Chapter Text
Egawa Souta may have been considered a prodigy if he hadn’t had the bad luck to be born in the same generation as Namikaze Minato.
After all, what was there to talk about a second son of a hot springs ryokan when you could talk about the prized student of Sannin Jiraiya-sama? Souta may have made his family and friends proud by becoming the youngest civilian jounin at seventeen but Namikaze made history by becoming jounin at fifteen. Namikaze would later become a sealmaster surpassing even his own teacher at twenty, the next in line for Hokage at twenty three, and on top of that, he was easy on the eyes. Who could best that?
(Six years later, Souta would think, at least he wasn’t in the same generation as Hatake fucking Kakashi.)
——
The excitment of making jounin didn’t last long for anyone; exactly a week after promotions were announced, Lord Third declared that Konoha would go to war.
It made Souta’s mother cry. His father closed the hot springs for a day and Kouta didn’t say a word but Souta knew his twin, who was forever burdened by the responsibilities of the first born. When Kouta thought no one was looking, his breathing would stutter, like he was holding back a sob.
Souta, on the other hand, accepted the news with quiet resignation.
“You fool,” his mother shouted at him that evening, shaking in fury at his calm. She brushed off Souta’s father’s feeble attempts to stop her. She had held her silence when Souta had first started in the Academy, when he was made genin and chuunin, every single time he came back from missions with injuries. No more. “It won’t be like the Second War. You’re a jounin now - you’ll be sent to the front lines, you’ll have to fight, don’t you understand?”
Souta did. He was likely to be killed in battle before he turned eighteen. If he was really unlucky, he would lose a limb or two and survive. He understood all of this.
He simply wasn’t surprised.
The peace after the Second War had been slapstuck together and war had been on the horizon far longer than Hatake Sakumo’s failed mission if you knew to look for it: trade routes were getting more dangerous by the day despite doubling patrols. Skirmishes at the border were becoming more frequent and viscious. Rumour had it that economic collapse was glooming over Iwa. ANBU was recruiting again.
He tried to explain all of this, that the peace after the Second War was only ever transitory—peace always was—but this way, at least they wouldn’t have to worry about rations and safety since jounin family members were given priority.
His mother refused to listen, but she was his mother and heard the unspoken truth anyways: when Souta took his oaths as a shinobi, he meant his pledge to the Will of Fire. He was ready to take his place, fight and die for something bigger than himself. For honor, for glory, for Konoha. After all, dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.
“Foolish child,” his mother whispered, refusing to look at him.
His orders came two days later. Souta left without saying goodbye.
——
The first day of war, Souta learned that being a Konoha jounin in war time involved a frankly shocking amount of paperwork. He learned how to fill out requisition forms, mission forms and death certificates. He was responsible for receiving mission scrolls, disseminating information to chuunin and genin as needed, and keeping his team’s medical forms up to date.
The second day of war, he was sent to the east camp to take command of a genin team who was assigned a supply run. They moved from camp to camp through established paths that were patroled by chuunin. It felt like a regular C rank mission.
Eleven weeks in, Hayashi Momo, a genin under his command, was killed in action. It was supposed to be a routine mission to transport supplies from one camp to another but an Iwa team had infiltrated further into the Fire Country’s border than expected. The ambush caught Souta’s team flat-footed, and Hayashi, who had been at the rear paid the price. After a furious hand-to-hand, Souta managed to distract the Iwa jounin with a well placed genjutsu long enough to slit her throat, which caused the remaining two Iwa chuunin to scatter.
He let them run: the mission wasn’t over so he secured Hayashi’s body instead.
When they finally reached base, he sat down—still soaked in blood—and filled out the death certificate with shaking hands. Name. Rank. Cause of death.
Then he dismissed the two surviving genin, their eyes red and faces pale. He didn’t say anything. What was there to say?
He instead dropped by the canteen for food and news, and then quickly turned around to volunteer himself for a perimeter check to slip out of the camp. He didn’t stop moving until the trees swallowed him whole—a safe haven for Konoha shinobi.
Hidden beneath the thick canopy, out of sight, he finally let himself slow down.
Souta swayed. Once. Twice. Then he crouched low, balancing on the balls of his feet like he was bracing for an earthquake. But the tremor was inside him, the news still ringing in his ears.
The Yamanaka twins—dead. Killed in a skirmish by the river two weeks ago. Their bodies were lost for days and finally found downstream. They used to always ask after Kouta and tease him that Kouta was the better looking twin.
Inuzuka Kegawa, who taught Souta the basis of chakra manipulation, had snapped after Kuromaru died in his arms and was in some T&I cell for reconditioning.
Adachi Yuto, who lived across the street, was taken prisoner and returned in pieces. Yuto had promised a congratulatory drink for Souta’s promotion.
People he knew, people he grew up with—all gone.
Souta pressed the heels of his hands hard against his eyes as if he could keep the building pressure in his chest from spilling out.
All for the Will of Fire.
Souta knew this, he believed it—but his breathing stuttered all the same.
——
Four months in, after Souta learned that his first crush, Kanako, had gone MIA, he stopped asking after the people he knew. The news became too much to bear. It was better to only focus on surviving each day, and he let days blur into weeks and then into months.
Six months in, Souta learned why his friends were disporportionately dead or dying as he finally recognized the unfairness of mission allocation.
Clan genin and chuunin got the safe assignments—missions close to home or strategically insignificant with a low chance of danger. For jounin, there was no such thing as safe missions but clan jounin always had more information from other clan members. They knew the areas or missions to avoid or volunteer for depending on your ambition and injuries.
Civilian jounin like Souta were stuck with whatever was left.
Still, Souta continued to survive his missions, and quickly got moved closer and closer to the border. Despite his best efforts to stay detached, Souta also continued to hear rumors of Namikaze. Excited chatter floated through the ranks—how he descended onto battlefields like a golden hurricane of rage. A beacon of hope, ripping through enemies and turning the tide of battle single-handedly.
Then in a wave of deaths and killing and missions, Souta met Hatake Kakashi.
Hatake’s cheeks were round with baby fat, and the boy barely came up to Souta’s knees, but he was somehow a chuunin at six years old.
This tiny shrimp outranked half of Souta’s friends. Souta tore himself away from that absurd thought to focus on the sealed scroll Hatake was holding up.
“Souta-san, this is for you.”
The scroll contained three words, written in broad messy strokes, clearly urgently penned: I’ll owe you.
He didn’t recognize the handwriting but Souta could put two to two together.
“Uh,” he said, because he just got back from three consecutive supply runs, hadn’t slept for a week, and was not entirely convinced this wasn’t a hallucination. “Minato-san wanted this passed to me?”
“Yes, I just said that,” Hatake replied with an impressive amount of derision, even for a clan kid. “Ni-san had to head out immediately so he couldn’t wait until you came back from your mission. He told me to wait here and give this to you and you’d understand,” Hatake’s eyes narrowed. Every word dripping with suspicion, the shrimp asked him, “You can read right?”
For the first time since the war started, Souta laughed.
——
Whether it was a stroke of luck or terrifyingly precise planning on Namikaze’s part, Souta was indeed between missions for the following sixty hours and available to babysit Hatake.
At first, Souta wasn’t sure why Namikaze wanted someone watching over Hatake. Hatake was young but he was a chuunin, and had the legal authority and actual skill of one.
Hatake also wasn’t exactly thrilled about the arrangement. Fiercely independent and bristling with attitude, he reacted to Souta’s offer to help grab a kunai requisition form from the top shelf with open hostility.
“I’ve been chakra walking since I was two,” the boy snapped, already scaling the shelving unit with the casual grace of a cat. “I don’t need a babysitter.”
Souta let it go. There was no winning a pissing match with a six-excuse-me-I’m-six-and-a-half-year-old prodigy.
But later that evening, they entered the canteen together—Souta just a step behind, more out of habit than anything—and conversations quieted around them like someone had flipped a switch. Pockets of shinobi turned to stare. Some whispered. Others didn’t bother hiding their scowls as Hatake passed.
Souta caught the subtle shift in the kid’s posture—shoulders squared, chin up, eyes blank. Just like the black mask he liked to wear, the facade of indifference was armor. Reflexive and defensive, but the correct response. Hatake was a shinobi too after all. He knew better than to show weakness.
That’s when Souta understood why Namikaze didn’t want the kid alone. He needed someone nearby—not to hold his hand, but to watch his back.
What Souta still didn’t understand was why Namikaze chose him.
——
Two days later, Namikaze schlepped back into camp, muddy and weary but otherwise seemingly uninjured. He thanked Souta with a nod, dropped a hand onto Hatake’s head, and—without breaking stride—pushed the kid into a deep, reluctant bow in a very practiced motion before dragging the kid away.
——
The bizarre baby-sitting, for a lack of a better term, happened a few more times after that and Souta didn’t really mind. Not only did it improve his standing among clan shinobi to be trusted to look after a clan kid like Hatake, as well as his standing with all shinobi to be trusted by Namikaze, working with Hatake was refreshingly easy.
The boy understood orders and was frighteningly competent. His taijutsu was still limited by his reach and weight but his ninjutsu was soldily chuunin level and improved each time Souta saw him.His chakra control and memory was likely better than Souta’s and the shrimp somehow already has some mastery over his third chakra nature.
This all changed after Hatake Sakumo’s death. The whispers and furtive looks towards Hatake grew bold after White Fang’s death, as if his suicide was an admission of guilt rather than a desparate man’s ploy. Shinobi, clan and civilian alike, spat on the Hatake name around campfires, blaming the White Fang for the entire war and cursing that his child continued to bring misfortune to them all.
The next time he met Hatake, Hatake was a very different child. Quiet and solemn. He hadn’t been talkative before but he would respond to Souta’s questions and comments with a childlike openness and honesty. Now he didn’t speak unless spoken to.
War makes a shinobi desperate and bitter, Souta knew this. He was no different -he stopped asking for updates of people he knew and had been volunteering for supporting attacks against Iwa to calm the churning desire to inflict as much pain on the enemy as they had inflicted on his fellow shinobi.
But if any of this were to mean something, there had to be a line, and the line had to be this: Hatake was Konoha. He was loyal. He was six.
Unsurprisingly, Namikaze started keeping the boy close after that. Word around camp said he’d pulled strings to have Hatake permanently assigned to him—breaking protocol that expected chuunin to rotate between field teams. Unprecedented but likely the perk of being Namikaze-I-clear-battlefields-alone-Minato.
——
Souta still met with Minato and Kakashi occasionally throughout the war. Unlike Minato, and by association Kakashi, who were constantly on the move, Souta was stationed by the western border near Kusa. The days were long, and war didn’t leave much room for rest, but somehow, he found himself making time for the two when they were around.
Minato, despite the weight of the world on his shoulders, had this constant cheerfulness that seemed out of place in the grim realities of war. He had a way of talking to people that made them forget the battles they fought or the losses they’d endured. A natural warmth and earnestness that made people gravitate to him.
Except, Souta noticed, in the quiet moments—the ones when Minato wasn’t grinning or cracking jokes, that there was something different about him when Kakashi was around.
Minato was still Minato, of course—kind, approachable, always willing to lend a hand or offer a word of encouragement. But the easy warmth that defined him seemed to fade when Kakashi was nearby, replaced by something a touch more protective for it to be simple affection.
Souta’s suspicions were confirmed one afternoon in the base camp. Two older shinobi, clearly not realizing Minato was nearby, bristled when they saw Kakashi kicking a stone at the edge of the camp with his distinct silver hair.
Souta recognized the two men—both experienced chuunin, who had survived but lost much during the Second Shinobi War.
The shorter one spat in Kakashi’s direction.
Kakashi didn’t flinch. He rarely did. His hands were tucked into the folds of his travel cloak, his head tilted down as always, hiding his entire face between his mask and his hair. He didn’t respond to their hurtling insults, not even sparing them a glance.
Minato paid attention though.
The change was subtle at first. Minato had been standing with Souta a few feet away, discussing a new earth jutsu he witnessed the enemy use, when he paused to observe the exchange and a slight shift in his posture made Souta’s stomach tighten. Minato’s smile—the cheerful easy thing, grew sharp and dangerous. His eyes darkened, the warmth draining from his expression like water slipping through the cracks of a dam.
It was the look of someone who had seen far more than most would ever hope to, someone who had learned exactly how far the world would push him before he pushed back.
When the taller shinobi brought up Hatake Sakumo, the predator in Minato fully emerged.
It wasn’t that Minato moved at all. It was actually the stillness in his presence that made Souta’s pulse spike. A cold deliberation in his gaze now, and his body—always so relaxed—had gone completely still.
For a split second, as if sensing Souta’s discomfort, Minato’s eyes glanced over to Souta, and there was something terrifyingly thoughtful in them—like a feral but intelligent beast, weighing its options.
Minato looked back at the chuunin, and released killing intent.
Souta’s knees almost buckled at the weight of it. The sheer force of Minato’s presence—a promise of violence tempered by complete control—was enough to make everyone in the vicinity flinch. Even the two chunin, who had witnessed their fair share of battles, stumbled back.
Kakashi, in a twisted kind of irony, seemed to relax into it. He looked over at Minato, his expression unreadable before he silently moved to stand at Minato’s back.
Minato didn’t look at him but he straightened, the tension in his body dissipating like the calm after a storm, though the sharpness in his eyes remained fixed on the two chuunin who quickly withered under his gaze and slunk away. Then, after a long breath, he turned to Kakashi, his expression softening just enough to let a small, almost apologetic smile tug at his lips.
As though nothing had happened, Minato asked, "Ready to go?"
It was the first time Souta saw the man beneath the mask of Namikaze Minato and would be a while before he saw it again.
But in that moment, Souta understood: Minato’s kindness was genuine, but the calculated coldness that lay under it was genuine too.
Namikaze Minato, who was perfect, too perfect, too self sacrificing for Konoha, too kind to everyone he ever met, had a line that couldn’t be crossed. People he staked as his, who he wouldn’t hesitate to make the world burn for.
It meant that Minato was human too, and strangely, that only made Souta like him more.
——
Three years in, Souta made ANBU. He didn’t tell anyone, not even Kouta.
Unlike when he became jounin, there was no celebration, no ceremony—just a summons, an offer of a mask, and a new kind of oath.
He started moving toward the front lines not long after and learned that in ANBU, skill was the only thing that mattered. Unauthorized use of bloodlines limits was forbidden, and call signs replaced family names. You were measured and respected solely by your ability to survive and execute. It was refreshing, even freeing, because for the first time in his career, Souta wasn’t a civillian jounin—he was ANBU.
There was a strange kind of kinship in that. Not warmth exactly—but trust. A bone-deep certainty that the shinobi beside you would take a blade for you without question, and that you’d do the same because you were both tools forged in the same fire. Because you were both Konoha, and ANBU comprised of people who believed that was enough.
The work was darker than anything Souta had done before, but he didn’t flinch.
His upbringing in a civillian family was his greatest asset, letting him travel through country borders as a harmless civillian. Once he was in, he spent his days in the shadows, carving away at the enemy before they even realized they were bleeding. Starting rumors that would topple alliances. Planting evidence in the right hands at the right time.
He orchestrated chaos in the Wind Country, assassinating a rising Sand general and making sure the trail led directly to Iwa. He left forged correspondence in Taki’s outposts, suggesting betrayal, seeding distrust that would fracture their neutrality. He slipped poison into the ink of diplomatic scrolls, sending whispers of conspiracy rippling through the ranks of foreign shinobi.
Everything he did was a lie with a body count.
Some nights, he woke up with the weight of those deaths pressing down on his chest. Other nights, he didn’t dream at all, and that was worse.
——
Being in ANBU meant he saw less of Minato and Kakashi, but he heard about them more than ever. In a way, being on the inside of ANBU made him realize just how essential Minato was to the war effort. What had once seemed like unpredictable movements from the jounin were actually intricately tied to the ANBU’s operations. Like when ANBU carefully leaked intel that a camp by the waterfall was restocked with supplies. When Iwa finally moved to raid it, they found Namikaze Minato waiting for them instead.
Then, four years into the war, Minato somehow replicated the Second Hokage’s hiraishin, and for the first time since the war started, Souta dared to hope that the war might actually end.
——
The break in Souta’s run of missions came later when he got a sealed purple scroll which indicated an urgent request to return to Konoha. The scoll contained three words, written in broad, messy but familiar strokes, clearly urgently penned: I’ll owe you.
Ignoring the excited chatter that the Kannabi Bridge was destroyed, Souta turned toward Konoha and started to run.