The house was quiet. It was always quiet, but tonight the silence felt heavy, like the air pressure before a storm.
Overhead, the single incandescent bulb buzzed—zzzt... zzzt—a nervous, insectoid rhythm that grated against the silence, casting the shadow of the exposed ceiling wires across the table like a net.
Sakumo sat at the kitchen table. His flak jacket was draped over the chair. The White Light Chakra Sabre sat on the table in front of him.
The blade was sheathed, but it was still humming. A low, sick vibration that rattled the tea cup next to it.
Tiny ripples appeared in the cold green tea, concentric circles radiating outward from the blade's killing intent, distorting the reflection of the light bulb above.
It had tasted the Ryuku current. It had sliced through a chakra vein so dense it was like cutting the throat of the earth itself.
He looked at his hands. They were clean. He had scrubbed them three times.
His skin was raw and red, smelling of harsh lye soap, but beneath it, the metallic tang of Roran's destruction still coated the back of his throat like swallowed ash.
They still smelled like ozone and burning sand.
Mission Accomplished, the report said. Roran production facility neutralized. Suna supply lines severed. Minimal friendly casualties.
Minimal.
He closed his eyes and saw the purple light. He saw the city crumbling, not wall by wall, but all at once, swallowed by the screaming earth. He saw the civilian distinct. He saw the smoke that looked like a mushroom cloud.
"Papa?"
Sakumo flinched. His hand instinctively went to the tanto, covering the hilt, shielding the boy from the blade.
Kakashi stood in the doorway. He was five years old. He was wearing his pajamas with the little ninken patterns on them.
His small feet made a soft shhh-shhh sound against the tatami mats, the smell of dry rush grass suddenly cutting through the ozone stench of the weapon.
He was rubbing his eyes.
"You're back," Kakashi mumbled sleepily. "Did you win?"
Sakumo looked at his son.
He saw the silver hair. He saw the talent already coiling in the boy's chakra network. He saw the potential for greatness.
And he saw the shadow of Roran stretching out from his own feet to cover the boy.
The draft from the hallway rattled the sliding paper doors—clack-clack—and for a second, the darkness in the corridor looked less like a hallway and more like the open maw of a wolf waiting to be fed.
If I stay, Sakumo realized with a cold, piercing clarity, he will become me. The village will demand it. They will see the White Fang's son and they will ask for another Roran. They will ask him to burn cities to save teammates.
And he will do it. Because he loves them.
"Papa?" Kakashi asked again, sensing the shift in the air.
Sakumo forced a smile. It felt like cracking porcelain.
The skin around his eyes felt tight and brittle, as if a single wrong muscle movement would shatter his face into dust.
"Go to bed, Kakashi," Sakumo whispered. "I... I just have one more report to write."
Kakashi lingered for a second, then nodded. "Okay. Train tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow," Sakumo lied.
Kakashi padded away.
Sakumo waited until he heard the bedroom door click shut.
He picked up the pen. He didn't write a mission report. He wrote a plea.
To the Third Hokage,
The blade is too sharp. It cuts things that should not be cut. It cuts futures.
Do not let him pick it up.
Do not let them turn him into a hero. Let him be a man.
I am taking the ghost with me.
The ink was black and wet, glistening under the yellow light like fresh blood before sinking irrevocably into the paper fiber.
Sakumo put the pen down. He looked at the Tanto.
He didn't hate the village. He didn't hate the mission. He hated the fact that he was so good at it.
He unsheathed the blade. The white light filled the kitchen, cold and unforgiving.
The light didn't just illuminate; it stripped the room of color, bleaching the warm, dark timber of the walls into a sterile, skeletal grey and dropping the room temperature ten degrees in a heartbeat.
"Forgive me, Kakashi," he whispered. "I'm clearing the path."