The dawn, on this morning, was not a glorious event but a slow, tentative staining of the sky at the horizon's edge, a faint seepage of pale gold and bruised purple into the dominant, velvety grey.
Renjiro walked alone, his footsteps on the gravel path the only sound in the vast, sleeping silence.
He was nearing the newer section, where the earth was still dark and loosely packed, when a figure resolved itself from the mist ahead, standing motionless before one particular grave.
Renjiro's steps slowed.
Even from the back, silhouetted against the lightening east, he recognised the posture—a familiar, weary straightness he hadn't seen in years.
Riku Senju, his former jōnin sensei.
Time and war had worked on him. His frame, once solid and robust, seemed thinner, almost gaunt. His hair was now heavily streaked with iron grey. He carried the invisible weight of command and loss in the slope of his shoulders, a weariness that went deeper than bone.
Renjiro stopped a few paces away, unsure whether to announce himself or retreat. Before he could decide, Riku spoke, his voice a dry, rasping thing that scraped through the quiet. He didn't turn.
"You look like shit."
The curse, so blunt and unexpected in the solemn dawn, startled a faint, breathless sound from Renjiro—not quite a laugh, not quite a gasp. The surprise was swiftly followed by a reflexive, familiar defiance. He found his own voice, just as rough.
"You should look in a mirror first, old man."
Riku Senju finally turned. His face was indeed older, lined with trenches carved by stress and sun, but his eyes, though shadowed, held the same sharp, assessing glint Renjiro remembered.
A ghost of a smile touched his lips. They looked at each other for a moment and shared a dry, exhausted chuckle.
The brief moment of levity evaporated into the mist. Riku's gaze turned searching, the professional assessment of a sensei evaluating a former student on the brink.
"How are you?" he asked, the question stripped of all social pretence.
Renjiro held that gaze. There was no point in lying to Riku. The man had seen him at his worst as a genin, had pulled him back from the edge before.
"I'm… doing my best to keep it together," he admitted.
Riku nodded slowly, as if this was the answer he expected.
"One great war can wear a man down to his component parts," he said, his voice low and gravelly with memory.
"Grind away the idealism, scar over the soft spots. But you…" He looked back at Renjiro, "You've lived through the tail end of one and the entirety of another. If you don't learn to manage it—to process it, not just shove it in a locker and throw away the key—it will hollow you out. It will break you in ways no enemy ever could. Not with a blade, but with silence. You'll just… stop."
The words landed with the weight of prophecy. Renjiro felt their truth resonate in the cold, hollow place where his grief for Hiro lived
An awkward, heavy silence descended, thicker than the morning mist. Both men turned their attention to the grave before which Riku had been standing. The name etched into its face was a physical blow every time Renjiro's eyes traced the characters: Hiro Hatake.
The finality of it, there in the cold, unyielding rock, was a truth he could not argue with, could not strategise around. Riku's warning echoed in the quiet. Hollow you out.
A subtle shift in the light, a soft rustle of fabric, drew their attention. Another figure approached through the mist, her steps hesitant. Aiko. She looked older, too; the soft roundness of her youth sharpened into the angles of a career medic-nin.
She stopped a few feet from them, her lips parting as if to speak, but no sound came out. Instead, her composure, so carefully maintained, fractured. Her face crumpled, and her eyes welled up with tears that spilt over instantly, tracing silent paths down her cheeks.
"Sensei… Renjiro…" she managed, her voice a shattered whisper.
Riku was moving before the first sob fully broke. In two strides, he was at her side, his arm going around her shoulders, pulling her into a firm, steadying embrace. He didn't shush her; he simply held her as the grief she'd been suppressing since the news arrived finally found its voice.
"I tried," she choked out between ragged breaths, her face buried against Riku's shoulder.
"I was… I was at the station when they brought him in. I tried everything. There was too much internal damage. I couldn't… I couldn't save him."
Renjiro moved then, stepping to her other side. He placed a hand on her arm, his grip firm.
"Aiko," he said, "Look at me."
She turned her tear-streaked face toward him, her eyes wide with guilt and pain.
"It was not your fault. Do you hear me?"
Riku nodded, his own voice a rumble of agreement. "He'd fight you for blaming yourself, and you know it. Your hands save lives, but you can't save them all. That's the hell of it."
Their combined words, blunt and honest, seemed to steady her. The violent sobs subsided into shaky, hiccuping breaths. She pulled back slightly, wiping at her face with her sleeves, embarrassment now mixing with the grief.
"I'm sorry… I just… seeing you both here…"
"We're all here for the same reason," Riku said gently, releasing her but keeping a hand on her shoulder. After a moment of quiet, he asked, "Do you have it?"
Aiko nodded, sniffing hard. She reached into her cloak and withdrew an object, clutching it tightly in her fist for a moment before holding it out. It was a Konoha forehead protector, the metal plate slightly dented and scratched, the fabric faded from sun and sweat.
Hiro's forehead protector.
The sight of it was a spear through Renjiro's chest. The surge of emotion was so violent that it threatened to activate his Sharingan. He clenched his jaw, fists tightening at his sides, forcing the chakra back, forcing himself to breathe through the wave of pain.
Riku took the protector from Aiko's trembling hand. He held it for a moment, his thumb tracing the familiar spiral symbol. Then, without ceremony, he knelt at the foot of the grave.
Using his fingers, he dug a small, shallow hole in the soft earth beside the headstone. He placed the forehead protector inside, then carefully covered it, patting the soil down gently. It was a simple, intimate ritual—returning a piece of the shinobi to the earth that now held him.
From a pouch at his hip, Riku produced a single stick of incense and a match. He struck it with a soft scritch, the small flame flaring in the dim light.
He lit the incense, the tip glowing orange before releasing a thin, fragrant trail of smoke that wound its way upward, defying the heavy, mist-laden air.
As the scent of sandalwood and myrrh spread, Riku began to recite something under his breath—a low, rhythmic chant in words Renjiro didn't recognise. It wasn't a Konoha prayer, nor a standard Senju rite. It sounded older, more personal.
Renjiro didn't ask.
In this moment, the origin of the words mattered less than their intent: a guide for a restless spirit, a final salute from a teacher to a student.
The three of them stood in a loose triangle around the grave as Riku chanted, the incense smoke weaving between them. No more words were spoken.
None were needed.
The shared silence was its own language, heavy with memories of a four-person team that was now forever broken. Their presence together was the only eulogy that mattered.
As Riku's chant faded, the sun finally crested the distant treeline. The first true rays of morning light, long and golden, pierced the mist, painting the cemetery in stark contrasts of light and shadow.
Watching the sunrise paint Hiro's grave in warm light, a dark, treacherous thought, cold and slick as an eel, surfaced from the depths of Renjiro's mind.
'I could learn it. Edo Tensei, the Impure World Reincarnation. I could bring him back. I could see his smile, hear his laugh, have him at my back again.'
The thought was so potent, so seductive in its promise of undoing the unbearable finality before him, that it stole his breath. For a single, dizzying second, he entertained it—the forbidden scrolls, the sacrifice, the monstrous morality of it.
But then, just as swiftly, another thought followed, a quiet, devastating counterpoint.
'But would Hiro want that? To be a puppet of earth and soul, dragged back into a world that got him killed? To exist as a ghost in borrowed flesh, for my comfort?'
The question hung, unanswered, freezing the dark temptation in its tracks. There was no resolution, only the terrible tension between his desperate desire and his respect for the friend he had lost. The sunrise offered no answers, only light.
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