Devoted Heart
"When you walk to the edge of all the light you have and take that first step into the darkness of the unknown, you must believe that one of two things will happen. There will be something solid for you to stand upon or you will be taught to fly."
- Patrick Overton
Getting the chakra seals removed was a transcendent experience. There were so many things he could compare it to that wouldn’t quite do it justice. Like a cicada escaping itself via a looser skin, he felt free in ways he hadn’t known he’d been trapped.
That being said, now that his facilities had been returned to him, there was no way of hiding from the reaction of what needed to be said.
“I don’t know if I want to be a shinobi anymore.”
He avoided eye contact, picking at a loose thread on the hospital cot he was perched on. His feet didn’t reach the floor, and he swung them in an anxiety fueled burst of energy.
Avoiding eye contact couldn’t save him anymore. He no longer had to scrutinize expressions to gleam a fraction of people’s inner dialog. Worse, his sense was now hypersensitive from lack of use, leaving him reeling in the sudden brightness of everything. He experienced the wave of Itachi’s reaction like a kaleidoscope that he couldn’t look away from, each fragment dilating into its entire scope.
(Being injured had been its own kind of sanctuary as much as it had been a cage. He had been expected to be imperfect and had been able to fumble about unknowing of unknowable things. If the sun disappeared there would be a myriad of reasons to miss it, but we would be able to stare into the darkness with full knowledge that that was all it would be.)
First came the shock, of course, laced with confusion and hurt that bloomed into a shamed veil of rejection, loss, worry, and remorse. There was a surprising amount of understanding and jealousy, which shouldn’t be so surprising as Itachi, who was the Uchiha Clan’s heir, would never have had the option to quit. To choose a different path not coated in blood and heaped with corpses. He felt Itachi’s chakra settle into a determined shape and resolved himself to a lecture on commitment and duty.
So adamant was he to ignore as much sensory input as possible he didn’t notice Itachi had moved forward until it was too late. He flinched at the contact, physical touch being so much more now with his chakra released. Daiki felt hands grip his shoulders and almost slumped at the grounding nature of the touch.
“Otouto. Please look at me.”
It was Daiki’s turn to be shocked, not only at the form of address but at Itachi’s tone. It was almost a whisper, it was so gentle. Devotion like a thousand cranes ghosted over him. There was a brief moment of silence and eye contact as Itachi visibly gathered himself.
“Whatever your path, you will not be alone. I will do my utmost to safeguard your wishes.”
Daiki swallowed twice before brusquely nodding, dabbing at his wet eyes with his sleeve, dislodging Itachi in the process. He flopped into his brother's lap, hiding a relieved smile in the starched fabric of Itachi’s haori.
“You’re so dramatic.”
-
Somehow, Naruto took the news of his quitting the academy the best and the worst.
He couldn’t seem to understand ever giving up anything, much less becoming strong enough to be recognized by the village. And that was by design, of course. So many years of the bastardization of ambition by the shinobi system couldn’t be washed away overnight.
Conversely, the possibility of being something other than a ninja thrilled the boy, in the way that all forbidden things did.
They sat up into the early hours of the morning, trading back and forth more and more ridiculous and fantastical professions Daiki could fall into: from globe trotting botanist to premiere ramen chef to action-movie heart throb. Daiki found himself basking in Naruto’s candy floss fascination and delight, committing to memory how his expressive eyes sparkled as his face contorted in bizarre fashions as he flitted around, acting out the different roles in the suddenly wide open landscape of Daiki’s future.
Daiki rubbed his cheeks that were sore from smiling and laughed once more as Naruto suddenly flopped onto the ground, a bandit king who coveted a beautiful Ice Princess laid low by Daiki’s vague future strength, which involved many fake explosion noises. Daiki would never understand Naruto’s obsession with princesses.
His friend laid still for such a long time that Daiki would have thought he’d finally fallen asleep if not for the way his chakra had begun to coil in on itself in doubt, hurt, rejection, and uncertainty .
It had taken regaining his chakra sense for him to notice just how much, but Naruto had truly changed since Daiki’s injury. It would be wrong to say he had matured, as he was still very much Naruto , but it would also be remiss to say he had not. Despite being unaware of the role he had unwillingly played in the damage, Naruto had shouldered much of the emotional labor of Daiki’s healing. Caretaking was rigorous work, and the relief of Daiki’s encroaching full return to health was greatly apparent in Naruto, but so was the bereft feeling of another change in their relationship dynamic.
Not that Naruto probably even fully understood why he felt the way he did.
‘Blissfully unknowing of the unknowable’, Daiki thought to himself, as Naruto rolled over to face him, expression as earnest as ever, even in his uncertainty.
“Don’t ya think we should be rescuing the princesses together, though?”
In all the futures they had prophesied, Daiki had been set in some ever changing, far away mysterious land, unfettered and wandering, mysterious and indistinct.
Far away.
‘Naruto-san, could you do me a favor?’
‘What is it, huh? I can do whatever it is ya need me to do, believe it!’
“I can’t imagine doing any of it alone.”
After all, what were friends for?