasn’t the type to make women flustered, to leave them struggling for composure. And yet, you were. And so, he watched you closely, putting the pieces together with the same methodical precision he applied to everything else. You liked him.
And then he noticed something else. Your touch was softer than it should have been. Not just the practiced gentleness of a medic, but something… more.
And he liked it.
He liked the way your fingers lingered, how your movements betrayed an unconscious tenderness you hadn’t shown the others. He liked the warmth of it, the way it reminded him however briefly of something long forgotten. Something that once had belonged to him.
In retrospect, he should have asked you out. He wanted to. But back then, he told himself that pursuing you would put you in danger because Orochimaru would see you as a weakness, a liability. But in truth, it was never about Orochimaru. It was about him. Kabuto still hadn’t learned how to claim something for himself without it first being offered. So instead, he let the moment slip through his fingers, watching it fade into memory.
And then, for years, he chased it. Not you, exactly, but the feeling. That warmth, the unfamiliar sense of being seen, of being touched with something other than indifference or clinical detachment. He searched for it in all the wrong places, trying to reconstruct something he hadn’t even realized he was missing until it was already gone.
Kabuto did find satisfaction in Orochimaru’s praise. Perhaps even pleasure, in a way. But it was never quite the same. No matter how many times he earned his master’s approval, no matter how indispensable he became, it never once gave him what he’d felt after the Chūnin Exams with you.
And you know what? You actually liked him. A lot.
You actually had noticed him before that day. Last year, the year before, maybe even longer. It was far from his first time in the exams. And he wasn’t someone easy to overlook, though many did. His careful way of moving, the way his eyes always seemed to be taking in more than he let on. Something about him had drawn you in from the very start. And if he had asked you out? You would have said yes. Gladly.
But he didn’t. And when you realized he likely never would, you decided to stop waiting.
Kabuto would never find out that you had returned his affections, because before you ever had the chance to show him, he ran.
He left, abandoning the version of himself you had once known, the one who had hesitated, who had wanted but never taken. And when he did, he committed himself to reinvention. He altered himself, modified his very DNA to reflect everything he found admirable in others. Stronger. Smarter. More powerful. He took Orochimaru’s serpentine resilience, the strengths of countless shinobi, and, quite literally wove them into his being, crafting a version of himself that, in his mind, would finally be worthy of you.
And yet, when the transformation was complete, he still felt empty.
Why?
Because everything he had become was a reflection of someone else. A patchwork of borrowed greatness, a body that no longer felt like his own. He had stripped himself down to nothing, built himself up again from stolen pieces, and in the end, the thing he had created was just that. A construct.
But at least now, he had the confidence to approach you. And that ought to bring him clarity. Identity. A purpose beyond the one he had been assigned.
From your perspective, it had been years. Eventually, any hopes you once had of gaining the affections of the silver-haired shinobi you had treated during the Chūnin Exams had long faded. Because what else was there to do but move on? You could only dwell on the past for so long before it became just that – the past.
So when a scaled, eerie, barely human with a snake hanging from its abdomen approached you, your first reaction wasn’t recognition. It was unease. Everything about your instincts screamed that the man was off. But you had treated dangerous men before, so you mustered a polite “Sorry, do I know you?”
Kabuto didn’t introduce himself right away. Instead, he chose a cryptic, odd thing to say to someone you’d supposedly never met.
“Your hands still look the same.”
You frowned, narrowing your eyes, your muscles tensing as a defensiveness crept into your posture. “Excuse me?”
He tilted his head slightly, studying your reaction. Testing you. And then, it hit him: You didn’t remember him.
Of course, you wouldn’t.
To you, it had been a job. Just another wounded shinobi in a long line of them. A fleeting interaction, something insignificant in the grand scheme of your life. But to him? It had been something else entirely. A moment he had clung to for years, a memory that had shaped the very foundation of his transformation.
It stung. Though he wouldn’t admit it outright.
“Do I know you?” you repeated.
A pause. A long pause.
He considered his response carefully. He had never been naive enough to expect immediate recognition, but some foolish part of him had still hoped for some drop of the admiration you once evidently held, some trace of the warmth you had once shown him. Especially now that he was perfect. But he was met with nothing but unease.
Finally, he settled on an answer. His voice was even, almost indifferent. “You did once.”
And then, before you could say anything else, before you could press him for answers, he was gone. Leaving you standing there confused with a heart pounding so hard you heard it in your ears.
Returning to his hideout, Kabuto wasn’t sure how to cope with the disappointment gnawing at him. He had spent years chasing something. An ideal. A feeling. But why would you hand him that. Because when he truly thought about it, when he forced himself to strip away the grand narrative he had woven in his mind, what had really happened between you? A brief interaction. A routine procedure. A treating of a wounded shinobi before moving on. You had been kind, yes, but that was simply your job. It had never been more than that.
It was Kabuto who had made it more.
Somewhere in the depths of his fragmented mind, he had built you into something far greater than you were ever meant to be. You weren’t a lover, not a guiding force in his life, not some destined figure who had left an indelible mark on his soul. You were a woman he had met once. A woman who had patched him up and moved on, while he had clung to the moment as if it had defined his entire existence. How pathetic. How utterly delusional.
The thought twisted in his gut, leaving behind an emptiness far worse than rejection. It wasn’t just that you hadn’t remembered him. It was that there had never been anything to remember. Utterly embarrassed, he decided that if strength could be taken, refined, assimilated, then so could identity.
He experimented relentlessly, pushing past the limits even Orochimaru had feared to breach. Cells taken from the greatest shinobi of the past merged into his own. When he looked in the mirror, he no longer recognized the reflection staring back. And that was a good thing. That was the point.
The past was dead. Again.
Kabuto had erased the boy who had once flinched at kindness, who had waited to be chosen, who had sought meaning in the hands of another. That version of himself was weak. A ghost. Now, he had remade himself into something unstoppable.
And when the war came, when the world erupted into chaos, Kabuto stepped forward. Not in the shadows. Not as a spy or a servant.
As a force to be reckoned with. A god.
His voice carried across battlefields, summoning the dead to rise again. Warriors long thought invincible obeyed his command. Former Kages, Akatsuki, shinobi whose names had once shaped nations. The world trembled beneath the weight of his power.
They feared him now.
He had done what even Orochimaru could not. He had surpassed him, transcended him. He had become something beyond human.
No longer a pawn. No longer a servant. A god.
No longer the boy who once stared at a woman’s gentle hands and mistook them for salvation.
But then came Itachi Uchiha.
Itachi didn’t challenge Kabuto in the way he had expected. He didn’t seek to overpower him through brute strength or technique. Instead, he dismantled him in the one way Kabuto had never prepared for. He forced him to confront himself.
Trapped in Izanami, Kabuto was caught in an endless cycle, forced to relive his choices over and over again. And at first, he resisted. Of course he did. He had spent his entire life becoming someone by adopting different roles, disguises, and identities, shedding one skin after another in his desperate pursuit of meaning.
He wasn’t lost. He had found himself.
Hadn’t he?
Yet, the longer he was trapped, the harder it became to hold onto that belief.
Because the truth was undeniable.
The perfection he had sought, the power he had amassed, the godlike form he had built. It wasn’t truly his. It was a patchwork, a stolen mosaic of others, a hollow reconstruction of strength that had never belonged to him.
And then he saw the moments he had tried to erase.
The orphanage. The gentle hand of Nonō on his shoulder. The warmth of being cared for, of being wanted before the world twisted him into something else. And then, finally you.
But this time, it was different.
This time, he saw it as it truly was.
You weren’t bathed in some mythical glow. You weren’t a symbol of anything. You weren’t special.
You were just a girl.
And yet, he had spent years imagining that one moment meant something profound, something life-altering. That if he could just make himself worthy enough, you would see him as he saw you.
But you didn’t owe him anything.
Liking you had been his subconscious decision, not yours.
And that was the final, devastating truth he had been running from all along.
He had built so much of himself around the idea that you would give him meaning, that your recognition would validate his existence. But that was never your burden to carry. He had thought that if he became something great, something worthy, you would see him again, and maybe this time, things would be different.
But it had never been about you.
It had always been about him.
And so, in that endless loop, Kabuto did something he had never done before. He stopped resisting.
For the first time in his life, he let go of the masks, the borrowed power, the roles he had played. He let go of the need to be more, the desperate clawing for the self he had spent years trying to construct.
And what remained, when everything else was stripped away, was just Kabuto Yakushi.
Not a god.
Not Orochimaru’s successor.
Not a warlord.
And in that moment of acceptance, the cycle finally broke.
And what was left was just a boy in a helmet.