This is how it begins;
Yoshito Shimura has been at odds with his father his entire life, ever since his unfortunate birth, which Danzo Shimura is not present for but Yoshito's poor mother spends ten blood-soaked hours laboring for in a nameless little shack without a proper roof, which is located on an isolated mountain-ridge near the border to Kumo.
When Danzo finally shows up, sixteen hours after little Yoshito gasped his first breathe, opened his mouth and screamed, the babe has already been cleaned, fed, wrapped securely in the only moderately clean shirt there is and then gently lulled into a dreamless sleep next his exhausted mother.
The first sign of his father presence is the sudden quieting of birdsong and the creeping chill that claws up Yoshito's mother's spine. She shivers against the pillows, hands scrambling for the abandoned clothing of the floor, but slumps back when her torn body refuses her. Outside, the sun is setting, but the remaining light has not yet faded, illuminating the room in purples and pinks. Still, the world feels suddenly darker, like an angry shadow has stretched out over it, hoovering above their heads, thickening the air with its dark intent.
"Anata..." Yoshito's mother rasps in voice broken by ten hours of screams, opening her eyes to stare at the dark shape that hoovers in the doorway, smelling of fresh violent death and funeral smoke.
The shape does not respond, but the feeling of coldness in the room intensifies.
"His name... His name... is Katsu," she breathes out, and in that one name, there is a thousand meanings unheard and unsaid. She smiles, tiredly, brilliantly, almost deliriously as her eyes shine with a tenderness that speaks only of love and in that moment, caked in sweat and dirt and streaks of half-coagulated blood, she is truly, utterly beautiful.
Jonin Commander Danzo Shimura takes one step into the room and then lunges.
-*-
Injured and exhausted, Yoshito's mother never really stood a chance.
-*-
Later, far later, when Yoshito grows up rich and loyal and angry with the entire world, he will horde the scraps of his mother that he can scavenge. An overheard conversation between his father's associates, a half-erased reference to 'Danzo's woman' in a stolen mission report, a burnt picture that had slipped under the floor-boards and never been found.
This is my mother, he will think, fourteen years old and scrawny and hands bleeding from prying the entire living room floor up and almost getting caught in the act. He stares hungrily at the photograph, his fingers leaving smudges that he will later frantically try to wash away, but for now is uncaring about, because for the first time in fourteen years, he can see the woman who gave birth to him.
Her face is half-burnt away, but if he puts his finger over the burn, he can almost convince himself it's not there.
"Mom," he whispers into the quiet of the ventilation shaft, curling a trembling hand around his squirming stomach as he cradles his secret close to himself. "Mom."
She has his eyes.
-*-
Yoshito Shimura has been at odds with his father his entire life, and this is how it begins;
In a nameless little shack on an isolated mountain ridge at the border of Kumo, there sleeps a baby less than a day old, peacefully next to his mother who loves him very, very, much. Be kind and strong, my little victory, she whispers against his dune-soft forehead, stroking his tiny little fingers intently as if he holds the very mysteries of the universe inside them.
I shall love you, always, she whispers and strokes, strokes, strokes soft little kanji into his wrinkly little skin, as if hoping to etch the words so deep into him that he will carry them with him always.
(He won't, memories from such early days are hard to recall, and four, fifteen, twenty-two year old Yoshito won't remember the mother who held him and loved him and stroked her love into his wrinkly, newborn flesh. All he has is his dreams, and a father who won't even look him in the eye other than when he's done something wrong.
It won't be enough.)
(Maybe, a part of her knows that)
Then a shadow arrives, oozing of danger and blood and intent to kill, smelling of pyres and pain given and received, and Danzo Shimura slits his lover's throat with a blood-soaked blade so deep that her skin splits open and a waterfall of blood appears, and then he watches as the arterial spray paints his newborn son in his own mother's blood and she dies, slowly, choking on words she can no longer speak.
"Shut up," he says, dispassionately, as his tiny infant son startles awake with wide, unseeing eyes, gasping desperately like a fish for water, whimpering at this horrible feeling that hangs in the air.
Choking, Yoshito's mother topples over the bed and onto the floor where she lays still and naked, infusing the floor with the last remnants of her life.
-*-
Years later, after order and duty and war, Border Patrol Captain Yoshito Shimura will fold himself against his lover and mortal enemy, soft and pliant and all cried out, and stare emptily into the far distance beyond. "He killed her," he'll say, softly, tenderly, without any more fight left in him.
"My father... he killed my mother," he'll say, looking up at his would-be enemy with warm brown eyes, his mother's eyes, shining with golden hazelnut flecks and ancient grief.
"I don't even know her name."
-*-
In an abandoned shack on the border of Kumo, a man - no, a soldier, always a soldier, always a soldier first and foremost - watches the life drain out of his once-lover without flinching a single time. The world is silent, the songbirds having long fled, and the only sound audible is the drip of blood from steel and the sniffles of a newly born babe.
Outside the window, the sun sets, taking the last light with it.
The soldier watches, the woman dies, and in the aftermath, he turns away it and walks slowly to the ruined bed where his son lies, wrapped in sheets that are soaked in red. He looks down at it, all red and scrunched up and ugly, helpless and pathetic in the bitter cold of the night.
"Your name is Yoshito Shimura. You are my son." he informs his son in cold, clipped tones, and his words are not tender and loving but a command.
His name is Katsu, whispers a woman's voice into the cold, blood-soaked space between them, echoing unheard between the walls that have no proper roof.
In a move that will perfectly sum up all their future interactions in one way or another, the newly named Yoshito Shimura opens his tiny little mouth and angrily screams.