On nights when Chouji hated his hands, he couldn’t sleep.
He sat on his bed and stared out at the moon. He’d watched it often in the days after the war ended, and somehow it seemed more sharp, unforgiving.
A gentle wind shook the leaves of the maple tree in the courtyard his room faced, and Chouji looked from the moon and past the leaves to the street on the other side of the compound's wall. There was no one there but the breeze brought the smells of the late night food carts and restaurants.
Sometimes it would bring the faint smell of cigarette smoke and a man's deep-voiced laughter.
The breeze was kind tonight. It carried no voices, no laughter, no smoke. Chouji’s hands rested on his lap, limp and relaxed. They were large hands, calloused hands; hands used to lifting, to crushing, to gripping and throwing. Akimichi hands.
Hands that had killed Asuma Sarutobi, a second time.
Chouji closed his eyes and did as he had practiced with the mednins, reminding himself over and over. Asuma was already dead. He was dead, and being controlled unfairly, pulled from his eternal rest. Asuma had been dead before the blow fell. Dead before the trenchknife he’d entrusted to Shikamaru bound his shadow, dead before the sealing squad wrapped him in blessed cloth.
Asuma Sarutobi had been dead. You can’t kill a dead man. You can only bring him peace.
In the earliest days, Chouji had found himself gripped by an urge to cut his hands off. These hands, which he had sworn would be used to defend Konoha and all within it, had taken the life of his sensei- the life of the one adult he had trusted, aside from those of his clan, utterly and completely. The life of the man Chouji had fought for, had bled for, the life of a man who had liked Shikamaru for his brains and Ino for her determination and Chouji just for being exactly who he was.
Chouji forced himself to look down at his hands. In the soft moonlight they seemed unreal, molded from clay and painted like the hands of a bunraku puppet.
“Your hands are a part of you,” he remembered his therapist saying, “and all of you is kind. Your love for Asuma is what gave you the strength you needed, and your hands were just the vehicle to see it done. They are tools, Chouji, important ones.”
Chouji raised his right hand and examined it. Scarred, now; he wore through gloves like water displaced sand. Older members of his clan had hands like chunks of wood, callouses on callouses. Chouji had no doubt that someday he would be the same.
At the tip of Chouji's pointer finger, a flame appeared. Small and steady it burned, feeding back on itself. It spread to his middle finger and then to his thumb, until all of his fingers were shining softly with the flame.
Chouji had admitted to only two people, and long after the war was done, that with that final blow to Asuma Sarutobi he had done more than just knock him into a stone cliff.
(annihilating his insides, turning them to nothing more than pulp, but Asuma couldn't feel that and it was a tiny blessing but it was one all the same.)
Shikamaru had understood, and Ino had tried to, which was all Chouji ever really asked of her.
Keeping chakra absorbed from opponents wasn’t like keeping a body’s ashes. When you ran out, you could replenish, but what came would be your own. Still, he had been careful. He had found a way to keep it, in a bottle that Tenten had been kind enough to provide from her endless scrolls.
Chouji had kept the last flicker of chakra long enough to learn the Burning Palm, long enough to consume it and cast the jutsu for baby Mirai, creating beautiful shadows on her wall. She was a true Sarutobi. She’d reached for his burning fingers and giggled for more.
Asuma had always meant to teach the Burning Palm jutsu to Chouji, claimed that it was one of the few fire jutsus he would find useful with his up-close combat style. There simply hadn’t been time, and then there never would be time.
Whenever Chouji hated his hands and couldn’t sleep, he lit his palm on fire.
This, he said to himself, was Asuma. It was Asuma’s hours of teaching, his many treats at many restaurants. This was Asuma telling Chouji he was kind when Chouji knew his father thought he was a coward. This was Asuma telling them they were the perfect Ino-Shika-Cho.
If he cut off his hands, he would be cutting off Asuma, like snuffing a candle.
Chouji could not, and would not, lose his teacher again.
His mind tangled and fought like it always did but Chouji put the Burning Palm out and rolled over, back to the window.
Chouji knew he wouldn't sleep. He knew that in the morning Shikamaru would give him that hooded look, and Ino would keep glancing back at him to make sure he was still there. He would be, and maybe behind him there would be a ghost, but Chouji hoped not.
Asuma Sarutobi had died twice. That was enough for anyone.