Youth and determination
Cousin Kyouya wasn’t quite like anyone else Lee had ever known. Not that he thought that was a bad thing of course. In fact his cousin was practically bursting with youthful energy, as demonstrated by the way he challenged Lee to a most youthful spar every time their families held a gathering. He really didn’t understand why their parents found their manly bonding activities so distressing. Unless it was the property damage. But it wasn’t as though any of it had been that hard to fix. He’d even helped with the repairs so he knew that for a fact. Kyouya was probably Lee’s favourite cousin, even if it was unyouthful to pick favourites amongst family members.
But still, cousin Kyouya was… different, and Lee had worried a little about that. Sometimes people didn’t really understand his cousin and he’d been concerned that Kyouya might have trouble finding youthful friends to share his academy experience with. He was the older cousin after all, it was his job to worry.
As it turned out though, there was absolutely no reason to worry. His cousin had made friends almost immediately. That much was obvious from the bruises and satisfied grin he wore when Lee walked him home from the academy. His cute little cousin had found a youthful friend to spar with. Lee was so proud.
He was even more proud when Cousin Kyouya had decided to introduce him to his friends. That wasn’t how Kyouya had said it of course, because Kyouya didn’t explain things that way. Kyouya had framed it as a three way sparring session with one of his classmates, but Lee had known Kyouya since he was a tiny homicidal toddler, and he knew what Kyouya had meant. And Kyouya’s friends were so adorably youthful. Little Kusakabe kun was so carefully efficient in diverting the attention of teachers and students alike so that they could train uninterrupted, and it was so cute how he followed Kyouya around like a well trained puppy. He did have to explain to Kyouya that he couldn’t take Kusakabe kun home without his parents’ permission. Lee had a faint suspicion Kyouya might try and stash the kid under his bed with his other favourite things if he weren’t warned not to, and he wasn’t entirely sure little Tetsuya would argue with him. That could have got messy fairly quickly, so best to nip the idea in the bud.
Honestly Lee was a little surprised at the friends Kyouya had chosen. Kusakabe at least made some sense, with his unwavering devotion and long list of useful support skills. Sasagawa Ryouhei on the other hand… Well Lee liked him, a lot. He just hadn’t expected Kyouya to like him. The kid was most youthfully enthusiastic, about pretty much everything, but training especially. Kyouya had always been a very controlled and serious child, it didn’t seem like the most natural connection.
But then again, Sasagawa kun was strong, he’d more than held his own in that spar, and Kyouya always did approve of strength. And Sasagawa’s exuberance did provide a good counterbalance to Kyouya’s rigidity. Rather like Lee’s did actually. Lee suspected that honestly might be why he was Kyouya’s favourite cousin. And now he came to think about it there were more than a few similarities between himself and Kyouya’s new friend. They were both energetic, and youthful, and devoted to hard work. They were both probably a little louder than they should have been. Maybe Kyouya looked up to him more than he thought. Lee felt so happy he thought he might burst at the idea. The youthful bonds of family burned strong.
In any case Lee was very happy that his adorable cousin had such good friends in the academy. And so he hadn’t been concerned when he graduated to genin, and left his cousin alone in the academy. Or at least he hadn’t bee at first. Maybe he should have been, because over time Kyouya had started acting oddly. It wasn’t a fast thing, nothing that could be pinned down to a single incident, but Kyouya had been increasingly on edge, touchy, even more so than was normal for him. Lee would have suspected some sort of problems with his classmates but there didn’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary in their reactions to Kyouya. In fact it seemed more the other way around. Kyouya had started, not stalking, his cousin would never engage in such an unyouthful activity as stalking, but observing Sawada Tsunayoshi. Lee didn’t know why, there didn’t seem to be anything unusual about the kid at first glance, but clearly something about him had caught Kyouya’s attention. He just hoped it wasn’t the same disturbing flowering of youth that had Lee’s female classmates following his teammate Neiji around and trying to steal his underwear. His cousin was better than that.
…
Lee spent the invasion in the hospital, half believing he’d never fight again, and hating himself for being so useless. It had been… frustrating. It might well have been the worst day of his life, except that after the invasion his cousin had come by to visit, and changed everything. Kyouya had come by, settled in his own skin in a way that Lee had never seen him, not even when he was a scrappy little three year old, with Sawada Tsunayoshi standing at his back and blazing like starlight in a way that tugged at something Lee had only ever been half aware of in his own soul. That was when Lee had started to understand why Kyouya was so drawn to the boy.
But for all Sawada’s intensity it was Sasagawa who truly managed to help. Kyouya had brought him and for once he’d been all calm focus as he called up a fire that burned as yellow as sunlight in his hands and ran it over Lee’s skin and through his bones. Sasagawa had healed him while Kyouya guarded the door and Sawada kept a discreet eye on the window. When he was done Lee was still far from healed but the body awareness he’d been developing since he was five years old and determined to become a ninja told him that his wounds were no longer something time couldn’t heal. That he was no longer broken beyond repair. When Sawada asked him to keep quiet about what had been done to fix him it had been an easy thing to promise. He trusted his cousin, and his cousin trusted Sawada, and he owed all three of them a debt beyond words or faith. Lee might be loud but he knew how to keep a secret quiet, and he was smart enough to know the kind of dangers a secret like that could carry for a group of children who weren’t even genin yet, with all the vulnerability that implied.
A few months later when he found that same yellow fire Sasagawa had wielded dancing over his own fists, he knew exactly who to go to.