Chapter Text
one: sand children
“You will train them,” the Kazekage says, and Tatsuya has to keep his gaze still. “I trust you, Kokuyo.”
“Yes, Kage,” the black-clad jonin nods, before taking his leave.
Is he crazy? Be sensei for the Kazekage’s children ?
They’re good kids, with natural aptitude, but really ? After being stranded here, he’s going to take on something like this?
So that’s how Tatsuya finds himself standing in the middle of a training ground a few days later, his three charges waiting - Temari, the oldest, is waiting for orders, sandy brown wrap draped over her shoulders, her eyes flitting between her new teacher and her brothers; and her brothers are both silent. There is palpable mistrust between all three of them - everyone in Suna fears Gaara, the youngest son, the monster within.
“You three are under my command now,” Tatsuya breaks the silence, and three pairs of eyes look up at him - there is fear, and unsureity, and more in those eyes. “You will train hard, and long, and do what I ask of you. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sensei,” three voices chorus, two shaking a little.
“You have nothing to fear from me,” he smiles softly. “And nothing to fear from each other, either,” Todd sneaks in, catching the glances of Temari & Kankuro to their brother. “You are here to learn, to grow, and you can only do that together.”
“Is that understood?”
two: too much black
“I still don’t understand how you wear so much black, Irakusa,” a voice says from behind where Tatsuya’s biting into his taiyaki.
Sitting down beside him, holding a paper-wrapped taiyaki of her own, Isobe Emiri has a wicked smirk on her face. “It just makes you more of an eyesore.”
“Jerk, “ Tatsuya elbows his fellow jonin the side, and the green-haired woman laughs before tearing into her own red bean filled pastry. “I’m just used to it, doesn’t feel like me otherwise.”
“It’s rubbing off on your charges, one of them at least,” Emiri nods to where the three genin are each going through drills nearby - Kankuro is running laps around the training field, and he’s dressed in stark black, a dark spot compared to the violet of Temari’s form as she does push-ups on one side of the field, and the bright fucking red of Gaara and his hair as he sits, quietly beside his sister, meditating.
“That reminds me,” the jonin-sensei finishes off the last of his snack and turns to his friend. “At some point I want to see some specialized training into my kids, and I thought-”
“Which one?”
“Kankuro,” Tatsuya looks his friend square in the eyes, waiting. “I think he might have some puppet-mastery in his future, and I don’t know anybody else better than you, Emiri-san.”
“I’m flattered,” the green-haired ninja laughs before standing up. “Just give me a place and a time, and I’ll be there.”
Maybe this won’t be that hard after all.
three: fear
They’re all scared out of their minds; Temari & Kankuro of their brother, and Gaara, well...that one’s harder to pinpoint.
“You are a team,” Tatsuya tells them early one morning, before the sands and the winds pick up. “More than that, you are family. You have to learn to work together, if you’re going to progress further in your training.”
“Tatsuya - sensei,” Temari looks up at him through a bit of blonde hair falling into her face.
“I’m not finished,” Tatsuya holds up one black-gloved hand. “Fear is a powerful foil against us, but can also be an equally powerful tool for ourselves.”
“Today, we face our fears.” The jonin says, carefully pulling from his shirt a long silver chain, dangling from it his ring. Unclasping the chain, he slips the black band onto his left pointer finger and Dark Matter coils around his arm.
A few moments later, there are three spectral black figures standing in front of the siblings. “Each of these constructs will fight you, harder than you’ve fought until now.” Tatsuya steps back, and the figures stand before his students, waiting for their master’s command.
“They also know your worst fears and will use them against you,” Tatsuya looks between his charges. “You all have the ability to defeat them, you just have to find that strength and use it .”
four: friends
“It’s a good thing you’re pretty,” Emiri is laughing into her drink, sprawled out on Todd’s floor.
“Amen to that,” another voice says, and Tatsuya looks over at Akiyama Shiro, accomplished medical-nin, who’s leaning against Emiri’s back.
Tatsuya shakes his head and takes another sip of his own beer before sitting down on the floor with his friends. “You are the worst ,” he side-eyes them both.
“You love us,” Shiro smirks, nudging Tatsuya with a foot.
“Debatable,” the jonin-senshi replies and looks over at his best friends. Emiri, the skilled ninjutsu kunoichi - her green hair is out of its usual high ponytail and she’s laughing, wild in its cadence, and Shiro, his black and white hair disheveled as the smirk across his lips.
In a moment, they remind him of someone else: someone he’s tried to forget, purple light and emotions run wild -
“Earth to Tatsuya,” Shiro’s voice breaks Tatsuya’s thought pattern, and he looks over at the silver-and-black haired medical-nin. “Over here, pretty boy.”
Tatsuya finds himself looking at the pair of them again: Emiri and Shiro back-to-back, laughing and trying to draw him closer. It’s exactly what the blackette’s been missing.
Which is exactly why Tatsuya slides across the floor to his friends, who draw their arms around him. The three of them laugh, and smile, and it’s the happiest Tatsuya’s been in a very long time.
five: cunning as a fox
“It’s time you three had a new challenge.” Tatsuya gathers his trio together and looks at them: there is still tension between all of them, but slowly, they’re becoming more comfortable with each other.
“This had better be good,” Temari quips, glower across her face.
“Trust my judgement. I am, after all, as much a part of this team as each of you,” Tatsuya says, hands moving in a flash of hand seals. A moment later, as he slams his hand onto the sandy ground before the three, there’s two pops and two of Todd’s fox summons are sitting in the sand.
“Tatsuya-san!” Shinku brightens, immediately curling around Tatsuya’s feet as he stands.
All three genin’s eyes open a little wider, as both Shinku and Hoshi chitter around Tatsuya. “Girls,” he draws the foxnin’s attention. “It’s good to see you too, but you’re here to meet some special someones: my genin.”
“Ooh!” Hoshi’s eyes widen and she runs over to Kankuro, who looks at the fox and raises an eyebrow.
“I hope one day soon we’ll all be able to work together in perfect harmony,” Tatsuya smiles as Shinku stands between Temari and Gaara, choosing the redhead to lay her attention upon.
“You are as red as me!” The crimson-colored fox laughs, and it’s not long before Gaara’s self-imposed wall of Anger Superiority has fallen a little as Shinku runs around his feet laughing, a smile cracked on Gaara’s stony face.
Temari steps toward her sensei, eyes on her brothers, both smiling and not paying attention to each other for the first time in months. “Tatsuya-sensei, thank you.” She nods her head at her teacher, eyes back to her brothers again.
“It has been too long since I saw my brothers smile,” the blonde sighs. “I had feared I might never see it again.”
Tatsuya smiles, looking between his charges for another few minutes, before raising his voice to get the attention of everyone. “Alright, time to get to work!”
So that’s how they spend the rest of the day, switching the Sisters out with each of the trio in trails along the training courses. It’s long, watching Shinku & Hoshi outrun the siblings, giggling laughter as they playfully tease the sibling they’re with. But by the end of it, covered in sweat and sand and dust, Tatsuya knows he made the right choice.
to be continued...